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Of the Mareschal

vaise coustume apprise de jeunesse.' Boucicaut we read, "Jamais souffriroit jurer à nul de son hostel," and in the camp he used to command, " que nul n'y jure vilainement Dieu. Et si aucun le faict, il est grefvement puny." It was from a devout and reverential spirit, that oaths were forbidden to chivalry, and not merely from an idea that they were contrary to good manners. The same spirit induced knights and princes to pay all devout honour to the seasons and festivals of the Church. In the Anglo-Saxon times, a law says, "Sunday is most holily to be kept; but if it happen that a man must of necessity travel, he may ride or sail, but on condition that he hear mass 299 Louis-le-Débonnaire renewed the primitive laws of the Church, which commanded the cessation of every servile work on Sunday; and he even endeavoured to prevent all public assemblies for amusement. The ancient laws of the Bavarians forbid any one to travel by land or water on Sunday, under pain of twelve shillings fine. In a council held by Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 747, all priests and monks are forbidden to travel on Sundays, unless on urgent necessity, The council of Paris in 1557 decreed, that all plays, dances, drinkings, and idle discourse, be avoided on festivals; and St. Augustin even said, they would have done better to dig the whole day, than to dance the whole day." Theodosius the Elder, in 386, forbad even Pagans to be gratified on Sundays with any exhibition of gladiators, or stage-plays, or horse-racing, or fighting of wild beasts; and his grandson, Theodosius the Younger, extended the prohibition to all the other great festivals of the year; nor would he allow any exception to be made in honour of the emperor's birth-day, or the anniversary of his accession, if it should fall on a festival; adding, that no greater honour can be paid to the imperial majesty on earth, than by shewing a just veneration to the majesty of Almighty God in heaven. The Greek and Latin Churches have universally condemned the violation of the Sunday and other festivals. The religious shows were first represented in Paris, under Francis I.; but it was only in the voluptuous court of Henry III. that regular comedians

Wilk. Concil. 273.

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were established. The Church condemned both, on the festivals in 1579 at Melun, at Bourges in 1584, at Avignon in 1594, at Rheims in 1583, at Tours in 1585. Similar decrees were passed by the councils in Spain. After divine service innocent recreation was permitted and approved of by the Church. Fenelon gently reproved a curate for blaming some poor peasants for dancing on the evening of Sunday. The knights and barons in every age made it a law never to hunt on Sunday *; and the German Legend of the Wild Huntsman will prove what opinion often prevailed respecting the consequence of profaning this holy day. Among the ecclesiastical laws of King Ine, in 643, we read, "If a slave work on the Sunday by his lord's command, let him become a freeman, and let the lord pay thirty shillings." St. Antony of Florence relates of two young men who went on a party of hunting on a festival, that one being killed by lightning, it was remarked he had not heard mass to the end before he set out. In the wicked court of our Henry II, the Sunday, was profaned: "Homines in curia Sabbatizare non vidi," says a contemporary, "unde et in ea parte melior est conditio jumentorum †." Tirante the White, describing the grand fetes given by the King of England in London, says that separate exercises were ordained for each day; but " Friday, a day of sorrow and of mourning, there was no joust, only after mass it was allowable to hunt." So in the famous challenge by Raynolde du Roy, Boucicaut, and St. Pye, in the reign of King Charles V. to hold a joust at St. Ingelbertes, in the marshes of Calais, in 1389, they were to continue there thirty days complete, the Fridays only excepted. The rule must be ascribed to a feeling of devout reverence, though the careless part of society may have only attended to the letter, At Easter, Theodosius and Justinian ordained, that all prisons should be thrown open, excepting in a few cases of particular crime: by the capitularies of Charlemagne, the same custom was observed at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. King Louis of France and the English barons in the first year of Henry III. made a truce for the

i

St. Palaye Mémoires Historiques sur la Chasse, + Petri Blesensis Epist. 14.

feast of the nativity, which was to last till twenty days after Christmas. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, when besieging Tortona in 1155, ordered hostilities to cease the day before Easter eve, and granted a truce for forty days to keep the festival. The approach of Christmas determined Godefrey de Bouillon to make peace with Alexis. During the siege of Rouen by the English, when a great number of poor silly creatures were driven between the wall of the city and the trenches of the enemy, King Henry V. moved with pity, "on Christmasse-day, in the honour of Christe's nativitie, refreshed all the poor people with vittaile, to their greate comfort, and his high prayse." Henry VI. on one occasion, kept his Christmas at the magnificent monastery of St. Edmundsbury, where he remained in a state of seclusion from the world till the following Easter.

But if the ordinary occasions of life could elicit indica tions of this solemn and reverential spirit, how sublime and awful must have been the scenes of imprisonment and affliction and death! What a spectacle to see the king, St. Louis die, after he had twice, with a large army, passed so many seas, tempests, monsters, arms and battles, for the glory of his master! What a spectacle to see St. Paul, the hermit, die, after he had laboured 100 years under the habit of religion! Would we reverse the picture, and behold the last agony of that proud knight, who now lies so low, and listens with horror to some holy monk who repeats to him, perhaps, the words of Luis Granaden. sis. "They that were ready," says the Gospel, "entered into the palace of the bride-groom, and presently the gate was shut. The gate shut! O eternal shutting! O gate of all goodness, which shall never be opened again,-who can sufficiently consider thee?" What a solemn scene is this? The very minstrel's harp is tuned to the solemnity of judgment.

" Or dance, amant, dance,

Tu as qui t'avance
Il te fault suyr;
Mais a l'autre dance
Le poid de balance
Ne pourras fuyr
Veulx tu consuyr
Par ton diffuyr

Divine vengeance?
Apres circuyr

Te vient poursuyr
Rigoreuse lance

O what a picture does the poet give of that proud chieftain struggling with death, in the prison of Stirling! "Old Allan-bane looked on aghast,

While grim and still his spirit pass'd."

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Far be it from any son of chivalry to fancy that fear is on all occasions unworthy of a brave man. The great moralist of nature has pronounced a different sentence. Οὐ περὶ πάντα δοκεῖ ὁ ἀνδρεῖος εἶναι· ἔνια γὰρ καὶ δεῖ φοβεῖσθαι, καὶ καλόν· τὸ δὲ μὴ, αἰσχρὸν, οἷον αδοξίαν τ. A reverential spirit was always considered as belonging to the heroic character. In the expedition of the Argonauts, at the banquet, when Idas had uttered that prophane speech, calling upon his spear to bear witness, sayingοὐ δέ μ ̓ ὀφέλλει

Ζεὺς τόσον, ὁσσάτιόν περ ἐμὸν δόρυ.

and affirming that a god could not resist him, all the war riors cried out and trembled, and Idmon rose up and said,

Δαιμόνιε, φρονέεις ὀλοφώνα καὶ πάρος αὐτῷ
Μέ τοι εἰς ἄτην ζωρὸν μέθυ θαρσαλέον κῆρ
Οἰδάνει ἐν στήθεσσι, θεοὺς δ ̓ ἀνέηκεν ἀτύζειν ;
*Αλλοι μυθοὶ ἔασι πανήγοροι, οἷσί περ

ἀνὴρ

Θαρσύνει ἕταιρον· σὺ δ ̓ ἀτάσθαλα πάμπαν ἐείπας τ

Thus again, Jason addresses the sons of Prixus, after their escape from shipwreck,

Ζεὺς αὐτὸς τὰ ἕκας ἐπιδέρκεται· οὐδέ μιν ἄνδρες
Λήθομεν ἔμπεδον, οἵ τε θεούδεες, οὐδὲ δίκαιοι.

For as he saved your father from murder, and gave him great wealth,

Ως δὲ καὶ ὑμέας αὖτις ἀπήμονας ἐξεσάωσε

Χείματος οὐλομένοιο δ.

XV. In a book which is written under the favour and correction of

"That gentle race and dear,

By whom alone the world is glorified ;”

and in an attempt to explain the religious character

• Pierre Michaut, Dance aux Aveugles,

+ Aristot. Ethic. Nicomach, iii. 6.

* Apollon. Rhod. i. 476.

§ Ibid. ii. 1183.

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of the Christian chivalry, it would be unpardonable,
were I to pass over in silence the influence of this chi-
valry upon the female sex. The limits of this present
book will prevent me from looking farther than the
religious graces which distinguished women: hereafter we
shall have occasion to behold their movements in a more
brilliant sphere.
"After the of the Patriarchs," says
age
Segur, women were only splendid slaves, who, like
victims crowned with flowers, announced by their decora-
tion the sacrifice to which they were destined by those
who ought to have admired, respected, and protected
them." In Egypt, indeed, their slavery assumed a less
cruel character; but throughout the other vast nations of
the East, it was unlimited. In China it continues so to
this day. If we pass to more civilized nations, in ancient
Greece women were held in the most complete subjection,
their minds condemned to ignorance, and their persons to
confinement. The sentiments of Homer indeed, form an
exception to this charge. He speaks of marriage with
respect and regard*: and a similar testimony is extorted
even from Euripides.

Γάμοι δ' ὅσοις μὲν εὖ καθεστᾶσιν βροτῶν,
Μακάριος αἰών

In Rome their lives were at the disposal of their husbands. Thus, before Christianity, one half of the human race was condemned by the injustice and tyranny of the other, to a servile subjection. But now was at length justice rendered to the most lovely of the Creator's works. Being Christians, women had now, for the first time, hope; the world being subdued to that religion, they appeared invested with an angel dignity to which nature alone had not raised them; but which secured to them the reverence and the love of all men. To this was added an empire in the heart which was confirmed by the influence of chivalry. Hence the way was opened to exalt the glories of chivalry and to accomplish a regeneration of the human race. The Christian religion secured the purity and the elevation of the female heart, and it was the consequent influence of women, that empire which they obtained by the power of virtue, meekness, and innocence, over the wild

Odyss. vi. 182.

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