Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
Jeffrey O. Segrave*
While numerous historical forces conspired to produce a 19th century Zeitgeist
receptive to the renovation of the Olympic Games, le renovateur Pierre de Coubertin drew his ideological inspiration primarily from philosophical idealizations
of ancient Hellenism, the chivalric tradition of the Middle Ages, 19th and 20th century English, French and American educational theorists and practices, and liberal cosmopolitan and internationalist doctrines. While the significance of the
ancient and modern eras on the derivation of Coubertin’s ideology of Olympism
has been well documented, less has been written about the impact of the Middle
Ages on Coubertin. Yet, Coubertin was clearly drawn to the medieval period
arguing that an unintended Olympism nearly took root in the Middle Ages. He
was especially enamored by the esthetic, moral, and, indeed, religious context that
informed the athletic instinct during the Middle Ages, and he found in chivalry
reified and rhetorical echoes of the romantically conceived ancient Olympic cosmology that so inspired him. The purpose of this essay is to carefully delineate the
influence of the medieval period on Coubertin, or, more accurately, to assess the
influence of both medieval and 19th century conceptions of chivalry on the derivation of Coubertin’s idiosyncratic Olympic philosophy, Olympism. Ultimately, I
wish to argue that chivalry exerted considerable influence on Coubertin, and,
furthermore, because of the way he read the Middle Ages and the cultural circumstances that molded chivalry in the medieval and modern eras, as well as the way
he read history itself, he was able to rationalize and popularize his Olympic project as the teleological destination of an identifiable world-historical process.
❖
The modern Olympic Games, as sport historian Allen Guttmann rightly notes,
“are more than just games.”1 In fact, from the very beginning, the Games have
always been distinguishable from all other sporting institutions, including
world championships. As their founder, Pierre de Coubertin wrote, “world
championships do form part of the Olympic Games: Nevertheless the Olympic
Games are ‘something else’ as well, and it is just this ‘something else’ that matters, as it is not to be found in any other variety of athletic competition.”2 The
“something else” was primarily an ideology, what Coubertin called Olympism,
a complex admixture of ethics, world-view, metaphysics, and mythology that
Coubertin elicited from a variety of contemporary and historical sources. The
Games were also distinguished by an elaborate and compelling system of cere*
Jeffrey O. Segrave holds The David H. Porter Endowed Chair in the Department of Health and
Exercise Sciences, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, U.S.A.
Olympika XXII (2013), 1-38
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monies, rituals, and symbols that sanctified and popularized the Games, as
well as a pedigreed lineage that dated back to the athletic festivals in ancient
Olympia. But, as important as the presentation of the Games were, and as
illustrious as their history may well have been, it was Coubertin’s “philosophico-religious”3 doctrine of Olympism that truly differentiated the Olympic
Games from all other athletic competitions.
Olympism was an idiosyncratic philosophical amalgam drawn from eclectic sources, including Coubertin’s idealizations of ancient Hellenism, the chivalric tradition of the Middle Ages, 19th and 20th century English, French, and
American educational theorists and practices, and liberal cosmopolitan and
internationalist doctrines. But, while the significance of the ancient and modern eras on the derivation of Coubertin’s ideology of Olympism has been well
documented,4 less has been written about the impact of the Middle Ages on
Coubertin. Yet, Coubertin was clearly drawn to the medieval period arguing
that an “unintended”5 Olympism, born of “war, hygiene and sport,”6 nearly
“took root in the Middle Ages.”7 Coubertin was especially enamored by the
esthetic, moral, and, indeed, religious context that informed the “athletic
instinct”8 during the Middle Ages, and he found in chivalry reified and rhetorical echoes of the romantically conceived ancient Olympic cosmology that so
inspired him. Coubertin acknowledged the core relevance of the Middle Ages
in other settings too. During his visit to the Much Wenlock Games in England,
he noted that “The dress and speeches were modern; the use of laurels and the
quotations from Greek authors inscribed on the flags and banderoles were
antique; the latter part of the ceremony was an homage paid to medieval ideas
and theories.”9 In the 1894 meeting at the Sorbonne, a three-part lecture on the
history of physical education was delivered by George Bourdon on Antiquity,
J. J. Jusserand on the Middle Ages, and by Coubertin on the modern era,10 and
the Athletic Fair at the 1900 World Fair was slated to be constituted of three
sections—the ancient period, the Middle Ages, and the modern era.11
While Coubertin paid allegiance to the incipient “sporting passion”12
emergent during the feudal period, he was particularly drawn to one of the
most celebrated expressions of the medieval sporting spirit—chivalry—the
sacramental code of knightly conduct that germinated in the Middle Ages and
echoed throughout history enjoying a widespread renaissance in 19th century
Europe, especially France and England. As late as 1920, Coubertin acknowledged “the noble spirit of chivalry” as “the basis of all enduring and pure
sporting activity.”13 To Coubertin, chivalry constituted “a well-defined Olympic revival,”14 and references to chivalry and the lofty and unselfish virtues that
defined knightly behavior and conduct inspired Coubertin and conspicuously
infiltrated his philosophical Olympic musings.
In other words, Coubertin was most heavily influenced by the ideas and
practices emergent in three epochs—the ancient, medieval, and modern. The
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Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
purpose of this essay is to carefully delineate the influence of the medieval
period on Coubertin, or, more accurately, to assess the influence of both medieval and 19th century conceptions of chivalry on the derivation of Coubertin’s
Olympic philosophy, Olympism. After all, as Olympic historian John Lucas
wryly notes, Coubertin’s Olympian was “a kind of Greek reincarnation, a modern-day medieval knight, a slightly modified aristocratic English gentlemanathlete.”15 Ultimately, I wish to argue that chivalry exerted considerable influence on Coubertin, and, furthermore, because of the way he read the Middle
Ages and the cultural circumstances that molded chivalry in the medieval and
modern eras, as well as the way he read history itself, he was able to rationalize
and popularize his Olympic project as the teleological destination of an identifiable world-historical process.
This essay is divided into five sections. The first section addresses Coubertin’s assessment of the Middle Ages with regard to sport and chivalry. The second section presents a brief description and history of medieval chivalry. The
third section focuses on the impact of 19th century chivalry in both France and
England on Coubertin, and considers the ways in which he embraced the core
virtues of medieval chivalry and how he interpreted the value of the medieval
tournament. The fourth section discusses the regressive social tendencies precipitated by modern interpretations of chivalry, and the fifth section considers
Coubertin's historicism. I end with some concluding comments.
Coubertin and the Middle Ages
Coubertin was not drawn to the Middle Ages because of an easily identifiable
culture of sport, or because the Middle Ages espoused a refined athletic philosophy. In fact, quite the opposite: Coubertin largely condemned the Middle
Ages precisely for failing to recognize, either in ideology or practice, the benefits of sport, especially the refined Greek model of sport, that “bilateral cult of
the things of the body and the things of the mind,”16 as Coubertin described it.
Instead, the Middle Ages made the “gross error” of “treating the body as a pile
of rags,” and, as a consequence, “teaching man to despise life.”17 According to
Coubertin, sport in the medieval period was never “surrounded by esthetic
and moral concerns,”18 and it was never embraced as an institutional necessity:
“it was never a matter of state or a matter of education, as ancient Olympism
had been.”19 Rather, the Middle Ages were “deeply marked” by a “sincere and
naïve absolutism”20 that quashed the athletic spirit and prohibited the emergence of an enlightened sport culture. As a result, Coubertin argued, “since the
Middle Ages a sort of discredit has hovered over bodily qualities and they have
been isolated from the qualities of the mind.”21
Despite his critique of the ascetic propensities of the Middle Ages, Coubertin did find one glimmer of hope in the era, a transient Olympism in the
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form of chivalry. In both practice and ideal, the knight and the chivalric code
represented to Coubertin “a clearly defined Olympic restoration,”22 and he
championed chivalry as a revival that, even as it “scattered and dissipated,”23
allowed him to indulge in what philosopher Russell Kirk calls “dreamy visions
of unborn ages.”24 Envisioning chivalry as an embryonic Olympism, Coubertin
gave voice to an idealistic historicism that allowed him to find patterns in history at the same time that it helped his Olympic vision take root in a time, the
fin de siècle, that was not only infused with chivalric revivalism, but also convinced of the notion of ineluctable progress.25
Chivalry
Simply stated, chivalry was the distinctive code, or body of law and custom,
that defined the conduct of feudal knights.26 More an outlook than a doctrine,
more a lifestyle than an explicit ethical protocol, medieval chivalry embraced
both ideology and practice and served as both value system and behavioral
convention for the secular aristocratic elite of the Middle Ages.27 As an ideal of
warfare, religion, and comportment, the chivalric code prevailed in Western
Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries. The composite, enduring, and,
indeed, compelling, ideal of chivalry was characterized by an inventory of
accumulated virtues that, according to the 14 th century poet and political
writer Alain Chartier included, nobility, loyalty, honor, righteousness, prowess,
love (not only for one’s lady, but for King and country), courtesy, diligence,
cleanliness, generosity, sobriety, self-sacrifice, and perseverance,28 virtues
which also constituted Chaucer’s archetypal ‘very parfyt gentill knight.’ Chivalry drew its inspiration not only from heroes from real wars and tournaments, but also from the heroes of the romances, from the practical Gawain to
the ethereal Galahad. Formulated gradually over a period of time, the rules of
chivalry found their way into a variety of texts, not only the prayers which
accompanied the oath and dubbing ceremonies, but, perhaps, most importantly, the writings of Perceval of Chrétian de Troyes, the prose romance of
Lancelot, the German Minnesang, in a fragment of the ‘Meissner,’ and the
French didactic poem, L’Ordene de Chevalerie. Both heroic biography and epic
poetry, les chanson de geste, were instrumental in the construction and popularization of the cult of chivalry. In the works of Ramon Llull and Geoffroi de
Charney, for example, knights are presented as the virtuous armed force of
Christendom, the practitioners of licit might, fair and compassionate judges in
society, wise and righteous men both inspired and restrained by the high ideals of honorable social service. One poet describes the knight as “a flower of
shining perfection, a rock of steadfast virtue, a mirror of magnanimity and
courtly deportment, he was pure and humble, of manly kindness, wise, gracious in an understanding way, brave with lofty disposition.”29
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Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
As Southern wryly notes, however, the knights of literature “had as much
relationship to the knights of the time as the private detectives of fiction to the
policeman of everyday life.”30 In other words, accounts in the chivalric literature were often more prescriptive than descriptive, serving more as an active
social force in the creation of a romantic notion of chivalry rather than a mirror of an already extant social reality. In truth, the roots of chivalry were barbarian and the knighthood was a warrior class, and chivalry denoted the code
and culture of a martial aristocracy that celebrated warfare as a hereditary profession. Unlike the clergy and royalty, chivalry was born not from the restraining traditions characteristic of the institutions of government, but rather from
the ancient practices and heroic exploits of warriors, proud of their independence, exultant in their right to violence, and more than willing to use it. More
than one commentator disparaged knights for their distinct lack of chivalry:
St. Bernard described them as “impious rogues, sacrilegious thieves, murderers, perjurers and adulterers,”31 and Baldric of Bol wrote about them: “You are
proud; you tear your brothers to pieces and fight among yourselves … you
oppressors of orphans and widows, you murderers, you temple-defilers, you
lawbreakers, who seek the rewards of rapacity from spilling Christian blood.”32
Tournaments were condemned by the clergy as “mock wars” that “imperiled
soul as well as body, encouraged pride, occasioned the risk of homicide, and,
in a more general sense, deflected martial energies better spent on Cruscade.”33
In short, all too often, knights practiced not militia, knightly service, but
rapina, plundering.34
The unendurable prevalence of violence in the medieval period, including
the behavior of knights themselves, became an issue of social order and drew
the attention of both government and religious institutions. The highest
French court, the Parlement of Paris, for example, prosecuted knights for
assault and murder, theft and pillage, and private war. The Christian Church,
in particular, sought to secure what historian Gerd Tellenbach calls “right
order in the world,”35 and the determined Christianization of the chivalric
code gradually established a more progressive social protocol for knightly conduct which, at its most community inspired, enjoined knights to defend the
church and the faith, protect orphans, widows, and the poor, promote justice,
seek peace, exercise mercy, and refrain from treasonous acts.36 Gradually, a
courtly culture with origins very different from the bloody military skills so
admired and embraced by the knights was grafted onto chivalry. Blending
warrior honor, Roman Stoic virtue, court fashion and manners, and Christian
morality, it constituted an impossible, even self-contradictory, amalgam of
expectations. As Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee somewhat humorously
noted having observed life in Camelot: “I will say this much for the nobility;
that, tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they
were deeply and enthusiastically religious.”37
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Furthermore, knights were no more a uniform class than chivalry was a
fixed, uniform custom. The idea of the knighthood as homogenous estate, as
well as the notion of chivalry as a monolithic code is a modern, not medieval
invention. But, the demand, and need, for social order and peace transcended
the social value of individualistic, even anarchical, displays of strength and
skill in mounted, martial combat, and both clergy and laity alike sought to civilize and institutionalize what to many had become an intolerable antisocial
force. Even Lancelot during the transformation that marks his character in
Mort Artu declares “better ye pees than always warre.”38
Over time, the durable synthesis of power, status, piety, and cultural ideals
embodied in chivalry disintegrated and the worldly trappings associated with
the knight lost their relevance, exclusivity, and efficacy. Chivalry and its intricate relationship with royalty and clergy transformed, and the autonomy of
chivalry and its private violence gradually disappeared, absorbed by the
growth of state power and public violence, sanctioned by the Church. The selfauthenticating honor-based society that nurtured medieval chivalry became a
thing of the past. The changes were evident in a wide array of diverse agencies,
including behavior in the royal court, the evolution of political, social, and
religious thought, the development of mercantile companies, the progression
of battlefield techniques, the nature of armed forces, and myriad forms and
practices that marked the social hierarchy.39 Although chivalry enjoyed a
revival during the reign of Elizabeth I in England—centered primarily on the
cult of Elizabeth herself—it was largely allegorical in style and pageantry.40 By
the time the last tournament had taken place in 1624 on the anniversary of
James I’s accession to the throne of England,41 the age of the knight had largely
passed into history.42 Invariably idealized and romanticized in the literature,
chivalry exercised an extraordinarily powerful influence on the medieval
world, generating a legacy that would resonate across the ages and leave a deep
impact on the times that followed, especially the 19th century and Coubertin.
Coubertin and Chivalry
It is not surprising, although certainly fitting, that the two cultures most
responsible for the revival of chivalry in the 19th century and most influential
in the imaginings of Coubertin as he ruminated on his national reclamation
project were France and England. Both at home in his native France and while
travelling and studying the educational environment in England, Coubertin
was enveloped in the resuscitated culture of chivalry on both sides of the
Channel. From the 18th century forward, chivalry acquired a new integrity,
new characteristics, and a renewed élan in both countries. As early as 1759, in
England, Richard Hurd wrote that the tilt-yard was “a school of fortitude and
honor to our generous forefathers…Affability, courtesy, generosity, veracity,
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Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
these were the qualifications most pretended to by the men of arms, in the
days of pure and uncorrupted chivalry.”43 In 1759, the same year that Hurd
published his Moral and Political Dialogues, J. B. de la Curne de Sainte-Palaye
published the first two volumes of his Mémoires de l’ancienne chevalerie in
Paris. In 1774, Sainte-Palaye published his Histoire littéraire des troubadours.
In the 19th century, medievalism became increasingly popular in England due
to the works of Walter Scott, Stacey Grimaldi, and Kenelm Henry Digby, and,
in France, under the influence of writers such as Chateaubriand, Madame de
Staël, and Victor Hugo. To the delight of all France, in 1835, Francisque Michel
discovered a new version of Le Chanson de Roland.
The sheer popularity of the Middle Ages during the fin de siècle, whether
born from political, aesthetic, or sentimental needs, brought medieval art, civilization, and culture to the forefront of the national imagination. Knights in
armor were described in literature, depicted in painting and sculpture, featured in statues, images, family crests, and stained glass windows, and celebrated in the resurrected tournament, the most famous of which was the
Eglinton Tournament of 1839. Chevalerie influenced architecture, dress, educational philosophy, language, and social behavior. In England, royal patronage was bestowed upon chivalry in clothing, the decorations in the House of
Lords, the theater, and in the works commissioned by Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert for Edward Henry Corbould, the official depicter of chivalry to
royalty. While the Scottish historian and political theorist James Mill once proclaimed that “the sun of English chivalry reached its meridian in the reign of
Edward III,”44 others felt that the sun of English chivalry had risen yet again in
the 19th century.
France
French attraction to the Middle Ages during the late 19th century was due to a
variety of factors, including the advance of industrialism,45 the decreasing
power of the Catholic Church in French political spheres,46 the rise of positivism,47 competition with Germany and a general European preoccupation of
the Middle Ages,48 and, most importantly, as a way of recovering national stability and pride.49 “Understanding our history well,” the French dramatist and
politician Ludovic Vitet wrote, “is the key to all of our problems, the regenerative principle of all order and progress.”50 It was to the cause of national revitalization and the regenerative power of history that Coubertin would dedicate
his life. Like many of his compatriots, he was deeply concerned by the decadence of his era, a time of economic and moral depression, physical degeneration, educational tedium, and profligacy, crime, and sybaritic excess. 51
Coubertin would no doubt have agreed with the French writer Joris-Karl
Huysmans who, too, rejected what he described as “the purulence of a repugnant era.”52 Rather than follow a career in law or the military, Coubertin chose
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instead the world of education: “I resolved to change careers,” he wrote, “and
attach my name to a great pedagogical reform.”53
Understanding and invoking the Middle Ages and chivalry became a
common motif in the aftermath of the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War.
For many, chivalry was one of the high points of French cultural history, a testimony to the qualité of the French soul and character; during that era, French
historian Daniel Halévy famously dubbed “la fin des notables,” the late 19th
century, a call to French pride, ingenuity, and resolve. Medieval history, medieval characters, and medieval literature became political rallying points, the
"virile inspiration"54 for the publication of patriotic texts and treatises, the
cause for the canonicalization of epics like Le Chanson de Roland, a widely
required text for students throughout France, including, no doubt, Coubertin,
and the call for an emancipatory, even therapeutic, historicism. As the French
historian Fustel de Coulanges wrote in late 1871:
Learning the truth about the Middle Ages would allow the various
factions of French society to see their common heritage and to heal
their psychological wounds. Understand the Middle Ages—the
exact, scientific, and sincere understanding of them without bias—
is, for our society a concern of the highest order. It is the best way to
put an end to the insane regrets of some, to the empty utopias of others, to the hatred of all. To reestablish calm in the present, it is not
un-useful to begin by destroying prejudices and errors about the
past. History implicitly observed divides us; it is by better understanding that the work of reconciliation must begin.55
Appealing to history was one of Coubertin’s prime rhetorical tactics as he
sought to rebronzer56 France through an invigorated program of school physical education and sport, and, ultimately, the world through the paradigm of
the modern Olympic Games. Clearly, he favored, in both rhetoric and reality,
the lure of the ancient Olympic Games and he forever invoked the model of
ancient Olympia as he sought to institutionalize, and, once institutionalized,
glorify and commemorate his reified Olympic project. “To celebrate the Olympic Games,” he declared in 1936, “is to appeal to history.”57 Consequently, Coubertin also appealed to the Middle Ages, his embryonic enthusiasm for the
heritage and values of chivalry well-expressed in a passage written by him in
1896, not about sport, but about the Army of the National Defense:
Gambetta announced himself as the second organizer of victory; at
the summons of his voice, which rarely found nobler accents later on,
confidence rose again in souls and hatred against the invader drew
all hearts together. ‘Not an inch of our territory! Not a stone of our
fortresses!’ Jukes Favre had said, and that haughty reply was
repeated by each man in the depths of his own being. A great wave of
patriotism had swept over France, solidifying it … It was a heroic
struggle. All the generous and noble ardor of the Gallic blood awoke:
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Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
there was but one flag now; after the young men, the elderly enlisted,
with joy in their eyes, happy to fight for a cause so just and holy; and
when, at last, the ruin was complete, when Paris besieged was on the
point of perishing with hunger, when they were compelled to lay
down their arms and confess defeat, France had the consolation of
being able to assert, as in the time of Francis I, that all was lost, ‘save
honor.’58
The appeal to history and the chivalric values of honor, loyalty, and prouesse
resonate throughout the passage—the “wave of patriotism,” the “heroic struggle,” the “generous and noble ardor” of Gallic blood, soldiers “with joy in their
eyes,” fighting for “a cause so just and holy,” and “as in the time of Francis I …
all was lost, ‘save honor’.” Moreover, as cultural historian John MacAloon
notes, the “universalizing, nationalizing character of these symbols and sentiments aptly signals the new meaning la patrie took on for the children of
1871.”59
Of further interest in this passage is Coubertin’s invocation of Francis I, a
king that history may well have endowed with a mixed legacy, but a king who,
for many, personified the best of the chivalric code. Francis I, in fact, liked to
be known as the “chivalric king” who “swore on his word as a gentleman.”60
The writer Mézeray described him as a “great king” who had “a marvelous skill
in all the noble exercises of a cavalier, brave, generous, magnificent, courteous,
debonnaire, and gracious in speech,”61 and the Venetian Marino Cavalli judged
him “learned in matters of hunting, in painting, in literature, in languages, in
the difficult bodily exercises appropriate to a fine courtier.”62 Coubertin’s
motive in invoking the chivalric Francis I is likely to confirm that honneur had
always resided in the soul of France, and that a renascent honneur, one that he
ultimately felt best instilled in his countrymen through the rigors of sport,
would help revitalize France during the waning years of the 19th century.63
In effect, Coubertin was suggesting that for France national renovation was
rooted, in part, by reclaiming history, especially medieval chivalry, a legacy in
France that connoted cultural grandeur and vitality. It was a conservative elegiac that assumed that France could be saved from the social and political problems associated with industrialism, a waning world influence, military decline,
and a deteriorating national character by a benevolent paternalism.64 As the
Belle Époque historian Eugen Weber argues, Coubertin was primarily attempting to re-invent the French aristocracy in a newly emerged era of democracy
and nationalism to forge French Tories committed to national unity and
revanche. 65 But, if the legacy and expressions of chivalry that Coubertin
encountered in France gave weight to his nationalist revitalizing intentions,
then the representations of chivalry that he encountered in England revolutionized his internationalist ambitions, ultimately giving him the philosophical core
and contemporary inspiration for his incipient Olympism.
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England
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the ideals of chivalry percolated through
the distinctly English culture and were reconstituted as the pious and bloody
medieval past was refashioned not only as a topic of antiquarian research, but,
more importantly, as a powerful idiom for evangelization, education, moral
instruction, particularly for the young, and, as in France, national revitalization. The revival of chivalry was precipitated in the late 18th and early 19th century by the publication of a spate of books on chivalry, including, most
notably, Richard Hurd’s Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762), Kenelm
Digby’s The Broad Stone of Honour (1822),66 Sir Walter Scott’s Essays on Chivalry (1824),67 Stacey Grimaldi’s A Suit of Armour for Youth (1824),68 James
Mill’s The History of Chivalry (1825),69 and Charles Kingley’s Westward Ho!
(1855).70 In Westward Ho!, Kingsley depicted a distinctly Elizabethan chivalry
because it allowed him to combine his chivalric enthusiasm with an equally
profound enthusiasm for Protestantism and the British Empire. Others situated chivalry in the modern context. Grimaldi, for example, treated chivalry
not as a way of life that belonged to the past, like Kingsley, but as a living code
readily suitable for socializing youth and inculcating them with an invigorated
morality. Grimaldi stressed the duty, not the glamour of chivalry, and posited
that men who were not born into privilege and advantage were equally capable
of valor and heroism as those who were. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the
chivalric moral literature of the Victorian era was its criticism of dissolute and
decadent aristocrats unworthy of the ideals they had inherited.
One of the most influential books in England, Digby’s The Broad Stone of
Honour, served as an extraordinarily popular and powerful apology for chivalry and Christian knighthood. Digby’s goal was to present the heroes of chivalry as men of faith and honor rather than as barbarians, and he stressed the
value of chivalry as a civilizing and moralizing agent. He downplayed the violence of the knighthood and represented it instead as a doctrinal register that
was both high-minded and didactic. The aggressive anti-social behavior that
typified chivalry was presented as self-denial, constraint, and humility, the
sublimation of the delinquent and rebellious proclivities of youth to the
greater good of others and the community, and, in the service of honor. Digby,
in fact, defined chivalry as “a name for that general spirit or state of mind
which disposes men to heroic actions, and keeps them conversant with all that
is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world.” 71 Muscular
Christianity was another kind of chivalry. The key figures in the adaptation of
Muscular Christianity to Victorian life were Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Kingsley, and Thomas Hughes, all of whom valorized the Anglo-Saxon culture,
fused physicality with Christian morality, and preached physical toughness as
the path to a valiant and noble manhood.
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Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
In conjunction with the publications of numerous other authors, such as
Henry Newbolt, Alfred Austen, and J. M. Ludlow, collectively works on chivalry served as the literary foundation, inspiration, and justification for the turn
of the century way of life in England. In particular, with regard to Coubertin,
chivalry was a potent influence in the development of the code of the English
gentleman, and, most importantly, the educational environment in England,
especially the public schools that so charmed and influenced Coubertin as he
sought not only in the early stages of his career to “harder, a flabby, listless,
confined youth, its body and its character,”72 but also, subsequently, as he internationalized his thinking and developed his idea of reviving the Olympic
Games and proselytizing the world to the merits of Olympism.
The model of the 19th century English gentleman, with its emphasis on
honor, loyalty, independence, modesty, and accomplishment, grew out of the
chivalric tradition. As Sir Walter Scott put it: “From the wild and overstrained
courtesies of Chivalry has been derived our present system of manners.”73 One
of Scott’s greatest accomplishments, in fact, was to resurrect the cult of chivalry and popularize a type of character that appealed to his contemporaries
and took root as a viable and serviceable code of conduct that invigorated the
leadership of the country. While Scott viewed the gentleman as a derivative of
the knight, Grimaldi used the terms gentleman and knight interchangeably.
In either case, the English gentleman constituted an ideal and a reality that
impressed and appealed to Coubertin during his travels. Unlike French gentilshommes, indolent dandies, or ignorant reactionaries “imprisoned in the
ruins of the past,”74 for whom idleness was vital to social prestige, the English
gentleman personified the model of rigor, vigor, and social action that Coubertin had encountered in Hippolyte Taine’s Notes on England.75 The privileged
rentier mentality drove the French upper classes into the sort of contempt for
political and community action manifested by Flaubert, Baudelaire, and
Valéry, whereas the English aristocrat, according to Taine, “rarely stands aside
from public business; for it is his business and he wishes to take a hand in its
management. He does not live withdrawn. On the contrary, he feels himself
under an obligation to contribute in one way or another to the common
good.”76 English gentlemen represented a modern nobility, “who, as citizens,
are the most enlightened, the most independent and the most useful to the
whole nation.”77 The “real ‘gentleman,’” wrote Taine in reference to the English
example, was:
A truly noble man, a man worthy to command, a disinterested
man of integrity, capable of exposing, even sacrificing himself for
those he leads; not only a man of honor, but a conscientious man,
in whom generous instincts have been confirmed by right thinking
and who, acting rightly by nature, acts even more rightly from
good principles.78
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This, for Coubertin, was the formula for an invigorated national leadership, a
contemporary aristocracy that could effect change, engage in community
action, act selflessly, and embrace the common good, and not, as he found in
France, nobles, who, as Weber politely puts it, “spend longer in the indeterminate and undemanding chrysalis stage of student life.”79 Moreover, as historian
J. A. Mangan points out, it was not only in England that these gentlemanly
characteristics were exalted. They were equally commended in the elite circles
of European civic and social life, and here they formed the pretext for Coubertin's vision of nobility of the Olympic athlete, “the diplomat of an ideal world
community of respect.”80
There was one further specific quality of the gentleman that infused the culture
of late 19th century sport and profoundly influenced Coubertin’s Olympism—the
normative expectation that honor and virtue transcended personal gain, which
was another legacy of the ideal knight. “If you will endeavor to arrive at distinction,” Digby wrote, “the prize must be, not riches, but virtue.”81 Reflecting the
classist cult of amateurism that dominated the bureaucracy of sport, Coubertin
famously wrote in his evaluation of the 1896 Athens Games that
professionalism tends to grow apace. Men give up their whole existence to one particular sport, grow rich by practicing it, and thus,
deprive it of all nobility, and destroy the just equilibrium of man by
making the muscles predominate over the mind. It is my belief that
no education, particularly in democratic times, can be good and
complete without the aid of athletics; but athletics, in order to play
their proper educational role, must be based on perfect disinterestedness and the sentiment of honor.82
As MacAloon rightly notes, “To Coubertin, sport was to produce a moral elite,
not a social elite.”83 The aim of Olympism was to challenge the athlete to rise
above self-interest in the pursuit of an ideal that would serve as a positive
image for society.
It was not only the model of the chivalric English gentleman that
impressed Coubertin, but also the public school education that prepared the
English elite for their role in servicing a vibrant imperial nation, an education
that drew from the legacy of chivalry and focused on the development of character. Even when Digby addresses the education of the gentleman in medieval
times, it is the character-building aspects that he admires most, the training of
the body as a means to strengthen character. Coubertin found an analogous
value in the games of the public schools: “The effects of exercise and activity,
and even of the violent amusements of ancient chivalry and our modern youth
are,” he wrote, “unquestionably in warming the heart and in exciting the love
of virtue.”84
The relationship between public school education, chivalry, character, and
sport is made even more explicit in Edward FitzGerald’s Euphranor, a dialogue
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Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
on education published in 1851 that provided the philosophical framework for
both the Arnoldian system and the Muscular Christian movement that so
aroused Coubertin’s interest and admiration. The importance of training the
body, Fitzgerald wrote, is to provide the soul with “a spacious airy, and wholesome tenement becoming so Divine a Tenant.” While he initially recommends
compulsory gymnastics and military drills as a way to strengthen the will and
to acquire a “Sense of Order, Self-restraint, and Mutual Dependence,” he also
advocated cricket, boxing and other sports to instil a “habitual Instinct of Courage, Resolution, and Decision” and “the Good Humour which good animal
Condition goes so far to ensure.”85 Eton College, the preeminent public school,
in particular, is praised for teaching their students to “sublime their Beefsteak
into Chivalry in that famous Cricket-field of their by the side of the old Father
Thames murmuring of so many Generations of chivalric Ancestors.”86
The example of Eton, along with the rhetoric of Digby, Scott, Hughes,
Newbolt, and Carlyle, caused the role of sport to attain special status in the
curriculum of the English public school. Extending the chivalric model even
further, Henry Newbolt, described, even if inaccurately, how the public
schools had “derived the housemaster from the knight … and the love of
games, the ‘sporting’ or ‘amateur’ view of them from tournaments and the chivalric rules of war.”87 Success on the school team, participation in the democratically organized system of sport, and the inculcation of distinctly chivalric
values assumed primary importance in the culture of schools like Wellington,
Winchester, Charterhouse, Rugby, and Marlborough, all schools that Coubertin visited during his English sojourn. To Hughes and Kingsley, strength of
intellect was useless, even dangerous, without strength of character. The best
way to attain moral prowess was physical prowess: after all, at Eton, “It was not
cricket only that the boys learnt from poor old Bob Grimston, but they
acquired the true principles of chivalrous honor.”88 Being a sportsman, a gentleman—not to mention the driving force for an imperial empire—and being
chivalrous were overlapping concepts. As Mangan has persuasively argued,
English public school athleticism embraced a self-conscious deification of chivalric values and the English sportsman was routinely lionized as the hero of a
“romance of nineteenth-century knighthood, a youthful public school Arthur,
Lancelot, and Galahad rolled into one,” and the games field “his Chapel Perilous and Fair-Play his Holy Grail.”89
While Coubertin was universally infatuated with English public schools
and their athletic ideology, it was Thomas Arnold’s pedagogical and curricular
model at Rugby that specifically consumed his attention and generated his
adulation. Coubertin's “vision at Rugby Chapel,” as MacAloon metaphorically
describes it,90 drove Coubertin to acclaim the Arnoldian system of school
games, student self-government and self-regulation, and postgraduate athletic
association, combined with a rigorous liberal arts and Christian education, as
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the enduring hope for a reinvigorated France and a lasting democratic society.
Moral development, athletics, and social education were the hallmarks of
Arnold’s prototype: the catalysts were “liberty and sport.”91
This prescription for greatness profoundly impressed Coubertin: “Gentlemen,” he proclaimed in 1894, “there are not two parts to a man—body and
soul: there are three—body, mind and character; character is not formed by
the mind, but primarily by the body. The men of antiquity knew this, and we
are painfully learning it.”92 Sport, to Coubertin, was the catalyst for the inculcation of ethical qualities and instilled the virtues of initiative, daring, decision, and self-reliance. It “also has the effect of exalting courage,”93 he wrote.
The potent amalgam of distinctly chivalric public school moral values and virtues, especially sportsmanship and fair-play, became the inspiration for one of
the most well-known of Coubertin’s Olympic dictums: “The important thing
in these Olympiads,” he wrote in 1908, “is less to win than to take part in
them.” “Gentlemen, let us bear this potent word in mind,” he wrote:
It extends across every domain to form the basis of a sense of a
serene and healthy philosophy. The important thing in life is not the
victory but the struggle; the essential is not to have won but to have
fought well. To spread these precepts is to prepare the way for a
human race which will be at once braver and stronger, and more
scrupulous and generous.94
The Muscular Christian, among whom Coubertin counted Thomas Arnold,
also mediated between medieval chivalry and Coubertin’s modernized sporting agenda:
True chivalry existed in only a few scattered individuals without a
code, without a fraternal organization or opportunities and means to
help one another, when there appeared in England a century ago these
‘muscular Christians’ among whom one finds in embryo all the qualities of bygone chivalry—its high ideals, its healthy ruggedness, its generous ardour; all that modernized, detached from war and blood,
turned towards the less picturesque but wider horizons of the democracies, within which a man serves the cause of the general good more
directly than in former times by perfecting his own individuality.95
As sport historian Patrick Clastres argues, from a political perspective, Coubertin became obsessed with the idea of creating a new French elite, a new
brand of French Tories shaped by English sport and compatible with the
Republic. This new elite was a sort of revamped French gentry federated by
sports, which would allow France to once again assume leadership status
among European nations and, indeed, the world at large, in the commercial,
military, and colonial realms.96
It remains one of the great ironies of Coubertin’s life that the two elements that
loomed large in public schools and in Coubertin’s philosophy were entirely
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lacking in Arnold’s Rugby: organized games, in which Arnold took little, if any
interest, and chivalry, which he construed as an affront to God with its emphasis on personal allegiance and honor rather than faith and justice. In 1829,
Arnold wrote: “If I were called upon to name what spirit of evil predominantly
derived the name of AntiChrist, I should name the spirit of chivalry the more
detestable for the very guise of the ‘Archangel ruined’ which has made it so
seductive to the most generous spirits.”97 But, Coubertin misrepresented much
about Arnold, choosing instead, to invoke the images that most suited his
cause. He glorified the moral idealism, Christian chivalry, and athleticism of
Arnold's model, and summarily dismissed, or willingly ignored, the philistinism and barbarism of the school environment. Despite Arnold's antipathy
towards chivalry, Coubertin still credited him as "one of the founding fathers
of sporting chivalry."98 Coubertin misrepresented much about the history of
sport too. There was, of course, no continuous tradition that joined the ancient
Olympic Games to chivalry and chivalry to the games of the 19th century. Just
as the Victorians selected the qualities which they most admired in chivalry
and refashioned the cult of games in the light of them, so Coubertin selected
the qualities that he most admired in the Arnoldian system and chivalry and
created Olympism in their image.
The Values of Chivalry
Drawn to the model of both medieval chivalry and the modern mutation of
chivalry as it was conceived and expressed within the late 19th century English
tradition of sport, Coubertin invoked the virtues and values of chivalry
throughout his illustrious career. As early in his Olympic sojourn as 1894, he
praised chivalry as a “vast athletic fraternity,”99 and, as late as 1935, just two
years before his death, he declared that his Olympic athletic elite should be “a
knighthood.”100
One of the primary reasons that Coubertin was drawn to chivalry was
because the medieval knight, as well as the reincarnation of the knight in the
19th century, personified the exalted and lofty values that inspired Coubertin
and that he ultimately imposed on his Olympic athlete and lauded as the moral
foundation of his idealized Olympic philosophy. The virtues that defined the
behavior and conduct of the knight, and the code that developed to circumscribe, and, in fact, over time, to civilize the knight’s demeanor, found their
way in one way or another into Coubertin’s sporting taxonomy.
From a very early stage, romantic authors such as Chrétian de Troyes,
Geoffroi of Charney, and Ramon Lull, habitually and consistently identified a
quorum of qualities that defined the archetype of chivalrous distinction:
honor, prowess, loyalty, generosity, courtesy, self-sacrifice, and daring. Ramon
Lull, for example, argued that the knight should not only routinely exercise his
body in hunting and jousting, but he should also school himself in the virtues
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necessary to discharge his duties, in wisdom, charity, unselfishness, and loyalty, and, above all, in courage, “for chivalry abideth not so agreeable in no
place as in noblesse of courage.”101 In Geoffroi of Charney’s judgment, chivalry
comprised an ethos in which athletic, martial, aristocratic, and Christian elements were fused together. Embracing the positive sentiments expressed in the
classic chivalric code, and consonant with the values instilled in him during
his formal education,102 Coubertin advocated for an Olympic formulation
based on the traditional virtues of chivalry. In 1918, he specifically called for a
“broad-based athletic education accessible to all, trimmed with manly courage
and the spirit of chivalry.”103 In 1928, he made an impassioned appeal for a
“modern chivalry” that he hoped to see displayed by the athletes at the
Amsterdam Games, a chivalry characterized by “its high ideals, its healthy
roughness, its generous zeal.”104
Not only did the values of chivalry in general resonate with Coubertin, but
specific virtues echoed particularly strongly in his idealized Olympic vision
and related rhetoric. Just as one 13th century romance writer suggested, “The
Good Knight upheld loyalty, prowess and honor,”105 so too did Coubertin rest
his philosophic Olympic edifice to a great extent on the core values of honor,
loyalty and prowess.106 These same values also reflected what MacAloon identifies as the “structural triangle”—a matrix comprised of ‘name’ (nom, honneur,
virtue), ‘deeds’ (noble travaux, beaux exemples, généreux sacrifices), and ‘vocation’ (guerrier, magistrate, home de genie, jurisconsonsulte, artiste)”—that
became a paradigm for action for each successive generation of French aristocrats, including Coubertin’s generation as it sought to assert a new élan against
a weary and enervated nation.107
Honor, honneur, took particular pride of place in the medieval chivalric
code.108 Honor, according to historian Clifford Backman, was the “fundamental core value of chivalry;”109 to historian Maurice Keen it was “the greatest legacy of chivalry to later times,”110 specifically and especially as honor related to
the idea of nobility and noble works. Social historian Richard Barber simply
identified honor as “the shrine at which the Knight worshipped.”111 The social
value of honor, as the British social anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers points
out, and as Coubertin well-understood, was that it provided “a nexus between
the ideals of society and their reproduction in the actions of individuals—
honor permits men to act as they should even if opinions differ [from society
to society] as to how they should act.”112 Consequently, Coubertin allocated a
central role to the value of honor as he adumbrated his Olympic ideal. “Athletics,” he wrote,
can bring into play both the noblest and basest passions; they can
develop the qualities of unselfishness and honor just as much as the
love of gain; they can be chivalrous or corrupt, virile or bestial; finally
they can be used to strengthen peace or to prepare for war. Now,
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nobility of sentiments, high regard for the virtues of unselfishness and
honor, a spirit of chivalry, virile an energy and peace are the prime
needs of modern democracies, whether republican or monarchic.113
Derivative of honor, and aligned with his broader aesthetic ideology, Coubertin
also grafted the modern Anglo-Saxon concepts of sportsmanship and fair play
onto his Olympic construction. “The Olympic idea,” he wrote, “is the concept of
strong physical culture based in part on the spirit of chivalry—what you here so
pleasantly call ‘fair play’—and in part on the esthetic idea of the cult of what is
beautiful and graceful.”114 After all, as Backman writes, “no knight should violate his sense of honor by taking unfair advantage of another knight.”115
Nowhere is the concept of honor more centrally located than in the Olympic oath, an element of the Olympic protocol which Coubertin specifically
identified as representative of “a commitment, an obligation in the name of
honor.”116 Just as honor was the most solemn oath the medieval knight knew,117
so was it to become the virtuous cornerstone of the modern Olympic oath. First
taken at the Games of the VII Olympiad in Antwerp, the Belgian fencer Victor
Boin declared on behalf of all athletes, “We swear that we are taking part in the
Olympic Games as loyal competitors, observing the rules governing the Games,
and anxious to show the spirit of chivalry, for the honor of our countries and for
the glory of sport.”118 While the current oath no longer invokes “the spirit of
chivalry,” as it once did, it still demands that athletes swear to compete in the
name of honor, a collective honor, “the honor of our teams.”119
Just as the purely individualistic, even radically anarchic, force of chivalry
needed to be tied to a correspondingly positive social ethos, so also did Coubertin’s cult of sport need to be tied to a progressive collective ideology that
sought not only to refurbish a nation, but to morally advance a world. In both
cases, loyalty served as one of the integrative values; in the case of the medieval
knight, loyalty to the chivalric code with its emergent emphasis on charity and
communal justice,120 and, in the case of the Olympic athlete, loyalty to the idea
of fair-play and sportsmanship and to the notion of a courteous competitiveness that ultimately served as a paradigm for a robust civic life as well as the
ultimate goals of a cosmopolitan internationalism. In 1935, Coubertin recognized the likenesses between the chivalric knight and the honorable athlete,
writing that
Knights, above all else, are “brothers in arms,” brave, energetic men
united by a bond that is stronger than that of mere camaraderie,
which is powerful enough in itself. In chivalry, the idea of competition, of effort opposing effort for the love of the effort itself, of courteous yet violent struggle, is superimposed on the notion of mutual
assistance, the basis of camaraderie.121
As in chivalry, so also in Olympic sport, the chivalrous cults of competition,
loyalty, and honor remained mutually enshrined in a universal sacrament:
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“Healthy democracy, wise and peaceful internationalism, will penetrate the
new stadium and preserve within it the cult of honor and disinterestedness
which will enable athletics to help in the tasks of moral education and social
peace as well as of muscular development.”122
Coubertin’s emphasis on disinterestedness and the love of effort for its
own sake were also derivative of the knightly virtue of honor. According to
Geoffroi de Charney, knights who exercise prowess should find that it is its
own reward, and that honor and justice are more worthy and socially valuable
than personal fortune. The concept of selflessness in the name of civic duty is
similarly affirmed in Chaucer’s description of knightly behavior in the
“Miller’s Tale.” One scholar, Gregory Semenza, specifically argues that, while
wrestling in the “Miller’s Tale” is an activity practiced by both knights and
commoners, the medieval knight, in particular, “must remain a hero and a
gentleman,” because, at least in theory, “the knight’s athleticism was not to be
employed except in a socially functional manner,” namely, on behalf of the
“stability and safety of the Kingdom.” 123 Coubertin’s Olympic code, too,
required a renewed spiritual and physical discipline dedicated to a larger social
good, the Olympic athlete competing in “the spirit of sincere disinterestedness” so that sport, “collective muscular exercise,” could become a “true school
of moral perfection.”124 “O Sport,” Coubertin intoned in his renowned poem,
“Ode to Sport,.. You are Honor! The titles you bestow are worthless save if won
in absolute fairness and perfect unselfishness.”
Central to Coubertin’s philosophy of Olympism, the knightly “cult of disinterestedness” also stood as a moral bulwark against an overly commercial
and materialistic culture that threatened the very fabric of sport, certainly the
model of sport, le pedagogie sportive, that Coubertin evinced as indispensable
to the progress and rejuvenation of society. Referring specifically to his Olympic vision and the sanctity of the values of a selfless chivalry, he wrote:
As for the modern movement, it had hardly emerged before corruption
strove to penetrate it. And by corruption is meant not only profit and
monetary gain, which directly and indirectly entice the athlete and
champion in a thousand ingenious ways, but also the crumbling and
ere long the obliteration of the spirit of chivalry. From the day when the
sportsman ceases to place above all else his joy in his own effort and the
rapture of power and body equilibrium which result from it, from the
day when he lets himself be mastered by considerations of vanity or
self-interest, from that day his ideal is tainted and its educational value
… immediately diminished. That is why in these times, when the thirst
for gold piles up so many evils, and having instigated a vile holocaust
… it is of the utmost urgency that a school of practical chivalry should
be open to youth, a school in which it will learn that success can be
obtained by will and perseverance and can be consecrated only by
uprightness and loyalty. And their school will be sport.125
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He railed equally strongly against the moral decline that visited “one of the
most noble sports” in France, fencing. That “fine chivalrous spirit which ruled
it a few years ago,” he observed, “is becoming even more rare; a mandarinate of
button-blows … is being organized under our eyes.”126
Coubertin’s language also gave expression to a vaulted position that for
many years rationalized the code of amateurism and established the Olympic
Movement, at least during its early years, as yet another institutionalized
example of a privileged class seeking to protect its preeminent socio-political
status. In stringent terms, Coubertin opined that,
Sport has grown up within a society which the lust for money is
threatening to rot to its marrow. It is for the sports clubs now to set a
good example by returning to the code of honor and sincerity, and by
casting out mendacity and hypocrisy from their midst … Let them
ruthlessly disqualify the false amateurs who in more or less direct
forms reap fat rewards from participation in public events.127
But the “demi-god” of knightly values, what medievalist Richard Kaeuper also
calls the “quasi-religion of chivalric honor,”128 the ultimate quality of the knight
as depicted in les chansons de geste, romance, vernacular literature, chivalric
biography, and chronicle, was prowess, prouesse.129 The Lady of the Lake tells
Guinevere that she raised the young Lancelot “because of the great prowess that
was to manifest itself in this knight.”130 Within the chivalric tradition, prowess
generally referred to proficiency in feats of martial combat and violence, but, as
the American sociologist Jesse Pitts points out, prouesse in French culture in
general and the aristocratic ethos in particular described conspicuous moral
acts undertaken for the sake of honor rather than utility.131 Prouesse became a
concept that not only provided a moral framework for Coubertin’s own ambitions as he sought to institutionalize his Olympic dream,132 but also a concept
that allowed him to rhetorically rationalize the feats of his Olympic athletic elite
in the name of a greater moral good, what he ultimately identified as nothing
less than “the general welfare” and “betterment of humanity.”133
The prowess of his Olympic athlete was to serve as an inspiration for society. “In order for a hundred people to take part in physical culture,” he wrote,
“it is necessary for fifty to take part in sport; in order for fifty to take part in
sport, twenty must specialize; in order for twenty to specialize, five must be
capable of astonishing feats of prowess.”134 Consequently, he enjoined athletes
to dare, to aspire to greatness, to embrace “initiative, perseverance, intensity,
search for perfection, disdain for possible danger,” 135 to seek “freedom of
excess,”136 to strive for excellence, break world records, and to compete collectively every four years in the Olympic Games, those “peaceful and chivalrous
contests” that “constitute the best of internationalism.”137
Both medieval chivalry and Coubertin’s modern Olympic edifice were rife
with paradox; both represented conflicting possibilities—preparation for war
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or education for peace, as a model for social order or as the paradigm for
naked competition, for blatant self-interest or for altruistic service. Coubertin
well understood the dialectic of sport, that it could be noble or ignoble, doctrinaire or enlightened, but he was, as Lucas describes him, “a consummate
romantic,”138 and so he celebrated and, hence, sought to institutionalize the
progressive values he encountered in what he consciously and purposefully
interpreted as an honorable code of chivalry, a code that he once saluted as
“the last summit and supreme goal of sporting activity.”139
Medieval Tournaments
Coubertin not only idealized the values of chivalry, he also idealized the famed
tournaments that featured the knight in action. The great social spectacle of
chivalry, medieval tournaments were as characteristic of the age as were the
Pan-Hellenic Games of antiquity or the gladiatorial games of the Imperial
Roman Empire. Tournaments were both écoles de prousse, and, as Pope Innocent II called them, “detestable markets and fairs … at which knights are wont
to assemble in order to display their strength and their rash boldness.”140 Coubertin assumed the best in medieval tournaments, and, emphasizing the profound role of sport in modern democracies, cast the medieval tournament in
the role of “social educator.”141 While the athletics of antiquity served as the
“agent of human equilibrium,” chivalry served as the agent of social education:
“We must look not only towards the Olympic gymnasium,” he wrote, “but also
towards those much-neglected and much-misunderstood tournaments of the
Middle Ages whose only fault was sometimes to push beyond reason the elegant cult of honor, stoicism and generosity.”142
For Coubertin, social education, more than physical, intellectual, and
moral education, was vital to the health and evolution of modern democracies. Although he never fully explains how medieval tournaments functioned as social educators, he does argue that the two bases of democratic
education are “proper hygiene and cooperation,” 143 the maintenance of a
healthy body and, most importantly, a deep and abiding appreciation for the
dynamics of a communal life. Suggesting that no association can function
unless “fed by a mixture of personal activity, mutual tolerance, and a proper
understanding of common interests,”144 Coubertin presumably interprets the
camaraderie of the knight and the knight’s associative organization, the
brotherhood of knights, as an engine for inculcating what he calls “solidarity
and mutual responsibility,”145 social skills learned not in theory, but in the
active pursuit of group life.
While Coubertin was largely silent about the workings of the medieval
tournament as social educator, he was far from silent when it came to the qualities of social education that he attributed to the Arnoldian system of English
public school sport. “The most noteworthy aspect of English education,” he
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informed his compatriots, is “the role that sports play in that education.” The
role of sport is “physical, moral and social, all at the same time,” he wrote.
Sport means movement, and the influence of movement on bodies is
something that has been evident from time immemorial. Strength
and agility have been deeply appreciated among savage and civilized
people alike. Both are achieved through exercise and practice: happy
balance in the moral order, mens sana in corpora sano say the
ancients.146
The English public school model of sport was particularly distinctive to Coubertin not only because it ascribed the highest ethical values to participation in
school games and athletics, but also because it furnished a “perfect terrain for
social education,” preparation for life in an environment that was “a whole
society in miniature.”147 The liberty that the English school boy was allowed in
organizing, administering, and participating in sport cultivated a dynamic
cooperative that would serve as preparation for life in a robust democracy,
allowing the “boys to create and inhabit a society as homologous as possible
with the adult world they would soon enter.”148
Although Coubertin certainly never said so, it is possible that he imputed
a similar social function to tournaments. After all, the medieval tournament
was not just the “school and study of arms,”149 it introduced young knights, as
well as spectators, to a whole scale of civil values and virtues that spoke to the
development of physical skills and fitness as well as to the development of
knightly character and the traits deemed most worthy of a true nobleman.150
The 13th century minstrel Jacques Bretel, for example, wrote that, “without giving, a tourney is not worth two livres tournois: for largesse is one of the robes of
prouesse; courtesy is the second; the third is… honesty.”151 Tournaments had
an important integrative social function in the sense that they portrayed
esteemed social values in action and deeply influenced social mores and attitudes.152 They also served as the expression of an order that drew men from far
afield, inculcated appropriate social behavior, and depicted a martial and aristocratic ideology that transcended local boundaries and parochial interests.
They even operated as a socializing mechanism for knights as they prepared
for service in social and civic life.
Perhaps, most importantly to Coubertin, the medieval tournament served
as a point of diffusion for a chivalrous culture that sought to advance the interests of an enlightened communal life.153 As Keen writes: “It could indeed be
argued that the relatively subtle influence of the tournament did more, in the
long run, to promote standards of civilized behavior between belligerent forces
than papal prohibitions, issued in the name of restraining undisciplined violence, ever looked like doing.”154
The knight was seen to embody moral social behavior, and, according to
MacAloon, Coubertin likely seized upon the image of the knight at the same
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time as he was looking to transform sports from the idle pastimes of the
“bejeweled and gallant rich” to a form of moral education available to all. The
medieval tournament was, MacAloon suggests, “one of the strands of adolescent inspiration which lay behind the revival of the Olympic Games.”155
In the end, however, it is a mistake to impute too much importance to the
medieval tournament in Coubertin’s thinking. He only mentions the idea of
the tournament as social education once in his voluminous writings, and, even
then, he makes no effort to expound upon the claim. He is far more eloquent
and vociferous about the English system of games as social educator and the
role it could play in his effort to revitalize France and create an enduring democratic society. But, that said, he mentions the medieval tournament in the
same breath as the athletics of antiquity, arguing that both were pivotal historical moments in Olympic lineage. In this sense, the tournament served an
important role in the etiology of his Olympic project.
Chivalry, Masculinity, and Imperialism
The renowned Greek historian Thucydides once claimed that the three causes
of the Peloponnesian War were fear, interest, and honor, and, that of the triad,
it was honor—for both the warrior and those who admired him—that metamorphosed individual fear and interest into something beyond a merely fleeting response to events and made action morally reasonable. Honor is always
more individually rooted and only metaphorically a collective trait, and it
became a crucial historical element in the construction of masculinity. The
most enduring cultural mediator between the individual warrior and his social
group, between violence and civility, between war and peace, honor palliates
the propensity for male physical violence and transposes it into socially
acceptable and productive forms.
The transformative power of honor is no less compelling for Coubertin’s
Olympic athlete than it was for Thucydides’s soldier or chivalry’s knight. For
the Olympic athlete, with his mixed ancestry in medieval chivalry, Muscular
Christianity, and the distant memory of classical Hellenism, honor constituted a social practice within which numerous seemingly disparate values
could be fused: material gain and idealism, social hierarchy and social egalitarianism, competition and cooperation, nationalism and internationalism.
To resolve these conflicting precepts, the preaching of chivalry and honor
emphasized the relationship between agonetic masculinity and the ambitions
of a peaceful cosmopolitanism. In fact, one of the singular achievements of
Coubertin’s Olympic Movement was to bring a chivalric manhood in the
guise of a performative nationalism onto the world stage during the last
decade of the 19th century. In place of the warrior body, Olympism stressed
the agonetic body as the essence of personal and collective character, first in
22
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
athletic competition, and later, in artistic creativity—or, as Coubertin liked to
think of it, purification through athletic performance. At the heart of Olympism, Coubertin wrote, was a “sort of moral Altis,” a “sanctuary reserved for
the consecrated, purified athlete only, the athlete admitted to the main competitions and who became, in this way, a sort of priest, an officiating priest in
the religion of the muscles.”156
As fears of national degeneracy grew in France in the aftermath of the
Franco-Prussian War and in the face of a perceived widespread effeminacy, the
link between sport and national vitality, first promoted at the time of the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, became even more pronounced during
Coubertin’s milieu. Throughout Europe, sport became the realm of an energetic male fellowship and purified physicality that pointedly excluded women,
such that the perfected male body became the goal of numerous movements in
Europe that embraced national revitalization, including gymnastic societies in
Germany, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia, what Friedrich Ludwig Jahn referred
to in The German Art of Gymnastics (1816) as “love of the fatherland through
gymnastics.”157 Underlying the cult of athletics in England was the familiar
organic metaphor that identified the health of the male body with the health of
the nation—the male body as the locus of political power. Within Thomas
Arnold’s pedagogical formulation, the goal was “the body of a Greek and the
soul of a Christian Knight,”158 a vigorous manliness that would replenish a
depleted national moral and physical stock. As historian Leo Braudy argues,
the central importance of Greek and Latin literature in the curriculum further
underscored the argument that manliness involved a distinct element of male
camaraderie: “the cult of the classical thereby joined hands with the cult of the
medieval, which also highlighted and celebrated the beauty and spirituality of
the virgin boy, the Galahad whose purity, athleticism, and moral rectitude
would serve as a tonic for a nation.”159 In this sense, Hellenism, medievalism,
Muscular Christianity, and Olympism all drew from the same ideological wellspring.
Advocating for an athletically purified masculinity, Coubertin summarily
dismissed women from Olympic participation, advocating instead that the
ideal Olympic athlete was “the individual adult male.”160 The notion of a feminine Olympiad was to Coubertin “impractical, uninteresting, ungainly, and …
improper.” At the core of the Olympics was “the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism, based on internationalism, by means of fairness, in an
artistic setting, with the applause of women as reward.” Furthermore, Coubertin added, “This combination of the ancient ideal and the traditions of chivalry
is the only healthful and satisfactory one.”161 References to chivalry rationalized both the increasing moralization of sport—the sublimation of the athletes
and their ambitions to the dictates of sportsmanship and fair play—as well as
the model of male athletic camaraderie and exclusivity which relegated
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women to the sideline. Although never instituted, Coubertin contemplated a
prize ceremony, modeled after the Games at Much Wenlock and grounded in
“the chivalrous customs of the Middle Ages,” whereby “the winner received his
prize from a lady before whom he knelt.”162
Within the context of national revitalization, the fears of an apparent
effeminacy, and national expansion, sport also served a burgeoning imperialism, and it did so on the basis of a transparent Eurocentrism. “In the face of
fears of racial degeneracy,” Braudy writes
amid the new burdens of empire, sports could be energizer and the
purifier, creating the right sort of man, but also the right sort of soldier-imperialist, bringing civilized order and fair play to the frontier,
along with rituals of initiation, physical pain, and manly stoicism
that were not unlike those undergone by the more barbarous foe.163
The now famous aphorism that ‘the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing
fields of Eton’ reveals the relationship between the philosophy of athleticism in
the English public schools and the practical and ideological exigencies of
empire. “If asked what our muscular Christianity has done,” Cotton Minchin
haughtily proclaimed, “we point to our Empire.”164 Or, as the narrator in Tom
Brown’s School Days put it: “My dear sir, a battle would look much the same to
you, except the boys would be men, and the balls iron; but a battle would be
worth your looking at for all that, and so is a football match.”165 In the context
of empire, it is not surprising that sport acquired a significance, even a holiness, that carried indisputable moral weight. “The spirit of sport has sustained
many a healthy and productive oasis in the desert of artificialism and commercialism,” John Ashley Cooper wrote, “the underlying philosophy of our
National and Imperial games is not only to produce skill, discipline, loyalty,
endurance, steadiness in attack, patience in misfortune, and other physical and
mental qualities, but to encourage unselfishness, which is synonymous with
good temper, good humour and honour.”166 The resurrection of Arthurian legends in the 19th century allowed boys, and men, living in the world of imperialist expansion to believe that they were engaged more in a spiritual and
benevolent quest than a materialist and military conquest. The rhetoric of
honor, gentlemanliness, and chivalric athleticism became a comforting justification for ethnocentricity, chauvinism, and imperialism, as well as for the
exclusiveness of the Olympic Games.
As social theorist Ben Carrington rightly notes, there were strong analogies between Olympism and humanism. Olympism was a compelling admixture of the ‘renaissance,’ ‘romantic,’ and ‘Enlightenment’ traditions of French
humanism found in the various works of Montaigne, Rousseau, and Constant,
as well as the athletic ideology of the English public school.167 Coubertin’s conception of humanism also claimed its roots stretching back to medievalism
and its chivalric idealism, and antiquity, linking mind, body, and spirit in the
24
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
quest for individual and collective moral improvement and progress. But, as
philosopher Tony Davis points out, humanism is a two-edged sword. Humanism can serve “as an ideological smokescreen for the oppressive mystification
of modern society and culture” and cause “the marginalization and oppression
of the multitude of human beings in whose name it pretends to speak,” and “a
philosophical champion of human freedom and dignity, standing alone and
often outnumbered against the battalions of ignorance, tyranny and superstition.”168 For those such as Matthew Arnold, humanism was synonymous with
cultural development and the expansion of European civilization. For those
such as Coubertin, Olympism was synonymous with physical development
and the perfection of the dominant race:
We must establish the tradition that each competitor shall in his
bearing and conduct as a man of honor and a gentleman endeavor
to prove in what respect he holds the Games and what an honor he
feels to participate in them … Such is my view of the development
which ought to take place in the institution of the modern Olympic
Games … The work must be lasting, to exercise over the sports of the
future that necessary and beneficial influence for which I look—an
influence which shall make them the means of bringing to perfection
the strong and hopeful youth of our white race, thus again helping
towards the perfection of all human society.169 In short, like medieval chivalry, and even ancient Hellenism, especially to the
extent that the ancient Olympics fostered exclusive, racial Greekness, Coubertin’s Olympism was predicated on an elitist doctrine which lead to the overt
masculinization and racialization of the Olympic athlete. Eurocentric doctrines of internationalism and Olympism, dignified and historicized by references to chivalry and concomitant concepts of honor, achievement, and loyalty
to an ideal, rationalized Olympic class, gender, and ethnic exclusivity. On the
one hand, Coubertin’s persistent references to chivalry endowed Olympism
with a nobility of character and purpose; on the other hand, they bequeathed
Olympism with a regressive proclivity to trumpet the disreputable narrative of
an identifiably Eurocentric historicism.
Coubertin's Historicism
The great German historian Jacob Burckhardt insisted that the interest of the
historian must be personal, authentic, and participatory, and he admonished
his students to understand the difference between Parteilichkeit and Vorliebe,
the difference between partisanship and elective affection. The serious historian, he argued, must eschew partisanship because it posited a view of history
as essentialist, as consisting of discernible patterns which simply required identification and celebration.170 American historian Jacques Barzun said something very similar, arguing that to seek patterns and rhythms in history “is not
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enlightening but productive of superstition.” Further, Barzun writes, the historian who “gazes at history and sees a grand design in its unfolding, shows that
he takes men for stones acted upon and not acting.” In so doing, “he denies
reality to history’s most conspicuous feature, which is active change.”171
In many ways, Coubertin was guilty of historical partisanship, of imposing on his Olympic history a master narrative that spoke to the hallowed heritage of Olympism, a view of the Games as the culmination of a line of history
that spanned the centuries and that he drew from ancient Hellenism to medieval chivalry, and, ultimately, to the athletic cosmology of his own time. In
1896, he wrote:
When a new idea springs up, assumes a practical form and becomes
a reality, it is not always easy to explain why this particular idea,
more than any other, has emerged from the stream of other thoughts,
which are as yet awaiting their realization. This however is not the
case with the reinstitution of the Olympic Games. Their revival is
not the result of a spontaneous dream, but the logical consequence of
the great cosmopolitan tendencies of our times.172
In other words, rather than a passing fancy, the Olympic Games were construed by Coubertin as the culmination of an identifiable movement across
history.173 “I lift my glass to the Olympic idea,” he wrote, “which has traversed
the mists of the ages like an all-powerful ray of sunlight and returned to illumine the threshold of the 20th century with a gleam of joyous hope.”174 Similarly, when acknowledging the contribution of the 7th Olympiad, he declared
that “when the new Olympic Games were inaugurated at Athens two years
after the proclamation of their coming revival, the institution received at the
foot of the Acropolis a classical baptism which linked it to the illustrious
past.”175
To a great extent, Coubertin was merely following in the footsteps of the
classical meta-narratives of history that dominated Europe in the late 19th century, all of which were couched in terms of some notion of progress. Like
Hegel’s version of the Unfolding of World Spirit Realizing Itself, Marx’s materialist inversion in terms of Class Struggles and Human Emancipation towards
Pure Communism, and the Whig version of the Onward March towards Liberty and Democracy, Coubertin’s Olympism, too, shared a common “nineteenth-century faith in evolutionary progress towards some ultimate goals, or
telos, of all of human history.”176 Coubertin in fact was singularly eloquent in
his advocacy of sport as the purveyor of progress. “O Sport,’ he wrote, “you are
Fecundity! You tend by straight and noble paths towards a more perfect race…
O Sport, you are Progress! To serve you well, man must better himself in body
and in soul.”177
Idealist historicism as it may have been, references to Hellenism and
medievalism stood Coubertin in good stead in an era besotted by ancient
26
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
Greek and chivalric forms. As Clastres argues, it was a question of endowing
his Olympic project with a noble appearance and, from a diplomatic point of
view, neutralizing it by depriving it of any national connotation, even a French
one.178 By suggesting that the modern Olympic Games were the teleological
destination of a trans-millennial cosmology that sprang initially from the soil
of ancient Olympia, Coubertin popularized and justified his Olympic vision,
elevating his creation above all other international sporting events and championships, including other Olympic Games,179 and endowing his version of
competitive, international sport with a sacred and privileged aura. Even if
Coubertin did not literally mean that “Hellenic Olympism had re-entered the
world after an eclipse of several centuries,”180 even if it was a rhetorical flourish
meant to inspire and appeal, like so much of his language, he nonetheless
aligned himself with a tradition of historical scholarship that failed to recognize that the Olympic Games were, like all human institutions, the result not of
what the famed English historian H. A. L. Fisher called the harmonies of plot,
rhythm, and pattern,181 but rather what the celebrated French philosopher and
sociologist Raymond Aron characterized as “the irrevocable choice by fallible
men in unforeseen circumstances and semi-ignorance.”182
Conclusion
Coubertin may not have been a first class historian, or, for that matter, a first
class philosopher; he was not, to use Clastres characterization, “a great connoisseur of the Ancient Games.”183 Nor was he an astute student of chivalry. Rather,
he was a brilliant sports promoter, and he bequeathed to his Olympic Games a
unique identity and a distinguished pedigree. Part of his success was that he
knew how to appeal to history, especially a history that resonated with his era.
While the most poignant and persuasive allusions were always those he made to
the Games of antiquity, and while he himself was clearly most smitten with the
ancient Olympic epoch, he was also heavily influenced by chivalry, both medieval chivalry and the culturally filtered versions of chivalry he encountered in
France and England. Chivalry impacted him in both direct and indirect ways:
directly, in the sense that he was exposed to the history and literature of chivalry
within his own education and culture, and within the cultural traditions, practices, and ideologies of England, most especially the English public school; and,
indirectly, in the sense that chivalric images, references, artifacts, architecture,
and values were resplendent in both France and England, and, to some extent,
throughout Europe in the 19th century. The values and morals of chivalry during
this time informed many of the cultural paradigms and institutions that influenced his thinking and certainly constructed his cultural experience.
It is also worth remembering that Coubertin’s homeland, France, was the
birthplace of chivalry, chevalerie, and chivalric literature. Even to the Germans,
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France was the true land of the knights, das rehten ritterschefte Lant,184 and,
while chivalry was nurtured within a broad European context,185 it was the
French circumstance and cultural temperament that gave shape and definition
to chivalry. Chivalry was part of Coubertin’s cultural heritage, part of France’s
national historical consciousness, and, no doubt, one of the ingredients that
engendered Coubertin’s sense of noblesse d’oblige.
In 1896, the same year that Coubertin consummated his beloved Olympic
revival, Martin du Gard’s fictional hero Jean Barois was founding his periodical,
Le Semeur. Not unlike Coubertin’s ambitions for le pedagogie sportive and le
virilité scolaire, Le Semeur was also designed to insert a new élan into a tired and
enervated world. While du Gard probably gave little if any thought to Coubertin’s achievements, the work of both men reveals the possibilities that a particular moment in time presented to a privileged social group. Both men aimed at
“moral rearmament education,” to use Weber’s apt phrase.186 While du Gard
chose literature, Coubertin chose sport. In order to legitimize, and, in fact, sell
his Olympic project, both politically and ideologically, Coubertin reached
across history and invoked medieval chivalry in much the same way as he summoned up memories and images of ancient Olympia. Though Olympia may
well be the most evocative reference in his Olympic rhetoric, chivalry was an
equally critical historical ingredient in the realization of his Olympic dream.
Endnotes
1
2
3
4
28
Allen Guttmann, The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1992), 1.
Pierre de Coubertin, “Why I Revived the Olympic Games,” Fortnightly
Review 90 (1908), 111.
S. von Kortzfleisch, “Religious Olympism,” Social Research 37 (1970), 231.
See, for example, Sigmund Loland, “Coubertin’s Ideology of Olympism
from the Perspective of the History of Ideas,” Olympika: The International
Journal of Olympic Studies IV (1995), 49-77; John A. Lucas, “The Influence
of Anglo-American Sport on Pierre de Coubertin—Modern Olympic
Games Founder,” in: The Modern Olympics, eds. Peter J. Graham and Horst
Ueberhorst (West Point, NY: Leisure Press, 1976), 27-36; John J. MacAloon,
This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Roland Renson, M.
Lämmer, James Riordan and D. Chassiotis, eds., “The Olympic Games
Through the Ages: Greek Antiquity and its Impact on Modern Sport,” Proceedings of the 13th International HISPA Congress, Olympia, Greece, May 2228, 1989; David C. Young, The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
Pierre de Coubertin, Olympism: Selected Writings (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee, 2000), 218.
Ibid., 287.
Ibid., 218.
Ibid.
Pierre de Coubertin, “A Typical Englishman: Dr. W. P. Brookes of Wenlock,” American Monthly Review of Reviews 15 (1897), 64-65.
Coubertin, Olympism, 314.
Ibid., 374.
Pierre de Coubertin, The Olympic Idea: Discourses and Essays (Stuttgart:
Carl-Diem-Institut, 1967), 113.
Ibid., 80.
Ibid., 112.
Lucas, “The influence of Anglo-American sport on Pierre de Coubertin,”
35.
Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 107.
Coubertin, Olympism, 535.
Ibid., 218.
Ibid.
Ibid., 535.
Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 6.
Coubertin, Olympism, 570.
Ibid., 218.
Russell Kirk, “Foreword,” in: Historical Consciousness: The Remembered
Past, John Lukacs (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1994), xii.
See Gerit Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
There is, not surprisingly, an extensive body of literature on chivalry, but,
see, in particular, Ian Anstruther, The Knight and the Umbrella: An Account
of the Eglinton Tournament, 1839 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1963); Clifford R.
Backman, The World of Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003); Richard Barber, The Knights and Chivalry (London: Longmans,
1970); Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Mangan (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1961); Allen J. Frantzen, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and
the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Mark Girouard,
The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1981); Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in
Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Maurice Keen,
Nobles, Knights, and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (Rio Grande, OH:
Hambledon Press, 1996); Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven: Yale Uni29
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27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
30
versity Press, 1984); Sidney Painter, French Chivalric Ideas and Practices in
Medieval France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940); Nigel Saul, Chivalry in Medieval England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).
Saul, Chivalry in Medieval England, 3.
See, W. H. Rice, “Deux Poems sur la Chevalerie: Le Breviare des Nobles
d’Alain Chartier et Le Psaultier des Vilains de Michault Taillevent,”
Romania, lxxv (1954), 54-97.
Quoted in Joachim Burke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the
High Middle Ages, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 302.
R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 115.
Quoted in Conrad Greenia, trans., Treatises III: On Grace and Free
Choice. Praise of the New Knighthood in The Works of Bernard of Chairvaux. Volume Seven. Daniel O’Donnovan and Conrad Greenia (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 132.
Quoted in Carl Erdmann, The Origins of the Idea of Cruscade, trans. Marshal Baldwin and Walter Goffart (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1977), 339-340.
Kaeuper, Chivalry, 80.
Ibid., 77.
Gerd Tellenbach, Church, State and Christian Society at the Time of the
Investiture Contest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 36.
Bloch, Feudal Society, 318; Backman, The World of Medieval Europe, 129.
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (New York:
Bantam Books, 1982), 82.
Quoted in Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence, 169.
Ibid., 308-310
See A. B. Furgeson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1960).
An Accession Day tilt seems to have taken place at Westminster on
March 24. John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First (London: J. B. Nichols, 1828), IV, 968.
Barber notes of the demise of chivalry that: “The ideals of chivalry
appealed to the emotions, and they flourish best in a gothic and romantic
climate; neoclassicism appeals to reason and to the sense of order. When
the seeds sown by the Renaissance humanists became the classical movement of 17th century France, chivalry was driven from the land which had
for so long been its chief refuge.” Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, 341.
Edith. J. Morley, Hurd’s Letters on Chivalry and Romance with the Third
Elizabethan Dialogue (London: Henry Frowde, 1911), 51, 58.
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
44 Quoted in Girouard, The Return to Camelot, 113.
45 See Laura Morowitz, Consuming the Past: The Nobles and French Medieval Art (PhD diss., New York University, 1996).
46 See Richard Griffiths, The Reactionary Evolution (New York: Frederick
Unger, 1965).
47 See Janine Dakyns, The Middle Ages in French Literature, 1851-1900
(London: Oxford University Press, 1973).
48 See Peter Frankl, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations
Through Eight Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
49 See Elizabeth Emery, “The Truth about the Middle Ages: La Revue des
Deux Mondes and Late Nineteenth Century Medievalism,” in: Medievalism and the Quest for the ‘Real’ Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Simmons (Portland: Frank Cass, 2001), 98-114.
50 Ludovic Vitet, “Une Novella Histoire de France, de M. Guizot,” La Revue
des Deux Mondes 95, no. 2 (May 15, 1872), 439.
51 In particular, see Eugen Weber, France, Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986), 1-50. Weber paints the
cultural context which motivated many of Coubertin’s peers to invest in
reenergizing France.
52 Quoted in Michel de Lézinier, Avec Huysmans (Paris: Andre Delpeuch,
1928), 193. Also quoted in Fernande Zayed, Huysmans: Peintre de son
Epoch (Paris: Nizet, 1973), 432.
53 Pierre de Coubertin, Une Campaigne de 21 Ans (Paris: Libraire de L’Éducation Physique, 1908), 2.
54 Joseph Duggan, “Franco-German Conflict and the History of French
Scholarship on the Song of Roland,” in: Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture, eds. Patrick J. Gallagher and Helen Damico (Albany: State University Press, 1989), 103.
55 Fustel de Coulanges, “L’Organization de la Justice dans L’Antiquité et les
Temps Modern. III. La Justice Royale au Moyen Age,” La Revue des Deux
Mondes 94, no. 2 (Aug. 1, 1871), 536-537.
56 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 51.
57 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 134.
58 Pierre de Coubertin, The Evolution of France under the Third Republic,
trans. Isabel Hapgood (New York: Crowell, 1897), 6.
59 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 23.
60 W. L. Wiley, The Gentlemen of Renaissance France (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1954), 8.
61 François de Mézeray, Abrégé Chronologie de l'Histoire de France, 3 Vols.
(Paris: Esprit Billiot, 1717), III, 3.
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62 Quoted in N. Tommaseo, Relations des Ambassadeurs Vnétiens sur les
Affaires de France au XVIe Siècle, 2 Vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Royale,
1838), I, 283.
63 Honneur has always remained one of the desirable qualities in a gentleman. Rabelais, for example, argued that it was the instinct in well-born
and cultured people that encouraged them to engage in noble rather than
ignoble deeds (François Rabelais, Gargantua, LVII). Ronsard admired the
man who was upright and not a servant to vice, who scorned the greed
and materialism of the Court, who would rather die than become corrupt,
and a man who loved honneur more than the mandate of a king (Pierre de
Ronsard, Discources a M. De Chevorny, I, 911).
64 His notion of benevolent paternalism would ultimately find its way into
the structure of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
65 Eugen Weber, “Pierre de Coubertin and the Introduction of Organized
Sport into France,” Journal of Contemporary History 5 (1970), 3-26.
66 Kenelm Henry Digby, The Broad Stone of Honour (London: Edward
Lumley, 1822).
67 Sir Walter Scott, Essays on Chivalry (London: Frederick Warne and Company, 1824).
68 Stacey Grimaldi, A Suit of Armour for Youth (London: Proprietor, 1824).
69 Mill, The History of Chivalry.
70 Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho! (London: Rand McNally, 1855). Also, in
the 1830s, an aggressive group of journalists and novelists published in a
variety of incursions into life, literature, and politics in the popular Fraser’s Magazine that was clearly conditioned by the spirit of chivalry. See
Girouard, The Return to Camelot, 76.
71 Digby, Godefridus, in The Broad Stone of Honour, 87.
72 Quoted in Marie-Thérèse Eyquem, Pierre de Coubertin: L’Épopée (Paris:
Calmann-Lévy, 1966), 58.
73 Sir Walter Scott, Miscellaneous Prose Works (London: Wells and Lilly,
1878), 525.
74 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 51.
75 Hippolyte Taine, Notes on England, trans. Edward Hyams (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1957).
76 Ibid., 168.
77 Ibid., 144.
78 Ibid., 145.
79 Weber, France, 18.
80 J. A. Mangan, “Duty unto Death: English Masculinity and Militarism in
the Age of New Imperialism,” in Tribal Identities: Nationalism, Europe,
and Sport, ed. J. A. Mangan (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 12.
32
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
81 Digby, The Broad Stone of Honour, 575.
82 Coubertin, Olympism, 360. Coubertin’s perspective on amateurism was
actually complex and nuanced. Coubertin was not the stringent apologist
for amateurism that he is often made out to be. But, he was the consummate pragmatist and recognized that the success of his Olympic project
depended to a great extent on his ability to work with the world leadership of sport and the prevailing norms. He later declared in 1936 that
“there is not and never has been any such thing as amateurism… Only the
Olympic spirit matters. All the rest is of trifling importance.” Ibid., 521.
83 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 166.
84 Digby, The Broad Stone of Honour, 556.
85 Edward FitzGerald, Euphranor: A Dialogue on Youth (London: William
Pickering, 1851), 222.
86 Ibid., 230.
87 Sir Henry Newbolt, The Book of the Happy Warrior (London: Longmans
Green & Co., 1917), vii.
88 See Frederick Gale, Life of the Hon. Robert Grimston (London: Longmans
Green & Co., 1883), 308.
89 J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School:
The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), 197.
90 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 43-82.
91 Pierre de Coubertin, L’Éducation Anglaise en France (Paris: Hachette,
1887), 636.
92 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 7.
93 Coubertin, L’Éducation Anglaise, 643.
94 Ibid., 20. The following message, sent by Coubertin to the Los Angeles
Games in 1932, was displayed on the scoreboard: “The important thing in
the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part.” For a discussion of
the derivation of these words and the associated sentiments, see Ture
Widlund, “Ethelbert Talbot: His Life and Place in Olympic History,”
Citius, Altius, Fortius: Journal of the International Society of Olympic Historians 2, no. 2 (May 1994), 7-14, and David C. Young, “On the Source of
the Olympic Credo,” Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic
Studies III (1994), 17-26.
95 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 103.
96 Patrick Clastres, “Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937): The chivalry of
sportsmen. A political biography.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the North American Society for Sport History, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, May 24-27, 2013; Jeux Olympiques: Un siècle de passions
(Paris: Les Quatre Chemins, 2008).
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97 A. P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold D. D. (London: Fellowes, 1844), Ch. V, Letter 7.
98 Coubertin, Olympism, 515.
99 Ibid., 535.
100 Ibid., 581.
101 Quoted in Keen, Chivalry, 10.
102 One of the most important classes in Coubertin’s Saint-Ignace education
was the class in rhetoric in which students were asked to “place noble
words into the mouths of great personages … lofty sentiments … Honor,
dignity, virtue, nobility, courage, sacrifice, renunciation of the world.” See
Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’Enseignement en France, 1800-1967 (Paris:
Armand Colin, 1968), 52-53. In other words, there was an obvious consonance between his formal education and the established virtues of chivalry.
103 Coubertin, Olympism, 548.
104 Ibid., 514.
105 See Ross G. Arthur, trans., Three Arthurian Romances: Poems from Medieval France (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1996), 12.
106 Martial prowess, honor, liberality and pride in loyal service were also the
hallmarks of the hero in the Caroliginian epics, the older Germanic epic
literature, Beowulf, and the Hildebrandslied.
107 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 13.
108 Honor took a central place in both medieval chivalry and late 19th century
European culture. Anthropologists and historians have long recognized
that any society animated by a code of honor will be highly competitive.
As Pitt-Rivers argues: “Respect and precedence are paid to those who
claim it and are sufficiently powerful to enforce their claim. Just as possession is said to be nine-tenths of the law, so the de facto achievement of
honor depends upon ability to silence anyone who would dispute the
title.” Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honor and Social Status,” in: Honor and Shame:
The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 24.
109 Backman, The World of Medieval Europe, 129.
110 Keen, Chivalry, 249.
111 Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, 32.
112 Pitt-Rivers, “Honor and Social Status,” 38.
113 Coubertin, Olympism, 322.
114 Ibid., 588.
115 Backman, The World of Medieval Europe, 129.
116 Coubertin, Olympism, 525.
34
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
117 See Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, 32.
118 Coubertin, Olympism, 482.
119 See Karel Wendl, “The Olympic Oath—a Brief History,” Citius, Altius,
Fortius (Winter 1995), 4.
120 Chrétian de Troyes’s Perceval is the moral tale of a knight’s education,
where charity, faith and the demands of the common good, and especially
the needs of the poor, supersede the yearning for glory, prowess, and fame
as the ultimate goals. See Nigel Bryant, trans., Perceval: The Book of the
Grail (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982).
121 Coubertin, Olympism, 581.
122 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 9.
123 Gregory M. Colón Semenza, “Historicizing ‘Wrastlynge’ in the Miller’s
Tale,” The Chaucer Review 38, no. 1 (2003), 68. For a summary of the
medieval knight as hero, athlete and gentleman, see Sally North, “The
Ideal Knight as Presented in some French Narrative Poems, c. 1090-1240:
An Outline Sketch,” in: The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood:
Papers from the First and Second Strawberry Hill Conference, eds. Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey (Rochester: Boydell Press, 1986), 111132.
124 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 15.
125 Ibid., 83-84.
126 Ibid., 15.
127 Ibid., 97.
128 Kaueper, Chivalry and Violence, 129-130. With regard to the obsessive
emphasis placed on personal prowess as the fundamental chivalric trait,
Kaueper also notes that, “not simply one quality among others in a list of
virtues, prowess often stands as a one-word definition of chivalry” in the
works of chivalric literature (135).
129 In German, Manheit.
130 Corin Corley, trans., Lancelot and the Lake (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989), 359.
131 Jesse R. Pitts, “Continuity and Change in Bourgeois France,” in: In Search
of France: Economy, Society and Political System in the 20th Century, Stanley Hoffmann, Charles P. Kindleberger, Lawrence Wylie, Jesse Pitts, JeanBaptiste Duroselle, and François Goguel (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1963), 235-304.
132 See MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 14-17.
133 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 39.
134 Ibid., 131-132.
135 Ibid., 108.
35
Segrave
136 Ibid., 132. Hence, too, of course, the famed Olympic motto, “Citius, altius,
fortius” (“Even faster, higher, stronger”).
137 Ibid., 2.
138 John A. Lucas, The Modern Olympic Games (New York: A. S. Barnes,
1980), 23.
139 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 103.
140 Quoted in Keen, Chivalry, 84.
141 Coubertin, Olympism, 448.
142 Ibid.
143 Ibid., 149.
144 Ibid., 151.
145 Ibid.
146 Ibid., 114.
147 Ibid., 116.
148 MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 69.
149 N. H. Nicolas, The Controversy Between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert
Grosvenor in the Court of Chivalry (London: Bentley, 1832), 1, 155.
150 Jan Broekhoff, “Chivalric Education in the Middle Ages,” in: Sport and
Physical Education in the Middle Ages, ed. Earle F. Zeigler (Vancover,
B.C.: Trafford Publishing, 2006), 40-55.
151 M. Delbouille, ed., Jacques Bretel: Le Tournoi de Chauvency (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de L'Université de Liège,
1932), lines 2617-2624.
152 Interestingly, Coubertin’s romanticized notion about tournaments also
informed his judgments about spectator, not just, athlete behavior: “More
and more,” he argued, “modern crowds lack the chivalrous spirit that
thrived in the middle ages among those attending tournaments and popular jousts.” Coubertin, Olympism, 562.
153 Joanna Burke claims that the “language” of chivalry ennobled men to
“emphasize love rather than hatred,” and in the end hid, or at least, minimized, the violence that knights were capable of perpetrating. Joanna
Burke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in 20th Century
Warfare (London: Granta, 1996), 359.
154 Keen, Chivalry, 101.
155 Ibid., 283-284.
156 Coubertin, Olympism, 582-583.
157 Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, The German Art of Gymnastics (Northampton:
Simeon Butler, 1816), 12.
158 Quoted in Leo Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 300.
36
Coubertin, Olympism and Chivalry
159 Ibid., 340.
160 Coubertin, Olympism, 582.
161 Ibid., 713.
162 Ibid., 615.
163 Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism, 343.
164 J. G. Cotton Minchin, Our Public Schools: Their Influence on English History (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1901), 52.
165 Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School-Days (Boston: Atheneum Press,
1908), 118.
166 John Ashley Cooper, "The British Imperial Spirit of Sport and War."
United Empire, VII (1916), 581.
167 Ben Carrington, “Cosmopolitan Olympism, Humanism, and the Spectacle
of ‘Race,’” in: Post-Olympism? Questioning Sport in the Twenty-First Century, eds. J. Bale and M. Krogh Christensen (New York: Berg, 2004), 82.
168 Tony Davis, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1997), 5.
169 Coubertin, Olympism, 546.
170 Quoted in Lukacs, Historical Consciousness, 355.
171 Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History
and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 121-122.
172 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 10.
173 See Synthia Sydnor, "Essences of Post-Olympism: A Prolegomena of
Study,” in Post-Olympism, 165.
174 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 66-67.
175 Ibid., 86.
176 Mary Fulbrook, Historical Theory (London: Routledge, 2002), 59
177 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 40.
178 Clastres, “Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937).”
179 See Gerald Redmond, “Prologue and Transition: The 'Pseudo-Olympics'
of the Nineteenth Century,” in: Olympism, eds. Jeffrey O. Segrave and
Don Chu (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1980), 7-21.
180 Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 6.
181 H. A. L. Fisher, A History of Europe (London: Edward Arnold, 1936), v.
182 Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962), 12.
183 Clastres, “Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937).”
184 K. Lachmann, ed., Wolfram von Eschenbach—Willehalm (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 1926), 229. Moreover, chivalrous ideas in Germany, especially
the German cult of Ritterschaft and Ere, were profoundly influenced by
French notions of chevalerie and honneur.
37
185 On chivalry in Spain, see Carolina A. Jewers, Chivalric Fiction and the
History of the Novel (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2000); in Germany, see Joachim Bumke, trans. W. T. H. Jackson and Erika Jackson,
The concept of knighthood in the Middle Ages (New York: Ams Press,
1982); on European chivalry in general, see D’arcy Dacre Jonathan Boulton, The King of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in
Later Medieval Europe, 1325-1520 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987).
186 Eugene Weber, My France: Politics, Culture, and Myth (Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991), 209.
38