Creating the Medieval Miles Christi

This chapter outlines the way chivalric images and themes were mapped onto religious identities in the Middle Ages. The chivalric metaphor found in religious texts is a potent example of the enculturation of the Christian religion in a medieval European context. This enculturation shaped the way medieval religious narrated Christian history, imagining the biblical story in a medieval cultural milieu. This retelling extended to the narration of the passion of Jesus Christ, who was frequently depicted as one engaged in a chivalric contest against the devil; to the martyrs, who emulated Christ, the miles par excellence , in loyalty to the death; and finally, to the authors themselves. The second half of the chapter then outlines how chivalric language penetrated the literary production of the spiritual elite beginning in the eleventh century. The chapter argues it was not only the fact of spiritual battle, but the moral character of the spiritual warrior and the “genealogy” of the warrior that made the knight a fitting literary persona for medieval religious and ministers.