The perpetual knight errand

Once upon a time there was a poor gentleman of La Mancha called Quijada, Quesada or Quejana - Cervantes isn't quite sure. His estate was a small one and life in the country rather tedious, so he passed the time by reading books about chivalry. So did the village priest and barber. The three of them used to meet and talk about who had been the most illustrious knight in the world.

Our hero read much and slept little, and in the end his brain dried out and he lost his reason. That's the kind of thing that can happen. And now he had the weirdest idea the world had ever known. He would become a knight errant. But to do that he must have a name as resonant as those of the knights in the books. After much head-scratching he adopted the name of Don Quixote for himself and that of Rocinante for his bony carthorse.

A trivial story. All of us need to escape from everyday reality into dream worlds of different kinds - of such is the livelihood of authors and printers. And, like the priest and the barber, we know how to distinguish between dreams and reality. That is exactly why we laugh at a madman like this "Don Quixote", but at the same time we are frightened and we envy him a just a little. Just imagine being able to obliterate the boundary between these two worlds and live in them both at once...

And why this insane dream of knighthood?

Perhaps it all began with the stirrup. Sometimes a thing that simple can change the course of history. The stirrup came to Europe from the mounted people of the Orient in the 6th century. Before that, people had ridden to save walking, but with stirrups they suddenly acquired such a firm seat that they were able to use weapons on horseback. The Frankish kings were apparently the first to surround themselves with such retinues of armed horsemen, and before long the practice spread to other European countries.

These mounted knights were to change the face of medieval warfare. They could suddenly appear and strike anywhere, and with their increasingly heavy armour and efficient weapons they seemed irresistible, like tanks in the First World War and aircraft and missiles in more recent conflicts.

For this very reason, however, princes and lords had to make sure of their loyalty. It became common practice to invest these knights with a certain number of estates as fees or fiefs - feudum in Latin, hence the expression "feudal" society. From the 11th century onwards, this new group of horsemen acquired the rank of upper class of nobility, with a lifestyle differing from that of other groups in the community. That lifestyle included a number of rites and ceremonies.

When a young man had completed his education with another knight or at a princely court, time came for him to dubbed a knight himself. This was a solemn, almost sacred act, like that of taking the vows of a priest or monk. Cervantes' third chapter is a wicked parody of this ceremony, with the confused Don Quixote mistaking a humble inn for a castle and asking the astonished landlord to perform the sacred ceremony of dubbing him to knighthood.

Another such rite was the tournament, which became common all over Europe from the 12th century onwards. In it, knights fought each other in groups or in single combat. This was part of their training. In time, however, tournaments also became a sort of public display designed to surround the world of chivalry with a special aura and mystique in the eyes of the community.

These knights, however, with their squires and retinues, were also a constant danger to society. Very often they plundered the peasants' villages in the most brutal manner, as professional soldiers always have done. Very often they deserted their prince and lord in batle, changing sides if the opponent paid better. Disciplining this dangerous, unruly class became a matter of immense importance. An attempt was made to do so through all the rites and ceremonies which were intended to instill certain virtues in these men, above all bravery in battle but also fidelity so their prince or lord, as well as piety and courtly manners.

Stories about knights embodying all these virtues were another means to the same end. And sometimes these instructive examples were turned into great poems which were sung or recied at courts - poems about Roland and other knights at the court of Charlemagne or the twelve knights of King Arthur's Round Table.

These armed horsemen, then, introduced a new technique of warfare in Europe. They also helped to form a distinctive social system and power structure - feudalism. During the 15th century, however, methods of warfare began to change. More long-range weapons made thier appearance on the battlefield, first longbows and crossbows, and then hand-guns, mortars and cannon. These were soon followed by solid squares of mercenaries armed with lances and pikes. Old-fashioned cavalry were powerless against them, and the age of chivalry was now past, at least on the battlefield.

In the imagination and in literature, though, knighthood lived on, becoming more important than ever. The names were the same - Roland, Oliver, Lancelot and all the rest of them - but now that this world of chivalry no longer existed, people could afford to make a joke of it. Luigi Pulci gave the merchants of Florence many a good laugh with his poem Morgante in 1483, about the battles and adventures of Roland among giants and horrid champions.

In another city, Ferrara, Boiardo amused the courtiers with a full-length epic about Roland, or Orlando to give him his Italian name, but in a completely new, unexpected role - as the defenceless victim of the joy and suffering of love. Hence the title of the poem, Orlando innamorato. Then, in 1516, came a sequel to Boiardo's poem: Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, the best-seller of the 16th century. In it Orlando becomes not only enamoured but also "furious", as the title tells us, his mind unhinged by an all-consuming passion. This is the poem which Don Quixote tries to emulate by rending his clothes, throwing weapons about him, banging his head against the rocks and at the same time writing plaintive letters and poems to prove his great love for his chosen lady.

Underlying this burlesque, however, there is a vein of seriousness, melancholy and nostalgia. For, whatever the history books may tell us, the Renaissance was not only a "rebirth" of Europe, it was also a crisis. Many people felt that the world had become more false, cruel and godless, and so knighthood now acquired a completely new mission: that of symbolising a vanished world in which life had been more simple and pure, in which one sole champion could still defy whole armies with his sword and his illustrious valour, in which virtue and goodness always prevailed over evil and vice. A world in which honour meant everything and death itself was beautiful. A world to dream of when one heard the heavy tramp of the new mercenaries on the march and saw artillery spattering flesh and blood over the battlefields.

It was this dream that made great art of Ariosto's poem. It was this dream which impelled Torquato Tasso to write his epic describing the liberation of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, or Edmund Spencer to portray the England of Elizabeth as a magical world of chivalry in his Faerie Queene. The knight had been converted into an ideal which would elevate and educate the present. And it is the same dream we encounter in Cervantes' novel, when our country hero ventures forth into the world as a knight errant, fighting for virtue and justice. In the midst of our laughter we are touched by this faith in a better world.

Something of the same dream also penetrated the tournaments of the time. On these occasions, courtiers, officers and diplomats had an opportunity of displaying their elegant horsemanship and the tilting prowess which they had acquired under many years' tuition by their riding instructors. But tournaments could be something more than this, especially in conjunction with coronations and peace treaties. Then the participants would sometimes be cast as famous knights and princes from the past, and special programmes and poems would declare that they were campaigning for various virtues and indeed for the preservation of world order.

Still today we can encounter this dream of the chivalrous knight. Every Christmas in Sweden nowadays he appear on our television screens, when Ivanhoe enters the lists in his white armour, vanquishing the three proud and vicious knights of Normandy. In every video store we can rent or buy George Lucas' film Star Wars, as big as success in its way as Ariosto's poem of the 16th century. This is a modern saga of chivalry, in which the young Luke Skywalker, instead of riding, flies through space with his squire Han Solo and his antiquated spaceship to rescue the kidnapped Princess Leija. And the climax of that film is the battle between fair-haired Luke and the dark Lord Darth Vader, in which the laser swords flash and clang together just as in the old tales of chivalry. And the whole thing, of course, is a contest between good and evil, between world order and chaos. So even in this electronic age, the old myths are very much with us.