Ivanhoe

Summary

Ivanhoe is set in England in 1194, when King Richard the Lion-Hearted is making his way home in secret after captivity in Austria and his brother Prince John is scheming to take the crown. More than a century after the Norman Conquest, Saxons and Normans are still bitterly divided. Cedric the Saxon, of Rotherwood, has disinherited his son Wilfred of Ivanhoe for loving his ward, the Lady Rowena, and for following Richard on crusade; Cedric hopes to marry Rowena to Athelstane of Coningsburgh, heir of the old Saxon kings, and so restore Saxon rule. The novel opens with the swineherd Gurth and the jester Wamba in the forest, then a stormy night at Rotherwood where the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Prior Aymer, a disguised Palmer who is Ivanhoe himself, and the moneylender Isaac of York all take shelter; the Palmer saves Isaac from the Templar's servants. At Prince John's tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouch a mysterious knight calling himself Desdichado, the Disinherited, overthrows every challenger, including Bois-Guilbert, and names Rowena Queen of Love and Beauty. On the second day a silent Black Knight saves him from defeat, and when he is unhelmed as Ivanhoe he falls wounded. The yeoman Locksley wins the archery contest. Isaac's daughter Rebecca, taught medicine by an old woman named Miriam, takes the wounded knight into her care. On the road the Saxons, Isaac and Rebecca are seized by the Norman knights Maurice de Bracy and Bois-Guilbert and carried to Reginald Front-de-Bœuf's castle of Torquilstone. There De Bracy courts Rowena, Front-de-Bœuf threatens Isaac with torture, and Bois-Guilbert presses his passion on Rebecca, who threatens to throw herself from the battlements rather than yield. Wamba changes clothes with Cedric so that his master can escape. The Black Knight, Locksley's outlaws and the hermit Friar Tuck storm the castle; Ulrica, an old Saxon woman long held there, sets it on fire, and Front-de-Bœuf dies in the flames. Bois-Guilbert carries Rebecca to the Templar preceptory of Templestowe, where the Grand Master, Lucas de Beaumanoir, tries her as a sorceress, partly on the evidence of her cures, and she claims trial by combat. The Black Knight reveals himself as King Richard and Locksley as Robin Hood, and Athelstane, thought dead, reappears at his own funeral feast and yields his claim to Rowena. Ivanhoe, barely healed, rides to Templestowe as Rebecca's champion; Bois-Guilbert falls at the first encounter and dies untouched, killed by his own warring passions. Ivanhoe marries Rowena, and Rebecca, after a last visit to the bride, leaves England with her father for Granada, resolved to spend her life tending the sick. Published in Edinburgh in December 1819 with 1820 on the title page, the novel was an immediate success.

Top Lessons

• Two kinds of courage

  Ivanhoe's courage is the knight's courage of the lance and the lists. Rebecca's is that of the threatened woman on the battlement and the prisoner before the Grand Master, who refuses to save herself by sin or apostasy. Scott sets them side by side in Chapter XXIX, where she questions the worth of the glory he praises.

• Faithfulness under pressure

  Rebecca refuses the Templar's offer of safety and power if she will give herself to him and abandon her faith, and at the end refuses Rowena's kind offer of a home if she will convert. Scott honors her constancy as integrity, not obstinacy.

• Healing the enemy

  Rebecca tends Ivanhoe though he is a Christian and his people despise hers, and she leaves England to give her life to the sick and the hungry. Her skill is turned against her as evidence of witchcraft. The novel honors mercy given across hatred and shows how fear can twist good works into accusations.

• One people out of two

  Wamba's joke about swine and pork shows Saxon laborers and Norman masters divided even by their words. By the end Richard rules with Saxon and Norman support, Gurth is freed, and Ivanhoe's marriage joins the old line to the new court. Scott presents England's unity as something won by justice and loyalty, not by conquest alone.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Rebecca is one of the best-known healers in English fiction. Scott explains in Chapter XXVIII that medieval Christians often sought out Jewish physicians while suspecting them of occult knowledge, and that Rebecca learned the healing art from Miriam, a celebrated doctor's daughter who was herself put to death in the fanaticism of the age. Rebecca dresses Ivanhoe's tournament wound with Miriam's balsam and sends him a draught Scott calls sedative and narcotic, and he wakes free of feverish symptoms; at Templestowe her cures, including the treatment of a Saxon peasant for palsy, become evidence in her trial for sorcery. The novel thus touches the history of medicine in its picture of Jewish medical learning, of the healer under suspicion, and of the ethic of treating an enemy. Front-de-Bœuf's wounded deathbed, the threat of the iron bars over glowing charcoal for Isaac, and Bois-Guilbert's death in the lists without a wound, which Scott attributes to his contending passions, complete the medical picture; the last is a romantic convention, not a diagnosis.

• Chapter XXVIII

  Scott's account of Jewish physicians in medieval England, Rebecca's training under Miriam, her balsam for Ivanhoe's wound and her sedative draught.

• Chapter XXII

  Front-de-Bœuf shows Isaac the iron bars over glowing charcoal in his dungeon to extort a ransom.

• Chapter XXX

  The wounded Front-de-Bœuf lies dying in remorse while Ulrica taunts him and sets his castle ablaze.

• Chapter XXXVII

  At Rebecca's trial a Saxon peasant she treated for palsy is dragged forward, and her cures and balms are offered as proof of witchcraft.

• Chapter XLIII

  Bois-Guilbert falls in the lists and dies with no wound, flushed and then pallid, victim of his own passions.