s of apparel and person, far from
being next to godliness, was incompatible with it, and that baths were
the direct invention of the devil.[1] Later on we know that Philip II.,
the husband of our Queen Mary, had all public baths in his Spanish
dominions destroyed, on the ground that they were relics of
infidelity.[2]
Celibacy of the clergy, again, was strongly advocated as a contrast to
the polygamy of Mohammedans; and an abbot, Saulus, is mentioned with
horror as having a wife and children, one of whom afterwards succeeded
him, and also married.[3]
One of the last acts of a Gothic king had been to enforce the marriage
of the clergy, and though this act was repealed by Fruela I. (757-768)
in the North, yet concubinage became very common among the clergy;[4]
and it was perhaps to remedy a similar state of things that Witiza
wished to compel the clergy to have lawful wives.
[1] Miss Yonge, p. 67.
[2] Lane-Poole, "Story of the Moors," p. 136.
[3] Florez, "Esp. Sagr.," xviii. 326--"Conventus Episcoporum
pro restoratione monasterii." The children are called "Spinae
ac vepres, nec nominandi proles."
[4] Prescott, "Ferd. and Isab.," p. 16. From Samson, "Apol.,"
ii. cc. 2, 6, we learn that Christians had begun to imitate the
Moslems in having harems.
We have left to the last the great and interesting question of the
origin of chivalry. Though forming no part of the doctrines of
Christianity or Islam, chivalry and its influences could not with
justice be wholly overlooked in a discussion like the present. The
institution known by that name arose in the age of Charles the Great
(768-814),[1] and was therefore nearly synchronous with the invasion of
Europe by the Arabs. Its origin has been, indeed, referred to the
military service of fiefs, but all its characteristics, which were
personal and individual, such as loyalty, courtesy, munificence, point
to a racial rather than a political source, and these characteristics
are found in an eminent degree among the Arabs. "The solitary and
independent spirit of chivalry," says Hallam,[2] "dwelling as it were
upon a rock, and disdaining injustice or falsehood from a consciousness
of internal dignity, without any calculation of the consequences, is not
unlike what we sometimes read of Arabian chiefs or American Indians."
Whatever the precise origin of chivalry may have been, there can be no
doubt that its development was largely influenced
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