Spanish chivalry after his death.
The merits of missals decided by battle.
I have already alluded to the mighty influence of the Cid on the political history of Spain,—his decision of the great question of Christian or Mohammedan superiority. After his death the impulse which he had given to the Spanish power was kept alive; the Moors never recovered themselves from the prowess of his knighthood, and, finally, they were driven from the Peninsula. It was only when the general Christian cause was the weakest, that the Spanish government, and people, who were occasionally conquerors, extended the humanities of chivalry to the Moors. But when the Crescent waned, this mild aspect was changed; for revenge and all the baleful passions of victory swept away the gentle graces of the cavalier, and intolerance and cruelty rose with the increasing power of the Christians. Concessions of liberty of conscience were made to the Moors, but the treaties were broken, apparently that mockery might embitter pain. The Moors and Christians did not deport themselves to each other with chivalric courtesy; and history gives no warrant to the romantic stories of any magnanimity or grandeur of soul illuminating the last years of the Arabs in Spain.[201] Among the Christians themselves, indeed, the chivalric character was sustained in all its vigour and gracefulness. Ecclesiastical history furnishes us with a very amusing instance of its influence. When Alphonso IX., about the year 1214, had expelled the Moors from Toledo, he endeavoured to establish the Roman missal in the place of St. Isidore’s. But the people clung to their old ideas, and resisted the innovation. Those were not the days of theological argument; but the sword was the only means of deciding disputes and of determining truth. Each party chose a doughty knight, and commended to his chivalry the cause of a missal. The two champions met in the lists; the two parties ranged themselves in the surrounding galleries, and to the joy of the Spaniards the champion of St. Isidore was victorious.[202]
Gallantry of a knight.
But the gallantry of the Spaniards is the most interesting subject of regard. James II., King of Arragon, decreed that every man, whether a knight or another, who should be in company with a noble lady, might pass safe and unmolested, unless he were guilty of murder.[203] In the minds of Spanish knights, religion and love were ever blended; and he who, thinking of his mistress, took for his motto the words, “Sin vos, y sin Dios y mi,” (without thee, I am without God, and without myself,) was not thought guilty of impiety. In romantic gallantry the Spaniard was a very perfect knight. Garcia Perez de Vargas, who lived in the thirteenth century, was a splendid exemplar of Spanish chivalry. His valour excited the envy of men of nobler birth, who displayed the meanness of their spirit in questioning his title to bear arms. He once withstood the Moors, while those of more ancient heraldry quailed. When he had discomfited the foe, he returned to his host, and striking his battered shield, remarked to his envious rival, in a tone of justifiable sarcasm, “You are right in wishing to deprive me of my coat of arms, for I expose it to too great dangers. It would be far safer in your hands; for so prudent a knight as yourself would take very excellent care of it.”[204] Garcia was such a doughty knight, that his very presence terrified the Moors. He and a companion were once suddenly met by a party of seven of their turbaned foes. His friend took flight, but Perez closed his vizor, and couched his lance. The Moors declined a battle. Perez reached the camp: his conduct met with its guerdon; but he had too much chivalric kindness warming his heart to answer the demand, who it was that had forsaken him in so perilous a moment. There was another circumstance in this affair which marks the gallantry of our knight. While his martial demeanour was keeping the Moors at bay he found that his scarf had fallen from his shoulder. He calmly turned his horse’s head, recovered his mistress’s favour, and then pursued his course to the camp, the Moors being still afraid to attack him.[205]
Passage of arms at Orbigo.
On the first day of the year 1434, while the Spanish court was holding its festivities at Medina del Campo, a noble knight, named Sueno de Quinones, presented himself before the King (John II.) with a train of nine cavaliers gallantly arrayed, whose lofty demeanour and armorial ensigns showed that they prided themselves on the perfect purity of their Christian descent. The King smiled graciously on the strangers; and learning from his attendants that they had come to court in order to address his power, he waved his hand in sign of permission for them to speak. A herald, whom they had brought with them, stepped in front, and in the name of Sueno de Quinones spoke thus: “It is just and reasonable that any one who has been so long in imprisonment as I have been should desire his liberty; and, as your vassal and subject, I appear before you to state, that I have been long bound in service to a noble lady; and, as is well known, through heralds, not only in this country but through foreign lands, every Thursday I am obliged to wear a chain of iron round my neck. But, with the aid of the Apostle James, I have discovered a means of liberation. I and my nine noble friends propose, during the fifteen days that precede and the fifteen days that follow the festival of that Saint, to break three hundred lances, with Milan points[206], in the following manner: Three lances with every knight who shall pass this way on his road to the shrine of the Saint. Armour and weapons will be provided in ample store for such cavaliers as shall travel only in palmer’s weeds. All noble ladies who shall be on their pilgrimage unattended by a chivalric escort must be contented to lose their right-hand glove till a knight shall recover it by the valour of his arm.”
When the herald concluded, the King and his council conferred together, and they soon agreed that the laws of chivalry obliged them to consent to the accomplishing of this emprise of arms. When the royal permission was proclaimed by the heralds, Sueno got a noble knight to take off his helmet, and thus, bareheaded, approached the throne, and humbly thanked the King. He afterwards retired with his nine friends; and having exchanged their heavy armour for silken dresses of festivity, they returned to the hall and joined the dance.
Six months were to elapse before the valiant and amorous Sueno de Quinones could be delivered from his shackle; and all that time was spent by him and his friends in exercising themselves to the use of the lance, and in providing stores of harness and lances for such knights as would joust with them. The place that was arranged for the contest was the bridge Orbigo, six hours’ ride from Leon, and three from Astorga. The marble effigies of a herald was set-up in the road; and by the label in its right hand travellers were acquainted that they had reached the passage of arms. The lists were erected in a beautiful plain formed by nature in a neighbouring wood. Tents for banqueting and repose were raised, and amply furnished by the liberality of Sueno. One tent was admirable for the beauty of its decorations, and more so for its purpose. It contained seven noble ladies, who, at the request of the mother of Sueno, devoted themselves to attend upon such of the knights as should be wounded in the joust. At the time appointed, Sueno de Quinones appeared in the lists with his nine companions, all arrayed in the most splendid tourneying harness, the enamoured knight himself bearing round his neck the chain of his mistress, with the motto, which his friends also wore on some part of their armour, “Il faut délibérer.” Many stranger knights jousted with him, and his success was generally distinguished.
The fair penitents to the shrine of the saint were stopped; and such as were of noble birth were asked by the King’s herald to deliver their gloves. The pride and prerogatives of the sex were offended at this demand: the ladies resisted, as much as words and looks of high disdain could resist, the representative of the King; but they yielded with grace and pleasure, when they were asked to surrender their gloves in the name of the laws of chivalry, of those laws which had been made under their auspices, and for their benefit. There was no lack of knights to peril themselves for the recovery of these gloves in the listed plain; and if the champions of the dames were ever worsted by the hardier sons of chivalry, the gallantry of the judges of the tournament would not permit the ladies to suffer from any want of skill or good fortune in their chosen knights. When the thirty days had expired, it appeared that sixty-eight knights had entered the lists against Sueno de Quinones; and in seven hundred and twenty-seven encounters only sixty-six lances had been broken;—a chivalric phrase, expressive either of the actual shivering of lances, or of men being thrown out of their saddles. The judges of the tournament, however, declared, that although the number of lances broken was not equal to the undertaking, yet as such a partial performance of the conditions of the passage at arms had not been the fault of Sueno de Quinones, they commanded the king at arms to take the chain from his neck, and to declare that the emprise had been achieved: accordingly the chain was removed, and the delivered knight entered Leon in triumph.[207]
Knights travel and joust for ladies’ love.