[206] This is another and singular proof of the generally acknowledged excellence of Italian armour. [207] Libro del paso honroso, defendido por el excelente caballero Sueno de Quinones, copilado de un libro antiquo de mano, por Juan de Pineda. 1588. Reprinted, Madrid, 1783. [208] Paston, Letters, vol. i. p. 6. [209] Monstrelet, vol. vii. c. 82. [210] Sismondi. Hist. des Rep. Ital. vii. 439. The Germans were more observant of the forms than of the spirit of chivalry. The reader remembers that the spur, the golden spur, was the great mark of knighthood; and every ancient church in this country, or a copy of its antique monumental effigies, will inform him of the custom of placing a spur over or upon a knight's tomb. This was also a custom among the Germans, who, besides, reposited spurs in churches, when age, infirmity, or other causes, unnerved the arm of the knight: moreover, they reposited spurs in churches as memorials of victory. In the fourteenth century five hundred pair of them, which had been taken in a victory over the French, were hung round the walls of the church at Gröningen. Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, p. 212. [211] Olaus. Hist. Septent. lib. xiv. c. 7. [212] Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, from the Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances, p. 76. [213] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. i. p. 59. [214] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. i. p. 60. [215] Ibid. p. 71. [216] Froissart, vol. i. c. 433. [217] Froissart, liv. ii. c. 125. [218] Schmidt, iv. 492. [219] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, p. 108. [220] Ibid. vol. i. p. 7. [221] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. ii. p. 61. [222] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 272. [223] Ottokar v. Hornek, c. 268, &c. in his Annals of Austria. [224] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. ii. last chapter. [225] Muratori, Dissert. 29. [226] Ibid. 23. [227] Giannone, lib. i. [228] Muratori, Annali d'Italia, vol. v. part 2. p. 171, &c. Even the Modenese librarian throws aside his dust and parchments, and warms himself into a humanised being at this story; while Sismondi passes it over with frigid indifference. [229] Muratori, Dissert. 49. [230] See in the twenty-seventh Dissertation of Muratori (Della Milizia de secoli rozzi in Italia) for a minute account of the armour of these different classes. I observe that Mr. Perceval, in his History of Italy, vol. i. p. 197., holds a different opinion from that which I have expressed in the text. Instead of thinking that the change in the military art formed one of the causes which hastened the overthrow of the Lombard liberties, he contends that, perhaps, it might be more correctly numbered among the circumstances which, after that overthrow had been accomplished, perpetuated the work of slavery. [231] Perceval's History of Italy, vol. i. chap. 5. part 1. [232] Monstrelet, vol. xi. p. 328.