The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

When the grand century of the Middle Ages had closed, when the blatant thirteenth century commenced, the sentimental had already gained the advantage over our old classic chansons; and the new school, the romantic set of the Table Round, triumphed! Unfortunately, they also triumphed in their manners; and they were the knights of the Round Table who, with the Valois, seated themselves upon the throne of France.

In this way temerity replaced true courage; so good, polite manners replaced heroic rudeness; so foolish generosity replaced the charitable austerity of the early chivalry. It was the love of the unforeseen even in the military art; the rage for adventure—even in politics. We know whither this strategy and these theatrical politics led us, and that Joan of Arc and Providence were required to drag us out of the consequences.

The other causes of the decadence of the spirit of chivalry are more difficult to determine. There is one of them which has not, perhaps, been sufficiently brought to light, and this is—will it be believed?—the exdevelopment of certain orders of chivalry! This statement requires some explanation.

We must confess that we are enthusiastic, passionate admirers of these grand military orders which were formed at the commencement of the twelfth century. There have never been their like in the world, and it was only given to Christianity to display to us such a spectacle. To give to one single soul the double ideal of the soldier and the monk, to impose upon him this double charge, to fix in one these two conditions and in one only these two duties, to cause to spring from the earth I cannot tell how many thousands of men who voluntarily accepted this burden, and who were not crushed by it—that is a problem which one might have been pardoned for thinking insoluble. We have not sufficiently considered it. We have not pictured to ourselves with sufficient vividness the Templars and the Hospitallers in the midst of one of those great battles in the Holy Land in which the fate of the world was in the balance.

No: painters have not sufficiently portrayed them in the arid plains of Asia forming an incomparable squadron in the midst of the battle. One might talk forever and yet not say too much about the charge of the Cuirassiers at Reichshoffen; but how many times did the Hospitaller knights and the Templars charge in similar fashion? Those soldier-monks, in truth, invented a new idea of courage. Unfortunately they were not always fighting, and peace troubled some of them. They became too rich, and their riches lowered them in the eyes of men and before heaven. We do not intend to adopt all the calumnies which have been circulated concerning the Templars, but it is difficult not to admit that many of these accusations had some foundation. The Hospitallers, at any rate, have given no ground for such attacks. They, thank heaven, remained undefiled, if not poor, and were an honor to that chivalry which others had compromised and emasculated.

But when all is said, that which best became chivalry, the spice which preserved it the most surely, was poverty!

Love of riches had not only attacked the chivalrous orders, but in a very short space of time all knights caught the infection. Sensuality and enjoyment had penetrated into their castles. "Scarcely had they received the knightly baldric before they commenced to break the commandments and to pillage the poor. When it became necessary to go to war, their sumpter-horses were laden with wine, and not with weapons; with leathern bottles instead of swords; with spits instead of lances. One might have fancied, in truth, that they were going out to dinner, and not to fight. It is true their shields were beautifully gilt, but they were kept in a virgin and unused condition. Chivalrous combats were represented upon their bucklers and their saddles, certainly; but that was all!"

Now who is it who writes thus? It is not, as one might fancy, an author of the fifteenth century—it is a writer of the twelfth; and the greatest satirist, somewhat excessive and unjust in his statements, the Christian Juvenal whom we have just quoted, was none other than Peter of Blois.

A hundred other witnesses might be cited in support of these indignant words. But if there is some exaggeration in them, we are compelled to confess that there is a considerable substratum of truth also.

These abuses—which wealth engendered, which more than one poet has stigmatized—attracted, in the fourteenth century, the attention of an important individual, a person whose name occupies a worthy place in literature and history. Philip of Mezières, chancellor of Cyprus under Peter of Lusignan, was a true knight, who one day conceived the idea of reforming chivalry. Now the way he found most feasible in accomplishing his object, in arriving at such a difficult and complex reform, was to found a new order of chivalry himself, to which he gave the high-sounding title of "the Chivalry of the Passion of Christ."

The decadence of chivalry is attested, alas! by the very character of the reformers by which this well-meaning Utopian attempted to oppose it. The good knight complains of the great advances of sensuality, and permits and advises the marriage of all knights. He complains of the accursed riches which the Hospitallers themselves were putting to a bad use, and forbade them in his Institutions; but nevertheless the luxurious habits of his time had an influence upon his mind, and he permitted his knights to wear the most extravagant costumes, and the dignitaries of his order to adopt the most high-sounding titles. There was something mystical in all this conception, and something theatrical in all this agency. It is hardly necessary to add that the "Chivalry of the Passion" was only a beautiful dream, originating in a generous mind. Notwithstanding the adherence of some brilliant personages, the order never attained to more than a theoretical organization, and had only a fictitious foundation. The idea of the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel was hardly the object of the fifteenth-century chivalry; for the struggle between France and England then was engaging the most courageous warriors and the most practised swords. Decay hurried on apace!