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[Footnote 51: Omnes de Burgundia, et Alvernia, et Vasconia, et Gothi, (of Languedoc,) provinciales appellabantur, caeteri vero Francigenae et hoc in exercitu; inter hostes autem Franci dicebantur. Raymond des Agiles, p. 144.]

[Footnote 52: The town of his birth, or first appanage, was consecrated to St Aegidius, whose name, as early as the first crusade, was corrupted by the French into St. Gilles, or St. Giles. It is situate in the Iowen Languedoc, between Nismes and the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate church of the foundation of Raymond, (Melanges tires d'une Grande Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvii. p 51.)]

[Footnote 53: The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great Robert Guiscard; his father, the Marquis Odo the Good. It is singular enough, that the family and country of so illustrious a person should be unknown; but Muratori reasonably conjectures that he was an Italian, and perhaps of the race of the marquises of Montferrat in Piedmont, (Script. tom. v. p. 281, 282.)]

[Footnote 54: To gratify the childish vanity of the house of Este. Tasso has inserted in his poem, and in the first crusade, a fabulous hero, the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x. 75, xvii. 66 - 94.) He might borrow his name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila bianca Estense, who vanquished, as the standard-bearer of the Roman church, the emperor Frederic I., (Storia Imperiale di Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script. Ital. tom. ix. p. 360. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.) But, 1. The distance of sixty years between the youth of the two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2. The Storia Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the end of the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281 - 289.) 3. This Rinaldo, and his exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero of Tasso, (Muratori, Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]

Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.

Part III.

Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the crusades, a revolution had taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was gradually extended to the rest of Europe. The service of the infantry was degraded to the plebeians; the cavalry formed the strength of the armies, and the honorable name of miles, or soldier, was confined to the gentlemen ^55 who served on horseback, and were invested with the character of knighthood. The dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful barons: the barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices of their jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of each other and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian order, which disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species with themselves. The dignity of their birth was preserved by pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry without spot or reproach, might legally pretend to the honor of knighthood; but a valiant plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and became the father of a new race. A single knight could impart, according to his judgment, the character which he received; and the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more glory from this personal distinction than from the lustre of their diadem. This ceremony, of which some traces may be found in Tacitus and the woods of Germany, ^56 was in its origin simple and profane; the candidate, after some previous trial, was invested with the sword and spurs; and his cheek or shoulder was touched with a slight blow, as an emblem of the last affront which it was lawful for him to endure. But superstition mingled in every public and private action of life: in the holy wars, it sanctified the profession of arms; and the order of chivalry was assimilated in its rights and privileges to the sacred orders of priesthood. The bath and white garment of the novice were an indecent copy of the regeneration of baptism: his sword, which he offered on the altar, was blessed by the ministers of religion: his solemn reception