Good People In The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, there were many groups of people who wanted to be considered good, such as the monks, who were known as some of the most pure people in their time; those of the Christian faith, who were practicing the primary religion of the time; and the knights, who have been described in stories as loyal and powerful guardians to their King. The actions of the monks, Christians, and knights were ways to show that they were good and meant well to the people around them. This idea of being good is what a lot of people in the Middle Ages tried to achieve. Even though everyone’s main goal was to aim for the label of goodness, there were many methods that people used. In this essay, those methods will be discussed and broken down …show more content…
They were people who went away from the city and away from all the worldly things to build churches and monasteries dedicated to God. Their idea of a good person was someone focused on God and not persuaded by the materialistic things of the world. A way to show devotion to God was to humble themselves and have humility. They would put themselves at a very low rank in comparison to God. They were not to be prideful, but humble. “The first grade of humility is obedience without delay” (St. Benedict, Cp.1 pg.8). This quote shows that having humility, the desire to lower one’s own importance, is a big way to show loyalty to God which makes one good. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic priest, had another way of showing people how to be good. He did not directly tell them how to be good, but he did show them ways that would make them better which would make them good according to the standards of their religion. In one instance, Thomas Aquinas talks to his student about “the cause of sin, as regards the devil” (Thomas Aquinas, Cp.1 pg.22-36). In almost all of his responses to his student’s theories, he proves his student wrong. The student claims that the devil has full control over one’s choice of sinning and that an individual has no control whatsoever. The student’s theories are very convincing because he had evidence from works of other well-known people to support his statements. However, Aquinas, already aware …show more content…
Even though, in reality, the knights actually turned out to be selfish men who raped women and were feared by the very people they were supposed to protect, people still wrote about them as loyal warriors who would die for their kingdom and were loved by the people ("Terry Jones ' Medieval Lives - S1 Ep 5 - The Knight." YouTube). A good literary representative of this kind of knight was a man named Sir Gawain, from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the story, a green knight shows up during a party that King Arthur is hosting. He challenges anyone to come chop his head off. The king is offended by the knight’s overconfidence and accepts his challenge. Gawain interrupts the king and volunteers instead (Gawain and the Green Knight, pg.36, stanza 16). This is an example of a knight’s loyalty and devotion to his king. As the story continues, Gawain chops off the green knight’s head and goes looking for him to fight with him again. On his journey, he finds a castle that is ruled by a good king. During his stay there, the king’s wife tries multiple times to seduce Gawain; he respectfully refuses to do anything with her (Gawain and the Green Knight, pg.91, stanza 71). Gawain stays true to what is called the five joys, mainly chastity (Gawain and the Green Knight, Pg.91 Stanza 71). This story demonstrates a knight’s devotion to his code. From