The Broad-Stone of Honour

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The Broad Stone of Honour, or Rules for the Gentlemen of England, is a book written by Kenelm Henry Digby and published first in 1822 by F. C. & J. Rivington of London. Then the work was subdivided into its constituent parts and published as Godefridus (1829), Tancredus (1828), Morus (1826) and Orlandus (1829). Later it was revised and republished as The Broad Stone of Honour: Or, the True Sense and Practice of Chivalry (1844–1848).[lower-alpha 1]

Now almost unknown, Digby's Broad Stone of Honour (named after his favourite castle, Ehrenbreitstein) was an attempt to describe the true meaning of chivalry and to revive it in modern life. In his Godefridus section, Digby defined chivalry:

Chivalry is only 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.

The book is plentifully supplied with examples from medieval literature, even the most obscure accounts,[2] and had an appreciable effect on many of Digby's contemporaries, such as John Ruskin, but also on Charles Kingsley[lower-alpha 2] and Charlotte Yonge,[3] among many others. The style of Godefridus — the first part of The Broad-Stone of Honour — "probably influenced FitzGerald's prose more than that of any other work."[4] Some of Digby's conceptions in Orlandus were expanded by his friend Wordsworth in the poem "The Armenian Lady's Love,"[5] — part of Yarrow Revisited (1831) — and later in The Prelude (1850).[6] Broad-Stone was deeply influential and gave rise to an entire genre of Victorian fiction writing, largely in defiance of Digby's principles.[7] Digby's best-known novelistic influence was on the young Benjamin Disraeli. Tancred; or, The New Crusade (1847) bears the name of one of Digby’s four key heroes — Tancredus, the Crusader-king of Sicily.[8]

Its attack on utilitarianism and its devotion to rationalism over the heart,[9] his lack of interest in intellectual ability,[10] and his disdain for making money[11] all had serious impact on the Victorian notion of a proper gentleman.[12] It has been called "the breviary of Young England."[13]

Digby concluded that the whole concept of gallantry or chivalry is to be found in the Eight Beatitudes; significantly the eight-pointed crosses used by the Knights of Malta and other such orders are believed to have alluded to the same idea. The book was so influential in its day that ideas such as the Boy Scout movement can be traced back to it.[14][15]

See also

Notes

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Father Nicholas Dillon edited an anthology of passages from The Broad-Stone of Honour in 1926, with a foreword by Robert Kane.[1]
  2. ↑ One chapter of Charles Kingsley's novel Two Years Ago (1857) was entitled "The Broad Stone of Honour."

Citations

  1. ↑ Digby, Kenelm Henry (1926). Maxims of Christian Chivalry. London: Harding & More/The Ambrosden Press.
  2. ↑ Girouard (1981), p. 63.
  3. ↑ Bourrier, Karen (2015). "Charles Kingsley’s and Charlotte Yonge's Christian Chivalry." In: The Measure of Manliness: Disability and Masculinity in the Mid-Victorian Novel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 26–51.
  4. ↑ Wright, Thomas (1904). The Life of Edward FitzGerald, Vol. 1. London: Grant Richards, pp. 154–55.
  5. ↑ Wordsworth, William (1835). Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems. New York: R. Bartlett and S. Raynor, p. 79.
  6. ↑ Gidal, Eric (1993). "Playing With Marbles: Wordsworth's Egyptian Maid," The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, pp. 3–11.
  7. ↑ Markwick, Margaret (2007). New Men in Trollope's Novels: Rewriting the Victorian Male. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate, p. 18.
  8. ↑ Simmons, Clare A. (1990). Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in Nineteenth-century British Literature. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, p. 103.
  9. ↑ Girouard (1981), p. 62.
  10. ↑ Girouard (1981), p. 64.
  11. ↑ Girouard (1981), p. 66.
  12. ↑ Palmer, Abram Smythe (1908). The Ideal of a Gentleman: or A Mirror for Gentlefolks. London: G. Routledge & Sons.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Girouard (1981), pp. 56, 255 & 256 - "Quoted in Forster"

References

Anon. (1824). "The Broad-Stone of Honour," The British Critic, Vol. XXII, pp. 35–54.
Anon. (1824). "The Broad-Stone of Honour," Knight's Quarterly Magazine, Vol. II, pp. 287–309.
Anon. (1832). "Digby's Broadstone of Honour," The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. CII, pp. 329–34.
Anon. (1862). "England's 'Broad Stone of Honour'," Temple Bar, Vol. IV, pp. 427–38.
Anon. (1878). "The Broad-Stone of Honour," The Month, Vol. XXXII, No. 164, pp. 227–31.
Anderson, Robert (2002). Elgar and Chivalry. Rickmansworth: Elgar Editions.
Barry, William Francis (1920). "Kenelm Digby," The Dublin Review, Vol. CLXVI, No. 332, pp. 31–50.
Chandler, Alice (1970). A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-century English Literature. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press.
Crouch, David (2019). The Chivalric Turn: Conduct and Hegemony in Medieval Europe before 1300. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Girouard, Mark (1981). The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Holland, Bernard (1919). Memoir of Kenelm Henry Digby. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
Lappin, Henry A. (1919). "Kenelm Henry Digby," The Catholic World, Vol. CX, No. 655, pp. 1–13.
Morris, Kevin L. (1984). The Image of the Middle Ages in Romantic and Victorian Literature. London: Croom Helm.
Morris, Kevin L. (1985). "The Cambridge Converts and the Oxford Movement," Recusant History, Vol. XVII, No. 3, pp. 386–98.
Morris, Kevin L. (1991). "Kenelm Henry Digby and English Catholicism," Recusant History, Vol. XX, No. 3, pp. 361–70.
Simmons, Clare (2019). "Chivalric Medievalism." In: Robert W. Jones & Peter Coss, ed., A Companion to Chivalry. Boydell & Brewer, pp. 301–22.
Sterling, John (1848). Essays and Tales, Vol. 1. London: J. W. Parker.

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