But the key-stone of the arch was wanting, and religion alone could furnish it. A new world of principles and objects was introduced. The defence of the church was one great apparent aim of knightly enterprise, and on this principle, narrow and selfish as it was, many of the charities of Christianity were established. The sword was blessed by the priest, before it was delivered to the young warrior. By what means this amalgamation was effected, we know not; the less interesting matter, the date of the circumstance can be more easily ascertained. It was somewhere between the ninth and the eleventh centuries. It surely was not the custom in the days of Charlemagne, for he girt the military sword on his son Louis the Good, agreeably to the rude principles of ancient Germanic chivalry[21], without any religious ceremonies; and a century afterwards we read of the Saxon monarch of England, Edward the Elder, cloathing Athelstan in a soldier's dress of scarlet, and fastening round him a girdle ornamented with precious stones, in which a Saxon sword in a sheath of gold was inserted.[22] In the century following, however, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, we meet with the story of Hereward, a very noble Anglo-Saxon youth, being knighted by the Abbot of Peterborough. He made confession of his sins, and, after he had received absolution, he earnestly prayed to be made a legitimate _miles_ or knight. [Sidenote: Ceremonies of Anglo-Saxon inauguration.] It was the custom of the English, continues the historian, for every one who wished to be consecrated into the legitimate militia, to confess his sins to a bishop, abbot, monk, or other priest, in the evening that preceded the day of his consecration, and to pass the night in the church, in prayer, devotion, and mortifications. On the next morning it was his duty to hear mass, to offer his sword on the altar, and then, after the Gospel had been read, the priest blessed the sword, and placed it on the neck of the _miles_, with his benediction. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was then communicated to the knight.[23] This passage, though professedly descriptive only of the military customs of England, may be applied to the general state of Europe, with the exception of Normandy, whose people despised the religious part of the ceremony. But this feeling of dislike did not endure through all ages, for there is abundant evidence to prove, that in the reign of the Norman dynasty in England, the ceremonies of knighthood were religious as well as military; and in the same, the eleventh, century, the usage was similar over all Continental Europe. [Sidenote: Chivalry sanctioned by Councils, and regarded as a form of Christianity.]