Historical and Political Essays | Page 7

generations the favourite model. He was deemed,
in the words of an old Latin historian, to be of all men the one 'most
like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force till the softening influence
of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman life, made the stoical ideal seem
too hard and unsympathising; till the corruption and despotism of the
Empire had withdrawn the best men from political life and attached a
certain taint or stigma to public employment; till new religions arose in
the East, bringing with them new ideals to govern the world. Gradually
we may trace the contemplative virtues rising to the foremost place
until, about the fifth century, the ideal had totally changed. The heroic
type was replaced by the saintly type. The supremely good man was
now the ascetic. The first condition of sanctity was a complete
abandonment of secular duties and cares and a complete subjugation of

the body. A vast literature of legends arose reflecting and glorifying the
prevailing ideal and holding up the hermit life as the supreme pattern of
perfection, and this literature occupies a place in mediævalism very
similar to that held by the 'Lives' of Plutarch in antiquity.
Ancient art was essentially the glorification of the body, a
representation of the full strength and beauty of developed manhood.
The saint of the mediæval mosaic represents the body in its extreme
maceration and humiliation. The rhetorician, Dio Chrysostom, in a
somewhat whimsical passage, which was suggested by a remark of
Plato, found a special moral significance in the fact that Homer, though
he places his heroes on the the banks of what he calls 'the fishy
Hellespont,' never makes them eat fish, but always flesh and the flesh
of oxen, for this, as he says, is 'strength-producing food' and is
therefore suited for the formation of heroes and the proper diet for men
of virtue. Compare this judgment with the protracted, and indeed
incredible, fasts which the monkish writers delighted in attributing to
the saints of the desert, and we have a vivid picture of the change that
had passed over 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 the
result was the formation of a new ideal which for a long period mainly
governed the imagination of Christendom.
It for a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national
ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and
sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of
Crécy