Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/90

70 monastic discipline and rule. The paths of life were few and sharply defined. All men were warriors; the warriors of God must be monks. As heretofore, monasteries were the centres of learning: here Norman and Saxon children alike learnt to read and to write and to sing; here books were copied and illuminated and chronicles kept—imperfect and untrustworthy, but beyond all words precious. Here, too, were the hospitals, where the sick poor were provided with food and clothing; here were the wooden houses for those stricken with that scourge of the Middle Ages, leprosy.

It is this spirit or consciousness of sacrifice made ungrudgingly for the sick and suffering that gave rise to the spirit of Chivalry, which was such a characteristic of this age. For it is to the new life breathed into Christianity by direct contact with Europe after the Conquest that we owe the spirit of knighthood, suggestive of a new ideal and more generous impulses than any hitherto known in this country. Knighthood in the Middle Ages was no lightly earned title, as it is to-day. The ceremonies then were entirely of a religious character. After bathing, typical of baptism, the candidate for knighthood was clothed in a