# The Mediaeval Mind/Chapter 22

CHAPTER XXII
FEUDALISM AND KNIGHTHOOD
The world is evil! the clergy corrupt, the laity depraved! none denounces them! Awake! arise! be mindful! Such ceaseless cry rises more shrilly in times of reform and progress. It was the cry of the preacher in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when preaching was reviving with the general advance of life.
Satire and pious invective struck at all classes: kings, counts and knights, merchants, tradesmen, artisans, even villain-serfs, came under its lash. And properly, since every class is touched with universal human vices, besides those which are more peculiar to its special way of life. All men fall below the standards of the time; and each ​class fails with respect to its own ideals. The special shortcomings are most apparent with those classes whose ideals are most definitely formulated.
Among the laity the gap between the ideal and the actual may best be observed in the warrior class whose ideals accorded with the feudal situation and tended to express themselves in chivalry. Not that knights and ladies were better or worse than other mediaeval men and women. But literature contains clearer statements of their ideals. The knightly virtues range before us as distinctly as the monastic; and harsh is the contrast between the character they outline and the feudal actuality of cruelty and greed and lust. Feudalism itself presents everywhere a state of contrast between its principles of mutual fidelity and protection, and its actuality of oppression, revolt, and private war.
The feudal system was a sprawling conglomerate fact. The actual usages of chivalry (the term is loose and must be allowed gradually to define itself) were one expression of it, and varied with the period and country. But chivalry had its home also in the imagination, and its most interesting media are legend and romantic fiction. Still, much that was romantic in it sprang from the aggregate of law, custom, and sentiment, which held feudal society together. Chivalry was the fine flower of honour growing from this soil, embosomed in an abundant leafage of imagination.
The feudal system was founded on relations and sentiments arising from a state of turbulence where every man needed the protection of a lord: it could not fail to foster sentiments of fealty. The fief itself, the feudal unit of land held on condition of homage and service, symbolized the principle of mutual troth between lord and vassal. The land was part of mother earth; the troth, the elemental personal tie, existed from of yore. In this instance it came from the German forests. But the feudal system of land tenure also stretched its roots back into the rural institutions of the disintegrating Roman Empire. In the fifth century, for example, when what was left of the imperial rule could no longer enforce order, and provincial governments were decaying with the decay of the central power from which ​they drew their life, men had to look about them for protection. It became customary for men to hand over land and liberty to some near lord, and enter into a relationship akin to serfage in return for protection. Thus the Gallo-Roman population were becoming accustomed to personal dependence even while the Merovingians were establishing their kingdom.
On their side the Franks and other Teutons had inherited the institution of the comitatus, which bound the young warrior to his chief. They were familiar with exacting modes of personal retainership, which merged the follower's freedom in his lord's will. If during the reigns of Pepin and his prodigious son the development of local dominion and dependence was held in some abeyance, on the death of Charlemagne it would proceed apace. All the factors which tend to make institutions out of abuses and the infractions of earlier custom, sprang at once into activity in the renewed confusion. Everything served to increase the lesser man's need of defence, weld his dependence on his lord, and augment the latter's power. Moreover, long before Charlemagne's time, not only for protection in this life, but for the sake of their souls, men had been granting their lands to monasteries and receiving back the use thereof—such usufruct being known as a beneficium. This custom lent the force of its example and manifest utility to the relations between lay lords and tenants. And finally one notes the frequent grant to monasteries and individuals of immunity from governmental visitation, a grant preventing the king's officers from entering lands in order to exercise the king's justice, or exact fines and requisitions.
From out of such conditions the feudal system gradually took form. Its central feature was the tenure of a fief by a vassal from his lord on condition of rendering faithful military and other not ignoble service. As the tenth century passed, fiefs tended to become hereditary. So long as the vassal fulfilled his duty to his lord, the rights of the lord over the land were nominal; more substantial was the mutual obligation—on the part of the lord to protect his ​vassal against the violence of others, and on the vassal's part to make good the homage pledged by him when he knelt and placed his hands within his lord's hands and vowed himself his lord's man for the fief he held. His duty was to aid his lord against enemies, yield him counsel and assistance in the judgment of causes, and pay money to ransom him from captivity, knight his eldest son, or portion his daughter. The ramifications of these feudal tenures and obligations extended, with all manner of complications, from king and duke down to such as held the meagre fief that barely kept man and war-horse from degrading labour. All these made up the feudal class whose members might expect to become knights on reaching manhood.
Neither this system of land tenure, nor the sentiments and relations sustaining it, drew their origin from Christianity. But the Church was mighty in its influence over the secular relationships of those who came under its spiritual guidance. Feudal troth was to become Christianized. The old regard for war-chief and war-comrade was to be broadened through the Faith's solicitude for all believers; then it was raised above the human sphere to fealty toward God and His Church; and thereupon it was gentled through Christian meekness and mercy.
This Christianized spirit of fealty, broadening to courtesy and pity, was to take visible form in a universal Order into which members of the feudal class were admitted when their valour had been proved, and into which brave deeds might bring even a low-born man. Gradually, as the Order's regula, a code of knighthood's honour was developed, valid in its fundamentals throughout western Christendom; but varying details and changing fancies from time to time intruded, just as subsequent phases of monastic development were grafted on the common Benedictine rule.
Investing a young warrior with the arms of manhood has always in fighting communities been the normal ceremony of the youth's coming of age and his recognition as a member of the clan. The binding on of the young Teuton's sword in the assembly of his people was an historical antecedent of the making of a knight. In all the lands of western Europe—France, Germany, Anglo-Saxon ​England, Lombard Italy, and Visigothic Spain—this ceremony appears to have remained a simple one through the ninth and tenth centuries. As for the eleventh, one may note the following passages: William of Malmesbury (d. 1142 cir.) speaks of William of Normandy receiving the insignia of knighthood (militiae insignia) from the King of France as soon as his years permitted. Henry of Huntington (d. 1155) says that this same William the Conqueror, in the nineteenth year of his reign, invested his younger son Henry with the arms of manhood (virilibus induit armis); while another chronicler says that Prince Henry: "sumpsit arma in Pentecostem"—a festival at which it was customary to make knights. And again, Ordericus Vitalis says of the armour-bearer of Duke William that after five years' service he was by that same duke regularly invested with his arms and made a knight (decenter est armis adornatus et miles effectus).
These short references do not indicate the nature of the ceremony. But one notes the use of the Latin words miles and militia as meaning knight and knighthood. Like so many other classical words, miles took various meanings in the Middle Ages. But it came commonly to signify knight, chevalier, or ritter. And whatever other meanings militia and militare retained or acquired, they signified knighthood and the performance of its duties. Frequently they suggested the relationship of vassal to a lord: and in this sense miles meant one who held a fief under the obligation to do knightly service in return.
But how did this word miles (which in classical Latin meant a soldier and sometimes specifically a foot-soldier as contrasted with an eques) come to mean a knight? It was first applied to the warriors of the various Teutonic peoples, who for the most part fought on foot. But the wars with the Saracens in the eighth century appear to have made clear the need of a large and efficient corps of horse. From the time of Charles Martel the warrior class began to fight ​regularly on horseback; and thus, apparently, the term miles began to signify primarily one of these tried and well-armed riders. Such were the very ones who would regularly be invested with their arms on reaching manhood. Many of them had inherited the sentiments of fealty to a chief, and probably were vassals of some lord from whom they had received lands to be held on military tenure. They were not all noble (an utterly loose term with reference to these early confused centuries) nor were they necessarily free (another inappropriate term with respect to these incipiently mediaeval social conditions). But their mainly military duties would naturally develop into a retainer's relationship of fealty.
The ninth century passes into the tenth, the tenth into the eleventh, the eleventh into the twelfth. Classes and orders of society become more distinct. The old warrior groups have become lords and vassals, and compose the feudal class whose members upon maturity are formally girt with the arms of manhood, and thereupon become knights. The ceremony of their investiture has been gradually made more impressive; it has also been imbued with religious sentiment and elaborated with religious rite. It now constitutes the initiation to a universally recognized fighting Order which has its knightly code of honour, if not its knightly duties. In a word, along with the clearer determination of its membership, and the elaboration of the ceremonies of entry or "adoubement," knighthood has become a distinct conception and has attained existence as ​an Order. And an Order it remains, into which one is admitted, but into which no one is born, though he be hereditary king or duke or count. Moreover, although the candidates normally would be of the feudal class, the Order is not closed against knightly merit in whomsoever found. Of course there was no written regula or charter, except of certain special Orders. Yet there was no uncertainty as to who was or was not a knight.
A knight could be "made" or "dubbed" at any time, for example, on the field of battle or before the fight. But certain festivals of the Church, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, came to be regarded as peculiarly appropriate for the ceremony. Any knight, but no unknighted person however high his rank, could "dub" another knight. This appears to have been the universal rule, and yet it suffered infringements. For example, at a late period a king might claim the right to confirm the bestowal of knighthood, which in fact commonly was bestowed by a great lord or sovereign prince. On its negative side, the general rule may be said to have been infringed when Church dignitaries, no longer content with blessing the arms of the young warrior, usurped the secular privilege of investing him with them and dubbing him a knight.
The ceremony itself probably originated in the girding on of the sword. As these warriors in time changed to mounted riders with elaborate arms and armour, it became more of an affair to invest them fully with their equipment. There would be the putting on of helm and coat of mail, and there would be the binding on of spurs; and at some time it became customary for the youth to prepare himself by a bath. But girding on the sword was still the important point, although perhaps the somewhat enigmatical blow, given by him who conferred the dignity, and not to be returned (non repercutiendus), became the finish to the ceremony. That blow existed (we find it in the Chansons ​de geste) in the twelfth century as a thwack with the fist on the young man's bare neck; then in course of years it refined itself into a gentle sword-tap on the mailed shoulder.
At an early period the Church sought to sanctify the ceremony through religious rites; for it could not remain unconcerned with the consecration of the warriors of Christendom, whose services were needed and whose souls were to be saved. What time so apt for inculcating obedience and other Christian virtues as this solemn hour when the young warrior's nature was stirred with the pride and hopes of knighthood? And the young knight needed the Church's blessing. Heathen peoples sought in every enterprise the protection of their gods, usually obtained through priestly magic. And when converted to the faith of Christ, should they not call on Him who was mightier than Odin? Should not His power be invoked to shield the Christian knight? Will not the sword which the priest has blessed and has laid upon Christ's miracle-working altar, more surely guard the wearer's life? Better still if there be blessed relics in its hilt. The dying Roland speaks to his great sword:
"O Durendel cum ies bele et seintisme!"
"O Durendel how art thou fair and holy! In thy hilt what store of relics: tooth of St. Peter, blood of St. Basil, hairs of my lord St. Denis, cloth worn by the Holy Mary." These relics made the "holiness" of that sword, not in the way of sentiment, but through their magic power. And we shall not be thinking in mediaeval categories if we lose sight of the magic-religious effect of the priest's blessing on the novice's sword: it is a protection for the future knight.
Doubtless the religious features of the "adoubement" revert to various epochs. The ancient watch-nights preceding Easter and Pentecost, followed at daybreak by the baptism of white-robed catechumens, may have been the original of the novice's night vigil over his arms laid by the ​altar. His bath had become a symbol of purification from sin. He heard Mass in the early morning, and then came the blessing of the sword, the benedictio ensis, of which the oldest extant formula is found in a Roman manuscript of the early eleventh century: "Exaudi, quaeso, Domine, preces nostras, et hunc ensem quo hic famulus N. se circumcingi desiderat, majestatis tuae dextera benedicere dignare."
Through the Middle Ages the fashions of feudalism did not remain unchanged; likewise its quintessential spirit. chivalry, was modified, and one may say, between the ninth and the fourteenth centuries, passed from barbarism to preciosity. Nevertheless the main ideals of chivalry endured, springing as they did from the fundamental and but slowly-changing conditions of feudal society. Since that society was constantly at war, the first virtue of the knight was valour. Next, since life and property hung on mutual aid and troth, and a larger safety was ensured if one lord could rely upon his neighbour's word, the virtues of truth-speaking and troth-keeping took their places in the chivalric ideal. Another useful quality, and means of winning men, was generosity (largesse.) When coin is scarce, and stipulations for fixed pay unusual, he who serves looks for liberality, which, in accordance with feudal conditions, made the third of the chief knightly virtues.
Valour, troth, largesse, had no necessary connection ​with Christianity. It was otherwise with certain of the remaining qualities of a knight. According to Christian teaching, pride was the deadliest of sins. So haughtiness, boasting, and vain-glory were to be held vices by the Christian knight. He should show a humble demeanour, save toward the mortal enemies of God; and far from boasting, he should rather depreciate himself and his exploits, though never lowering the standard of his purpose to achieve. Humility entered knighthood's ideal from Christianity; and so perhaps did courtesy, its kin, a virtue which was not among the earliest to enter knighthood's ideal, and yet reached universal recognition.
Christianity also meant active charity, beneficence, and love of neighbour. These are virtues hard to import into a state of war. Fighting means harm-doing to an enemy; and only indirectly makes for some one's good. Let there be some vindication of good in the fighting of a Christian knight: he shall be quick to right the wrong, succour distress, and quickest to bear help where no reward can come. Since knighthood's ideals took form in crusading times, the slaughter of the Paynim became the supreme act of knightly warfare.
If such elements of the knightly ideal were of Christian origin, others still were even more closely part of mediaeval Christianity. First of these was faith, orthodox faith, heresy-uprooting, infidel-destroying, fides in the full Church sense. Without faith's sacramental credentials—baptism, participation in the mass—no one could be a knight: and heresy degrades the recreant even before the scullion's cleaver hacks off his spurs.
From faith knighthood advances to obedience to the Church, a vow expressly made by every knight on taking the Cross, and also incorporated in the Constitutions of the crusading Orders of Templars and Hospitallers. But does the knight pass on from obedience to chastity? This virtue might or might not enter knighthood's ideal. It scarcely could exist with courtly or chivalric love; a and, in fact, ​knights commonly were either lovers or married men—or both. Yet even in the Arthurian literature there is the monkish Galahad, and many a sinful knight becomes a hermit in the end; and among real and living knights, the Templars and Hospitallers were vowed to celibacy. In these crusading orders the orbits of knighthood and monasticism cross; and it will not be altogether a digression to review the foundation and constitution of one of them.
The Order of the Temple was founded in the year 1118 by Hugh of Payns (Champagne) and other French knights; who placed their hands within those of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and vowed to devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims in the Holy Land. Probably they also bestowed their lands for the support of the nascent Order. Ten years afterwards Hugh passed through France and England, winning new recruits and appearing at the Council of Troyes. With the authority of that Council and of Pope Honorius II. the Regula pauperum commilitonum Christi Templique Salomonici was promulgated. St. Bernard, to whom it is ascribed, was in large part its inspiration and its author. It still exists in some seventy-two chapters; but one cannot distinguish between those belonging to the original document of 1128 and those added somewhat later.
This regula with its amendments and additions was translated from Latin into Old French (par excellence the tongue of the Crusades), and became apparently the earliest form of the Regle dou Temple, upon which was grafted a mass of ordinances (retrais et establissemens). Apparently the whole of the extant Latin regula was prior to everything contained in the French regle; and accordingly we shall simply regard the Latin as containing the earliest regulations of the Temple, and the French as exhibiting the modifications of tone and interest which came in the course of years.
The hand of St. Bernard ensured the dominance of the monastic temper in the original regula; and Hugo, the first ​Master of the Temple, could not have been the Saint's close friend without sharing his enthusiasms. So the prologue opens with a true monastic note:
"Our word is directed primarily to all who despise their own wills, and with purity of mind desire to serve under the supreme and veritable King; and with minds intent choose the noble warfare of obedience, and persevere therein. We therefore exhort you who until now have embraced secular knighthood (miliciam secularem) where Christ was not the cause, and whom God in His mercy has chosen out of the mass of perdition for the defence of the holy Church, to hasten to associate yourselves perpetually."
This phraseology would suit the constitution of a sheer monastic order. And the first chapter exhorts these venerabiles fratres who renounce their own wills and serve the King (Christ) with horses and arms, zealously to observe all the religious services regularly prescribed for monks. The regula contains the usual monastic commands. For example, obedience to the Master of the Order is enjoined sine mora as if God were commanding, which recalls the language of St. Benedict. Clothes are regulated, and diet; habitual silence is recommended; the brethren are not to go alone, nor at their own will, but as directed by the Master, so as to imitate Him who said, I came not to do mine own will, but His who sent me. Again, chests with locks are forbidden the brothers, except under special permission; nor may any brother, without like permission, receive letters from parents or friends; and then they should be read in the Master's presence. Let the brethren shun idle speech, and above all let no brother talk with another of military exploits, "follies rather," achieved by him while "in the world," or of his doings with miserable women. Let no brother hunt with hawks; such mundane delectations do not befit the religious, who should be rather hearing God's precepts, and at prayer, or confessing their sins with tears. Yet the lion may always be hunted; for he goes seeking whom he may devour.
The religio professed by the Templars is called, in the Latin rule, religio militaris, which the French translates ​"religion de chevalerie," not incorrectly, but with somewhat different flavour.
"This new genus religionis, as we believe, by divine providence began with you in the Holy Land, a religio in which you mingle chivalry (milicia). Thus this armed religion may advance through chivalry, and smite the enemy without incurring sin. Rightfully then we decree that you shall be called knights of the Temple (milites Templi) and may hold houses, lands and men, and possess serfs and justly rule them."
The pomp of the last sentence seems to remove from the tone of the earlier chapters, and suggests a later date. Another, possibly late, chapter (66) permits the knights to receive tithes, since they have abandoned their riches for spontaneae paupertati. Still another accords to married men a qualified admission to the brotherhood, but they may not wear the white robe and mantle (55). The next forbids the admission of sorores; and the last chapter of all (72) warns against the sight of women, and forbids the brethren to kiss one, be she widow, virgin, mother, sister or friend.
Thus the Latin regula formulates an order of monasticism with only the modifications imperatively demanded by the exigencies of holy warfare. The French regle elaborates the military organization and enhances the chivalric element. This begins to appear in the portions which are a translation (usually quite close) of the Latin rule. But even that translation makes changes, for example, omitting the period of probation required in the Latin text, before admitting a brother to the Order. A striking change was made by the later French ordinances in the interrogations and proceedings for admission. The Latin formula begins in Cistercian phrase:
"Vis abrenunciare seculo?
"Volo.
"Vis profiteri obedientiam secundum canonicam institutionem et secundum preceptum domini papae?
"Volo.
"Vis assumere tibi conversationem (the monastic mode and change of life) fratrum nostrorum?
"Volo."
And so forth.
The substance of these and other questions was retained in the far longer French formula, which exacted specific promises of compliance with all the Order's ordinances. But far removed from the original are such questions as the following: "Biau dous amis" (the ordinary phrase of the chivalric romance) have you, or has any one for you, made any promise to any one in return for his aid in procuring your admission, which would be simony? "Estes vos chevalier et fis de chevalier?"
Is the candidate a knight, and son of knight and lady, and are his "peres … de lignage de chevaliers"? This means chivalry and gentle blood; and if the candidate answers in the negative, he cannot be admitted as a knight of the Temple, although he may be as "sergent," or in some other character. Most noble and courtly is the phrasing of these statutes. Their frequent "Beaus seignors freres" is the address proper for knights rather than monks.
Usually wherever the translation of the Latin regula ends, the Regle dou Temple passes on to provisions meeting the requirements of a military, rather than a monastic order. We enter upon such in the chapters governing the powers and privileges of the (Grand) Master, of the Seneschal, of the Marshal, of the "Comandeor de la terre de Jerusalem." Many sections have to do with military discipline, with the ordering of the knights and their followers on the march and in the battle; they forbid the knights to joust or leave the squadron without orders. Horses, armour, and accoutrements are regulated, and, in short, full provision is made for everything conducing to make the army efficient in war. There is also a long list of faults and crimes for which a knight may be disciplined or expelled; the latter shall be ​his punishment if he flee before the Saracens and forsake his standard in battle.
The history of the Templars, significantly epitomized in the amendments to their regula, shows the necessary as well as inevitable secularization of a military monastic order; an order which for the purposes of this chapter may be placed among the chief historical examples of chivalry. For in this chapter we are not straying through the pleasant mazes of romantic literature, but are keeping close to history, with the intention of drawing from it illustrations of chivalry's ideals. We shall not, however, enter further upon the story of the Order of the Temple, with its valorous and rapacious achievements and most tragic end; but will rather look to the careers of historic individuals for the illumination of our theme.
Reaching form and consciousness in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, chivalry became part of the crusading ardour of those times. All true knights were or might be Crusaders; and of a truth there was no purer incarnation of the crusading spirit than Godfrey of Bouillon, that figure of veritable if somewhat slender historicity, upon whom in time chronicler and trouvère alike were to fasten as the true hero of the enterprise that won Jerusalem. And so he was. Not that Godfrey was commander of the host. He was not even its most energetic or most capable leader. Boemund of Tarentum and Raymond of Toulouse were his superiors in power and military energy. But neither Boemund, nor Tancred, nor Raymond, nor any other of those princes of Christendom, was what Godfrey appears to us, the type and symbol of the perfect, single-hearted, crusading knight, fighting solely for the Faith, with Christian devotion and humility, and, like them all, with more than Christian wrath. The First Crusade (1096-1099) was stamped with hatred and slaughter: on the dreadful march, at the more dreadful siege and final sack of Antioch, and finally when the holy sepulchre's defilement was washed out in Saracen blood. And there was no slaughterer more eager than Godfrey.
The cruelty and religious fervour of the Crusade are ​rendered in the words of Raymond of Agiles, one of the clergy in the train of Count Raymond of Toulouse, and an eye-witness of the capture of Jerusalem. After days of despairing struggle to effect a breach, success came as by the mercy of God:
"Among the first to enter was Tancred and the Duke of Lothringia (Godfrey), who on that day shed quantities of blood almost beyond belief. After them, the host mounted the walls, and now the Saracens suffered. Yet although the city was all but in the hands of the Franks, the Saracens resisted the party of Count Raymond as if they were never going to be taken. But when our men had mastered the walls of the city and the towers, then wonderful things were to be seen. Numbers of the Saracens were beheaded—which was the easiest for them; others were shot with arrows, or forced to jump from the towers; others were slowly tortured and were burned in flames. In the streets and open places of the town were seen piles of heads and hands and feet. One rode about everywhere amid the corpses of men and horses. But these were small matters! Let us go to Solomon's temple, where they were wont to chant their rites and solemnities. What had been done there? If we speak the truth we exceed belief: let this suffice. In the temple and porch of Solomon one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses' bridles by the just and marvellous Judgment of God, in order that the same place which so long had endured their blasphemies against Him should receive their blood."
So the Crusaders wrought; and what joy did they feel! Raymond continues:
"When the city was taken it was worth the whole long labour to witness the devotion of the pilgrims to the sepulchre of the Lord, how they clapped their hands, exulted, and sang a new song unto the Lord. For their hearts presented to God, victor and triumphant, vows of praise which they were unable to explain. A new day, new joy and exultation, new and perpetual gladness, the consummation of toil and devotion drew forth from all new words, new songs. This day, I say, glorious in every age to come, turned all our griefs and toils into joy and exultation."
So new songs of gladness burst from the hearts of the soldiers of the Cross. In a few days the princes made an election, and offered the kingdom to Count Raymond: he ​declined. Then Godfrey was made king; though he would not be crowned, nor would he ever wear a crown where his Lord had worn a crown of thorns. As a servant of Christ and of His Church he fought and ruled some short months till his death. His fame has grown because his heart was pure, and because, among the knights, he represented most perfectly the religious impulse of this crusade which fought its way through blood, until it poured out its new song of joy over the blood-drenched city. He errs who thinks to find the source and power of the First Crusade elsewhere than in the flaming zeal of feudal Christianity. There was doubtless much divergence of motive, secular and religious; but over-mastering and unifying all was the passion to wrest the sepulchre of Christ from paynim defilement, and thus win salvation for the Crusader. Greed went with the host, but it did not inspire the enterprise.
Doubtless the stories of returning knights awakened a spirit of romantic adventure, which stirred in later crusading generations. It was not so in the eleventh century when the First Crusade was gathering. The romantic imagination was then scarcely quickened; adventure was still inarticulate, and the literature of adventure for the venture's sake was yet to be created. So the First Crusade, with its motive of religious zeal, is in some degree distinguishable from those which followed when knighthood was in different flower. If not the Crusades themselves, at least the Chansons of the trouvères who sang of them, follow a change corresponding with the changing taste of chivalry: they begin with serious matters, and are occupied with the great enterprise; then they become adventurous in theme, romantic, till at last even romantic love is infelicitously grafted upon the religious rage that won Jerusalem.
This process of change may be traced in the growth of the legends of the First Crusade and Godfrey of Bouillon. Something was added to his career even by the Latin Chronicles of fifty years later. But his most venturesome development is to be found in those French Chansons de geste which have been made into the "Cycle" of the First Crusade. Two of these, the Chansons of Antioche and Jerusalem, were originally composed by a contemporary, if ​not a participant in the expedition. They were refashioned perhaps seventy-five or a hundred years later, in the reign of Philip Augustus, by another trouvère, who still kept their old tone and substance. They remained poetic narratives of the holy war. In them the knights are fierce and bloody, cruel and sometimes greedy; but their whole emprise makes onward to the end in view, the winning of the holy city. These poems are epic and not romantic: they may even be called historical. The character of Godfrey is developed with legendary or epic propriety, through a heightening of his historic qualities. He equals or excels the other barons in fierce valour, and yet a touch of courtesy tempers his wrath. In Christian meekness and in modesty he surpasses all, and he refuses the throne of Jerusalem until he has been commanded from on high. At that he accepts the kingdom as a sacred charge in defence of which he is to die.
It is otherwise with a number of other chansons composed in the latter part of the twelfth and through the thirteenth century. Some of them (the Chanson des chétifs, for example) had probably to do with the First Crusade. Others, like the various poems which tell of the Chevalier au Cygne, were inaptly forced into connection with the family of Godfrey. They have become adventurous, and are studded with irrelevant marvels, rather than assisted to their denouements by serious supernatural intervention. Monsters appear, and incongruous romantic episodes; Godfrey's ancestor has become the Swan-knight, and he himself duplicates the exploits previously ascribed to that half-fairy person. Knightly manners, from brutal have become courteous. Women throng these poems, and the romantic love of women enters, although not in the finished guise in which it plays so dominant a rôle in the Arthurian Cycle. Such themes, unknown to the earlier crusading chansons, would have fitted ill with a martial theme driving on through war and carnage (not through "adventures") to the holy end in view.
​The Crusades open with the form of Godfrey of Bouillon. A century and a half elapses and they deaden to a close beneath the futile radiance of a saintlike and perfect knightly personality. St Louis of France is as clear a figure as any in the Middle Ages. From all sides his life is known. We see him as a painstaking sovereign meting out even justice, and maintaining his royal rights against feudal turbulence and also against ecclesiastical encroachment. During his reign the monarchy of France continues to advance in power and repute. And yet there was no jot of worldly wisdom, and scant consideration of a realm sorely needing its ruler, in the Quixotic religious devotion which drew him twice across the sea on crusades unparalleled in their foolishness. For the world was growing wiser politically; and what was glorious feudal enthusiasm in the year 1099, was deliberate disregard of experience in the years 1248 and 1270.
Yet who would have had St. Louis wiser in his generation? The loss to France was mankind's gain, from the example of saintly king and perfect knight, kept bright in the narratives of men equal to the task. Louis was happy in his biographers. Two among them knew him intimately and in ways affording special opportunities to observe the sides of his character congenial to their respective tempers. One was his confessor for twenty years, the Dominican Geoffrey of Beaulieu; the other was the Sire de Joinville. Geoffrey's Vita records Louis' devotions; Joinville's Histoire notes the king's piety; but the qualities which it illuminates are those of a French gentleman and knight and grand seigneur, like Joinville himself.
The book of the Dominican is not picturesque. It opens with an edifying comparison between King Josiah and King Louis. Then it praises the king's mother, Queen Blanche of pious memory. As for Louis, the confessor has been unable to discover that he ever committed a mortal sin: he sought faithful and wise counsellors; he was careful and gracious in speech, never using an oath or any scurrilous expression. In earlier years, when under the ​necessity of taking oath, he would say, "In nomine mei"; but afterwards, hearing that some religious man had objected to this, he restricted his asseverations to the "est, est" and "non, non" of the Gospel.
From the time he first crossed the sea, he wore no scarlet raiment, but clothed himself in sober garments. And as such were of less value to give to the poor than those which he had formerly worn, he added sixty pounds a year to his almsgiving; for he did not wish the poor to suffer because of his humble dress. Geoffrey gives the long tale of his charities to the poor and to the mendicant Orders. On the Sabbaths it was the king's secret custom to wash the feet of three beggars, dry them, and kiss them humbly. He commanded in his will that no stately monument should be erected over his grave. He treated his confessors with great respect, and, while confessing, if perchance a window was to be closed or opened, he quickly rose and shut or opened it, and would not hear of his confessor doing it. In Advent season and Lent he abstained from marital intercourse. Some years before his death, if he had had his will, he would have resigned his kingdom to his son, and entered the Order of the Franciscans or Dominicans. He brought up his children most religiously, and wished some of them to take the vows.
He confessed every Friday and also between times, if something occurred to him; and if he thought of anything in the night, he would send for his confessor and confess before matins. After confession he always took his discipline from his confessor, whom he furnished with a scourge of five little braided iron chains, attached to an ivory handle. This he would afterwards put back into a little case, which he carried hanging to his belt, but out of sight. Such little cases he sometimes presented to his children or friends in secret, that they might have a ​convenient instrument of discipline. He wore haircloth next his flesh in the holy seasons, a habit distressing to his tender skin, until his confessor persuaded him to abandon this form of penance as ill comporting with his station. He replaced it by increasing his charities. His fasts were regular and frequent, till he lessened them upon prudent advice; for he was not strong. He would have liked to hear all the canonical hours chanted; and twice a day he heard Mass, and daily the Office for the Dead. Sometimes, soon after midnight, he would rise to hear matins, and then would take a quiet time for prayer by his bed. Likewise he loved to hear sermons. On returning over the sea, when the ships suffered a long delay, he had preaching three times a week, with the sermon specially adapted to the sailors, a class of men who rarely hear the Word of God. He prevailed on many of them to confess, and declared himself ready at any time to put his hand to a rope, if necessary, so that a sailor while confessing might not be called away by any exigency of the sea.
While beyond the sea, this good king, hearing that a Saracen Sultan had collected the books of their philosophy at his own expense for his subjects' use, determined not to be outdone whenever he should return to Paris, a purpose which he amply carried out, diligently and generously supplying money for copying and renewing the writings of the Doctors. At enormous expense he obtained the Saviour's crown of thorns and a good part of the true cross, from the emperor at Constantinople, with many other precious relics; all of which the king barefooted helped to carry in holy procession when they were received by the clergy of Paris.
The king was very careful in the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage, always seeing to it that the candidate was not already enjoying another benefice. His heart exulted when it came to him to bestow a benefice upon some especially holy man. He was most zealous in the suppression of swearing and blasphemy, and with the advice of the papal legate then in France issued an edict, providing that the lips of those guilty of this sin should be seared with hot irons; and when certain ones murmured, he ​declared that he would willingly suffer his own lips to be branded if that would purge his realm of this vice.
Such were the acts and qualities of Louis which impressed his Dominican confessor. They were the qualities of a saint, and would have brought their possessor to a monastery, had not his royal station held him in the world. The Dominican could not know the knightly nature of his royal penitent, and still less reflect it in his Latin of the confessional. For this there was needed the pen of a great gentleman, whose nature enabled him to picture his lord in a book of such high breeding that it were hard to find its fellow. This book is stately with the Sire de Joinville's consciousness of his position and blood, and stately through the respect he bore his lord—a book with which no one would take a liberty. Yet it is simple in thought and phrase, as written by one who lived through what he tells, and closely knew and dearly loved the king. From it one learns that he who was a saint in his confessor's eyes was also a monarch from his soul out to his royal manners and occasional royal insistence upon acts which others thought unwise. We also learn to know him as a knightly, hapless soldier of the Cross, who would not waver from his word plighted even to an infidel.
That St. Louis was a veritable knight is the first thing one learns from Joinville. The first part of my book, says that gentleman, tells how the king conducted his life after the way of God and the Church, and to the profit of his realm; the second tells of his "granz chevaleries et de ses granz faiz d'armes." "The first deed (faiz) whereby 'il mist son cors en avanture de mort' was at our arrival before Damietta, where his council was of the opinion, as I have understood, that he ought to remain in his ship until he saw what his knights (sa chevalerie) should do, who made a landing. The reason why they so counselled him was that if he disembarked, and his people should be killed and he with them, the whole affair was lost; while if he remained in his ship he could in his own person renew the attempt to conquer Egypt. And he would credit no one, but leaped into the sea, all armed, his shield hanging from his neck, his lance in hand, and was one of the first upon the beach."
​This is from Joinville's Introduction. He recommences formally:
"In the name of God the all powerful, I, John, Sire of Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, cause to be written the life of our sainted king Louis, as I saw and heard of it for the space of six years while I was in his company on the pilgrimage beyond the sea, and since we returned. And before I tell you his great deeds and prowess (chevalerie), I will recount what I saw and heard of his holy words and good precepts, so that they may be found one after
the other for the improvement of those who hear.
"This holy man loved God with all his heart, and imitated His works: which was evident in this, that as God died for the love which He bore His people, so he (Louis) put his body in peril several times for the love which he bore his people. The great love which he had for his people appeared in what he said to his eldest son, Louis, when very sick at Fontainebleau: 'Fair son,' said he, 'I beg thee to make thyself loved by the people of thy kingdom; for indeed I should prefer that a Scot from Scotland came and ruled the people of the kingdom well and faithfully, rather than that thou shouldst rule them ill in the sight of all.'"
Joinville continues relating the virtues of the king, and recording his conversations with himself:
"He called me once and said, 'Seneschal, what is God?' And I said to him, 'Sire, it is a being so good that there can be no better.'
"'Now I ask you,' said he, 'which would you choose, to be a leper, or to have committed a mortal sin?' And I who never lied to him replied that I had rather have committed thirty than be a leper. Afterwards he called me apart and made me sit at his feet and said: 'Why did you say that to me yesterday?' And I told him that I would say it again. And he: 'You speak like a thoughtless trifler; for you should know there is no leprosy so ugly as to be in mortal sin, because the soul in mortal sin is like the devil. This is why there can be no leprosy so ugly. And then, of a truth, when a man dies, he is cured of the leprosy of the body; but when the man who has committed a mortal sin dies, he does not know, nor is it certain, that he has so repented while living, that God has pardoned him; this is why he should have great fear that this leprosy will last as long as God shall be in paradise. So I pray you earnestly that you will train your heart, for the love of God and of me, to wish rather for leprosy or any other bodily evil, rather than that mortal sin should come into your soul.' He asked me whether I washed the feet of the poor on Holy Tuesday. 'Sire,' said I, 'quel malheur! I will not wash those villains' feet.' 'Truly that ​was ill said,' said he; 'for you should not hold in contempt what God did for our instruction. So I pray you, for the love of God first, and for the love of me, to accustom yourself to wash them.'"
Joinville was some years younger than his king, who loved him well and wished to help him. The king also esteemed Master Robert de Sorbon for the high respect as a preudom in which he was held, and had him eat at his table. One day Master Robert was seated next to Joinville.
"'Seneschal,' said the king, smiling, 'tell me the reasons why a man of wisdom and valour (preudom, prud'homme) is accounted better than a fool.' Then began the argument between me and Master Robert; and when we had disputed for a time, the king rendered his decision, saying: 'Master Robert, I should like to have the name of preudom, so be it that I was one, and all the rest I would leave to you; for preudom is such a grand and good thing that it fills the mouth just to pronounce it.'"
Master Robert plays a not altogether happy part in another scene, varicoloured and delightful:
"The holy king was at Corbeil one Pentecost, and twenty-four knights with him. The king went down after dinner into the courtyard back of the chapel, and was talking at the entrance with the Count of Brittany, the father of the present duke, whom God preserve. Master Robert de Sorbon came to seek me there, and took me by the cloak, and led me to the king, and all the other gentlemen came after us. Then I asked Master Robert: 'Master Robert, what would you?' And he said to me: 'If the king should sit down here, and you should seat yourself above him, I ask you whether you would not be to blame?' And I said, Yes.
"And he said to me: 'Yet you lay yourself open to blame, since you are more nobly clad than the king: for you wear squirrel's fur and cloth of green, which the king does not.'
"And I said to him: 'Master Robert, saving your grace, I do nothing worthy of blame when I wear squirrel's fur and cloth of green; for it is the clothing which my father and mother left me. But you do what is to blame; for you are the son of a vilain and vilaine, and have abandoned the clothes of your father and your mother, and are clad in richer cloth than the king.' And then I took the lappet of his surcoat and that of the king's, and said to him: 'See whether I do not speak truly.' And the king set himself to defend Master Robert with all his might."
​"Afterwards Messire the king called to him Monseigneur Philippe his son, the father of the present king, and the king Thibaut (of Navarre), and laid his hand on the earth and said: 'Sit close to me, so that they may not hear.'
"'Ah Sire,' say they, 'we dare not sit so close to you.'
"And he said to me, 'Seneschal, sit down here.' And so I did, so close that our clothes touched. And he made them sit down by me, and said to them: 'You have done ill, you who are my sons, who have not obeyed at once all that I bade you: and see to it that this does not happen with you again.' And they promised. And then he said to me, that he had called us in order to confess to me that he was in the wrong in defending Master Robert against me. 'But,' said he, 'I saw him so dumbfounded that there was good need I should defend him. And do none of you attach any importance to all I said defending Master Robert; for, as the seneschal said to him, you ought to dress well and becomingly, so that your wives may love you better, and your people hold you in higher esteem. For the sage says that one should appear in such clothes and arms that the wise of this world may not say you have done too much, nor the young people say you have done too little.'"
The hopelessly worthy parvenu was quite outside this charmed circle of blood and manners.
Another story of Joinville opens our eyes to Louis' views on Jews and infidels. The king was telling him of a grand argument between Jews and Christian clergy which was to have been held at Cluny. And a certain poverty-stricken knight was there, who obtained leave to speak the first word; and he asked the head Jew whether he believed that Mary was the mother of God and still a virgin. And the Jew answered that he did not believe it at all. The knight replied that in that case the Jew had acted like a fool to enter her monastery, and should pay for it; and with that he knocked him down with his staff, and all the other Jews ran off. When the abbot reproached him for his folly, he replied that the abbot's folly was greater in having the argument at all. "So I tell you," said the king on finishing his story, "that only a skilled clerk should dispute with misbelievers; but a layman, when he hears any one speak ill of the Christian law, should defend that law with nothing but his sword, which he should plunge into the defamer's belly, to the hilt if possible."
​Well known is the hapless outcome of St. Louis' Crusades: the first one leading to defeat and captivity in Egypt, the second ending in the king's death by disease at Tunis. Yet in what he sought to do in his Lord's cause, St. Louis was a true knight and soldier of the Cross. The spirit was willing; but the flesh accomplished little. Let us take from Joinville's story of that first crusade a wonderfully illustrative chapter, giving the confused scenes occurring after the capture of Damietta, when the French king and his feudal host had advanced southerly through the Delta, along the eastern branch of the Nile. Joinville was making a reconnaissance with his own knights, when they came suddenly upon a large body of Saracens. The Christians were hard pressed; here and there a knight falls in the melée, among them
"Monseigneur Hugues de Trichatel, the lord of Conflans, who carried my banner. I and my knights spurred to deliver Monseigneur Raoul de Wanou, who was thrown to the ground. As I was making my way back, the Turks struck at me with their lances; my horse fell on his knees under the blows, and I went over his head. I recovered myself as I might, shield on neck and sword in hand; and Monseigneur Erard de Siverey (whom God absolve!), who was of my people, came to my aid, and said that we had better retreat to a ruined house, and there wait for the king who was approaching."
One notes the high-born courtesy with which the Sire de Joinville speaks of the gentlemen who had the honour of serving him. The fight goes on.
"Monseigneur Erard de Siverey was struck by a sword-blow in his face, so that his nose hung down over his lips. And then I was minded of Monseigneur Saint Jacques, whom I thus invoked: 'Beau Sire Saint Jacques help and succour me in this need.'
"When I had made my prayer, Monseigneur Erard de Siverey said to me: 'Sire, if you think that neither I nor my heirs would suffer reproof, I would go for aid to the Count of Anjou, whom I see over there in the fields.' And I said to him: 'Messire Erard, I think you would do yourself great honour, if you now went for aid to save our lives; for your own is in jeopardy.' And indeed I spoke truly, for he died of that wound. He asked the advice of all our knights who were there, and all approved as I had approved. And when he heard that, he requested me to let him have his ​horse, which I was holding by the bridle with the rest. And so I did."
The knightliness of this scene is perfect, with its liege fealty and its carefulness as to the point of honour, its carefulness also that the vassal knight shall fail in no duty to his lord whereby the descent of his fief may be jeopardized. Monseigneur Erard (whom God absolve, we say with Joinville!) is very careful to have his lord's assent and the approval of his fellows, before he will leave his lord in peril, and undergo still greater risk to bring him succour.
Well, the Count of Anjou brought such aid as created a diversion, and the Saracens turned to the new foe. But now the king arrives on the scene:
"There where I was on foot with my knights, wounded as already said, comes the king with his whole array, and a great sound of trumpets and drums. And he halted on the road on the dyke. Never saw I one so bravely armed: for he showed above all his people from his shoulders up, a gilded casque upon his head and a German sword in his hand."
Then the king's good knights charge into the battle, and fine feats of arms are done. The fighting is fierce and general. At length the king is counselled to bear back along the river, keeping close to it on his right hand, so as to reunite with the Duke of Burgundy who had been left to guard the camp. The knights are recalled from the melée, and with a great noise of trumpets and drums, and Saracen horns, the army is set in motion.
"And now up comes the constable, Messire Imbert de Beaujeu, and tells the king that the Count of Artois, his brother, was defending himself in a house in Mansourah, and needed aid. And the king said to him: 'Constable go before and I will follow you.' And I said to the constable that I would be his knight, at which he thanked me greatly."
Again one feels the feudal chivalry. Now the affair becomes rather distraught. They set out to succour the Count of Artois, but are checked, and it is rumoured that the king is taken; and in fact six Saracens had rushed upon him and seized his horse by the bridle; but he had freed himself with such great strokes that all his people took ​courage. Yet the host is driven back upon the river, and is in desperate straits. Joinville and his knights defend a bridge over a tributary, which helps to check the Saracen advance, and affords an uncertain means of safety to the French. But there is no cessation of the Saracen attack with bows and spears. The knights seemed full of arrows. Joinville saved his life with an arrow-proof Saracen vest, "so that I was wounded by their arrows only in five places"! One of Joinville's own stout burgesses, bearing his lord's banner on a lance, helped in the charges upon the enemy. In the melée up speaks the good Count of Soissons, whose cousin Joinville had married. "He joked with me and said: 'Seneschal, let us whoop after this canaille; for by God's coif (his favourite oath) we shall be talking, you and I, about this day in the chambers of the ladies.'"
At last, the arbalests were brought out from the camp, and the Saracens drew off—fled, says the Sire de Joinville. And the king was there, and
"I took off his casque, and gave him my iron cap, so that he might get some air. And then comes brother Henry de Ronnay, Prevost of the Hospital, to the king when he had passed the river, and kisses his mailed hand. And the king asked him whether he had news of the Count of Artois, his brother; and he said that he had indeed news of him, for he was sure that his brother the Count of Artois was in Paradise. 'Ha! sire,' said the Prevost, 'be of good cheer; for no such honour ever came to a king of France as is come to you. For to fight your enemies you have crossed a river by swimming, have discomfited your enemies and driven them from the field, and taken their engines and tents, where you will sleep this night.' And the king replied that God be adored for all that He gave; and then the great tears fell from his eyes."
One need not follow on to the ill ending of the campaign, when king and knights all had to yield themselves prisoners, in most uncertain captivity. The Saracen Emirs conspired and slew their Sultan; the prisoners' lives hung on a thread; and when the terms were arranging for the delivery and ransom of the king, his own scruples nearly proved fatal. For the Emirs, after they had made their oath, wished the king to swear, and put his seal to a parchment,
"that if he the king did not hold to his agreements, might he be as shamed as the Christian who denied God and His Mother, and was cut off from the company of the twelve Companions (apostles) and of all the saints, male and female. To this the king consented. The last point of the oath was this: That if the king did not keep his agreements, might he be as shamed as the Christian who denied God and His law, and in contempt of God spat on the Cross and trod on it. When the king heard that, he said, please God, he would not make that oath."
Then the trouble began, and the Emirs tortured the venerable patriarch of Jerusalem till he besought the king to swear. How the oath was arranged I do not know, says Joinville, but finally the Emirs professed themselves satisfied. And after that, when the ransom was paid, the Saracens by a mistake accepted a sum ten thousand livres short, and Louis, in spite of the protest of his counsellors, refused to permit advantage to be taken and insisted on full payment. Many years afterwards, when Louis was dead and canonized, a dream came to his faithful Joinville who was then an old man.
"It seemed to me in my dream that I saw the king in front of my chapel at Joinville; and he was, so he seemed to me, wonderfully happy and glad at heart; and I also was glad at heart, because I saw him in my chateau. And I said to him: 'Sire, when you go hence, I will prepare lodging for you at my house in my village of Chevillon.' And he replied, smiling, and said to me: 'Sire de Joinville, by the troth I owe you, I do not wish so soon to go from here.' When I awoke I bethought me; and it seemed to me that it would please God and the king that I should provide a lodging for him in my chapel. So I have placed an altar in honour of God and of him there, where there shall be always chanting in his honour. And I have established a fund in perpetuity to do this."
Godfrey of Bouillon and St. Louis of France show knighthood as inspired by serious and religious motives. We pass on a hundred years after St. Louis, to a famous Chronicle concerning men whose knightly lives exhibit no such religious, and possibly no such serious, purpose, so far at least as they are set forth by this delightful chronicler. His name of course is Sir John Froissart, and his chief work goes under the name of The Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining Countries. It covers the period ​from the reign of Edward II. to the coronation of Henry IV. of England. Have we not all known his book as one to delight youth and age?
Let us, however, open it seriously, and first of all notice the Preface, with its initial sentence giving the note of the entire work: "That the grans merveilles and the biau fait d'armes achieved in the great wars between England and France, and the neighbouring realms may be worthily recorded, and known in the present and in the time to come, I purpose to order and put the same in prose, according to the true information which I have obtained from valiant knights, squires, and marshals at arms, who are and rightly should be the investigators and reporters of such matters."
"Marvels" and "deeds of arms"—soon he will use the equivalent phrase belles aventures. With delicious garrulity, but never wavering from his point of view, the good Sir John repeats and enlarges as he enters on his work in which "to encourage all valorous hearts, and to show them honourable examples" he proposes to "point out and speak of each adventure from the nativity of the noble King Edward (III.) of England, who so potently reigned, and who was engaged in so many battles and perilous adventures and other feats of arms and great prowess, from the year of grace 1326, when he was crowned in England."
Of course Froissart says that the occasion of these wars was King Edward's enterprise to recover his inheritance of France, which the twelve peers and barons of that realm had awarded to Lord Philip of Valois, from whom it had passed on to his son, King Charles. This enterprise was the woof whereon should hang an hundred years of knightly and romantic feats of arms, which incidentally wrought desolation to the fair realm of France. Yet the full opening of these matters was not yet; and Froissart begins with the story of the troubles brought on Queen Isabella and the ​nobles of England through the overbearing insolence of Sir Hugh Spencer, the favourite of her husband Edward II.
The Queen left England secretly, to seek aid at Paris from her brother King Charles, that she might regain her rights against the upstart and her own weak estranged husband. King Charles received her graciously, as a great lord should receive a great dame; and richly provided for her and her young son Edward. Then he took counsel of the "great lords and barons of his kingdom"; and their advice was that he should permit her to enlist assistance in his realm, and yet himself appear ignorant of the matter. Of this, Sir Hugh hears, and his gold is busy with these counsellors; so that the Court becomes a cold place for the self-exiled queen. On she fares in her distress, and, as advised, seeks the aid of the great Earl of Hainault, then at Valenciennes. But before the queen can reach that city, the earl's young brother, Sir John, Lord of Beaumont, rides to meet her, ardent to succour a great lady in distress, "being at that time very young, and panting for glory like a knight-errant" In the evening he reached the house of Sir Eustace d'Ambreticourt, where the queen was lodged. She made her lamentable complaint, at which Sir John was affected even to tears, and said, "Lady, see here your knight, who will not fail to die for you, though every one else should desert you; therefore will I do everything in my power to conduct you and your son, and to restore you to your rank in England, by the grace of God, and the assistance of your friends in those parts; and I, and all those whom I can influence, will risk our lives on the adventure for your sake."
Is not this a chivalric beginning? And so the Chronicle goes on. King Edward III. is crowned, marries the Lady Philippa, daughter of the Earl of Hainault, and afterwards sends his defiance to Philip, King of France, for not yielding up to him his rightful inheritance, and this after the same King Edward had, as Duke of Aquitaine, done homage to King Philip for that great duchy.
So the challenge of King Edward, and of sundry other lords, was delivered to the King of France; and thereupon the first bold raid is made by the knightliest figure of the ​first generation of the war, Sir Walter Manny, a young Hainaulter who had remained in the train of Queen Philippa. The war is carried on by incursions and deeds of derring-do, the larger armies of the kings of England and France circumspectly refraining from battle, which might have checked the martial jollity of the affair. It is all beautifully pointless and adventurous, and carried out in the spirit of a knighthood that loves fighting and seeks honour and adventure, while steadying itself with a hope of plunder and reward. There are likewise ladies to be succoured and defended.
One of these was the lion-hearted Countess of Montfort, who with her husband had become possessed of the disputed dukedom of Brittany. The Earl of Montfort did homage to the King of England; the rival claimant, Charles of Blois, sought the aid of France. He came with an army, and Montfort was taken and died in prison; the duchess was left to carry on the war. She was at last shut up and besieged in Hennebon on the coast; the burghers were falling away, the knights discouraged; emissaries from Lord Charles were working among them. His ally, Lord Lewis of Spain, and Sir Hervé de Leon were the leaders of the besiegers. Sir Hervé had an uncle, a bishop, Sir Guy de Leon, who was on the side of the Countess of Montfort. The nephew won the uncle over in a conference without the walls; and the latter assumed the task of persuading the Lords of Brittany who were with the countess to abandon the apparently hopeless struggle. Re-entering the town, the bishop was eloquent against the countess's cause, and promised free pardon to the lords if they would give up the town. Now listen to Froissart, how he tells the story:
"The countess had strong suspicions of what was going forward, and begged of the lords of Brittany, for the love of God, that they would not doubt but she should receive succours before three days were over. But the bishop spoke so eloquently, and made use of such good arguments, that these lords were in much suspense all that night. On the morrow he continued the subject, and succeeded so far as to gain them over, or very nearly so, to his opinion; insomuch that Sir Hervé de Leon had advanced close to the town to take possession of it, with their free consent, when the countess looking out from a window of the castle toward the sea, ​cried out most joyfully, 'I see the succours I have so long expected and wished for coming.' She repeated this twice; and the town's people ran to the ramparts and to the windows of the castle, and saw a numerous fleet of great and small vessels, well trimmed, making all the sail they could toward Hennebon. They rightly imagined it must be the fleet from England, so long detained at sea by tempests and contrary winds.
"When the governor of Guingamp, Sir Yves de Tresiquidi, Sir Galeran de Landreman, and the other knights, perceived this succour coming to them, they told the bishop that he might break up his conference, for they were not now inclined to follow his advice. The bishop, Sir Guy de Leon, replied, 'My lords, then our company shall separate; for I will go to him who seems to me to have the clearest right.' Upon which he sent his defiance to the lady, and to all her party, and left the town to inform Sir Hervé de Leon how matters stood. Sir Hervé was much vexed at it, and immediately ordered the largest machine that was with the army to be placed as near the castle as possible, strictly commanding that it should never cease working day nor night. He then presented his uncle to the Lord Lewis of Spain, and to the Lord Charles of Blois, who both received him most courteously. The countess, in the meantime, prepared and hung with tapestry halls and chambers to lodge handsomely the lords and barons of England, whom she saw coming, and sent out a noble company to meet them. When they were landed, she went herself to give them welcome, respectfully thanking each knight and squire, and led them into the town and castle that they might have convenient lodging: on the morrow, she gave them a magnificent entertainment. All that night, and the following day, the large machine never ceased from casting stones into the town.
"After the entertainment, Sir Walter Manny, who was captain of the English, inquired of the countess the state of the town and the enemy's army. Upon looking out of the window, he said, he had a great inclination to destroy that large machine which was placed so near, and much annoyed them, if any would help him. Sir Yves de Tresiquidi replied, that he would not fail him in this his first expedition; as did also the lord of Landreman. They went to arm themselves, and then sallied quietly out of one of the gates, taking with them three hundred archers, who shot so well, that those who guarded the machine fled, and the men at arms, who followed the archers, falling upon them, slew the greater part, and broke down and cut in pieces this large machine. They then dashed in among the tents and huts, set fire to them, and killed and wounded many of their enemies before the army was in motion. After this they made a handsome retreat. When the enemy were mounted and armed they galloped after them like madmen.
​"Sir Walter Manny, seeing this, exclaimed, 'May I never be embraced by my mistress and dear friend, if I enter castle or fortress before I have unhorsed one of these gallopers.' He then turned round, and pointed his spear toward the enemy, as did the two brothers of Lande-Halle, le Haze de Brabant, Sir Yves de Tresiquidi, Sir Galeran de Landreman, and many others, and spitted the first coursers. Many legs were made to kick the air. Some of their own party were also unhorsed. The conflict became very serious, for reinforcements were perpetually coming from the camp; and the English were obliged to retreat towards the castle, which they did in good order until they came to the castle ditch; there the knights made a stand, until all their men were safely returned. Many brilliant actions, captures, and rescues might have been seen. Those of the town who had not been of the party to destroy the large machine now issued forth, and, ranging themselves upon the banks of the ditch, made such good use of their bows, that they forced the enemy to withdraw, killing many men and horses. The chiefs of the army, perceiving they had the worst of it, and that they were losing men to no purpose, sounded a retreat, and made their men retire to the camp. As soon as they were gone, the townsmen re-entered, and went each to his quarters. The Countess of Montfort came down from the castle to meet them, and with a most cheerful countenance, kissed Sir Walter Manny, and all his companions, one after the other like a noble and valiant dame."
In this manner the genial chronicler goes on through his long delightful ramble. After a while the chief combatants close. Cressy is fought and Poictiers. The Black Prince, that extremest bit of knightly royalty, fills the page. The place of Sir Walter Manny is taken by the larger figure of Sir John Chandos, and, on the other side, the usually unfortunate but unconquerable Bertrand du Guesclin. Froissart is at his best when he tells of the great expedition of the Black Prince to restore the cruel Don Pedro of Castille to the throne from which he had been expelled by that picturesque bastard brother Henry, who had a poorer title but a better right, by virtue of being fit to rule.
This whole expedition was—as we see it in Froissart—neither politics nor war, but chivalry. What interest had England, or Edward III., or the Prince of Wales in Don Pedro? None. He was a cruel tyrant, rightfully expelled. The Prince of Wales would set him back upon his throne in the interest of royal legitimacy, and because there offered a ​brilliant opportunity for fame and plunder: the Black Prince thought less of the latter than the Free Companies enlisted under his banner, and less than his own rapacious knights.
So in three divisions, headed by the most famous knights and in a way generalled by Sir John Chandos, the host passes through the kingdom of Navarre, and crosses the Pyrenees. Then begin a series of exploits. Sir Thomas Felton and a company set out just to dare and beard the Castillian army, and after entrancing feats of knight-errantry, are all captured or slain. Much is the prince annoyed at this; but bears on, gladdened with the thought, often expressed, that the bastard Henry is a bold and hardy knight, and is advancing to give battle.
And true it was. One of Henry's counsellors explains to him how easy it is to hem in the Black Prince in the defiles, and starve him into a disastrous retreat. Perish the thought! "By the soul of my father," answers King Henry, "I have such a desire to see this prince, and to try my strength with him, that we will never part without a battle."
So the unnecessary and resultless battle of Navaretta took place. Don Pedro, the cruel rightful king, was knighted, with others, by the Prince of Wales before the fight. The tried unflinching chivalry of England and Aquitaine conquered, although one division of King Henry's host had du Guesclin at its head. That knight was captured; somehow his star had a way of sinking before the steadier fortune of Sir John Chandos, who was here du Guesclin's captor for a second time. King Henry, after valiant fighting, escaped. Don Pedro was re-set upon his throne; and played false with the Black Prince and his army, in the matter of pay. The whole expedition turned back across the Pyrenees. And not so long after, Henry bestirred himself, and the tardily freed du Guesclin hurried again to aid him. This time there was no Black Prince and Sir John Chandos; and Don Pedro was conquered and slain, and Henry was at last firm upon his throne.
Could anything have been more chivalric, more objectless, and more absolutely lacking in result? It is a beautiful story; every one should refresh his childhood's memory of it ​by reading Froissart's delightful pages. And then let him also read at least the subsequent story of the death of Sir John Chandos in a knightly brush at arms; he, the really wise and great leader, perishes through his personal rash knighthood! It is a fine tale of the ending of an old and mighty knight, the very flower of chivalry, as he was called.
So matters fare on through these Chronicles. All is charming and interesting and picturesque; charming also for the knights: great fame is won and fat ransoms paid to recoup knightly fortunes. Now and then—all too frequently, alas! and the only pity of it all!—some brave knight has the mishap to lose his life! That is to say, the only pity of it from the point of view of good Sir John. But we can see further horrors in this picture of chivalry's actualities: we see King Edward pillage, devastate, destroy France; we see the awful outcome of the general ruin in the rising of the vile, unhappy peasants, the Jacquerie; then in the indiscriminate slaughter and pillaging by the Free Companies, no longer well employed by royalties; and then we see the cruel treachery of many an incident wrought out by such a flower of chivalry even as du Guesclin. Indeed all the horrors of ceaseless interminable war are everywhere, and no more dreadful horror through the whole story than the bloody sack of Limoges commanded by that perfect knight, the Black Prince, himself stricken with disease, and carried in a litter through the breach of the walls into the town, and there reposing, assuaging his cruel soul, while his men run hither and thither "slaying men, women and children according to their orders."
But when King Edward was old, and the Prince of Wales dying with disease, the French and their partisans gathered heart, and pressed back the English party with successful captures and reprisals. Du Guesclin was made Constable of France; and there remained no English leader who was his match. From this second period onwards, the wars and slaughters and pillagings become more embittered, more horrid and less relieved. The tone of everything is brutalized, and the good chronicler himself frequently animadverts on the wanton destruction wrought, and the ​frightful ruin. All is not as in the opening of the story, which was so fascinating, so knightly and almost as purely adventurous as the Arthurian romances—only that there was less love of ladies and a disturbing dearth of forests perilous, and enchanted castles. It was then that the reader had ever and anon to remind himself that Froissart is not romance or legend, but a contemporary chronicle; and that in spite of heightened colours and expanded (if not invented) dialogues, his narrative does not belong to the imaginative or fictitious side of chivalry, but to its actualities.
Froissart's pictures of the depravity and devastation caused by the wars of England and France, disclose the unhappy actuality in which chivalry might move and have its being. And the knights were part of the cruelty, treachery, and lust. One may remark besides in Froissart a certain shallowness, a certain emptying, of the spirit of chivalry. One phase of this lay in the expansion of form and ceremony, while life was departing;—as, for example, in the hypertrophe of heraldry, and in the pageantry of the later tournaments, where such care was taken to prevent injury to the combatants. A subtler phase of chivalry's emptying lay in its preciosity and in the excessive growth of fantasy and utter romance—of which enough will be said in the next chapter.
* ↑ See Bourgain, La Chaire française au XIIᵉ siècle; Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire française au XIIIᵉ siècle.
* ↑ Certain kinds of literature, in nature satirical or merely gross, portray, doubtless with grotesque exaggeration, the ways and manners of clerks and merchants, craftsmen and vile serfs, as well as those of monks and bishops, lords and ladies. A notable example is offered by the old French fabliaux, which with coarse and heartless laughter, rather than with any definite satirical intent, display the harshness, brutality, the degradation and hardship of the ways of living coming within their range of interest. In them we see the brutal and deceived husband, the wily clerk, the merchant with his tricks of trade, the vilain, raised above the brute, not by a better way of life as much as by a certain native wit. The women were reviled as coarsely as in monkish writings; but a Rabelaisian quality takes the place of doctrinal prurience. In weighing the evidence of these fabliaux their satirical nature should be allowed for. Cf. Langlois, La Vie en France au moyen âge d'après quelques moralistes du temps (Paris, 1908); also the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry; Pitra, Analecta novissima spicilegii Solesmensis, t. ii., and Haurèau upon the same in Journal des savants, 1888, p. 410 sqq.
* ↑ Such immunities were common before Charlemagne. Cf. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 243-302.
* ↑ Gesta regum Anglorum, iii. (Migne 179, col. 1213).
* ↑ Taken from the note to p. 274 of Gautier's Chevalerie.
* ↑ See Du Cange, Glossarium, under "Miles," etc.; where much information may be found uncritically put together.
* ↑ Cf. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 202-216.
* ↑ The way that miles came to mean knight has its analogy in the etymological history of the word "knight" itself. In German and French the words "Ritter" and "chevalier" indicate one who fought on horseback. Not so with the English word "knight," which in its original Anglo-Saxon and Old-German forms (see Murray's Dictionary) as cniht and kneht might mean any armed follower. It lost its servile sense slowly. "In 1086 we read that the Conqueror dubbade his sunn Henric to ridere; this … is the next year Englished by cniht" (Kington-Oliphant, Old and Middle English, p. 130; Macmillan, 1878).
* ↑ We naturally use the term "free" with reference to modern conditions, where law and its sanctions emanate, in fact as well as theory, from a stable government. But in these early feudal periods where a man's life and property were in fact and theory protected by the power of his immediate lord, to whom he was bound by the strongest ties then recognized, to be "free" might be very close to being an unprotected outlaw.
* ↑ In these respects it exhibits analogies to monkhood, which likewise was recruited commonly from the upper classes of society.
* ↑ See Gautier, La Chevalerie, p. 256 sqq.; Du Cange, under the word "Miles.".
* ↑ Cf. Gautier, o.c. 296-308. It must be remembered that an abbot or a bishop might also be a knight and so could make knights. See Du Cange, Glossarium, "Abbas" (abbates miletes).
* ↑ On this blow, called in Latin alapa, in French atcotte, in English accolade, see Du Cange under "Alapa," and Gautier, o.c. pp. 246-247, and 270 sqq.
* ↑ Chanson de Roland, 2344 sqq. Lines 2500-2510 speak of Charlemagne's sword, named Joiuse because of the honour it had in having in its hilt the iron of the lance which pierced the Saviour.
* ↑ Gantier, Chevalerie, pp. 290, 297. Examples of these ceremonies may be found as follows: the actual one of the knighting of Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou by Henry I. of England, at Rouen in 1129, in the Chronicle of Johannis Turonensis, Historiens de France, xii. p. 520; Gautier, Chevalerie, p. 275. Gautier gives many examples, and puts together a typical ceremony, as of the twelfth century, in Chev. p. 309 sqq. Perhaps the most famous account of all is that of the poem entitled Ordene de Chevalerie (thirteenth century), published by Barbazan, Fabliaux, etc., i. 59-82 (Paris, 1808). It relates how a captive Christian knight bestowed the order of chivalry, i.e. knighthood, upon Saladin. See other accounts cited in Du Cange under "Miles."
* ↑ Not war as we understand it, where with some large purpose one great cohesive state directs its total military power against another; but neighbourhood war, never permanently ended. When not actually attacking or defending, men were anticipating attack, or expecting to make a raid. Perhaps nothing better suggests the local and neighbourly character of these feudal hostilities than the most famous means devised by the Church to mitigate them. This was the "Truce of God," promulgated in the eleventh century. It forbade hostilities from Thursday to Monday and in Lent. Whether this ordinance was effective or not, it indicates the nature of the wars that could stop from Thursday to Monday!
* ↑ Courtly, chivalric, or romantic, love as an element of knightly excellence is so inseverably connected with its romantic literature that I have kept it for the next chapter.
* ↑ The following remarks upon the regula of the Templars, and the extracts which are given, are based on the introduction and text of La Règle du Temple, edited by Henri de Curzon for the Société de l'Histoire de France (Paris, 1886).
* ↑ The phraseology of the Latin regula often follows that of the Benedictine rule.
* ↑ Chaps. 33, 35.
* ↑ Chaps. 40, 41.
* ↑ Chap. 42.
* ↑ Chaps. 46, 48.
* ↑ Chap. 62 Latin regula and chap. 14 of French regle.
* ↑ Chap. 51.
* ↑ Chap. 58 of the Latin, chap. 11 of the French. The chapters of the French translation do not follow the order of the Latin.
* ↑ Page 167 of de Curzon's edition.
* ↑ See in de Curzon's edition, sections 431, 436, 448, 454, and 657 sqq.
* ↑ It would seem as if military discipline, as moderns understand it, took its rise in these Templars and Hospitallers.
* ↑ See e.g. de Curzon's edition, sections 419, 420, 574.
* ↑ Raimundus de Agiles, Hist. Francorum qui ceperunt Jerusalem, cap. 38-39. (Migne 155, col. 659).
* ↑ On these poems see Pigeonneau, Le Cycle de la Croisade (St. Cloud, 1877); Paulin Paris, in Histoire litttraire de la France, vol. 22, pp. 350-402, and ibid. vol. 25, p. 507 sqq.; Gaston Paris, "La Naissance du chevalier au Cygne," Romania, 19, p. 314 sqq. (1890).
* ↑ "Vita Ludovici noni auctore Gaufrido de Belloloco" (Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, t. xx. pp. 3-26).
* ↑ The Testament of St Louis, written for his eldest son, is a complete rule of conduct for a Christian prince, and indicates St. Louis' mind on the education of one. It has been printed and translated many times. Geoffrey of Beaulieu gives it in Latin (chap. xv.) and in French at the end of the Vita. It is also in Joinville.
* ↑ One sees here the same religious anxiety which is so well brought out by Salimbene's account of St. Louis, ante, Chapter XXI.
* ↑ The founder of the College of the Sorbonne.
* ↑ Chroniques de J, Froissart, ed. S. Luce (Société de l'Histoire de France). The opening of the Prologue. It seemed desirable to render this sentence literally. The rest of my extracts are from Thomas Johnes's translation, for which I plead a boyhood's affection. For a brief account of Froissart's chief source (Jean le Bel), with excellent criticism, see W. P. Ker, "Froissart" (Essays on Medieval Literature, Macmillan and Co., 1905).
* ↑ Froissart, i. 210.
* ↑ Froissart, i. 220.
* ↑ Froissart, i. 290.
* ↑ Yet the matter was fit for legend and romance; and a late impotent chanson de geste was formed out of the career of du Guesclin.