In the castles of the fourteenth century, the men no less than the women
were religious. The middle class, and especially the respectable
bourgeois man of letters, affected a certain freedom of thought: he was
already the father of Voltaire and the grandfather of the speech-making
Jacobins of the French Revolution. But all that was changed among the
nobility. There it was essential (even as it is among the nobles of
France to-day), however light of life, to be grave of thought. The
education of every knight made him instinctively religious. Even the
scapegrace Louis of Orleans would pass weeks together in the Convent of
the Celestines, praying, fasting with the monks before the altar. And a
perfect knight was habitually not only pious, but austere.
The _Livre des Faiz de Messire Jehan Bouciquaut_ gives us an admirable
picture of a pattern of chivalry. The great Governor of Genoa (whom the
documents of the Florentine archives reveal to us as an insupportable
martinet, dogmatic, obstinate, and tyrannical, despite his virtues)
appears in these pages in the inner splendour of a noble soul. Every
morning he rose at dawn, “that the first-fruits of his day might be
consecrate to God,” and we learn with some surprise that this poet of
courtly ballads, this soldier, this statesman, gave every morning of his
life three consecutive hours to his “œuvre d’oraison,” as infallibly
renewed at night. At table, while his household were served in gold and
silver, he ate and drank from pewter, glass, or wood; however rich the
banquet, he partook but of one dish, the first served, with one glass of
wine and water.
“He loves to read the fair books of God, the lives of the saints, the
deeds of the Romans, and ancient history; but he talks little and will
listen to no slander.... Marvellously hateth he liars and flatterers,
and driveth them from him.... Marvellously hateth he also all games of
chance and fortune, and never consenteth to them.... Those virtues which
be contrary to lubricity are steadfast in him.... He is stern and to the
point in justice, yet faileth he not in mercy and compassion.... He is
very piteous to the ancient men-at-arms who can no longer help
themselves, who have been good blades in their time, but have laid by
nothing, and so are sore distressed in their old age.... And with all
his heart loveth he those who are of good life, fearing and serving our
Lord Jesus Christ.... He oweth no debts.... He never lies; and all that
he promiseth, so much doth he perform.”
We are content to end our studies with the portrait of so true a knight.