CHIVALRY—MILITANT AND COMIC
In the howling wilderness of mediæval masculine brutality and feminine degradation there was one sunny oasis in which the flowers of Love were allowed to grow undisturbed for a few generations—until military ambition trod them again underfoot. This brief episode of gentler manners is known as the period of Chivalry.
Ever since the fifth century the worship of the Virgin Mary had increased in ardour, and it was to be expected that at some favourable moment this adoration would be extended to the whole female sex, or at least its nobler representatives. This was the mission taken upon themselves by the knights and poets of chivalrous times.
Chivalry, it is true, was so often a mixture of clownishness and licentiousness, its practice was so much less refined than its theory, that in opposition to those historians who have sung its praises others have doubted whether its influence was on the whole for good or for evil. For, although the knights vowed especially to protect widows and orphans, and respect and honour ladies, yet it was precisely under their régime that, when cities were taken and castles stormed, women were subjected to the most brutal treatment.
The difficulty is best solved by distinguishing between two kinds of Chivalry—the Militant and the Poetic. The militant type of knight-errantry was less inspired by the desire to benefit womankind than by ambition to gratify silly masculine vanity. So thoroughly was the mediæval mind imbued with ideas of war that these knights could not conceive even of love except in a military guise. So they rode about the country in quest of adventure, ostensibly in the service of an adored mistress, but really to find an outlet, in times of peace, for pent-up military energy and ambition.
Spain and Southern France were the principal home of Chivalry Militant, because there a warm climate and smiling nature offered most favourable conditions to wandering knights in quest of adventure. Fortunately the world possesses, in Don Quixote, a lifelike picture of knight-errantry; for although the aim of Cervantes was to make fun, not so much of Chivalry as of trashy contemporaneous romances of Chivalry, yet in doing this he could not avoid depicting the comic side of the institution itself, concerning which it is indeed difficile satiram non scribere.
It appears to have been the custom of these knights to wander about the country interfering in every quarrel, and, in default of a disturbance, creating one.
Each knight had a Dulcinea, whom he had perhaps never seen, but in whose honour and for whose love he engages in all these combats. And whenever he meets another knight he forthwith challenges him to admit that this Dulcinea, whom the other has of course never seen, is the most beautiful lady in the world. The other knight echoes the challenge in behalf of his Dulcinea; and the result is a combat in which the victor, by the inexorable logic of superior strength, proves the superior beauty of his chosen lady-love.
The vanquished knight is then sent as prisoner to the victor’s mistress with a message of love.
The Germans do not often originate anything; but if they take up an idea or institution they work it more thoroughly than any other nation. So with the fantastic side of Chivalry, which was introduced after the second crusade, during which German knights had come into close contact with French knights.
“Spain,” says Professor Scherr, “has imagined a Don Quixote, but Germany has really produced one.”
His name was Ulrich von Lichtenstein, and he was born in the year 1200. “From his boyhood, Herr Ulrich’s thoughts were directed towards woman-worship, and as a youth he chose a high-born and, be it well understood, a married lady as his patroness, in whose service he infused method into his knightly madness. The circumstance that meanwhile he himself gets married does not abate his folly. He greedily drinks water in which his patroness has washed herself; he has an operation performed on his thick double underlip, because she informs him that it is not inviting for kisses; he amputates one of his fingers which had become stiff in an encounter, and sends it to his mistress as a proof of his capacity of endurance for her sake. Masked as Frau Venus, he wanders about the country and engages in encounters, in this costume, in honour of his mistress; at her command he goes among the lepers and eats with them from one bowl. … The most remarkable circumstance, however, is that Ulrich’s own spouse, while her husband and master masquerades about the land as a knight in his beloved’s service, remains aside in his castle, and is only mentioned (in his poetic autobiography) whenever he returns home, tired and dilapidated, to be restored by her nursing.”
When a German knight had chosen a Dulcinea, he adopted and wore her colour, for he was now her love-servant, and stood to his mistress in the same relation as a vassal to his master. “The beloved,” Scherr continues, “gave her lover a love-token—a girdle or veil, a ribbon, or even a sleeve of her dress; this token he fastened to his helmet or shield, and great was the lady’s pride if he brought it back to her from battle thoroughly cut and hewn to pieces. Thus (in Parzival) Gawan had fastened on his shield a sleeve of the beautiful Olibet, and when he returned it to her, torn and speared, ‘Da ward des Mägdlein’s Freude gross; ihr blanker Arm war noch bloss, darüber schob sie ihn zuhand.’”
The attitude of the knight-errants may be briefly described as Gallantry gone mad. We have seen that a few traces of Gallantry are found in the pages of Ovid; but it was during the age of Chivalry that this overtone of Love made itself heard for the first time distinctly and loudly. And as, when a new popular melody appears, everybody takes it up and sings and whistles it ad nauseam; so these knights, intoxicated with the novel idea of gallant behaviour toward women, took it up and carried it to the most ridiculous extremes.
The women, naturally enough, unused to such devotion, became as extravagantly coy as the men were gallant. They subjected this Gallantry to the most absurd and even cruel tests. The knights were sent to war, to the crusades, into the dens of wild animals, to test their devotion; and few were so manly as the knight in Schiller’s ballad, who, after fetching his lady’s glove from the lion’s den, threw it in her face, instead of accepting her willing favours.
It is with reference to these coy and cruel tests of Gallantry that Wolfram von Eschenbach bitterly accuses Love of having caused the death of many a noble knight.
Yet, despite these absurdities, the trials and procrastinations to which the knights were subjected had one good result: they helped to give Love a supersensual, imaginative basis. This fact is brought out clearly in the following statement made by Dr. Bötticher in his learned work on Parzival. When, he says, after the middle of the twelfth century, the Troubadour love-poetry became known in Austria, “it was especially the idea of Minnedienst (love-service) that was seized upon with avidity: the knight wooes and labours for a woman’s love, but she holds back and grants no favours until after a long trial-service. The final object of this service, the possession of the beloved, is regarded as quite subordinate to the pangs and pleasures of wooing and waiting.”
Here was a novelty in Love, indeed! And, as good luck would have it, fashion lent its powerful aid to the innovation. The sentiment was that “Whoever is not in the service of love is unworthy to be a courtier”; and thus many a boor who would have very much preferred to continue treating women as servants, had to put his head into the yoke of Gallantry, in order to be “fashionable.”