Chivalry (derived through the French cheval from the Latin caballus) as an institution is to be considered from three points of view: 1) the military, 2) the social, 3) and the religious. We shall also here consider: 4) the history of chivalry as a whole. 1) MILITARY In the military sense, chivalry was the heavy … Read more
On a certain morning in 1208, probably 24 February, Francis was hearing Mass in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near which he had then built himself a hut; the Gospel of the day told how the disciples of Christ were to possess neither gold nor silver, nor scrip for their journey, nor … Read more
Founder of the Franciscan Order, born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181 or 1182 — the exact year is uncertain; died there, 3 October, 1226. Francis received some elementary instruction from the priests of St. George’s at Assisi, though he learned more perhaps in the school of the Troubadours, who were just then making for … Read more
It appears that in some kingdoms of Europe, maybe the one of the Cid in the north of Spain, there was a contract between the king and his vassal so that if the king broke the contract, allegiance was extinguished. This is easy to understand because of the feudal bond. In other words, he could … Read more
To be like Our Lord Jesus Christ was the ideal that inspired the Middle Ages. Medieval man desired to be linked to Him in the most complete way possible; to lose himself in Him. These sentiments were not only loving movements of admiration and awe. Medieval man took them to their final consequences, reasoning that … Read more
Frantz Funck-Brentano, a member of the Institute of France, describes the role of the family in the constitution of feudal society in his celebrated work L’Ancien Régime: The Ancien Régime grew out of feudal society. Nothing contradicts this. As for the feudal system, it was produced, in that astonishing period which ran from the middle … Read more
As modern society sinks further into depravity and chaos, we turn to the Medieval Christendom to learn what a truly Christian society is. While the Middle Ages had its faults, like every human epoch, Pope Leo XIII states in his encyclical Immortale Dei, that the Middle Ages was an era in which the philosophy of … Read more
Frantz Funck-Brentano, a member of the Institute of France, describes the role of the family in the constitution of feudal society in his celebrated work L’Ancien Régime: The Ancien Régime grew out of feudal society. Nothing contradicts this. As for the feudal system, it was produced, in that astonishing period which ran from the middle … Read more
