the ideal.

But as time moved on the ascetic ideal gradually declined and was
replaced by the very different ideal of chivalry. It consisted chiefly
of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry
which gave women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was
in part a reaction against the extreme austerity of the saints, and
this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic
which had risen at the close of the tenth century about the
approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer
and more epicurean civilisation which grew up in the country bordering
on the Pyrenees. It was especially represented in the romances and
poems of the Troubadours, and the new tendency even received some
assistance from the Church when the Council of Clermont, which
originated the Crusades, imposed on the knight the religious
obligation of defending all widows and orphans.

The second element was an increased reverence for secular rank, which
grew out of the feudal system, when a great hereditary aristocracy
arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy,
of which the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The
principle of subordination and obedience ran through the whole
edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. Men came to
associate their ideal of greatness with regal or noble authority, and
they were therefore prepared to idealise any great sovereign who might
arise. Such a sovereign appeared in Charlemagne, who exercised upon
Christendom a fascination not less powerful than that which Alexander
had once exercised upon Greece, and he accordingly soon became the
centre of a whole literature of romance.

The third element was the fusion of religious enthusiasm with the
military spirit. Christianity in its first phases was utterly opposed
to the military spirit; but this opposition was naturally mitigated
when the Church triumphed under Constantine and became associated with
governments and armies. The hostility was still further qualified when
many tribes of warlike barbarians embraced the faith, and the military
obligation which was an essential element of feudalism acted in the
same direction. But, above all, the rise and conquests of
Mohammedanism awoke the military energies of Christendom and
determined the direction it should take. In the Crusades the two great
streams of military enthusiasm and of religious enthusiasm met, and