The Crusades.—This chivalry impelled France out of the West into the East, there to fight with the unbelievers, to struggle to free from the hands of the infidels the land where our Lord had lived, to set up there new kingdoms for those who thirsted for larger fiefs than they could hope to acquire at home. To these the love of adventure was sufficient, the desire to prove themselves noble cavaliers by personal courage and deeds of bravery.
It has before been stated (p. 146) that the great ideal of eternal peace the ordained authorities prevailed principally in Germany, and that France possessed least of it; we may add that this ideal was a truly spirit ual one, related to the contemplative life of the cloister. We have said that the architecture of Germany was the purest expression of this ideal, and, as Germany was the strongest power in Europe, its archi tecture may be reckoned the purest and most complete expression of the culture of the period: in this sense we may say that Germany stood at the highest point of civilization. But only in this sense; iu fact, another very different comparison may be made.
That chivalry which sought neither rest nor peace, but activity and battle, rose more and more in opposition to contemplative calm, and it was the Crusades that gave the French and their ideas the supremacy and made them the unopposed leaders of civilization before the twelfth century was at an end. As in France, so more and more everywhere, spread the spirit which sought to win heaven, not by meditation, but by battle. Yet this ideal was not rude war; it was not to slay and to devastate: fixed regulations made war a knightly game, and the chivalric spirit longed not simply for courage and strength, but for magnanimity, generosity, .and piety as its inward qualities; for refinement, gallantry toward women, and an awakened taste for the fine arts—in a word, for culture—as the outward qualities of the cavalier. Chivalry, while not conforming itself exclusively to the inner life of man, had rendered the world more worldly than that ideal of peace would have been able to do, and by so doing it had con quered the world.
Chivalry, which may be considered a refined worldly idea, had to pass through a course of development, but this development was retarded for two centuries through the belief, entertained at the beginning of the eleventh century by the better portion of mankind, that the world was near its end. This development is seen in French architecture as con
trasted with the German. The latter had at the beginning of the period a clear mark before it; grand harmony lay in it from its inception, or was at least present in the germ.
But the details did not notably develop with the progress of time, nor did the taste for rich decoration essentially increase. It was otherwise in France; there, even in the building of churches, which alone assigns ideal tasks to the architects, harmonious execution was not attained. Unas similated elements, diverse and foreign, stand near together, each making its individual power felt according to the idea and inclinations of men, but more worldly and more free than in Germany. Little by little Archi tecture attained organized proportions; little by little the love of variety led to design, to definite execution, to a rational employment of materials, to richness and elegance of details, and to a wealth of ideas in the deco ration.
IntMence of Me Church on Architectural France as iu Germany it was the Church that inaugurated the development. The clergy were the representatives of the culture of the time: they were the savants and the poets, the architects and the sculptors. As the German clergy embodied in themselves the expression of the German spirit, so that of the French people was embodied in the French clergy. Indeed, the clergy played in France a greater part in the education of the laity than they did in Germany, and contributed not a little to turn the widespread want of culture into chivalry. Little by little, under their influence, the laity became so possessed of that spiritual power that chivalry no longer required spiritual guidance to attain the climax of outward refinement, and Architecture no longer asked for the guidance of an ecclesiastical architect, but strove on rapid wings to reach the height of an ideal of which only worldly temerity could dream, and which spiritual contempla tion could not attain.