"Militia Christi" redirects here. For the rock band, see Militia Christi (band).
This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2013)
By the 5th century, the Church had started to develop doctrines that allowed for Christian participation in battle, though this was limited by a requirement that the fighting must be undertaken to convert infidels or spread the glory of Christ. Christians were not to fight for conquest or personal glory.[4]
The metaphor has its origins in early Christianity of the Roman Empire, and gave rise to the contrasting term paganus (hitherto used in the sense of "civilian," "one lacking discipline") for its opposite, i.e. one who was not a soldier of Christ.[6]
Chivalry as the idealized image of knighthood was a common moral allegory in early Christian literature.[4] During the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne's Christian knights attended Mass, surrounded by relics, before battles.[4]
Fragments from 15th c. Polish chronicler Jan Długosz describe the sanctification of weapons and a concept of knighthood that was grounded in religion.[4] It became a theme in art during the High Middle Ages, with depictions of a knight with his various pieces of equipment identified with various virtues. This parallels the development of the understanding in medieval Christendom of the armed nobility as defenders of the faith, first emphasized by Gregory VII in the context of the Investiture controversy and later made even more explicit with the actual military expeditions of the crusades.
Depictions of the miles christianus with the emblematic Armour of God however remained very rare in the medieval period and only became prominent after the Protestant Reformation.[7]
Brian A. Catlos, "Militia Christi", Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2010), defines militia Christi as the "idea of service to the church, with military connotations derived from crusading ideology and Bernard of Clairvaux's writings."
Michael Evans, "An Illustrated Fragment of Peraldus's Summa of Vice: Harleian MS 3244", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 45 (1982), pp.14–68.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Miles_Christianus, and is written by contributors.
Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.