The Spirit of the Laws :: :: University of Virginia Library

Our connections with the fair sex are founded on the pleasure of enjoyment; on the happiness of loving and being loved; and likewise on the ambition of pleasing the ladies, because they are the best judges of some of those things which constitute personal merit. This general desire of pleasing produces gallantry, which is not love itself, but the delicate, the volatile, the perpetual simulation of love.

According to the different circumstances of every country and age, love inclines more to one of those three things than to the other two. Now I maintain that the prevailing spirit at the time of our judicial combats must have been that of gallantry.

I find in the law of the Lombards, [133] that if one of the two champions was found to have any magic herbs about him, the judge ordered them to be taken from him, and obliged him to swear he had no more. This law could be founded only on the vulgar opinion; it was fear, the alleged inventor of much that made them imagine this kind of prestige. As in single combats the champions were armed at all points, and as with heavy arms, both of the offensive and defensive kind, those of a particular temper and strength gave immense advantages, the notion of some champions having enchanted arms must certainly have turned the brains of a great many people.

Hence arose the marvellous system of chivalry. The minds of all sorts of people quickly imbibed these extravagant ideas, In romances are found knights-errant, necromancers, and fairies, winged or intelligent horses, invisible or invulnerable men, magicians who concerned themselves in the birth and education of great personages, enchanted and disenchanted palaces, a new world in the midst of the old one, the usual course of nature being left only to the lower class of mankind. Knights-errant ever in armour, in a part of the world abounding in castles, forts, and robbers, placed all their glory in punishing injustice, and in protecting weakness. Hence our romances are full of gallantry founded on the idea of love joined to that of strength and protection.

Such was the origin of gallantry, when they formed the notion of an extraordinary race of men who at the sight of a virtuous and beautiful lady in distress were inclined to expose themselves to all hazards for her sake, and to endeavour to please her in the common actions of life.

Our romances of chivalry flattered this desire of pleasing, and communicated to a part of Europe that spirit of gallantry which we may venture to affirm was very little known to the ancients.

The prodigious luxury of that immense city of Rome encouraged sensuous pleasures. The tranquillity of the plains of Greece gave rise to the description of the sentiments of love. [134] The idea of knights-errant, protectors of the virtue and beauty of the fair sex, led to that of gallantry.

This spirit was continued by the custom of tournaments, which, uniting the rights of valour and love, added still a considerable importance to gallantry.