An interesting blending of the class ideal of the warrior and "gentleman" with the religious ideals of devotion to some spiritual service, and of protection to the weak, is afforded by _chivalry_. The knights show their faith by their deeds of heroism, not by renunciation. But they fight for the Holy Sepulcher, or for the weak and oppressed. Their investiture is almost as solemn as that of a priest. Honor and love appear as motives side by side with the quest of the Holy Grail. Chevalier Bayard is the gallant fighter for country, but he is also the passionate admirer of justice, the knight _sans peur et sans reproche_. Moreover, the literature which embodies the ideal exhibits not only feats of arms and religious symbolism. Parsifal is not a mere abstraction; he has life and character. "And who will deny," writes Francke,[87] "that in this character Wolfram has put before us, within the forms of chivalrous life, an immortal symbol of struggling, sinning, despairing, but finally redeemed, humanity?" If chivalry represented in some degree a moralizing of the warrior class, the mendicant orders represented an effort to bring religion into secular life. The followers of St. Dominic and St. Francis were indeed ascetic, but instead of maintaining the separate life of the cloister they aimed to awaken a personal experience among the whole people. Further, the Dominicans adopted the methods and conceptions of Greek philosophy to support the doctrines of the church, instead of relying solely on faith. The Franciscans on their part devoted an ecstatic type of piety to deeds of charity and beneficence. They aimed to overcome the world rather than to withdraw from it. A bolder appeal to the individual, still within the sphere of religion, was made when Wyclif asserted the right of every instructed man to search the Bible for himself, and a strong demand for social justice found expression in Wyclif's teaching as well as in the vision of Piers Plowman. In the political world the growing strength of the empire sought likewise a religious sanction in its claim of a divine right, independent of the church. The claims of the civic life find also increasing recognition with the spiritual teachers. The State had been regarded by Augustine as a consequence of the fall of man, but it now comes to claim and receive a moral value: first, with Thomas Aquinas, as the institution in which man perfects his earthly nature and prepares for his higher destiny in the realm of grace; then, with Dante, as no longer subordinate to the church, but coördinate with it.