Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 27 | Issue 1 Article 13 1992 Vainly Expected Messiahs: Christianity, Chivalry and Charity in Ivanhoe Lionel Lackey Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Lackey, Lionel (1992) "Vainly Expected Messiahs: Christianity, Chivalry and Charity in Ivanhoe," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 27: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol27/iss1/13 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Lionel Lackey Vainly Expected Messiahs: Christianity, Chivalry and Charity in Ivanhoe Ivanhoe, Scott I s account of ethnic, political, and military conflict in England after the unsuccessful Third Crusade, is closer to being a religious novel than commentators have acknowledged. Its central struggle is between the forces of superstition, bigotry, and brutality and those of enlightened jus tice and mercy, with the varieties of religious experience in the novel serving as a medium to convey all these attitudes. No one claims that Scott was a theologian, his Religious Discourses by a Layman notwithstanding. l Yet the truth may be not so much that his treat- 1Scott's little-known Religious Discourses by a Layman (Philadelphia, 1828) comprises two sermons which he wrote for a clergyman friend, George Huntly Gordon. John Buchan speaks of their "irreproachable orthodoxy" (Buchan, p. 315), a characterization with which I concur: In his preface Scott acknowledges that "they contain no novelty of opinion" (Discourses VH).