What value do chivalric ideals have today, which send us back to a Europe made up of castles, courts and ladies? And who is, in the contemporary world, a knight? This is asked and the answers are provided in a recently published essay by Cinabro Edizioni, which inaugurates the series “The sword and the rose”is Cosmo Intini, a multifaceted figure of musician and composer, stugod of symbolism and essayist who has concentrated his decades-long research mainly on the figure of Frederick II Hohenstaufen and, more specifically, on the theme of the Marian-Ghibelline sacredness of Castel del Monte. Intini, born in 1958, is a secular Benedictine oblate at the Santa Scolastica Abbey in Subiaco.

The book he published a few months ago is entitled “Chivalric identity code“. This is a work born on the basis of the experience that the author has lived and has lived for some years as a knight and prior of the Sodalitium Equitum Deiparae Miseris Succurrentis. A brotherhood that is, first of all, a community of action, prayer and thought whose purpose is to fight a “good fight”. Battle the principles of which are analyzed within the essay: love and fear of God; generous and heroic love towards others; the measure in every desire and action; far-sighted prudence accompanied by a heroic vision of life as super terram militia, in contrast with a vision of faith, (prevalent today) “disarmed” and helpless in the face of contemporary challenges; the kindness of the heart and the nobility of feeling; sincerity and loyalty; modesty; the service to be offered up to the sacrifice.

There is no lack of an erudite symbolic study on the symbolism of the rose, depicting the Holy Virgin and which also had such importance for the mythical order of the Templars and a refined meta-historical analysis, an essential tool for understanding the role of the contemporary knight in the face of the world that surrounds.