Of such a character, then, was the audience which the mediæval romancers had to please. A class essentially military, ferocious, and accustomed to shedding blood, yet preserving in their violence a certain observance of laws of honor and courtesy; setting before themselves more often an ideal of glory and nobility, than an object of plunder or conquest; cultivating a consideration and gallantry toward women, remarkable in view of the necessarily rough and unrefined circumstances of their life; highly imaginative and adventurous; rejoicing in brilliancy of dress and show; filling the monotony of peace by tournaments, martial games, and the entertainments of the minstrels.
[Footnote 1: Taine: History of Eng. Lit., Van Laun's trans. chap. 3, pt. ii.]
[Footnote 2: "Hist. of Crusades," p. 11; Sir E. Strachey, Introd. to "Morte d'Arthur."]
[Footnote 4: Quoted in Green's "Short History of the English People." p. 224.]
[Footnote 5: Warton's "Hist. of English Poetry," Dissert. i.]
[Footnote 6: Quoted by Warton, "Hist. of Poetry," Dis. i.]
[Footnote 7: Froissart's "Chronicles," v. ii, p. 248, Johnes' Trans.]
[Footnote 8: Lecky's "History of Morals," chap. 5, vol. 2.]
[Footnote 9: Scott's "Essay on Chivalry."]
[Footnote 10: "Amadis of Gaul," Southey's ed. vol. 1, p. 40. This romance belongs to a late period of romantic fiction, but the passage cited is a good illustration of mediæval sentiment.]
[Footnote 11: Sir J. Barnes' "History of Edward III."]
[Footnote 12: Wright's "Manners and Sentiments in the Middle Ages," p. 276.]
The romances of chivalry sprang to life a logical production of the times. Their authors seized on the character of a king and a warrior--their highest conception of greatness, in the persons of Charlemagne and Arthur. Regardless of anachronism, they represented their heroes as the centre of a chivalric court, accoutred in the arms, and practising the customs of later centuries; they created in fact a new Arthur and a new Charlemagne, adapted to the new times. They brought to light the almost forgotten characters of antiquity. They represented Jason and Alexander invested with chivalric attributes and affected by mediæval superstitions. Hercules, according to them, performed his labors, not because of the wrath of Juno or the command of Jove, but, like a true knight-errant, to gain the favor of a Boeotian princess. Virgil the poet was transformed into Virgil the enchanter. The chief heroes were surrounded with restless knights, whose romantic adventures afforded unlimited range to the imagination, and delighted the chivalric mind. The romancers mingled with their endless tales of "arms and amours," the superstitions and myths which occupied the minds of men to the exclusion of all real knowledge and inquiry. The gloomy and terrible fictions which had adorned the songs of Northern scalds, the bright and fanciful imagery contained in the tales of Arabia and the East which the crusaders brought back with them into Europe, the superstitions of Christianity itself, were given only a greater influence in the lives of fictitious heroes than they were supposed to have in those of living men. Perfectly suited to the times, and in fact born of them, the romances took at once a powerful hold on the popular imagination. The characters of Arthur, of Launcelot and of Tristram became the objects of an ardent admiration, and the standards of excellence to which many strove to attain. The most exaggerated ideas of chivalry contained in the romances were adopted in actual life. Knights and ladies took upon themselves adventures and cultivated manners, which vied in extravagance with those of imaginary beings. The personality of King Arthur was so intensely realized, that for centuries it was believed that he would one day return from beyond the grave to resume his glorious rule. On his tomb were supposed to be inscribed the words: