The Fifth Commandment of Medieval Chivalry – Thou shalt not recoil in the face of the enemy.
That’s the great commandment of masculine courage. It’s the commandment that forbids cowardice, which was a great dishonour. ‘It is much better to die than to be a coward’ was the motto of the Knights. And Roland, the first Knight of Charlemagne, who volunteered to remain and to die in the rearguard of the Frankish army in the Battle or Roncevaux Pass, he curses the coward, saying, “That he be forever cursed, the chest in which beats the heart of a coward.”
In the Apocalypse, Saint John states: “the fearful [or the cowards] and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death (21:8).
The Knights had contempt for bow and arrow, because its use did not demand the courage of a sword, and they said, “Cursed be the first archer, he was coward, because he did not dare to approach the enemy.”
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), the Doctor Mellifluus, as Pius XII referred to him, wrote ecstatic poems in praise of Our Lady; he wrote also the rule of the Knights Templar. He played the pivotal role in the planning, formation and promotion of the infant Templar Order.
Saint Bernard’s influence to promote courage in the souls of the Knights Templar was balanced by his utter veneration of the Virgin Mary, the Lady, the Dame, whose colors all Templar Knights wore in battle. St Bernard wrote the first ‘rules’ of the Templar Order (1).
It was in order to prepare for great acts of prowess that the rule of the Knights Templar allowed them to go hunting, but the only animal they were allowed to hunt was… the lion. That says everything.
He persuaded Pope Innocent II to formally accepted the valiant men of the ‘The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon’ (The Knights Templar). From the guidance of Saint Bernard, the Knights Templar acquired and developed their sense of indomitable courage to face the Muslim enemy.
The medieval Knight Templar would swear never to step back out of fear. He could avoid the combat only if the enemy were four times more numerous.
It is also told the story of the Lord of Edessa, called Josselin, who was about to die and send his son to go fight the Mohammedans. And when the son refused to fight, alleging that the Infidels were much superior in number, Josselin asked some knights to carry him in a stretcher until the place of the combat. And the Moslems, when they heard that the old baron was coming, they ran away without struggling, allowing to that noble Knight one last glory before he died. He used to say: You do not count your enemies: you fight them!
When the Spaniards came to Mexico, led by Spanish knight Hernan Cortez, they were only four hundred men. Cortez demanded that the Aztecs deliver to him the great pyramid of Mexico, the temple of the Aztec God of War. The Aztecs were obliged to give in. And from the height of the great pyramid, the image of the Virgin Mary triumphed for the first time in America. It took a lot of courage to demand the pyramid from the Aztecs! Cortez also showed a greater courage in burning the ships that brought the Spaniards to America: There was no way any coward would wish to go back home to Europe…
Shortly thereafter, Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego in Guadalupe, and millions of Aztecs were converted to the Catholic Faith!
Pizarro in Peru had a similar courage. Together with Cortez, he was maligned by anti-Catholic historians, but the Spanish conquest of America was highly praised by Popes Pius IX (2) and Pius XII (3).
When he met the Inca and his army, Pizarro tied a ribbon to his arm and told the soldiers to fight if he removed it. A native interpreter explained the Gospel to the Inca, and gave him a book. The Inca smelled the book and throw it out of his hands, saying that he would not worship a crucified God. The interpreter turned to Pizarro and said, “He blasphemed”.
Pizarro then removed the ribbon from his arm. And Peru became Catholic.
More recently, Pope Benedict XVI, during a 2007 visit to Brazil, defended the church’s campaign to Christianize indigenous peoples. He said the Indians of Latin America had been “silently longing” to become Christians when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors spread their colonizing efforts. Of course, the defenders of the cultural paganism (exemplified by the idolatrous worship of the Pachamama in the Vatican) against the missions strongly criticized the Pope.
The Medieval Knight derived his masculine courage from Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 6, which portrays the armour of God, wherewith all truly Catholic men arm themselves for the fight.
“Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of Justice in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
Catholic masculinity demands the full armour of God: The belt of Truth, the breastplate of Justice, the feet shod with readiness for the Gospel of peace, the shield of Faith, the Helmet of Salvation, the Sword of the Spirit… that is how we Catholic men must be armored to fight and never to recoil before an enemy of the Holy Mother Church!
How can Catholic men fulfil the fifth commandment of Chivalry? By never running away from the defense of the Faith. Learn the spiritual weapons (Eph. 6) and use them well, learn
Apologetics, and how to argue to defend the Catholic Faith, but do not waste your time with idle arguments. Flee only in the face of impurity.
(1) A comprehensive detailed biography of St Bernard’s life can be found in The Knights Templar Revealed Butler and Dafoe, Constable and Robinson – 2006.
(2) 06/20/1871, Allocution to a Commission of Spanish Catholics;
(3) Pius XII, Message to the closing of the Great Spanish Nation’s commemoration of the definition of the dogma of the Assumption;
Quotes taken from the work “Une Chrétienté d’Outre-Mer” by Fr. Jean Terrades, in “Developpment et Paix, un Socialism Multicolore au Service du Communisme” Collection Tradition, Family, Property, Montréal, 1978, p.78).
Thank you Father for another well-written, and timely, article offering up authentic Catholic masculinity as an antidote to our disoriented age of effeminacy. My only (minor) pushback is that you trace such Christian chivalry back to the Middle Ages, not to its founding and flourishing within the ranks of the Roman military, specifically with its centurions.
All seven centurions mentioned in Scripture are positively portrayed, which is unexpected, at a minimum, given that they were despised Pagan occupiers of the land promised by God to Israel, and were responsible for the deaths of Peter, Paul, and many lesser known followers of Christ. St. Longinus (and his spiritual successors) may have been consecrated from the pierced Heart of Christ to tend, defend, and extend the Kingdom of God at the instant it came into existence on earth on Calvary. According to tradition and pious legend, he became the first Christian warrior-monk, a thousand years before the Knights Templar, for he was a battle-tested warrior before becoming a monk (and priest, and bishop) in Cappadocia. The remaining Scriptural accounts (which includes St. Paul spending his final four plus years on earth in the constant company of centurions and soldiers) and historical, archeological, and sociological evidence demonstrate that centurions played an unexpected, outsized role in the exponential expansion of Christianity, both in Rome and across the vast Empire.
I wrote a book to be published and released by Sophia Institute Press on March 15, 2026 (the original Feast of St. Longinus) titled: Rise of the Centurion: Reclamation of a Mystical Masculine Theology. I’d like to send you a copy if you provide a P.O. Box or mailing address.
I appreciate all that you do for the faith.
In Corde Perforatum Iesu,