CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



In Spain, the Christian kingdoms of the north 

 continued to gain on the Mohammedans, now 

 called the Moors, in the south ; and by 1236, there 

 remained to the latter only the kingdom of Granada. 

 Out of a portion of the peninsula thus wrested from 

 Mohammedan rule, was formed the kingdom of 

 Portugal (1095). 



State of Feudal Society. Every feudal country 

 was parcelled out into a number of fiefs or feudal 

 estates, each of which had a complete social organ- 

 isation of its own. A fief consisted properly of 

 two things the castle, in which the lord or pro- 

 prietor lived with his family and men-at-arms ; 

 and the village or attached domain, inhabited by 

 the Agricultural population, subject to the pro- 

 prietor. Some of these were actual slaves or 

 serfs, the born property of the lord of the soil, but 

 the greater part were villeins that is, free-born 

 serving for a consideration or renting land, 

 rotically, the lord had not full power over 

 such villeins ; but if they were aggrieved by him as 

 proprietor, he was the sole magistrate within the 

 .me! thus his power was practically absolute. 



The three influences that gradually undermined 

 the feudal system were royalty, the municipalities, 

 nnd the power of the clergy. At the outset, the 

 monarch was merely to the great suzerains what 

 these were to their vassals the head of a system 

 of fiefs. The idea of nationality was foreign to the 

 feudal system, which tended to segregation. The 

 first, from his position, to be inspired with that 

 idea would be the king, who naturally looked at 

 the nation as a whole, and tried to pierce down 

 through the intermediate ranks of barons, counts, 

 Ci:c. to the heart of the subject population, and 

 establish a direct communication between the 

 crown and the people at large. By issuing 

 decrees also to be put in force over the whole 

 kingdom, the throne became the fountain of law, 

 as something distinct from the mere will of the 

 feudal chiefs for the time being. 



Many of the municipalities of the Roman Em- 

 pire survived the shock of the German invasions, 

 which destroyed all the rest of the fabric, and 

 formed little republics or self-governing bodies in 

 the midst of the feudal society. In addition to 

 these, feudalism gradually created similar com- 

 munities for itself. During the turbulence and 

 insecurity of those times, people naturally con- 

 gregated in large numbers around the castles of 

 powerful chiefs. Any lord on whose property such 

 a concentration of population, with its attendant 

 industry, took place, found it advantageous to him, 

 both in respect of wealth and of influence, and 

 hence sought to foster and augment it, by relaxing 

 his feudal authority over it, and granting privileges 

 and immunities to its inhabitants. Hence arose 

 towns, governed by bailiffs or provosts appointed 

 by the suzerain of the territory, and the still 

 more highly privileged boroughs that is, towns 

 possessing regular charters of enfranchisement, 

 empowering them to govern themselves by mayors, 

 aldermen, and the like, chosen by the burghers 

 from their own body. These towns and boroughs 

 were oases of freedom amid the general desert of 

 feudal despotism, and constituted the nurseries of 

 that social power which we now call the com- 

 monalty of a country. 



The Clergy. It has been estimated that every 

 twentieth man in the thirteenth century belonged 

 to the clerical order; and that the clergy held 



122 



more than one-half of the entire landed property 

 of most European countries. The possession of 

 this wealth, added to their moral and spiritual 

 influence, gave them immense sway ; and the con- 

 nection of the clergy everywhere with the central 

 authority of Rome, made the church a great inde- 

 pendent empire, superimposed upon the kingdoms 

 of the earth, and able to control and modify all 

 temporal and local authorities. 



Chivalry. This sentiment was the natural and 

 gradual product of feudalism. It was the custom 

 for the sons of the various vassals of a suzerain to 

 form a little court or school in his castle, where 

 they were educated under his eye and along with 

 the members of his family in military exercises 

 and feudal etiquette. When these youths called 

 squires while in training arrived at manhood, 

 they were admitted to the dignity of full-grown 

 warrior, styled miles (Lat) or knight (Ger. imply- 

 ing ' service '), and the admission was attended by 

 an imposing ceremonial tending to invest it with 

 religious interest, and to inspire ideas of something 

 higher and nobler than was expected of ordinary 

 men. Under this feeling, the conviction would 

 grow in generous minds, that the power which 

 their arms and training gave them ought to be 

 exercised in the defence of the weak and oppressed ; 

 and what was at first mere individual feeling, soon 

 became matter of rule. The knights of each 

 country as an order bound themselves to observe 

 certain regulations ; and different countries vied 

 with each other as to which should produce the 

 most perfect specimens of knighthood. There 

 was no virtue, actual or conceivable, which was 

 not in theory associated with the character of a 

 perfect knight ; and however far short the practice 

 may have fallen of the theory, there can be no 

 doubt that some of the noblest characters of the 

 middle ages were nursed by the ideas of chivalry. 

 The institution attained its highest form during 

 those great historical occurrences known as the 

 Crusades, of which we now proceed to give a brief 

 sketch. 



History of the East 



The Turkish Conquests and the Crusades. It 

 had been customary from an early period in the 

 history of Christianity for believers from every 

 part of the Christian world to make pilgrimages 

 to the Holy Land of Palestine. After the Moham- 

 medan conquest of the East, the earlier califs, not- 

 withstanding their fanaticism, had, in return for 

 certain tribute, suffered the patriarchate of Jeru- 

 salem to remain, and the Christians to exercise 

 their worship ; the later califs were more liberal 

 still, and pilgrims continued to arrive from all 

 parts of Christendom. 



But about the beginning of the tenth century, 

 pilgrimage had become precarious. The condi- 

 tion of the Mohammedan world was by that time 

 greatly changed. While the refined Abbaside 

 califs were cultivating literature at Bagdad, the 

 emirs of the provinces had succeeded in establish- 

 ing themselves as independent sovereigns. In the 

 very vicinity of the capital, ' the Bowides,' as the 

 emirs of Shiraz called themselves, became so 

 powerful that, by the middle of the tenth century, 

 the califs of Bagdad were mere puppets in their 

 hands, and nothing remained to them but their 

 nominal dignity as spiritual heads of the Moham- 

 medan world. In Africa, again, an extensive 



