Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/114

92 tell each other of the marvellous revelations which have already heralded it. Let them ignore all the futile differences which might prevent peace, if negotiations were left to ecclesiastics, to lawyers, and to soldiers. The king of France may fearlessly cede a few frontier towns and castles. Directly after the conclusion of peace the crusade will be prepared. Quarrels and hostilities will cease everywhere; the tyrannical governments of countries will be reformed; a general council will summon the princes of Christendom to undertake a crusade, in case sermons do not suffice to convert the Tartars, Turks, Jews and Saracens.

The share which the ideas of chivalry have had in the development of the law of nations is not limited to these dreams. The notion of a law of nations itself was preceded and led up to by the ideal of a beautiful life of honour and of loyalty. In the fourteenth century we find the formulation of principles of international law blending with the casuistical and often puerile regulations of passages of arms and combats in the lists. In 1352 Sir Geoffroi de Charney (who died at Poitiers bearing the oriflamme) addresses to the king, who has just instituted his order of the Star, a treatise composed of a long list of “demandes,” that is to say, questions of casuistry, concerning jousts, tournaments and war. Jousts and tournaments rank first, but the importance of questions of military law is shown by their far greater number. It should be remembered that this order of the Star was the culmination of chivalrous romanticism, founded expressly “in the manner of the Round Table.”

Better known than the “demandes” of Geoffroi de Charney is a work that appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century, and which remained in vogue till the sixteenth: L’Arbre des Batailles of Honoré Bonet, prior of Selonnet, in Provence. The influence of chivalry on the development of the law of nations nowhere appears more clearly than here. Though the author is an ecclesiastic, the idea which suggests his very remarkable conceptions to. him is that of chivalry. He treats promiscuously questions of personal honour and the gravest questions of the law of nations. For example, “by what right can one wage war against the Saracens or other unbelievers,” or, “if a prince may refuse the passage