Rebecca got the better of the contest last time.  She had a better first half, as we often say about a football team.  But there are two halves, even in the time of Chivalry and the Crusades, and Ivanhoe does better in the second half.

In the first half, Rebecca went on the offensive, taking apart what I have been calling “the glory machine” piece by piece.  She doesn’t deny that there is a machine.  She argues, that it is only temporary and is, besides, rude and tacky.  “Glory” is not worth the price Ivanhoe is paying for it.  Here is his first response.

“By the soul of Hereward! ” [1] replied the knight, impatiently,“thou speakest, maiden, of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone dis­tinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honor, raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no evil but disgrace. 

Ivanhoe here begins to rebuild the value of glory, starting with social distinctions.  It is chivalry—alone!—that distinguishes what is noble from what is base.  It distinguishes the knight from the churl [2].  A churl is a man of low degree, but he is part of the ordered society in which the novel takes place.  The next distinction, however leaves even that.  Glory—only glory!— distinguishes the knight from the savage.

And glory establishes a kind of character in the knight as well.  It ranks the life a knight well below his honor.  The commitment to glory overcomes challenges that would in other circumstances be daunting.  Ivanhoe names explicitly, pain, toil, and suffering.

At this point there are distinctions Ivanhoe makes not only between the sex of Rebecca but also her faith.  I want to come back to that after we finish the glory games.

Ivanhoe here begins to take some of Rebecca’s criticism into account.

Chivalry! Why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection, the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant. Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”

Here Ivanhoe begins to address questions that Rebecca has not brought up and very likely has never considered.  She does touch on the topics Ivanhoe raises but only as they bear on the nation, Israel, and only in a very long context of history.  That is not what Ivanhoe has in mind at all.

Chivalry is the backbone of three important transactions, but they can be summed up, as Ivanhoe does at the end, as “liberty.”  Very likely he means liberty for the nobility—that is how it developed in English history—but liberty is the core value he chooses.  We’ ll look here at three elements of that treasured notion.

The first is that chivalry is “the stay of the oppressed.”  Very likely, he has in mind here that a noble class that is being stressed, like the Saxons under Norman rule, can count on chivalry to hold off that oppression.  He doesn’t say that exactly, but it is a good guess that is what he means.  He certainly is not referring to the people whom the Saxon nobles oppress.  He has already distinguished the noble knight from the churl.  No need to go back to that question.  

The second is that chivalry is a redresser of grievances.  Note that in this role for chivalry, the grievances have already taken place.  Chivalry as the stay of the oppressed might mean that the oppression is prevented; chivalry as the source of a redress of grievances grants that there are grievances.

Finally, chivalry is a curb on the power of the tyrant.  A “curb” tells the tyrant that he can come this far and no farther.  It is a limitation.  The tyrant is still there and very likely Ivanhoe is thinking principally of Richard’s brother John, who is pretending the be the king of England as long as his brother cannot be found.

So chivalry, which Rebecca demeaned by her remarks about second rate tombs and third rate ballads, is defended on political as well as personal grounds.

That is really all the argument that deserves to be grasped by its rhetorical elements, but there is one more transaction that I think ought to be touched on before we let this conversation go.  This one has to do with ethnicity—they would have called it “race”—and religion.  Here Ivanhoe has the opening shot.

Thou art no Christian, Rebecca ; and to thee are unknown those high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover hath done some deed of emprize [3] which sanctions his flame.

Ivanhoe has in mind, although he doesn’t say it, the beautiful Saxon maiden, Rowena.  The match between Ivanhoe and Rowena is the highest hope of Cedric the Saxon, but things are not looking good right now.  I mention that because Rebecca will close with it.

Rebecca is no Christian and therefore she cannot know the feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden (he is thinking of Rowena) when her lover (he is thinking of himself) has done “a deed of chivalrous endeavor.”  It is her feelings that “sanction” his flame.  Earlier, Ivanhoe as the champion of the tournament, won the right to officially honor a “Queen of Love and Beauty,” who was watching from the stands.  He chose Rowena.

But Ivanhoe’s idea is that a noble Christian (like a Saxon or a Norman) can understand these feelings and that a Jewess cannot.  She is a lower form of being.  Not a “churl,” as above, but not “superior” as a Christian would be. [4]

Rebecca’s response is noteworthy.  I will give you two pieces of it: the one she speaks aloud; the other she murmurs to herself.  Here is the public one.

“I am, indeed,” said Rebecca, “ sprung from a race whose courage was distinguished in the defense of their own land, but who warred not, even while yet a nation, save at the command of the Deity, or in defending their country from oppression. The sound of the trumpet wakes Judah no longer, and her despised children are now but the unresisting victims of hostile and military oppression. Well hast thou spoken. Sir Knight: until the God of Jacob shall raise up for His chosen people a second Gideon, or a new Maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the Jewish damsel to speak of battle or of war.”

The race that produced Rebecca showed its courage in defending its own land but attacked no one else “save at the command of the Deity.”  She grants that Ivanhoe’s criticism is plausible, but only until “the God of Jacob shall raise up a national hero.”  Until then it is unseemly for a Jewish woman to speak of war.  But then…she allows the next stage to linger on…maybe it will no longer be unseemly.

That was the public response.  Here is the private one.

“How little he knows this bosom,” she said, “ to imagine that cowardice or meanness of soul must needs be its guests, because I have censured the fantastic chivalry of the Nazarenes! Would to Heaven that the shedding of mine own blood, drop by drop, could redeem the captivity of Judah ! Nay, would to God it could avail to set free my father, and this his benefactor, from the chains of the oppressor ! The proud Christian should then see whether the daughter of God’s chosen people dared not to die as bravely as the vainest Nazarene maiden, that boasts her descent from some petty chieftain of the rude and frozen north! ”

He thinks I am cowardly, Rebecca says, because of what I have opposed in him.  She refers to it as “the fantastic chivalry of the Nazarenes (Christians).” She means “fantastic” is a form of “fantasy,” i.e. of self-delusion.  She promises to herself that she would gladly close the shedding of her own blood drop by drop if it could free her father and also Ivanhoe.  

Question: How bravely could she die?

Answer: As bravely as the vainest Nazarene maiden (slap #1) who boasts her descent from some petty chieftain (slap #2) from the rude and frozen north (slap #3).  

It is probably a good thing she spoke these last thoughts only to herself because the vain Nazarene maiden she has in mind is almost certainly Rowena.t

I began by celebrating the kinds of things you can turn up by reading well-written books over and over.  I rest my case.

[1]. Hereward is a major figure in English lore, representing both resistance against the Normans and also the moral commitments underlying chivalry.

[2] A word modern English knows only from churlish, but it carried the connotations of low is standing and unworthy.

[3]. From about 1300, the term has referred to “deeds of chivalrous endeavor.”

[4]. It is probably worth a note that “Christian” in Ivanhoe’s lexicon is a racial and social category, not a religious one.  In has nothing to do with personal religious faith.  Rebecca’s embrace of Judaism is a good deal more authentic.