From the book:

Charlemagne
by Derek Wilson
2006

"In our time God has instituted holy warfare so that the knightly order and the unsettled populace, who used to be engaged like the pagans of old in slaughtering one another, should find a new way of deserving salvation. No longer are they obliged to leave the world and choose a monastic way of life...but in their accustomed liberty and habit, by performing their own office, they may in some measure achieve the grace of God."

So wrote Abbot Guibert of Nogent in 1108 and, as we have seen, the sanctification of the profession of arms was reflected not only in the call to the Crusades but also in the character of the chansons, which -- as well as lauding the feudal virtues of duty, sacrifice, and loyalty to one's Lord -- advocated religious war against the unspeakable evil of Islam. Horace's dictum, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (it is sweet and right to die for your country), may be the "old lie", but it has always exerted enormous power over men. In every age some such mantra has been offered to those who need justification for giving free reign to their aggressive instincts. "King and country", "hearth and home", "freedom", all these have been taken up as battle cries by those setting out to massacre their fellow men. In the middle ages the excuse was the defense of the faith.

The way was now open for chivalry, the code of the mounted warrior, to develop a semi-mystical character. Orders of knighthood were founded, beginning with the crusading fraternities, the Templars and Hospitalers. These had very clear functions of protecting pilgrims and maintaining access for Christians to the Holy Land, but over the next couple of centuries the idea of knightly order took on an increasingly fantastic character and became intimately bound up with royal prestige. Kings and princes vied with each other to found exclusive orders -- the Garter, the Golden Fleece, the Star, the Sword, etc. -- all hedged about with arcane ritual (a sort of medieval Freemasonry).

At root the chivalric ideal involved submission to God. Just as a King, going on a Crusade, metaphorically laid his realm at the foot of the Cross, so all knights devoted themselves to the Almighty, renouncing worldy diversions. They were called to holiness of living, were to attend mass daily, fast on Fridays, show themselves honorable toward women and set a good example to their social inferiors. The ceremonies of initiation to knighthood became ever more dramatic and elaborate. Those to be admitted took a bath to symbolize the washing away of the old life, their hair and beards were trimmed, then they held an all night vigil in church or chapel. The following day they attended mass, swore solemn oaths and were ceremoniously invested with sword, spurs, and robes. That, at least, was the ideal.

In reality it proved impossible wholly to sanctify the bloody business of war or to disinvest it of the spurious glamor that has always been part of the soldiers life. Hitherto the the warrior class had been a self-conscious, self-regarding elite, but now the the development of the art of mounted warfare -- with its atttendant heraldic splendors and elaborate rituals -- produced an arrogant gang culture, which reveled in its own machismo and paid only lip service to cultural refinement and spiritual values. A young man being received into the knightly corps might fulfill the attendant holy rites, but he was also excited about being admitted to a privileged brotherhood of celebrities and this could well outweigh the solemnity of the occasion. When two royal princes were knighted in 1389 at the abbey of Saint-Denis, the monks found the proceedings far from edifying:

"The lords, in making day of night and giving themselves up to all excesses of the table, were driven by drunkeness to all such disorders, that, without respect of the king's presence, several of them sullied the sanctity of the religious house, and abandoned themselves to libertinage and adultery..."

(Ed. -- No doubt these privileged princes were then given writs of -- Fornication Under Cognizance of the King - abbreviated as f.u.c.k. - exempting them from punishment for these aberrations...)

Such behaviour was as nothing compared with what the armies of Christ did, once they were unleashed on their enemies. The Crusades are a long horror story of human savagery; of atrocities not only against the armies of Islam, but also against Christian cities...An estimated 70,000 defenseless citizens perished in the first onslaught on Jerusalem...In 1203, when the leaders of the Fourth Crusade were deflected from their declared objective of liberating the Holy Land settlements, then turned their fury on Constantinople, the looting went on for years...

pages 159-160