View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 39

Translations into the Provencal by the Waldensian or other heretics were made in the twelfth; several ma.n.u.scripts of them are in existence, and one has been published by Dr. Gilly. [1848.]

[754] The application of the visions of the Apocalypse to the corruptions of Rome has commonly been said to have been first made by the Franciscan seceders. But it may be traced higher, and is remarkably pointed out by Dante.

Di voi pastor s' accorse 'l Vangelista, Quando colei, chi siede sovra l'acque, Puttaneggiar co' regi a lui fu vista.

Inferno, cant. xix.

[755] Walsingham, p. 238; Lewis's Life of Pec.o.c.k, p. 65. Bishop Pec.o.c.k's answer to the Lollards of his time contains pa.s.sages well worthy of Hooker, both for weight of matter and dignity of style, setting forth the necessity and importance of "the moral law of kinde, or moral philosophie," in opposition to those who derive all morality from revelation.

This great man fell afterwards under the displeasure of the church for propositions, not indeed heretical, but repugnant to her scheme of spiritual power. He a.s.serted, indirectly, the right of private judgment, and wrote on theological subjects in English, which gave much offence.

In fact, Pec.o.c.k seems to have hoped that his acute reasoning would convince the people, without requiring an implicit faith. But he greatly misunderstood the principle of an infallible church. Lewis's Life of Pec.o.c.k does justice to his character, which, I need not say, is unfairly represented by such historians as Collier, and such antiquaries as Thomas Hearne.

[756] Lewis's Life of Wicliffe, p. 115; Lenfant, Hist. du Concile de Constance, t. i. p. 213.

[757] Huss does not appear to have rejected any of the peculiar tenets of popery. Lenfant, p. 414. He embraced, like Wicliffe, the predestinarian system of Augustin, without pausing at any of those inferences, apparently deducible from it, which, in the heads of enthusiasts, may produce such extensive mischief. These were maintained by Huss (id. p. 328), though not perhaps so crudely as by Luther.

Everything relative to the history and doctrine of Huss and his followers will be found in Lenfant's three works on the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basle.

[758] Lenfant, Hist. de la Guerre des Hussites et du Concile de Basle; Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. v.

[759] Nihil neque publicae neque privatae rei nisi armati agunt. Sed arma sumere non ante cuiquam moris, quam civitas suffecturum probaverit. Tum in ipso concilio, vel principum aliquis, vel pater, vel propinquus, scuto frameaque juvenem ornant; haec apud eos toga, hic primus juventae honos; ante hoc domus pars videntur, mox reipublicae. De Moribus German.

c. 13.

[760] William of Malmsbury says that Alfred conferred knighthood on Athelstan, donatum chlamyde coccinea, gemmato balteo, ense Saxonico c.u.m v.a.g.i.n.a aurea. 1. ii. c. 6. St. Palaye (Memoires sur la Chevalerie, p. 2) mentions other instances; which may also be found in Du Cange's Glossary, v. Arma, and in his 22nd dissertation on Joinville.

[761] Comites et va.s.salli nostri qui beneficia habere nosc.u.n.tur, et _caballarii_ omnes ad placitum nostrum veniant bene preparati.

Capitularia, A.D. 807, in Baluze, t. i. p. 460.

[762] We must take for this the more favourable representations of the Indian nations. A deteriorating intercourse with Europeans, or a race of European extraction, has tended to efface those virtues which possibly were rather exaggerated by earlier writers.

[763] Since this pa.s.sage was written, I have found a parallel drawn by Mr. Sharon Turner, in his valuable History of England, between Achilles and Richard Coeur de Lion; the superior justness of which I readily acknowledge. The real hero does not indeed excite so much interest in me as the poetical; but the marks of resemblance are very striking, whether we consider their pa.s.sions, their talents, their virtues, their vices, or the waste of their heroism.

The two princ.i.p.al persons in the Iliad, if I may digress into the observation, appear to me representatives of the heroic character in its two leading varieties; of the energy which has its sole principle, of action within itself, and of that which borrows its impulse from external relations; of the spirit of honour, in short, and of patriotism. As every sentiment of Achilles is independent and self-supported, so those of Hector all bear reference to his kindred and his country. The ardour of the one might have been extinguished for want of nourishment in Thessaly; but that of the other might, we fancy, have never been kindled but for the dangers of Troy. Peace could have brought no delight to the one but from the memory of war; war had no alleviation to the other but from the images of peace. Compare, for example, the two speeches, beginning Il. Z. 441, and Il. II. 49; or rather compare the two characters throughout the Iliad. So wonderfully were those two great springs of human sympathy, variously interesting according to the diversity of our tempers, first touched by that ancient patriarch,

a quo, ceu fonte perenni, Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.

[764] Ingulfus, in Gale, XV Scriptores, t. i. p. 70. William Rufus, however, was knighted by Archbishop Lanfranc, which looks as if the ceremony was not absolutely repugnant to the Norman practice.

[765] Du Cange, v. Miles, and 22nd Dissertation on Joinville, St.

Palaye, Mem. sur la Chevalerie, part ii. A curious original ill.u.s.tration of this, as well as of other chivalrous principles, will be found in l'Ordene de Chevalerie, a long metrical romance published in Barbazan's Fabliaux, t. i. p. 59 (edit. 1808).

[766] Y eut huit cens chevaliers seant a table; et si n'y eust celui qui n'eust une dame on une pucelle a son ecuelle. In Launcelot du Lac, a lady, who was troubled with a jealous husband, complains that it was a long time since a knight had eaten off her plate. Le Grand, t. i. p. 24.

[767] Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. iii. p. 438; St. Palaye, t. i. p. 41. I quote St. Palaye's Memoires from the first edition in 1759, which is not the best.

[768] Statuimus, quod omnis h.o.m.o, sive miles sive alius, qui iverit c.u.m domina generosa, salvus sit atque securus, nisi fuerit homicida. De Marca, Marca Hispanica, p. 1428.

[769] Le Grand, t. i. p. 120; St. Palaye, t. i. p. 13, 134, 221; Fabliaux, Romances, &c., pa.s.sim.

[770] St. Palaye, p. 222.

[771] Froissart, p. 33.

[772] St. Palaye, p. 268.

[773] The romances will speak for themselves; and the character of the Provencal morality may be collected from Millot, Hist. des Troubadours, pa.s.sim; and from Sismondi, Litterature du Midi, t. i. p. 179, &c. See too St. Palaye, t. ii. p. 62 and 68.

[774] St. Palaye, part ii.

[775] Non laudem meruit, sed summae potius opprobrium vilitatis; nam idem facinus est putandum captum n.o.bilem vel ign.o.bilem offendere, vel ferire, quam gladio caedere cadaver. Rolandinus, in Script Rer. Ital. t. viii. p.

351.

[776] Froissart, 1. i. c. 161. He remarks in another place that all English and French gentlemen treat their prisoners well; not so the Germans, who put them in fetters, in order to extort more money, c. 136.

[777] St Palaye, part iv. p. 312, 367, &c. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. i. p.

115, 167. It was the custom in Great Britain, (says the romance of Perceforest, speaking of course in an imaginary history,) that n.o.blemen and ladies placed a helmet on the highest point of their castles, as a sign that all persons of such rank travelling that road might boldly enter their houses like their own. St. Palaye, p. 367.

[778] Fabliaux de Barbasan, t. i.

[779] Joinville in Collection des Memoires, t. i. p. 43.

[780] St. Palaye, part i.

[781] Du Cange, 5me Dissertation sur Joinville. St. Palaye, t. i. p.

87, 118. Le Grand, t. i. p. 14.

[782] St. Palaye, t. i. p. 191.

[783] G.o.dfrey de Preuilly, a French knight, is said by several contemporary writers to have invented tournaments; which must of course be understood in a limited sense. The Germans ascribe them to Henry the Fowler; but this, according to Du Cange, is on no authority. 6me Dissertation sur Joinville.

[784] St. Palaye, part ii. and part iii. au commencement. Du Cange, Dissert. 6 and 7: and Glossary, v. Torneamentum. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t.

i. p. 184.

[785] St. Palaye, part iv. Selden's t.i.tles of Honour, p. 806. There was not, however, so much distinction in England as in France.

[786] St. Palaye, vol. i. p. 70, has forgotten to make this distinction.

It is, however, capable of abundant proof. Gunther, in his poem called Ligurinus, observes of the Milanese republic:

Quoslibet ex humili vulgo, quod Gallia foedum Judicat, accingi gladio concedit equestri.

Otho of Frisingen expresses the same in prose. It is said, in the Establishments of St. Louis, that if any one not being a gentleman on the father's side was knighted, the king or baron in whose territory he resides, may hack off his spurs on a dunghill, c. 130. The count de Nevers, having knighted a person who was not n.o.ble exparte paterna, was fined in the king's court. The king, however, (Philip III.) confirmed the knighthood. Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francoise, p. 98. Fuit propositum (says a pa.s.sage quoted by Daniel) contra comitem Flandriensem, quod non poterat, nec debebat facere de villano militem, sine auctoritate regis. ibid. Statuimus, says James I. of Aragon, in 1234, ut nullus faciat militem nisi filium militis. Marca Hispanica, p.

1428. Selden, t.i.tles of Honour, p. 592, produces other evidence to the same effect. And the emperor Sigismund having conferred knighthood, during his stay in Paris in 1415, on a person incompetent to receive it for want of n.o.bility, the French were indignant at his conduct, as an a.s.sumption of sovereignty. Villaret, t. xiii. p. 397. We are told, however, by Giannone, 1. xx. c. 3, that n.o.bility was not in fact required for receiving chivalry at Naples, though it was in France.

The privilege of every knight to a.s.sociate qualified persons to the order at his pleasure, lasted very long in France; certainly down to the English wars of Charles VII. (Monstrelet, part ii. folio 50), and, if I am not mistaken, down to the time of Francis I. But in England, where the spirit of independence did not prevail so much among the n.o.bility, it soon ceased. Selden mentions one remarkable instance in a writ of the 29th year of Henry III. summoning tenants in capite to come and receive knighthood from the king, ad recipiendum a n.o.bis arma militaria; and tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they pleased, ad recipiendum arma de quibuscunque voluerint. t.i.tles of Honour, p. 792.

But soon after this time, it became an established principle of our law that no subject can confer knighthood except by the king's authority.

Thus Edward III. grants to a burgess of _Lyndia_ in Guienne (I know not what place this is) the privilege of receiving that rank at the hands of any knight, his want of n.o.ble birth notwithstanding. Rymer, t. v. p.

623. It seems, however, that a different law obtained in some places.

Twenty-three of the chief inhabitants of Beaucaire, partly knights, partly burgesses, certified in 1298, that the immemorial usage of Beaucaire and of Provence had been, for burgesses to receive knighthood at the hands of n.o.blemen, without the prince's permission. Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. iii. p. 530. Burgesses, in the great commercial towns, were considered as of a superior cla.s.s to the roturiers, and possessed a kind of demi-n.o.bility. Charles V. appears to have conceded a similar indulgence to the citizens of Paris. Villaret, t. x. p. 248.

[787] St. Palaye, part iii. pa.s.sim.