6

Ch. 14.

Influence of chivalry on

ners.

INFLUENCE OF CHIVALRY.

their deaths; the worship of their paltry images; the signs, the wonders, the corporal punishments, the penances, the mummery, the grimace of a spurious Christianity, were hardly less adverse to the interests of true religion than a paganism which was linked with poetry and the arts.

It is difficult to suppose that a generation wholly illiterate, and oppressed by a dull and sordid superstition, could be animated by the noblest sentiments of virtue, as well as by a strict regard to the minor morals which embellish polite life; we are not required to believe anything so improbable. Magnanimity, honour, justice, truth, chastity, courtesy, can never, I hope, be wholly eradicated from human nature; but the examples of such virtues are rare in a barbarous age, and shine with greater lustre from the darkness which surrounds them. Rapine, falsehood, tyranny, lust, and violence, were the real characteristics of the gloomy interval between the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of modern society.

But, without attributing to a state of society modern man- which, though strained to a certain fantastic and unnatural fashion, was essentially rude and barbarous, the influence of qualities which have never yet predominated amidst the refinement of ancient or modern manners, it is, nevertheless, from the sentiment and practice of a chivalrous age, that the grace and polish of modern life is mainly derived. The adoption of slavery in the domestic institutions of Greece and Rome went far to reduce the

CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD.

Ch. 14.

gallantry.

relation of the sexes to the mere level of concu-
binage; the Christian dispensation restored to
woman her just rights, and endowed the conditions.
of wife and mother with the respect and authority
which are their due. Still something was needed
to redress the inequality between the weaker sex
and the proud lord of the creation. This defect
was supplied by the institution of chivalry. The
homage paid to women, extravagant and fantastical
as it was, introduced a new principle into social
life. The divine law, while it decreed that man Chivalric
should be the husband of one wife, still required
the woman to obey. But the Christian knight
deemed it his highest preferment to be the obse-
quious slave of woman; and the two cardinal
virtues of chivalry, valour and love, were expressed
by the one word, gallantry; though whether man-
ners were not refined by this beautiful fanaticism
at the cost of morality may perhaps be doubted.
Certain it is, that the age of chivalry was not less
dissolute than that of Charles the Second, or of the
Regent Orleans. At no period was the marriage
tie more frail than when women were all but wor-
shipped. The offspring of lawless love was hardly,
if at all, inferior in social position to the issue of
wedded vows. It was a common practice for men
of high rank to assume, as a surname, the designa-
tion of unlawful birth, as they would that of
Beauclerc or Longsword. Frequently the bold
Bastard succeeded to his father's inheritance, and
sometimes even took possession of a throne to the

8

Ch. 14.

Influence of chivalry on the female character.

CAVALIERS AND TROUBADOURS.

disherison of his legitimate brother.

It was

equally in vain that the Church denounced incon-
tinence as a mortal sin; and that the law of the
land refused to recognise the title of a bastard to
any position in society. The most illustrious
members of the most exclusive and punctilious
aristocracy the world ever saw were not ashamed
to display the bar sinister on their shields; and
even the paramour of a gentleman, if herself noble,
was neither disqualified to retain her position in
society, nor considered unworthy to form a
matrimonial alliance with a knight of unblemished
honour.

The effect, as well as the tendency, of these
manners, was to weaken female modesty and
reserve. With the religion of the Confessional,
and the education of Romance, fed by adulation
from the hands of valour and chivalry, amused by
the still more seductive talents of minstrels and
pages, living in idleness, luxury, and vanity, it
would have been marvellous indeed if women had
withstood the temptations to which they were
exposed. The noble and gallant cavalier expected,
and obtained the reward of his devotion; the licen-
tious and insinuating troubadour was a still more
frequent and successful suitor in the bower of
beauty. Nevertheless, this fashion of gallantry,
though adopted perhaps in mere wantonness or
caprice, has indelibly stamped the character of
modern society. Freed from the exaggeration
and grossness of its origin, the sentiment of chi-

1

CODE OF HONOUR.

valry has acquired a more amiable and generous character. If the sex are no longer worshipped with enthusiastic and passionate devotion, they are amply compensated by an ever vigilant and delicate attention, by a more sincere respect, and by an affection which, though less fulsome in its expression, is not less deep and ardent. The old as well as the young, the homely as well as the fair, alike experience the generous gallantry of an enlightened age.

Ch. 14.

notions of

Linked with this charming virtue, and sprung Chivalric from the same source, was the kindred sentiment honour of Honour. As the intercourse of the sexes was regulated by gallantry, the relations between gentlemen were governed by the law of honour. Though this law was undoubtedly the invention of chivalry, it hardly admits of accurate definition. It existed independently of, if not superior to, the law of God and man; and was, in many important particulars, consistent with the violation of both. It was the privilege of a gentleman to set up his own standard of morality, and to disdain the obligations which bind ordinary men. Oaths and engagements of the most solemn kind were regarded very much as promises made under duress, which might be eluded or set aside; but the perjured knight shrank from the certain disgrace which would attend the slightest evasion of his plighted word. He might commit deeds of injustice, treachery, and cruelty, nay, open robbery and murder, and yet maintain his chivalrous cha

9

ΙΟ

CODE OF HONOUR.

Ch. 14. racter; but he was accounted ever infamous who failed to resent the slightest affront; who took an unfair advantage of his mortal foe; or who shrank from poverty, bondage, or death, in the fulfilment of an idle vow, in the service of his mistress, or in the performance of military duty. 'All is lost save honour,' was the famous saying of Francis the First on the fatal field of Pavia. Yet this chivalrous prince thought it no shame to obtain his ransom on the most favourable terms from his conqueror on the faith of solemn stipulations, every one of which he had previously determined to violate.

Conservative influence of chivalry.

Code of honour.

Yet this strange conventional morality, which seemed destructive of the plain principles of honesty and truth, was in effect conservative of both. In an age when the church offered, to the rich and powerful, ready dispensation from duties and engagements even of the most solemn kind, and condoned offences against the law of God for pecuniary penalties, the only safeguard against an utter depravation of manners in the privileged class was in the existence of some restraint on conscience, which the priest could neither bind nor loose. Such a restraint is Honour, whose decrees, though enforced neither by spiritual terrors nor the arm of the civil magistrate, are still implicitly obeyed by many who regard no other law, human or divine.

The code of honour, as practised in the dark ages, was imperfect and uncertain, as their gal