In the middle ages 27

iiumanity that exist for all time. Once the Truce of

God is established, so runs the enactment, all clerks,

peasants, merchants, and non-combatants in gen-

eral, shall be entitled to relief from the violence of

the warriors. Even animals must be respected.

Religious edifices and public buildings are to be

safeguarded. Furthermore, hostilities shall be

suspended between Wednesday evening and Mon-

day morning during all of Advent and Lent and

the Emberdays, as well as on all principal holidays.

When any community of human beings exhibits

consciousness of such duties, it has already emerged

from barbarism; and, whatever its structure in de-

tail may be, it must be counted among those socie-

ties of mankind that are destined to a high civi-

lization.

Moreover, in the third place, Cluny moulded the

moral sense of chivalry, transformed its ideals, and

introduced religion into its * ceremonies. Once the

knight came in contact with Christian morality, he

was no longer an egotistic, ambitious, and brutal

warrior; he learned to be loyal and generous; he

became the born-defender of the Church, the cham-

pion of the weak, the opponent of violence. When-

ever conferences were called to discuss peace, the

monks urged charity and forgiveness upon the

nobles, who frequently repented in tears; or,

indeed, the very men who had pillaged on the pre-

vious day would forthwith set out on long pilgri-

mages to St. James of Compostella or to Rome or

28 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

to Jerusalem, to expiate their crimes. And so the

monks of Ckmy galvanized into life the nascent

virtues of the race. The word "Frank," originally

the name of a people inhabiting Gaul, came to be

synonymous with "loyal."^ It is under this aspect

that chivalry is represented in the numerous twelfth

century romances, in the Chansons de Geste of

which the Chanson de Roland furnishes the most

beautiful example. The union of the martial spirit

with the religious, and the alliance between feudal

system and Church became indissoluble. When

the time came to preach the Crusades, Cluny could

call with confidence upon the nobles to carry their

arms into the Holy Land. The First Crusade was

in fact a strictly Cluniac enterprise, and Pope Ur-

ban II, who proclaimed it at the famous council of

Clermont, had been himself a monk of Cluny.

And where, indeed, does the influence of the mo-

nastic ideal, as a social force, appear more clearly

than in those epics of audacity, those distant jour-

neys on which so many young nobles lost their

lives ?

But the abbots of Cluny performed a fourth so-

cial service ; they undertook the reform of the secu-

lar clergy, both priests and bishops. They con-

demned the scandalous abuses of married bishops,

who lived like feudal barons, wholly given over to

feasting and war. Thej^ also worked to free the

bishops from the patronage of the great feudal

7 Reynaufl, op. cit., p. 339.