Chivalry

Front matter

Social Bn^lanD Series.

Edited by KENELM D. COTES, M.A. (Oxon).

The Troubadours and Courts of Love.

Preface

IN introducing an old subject with some variety of form, it is easy to be britrf and at the same time clear, because the reader supplies from previous Sul^ect knowledge so much that is left unsaid ; but in stepping quite out of the beaten track nothing perha})s but actually treading the new path can make the goal that it is intended to reach plainly visible. It is not desirable that the whole object of a new series of books written on a new jjlan should be capable of being condensed into a few pages ; this can be done only for subjects whose scope is already well defined, where there are, and have been, many previous books written on the same lines, though perhaps from slightly different points of view, and in which the only novelty to be looked for is in the style of writing and in the arrangement and amount of matter.

Undoubted as is the influence of personality Personality. , • , . ,

upon history the attention directed to it has

hitherto been ratlier one-sided ; the entire course of national life cannot be summed up in a few great names, and the attempt to do so is to confuse biography with history. This narrow view, besides ignoring other causes, leads to the overrating of details, and since a cause must be found somewhere, personal character becomes everything. The stability of law^ that is seen in a large number of instances cannot be discovered by watching single lives, however exalted ; and history with no intention of discovering the condition of events becomes the sport of accident, resting in great measure for its interest on anecdote and rhetoric.

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The case is not much bettered by long accounts of acts of parliament, with summaries of debates, and numbering of divisions, and more lives of statesmen, eminent and mediocre. The details of parliament no more than the details of biographies afford sufficient data for scientific observation, if the forces of the society that surround them are omitted. Neither does the addition of military detail help much in the comprehension of the course of events ; one battle is much hke another, except when treated by the professional soldier or sailor, or at all events in the light of professional books ; and victories or defeats depend upon something else besides the position of the ground or the plans of the moment. It has been reserved for a naval expert of another powder to point this out to the multitudinous writers of the history of the great naval power of the wor'd.

Social questions are to-day taking the fore- Qu^estiona. '^^^^^ place in public interest ; the power behind the statesman is seen to be greater in controlling contemporary history than the eloquence or experience of any single man. We see this to be so now, and our knowledge of the present suggests the question whether it has not always been so ; and whether the life of society, though it has not had the same comparative weight, has not always been a more important factor than the life of the individual.

The "Social ^^^^ Social England" series rests upon the England" conviction that it is possible to make a success- Series, attempt to give an account, not merely of politics and w^ars, but also of religion, commerce, art, literature, law, science, agriculture, and all that follows from their inclusion, and that without a due knowledge of the last we have no real explanation of any of the number.

But the causes that direct the course of Appendix ^^'^^"^ts ^^'i^^ become no clearer if to one-third

poHtics and one-third wars we add another third, consisting of small portions of other subjects, side by side, but yet apart from one another.

The central idea is that the greatness or "^^^Idea ^^^^ weakness of a nation does not depend on the

greatness or weakness of any one man, or body of men, and that the odd millions have always had their part to play. To understand liow great that was and is, we must understand the way in which they spent their lives, what they really cared for, what they fought for, and, in a word, what they lived for. To leave out nine-tenths of the national life, and to call the rest a history of the nation, is misleading. It is so misleading that, treated in this mutilated manner, history has no pretension to be a science : it becomes a ponderous chronicle, full of details which, in the absence of any other guiding principle, are held together by chronology. Writers of great name and power escape from this limitation, which, however, holds sway for the most part in the books that reach the great majority of readers, that is those who have not time to read an epoch in several volumes.

The Carrying necessary, in seeing a famous town.

Out of the to visit every public building and private house. Idea. carrying out of this plan it has

been determined that adequate treatment can be secured of certain subjects in a series of books that should be popular not only in style, but also in the demands they make upon the reader's time.

It would be useless for any one writer to Specialists, pj^^j.^^^^ accomplish this task, though when

the way is cleared a social history connecting more closely and summarizing the work of all the contributors will iv bi possible; but at present it is intended to ask each of them to bring his special knowledge to bear upon the explanation of social life, and, in treating his portion of the work, to look at original authorities to see not merely what light they throw on his own branch separately, but how they affect its conception considered in relation to the whole, that is, to the development of the life of the EngUsh people.

The Possible bring the series to its completion will

Limits of need the services of many writers. A few of

the Series. ^|^^ number of books which might be suggested may be mentioned. The influence upon thought of geographical discovery, of commerce, and of science would form three volumes. The part inventions have played, the main changes in political theories, and, perhaps less commonplace, the main changes in EngHsh thought upon great topics, such as the social position of women, of children, and of the church, the treatment of the indigent poor and of the criminal, need all to be studied. The soldier, the sailor, the lawyer, the physician, have still to be wTitten of ; the conception of the duties of the noble or the statesman, not in the story of one man's life, but in a general theory, illustrated from the lives of many men, has still to be formulated ; the wide range of subjects connected with law — the story of crime, laws made in class interest, laws for the protection of trade and for the regulation of industry — are all to be found in the statutes at large. A more comprehensive sketch of the scope of the series should be found in an introductory volume. Works al ^P^^^ ^xoxw the probable extension of

ready Ar- the series, sufficient works have already been

ranged for. arranged for to describe some leading features of English social life, and to point out some of the numerous highways which lead to a great centre, passing through

V different provinces, which all have their local colour, but the lives of whose inhabitants need also to be known if we are to understand the country as a whole, and not merely the court and parliament of the capital.

The king is the centre of this life when "^^Pla^e^^^ war and justice form the chief reason for the loose federation of communities ; not merely does he give protection on the frontiers, but among his own subjects it is more and more his duty to enforce peace, and w^e have to see how, step by step, the local court or franchise is merged in the strengthening of sovereign justice.

What exactly was the ideal of knighthood ? Chivalry. -^^^^ imply an acquaintance with

the learning of the day and wdth foreign countries? Did it strengthen the feeling of pity for the weak, or purify the love for women ? In w^hat are wrongly called the dark ages, was there a vast society of men of culture, who dourr^^' spread over large parts of Northern Europe, to whom we owe the first-fruits of modern literature, the troubadours, who first came from Provence ?

In the manor is to be found the story of The Manor. ^^^^^ village life, of domestic manufactures, of the system of agriculture and of the simplest administration of justice, a system the remains of which last till to-day ; while a sketch of the history of man^^^^'^^^ working-classes helps to complete the picture, and at the same time to place a wider one beside it, to show especially how wages have been regulated, the condition under which the poor have Hved, and to see what on the whole is the part they have played in history. The Rise Turning from the working-man, we naturally of the ask when arose the great class of merchants, Merchants, j^^^ ^^^^^ gradual rise affected the condition of the population, whether their appearance synchronised vi with any other pohtical and social events, and in fact we

prepare for the question as to the influence of commerce

on poHtics and society.

Those who know the part that commerce

''"^^itieJ^^ plays in civilization are aware that the growth

of intercourse will naturally bring larger culture,

and the learning of the old world and of the Saracens will

The Travel- be taught in the schools of the West. It will

led English- impossible to rigidly confine the currents of man and the o ^

Traveller in thought to the four seas, or even only to break England. the barrier here and there by such stories as that of the Roman missionaries. England must be looked on as belonging to the circle of a great civilization. How far Englishmen went abroad, and how far the men of other nations came to England, requires to be set forth. Again,

to those who believe in the organic connection "^^Arts^^ of all branches of the national life it will be of

interest to learn in what way the character of art partook of the nature of life around it, how far its methods or motives can be borrowed, why the fifteenth century gave pause to our art, why at a certain period cathedrals ceaced to be built, and when it was we added great names in our turn to the list of painters.

The music of Anglo-Saxon and of Dane will

to some make clearer the influence of skald and gleeman ; the effect of poetry will be noted, the growth of instruments, and the increasing complexity of music.

Possibly the change in the landscape might Scenery. described : the alteration in the face of the country with the draining of fens, the making of roads, and the clearing of forests ; the introduction of fresh trees and plants. The Influence must recognise that the position of Great

of Geography Britain, as the known world grew wider, altered onSocialLife. ^^j. ^j^^ better; the effect of rivers, mountain,s vii and seas in fixing the boundaries of kingdoms and subkingdoms, in altering or preserving languages, in determining politics and the opinions of districts, and, the chief point of all, in deciding the character of what bids fair to be the language of commerce, and, probably, of all international communication.

As it is important to know where men lived and House- relation to the world at large in order to

hold Imple- understand how they lived, so we should be nisnts

acquainted with their dweUing-places, whether in town or country, at any period ; we should observe the changing styles of building, distinguish the international influence, the part that the facility of obtaining material played, and notice the gradual evolution of the rooms, the way that they were adorned and furnished, to see how far in beds and baths, in the provision for study and privacy, civilization was advancing.

From their literature we can gather most, for land Classics ^^^^5 with not much thought of history, contemporary spoke to contemporary of what each knew well. In the pre-Elizabethan drama we can see the natural touches that show it was not elaborated as an exercise, but with the intention of possessing a living interest, and in what interested them we discover their attitude, not merely to religion, but to much else besides. By recognising this fact we learn that masterpieces of literature lose their full meaning unless we find in them, besides creative power and command of the technique of art, " the very age and body of the time." Shakespeare's England and Chaucer's England are what Shakespeare and Chaucer knew of life ; the outer gallery of pictures the unknown artists drew, from which we pass into the inner rooms whose walls are covered by the groups and figures that the masters painted.

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Biography ^^^^ widening of history, biography is no

and longer cramped by being cut off from social History, ij^-^ . great men are not isolated, but take their proper places among their fellow-countrymen, their lives forming fit landmarks, because they are akin to the people among whom they live, their characters not adapted to the century of the commentator, but bearing the impress of the forces round them, whose constant pressure is part of their life. They and those who are lesser than themselves, and the changing conditions that create them and are modified by them, form the great and continuous whole, which constantly alters, as all life alters, coming from the past and linked to the future. It no longer becomes necessary to make all times alike, except for constitutional changes, or improvement in weapons, and the crowning or death of a king, pleading the half-truth that human nature is the same in every age.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introductory - - - - - . - n

II. Knighthood - 29

Chapter I

General view of the subject — Definition of chivalry — Distinction between gentle and simple — Various elements in chivalry — Its influence on the lower classes — Principal factors of chivalry — The rule of service — Knights and squires — Heraldry and distinction of ranks — Ceremony — Service of the Church — Knightly Orders — War and tournament — Service of ladies and the gai saber — Mediaeval morality — International character of chivalry — Literature and its several elements, Celtic, Teutonic, Arabian — Religious Houses — Universities — Latin and French the universal languages — The 13th century — Obedience and innovation — Love and gallantry — Licentious character of Provengal and French literature — Relations between the nobles and the people — Merits and defects of thej chivalric code of entiments — Origins — Ascendency of the mailed cavalry — The Crusades — Pilgrimage — Character of crusaders — St. Lewis — Birth of ideas between nth and 13th centuries — Humanising of war and growth of courtesy — Decay of chivalry — Rise of the modern system of war and politics — Summary.

Chivalry is a word of many meanings. For the purposes of this book it may be taken to mean a body of sentiment and practice, of law and custom, which prevailed among the dominant classes in great part of Europe between the nth and the i6th centuries; and which, more completely developed in some countries than others, was so far universal that a large portion of its usages is common to all the nations of western Europe. This institution may be defined as based upon the military and territorial system of the Teutonic nations, which brought into existence a distinction between men of noble blood and the rest of the world. The form which these sentiments and customs took was modified by the institutions of the RoQian Empire, and still more by those of the Catholic Church, which, in imposing its creed upon the (rerman invaders, accepted and consecrated their miUtary spirit to the service of reh'gion : and to these influences was added in a later age a new element imported froQi outside, the worship of woman.

The history of chivalry is not merely the history of a noble caste, though the usages and honours of chivalry belonged to none but gentlemen born, and though those Avho enjoyed them disdained to admit their inferiors to any share in them. Chivalry also held up an example to men of low degree, and raised the courage, softened the manners and relaxed the morals of the common people. The standard of honour, honesty, decency, and sobriety, which is conformed to by the ruling classes, is to some extent a standard set for those below them in rank. It is only partially true that men imitate the vices of their belters. So far as it is true at all, it is also true that they imitate the virtues of their betters.

Thus the maxims of chivalry, alike in what they condemned and in what they enjoined, were felt as a social force by those who did not submit to their ruling as applicable to themselves. The history of chivalry is not confined to the habits and ideals of the few thousands of men and women who held political and social power in the Middle Ages, but is an important part of the general history of those times. Chivalry was powerful both for good and for evil. So far as it was based on pride and contempt of inferiors, or condoned and regulated vice, it degraded ; so far as it upheld religion, honour and courtesy, it elevated society. It is altogether a mistake — one to which recent historians have given countenance — to dwell entirely on the former point of view, and to see in the fantastic ceremonialism of chivalry nothing but an empty pageant and a cloak for social immorality. The very ceremonialism was a protest against brutality and anarchy ; and the science of love was not only a masquerade of virtue and vice adopting each other's colours, bat both in its origin and its aim tended to raise appetite into sentiment, and sentiment into purity. If the practice of chivalry was compatible with gross immorality, it was an advance on what had gone before, and no higher ideal of sexual relations has ever been put forward than that which the best of the knights professed and practised.

Chivalry, then, may be defined as the moral and social law and custom of the noble and gentle class in Western Europe during the later Middle Ages, and the results of that law and custom in action. It applies, strictly speaking, to gentlemen only. Its three principal factors are war, religion, and love of ladies : its merits and faults spring from those three heads, and all the side influences which attend its growth and decay may be summed up under these.

The whole duty of a gentleman was included in the idea of chivalry ; and his Hfe from his early childhood was regulated by it. The principle of service to God, his lord, and his lady underlay everything The word viilitare^ which, in low Latin, meant ' feudal service,' explains to the knight the spirit which is to guide all his actions. He can never escape, nor can he wish to escape, from the rule of service imposed upon him alike by religion, military duty, and love;

and from these three elements, intimately connected with pride of birth, comes that frame of character which is expressed by the terms honour and loyalty — terms, the virtues equivalent to which were not unknown in ancient times and remote countries, but to which chivalry gave form and consciousness, whilst it also, by misunderstanding and misapplying them, gave rise to strange perversions of mercy, purity, and honesty.

To serve and be served by equals is more ennobling than to use the hired services of inferiors ; and, though based on pride of birth, such service combined dignity with submission, and cultivated the virtues of independence, self-reliance and submission to just authority. The devotion of squires to their lords, of which we read so many instances in Froissart, was no artificial sentiment, but true service, exalting both the inferior and the superior, binding them to each other, and producing in both a sense of duty and honour which is the soldier's highest excellence. Knight and squire worshipped one ideal ; and however the noble soldier of the Middle Ages may have fallen below or transgressed the whole duty of chivalry, this relation retained its original character throughout the whole age in which the world was ruled by armoured cavalry. And among the forces which have ruled in the world, those represented by the rustic nobility of Rome, the civic bourgeoisie of Greece, the farmers of Switzerland and the burghers of the Low Countries, the parliamentary lords and gentry of England, the democratic plutocracy of our own time, it would be difficult to refuse a high place, with all its faults, to the chivalry of France and England, if it is only from the fact that they were more conscious of an ideal than any other class of independent and undisputed rulers. ^ In these ideas of service the knight to be was brought up. \ War and its mimicry were to be his business, honour and ' rehgion the sanction of his actions ; to do the pleasure of ladies was his chief solace and the mainspring of his service.

The ' science ' of heraldry, and the distinction of ranks on which it was founded, taught him, whilst valuing his own station, to show reverence to his superiors in rank, and gentleness to his inferiors. He was bred up to think much ■of ceremony, whether the social ceremony which regulated the courtesies of daily life, or the more serious ceremony of his consecration to knighthood and his bearing in the battle and the tournament. Connected with heraldry and ceremony were the laws and usages of the feudal system, and the symbolical consecration of these by solemn forms, the tenure of land by knight service, and the consequent personal loyalty to his Hege lord. Part of his service was due to the Church. He was brought up in the use of her sacraments, and in obedience to her precepts and reverence for her ministers. The Crusader, the Templar, the Hospitaller, and the Knight of Santiago were champions of the Church against the infidel. The knight's consecration to chivalry was after the form of a sacrament, and to defend Holy Church was part of his vow of initiation. There were, it is true, many knights in all countries and in all times who fulfilled the ideal of chivalry on the field of battle or in the lists,' and in the bowers of ladies, and who yet had not a love of God in their hearts. But the least religious acknowledged the authority of religion ; and it was the imputation of imi6 piety rather than of immorality which destroyed the Templars; for impiety was in those days a worse imputation than immorality ; and the more hateful the crime, the more ready is the popular voice to charge it upon a class which has incurred odium.

War, like hunting, is a pleasure as well as a business; a pleasure so intoxicating that it absorbs a man's whole thoughts and faculties. The busiest warriors, the La Hires and Hotspurs, had little leisure for singing and dancing, writing love-poems and performing love- vows. But in the lives of all knights the tournament bore a principal part, and the laws and customs of the tournament were inseparable from the love of ladies. And outside the reality or the imitation of war^ it would seem that the whole of a knight's leisure time might be spent in hunting and hawking with ladies, or in music and amorous poetry. Nothing shows the unity of the chivalric sentiment more than the uniformity, during the whole period of which we are treating, of the chivalric literature, whether its note was that of love or of deeds of arms. Indeed, all that occupied a knight's thoughts could be expressed in terms of the gai saber or *gay science' of poetry and gallantry. The laws of gallantry were more imperious than even those of military honour.

The rise of a noble service of ladies, and its degradation to licensed immorality, may be placed side by side with the perfection of the character of a preux chevalier and its decline in the 15th and i6th centuries into the selfish quarrel- . someness of the duello and the vulgar ostentation of the lists. I Causes of corruption were present during the whole period ! of chivalry, and bad knights and good were always mingled.

If there was a point of culaiination, it may be placed between 1250 and 1350; not that chivalry itself was more truly taught and more nobly exemplified then than at other times ; but because the Christian world at that time was animated with a higher and fuller life.

During this century, and indeed throughout the period of chivalry, knighthood was an international freemasonry. Every court in Europe was a centre of the gay science and the art and practice of arms. Nations, except for the accident of language, were then less clearly distinguished than now. Norman, Angevin and Gascon lords held of the Kings of England, and the King of England was a vassal of the King of France. Knights errant and troubadours were welcome everywhere, and their language was a lingua franca common to the courts of France, Germany, and England. The romans^ fabliaux^ chansons de geste, and ballads of southern and central France were recited and sung in England ; and the Celtic literature of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, and the Teutonic legends of Charles the Great and of the Niblungs, as well as the love-poems of the Arabs, found their way to Provence. Thus the native literature of England took a European colouring. The establishment of Houses of Templars and Hospitallers in every country worked in the same direction ; so did the alien priories, religious houses affiliated to larger abbeys over seas ; as did also the oecumenical authority of the Roman Church and the community of scholars and divines who held benefices and wrote and disputed in the Universities of all countries, using the common language of the Church. Through the two universal languages, Latin and French, the Middle Ages enjoyed an advantage of common speech and literature which later ■centuries have lost. We cannot easily overestimate the influence of a common literature in moulding the thought of Europe into likeness : and among the Hterary influences which broke down national barriers, none was more pow^erful than <that of Provence.

Deeds of arms in war and tournament, social intercourse among the noble class, and all the relations between men and women, both married and single, were regulated by, not merely (as in our day) reflected in, the literature of gallantry. The 12th and 13th centuries w^ere a time of legislation and definition. As Edward 1 and St. Lewis settled the bases of law and constitutional government, as Thomas Aquinas laid down the axioms of religion and philosophy, as the builders of churches and castles framed laws of construction, proportion, and ornament in architecture, so the constructive and ordering spirit of an age more bound by law^ and authority, and more occupied in fixing their foundations than any which the world has known, prescribed a rule of sentiment and conduct, to which all knights and ladies rendered unquestioning obedience. The greatness of the 13th century lay in its reconcilement of obedience and innovation. Dante is its representative in both ; creating a new^ language and a new literature with no revolt against the old ; living among the rebellious conditions of Italian civic life, but never temporising with or excusing what sins against authority ; and yet pointing the way to greater freedom and tolerance hereafter.

This co-existence of romantic and exalted sentiments with a low standard of morals ; the consecration of sexual passion by a refined idealism ; the submission, according to laws of gallantry, of the stronger to the weaker sex, is so characteristic of the chivalric temper that it exceeded in practical importance both the military and the religious element in chivalry. From the middle of the 12th century to the end of the 14th, when political questions began to take the place of feudal questions, and changes in the art of war endangered the ascendency of the military caste, the law of gallantry was equal, if not superior, to the law of military honour as a guide to conduct ; the two usually worked in the same direction; but love, since it was not only a personal sentiment but the illustration of a social law, occupied .at least as large a place in the soldier's mind as soldierly ambition. 'La galanterie ' says Ste. Palaye. 'etoit conrnie Tame de la societe.' ' He were never good warrior that could not love aright.' ^

Such sayings as these come from the heart of mediaeval society. It is impossible to appreciate the motives and actions of a remote age without considering them from ^vithin, and from their own point of view ; and the student •of chivalry must qualify his ideas of morality and honour by the rules under w^hich lords and ladies lived. He may •compare one state of society with another, and form a judgment between them by the light of modern experience ; but in estimating characters and actions belonging to the past age he must use the rules and measures which were •current then. And among these, gallantry must be accepted as 'the soul of society:' if he finds the tone of thought on these matters intolerably gross and vicious, he must re-