Chivalry in the oldest discoverable form was
the invention of the Church. The religious service by which the neophyte was
initiated as a knight has been traced back to the time of Otto III, when it
appears in the liturgy of the Roman churches. But the ceremony was not in
general use, outside Italy, before the age of the Crusades. It was Urban II who
inspired the knighthood of northern Europe with the belief that they were Dei
militia, the soldiers of the Church; and it is significant that warfare
against the unbeliever ranks prominently among the duties enjoined upon the
new-made knight, though it does not stand alone. The defence of the true faith
and of the Church is also inculcated; merit might be acquired in persecuting
heretics or in fighting for the Pope against an unjust Emperor. Nor are the
claims of the widow, the orphan and the defenceless totally forgotten.
But the
perfect knight of the Church was the Templar, the soldier living under the rule
of a religious order and devoting his whole energies to the cause of the Holy Sepulchre.
It was a remarkable innovation when St. Bernard, the mirror of orthodox
conservatism, undertook to legislate for the Order of the Temple; for the
primitive Church had hardly tolerated wars in self-defence. From one point of
view it was a wholesome change of attitude in the moral leaders of society,
that they should recognise war and a military class as inevitable necessities,
that they should undertake to moralise and idealise the commonest of occupations.
But the resolve was marred in the execution. In the desire to be practical, the
Church set up too low an aim and translated Christianity into precepts which
were only suited for one short stage of medieval civilisation, the stage of the
Crusades.
