View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 40

[788] The word bachelor has been sometimes derived from bas chevalier; in opposition to banneret. But this cannot be right. We do not find any authority for the expression bas chevalier, nor any equivalent in Latin, baccalaureus certainly not suggesting that sense; and it is strange that the corruption should obliterate every trace of the original term.

Bachelor is a very old word, and is used in early French poetry for a young man, as bachelette is for a girl. So also in Chaucer:

"A yonge Squire, A lover, and a l.u.s.ty _bachelor_."

[789] Du Cange, Dissertation 9me sur Joinville. The number of men at arms, whom a banneret ought to command, was properly fifty. But Olivier de la Marche speaks of twenty-five as sufficient; and it appears that, in fact, knights-banneret often did not bring so many.

[790] Ibid. Olivier de la Marche (Collection des Memoires, t. viii. p.

337) gives a particular example of this; and makes a distinction between the bachelor, created a banneret on account of his estate, and the hereditary banneret, who took a public opportunity of requesting the sovereign to unfold his family banner which he had before borne wound round his lance. The first was said relever banniere; the second, entrer en banniere. This difference is more fully explained by Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francoise, p. 116. Chandos's banner was unfolded, not cut, at Navarette. We read sometimes of esquire-bannerets, that is, of bannerets by descent, not yet knighted.

[791] Froissart, part i. c. 241.

[792] Mem. sur la Chevalerie, part v.

[793] The prerogative exercised by the kings of England of compelling men sufficiently qualified in point of estate to take on them the honour of knighthood was inconsistent with the true spirit of chivalry. This began, according to Lord Lyttelton, under Henry III. Hist. of Henry II.

vol. ii. p. 238. Independently of this, several causes tended to render England less under the influence of chivalrous principles than France or Germany; such as, her comparatively peaceful state, the smaller share she took in the crusades, her inferiority in romances of knight-errantry, but above all, the democratical character of her laws and government. Still this is only to be understood relatively to the two other countries above named; for chivalry was always in high repute among us, nor did any nation produce more admirable specimens of its excellences.

I am not minutely acquainted with the state of chivalry in Spain, where it seems to have flourished considerably. Italy, except in Naples, and perhaps Piedmont, displayed little of its spirit; which neither suited the free republics of the twelfth and thirteenth, nor the jealous tyrannies of the following centuries. Yet even here we find enough to furnish Muratori with materials for his 53rd Dissertation.

[794] The well-known Memoirs of St. Palaye are the best repository of interesting and ill.u.s.trative facts respecting chivalry. Possibly he may have relied a little too much on romances, whose pictures will naturally be overcharged. Froissart himself has somewhat of this partial tendency, and the manners of chivalrous times do not make so fair an appearance in Monstrelet. In the Memoirs of la Tremouille (Collect. des Mem. t. xiv.

p. 169), we have perhaps the earliest delineation from the life of those severe and stately virtues in high-born ladies, of which our own country furnished so many examples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which were derived from the influence of chivalrous principles. And those of Bayard in the same collection (t. xiv. and xv.) are a beautiful exhibition of the best effects of that discipline.

It appears to me that M. Guizot, to whose judgment I owe all deference, has dwelt rather too much on the feudal character of chivalry. Hist. de la Civilisation en France, Lecon 36. Hence he treats the inst.i.tution as in its decline during the fourteenth century, when, if we can trust either Froissart or the romancers, it was at its height. Certainly, if mere knighthood was of right both in England and the north of France, a territorial dignity, which bore with it no actual presumption of merit, it was sometimes also conferred on a more honourable principle. It was not every knight who possessed a fief, nor in practice did every possessor of a fief receive knighthood.

Guizot justly remarks, as Sismondi has done, the disparity between the lives of most knights and the theory of chivalrous rect.i.tude. But the same has been seen in religion, and can be no reproach to either principle. Partout la pensee morale des hommes s'eleve et aspire fort au dessus de leur vie. Et gardez vous de croire que parce qu'elle ne gouvernait pas immediatement les actions, parceque la pratique demontait sans cesse et etrangement la theorie, l'influence de la theorie fut nulle et sans valeur. C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions humaines; tot ou tard il devient efficace.

It may be thought by many severe judges, that I have over-valued the efficacy of chivalrous sentiments in elevating the moral character of the middle ages. But I do not see ground for withdrawing or modifying any sentence. The comparison is never to be made with an ideal standard, or even with one which a purer religion and a more liberal organization of society may have rendered effectual, but with the condition of a country where neither the sentiments of honour nor those of right prevail. And it seems to me that I have not veiled the deficiencies and the vices of chivalry any more than its beneficial tendencies.

A very fascinating picture of chivalrous manners has been drawn by a writer of considerable reading, and still more considerable ability, Mr.

Kenelm Digby, in his Broad Stone of Honour. The bravery, the courteousness, the munificence, above all, the deeply religious character of knighthood and its reverence for the church, naturally took hold of a heart so susceptible of these emotions, and a fancy so quick to embody them. St. Palaye himself is a less enthusiastic eulogist of chivalry, because he has seen it more on the side of mere romance, and been less penetrated with the conviction of its moral excellence. But the progress of still deeper impression seems to have moderated the ardour of Mr. Digby's admiration for the historical character of knighthood; he has discovered enough of human alloy to render unqualified praise hardly fitting, in his judgment, for a Christian writer; and in the Mores Catholici, the second work of this amiable and gifted man, the colours in which chivalry appears are by no means so brilliant [1848.]

[795] Four very recent publications (not to mention that of Buhle on modern philosophy) enter much at large into the middle literature; those of M. Ginguene and M. Sismondi, the history of England by Mr. Sharon Turner, and the Literary History of the Middle Ages by Mr. Berington.

All of these contain more or less useful information and judicious remarks; but that of Ginguene is among the most learned and important works of this century. I have no hesitation to prefer it, as far as its subjects extend, to Tiraboschi.

[A subsequent work of my own, Introduction to the History of Literature in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, contains, in the first and second chapters, some additional ill.u.s.trations of the antecedent period, to which the reader may be referred, as complementary to these pages.

1848.]

[796] Heineccius, Hist. Juris German. c. 1. p. 15.

[797] Giannone, 1. iv. c. 6. Selden, ad Fletam, p. 1071.

[798] Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 359. Ginguene, Hist. Litt. de l'Italie, t.

i. p. 155.

[799] Irnerius is sometimes called Guarnerius, sometimes Warnerius: the German W is changed into Gu by the Italians, and occasionally omitted, especially in latinizing, for the sake of euphony or purity.

[800] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 38; t. v. p. 55.

[801] Tiraboschi, t. v. Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. ii. p. 517; t.

iii. p. 527; t. iv. p. 504.

[802] Duck, de Usu Juris Civilis, 1. ii. c. 6.

[803] Idem, 1. ii. 2.

[804] Duck, 1. ii. c. 5, s. 30, 31. Fleury, Hist. du Droit Francois, p.

74 (prefixed to Argou, Inst.i.tutions au Droit Francois, edit. 1787), says that it was a great question among lawyers, and still undecided (i.e. in 1674), whether the Roman law was the common law in the pays coutumiers, as to those points wherein their local customs were silent. And, if I understand Denisart, (Dictionnaire des Decisions, art. Droit-ecrit,) the affirmative prevailed. It is plain at least by the Causes Celebres, that appeal was continually made to the principles of the civil law in the argument of Parisian advocates.

[805] Crevier, Hist. de l'Universite de Paris, t. i. p. 316; t. ii. p.

275.

[806] Johan. Salisburiensis, apud Selden ad Fletam, p. 1082.

[807] Selden, ubi supra, p. 1095-1104. This pa.s.sage is worthy of attention. Yet, notwithstanding Selden's authority, I am not satisfied that he has not extenuated the effect of Bracton's predilection for the maxims of Roman jurisprudence. No early lawyer has contributed so much to form our own system as Bracton; and if his definitions and rules are sometimes borrowed from the civilians, as all admit, our common law may have indirectly received greater modification from that influence, than its professors were ready to acknowledge, or even than they knew. A full view of this subject is still, I think, a desideratum in the history of English law, which it would ill.u.s.trate in a very interesting manner.

[808] Duck, De Usu Juris Civilis, 1. i. c. 87.

[809] Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 196.

[810] Those who feel some curiosity about the civilians of the middle ages will find a concise and elegant account in Gravina, De Origine Juris Civilis, p. 166-206. (Lips. 1708.) Tiraboschi contains perhaps more information; but his prolixity is very wearisome. Besides this fault, it is evident that Tiraboschi knew very little of law, and had not read the civilians of whom he treats; whereas Gravina discusses their merits not only with legal knowledge, but with an acuteness of criticism which, to say the truth, Tiraboschi never shows except on a date or a name.

[The civil lawyers of the mediaeval period are not at all forgotten on the continent, as the great work of Savigny, History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages, sufficiently proves. It is certain that the civil law must always be studied in Europe, nor ought the new codes to supersede it, seeing they are in great measure derived from its fountain; though I have heard that it is less regarded in France than formerly. In my earlier editions I depreciated the study of the civil law too much, and with too exclusive an attention to English notions.]

[811] Ante ipsum dominum Carolum regem in Gallia nullum fuit studium liberalium artium. Monachus Engolismensis, apud Launoy, De Scholis per occidentem instauratis, p. 5. See too Histoire Litteraire de la France, t. iv. p. 1. "Studia liberalium artium" in this pa.s.sage, must be understood to exclude literature, commonly so called, but not a certain measure of very ordinary instruction. For there were episcopal and conventual schools in the seventh and eighth centuries, even in France, especially Aquitaine; we need hardly repeat that in England, the former of these ages produced Bede and Theodore, and the men trained under them; the Lives of the Saints also lead us to take with some limitation the absolute denial of liberal studies before Charlemagne. See Guizot, Hist. de la Civilis. en France, Lecon 16; and Ampere, Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. p. 4. But, perhaps, philology, logic, philosophy, and even theology were not taught, as sciences, in any of the French schools for these two centuries; and consequently those established by Charlemagne justly make an epoch.

[812] Id. Ibid. There was a sort of literary club among them, where the members a.s.sumed ancient names. Charlemagne was called David; Alcuin, Horace; another, Dametas, &c.

[813] Hist. Litteraire, p. 217, &c.

[814] This division of the sciences is ascribed to St. Augustin; and we certainly find it established early in the sixth century. Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae, t. iii. p. 597.

[815] Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 126.

[816] Crevier, Hist. de l'Universite de Paris, t. i. p. 28.

[817] Brucker, t. iii. p. 612. Raban Maurus was chief of the cathedral school at Fulda, in the ninth century.

[818] Crevier, p. 66.

[819] Crevier, p. 171; Brucker, p. 677; Tiraboschi, t. iii. p. 275.

[820] Brucker, p. 750.

[821] A great interest has been revived in France for the philosophy, as well as the personal history of Abelard, by the publication of his philosophical writings, in 1836, under so eminent an editor as M.

Cousin, and by the excellent work of M. de Remusat, in 1845, with the t.i.tle Abelard, containing a copious account both of the life and writings of that most remarkable man, the father, perhaps, of the theory as to the nature of universal ideas, now so generally known by the name of _conceptualism_.

[822] The faculty of arts in the university of Paris was divided into four nations; those of France, Picardy, Normandy, and England. These had distinct suffrages in the affairs of the university, and consequently, when united, outnumbered the three higher faculties of theology, law, and medicine. In 1169, Henry II. of England offers to refer his dispute with Becket to the provinces of the school of Paris.

[823] Crevier, t. i. p. 279. The first statute regulating the discipline of the university was given by Robert de Courcon, legate of Honorius III., in 1215, id. p. 296.