What think you, my good friend, of this learned deduction? Do not you begin to favour my conjecture, as whimsical as it might seem, of the rise and genius of Knight-errantry.
And yet (so slippery is the ground, on which we system-makers stand) from what I observed of the spirit, with which the Crusades were carried on, a hint may be taken, which threatens to overturn my whole system.
It is, “That, whereas I derive the Crusades from the spirit of Chivalry, the circumstances attending the progress of the Crusades, and even as pointed out by myself, seem to favour the opposite opinion of Chivalry’s taking its rise from that enterprize.”
For thus the argument is drawn out by a learned person[45], to whom I communicated the substance of my last Letter.
“On the crumbling of the Western empire into small states, with regular subordinations of vassals and their chiefs, who looked up to a common sovereign, it was soon found that those chiefs had it in their power to make themselves very formidable to their masters; and, just in that crisis of European manners and empire, the Saracens having expelled Christianity from the East, the Western Princes seized the opportunity, and with great craft turned the warlike genius of their feudataries, which would otherwise have preyed upon themselves, into the spirit of Crusades against the common enemy.
But when, now, the ardour of the Crusades was abated in some sort, though not extinguished, the Gothic princes and their families had settled into established monarchies. Then it was, that the restless spirit of their vassals, having little employment abroad, and being restrained in a good degree from exerting itself with success in domestic quarrels, broke out in all the extravagances of KNIGHT-ERRANTRY.
Military fame, acquired in the Holy land, had entitled the adventurers to the insignia of arms, the source of Heraldry; and inspired them with the love of war and the passion of enterprize. Their late expeditions had given them a turn for roving in quest of adventures; and their religious zeal had infused high notions of piety, justice, and chastity.
The scene of action being now more confined, they turned themselves, from the world’s debate, to private and personal animosities. Chivalry was employed in rescuing humble and faithful vassals, from the oppression of petty lords; their women, from savage lust; and the hoary heads of hermits (a species of Eastern monks, much reverenced in the Holy land), from rapine and outrage.
In the mean time the courts of the feudal sovereigns grew magnificent and polite; and, as the military constitution still subsisted, military merit was to be upheld; but, wanting its old objects, it naturally softened into the fictitious images and courtly exercises of war, in justs and tournaments: where the honour of the ladies supplied the place of zeal for the holy Sepulchre; and thus the courtesy of elegant love, but of a wild and fanatic species, as being engrafted on spiritual enthusiasm, came to mix itself with the other characters of the Knights-errant.”
In this way, you see, all the characteristics of Chivalry, which I had derived from the essential properties of the feudal government, are made to result from the spirit of Crusades, which with me was only an accidental effect of it: and this deduction may be thought to agree best with the representation of the old Romancers.