But for a true expression of this romance literature we must turn to the legends of the Holy Grail, in which a lofty imagination blends, in so far as they can be blended, all the varied elements of the knightly ideal in a consistent whole. No age save the age of Christian knighthood could have produced this wonderful cycle of tales.
Contribution of chivalry to the moral heritage of the Christian world
But it is neither in the crusading enterprises nor in the literary products of the age of chivalry that we are to look for the real historical significance of the ideal of chivalry. Its chief import for the moral evolution of the European nations lies in the fact that it helped to give fuller and richer content to the Christian ideal by contributing to it, or by giving a surer place in it, certain nontheological virtues, some of which the Church had laid little emphasis upon or had entirely neglected.
Thus the enthusiasm for the ideal of chivalry, like the Church’s veneration of the Holy Virgin,[685] tended to elevate and refine the ideal of woman, and thus to counteract certain tendencies of the ascetic ideal. It helped to give a high valuation to the moral qualities of loyalty, truthfulness, magnanimity, self-reliance, and courtesy. We designate these attractive traits of character as chivalrous virtues for the reason that we recognize that knighthood made precious contributions to these elements of the moral inheritance which the modern received from the medieval world.
Restrictions on the right of private war: the Truce of God
Very closely connected ethically and historically with chivalry is the movement during the later medieval time for the abolition of the right of private war.[686] In the tenth century, as feudalism developed and the military spirit of knighthood came more and more to dominate society, the right of waging war, with which privilege every feudal lord of high rank was invested, resulted in a state of intolerable anarchy in all those lands where the feudal system had become established. Respecting this right, claimed and exercised by the feudal prince, of waging war against any and every other chieftain, even though this one were a member of the same state as that to which he himself belonged, there was in these medieval centuries precisely the same moral feeling, or rather lack of moral feeling, that exists to-day in regard to the right claimed and exercised by the different independent nations of waging war against one another.
As a result of this practice of private war, Europe reverted to a condition of primitive barbarism. Every land was filled with fightings and violence. “Every hill,” as one pictures it, “was a stronghold, every plain a battlefield. The trader was robbed on the highway, the peasant was killed at his plow, the priest was slain at the altar. Neighbor fought against neighbor, baron against baron, city against city.”
In the midst of this universal anarchy the Church lifted a protesting voice. Toward the end of the tenth century there was started in France a movement which aimed at the complete abolition of private war. The Church aspired to do what had been done by pagan Rome. It proclaimed what was called the Peace of God. It commanded all men everywhere to refrain from fighting and robbery and violence of every kind as contrary to the spirit and teachings of Christianity.
But it was found utterly impossible to make the great feudal barons refrain from fighting one another even though they were threatened with the eternal torments of hell. They were just as unwilling to surrender this highly prized privilege and right of waging private war as the nations of to-day are to surrender their prized privilege and right to wage public war.
Then the leaders of the clergy of France, seeing that they could not suppress the evil entirely, resolved to attempt to regulate it. This led to the proclamation of what was called the Truce of God. The first certain trace of this movement dates from the year 1041.[687] In that year the abbot of the monastery of Cluny and the other French abbots and bishops issued an edict commanding all men to maintain a holy and unbroken peace during four days of every week, from Wednesday evening till Monday morning.[688] Every man was required to take an oath to observe this Truce of God. The oath was renewed every three years, and was administered to boys on their reaching their twelfth year.