Image taken from Amazon.com
Sir
Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe, stirs
the imagination with its villains and heroes, its knights and castles, and its
love and hate. Written in the early nineteenth
century and set in England at the time of the Third Crusade, Ivanhoe was a literary success. In spite of its classification as a
historical novel, its history is inexact.
Ivanhoe is set during the reign of King
Richard I. The friction between the
Normans and the Saxons has not yet ended.
The Saxons feel oppressed, and the Normans feel superior. This conflict between the two ethnic classes
divides the characters into two opposing factions, and the novel’s sympathies
are aligned with the Saxons.
Ivanhoe,
the novel’s title character, returns home from the Holy Land, but is unable to
declare his presence openly since his father, Cedric, has dispossessed
him. While in England, Ivanhoe takes
part in a tournament and defeats Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert, but is injured in
the process. Rebecca, who in many ways
is the character that moves the story, cares for him. While she is transporting Ivanhoe, she is
captured by Sir Brian who tries to take her as his mistress, even though he is
a member of the monastic Knights Templar.
When the castle of Torquilstone is sacked by Cedric, Robin Hood, and a
mysterious Black Knight, Sir Brian brings Rebecca to Templestowe and is
surprised by the Grand Master of the Templars.
Rebecca is tried and found guilty of bewitching Sir Brian. She calls for a champion to defend her, and
Ivanhoe fights and defeats Sir Brian.
The
storming of Torquilstone, the presence of Robin Hood, the tournaments all add
to the excitement of the story. However,
the novel is not a simple action piece.
It is complex and biased. One
area of this bias is the presentation of the clergy.
Every
member of the clergy that appears in the story is shown to be corrupt. The Templars are shown to be womanizers and seekers
of wealth. The one Templar who does not
fall into this category is the Grand Master, yet he is shown to be hateful and superstitious. Aside from the Templars, the Pryor Aymer, a
Cistercian, is worldly, a confirmed lover of pleasure and ease. He is even rumored to love the beauty of
women too much. The one cleric who is allied
with the Saxons against the Norman oppressors is the Friar of Copmanhurst,
Friar Tuck. However, even Friar Tuck is
not a good priest – he loves wine, battle, poaching deer. He does not know his Latin, nor is he willing
to hear the confession of one who is condemned to death. In short, there is not a good priest in the
novel.
This
poor opinion of the clergy has its roots in the state of the relations between
the laity and the priests before the Reformation and even for some time
after. Helen Parish explores the origins
of anticlericalism in England in an article titled,
“It Was Never Good World Sence Minister Must Have Wyves”: Clerical
Celibacy, Clerical Marriage, and Anticlericalism in Reformation England. She explains that before the Reformation,
many priests kept mistresses, and this did not help the English people hold
their priests in high esteem. They
considered these priests to be whoremongers.
When the clergy were permitted to marry under
Edward VI, the absence of celibacy removed the sense of the priest as a
consecrated minster from the minds of the laity.
The
reign of Queen Mary did not help the perception of the English laity. She brought England back to the Catholic
Church, and in so doing, forbade married clergy. Priest who had married had to either forgo
the priesthood or separate from their wives and perform a public penance. Parish writes:
The restoration
of clerical celibacy might well have been welcomed in many parishes: however,
the spectacle of widespread disciplinary proceedings against the clergy –
certainly more widespread than pre-Reformation actions against incontinent
priests – and the public penance and humiliation of married priests and their
wives, was unlikely to make public perceptions of the priesthood any more
positive.
The return of married clergy under
Queen Elizabeth did not help to alleviate the negative perception the laity had
of the clergy. They still retained the
perception of a married priest to be a womanizer. This loss of respect for the clergy may be
why Sir Walter Scott does not present the priests in thirteenth century England
as shepherd of their flocks.
Another
element of the anticlericalism in
Ivanhoe
is his presentation of the Knights Templars.
The Templars are seen as being cabalistic, self-serving womanizers. In fact, when the Templars were suppressed,
these were some of the accusations brought against the order. Helen Nicholson explores the origins of these
accusations in her article,
Saints or
Sinners? The Knights Templar in Medieval Europe. She explains that the Templars did become avaricious,
however that “no critic before 1300 accused the Templars of immorality.”
Nicholson references an English poet of the thirteenth
century who claims that the Templars were so concerned about making money that
they did not have time to pursue women.
While
Scott’s characterization of the Templars does not seem accurate, it is
understandable that he would use this accusation as immorality was one of the
many accusations upon which Pope Clement V based his suppression of the order.
His portrayal of the clergy reflect the
cultural anticlericalism of England where priests were not seen to be faithful
to their vows. In the words that Sir
Walter Scott places in the mouth of the Pryor Aymer: “Vows are the knots which tie
us to heaven – they are the cords which bind the sacrifice to the horns of the
altar – and therefore, as I said before, to be unloosed and discharged unless
our Holy Mother Church shall pronounce the contrary.”
While
clergy are not shown as shepherds of souls, the book itself is full many
unexpected character twists. Scott presents
stereotypes, then makes the stereotypes complex, as in the case of Isaac the
Jew. He has condemnation of bias and
bigotry coming from the Sir Brian, the story’s antagonist. He shows prejudice in the good characters,
and true charity only in a non-Christian.
Ivanhoe is a complex novel filled with
adventure, romance, and daring, and in spite of its anticlerical perspective,
remains an interesting view of late thirteenth century England. While the vision of the middle ages is not
accurate, the book provides us with a glimpse of Sir Walter Scott’s romantic
impression of the past.
The philosophical and political
revolutions in the nineteenth century were visually recorded, not just by their
effects on subsequent events in the twentieth century in the world and the
Church, but also in the changing nature of art.
