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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
The larger questions underpinning my contribution to this volume are ones I have no hope of answering adequately in a study of this length: How do we define ethics in the context of Arthurian romance as a genre? How are Arthurian ethics encoded in these texts? Are we looking primarily at morals defined by the Church, or expectations raised by the secular courts, or both? Furthermore, do the ethical conflicts described in this literature differ amongst the many “national traditions”? Do we find, for example, in the English Arthurian romances ethical dilemmas that can in any significant way be distinguished from those in the French, or German, or Italian romances? Any attempt to answer this larger question will have to wait until we possess an overarching, comprehensive map of ethics in Arthurian literature, and that would entail a much more expansive treatment of a large number of passages from the Middle Dutch Arthurian romances. Here, I would like to make a start at exploring the ethics of the Middle Dutch Arthurian corpus based on only a very limited selection of passages.
Before looking at those examples from the Dutch tradition, I want to begin with one of the most famous, explicit codes of ethics in all of Arthurian literature: the Pentecostal Oath appearing in Book III of Malory's Morte Darthur, which Arthur required all of his knights to swear; in Dorrie Armstrong's translation:
Thus, when the quest of the white hart was completed by Sir Gawain, and the quest of the brachet was completed by Sir Tor, King Pellinore's son, and the quest of the lady who was taken away by the knight was completed by King Pellinore, then the king established all his knights, and bestowed on them riches and lands. He charged then never to commit outrage or murder, always to flee treason, and to give mercy to those who asked for mercy, upon pain of the forfeiture of their honor and status as a knight of King Arthur's forever more. He charged them always to help ladies, damsels, gentlewomen, and widows, and never to commit rape, upon pain of death. Also, he commanded that no man should take up a battle in a wrongful quarrel – not for love, nor for any worldly goods.
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