The door was opened, and Adalbert himself conducted the carts into the court-yard; then Sicco drew his sword, and gave the signal to his followers by slaying Adalbert, and the men, being liberated from the casks, rushed on the garrison and slew them all; then the castle was burnt. On the ruins a church was built.
The Crusades gave a new impetus to arts and sciences, bringing the luxury and refinement of the East into contact with the almost barbaric simplicity of the Western nations; and from the eleventh century we find the legends assume a different character, saints and hermits giving place to knights and ladies, and minstrels sing lays of love and pleasure in place of dwelling on the old themes of war and religion. Instead of descriptions of lives passed in deserts, and celestial visions, we have pictures of tournaments and tales of robbers, ghosts, and stirring adventures of all sorts, mingled with dreams of Eastern luxury.
Popular fury having been raised by the preaching of Peter the Hermit and others, it expended itself in the first place on those more immediately within its reach; and in Trèves the Jews were so persecuted that they frequently committed suicide, after slaying their children: multitudes of them also embraced Christianity, only to resume their real faith when the storm had passed.
In the two succeeding centuries many curious laws were enacted to suit the times,—those relating to trial by combat are among the most remarkable; we will merely instance one: If a woman of the lower classes had been violated, but the matter could not be proved, the accused man was buried up to his middle in the earth, and a stick, an ell long, put into his hand; thus he fought the woman, who was armed with a stone tied up in her veil.
Coiners were at this period boiled in kettles.
In addition to courts of law, there were now established courts of love; these were composed of select women and knightly poets, who with extraordinary sagacity gave judgment in love affairs.
The service of the fair formed an essential part of knightly customs. To insult, or in any way injure a woman, was disgraceful. Woman—the ideal of beauty, gentleness, and love—inflamed each knightly bosom with a desire to deserve her favours, by deeds of valour and self-denial. She was worshipped as a protecting divinity, and knights undertook any task, however difficult, at the merest hint that it would be acceptable, even deeming themselves happy to die for her sake, and so win her approbation.
Love became an art, “a knightly study,” and this submission to the gentle yoke of woman, bred in humility and religion, chiefly contributed to humanise and civilise the manners of the age; and we may thank the German element for superseding the grosser and more sensual manner in which woman was regarded previously to the rising of that nation. The historian concludes his remarks on this subject by saying, “Fidelity was the essence of true love; and such were lovers then.”
In the thirteenth century arose an institution immediately allied with the neighbourhood of our river; this was the Fehm-gerichte, or Secret Tribunal. Engelbert, an Archbishop of Cologne, was the first president and founder of this secret court. It was in the first instance composed of a number of honourable men of every class, who joined together for the purpose of judging and punishing all evildoers; its measures were chiefly directed against the licentious nobles and robber-knights; its proceedings were necessarily secret, as, were the names of the judges known, they would have been objects of vengeance to all the turbulent spirits of the day. In the fourteenth century this association numbered a hundred thousand members, all bound by a solemn oath, and known to each other by a secret sign.