Le Morte Darthur
the main offices, interests, and occupations of the great body politic
are non-military, and the army is but a small portion of the nation,
specially trained for a minor, though indispensable, function therein.
Peace, for its own sake, and for the sake of the objects which can only
be obtained by the arts and with the opportunities of peace, is the end
and aim of every civilised nation now; and war is only an occasional
means to secure that end. But in the Middle Ages war was, or seemed to
be, the chief end of life to the greater part of every nation, and
especially to all who possessed rank, and wealth, and power, and were
in fact the leaders of the nation. And therefore chivalry, the spirit
which was to humanise those warriors, needed to be warlike too, and
thus to sympathise with those to whom it addressed itself.
Much, too, of its special form it no doubt owed to that wonderful race
of heroes, the Normans. The romantic love of adventure; the religious
and the martial enthusiasm; the desire to revenge injuries, and to win
wealth and power; the delight in arms and horses, in the luxury of
dress, and in the exercises of hunting and hawking; the eloquence and
sagacity in council; the patience with which when need was they could
endure the inclemency of every climate, and the toil and abstinence of
a military life; and the gentleness, the affability and the gallantry,
which were the characteristics of the Norman race; these must have been
more or less impressed on men’s minds wherever the Norman sway or
influence extended, from England to Sicily, and must have reproduced
something of themselves in the social habits and manners of the times.
When we read the description of William of the Iron Arm, the first
Norman count of Apulia, so strong, so brave, so affable, so generous,
and so sage above other men—a lion in battle, a lamb in society, and
an angel in council—we are reminded of the heroes of chivalry in the
days of its greatest refinement, the Black Prince, Sir John Chandos,
and Sir Walter of Manny, as they still live in the pages of Froissart;
or their counterparts in romance, King Arthur, Sir Launcelot, Amadis of
Gaul, or Palmerin of England.
The Normans, the latest of the Northern races who descended, full of
wild life, from their mountains and forests, upon the comparatively
civilised plains of Europe, may have brought a newer and fresher
feeling for those old manners and customs which Tacitus describes as
characterising the Germans of his time, and which are with so much
probability connected with the chivalry of the Middle Ages. In ancient
Germany, and in Scandinavia, it was the custom for each youth, when he
was of an age to bear arms, to be presented with a sword, a shield, and
a lance, by his father, or some near relation, in an assembly of the
chiefs of the nation; and from that time he became a member of the
commonwealth, and ranked as a citizen. He then entered the train of
some chief, of whom he and his brother youths became the followers and
companions, forming one brotherhood, though not without ranks and
degrees, while a generous spirit of equality ran through all.
In ancient Germany, too, women were held in a peculiar reverence,
beyond what was known in the other—and otherwise more
civilized—nations of antiquity; and the presence of women in the hour
of battle with their husbands, brothers, and fathers, was regarded by
those warriors as an incentive to courage, and a pledge of victory,
which (as they boasted) their Roman foes were unable to appeal to for
themselves. And this old Teutonic reverence for women conspired with
the new Christian reverence for the Virgin Mary as the type and
representative at once of her sex and of the Church, to supply the
purer and nobler elements of the gallantry which forms so large a part,
not only of the romance, but of the actual history, of chivalry.
But Christianity exercised not only an indirect, but also a direct and
avowed action upon the forms of chivalry, as they attained to their
full proportions. Knighthood was certainly a feature and distinction of
society before the days of Charlemagne, who in permitting the governor
of Friesland to make knights by girding them with a sword, and giving
them a blow, adds ‘as is the custom.’ But no ritual of the Church as
yet consecrated that custom. Charlemagne girt the sword on his son
Louis the Good without religious ceremonies; and a century later the
Saxon king of England, Edward the Elder, clothed Athelstan in a
soldier’s dress of scarlet, and girded him with a girdle ornamented
with precious stones and a sword with sheath of gold, but without
religious rites. But in the next century, in the reign of Edward the
Confessor, we read that Hereward, a noble Anglo-Saxon youth, was
knighted by the Abbot of Peterborough, with confession, absolution, and
prayer that he might be a true knight. And this the historian describes
as the custom of the English, as indeed it was, or soon became, that of
all Europe; the Normans resisting the innovation longest, but at last
adopting it with their wonted ardour. The candidate for knighthood
confessed his sins on the eve of his consecration (for such it now
was), and passed the night in prayer and fasting in the church: the
godfathers, the bath, the white garment, and the tonsure (sometimes
limited indeed to a single lock) were the symbols of the new and holy
state of life to which he was now called: next morning he heard mass,
offered his sword on the altar, where it was blessed by the priest; and
he was created a knight—either by the priest of highest rank present,
or by some knight, who, in virtue of his knighthood, was qualified to
confer the sacred office he had himself received—in the name of God,
of St. George, and of Saint Michael the Archangel. He swore, and
received the holy communion in confirmation of his oath, to fulfil the
duties of his profession; to speak the truth; to maintain the right; to
protect women, the poor, and the distressed; to practise courtesy; to
pursue the infidels; to despise the allurements of ease and safety, and
to maintain his honour in every perilous adventure. And the Council of
Cleremont, of which I have already spoken—as if in order to give the
sanction of the Church in a still more formal and comprehensive manner
to the whole system of chivalry—decreed that every person of noble
birth, on attaining the age of twelve years, should take a solemn oath
before the bishop of his diocese to defend to the uttermost the
oppressed, the widow, and the orphans; that women of noble birth, both
married and single, should enjoy his especial care; and that nothing
should be wanting in him to render travelling safe, and to destroy
tyranny.
Thus, as has been justly observed, all the humanities of chivalry were
sanctioned by legal and ecclesiastical power: it was intended that they
should be spread over the whole face of Christendom, in order to check
the barbarism and ferocity of the times. While the form of chivalry was
martial, its objects became to a great extent religious and social:
from a mere military array chivalry obtained the name of the Order, the
Holy Order, and a character of seriousness and solemnity was given to
it; and it was accounted an honourable office above all offices,
orders, and acts of the world, except the order of priesthood.
The education for knighthood usually began at a still earlier age than
that mentioned in the Canons of Cleremont. The castles of the princes
and nobles were the schools of those days, at least for the youth of
their own class. Every feudal lord had his court, to which he drew the
sons and daughters of the poorer gentry of his domains; and if he were
a knight distinguished for his merits, his castle was also frequented
by the children of men of equal rank and reputation with himself: for
the prudent and careful father would often have some brother in arms
whom he thought better fitted than himself to educate his children in
the accomplishments and duties of his station. So, long after, Ben
Jonson, looking back on those old times, and picturing them in their
ideal aspect, says, that then
‘Goodness gave the greatness,
And greatness worship: every house became
An academy of honour.’
And that this method of education
‘By a line
Of institution from our ancestors,
Hath been deriv’d down to us, and receiv’d
In a succession, for the noblest way
Of breeding up our youth in letters, arms,
Fair mien, discourses, civil exercises,
And all the blazon of a gentleman.
Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence,
To move his body gracefuller, to speak
His language purer, or to tune his mind
Or manners more to the harmony of nature,
Than in these nurseries of nobility?’
The boy of gentle birth, when he thus began his education, was called
by the names of Childe, or Damoiseau, or Valet, said to be a
contraction of Vassalet or little Vassal, and also Page, though this
last name was originally appropriated to the youths of inferior rank.
He usually entered the castle which was to be his school about the age
of seven or eight. He was to learn modesty, obedience, and address in
arms and horsemanship, and was duly exercised in the use of his
weapons, beginning with such as were suited to his strength. He was
instructed how to guide a horse with grace and dexterity, how to use
the bow and the sword, and how to manage the lance,—an art which was
taught him by making him ride against a wooden figure, which, if not
struck in true knightly fashion, was so contrived as to turn round and
give the awkward cavalier a blow with its wooden sword. He attended his
lord in the chase, and learnt all its arts; he attended him also in
many offices which we should now call menial, but which were then held
to be the proper symbols of modesty and obedience for the youth of
highest birth and rank. Thus the Black Prince was held to show the
highest respect to the French king, his prisoner, by personal
attendance on him. In the words of Froissart: ‘The same day of the
battle, at night, the prince made a supper in his lodging to the French
king, and to the most part of the great lords that were prisoners ...
and always the prince served before the king as humbly as he could, and
would not sit at the king’s board for any desire that the king could
make; but he said he was not sufficient to sit at the table with so
great a prince as the king was.’
And not the least important of the youth’s duties were those towards
the ladies of the house in which he lived. He was to wait on them
rather as attending a sort of superior beings to whom adoration and
obsequious service were due, than as ministering to the convenience of
human creatures like himself. The most modest demeanour, the most
profound respect, were to be observed in the presence of these fair
idols. And as not only the youths, but the maidens—the damoiselles no
less than the damoiseaux—were sent to the courts of the barons and
their ladies for education, it would often happen that this veneration
in which the boy was so early trained towards the ladies of maturer
years, would find an object in some young maiden whose more suitable
age might lead him, as he grew up, from mere boyish regard to that
passionate and abiding devotion which was the duty of every true knight
to his lady, and by the strength of which he held that all his power
for good was to be maintained. Here is a description of the beginning
of the loves of Amadis and Oriana, which is as charming as it is
simple; and which, though we find it in the pages of a romance, we