vassal against the violence of others, and on the vassal's part to make good the homage pledged by him when he knelt and placed his hands within his lord's hands and vowed himself his lord's man for the fief he held. His duty was to aid his lord against enemies, yield him counsel and assistance in the judgment of causes, and pay money to ransom him from captivity, knight his eldest son, or portion his daughter. The ramifications of these feudal tenures and obligations extended, with all manner of complications, from king and duke down to such as held the meagre fief that barely kept man and war-horse from degrading labour. All these made up the feudal class whose members might expect to become knights on reaching manhood.
Neither this system of land tenure, nor the sentiments and relations sustaining it, drew their origin from Christianity. But the Church was mighty in its influence over the secular relationships of those who came under its spiritual guidance. Feudal troth was to become Christianized. The old regard for war-chief and war-comrade was to be broadened through the Faith's solicitude for all believers; then it was raised above the human sphere to fealty toward God and His Church; and thereupon it was gentled through Christian meekness and mercy.
This Christianized spirit of fealty, broadening to courtesy and pity, was to take visible form in a universal Order into which members of the feudal class were admitted when their valour had been proved, and into which brave deeds might bring even a low-born man. Gradually, as the Order's regula, a code of knighthood's honour was developed, valid in its fundamentals throughout western Christendom; but varying details and changing fancies from time to time intruded, just as subsequent phases of monastic development were grafted on the common Benedictine rule.
Investing a young warrior with the arms of manhood has always in fighting communities been the normal ceremony of the youth's coming of age and his recognition as a member of the clan. The binding on of the young Teuton's sword in the assembly of his people was an historical antecedent of the making of a knight. In all the lands of western Europe—France, Germany, Anglo-Saxon
