n, and on a share of
plunder, proportioned to the number of their followers. During the
period of the crusades, we find the institution of chivalry acquire its
full vigour as an order of personal nobility; and its original connexion
with feudal tenure, if not altogether effaced, became in a great measure
forgotten in the splendour and dignity of the new form which it wore.

[Sidenote: Chivalry connected with religion.]

The crusaders, however, changed in more than one respect the character
of chivalry. Before that epoch it appears to have had no particular
reference to religion. Ingulfus indeed tells us that the Anglo-Saxons
preceded the ceremony of investiture by a confession of their sins, and
other pious rites, and they received the order at the hands of a priest,
instead of a knight. But this was derided by the Normans as effeminacy,
and seems to have proceeded from the extreme devotion of the English
before the Conquest.[764] We can hardly perceive indeed why the
assumption of arms to be used in butchering mankind should be treated as
a religious ceremony. The clergy, to do them justice, constantly opposed
the private wars in which the courage of those ages wasted itself; and
all bloodshed was subject in strictness to a canonical penance. But the
purposes for which men bore arms in a crusade so sanctified their use,
that chivalry acquired the character as much of a religious as a
military institution. For many centuries, the recovery of the Holy Land
was constantly at the heart of a brave and superstitious nobility; and
every knight was supposed at his creation to pledge himself, as occasion
should arise, to that cause. Meanwhile, the defence of God's law against
infidels was his primary and standing duty. A knight, whenever present
at mass, held the point of his sword before him while the gospel was
read, to signify his readiness to support it. Writers of the middle ages
compare the knightly to the priestly character in an elaborate parallel,
and the investiture of the one was supposed analogous to the ordination
of the other. The ceremonies upon this occasion were almost wholly
religious. The candidate passed nights in prayer among priests in a
church; he received the sacraments; he entered into a bath, and was clad
with a white robe, in allusion to the presumed purification of his life;
his sword was solemnly blessed; every thing, in short, was contrived to
identify his new condition with the defence of religion