——“e vidi gir gualdane,
Ferir torniamenti, e correr giostra.”
Inferno, c. 22.
So early as the year 1166, on occasion of the interview between Frederic Barbarossa and Pope Alexander at Venice, chivalric and civic pomp celebrated their friendship. Two centuries afterwards, the recovery of Cyprus presented a fair opportunity for military display. Knights flocked to Venice from England, France, and every country of the West, and manifested their prowess in the elegant, yet perilous, encounter of the tournament. There was a pageant, or grand triumphal show, of a splendid procession of knights cased in steel, and adorned with the favours of the ladies. The scene-painter and the mechanist combined their talents to give an allegorical representation of the Christian’s victory over Islamism: the knights moved amidst the scenic decorations, and by their gallant bearing swelled with noble pride the hearts of the spectators.
The sports of chivalry were so elegant and graceful that we might have supposed the refined Italians would have embraced them in all their circumstances. But the arena of the Coliseum, so admirably adapted for a tournament, was used for Moorish games. The matrons and virgins of Rome, arrayed in all their bravery, were seated in its ample galleries, and beheld, not a gallant and hurtless encounter between two parties of knights with lances of courtesy, but a succession of sanguinary conflicts between cavaliers and bulls. Only one solitary circumstance gave an air of chivalry to the scene, and prevents us from mingling the bull-feast of the Coliseum, on the 1st of September, 1332, with the horrid spectacles of classic times. Each knight wore a device, and fancied himself informed by the spirit of chivalry, and the presence of the ladies. “I burn under the ashes,” was the motto of him who had never told his passion. “I adore Lavinia, or Lucretia,” was written on the shield of the knight who wished to be thought the servant of love, and yet dared not avow the real name of his mistress.[240]
CHAP. VII.
ON THE MERITS AND EFFECTS OF CHIVALRY.
We are now arrived at that part of our subject where we may say with the poet,
“The knights are dust,
And their good swords are rust:
Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
With Italy the historical tracing ceases of that system of principles which for so many centuries formed or influenced the character of Europe. Its rude beginnings may be marked in the patriarchal manners which preceded every known frame of artificial life, and have been shaped and modified by the legislator and the moralist. The ties of fraternity or companionship in arms, respect to elders, devotion to women, military education and military investiture, were the few and simple elements of chivalry, and in other times would have formed the foundation of other systems of manners. But a new and mighty spirit was now influencing the world, and bending to its purposes every principle and affection. Christianity, with its sanctities and humanities, gave a form and character to chivalry. He who was invested with the military belt was no longer the mere soldier of ambition and rapine, but he was taught to couch his lance for objects of defence and protection, rather than for those of hostility. He was the friend of the distressed, of widows and orphans, and of all who suffered from tyranny and oppression. The doctrine of Christian benevolence, that all who name the name of Christ are brothers, gave beauty and grace to the principles of fraternity, which were the Gothic inheritance of knights, and therefore the wars of the middle ages were distinguished for their humanities. A cavalier was kind and courteous to his prisoner, because he saw in him a brother; and while the system of ancient manners would have limited this feeling to people of one nation, a knight did not bound his humanity by country or soil, for Christian chivalry was spread over most parts of Europe, and formed mankind into one band, one order of men. From the same principle all the courtesies of private life were communicated to strangers; and gentleness of manners, and readiness of service, expanded from a private distinction into an universal character. Since, by the Christian religion, woman was restored to the rank in the moral world which nature had originally assigned her, the feelings of respect for the sex, which were entertained in the early and unsophisticated state of Europe, were heightened by the new sanctions of piety. It was a principle, as well as a feeling and a love, to guard and cherish woman; and many of the amenities of chivalry proceeded from her mild influence and example.