Origin of Chivalry.—Its different Characteristics.—Chivalric Gallantry.—Chivalry and Nobility.—Its Relations with the Church.—Education of the Children of the Nobility.—Squires.—Chivalric Exercises.—Pursuivants at Arms.—Courts and Tribunals of Love.—Creation of Knights.—Degradation of Knights.—Judicial Duels.—Trials by Ordeal.—Feudal Champions.—Gages of Battle.—The Church forbids Duels.—Tournaments invented by the Sire de Preuilly in the Tenth Century.—Arms need in a Tournament.—Tilt.—Lists.—The part taken by Ladies.—King René’s Book.
The word Chivalry, according to M. Philarète Chasles, whose ingenious opinions we often borrow, expresses a mixture of manners, of ideas, and of customs peculiar to the Middle Ages of Europe, and to which no analogy is to be traced in the annals of the human race.
Fig. 115.—King Artus, protected by the Virgin, is fighting a Giant.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Chroniques de Bretagne,” of Alain Bouchard; 4to, Paris, Galliot du Pré, 1514.
The Eddas, Tacitus, and the Dano-Anglo-Saxon poems of Béowulf contain the only positive documents concerning the origin of chivalry. It reached its apogee rapidly after its birth, and gradually declined towards the close of the thirteenth century. At that period ladies took a very prominent position; they armed the knights, conferred the order of knighthood, and bestowed the prizes of honour. It was under the influence of the ideas peculiar to this epoch that Dante wrote his great poem, “for the sole purpose,” he said, “of glorifying Beatrice Portinari,” a child of eleven years of age whom he had accidentally seen in a church. It was at this time that the Suabian knights, invaded by the barbarous Hungarians, who were in the habit of slaying their enemies with their enormous bows and arrows, implored them, “in the name of the ladies,” to take sword in hand, in order to fight in “a more civilised manner.” But chivalry soon began to decline, both as an institution and as a doctrine. Froissart characterizes and describes with picturesque liveliness this tendency to decay, which, as time advanced, gradually resulted in a complete transformation, so that the chivalric ideal became lost, and the independence of the soldier, once the slave only of his God and of his lady, gave way to the obsequiousness of the courtier, and finally became a selfish and pitiful servility.
At these different epochs of organic transformation, chivalry was constantly modifying itself according to each nation’s particular tendency. In Thuringia and Saxony, in Ireland and in Norway, it resisted longer than elsewhere the growing influence of Christianity. It exhibits its semi-paganism in certain passages of the “Niebelungen,” a German epic poem of the thirteenth century, in which the rude impress of ancient Teutonism is still clear and distinct. Between the seventh and the eleventh centuries the traces of this rudeness of origin still strongly showed themselves among the Franks, whose bravery consisted in spilling their blood, in fearing nothing, and in sparing nobody. This thirst for blood was unknown in the south of Europe; there men’s dispositions were amiable and gentle, and as far back as the eleventh century chivalric gallantry was regulated by fixed laws, and gave birth to a learned and refined school of poetry. From Provence this spirit of gallantry and poetry made its way into Italy and Sicily, where the barbarous Teutonic knights had been so frequently turned into ridicule. Little by little, however, German chivalry was affected by these southern influences. The minnesingers softened to the best of their ability the Teutonic language to permit of its repeating the softer songs of the Provençal muse, and the light but lively imaginations of the troubadours assumed a gentle melancholy and often a metaphysical grace in their German verses. In Great Britain, where the actual has always overshadowed the ideal, chivalry remained cold, feudal, and aristocratic, whilst it was passionately worshipped by the Spaniards, those noble and knightly descendants of the Goths and Iberians, whose struggle with the Arabs was one long tournament that lasted for more than seven centuries (Fig. 116). In religious countries chivalry assumed monastic characteristics; among nations of a gay and lively disposition it verged on the voluptuous and licentious. Alphonso X., King of Leon and Castile, forced his subjects to submit to monkish regulations, and prescribed the shape of their clothes as well as the manner in which they were to spend their time. In Provence, chivalry regarded unlawful love with an indulgent eye, and made a jest of marriage.
Chivalry was in fact a fraternal association, or rather an enthusiastic compact between men of feeling and courage, of delicacy and devotion; such at least was the noble aim it had in view, and which it constantly strove to attain (Fig. 117).
Fig. 116.—Sword of Isabella the Catholic. Upon the hilt is the following inscription, partly in Spanish and partly in Latin:—“I am always desiring honour; now I am watching, peace be with me” (“Deseo sienpre onera; nunc caveo, pax con migo”).—From the “Armeria Real of Madrid,” a publication of M. Ach. Jubinal’s.