After a thousand years of gloom and
brutality, joy and culture shed their radiance on a renewed world. The
ideal of chivalry bore very little resemblance to the old Teutonic ideal
of the hero; the older ideal had been based entirely on the appreciation
of physical strength; but chivalry was the disseminator of culture,
leaving ecclesiastical culture, which hitherto had been synonymous with
civilisation, a very long way behind. "Mezura," "masze" (the [Greek:
mphstoes] of the Platonic Greeks) was the new criterion, as compared
with the barbarian's want of restraint.
I do not propose to give a description of the life at the courts of
Provence. The news of it travelled north, and everywhere roused a desire
to imitate it. The need of a renewed life was powerfully stirring all
hearts. Men yearned for beauty and spontaneity, for passionate life,
unprecedented and romantic. This was especially the case in the north,
in France and in Germany, and above all in Wales, the country of the
imaginative and highly-gifted Celts.
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