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Volume 3, Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ivanhoe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Merits of Chivalry
Disguise and Discovery
Inheritance and Displacement
The Vulnerability and Power of Women
History vs. Romance
Summary
Analysis
Now the tale returns to Isaac, who stops some four miles short of the Templar Preceptory of Templestowe, exhausted by his furious pace of travel. He stays at the house of Nathan Ben Samuel, a Jewish physician, who treats Isaac’s nervous exhaustion and shares more bad news. The head of the Templar Order, Lucas de Beaumanoir, is at the preceptory. In contrast to the worldly, ambitious, and avaricious knights of the Order, Beaumanoir has a zealot’s passion for purity and moral rectitude. He’s unlikely to be moved by bribes and, to make matters worse, people say he values the death of a Jewish person as highly as the death of the Templars’ avowed enemies, the Muslim forces who have seized Jerusalem from the crusaders. He especially distrusts the alleged witchery of Jewish medicine.
Isaac’s friend, Nathan Ben Samuel, introduces the third volume’s main antagonist in his description of Lucas de Beaumanoir. While thus far the book has criticized its antagonists (Prince John, Maurice de Bracy, Sir Brian) for not having a strong moral code or sense of ethics, Beaumanoir runs to the other extreme. His devotion to a narrow and excessively legalistic moral code—one which remains tainted by a good deal of pride and worldly ambition for the future of the Templar Order—makes him a bad and cruel leader in other ways. Importantly, as a uniquely powerful international organization, the growth and power of the Templar Order under Prince John in England also threatens King Richard’s rightful rule.
Themes
Be that as it may, Isaac insists, he must do what he can to rescue Rebecca. Nathan Ben Samuel suggests that Isaac try to appeal to Sir Brian privately; despising the Jewish people, Beaumanoir can hardly be expected to take pity on Isaac’s or Rebecca’s plight. With gratitude, Isaac bids his friend farewell.
Yet again, Rebecca and Isaac find themselves dispossessed, both as native English subjects under oppressive Norman rule (although it doesn’t say so explicitly, the Grand Master’s French name implies his alignment with the Norman oppressors) and as Jewish people.
Themes
Literary Devices
The Preceptory of Templestowe is a large, well-maintained, and heavily guarded structure that Isaac hesitates to approach, since his religion makes him an object of scorn and his wealth a target of extortion to those within. Meanwhile, Lucas de Beaumanoir paces a private courtyard with his friend and advisor, Mountfitchet. Age and the hard life of a soldier have not dimmed Beaumanoir’s noble bearing or his fiery, zealous devotion to the religious and martial ideals of his Order. Only a little extra lambskin leather and finer wool thread distinguish his plain garments from those worn by the lower ranks.
The character of the Templar Grand Master contrasts and rebukes the profligate excesses of the Prior of Jorvaulx; Aymer wears silks and furs while Beaumanoir’s garments remain austere, despite his position in the Order and the vast wealth which the Order commands. The book appreciates Beaumanoir’s convictions and casts him as a man of conscience, even as it argues that his extremely narrow and unmerciful beliefs morally compromise him in the end.
Themes
Literary Devices
Grand Master Beaumanoir expresses his heartsick disgust over the state of the English Templars and their excessive vanity, idleness, gluttony, and sexual indulgence. He describes a dream in which the Order’s founders exhorted him to purify it by slaying all its sinners. Mountfitchet suggests that mercy should temper Beaumanoir’s justice, but Beaumanoir insists that the Templars cannot ignore the existential threats they face. Despite their powerful friends, they have many enemies willing to seize on their wickedness as reason to oppose their power.
The book celebrates King Richard as a good monarch on the whole, in part because he balances a love of life—expressed in his appreciation for good food and wine and song—with a concern for honor and valor and justice. Thus, while Beaumanoir’s attitude initially seems like a necessary corrective to the vice-filled lives of the English clergy—at least those who come from the ranks of Norman nobility, like Aymer and Albert Malvoisin—it strays too far into legalism from mercy to become a viable model of leadership in any era.
Themes
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A squire enters the courtyard; his humble attitude and clothing impress Beaumanoir. The squire announces that a Jewish man named Isaac has arrived at the gate asking to speak with Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert. Noting that no knight of the Order should be entertaining visitors without his superiors’ permission, Beaumanoir thanks the squire for the intelligence and asks him to bring Isaac to the courtyard instead.
Without strong leadership from Albert de Malvoisin, Sir Brian has freely indulged his desires, even when they contradict the rules of his monastic and chivalric codes. His individual excesses both parallel and contribute to the current state of lawlessness in England that grows from its own lack of firm and competent leadership.
Themes
Declaring his aversion for Jewish people, Beaumanoir warns Isaac not to say a word except in answer to his questions. He demands to know Isaac’s business with Sir Brian. Afraid to anger the Grand Master by showing Sir Brian in a bad light, Isaac hesitates, then hands over Aymer’s letter. Beaumanoir reads, with growing rage, Aymer’s suggestion that Sir Brian ransom Rebecca before Beaumanoir can find out, then use the money for debauchery with Aymer himself.
As much as Beaumanoir expresses his distaste for Jewish people, it seems like he might rightfully blame the perpetrators of Rebecca’s kidnapping (and its attempted coverup). And they have committed or plan to commit many sins against their religious vows and the chivalric virtues the Templar Order stands for—protection of the vulnerable (especially) women, chastity, and poverty.
Themes
Then Beaumanoir, seizing on Aymer’s description of Rebecca as a “second Witch of Endor,” demands to know whether his daughter practices medicine. Isaac confesses that she does. The Grand Master alleges that she heals not through skill but with witchcraft and vows to burn her at the stake, just like someone else recently burned her teacher. Then he orders the squire to drive Isaac from the preceptory.
Beaumanoir quickly pivots, as the book itself so often does, to blaming Jewish victims for the wrongs they suffer. The Witch of Endor appears in the Hebrew Bible as a figure who tries to use black magic to undermine the will of God. By invoking her in this moment, Aymer means to suggest stereotypes found throughout medieval Christian theology that suggest women are inherently devilish and dangerous. But the Grand Master takes the title literally, thanks to his belief that all medicine that Jewish people practice involves black magic.
Themes
