Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

Fig. 403.—The Adoration of the Lamb by the Elders and Virgins of the Apocalypse.—Centre Panel of the Triptych painted on wood by Jean Van Eyck, and preserved in the Church of St. Bavon, at Ghent (Fifteenth Century).
By PAUL LACROIX
(Bibliophile Jacob)
CURATOR OF THE IMPERIAL LIBRARY OF THE ARSENAL, PARIS
Illustrated with
UPWARDS OF FOUR HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD
LONDON BICKERS & SON, LEICESTER SQUARE
Lately we published the “Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages,” a necessary sequel to “The Arts of the Middle Ages.” To understand this important period of our history, we must, as was pointed out at the time, go back to the very source of art, and study society itself—the life of our forefathers. The volume of “Manners and Customs” initiated our readers into all the secrets of Civil Life; the present work treats of the Military and Religious Life of the same period.
The subject is not wanting in grandeur, and we shall endeavour to throw into relief the two parallel forces—namely, the military and the religious life—which shaped the habits of the nation in the epoch of which our work treats.
The influence of these forces was immense. Society was made up of barbarous nations and of the corrupt remnants of the heathen world. Conquerors and conquered had nothing to put in common, with a view to forming a new society, beyond their ruins and their vices. How was a state of things, higher and better than that which had gone before, to be created out of this shapeless mass? What principle of life was there powerful enough to evoke from amid this chaos modern Europe, with all its variety of forces and of glory, its influence and authority over the rest of the world? Religious life, aided by military power, has brought about such a creation, after all the misery and suffering preceding its birth. Gradually gaining a hold upon society, and elevating its ideas as the tie became closer, religious life endowed it with new manners, a new social life, a set of institutions of which it before knew nothing, and a character which raised it to a degree of moral grandeur which humanity had never as yet attained.