[43] Nys, op. cit. p. 89. Idem, in his Introduction to Bonet’s L’arbre des batailles, p. xxiv. According to Conradus Brunus (De legationibus, iii. 8, p. 115), for instance, any war waged by Christians against the enemies of the Christian faith is just, as being undertaken for the defence of religion and the glory of God in order to recover the possession of dominions unjustly held by infidels.
Out of this union between war and Christianity there was born that curious bastard, Chivalry. The secular germ of it existed already in the German forests. According to Tacitus, the young German who aspired to be a warrior was brought into the midst of the assembly of the chiefs, where his father, or some other relative, solemnly equipped him for his future vocation with shield and javelin.[44] Assuming arms was thus made a social distinction, which subsequently derived its name from one of its most essential characteristics, the riding a war-horse. But Chivalry became something quite different from what the word indicates. The Church knew how to lay hold of knighthood for her own purposes. The investiture, which was originally of a purely civil nature, became, even before the time of the crusades, as it were, a sacrament.[45] The priest delivered the sword into the hand of the person who was to be made a knight, with the following words, “Serve Christi, sis miles in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”[46] The sword was said to be made in semblance of the cross so as to signify “how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lying”;[47] and the word “Jesus” was sometimes engraven on its hilt.[48] God Himself had chosen the knight to defeat with arms the miscreants who wished to destroy his Holy Church, in the same way as He had chosen the clergy to maintain the Catholic faith with Scripture and reasons.[49] The knight was to the body politic what the arms are to the human body: the Church was the head, Chivalry the arms, the citizens, merchants, and labourers the inferior members; and the arms were placed in the middle to render them equally capable of defending the inferior members and the head.[50] “The greatest amity that should be in this world,” says the author of the ‘Ordre of Chyualry,’ “ought to be between the knights and clerks.”[51] The several gradations of knighthood were regarded as parallel to those of the Church.[52] And after the conquest of the Holy Land the union between the profession of arms and the religion of Christ became still more intimate by the institution of the two military orders of monks, the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
[44] Tactitus, Germania, 13. According to Honoré de Sainte Marie (Dissertations historiques et critiques sur la Chevalerie, p. 30 sqq.), Chivalry is of Roman, according to some other writers, of Arabic origin. M. Gautier (La Chevalerie, pp. 14, 16) repudiates these theories, and regards Chivalry as “un usage germain idéalisé par l’Église.” See also Rambaud, Histoire de la civilisation française, i. 178 sq.
[45] Scott, ‘Essay on Chivalry,’ in Miscellaneous Prose Works, vi. 16. Mills, History of Chivalry, i. 10 sq. For a description of the various religious ceremonies accompanying the investiture, see The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry or Knyghthode, fol. 27 b sqq. Cf. also Favyn, Theater of Honour and Knight-Hood, i. 52.
[46] Favyn, op. cit. i. 52.
[47] Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 31 a sq.
[48] Mills, op. cit. i. 71.
[49] Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 11 b.
[50] Le Jouuencel, fol. 94 sqq.
[51] Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 12 a.