LETTER III.
If the conjecture, I advanced, of the rise of Chivalry, from the circumstances of the feudal government, be thought reasonable, it will not be difficult to account for the several CHARACTERISTICS of this singular profession.
I. “The passion for arms; the spirit of enterprize; the honour of knighthood; the rewards of valour; the splendour of equipages;” in short, every thing that raises our ideas of the prowess, gallantry, and magnificence of these sons of Mars, is naturally and easily explained on this supposition.
Ambition, interest, glory, all concurred, under such circumstances, to produce these effects. The feudal principles could terminate in nothing else. And when, by the necessary operation of that policy, this turn was given to the thoughts and passions of men, use and fashion would do the rest; and carry them to all the excesses of military fanaticism, which are painted so strongly, but scarcely exaggerated, in the old Romances.
II. “Their romantic ideas of justice; their passion for adventures; their eagerness to run to the succour of the distressed; and the pride they took in redressing wrongs, and removing grievances;” all these distinguishing characters of genuine Chivalry are explained on the same principle. For, the feudal state being a state of war, or rather of almost perpetual violence, rapine, and plunder, it was unavoidable that, in their constant skirmishes, stratagems, and surprizes, numbers of the tenants or followers of one Baron should be seized upon and carried away by the followers of another: and the interest, each had to protect his own, would of course introduce the point of honour, in attempting by all means to retaliate on the enemy, and especially to rescue the captive sufferers out of the hands of their oppressors.
It would be meritorious, in the highest degree, to fly to their assistance, when they knew where they were to be come at; or to seek them out with diligence, when they did not. This last feudal service soon introduced, what may be truly called romantic, the going in quest of adventures; which at first, no doubt, was confined to those of their own party, but afterwards, by the habit of acting on this principle, would be extended much further. So that in process of time, we find the Knights errant, as they were now properly styled, wandering the world over in search of occasions on which to exercise their generous and disinterested valour, indifferently to friends and enemies in distress;
Ecco quei, che le charte empion di sogni,
Lancilotto, Tristano, e gli altri erranti.
III. “The courtesy, affability, and gallantry, for which these adventurers were so famous, are but the natural effects and consequences of their situation.”
For the castles of the Barons were, as I said, the courts of these little sovereigns, as well as their fortresses; and the resort of their vassals thither in honour of their chiefs, and for their own proper security, would make that civility and politeness, which is seen in courts and insensibly prevails there, a predominant part in the character of these assemblies.
This is the poet’s own account of
——court and royal citadel,
The great school-maistresse of all Courtesy.
B. III. C. vi. s. 1.
And again, more largely in B. VI. C. i. s. 1.
Of Court it seems men Courtesie do call,
For that it there most useth to abound;
And well beseemeth that in Princes hall
That Virtue should be plentifully found,
Which of all goodly manners is the ground
And root of civil conversation:
Right so in faery court it did resound,
Where courteous knights and ladies most did won
Of all on earth, and made a matchless paragon.
For Faery Court means the reign of Chivalry; which, it seems, had undergone a fatal revolution before the age of Milton, who tells us that Courtesy
——is sooner found in lonely sheds
With smoaky rafters, than in tap’stry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was nam’d,
And yet is most pretended.
Mask.
Further, the free commerce of the ladies, in those knots and circles of the great, would operate so far on the sturdiest knights, as to give birth to the attentions of gallantry. But this gallantry would take a refined turn, not only from the necessity there was of maintaining the strict form of decorum, amidst a promiscuous conversation under the eye of the Prince and in his own family; but also from the inflamed sense they must needs have of the frequent outrages committed, by their neighbouring clans of adversaries, on the honour of the sex, when by chance of war they had fallen into their hands. Violations of chastity being the most atrocious crimes they had to charge on their enemies, they would pride themselves in the merit of being its protectors: and as this virtue was, of all others, the fairest and strongest claim of the sex itself to such protection, it is no wonder that the notions of it were, in time, carried to so platonic an elevation.
Thus, again, the great master of Chivalry himself, on this subject,
It hath been thro’ all ages ever seen,
That, with the praise of arms and chivalry,
The prize of beauty still hath joined been;
And that for reason’s special privity:
For either doth on other much rely;
For He mee seems most fit the fair to serve,
That can her best defend from villainy;
And She most fit his service doth deserve,
That fairest is, and from her faith will never swerve.
Spenser, B. IV. C. v.
Not but the foundation of this refined gallantry was laid in the ancient manners of the German nations. Cæsar tells us how far they carried their practice of chastity, which he seems willing to account for on political principles. However that be, their consideration of the sex was prodigious, as we see in the history of their irruptions into the Empire; where among all their ravages and devastations of other sorts, we find they generally abstained from offering any violence to the honour of the women.
IV. It only remains to account for that “character of Religion,” which was so deeply imprinted on the minds of all knights, and was essential to their institution. We are even told, that the love of God and of the ladies went hand in hand, in the duties and ritual of Chivalry.
Two reasons may be assigned for this singularity:
First, the superstition of the times, in which Chivalry arose; which was so great, that no institution of a public nature could have found credit in the world, that was not consecrated by the churchmen, and closely interwoven with religion.
Secondly, the condition of the Christian states; which had been harassed by long wars, and had but just recovered a breathing-time from the brutal ravages of the Saracen armies. The remembrance of what they had lately suffered from these grand enemies of the faith, made it natural, and even necessary, to engage a new military order on the side of religion.
And how warmly this principle, a zeal for the faith, was acted upon by the professors of Chivalry, and how deeply it entered into their ideas of the military character, we see from the term so constantly used by the old Romancers, of Recreant [i. e. Apostate] Knight; by which they meant to express, with the utmost force, their disdain of a dastard or vanquished knight. For, many of this order falling into the hands of the Saracens, such of them as had not imbibed the full spirit of their profession, were induced to renounce their faith, in order to regain their liberty. These men, as sinning against the great fundamental laws of Chivalry, they branded with this name; a name of complicated reproach, which implied a want of the two most essential qualities of a Knight, COURAGE and FAITH.
Hence too, the reason appears why the Spaniards, of all the Europeans, were furthest gone in every characteristic madness of true chivalry. To all the other considerations, here mentioned, their fanaticism in every way was especially instigated and kept alive by the memory and neighbourhood of their old infidel invaders.
And thus we seem to have a fair account of that PROWESS, GENEROSITY, GALLANTRY, and RELIGION, which were the peculiar and vaunted characteristics of the purer ages of Chivalry.
Such was the state of things in the Western world, when the Crusades to the Holy Land were set on foot. Whence we see how well prepared the minds of men were for engaging in that enterprize. Every object, that had entered into the views of the institutors of Chivalry, and had been followed by its professors, was now at hand, to inflame the military and religious ardor of the knights, to the utmost. And here, in fact, we find the strongest and boldest features of their genuine character: daring to madness, in enterprises of hazard: burning with zeal for the delivery of the oppressed; and, which was deemed the height of religious merit, for the rescue of the holy city out of the hands of infidels; and, lastly, exalting their honour of chastity so high as to profess celibacy; as they constantly did, in the several orders of knighthood created on that extravagant occasion.