A French scholar of our own day has said that for modern culture "antiquity" means ancient Greece and Rome, but that for modern manners "antiquity" means mediaeval France. Yet this is only in part true, and these sixteenth century books sum up that combination of "courtoisie" and "civilitas" which gives its special note to Renaissance manners, and which distinguishes such books from their predecessors of the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. We have but to examine any typical discussion of manners in mediaeval literature, such as the famous description of the exquisite table manners of the Prioress in the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," or the passage in the "Roman de la Rose" from which Chaucer borrowed his own details, to note a characteristic distinction. Both of these passages are concerned with women; in the Middle Ages it was only a woman who was supposed to exhibit such refined delicacy in the details of conduct. Liberality, magnanimity, courage, loyalty, chivalrousness to women, and courtesy in its larger sense,--these and other social virtues the mediaeval man was supposed to possess; but even in the courtly circles of Provence, it may be doubted whether the delicacy and refinement of every movement which Chaucer ascribes to his Prioress would have been expected of the courtliest knight. Moderation and discretion--called "measure" or "manner"--were the nearest mediaeval approach to these requirements for men. Moderation may be said to be implicit in the ideal of the gentleman in every age (indeed, it may be said to express the limitations of the ideal, for moderation is as often a vice as a virtue); but it was never more insisted on than in those ages when it was heeded least. For the Middle Ages, measure and good manners were almost synonymous terms. "Courtesy and measure are the same thing,"--we are told in the fourteenth century French romance of "Perceforest,"--"for manner and measure must be added to all your deeds if you would have great virtue." This may seem to be closely akin to Della Casa's statement that polished behaviour consists in adding a good grace to a good deed; but to the hero of "Perceforest," it would have argued lack of "measure," or discretion, for any man to adopt graces and refinements so essentially feminine and unmanly as the table manners of Chaucer's Prioress.