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.”