o the more integral parts of the vast
feudal system.

The most conspicuous offspring of feudalism was chivalry, with its
various orders of knighthood; but chivalry and the orders of knighthood
gained little foothold in Italy, where the conditions necessary for the
growth and development of such a social and military order were far from
propitious. Knights, it is true, came and went in Italy, and performed
their deeds of valor; fair maidens were rescued, and women and children
were given succor; but the knights were foreign knights, and they owed
allegiance to a foreign lord. So far, then, Italy was without the
institution of chivalry, and, to a great degree, insensible to those
high ideals of fealty and honor which were the cardinal virtues of the
knightly order. Owing to the absence of these fine qualities of mind and
soul, the Italian in war was too often of fierce and relentless temper,
showing neither pity nor mercy and having no compassion for a fallen
foe. Warriors never admitted prisoners to ransom, and the annals of
their contests are destitute of those graceful courtesies which shed
such a beautiful lustre over the contests of England and France.
Stratagems were as common as open and glorious battle, and private
injuries were revenged by assassination and not by the fair and manly
_joust a l'outrance_. However, when a man pledged his word for the
performance of any act and wished his sincerity to be believed, he
always swore by the _parola di cavaliere_, and not by the _parola di
cortigiano_, so general was the acknowledgment of the moral superiority
of chivalry.

It was in the midst of this age of ignorance that Matilda, the great
Countess of Tuscany, by means of her wisdom and intelligence and her
many graces of mind and body, made such a great and lasting reputation
for herself that her name has come down in history as the worthy
companion of William the Conqueror and the great monk Hildebrand, later
Pope Gregory VII., her most distinguished contemporaries. Matilda's
father, Boniface, was the richest and most powerful nobleman of his time
in all Italy, and as Margrave and Duke of Tuscany, Duke of Lucca,
Marquis of Modena, and Count of Reggio, Mantua, and Ferrara, he exerted
a very powerful feudal influence. Though at first unfriendly to the
interests of the papal party in Italy, he was just about ready to
espouse its cause when he fell under the hand of an assassin; and then
it was that Matilda, by special