"If God has made me beautiful, he will give me goodness, if it please him, for other way would be worth little ": The Spirituality of the Christian Cavalry in figure of Galaaz (13th century)

Abstract

From the 12th century the knighthood ascends as the bearer of moral and religious strongholds that keep the order and the maintenance of the feudal regime structures. Thus, a sort of knighthood models begin to be portrayed in the writings of the time, with the literature of the period as the main form of broadcasting. The ‘domestication’ and Christianization of this knighthood was influenced by a set of reforms in medieval clergy, known as Gregorian
reforms (1049-1119). In this way, new rules of conduct were established in order to make the figure of the medieval knight into something sacred, in a Christian model that valued the ascetic ideal of purity and chastity that serve the ecclesiastical interests to dominate and expand its influence within the feudal aristocracy. Among the literary figures depicted in the knighthood novels, we have Galahad as one of the representatives of this new model chivalrous. Starting from an proposal analysis involving the writing culture field in the medieval and the use of theoretical contributions related to literary representation and medieval imagery research proposes seen in literary figure of Galahad and his actions in the The Quest of Grail, links with Christian spirituality represented in the literature of the Middle Ages, highlighting how and what features were necessary to become a ‘soldier of Christ’. This work was developed with the support of scientific initiation scholarship, provided by the National Scientific and Technological Development Council (PIBIC / CNPq) and linked to the project entitled ‘The Cross, the Lady and the Knight: representations of sexuality and spirituality in culture written medieval (centuries XII-XV)’ under professor Dr. Gleudson Passos Cardoso guidance.