When I was a boy I was heavily enamored with Arthurian Legend. I was familiar with the various versions because there is no real single telling of Arthur until Thomas Mallory came on the scene and wrote Morte de Arthur. Mallory synthesized the multiple legends into one tale and has been interpreted on film many times. Most notably in John Boorman's Excalibur.
The Black Knight's origins though have always been shadowy and vague. In some tales he is a villain and others a neutral character, often amoral. I stumbled across this on the Ancient Origins site.
"Black Knights began to appear in history during the Middle Ages. Since the 13th century, a series of legends mentioning the mysterious Black Knights emerged. Although the Black Knights were said to have carried out good deeds and fought to protect cities from unjust rulers and other threats, texts referring to these legends were censored and banned by the Church during the medieval period. Nevertheless, the story of the legendary black knight Ashor endured over the centuries."
The Black Knight Ashor was renown for his good deeds and well as his bad deeds. Ashor was also in a sense a gun for hire. He was known also for assassinating oppressive kings and tyrants. This led his engagement by a King that wanted his rival killed. This rival King was known for his harsh treatment of his subjects and his cruelty. Ashor took the assignment on the condition that the claims of the rival King's cruelty were true, which he investigated himself and found valid.
While in the castle of the cruel King, after he dispatched with the monarch, he found a priest held captive in the dungeons. Ashor was moved by the priest's story and aided his escape, but the priest was weak and hindered their escape resulting in Ashor being wounded.
Knowing that they both could not escape, Ashor sent the priest off on his own. The priest gave him his blessing and as Ashor's wounds proved to be mortal he was visited by an angel and a demon, both wanting to claim his soul. The angel said that he had done enough good deeds to warrant heaven and the demon claimed he had done enough bad deeds to go to hell.
This is where the tale gets interesting and opens an unknown mythology that I was never aware of:
"As the two entities were getting ready to clash over the human’s soul, a third entity appeared. At this time, the angel and the demon had stopped fighting as if they had been frozen. The third entity had no form.
In order to be visible, it had appeared as a figure in a black cloak. However, nothing could be seen coming out of the cloak: no hands, no feet, no face. This third entity was Il Separatio , the Anonymous one, the keeper of universal balance, the one who cannot be named."
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| Statue of Il Separatio, Prague |
The entity known as II Separatio was there at creation when God divided the light from the day. He is absolute in the sense of neutrality. Beyond good and evil. He told the angel and the demon that Ashor's soul belonged to him because his good deeds and bad deeds were equal. Therefor neither the angel or demon could claim his soul.
The angel and demon departed and II Separatio healed Ashor and made him immortal and explained to Ashor that he was beyond the system. That Ashor could go where he wanted, do what he wanted with the power of his mind. That no matter what he did, bad or good, others would do the opposite to maintain the balance.
Now here is where it gets even more interesting. The acknowledgement of II Spearatio was banned by the Church. Even his name was not to be spoken, so hence he earned the moniker...Anonymous. Text and books mentioning him were either burned or even had their pages poisoned leading to books that list him as being cursed.
Much of this eradication of II Separatio was led by the Spanish Inquisition.
"Out of the few books mentioning Il Separatio that have survived up to the present day, one can point to two main examples: “Compendium Augumentum” and “Codex Lugubrum”. (The Codex Lugubrum may also have been printed in Latin with the title: D. Hilarii Pictauorum episcopi Lucubrationes quotquot extant : olim per Des. Erasmum Roterod. haud mediocribus sudoribus emendate. )"
What really struck a cord with me was how this saga has really been with us for quite sometime in film and media. I maybe jumping to a bit of conclusions here, but there are similarities with Ashor and Elric of Melnibone with his cursed blade Stormbringer that steals souls and his pact with Arioch, who in Moorcock's saga is the god of Chaos.
Now follow me if you will to the Western genre. During the '50's and '60's Westerns were highly popular. There isn't much argument that Westerns romanticized and reintroduced Chivalry. Of course a lot of it was invented and much retelling of historical events were glamorized in the dime novels that were popular in the late 1880's.
One of the most prime examples would be much later, the Lone Ranger, a masked man that merited out justice in the Old West leaving behind a silver bullet and rode a giant white steed. He would be an example of the quintessential white knight. But later would come a solitary figure clad only in black that was a hired gun who was known as Paladin. Played on television by Richard Boone in the series "Have Gun, Will Travel."
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| Paladin played by Richard Boone |
But the best example in the genre of Ashor would be Clint Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" and "Pale Rider". Both about a supernatural entity that rides mysteriously out of the ether and deals out vengeance and reckoning.
Nor is the SciFi genre immune, after all Lucas' Star Wars and the Siths and the Jedis.
So maybe Ashor did achieve immortality in a sense. Appearing here and there in film and media.
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