The faithful esquire was adubbed a knight at the will and by the hand of his superior. This honor was sometimes awarded on the field of conflict for a specially valiant deed. More commonly the heroic subalterns were summoned to receive the coveted prize when the fight was done. More than one instance is mentioned where the esquire bowed his head beneath the dead hand of his master and there assumed the duty of completing the enterprise in which his chief had fallen. Ordinarily, however, the ceremony was held in the castle hall, or in later times in the church, on the occasion of some festival or upon the candidate’s reaching the year of his majority.
The rite of admission to knighthood was made as impressive as possible. The young man, having come from the bath, was clothed in a white tunic, expressive of the purity of his purpose; then in a red robe, symbolical of the blood he was ready to shed; and in a black coat, to remind him of the death that might speedily be his portion. After fasting, the candidate spent the night in prayer. In the morning the priest administered to him the holy communion, and blessed the sword which hung from his neck. Attendant knights and ladies then clothed him in his armor. Kneeling at the feet of the lord, he received from him the accolade, three blows with the flat of the sword upon his shoulder, with the repetition of the formula, “In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I make thee a knight.”
More impressive, because more unusual, was the ceremony of his degradation, if he broke his plighted faith or forfeited his honor. He was exposed on a platform, stripped of his armor, which was broken to pieces and thrown upon a dunghill. His shield was dragged in the dirt by a cart-horse, his own charger’s tail was cut off, while he was himself carried into a church on a litter, and forced to listen to the burial service, since he was now to move among men as one who was dead to the honor for which he had vowed to live.
The chief defect of Chivalry was that, while it displayed some of the finer sentiments of the soul in contrast with the general grossness of the age, it did not aspire to the highest motives as these were felt in the early days of Christianity and as they are again apprehended in modern times. Notwithstanding the vow of devotion, there was little that was altruistic about it. The thought of the devotee was ultimately upon himself, his renown and glory. His crested helmet, his gilded spurs, his horse in housing of gold, and the scarlet silk which marked him as apart from and above his fellows, were not promotive of that humility and self-forgetfulness from which all great moral actions spring. Our modern characterization of the proud man is borrowed from the knight’s leaving his palfrey and mounting his charger, or, as it was called, getting “on his high horse.” In battle the personality of the knight was not, as in the case of the modern soldier, merged in the autonomy of the brigade or squadron; he appeared singly against a selected antagonist of equal rank with his own, so that the field presented the appearance of a multitude of private combats. In the lull of regular warfare he sought solitary adventures for gaining renown, and often challenged his companions in arms to contest with him the palm of greater glory. Writers aptly liken the mediæval knights to the heroic chiefs of Arabia, and even of the American Indians, to whom personal prowess is more than patriotism. Hallam would choose as the finest representative of the chivalric spirit the Greek Achilles, who could fight valiantly, or sulk in his tent regardless of the cause, when his individual honor or right seemed to be menaced.
The association of Chivalry with gallantry, though prompted by the benevolent motive of helping the weak or paying homage to woman as the embodiment of the pure and beautiful, did not always serve these high purposes. The “love of God and the ladies,” enjoined as a single duty, was often to the detriment of the religious part of the obligation. The fair one who was championed in the tournament was apt to be sought beyond the lists. The poetry of the Troubadours shows how the purest and most delicate sentiment next to the religious, the love of man for woman, became debauched by a custom which flaunted amid the brutal scenes of the combat the name of her whose glory is her modesty, and often made her virtue the prize of the ring.
Doubtless the good knight felt that the altar of his consecration was not high enough. Even his vow to defend the faith had, within the bounds of Christendom, little field where it could be honored by exploit of arms. To take his part in the miserable quarrels that were chronic between rival popes, or in the wars of the imperial against the prelatic powers, both professedly Christian, could not satisfy any really religious desires he may have felt. The chivalric spirit thus kindled the aspiration for an ideal which it could not furnish. If the soldier of the cross must wear armor, he would find no satisfaction unless he sheathed his sword in the flesh of the Infidels, whose hordes were gathering beyond the borders of Christendom. The institution of Chivalry thus prepared the way for the crusades, which afforded a field for all its physical heroism, while at the same time these great movements stimulated and gratified what to this superstitious age was the deepest religious impulse.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FEUDAL SYSTEM—GENERAL PRINCIPLES—INFLUENCE ON PEOPLE.
In accounting for the crusades we must consider the governmental condition of Europe at the time. Under no other system than that of feudalism would it have been possible to unify and mobilize the masses for the great adventure. Had Europe then been dominated by several great rulers, each with a nation at his control, as the case has been in subsequent times, even the popes would have been unable to combine the various forces in any enterprise that was not purely spiritual. Just to the extent in which the separate nationalities have developed their autonomy has the secular influence of the Roman see been lessened. Kings and emperors, whenever they have felt themselves strong enough to do so, have resented the leadership of Rome in matters having temporal bearings.
Nor would the mutual jealousies of the rulers themselves have allowed them to unite in any movement for the common glory, since the most urgent calls have never been sufficient to unite them even for the common defence, as is shown by the supineness of Catholic Europe when, in the fifteenth century, the Turks crossed the Marmora and assailed Constantinople.
But in the eleventh century there was no strong national government in Europe; kingship and imperialism existed rather in name than in such power as we are accustomed to associate with the words. At the opening of the tenth century France was parcelled out into twenty-nine petty states, each controlled by its feudal lord. Hugh Capet (987-996) succeeded in temporarily combining under his sceptre these fragments of Charlemagne’s estate; but his successors were unable to perpetuate the common dominion. In the year 1000 there were fifty-five great Frankish lords who were independent of the nominal sovereign. Indeed, some of these nobles exercised authority more weighty than that of the throne. Louis VI. (1108) first succeeded in making his lordly vassals respect his kingship, but his domain was small. “Île de France, properly so called, and a part of Orléannais, pretty nearly the five departments of the Seine, French Vexin, half the countship of Sens, and the countship of Bourges—such was the whole of it. But this limited state was as liable to agitation, and often as troublous and toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of modern states. It was full of petty lords, almost sovereign in their own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains several neighbors more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states” (Guizot).