The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 05: (From Charlemagne to Frederick Barbarossa)
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 05: (From Charlemagne to Frederick Barbarossa)
World history
The majority of these early heroes had no other shibboleth than "I am
going to separate the head from the trunk!" It was their war-cry. But if
you desire something more frightful still, something more "primitive,"
you have only to open the _Loherains_ at hazard, and read a few stanzas
of that raging ballad of "derring-do," and you will almost fancy you are
perusing one of those pages in which Livingstone describes in such
indignant terms the manners of some tribe in Central Africa. Read this:
"Begue struck Isore upon his black helmet through the golden circlet,
cutting him to the chine; then he plunged into his body his sword
Flamberge with the golden hilt; took the heart out with both hands, and
threw it, still warm, at the head of William, saying, 'There is your
cousin's heart; you can salt and roast it.'" Here words fail us; it
would be too tame to say with Goedecke, "These heroes act like the
forces of nature, in the manner of the hurricane which knows no pity."
We must use more indignant terms than these, for we are truly amid
cannibals. Once again we say, there was the warrior, there was the
savage whom the church had to elevate and educate!
Such is the point of departure of this wonderful progress; such are the
refractory elements out of which chivalry and the knight have been
fashioned.
The point of departure is Raoul of Cambrai burning Origni. The point of
arrival is Girard of Roussillon falling one day at the feet of an old
priest and expiating his former pride by twenty-two years of penitence.
These two episodes embrace many centuries between them.
A very interesting study might be made of the gradual transformation
from the redskin to the knight; it might be shown how, and at what
period of history, each of the virtues of chivalry penetrated
victoriously into the undisciplined souls of these brutal warriors who
were our ancestors; it might be determined at what moment the church
became strong enough to impose upon our knights the great duties of
defending it and of loving one another.
This victory was attained in a certain number of cases undoubtedly
toward the end of the eleventh century: and the knight appears to us
perfected, finished, radiant, in the most ancient edition of the
_Chanson of Roland_, which is considered to have been produced between
1066 and 1095.
It is scarcely necessary to observe that chivalry was no longer in
course of establishment when Pope Urban II threw with a powerful hand
the whole of the Christian West upon the East, where the Tomb of Christ
was in possession of the Infidel.
In legendary lore the embodiment of chivalry is Roland: in history it is
Godfrey de Bouillon. There are no more worthy names than these.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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