he
pleasures of the senses was held in contempt; the greatest reproach was
"vilania"; in the "Yvain" of the French epic poet Chrestien de Troyes,
this universal feeling is thus expressed:

A courtier counts though he be dead,
More than a rustic stout and red.

Dante and his circle, as well as the best of the troubadours,
substituted for the "cortois" of the superficial Chrestien the "cor
gentil," the noble heart, which they accounted more precious than rank
and wealth and power. "Wherever there is virtue there is nobility," says
Dante, "but where there is nobility there need not necessarily be
virtue." A time had come when personal distinction was in every man's
grasp, no matter whether he was learned or unlearned, a nobleman or a
commoner. Certainly the commoner was never on an equality with the
aristocrat, partly because he was dependent on the largess of the great.
Even Dante was compelled to seek princely patronage, and not until the
Renascence do we hear of writers whose sarcastic tongues were so dreaded
that they became independent of charity.

In opposition to the monkish ideal of a contemplative life which had
hitherto obtained, a new ideal, the ideal of the courtier's life, was
upheld; ecclesiastical saintliness was contrasted with knightly honour.
Beauty, which at the dawn of the Christian era had fallen into ill
repute and had become associated with unholy, and even diabolical,
practices, had again come into its kingdom. Above everything it was the
beauty of woman which was re-discovered--or rather, in its new,
spiritual sense, newly discovered--and claimed the enthusiasm and love
of the best men of the period. After a thousand years of gloom and
brutality, joy and culture shed their radiance on a renewed world. The
ideal of chivalry bore very little resemblance to the old Teutonic ideal
of the hero; the older ideal had been based entirely on the appreciation
of physical strength; but chivalry was the disseminator of culture,
leaving ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with
civilisation, a very long way behind. "Mezura," "masze" (the [Greek:
mphstoes] of the Platonic Greeks) was the new criterion, as compared
with the barbarian's want of restraint.

I do not propose to give a description of the life at the courts of
Provence. The news of it travelled north, and everywhere roused a desire
to imitate it. The need of a renewed life was powerfully stirring all
hearts. Men yea