853 



CHIVALRY. 



CHIVALRY. 



83* 



first, the admission of the young man to the rank and occupation of 

 the warrior ; secondly, the tie which bound him to his feudal superior 

 his lord, who conferred upon him the arms of knighthood. 



Of this we find an irrefragable proof in history of the term inilei 

 itself, which was constantly used in the latinity of the middle ages to 

 designate the chevalier, or knight. Towards the end of the Roman 

 empire, the verb militare signified simply to serve, to discharge some 

 service towards a superior, whether the service itself were of a military 

 or a civil nature. The service originally denoted by this expression, 

 indeed, was, no doubt, the military service exclusively ; but the use of 

 the term had in course of time been extended until it embraced every 

 subordinate office and function. After the Germanic invasions of the 

 declining Roman empire, we find it frequently employed in speaking 

 of the household of the barbarian kings, and the offices which their 

 companions held about then- persons. Soon, by a natural retrogression, 

 in conformity with the new turn given to the social state, the term 

 miles resumed its almost exclusively warlike character, and denoted 

 the companion, faithful to the service of his superior. It thus became 

 synonymous with vassit*, or I'a&sallits, and indicated that a certain man 

 held of another a benejicittm, or fee, and was attached to him by that 

 consideration ; in short, from the 9th to the 12th century, the word 

 miles denoted, not the chevalier, or knight, as ordinarily conceived of, 

 and as M. de Sismoudi himself has described him, but simply the com- 

 panion, the vassal, of a feudal superior. 



Here we see the tme and necessary origin of chivalry. But in the 

 course of its development, when once the feudal society had acquired 

 some degree of stability and self-confidence, the usages, the feelings, 

 the circumstances of every kind, which attended the young man's 

 admission among the vassal warriors, came under two influences which 

 soon gave them a fresh direction, and impressed them with a novel 

 character. Religion and imagination, poetry and the Church, laid hold 

 on chivalry, and used it as a powerful means of attaining the object 

 they had in view, of meeting the moral wants which it was their busi- 

 ness to provide for. So early as the 9th century we find some religious 

 i-eremonies associated with the Germanic practices on these occasions. 

 A succinct account of the reception of a chevalier, as practised in the 

 1 2th century, will show what progress this combination had made, and 

 how powerfully the Church had laid its grasp on every particular of 

 of that solemn act of the feudal life. 



Thu young man, the squire, aspiring to knighthood, was first of all 

 strip|>ed of his garments and put into a bath, the symbol of purifica- 

 tion. On his coming out of the bath, they clad him in a white tunic, 

 the symbol of purity, a red robe, emblematic of the blood which he 

 was to shed in the cause of the faith, and a black doublet, in token of 

 the dissolution which awaited him as well as all mankind. Thus 

 purified and clothed, the novice kept a rigorous fast for twenty-four 

 hours. When evening came, he entered the church, and passed the 

 night in prayer, sometimes alone, sometimes with a priest and with 

 h.p prayed in company with him. The next morning, his 

 rirst act was confession ; after which the priest administered to him 

 the communion ; and after communion he heard a mass of the Holy 

 Ghost, and commonly a sermon on the duties of a chevalier, and the 

 new course of life on which he was about to enter. When the sermon 

 was over, the novice advanced towards the altar, with the sword of 

 knighthood suspended from his neck : the priest took it off, blessed it, 

 ;uid attached it to his neck again. The novice then went and knelt 

 Iwfore the lord who was to knight him. " To what end," the lord 

 then asked him, " do you desire to enter into this order ? If it is that 

 you may be rich, repose yourself, and be honoured without doing 

 honour to knighthood, then you are unworthy of it, and would be to 

 knighthood you should receive, what the sirnoniacal clergyman is to 

 the prelacy." And on the young man's answering that he promised 

 well to discharge the duties of a knight, the lord granted his request. 



Then did knights in attendance, and sometimes ladies, approach the 

 novice, and array him in his novel garb, putting on first the spurs, 

 next the hauberk or coat of mail, then the cuirass or breast-plate, then 

 the brassarta or arm-pieces, and the gauntlets, and lastly girding on the 

 sword. Then he was diMed, to use the modern English expression, 

 derived from the French adoubt, which, according to Ducange, signi- 

 fied arlnjited. The lord rose from his seat, went up to him, and gave 

 Jade, that is, three strokes with the flat of his sword upon 

 the shoulder or the nape of the neck, and sometimes a blow with the 

 palrf of his hand upon the cheek, saying, " In the name of God, Saint 

 Michael, and Saint George, I make thee a knight;" and sometimes 

 adding, " Be thou brave, bold, and loyal." The young man being thus 

 knighted, they handed him his helmet, and brought him a horse upon 

 which he sprang, usually without the aid of the stirrup, and caracoled 

 within the church, brandishing his lance and flourishing his sword. 

 Then quitting the church, he went and exhibited himself in like 

 manner in public, beneath the castle walls, before the populace, whom 

 ho found eagerly awaiting their share of the spectacle. 



It is easy to recognise in all this the influence of the priesthood, 

 studious to associate religion with every circumstance of a solemnity so 

 rtant in the warrior's life. Not only have the Christian sacra- 

 ment* their place in the ceremonial, but several of the observances 

 more peculiarly chivalric, are assimilated as much as possible to the 

 . ,li,iinitr*ti<>n of a sacrament. Such was the share taken by the 

 ecclesiastical order in what may be called the exterior material part of 



the reception of a knight. And when we look into the moral character 

 of chivalry, when we examine the series of oaths required of the 

 knights at various periods from the llth to the 14th century, and 

 mark the ideas and the feelings with which it was sought to imbue 

 them, we find the clerical influence no less distinctly apparent ; and, 

 indeed, a part of the oath was, that the knight should defend the 

 rights of holy church, and respect religious persons and institutions. 

 Certain it is, that in the obligations thus imposed upon the chevalier, 

 we find a moral development extremely foreign to the state of lay 

 society at that period. Moral notions so exalted often so delicately 

 scrupulous above all, so humane, and so constantly impressed with 

 the religious character, evidently emanated from the clergy. They 

 alone then viewed the duties and relations of men in such a light ; and 

 their influence, it must be owned, was constantly employed in direct- 

 ing towards the fulfilment of those duties, and the improvement of 

 those relations, the ideas and the usages to which chivalry had given 

 birth. Whatever evils resulted from the unscrupulous and impro- 

 vident use which the Roman Church made of this direct influence over 

 the power of the sword, in promoting so many crusades against the 

 infidel and the schismatic, it undeniably made use of the chivalric 

 institutions which feudalism had brought forth, in labouring to intro- 

 duce internal peace in society, and a stricter and more comprehensive 

 morality into individual conduct. 



In proportion as this endeavour succeeded, and as chivalry more and 

 more appeared under a character at once warlike, religious and moral, 

 at once conformable and superior to the actual manners, it seized upon 

 and inflamed the imaginations of men ; and in like manner as it had 

 intimately bound itself up with their belief, so also it became the ideal 

 standard of their aspirations, and the source of their most exalted 

 pleasures. Poetry, in short, laid hold on chivalry as religion had already 

 done. As early as the llth century, the chivalric ceremonies, duties, 

 and adventures, formed the mine to which the poets resorted for the 

 means of charming the people, of at once gratifying and stimulating 

 that craving of the imagination, that thirst for incidents more varied 

 and more stirring, for emotions purer aud more elevated, than real life 

 affords. For it should be observed, that in the earlier stages of society 

 poetry is not merely a national pastime ; it is also a means of progress, 

 exalting and developing man's moral nature. The poetical remains 

 that have descended to us from that age show, that the poet imposed 

 upon the chevalier the fulfilment of the same duties, aud the practice 

 of the same virtues, as were inculcated in the more solemn exhorta- 

 tions of the priest. 



It is an oft-repeated observation, that all this was mere poetry, a fine 

 ehimecra, bearing no resemblance whatever to the reality. And indeed, 

 when we consider the state of manners in those three centuries, and 

 the incidents of daily occurrence that filled the lives of men, the 

 contrast between the duties and the actions of the chevaliers is truly 

 shocking. The period before us is undoubtedly one of the most 

 grossly brutal in the history of European society, one in which we find 

 the greatest amount of crime and violence, in which the public peace 

 was most incessantly disturbed, in which the most dissolute manners 

 prevailed. To any one attending only to the positive and practical 

 state of society, all this poetry and morality of chivalry looks like sheer 

 falsehood. Yet it is undeniable that the chivalric morality and poetry 

 existed simultaneously with these disorders, with this barbarism, with 

 all this deplorable social state. The monuments are before us : the 

 contrast, we repeat, is shocking, but it is real. 



This very contrast, however, forms the great distinctive character- 

 istic of the middle ages. When we look into other social systems, as 

 the Greek and Roman, when we examine, for instance, the early stage 

 of Greek society, its heroic age, of which the poems that bear the name 

 of Homer present a faithful mirror, we there find nothing resembling 

 the contradiction that strikes us in the middle ages. The practice and 

 the theory of manners are there nearly accordant. We do not find 

 men having ideas much purer, nobler, and more generous than then- 

 daily acts. Homer's heroes seem quite unconscious of their own 

 brutality, ferocity, selfishness, and covetousness ; their moral science 

 is no better than their conduct ; their principles are on a, level with 

 their acts. We find it to have been the same with all other social 

 systems in their vigorous and turbulent youth. But in Europe, on the 

 contrary, in the middle ages, while the deeds are habitually detestable, 

 while crimes aud disorders of every description abound, yet we find 

 dwelling in the minds and imaginations of men nobler instincts and 

 more exalted aspirations. Their notions of virtue are much more 

 developed ; their ideas of justice incomparably better than what is 

 practised around them, than what they practise themselves. A 

 brighter ideal of morality hovers, as it were, above that rude and 

 stormy social state, attracting the view and commanding the respect of 

 men whose lives are little conformable to it. Christianity must un- 

 doubtedly be ranked among the principal causes of this fact ; for its 

 great characteristic is, its labouring to inspire men with a high moral 

 ambition, to keep constantly before their eyes a standard infinitely 

 superior to human reality, and stimulate them to attain it. But what- 

 ever be the cause, the fact is indubitable. We find it everywhere in 

 the middle ages, in the popular poetry as well as in the exhortations of 

 the priests. The moral conceptions of men rose far above the practice 

 of their lives. Nor let it be thought, because those conceptions did 

 not govern their actions, because their practice so strangely belied their 



