Chivalry.
I refer to the remarkable passage of Sir Francis Palgrave, Normandy and England, iv. 438;
“Are we not told that ‘the Spirit of Chivalry was the parent and offspring of the Crusades?’ again that in ‘the accomplished character of the Crusader we discover all the virtues of a perfect Knight, the true Spirit of Chivalry, which inspired the generous sentiments and social offices of man?’—the Historian might reply in the words of a great Teacher, whose voice already resounds in History—‘I confess that if I were called upon to name what Spirit of evil predominantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I should name the Spirit of Chivalry: the more detestable for the very guise of the Archangel ruined, which has made it so seductive to the most generous spirits—but to me so hateful, because it is in direct opposition to the impartial justice of the Gospel, and its comprehensive feeling of equal brotherhood, and because it so fostered a sense of honour rather than a sense of duty.’… Take the huge folio of the Gesta Dei per Francos—search it boldly and honestly, turn over its fifteen hundred pages, examine their contents according to the rules of moral evidence, the praises the Writers bestow, and more than their praises, their blame; their commentaries upon deeds of cruelty, and more than their commentaries, their silence—and try how much you can extract which will justify any one of the general positions which the popular enthusiasts for Chivalry have maintained.”
The extract is from a letter of Arnold to Archdeacon Hare in 1829 (Life and Correspondence, i. 255). A note adds;
“‘Chivalry,’ or (as he used more frequently to call the element in the middle ages which he thus condemned) ‘feudality,’ is especially Keltic and barbarian—incompatible with the highest virtue of which man is capable, and the last at which he arrives—a sense of justice. It sets up the personal allegiance to the chief above allegiance to God and law.”
Nothing can be better; only it is not quite clear what Arnold meant by “Keltic;” continental chivalry must be carefully distinguished from devotion to the chief of the clan, though there is much analogy between the two feelings. But, as I have said elsewhere (N. C. vol. v. p. 483), chivalry is Norman rather than English and French rather than Norman; so in that sense it may be called “Keltic.”
Sir Francis Palgrave goes on to discuss one of the stories of the boasted generosity of Bayard. Like some others, it merely comes to this, that he did not act a part which would have been singularly shameful.
About chivalry and other kindred matters, I had my own say in an article on the Law of Honour in the Fortnightly Review, December 1876. But I must decline to pledge myself to Sir F. Palgrave’s condemnation of the crusades. All that he says is perfectly true of the crimes and follies in detail with which the crusades were disgraced. And in those days it would have been hard to carry out a crusade without a large measure of those crimes and follies. And this might be in itself a fair argument, though not one which the age would have understood, against undertaking any crusade at all. But I must hold that the general idea of the crusade itself was something high above all chivalry. I must hold that all the crusades before the fourth, whatever we say of the way in which they were carried out, were in themselves fully justifiable, both in morality and in policy. Surely, in all that bears on this matter, it is Cohen rather than Palgrave that speaks. With all his learning and acuteness, with all his lofty and Christian morality, his deep and wide-reaching sympathy with right and hatred of wrong in every shape, my illustrious predecessor in Norman and English history was still, as a man of the East, unable thoroughly to throw himself into the Western side of a great struggle between East and West.