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."[1]
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,[2] 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
- ↑ 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!
