ould be waged, and a
definition of the persons who were to be exempted from their menace. But
from seeking to limit the fighting instinct of a feudal society, the
Church soon rose to the idea of enlisting that instinct under her own
banner and directing it to her own ends. So arose chivalry, which, like
most of the institutions of the Middle Ages, was the invention of the
Church. Chivalry was the consecration of the fighting instinct to the
defence of the widow, the fatherless, and the oppressed; and by the
beginning of the eleventh century liturgies already contain the form of
religious service by which neophytes were initiated into knighthood.
This early and religious form of chivalry (there was a later and lay
form, invented by troubadour and trouvere, which was chiefly concerned
with the rules for the loves of knights and ladies) culminated in the
Crusades. In the Crusades we touch perhaps the most typical expression
of the mediaeval spirit. Here we may see the clergy moulding into
conformity with Christian principle the apparently unpromising and
intractable stuff of feudal pugnacity: here we may see the papacy
asserting its primacy of a united Europe by gathering Christian men
together for the common purpose of carrying the flag of their faith to
the grave of their Redeemer. Here the permeating influence of Christian
revelation may be seen attempting to permeate even foreign policy (for
what are the Crusades but the foreign policy of a Christian commonwealth
controlled and directed by the papacy?); and here again even the
instinct for colonial expansion, so often the root of desperate wars,
was brought into line with the unity of all nations in Christ, and made
to serve the cause of Him 'in whom alone is to be found the true nature
of the One'.

There is another aspect of the clerical control of peace and war in the
interest of Christian unity which must not be forgotten. The papacy
sought to become an international tribunal. The need for such a tribunal
was as much a mediaeval as it is a modern commonplace. Dante, who sought
to vindicate for the emperor, rather than for the pope, the position and
power of an international judge, has started the argument in famous
words. 'Between any two princes, of whom the one is in no way subject to
the other, disputes may arise, either by their own fault, or by that of
their subjects. Judgement must therefore be given between them. And
since neither can have cognizance of the