![]() ![]() 7 France was, indeed, its home, and the region wherein it attained to its fullest perfection. It was not an institution, but an ethical and religious association, shedding a ray of ideal beauty through a society corrupted by anarchy. Lacroix, substantially concur: “Chivalry,” they say, “was a system which modified and completed feudalism. 6 Two other French historians, less devout but more trustworthy than M. 5 It “represented the Christian form of the profession of arms,” contends the pious Paul Lacroix. Cornish, “a body of sentiment and practice, of law and custom, which prevailed among the dominant classes in a great part of Europe between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries.” 3 It was “more a spirit than an institution” says one enthusiastic eulogist 4 “less an institution than an ideal,” says another and more critical student. Davis as “that peculiar and often fantastic code of etiquette and morals which was grafted upon feudalism in the eleventh and succeeding centuries”. In this sense Chivalry is well defined by Professor H. ![]() 1 Perhaps, too, Chaucer had this wide meaning in mind when he said of his “perfight gentil knight” that he “lovede chyvalrye” with its concomitant “trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie”. It was in this last large connotation that Burke employed the term when, in denouncing the French Revolution, he said “The age of chivalry is gone”. Cowell, in his Interpreter, defines it as “the servitium militare of the French chevalier”,and remarks, “Chivalry is a tenure of service whereby the tenant is bound to perform some noble or military office unto the lord.” Fourthly, and finally, “Chivalry” is used in a broader sense to include the whole knightly system of the later middle ages, with its peculiar religious, moral, and social codes and customs. Secondly, “Chivalry” is employed in the sense of knighthood in the abstract knighthood as a rank or order the position and quality of a knight as, for example, when Chaucer in his Legend of Lucretia asks the guilty Tarquin, “Why hastow doon dispyt to chivalrye ?” 2 Thirdly, “Chivalry” is found in a technical or feudal sense to signify “tenure by knight service”. First, “Chivalry” is used as connoting simply a body of knights or horsemen equipped for battle as when Sir Bevis of Hamton in the course of his dangerous career remarks, on perceiving a host of mounted Saracens in pursuit of himself and the inevitable princess, “They would after us with wonder-great chevalrie.” 1 Here “Chivalry” means no more than “body of cavalry”. ![]() For historical purposes, however, both the seven and the ten can be reduced to four, as follows. The New English Dictionary distinguishes seven various meanings, while Lloyd's Encyclopœdic Dictionary furnishes no fewer than ten. ![]() The term is one which requires some definition for it is a term used in different senses. The subject of this course of lectures is Chivalry. ![]()
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