CHIVALRY AND PLATONIC LOVE 59 



the best a necessary evil, but until the recognition of 

 marriage as a sacrament the flimsiest pretexts for 

 divorce were accepted by the clergy. The husband 

 who desired to get rid of his wife had only to discover 

 some distant degree of consanguinity or affinity be- 

 tween his family and hers, such as exists between 

 almost any two people in a parish. This was suffi- 

 cient ground for a divorce, and as women in the tenth 

 or eleventh century had to a great extent lost the 

 power of holding property in their own right, which 

 had been the safeguard of the later form of marriage 

 in Rome, much injustice and suffering was entailed 

 upon the sex. 



Chivalry first became an instrument for righting 

 the wrongs of individual women ; then it developed 

 into a cult of womanhood in the abstract, its funda- 

 mental axiom being that a knight should lionour and 

 serve all women for the love of one. Theoretically 

 this devotion was exempt from sensuality, and a 

 curious system of metaphysical subtleties and refine- 

 ments sprang up in consequence. Love was esteemed 

 to be the principle of all virtue, all moral excellence. 

 It had its etiquette, its obligations, its laws. Some of 

 the rules laid down were of the most fantastic descrip- 

 tion, but their general effect was to invest woman 



