Although the Church was the protectress of chivalry, and even invested it with an almost sacred dignity, she always refused to extend her protection to tournaments, tilts, and assaults of arms, brilliant, but often dangerous manifestations of the chivalric spirit, and particularly to judicial duels, which were of German origin, and which dated from a period long prior to the institution of Christian chivalry. When the Church found itself obliged to show indulgence to these ancient traditions, which custom had interwoven with the habits of the Middle Ages, she did so in as reserved a manner as possible. She was always indignantly protesting against the barbarous custom which compelled or allowed women, children, churches, and convents, to choose from among the knights a special champion (_campeador_) who should be always ready to sustain against all the patron’s cause. The Church, while approving the generous protection which chivalry extended to the weak and to the oppressed, always endeavoured to destroy the savage doctrine of paganism which confounded might with right; but it was in vain that she opposed all her influence and authority to the custom of duelling; she was obliged to restrict herself to lessening the evil effects of the opinions that generally prevailed, without hoping to destroy the opinions themselves. The _point of honour_ had no existence in the breasts of the warriors of antiquity. They sacrificed themselves to their country and to the commonwealth, and they loved glory--a sentiment which with them was collective and not individual, for with them society, as a whole, was everything, its unit, nothing. The modern duel, whether it be considered a brutal and speedy method of settling private quarrels, or a proper act of submission to the divine will which cannot fail to crown right with success, springs from the strong individuality of barbarism, and from the personal tendency of savage dignity and independence. [Illustration: Fig. 125.--Fight between Raymbault de Morueil and Guyon de Losenne. The Abbot of St. Denis at the feet of the Archbishop of Paris, taking oath that his cause, defended by Raymbault, is a just one.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Romance of Charles Martel,” enlarged by David Aubert. Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.]