THE FEUDAL LAND SYSTEM 251 under pretext of war; I will not destroy mills nor steal the flour." A measure more generally adopted by the clergy Iwas the Truce of God, by which bishops forbade fighting in ■their dioceses over the week-end and on a number of church holidays. It can readily be imagined that this ecclesiastical
- prohibition was not easy to enforce. It is, however, possible
I to exaggerate the amount of robbing and slaughtering of the ! common people done by the feudal nobility and such atroci- i ties attributed to them as burning churches full of people or i gouging out babies' eyes with their own hands. The pas- sages in contemporary writers expressing disapproval and I horror at such cruel deeds are not a proof that they were i common practices, but are a proof that there was a strong ! public sentiment against such conduct. Vassal and lord alike belonged to the noble class and I passed their lives in the same round of warlike occupations and amusements. To their life is given the name "chivalry," derived from the Romance word for "horse" and denoting the life of cavaliers or knights. The earliest literature of feudal times extols physical hardihood and bravery, condones brigandage, and shows war brutally waged as almost the only ideal of the early chevalier. Later history indicates that it too often continued to be his prac- tice. But this military aristocrat in time developed, or rather had constructed for him by the Church and the po- etical romancers, a set of social ideals of which our present- day use of the term "chivalry " is a reminiscence. The medi- eval clergy insisted that the true knight should be a manly Christian, should respect and defend the Church, should fight against heathen and heretics, and should protect the needy and those in distress. The minstrels and romancers, who sometimes found the lords away and only the ladies at home when they visited the castles, depicted the true knight as an accomplished gentleman and perfect lover. The duty of court attendance brought knights together, sometimes in the society of the other sex, and so helped to develop the social virtue of courtesy or good manners and various chivalric conventions.
