been worsted, to the king and the registrar of the order, on
pain of being deprived of the order of knighthood; 26, that above all
things they would be faithful, courteous, and humble, and would never be
wanting to their word for any harm or loss that might accrue to them."

It is needless to point out that in this series of oaths, these
obligations imposed upon the knights, there is a moral development very
superior to that of the laic society of the period. Moral notions so
lofty, so delicate, so scrupulous, and so humane, emanated clearly from
the Christian clergy. Only the clergy thought thus about the duties and
the relations of mankind; and their influence was employed in directing
towards the accomplishment of such duties, towards the integrity of such
relations, the ideas and customs engendered by knighthood. It had not
been instituted with so pious and deep a design, for the protection of
the weak, the maintenance of justice, and the reformation of morals; it
had been, at its origin and in its earliest features, a natural
consequence of feudal relations and warlike life, a confirmation of the
bonds established and the sentiments aroused between different masters in
the same country and comrades with the same destinies. The clergy
promptly saw what might be deduced from such a fact; and they made of it
a means of establishing more peacefulness in society, and in the conduct
of individuals a more rigid morality. This was the general work they
pursued; and, if it were convenient to study the matter more closely, we
might see, in the canons of councils from the eleventh to the fourteenth
centuries, the Church exerting herself to develop more and more in this
order of knight-hood, this institution of an essentially warlike origin,
the moral and civilizing character of which a glimpse has just been
caught in the documents of knighthood itself.

In proportion as knighthood appeared more and more in this simultaneously
warlike, religious, and moral character, it more and more gained power
over the imagination of men, and just as it had become closely interwoven
with their creeds, it soon became the ideal of their thoughts, the source
of their noblest pleasures. Poetry, like religion, took hold of it.
From the eleventh century onwards, knighthood, its ceremonies, its
duties, and its adventures, were the mine from which the poets drew in
order to charm the people, in order to satisfy and excite at the same
time th