"Let us live for those who love us": faith, family, and the contours of manhood among the knights of Columbus in late nineteenth-century Connecticut

Journal of Social History, Winter, 2004 by Amy Koehlinger

Though the passing of the Crusades closed a chapter of Christian knighthood, the article argued, chivalry did not disappear with it. Rather, chivalry was resurrected by Columbus in his courageous and "stupendous project." Through Columbus, the ideal of Christian chivalry continued to the present day among a "band of knights rallying under his name and imbued with the spirit of the knights of old." (22) The article exhorted fellow Knights of Columbus to claim the mantle of chivalry, and to emulate in every action the selfless service performed by generations of Christian knights who came before them:

   The age of chivalry has not passed. There is still the duty for men
   to be generous, faithful and noble, indifferent to their own selfish
   interest, full of high honor, truthful, and just, not aiming to
   follow the erring multitude, but emulous of imitating the example of
   Christian knights of old. (23)

Religious visions of knighthood and chivalry were common themes in the rhetoric of Columbian fraternity. In his lengthy "toast to the Catholic citizen," Grand Knight William A. Maline of Youngstown, Ohio stated: "The Catholic citizen should be a knight, gentle to children, to age and to women, courteous to all whatever their station, clothing his words and deeds with politeness." (24) And in a surprising blurring of gender identification, the May 1899 issue of the Columbiad contained a feature article elevating Joan of Arc as "the ideal type for the Catholic knight of today." Joan united "to her maidenly virtues the martial courage and ardor of the noblest knights of chivalry," the author argued. The "glorious maid of Orleans" faced adversity, discouragement, and the jeers of those in high places while maintaining unwavering faith. She stood as exemplar for Catholic men because "every phase of her life and character contains a lesson fraught with the loftiest inspiration for the man who would have his life tend to the good of his fellow men and the glory of God." (25)

In all these cases, knighthood marked the intersection of robust Catholic faith, the performance of duty, and the articulation of Catholic manhood. Knighthood valorized individual self-sacrifice for greater social welfare. The portrait of the knight as one set apart from the "erring multitudes," pursuing right despite social pressure to assimilate, provided Catholic men with a positive interpretation of the separation they would have experienced relative to the Protestant-dominated social and political context in New Haven. Knight-hood rendered them exemplars rather than aberrations. It provided them with a mythical alternative to an American manhood based upon Protestant propriety, republican citizenship, or successful economic competition--one that accounted for the unique obligations that they shouldered as Catholics and as recent immigrants. Chivalry also united multiple layers of individual, familial, religious and social obligation into a singular, coherent code of conduct, perhaps diffusing tensions inherent to circumstances in which specific obligations appeared to be in conflict with each other. The rhetoric of Knighthood located individual Knights of Columbus within an unbroken lineage of valiant Christian knights, and specifically valorized the Catholic component of chivalrous manhood.