ABSTRACT
The secular writers of the Middle Ages were passionately concerned with the dignity of man, but they were concerned with it only in so far as the dignity of an individual man could be expressed in relation to the ideals of Christian chivalry. The author of the Chanson shows no interest in the dignity of the twenty thousand men who die with Roland at Roncevaux. They have willingly sacrificed their lives in the performance of their duty, but they have never had to come to terms with the ideals of Christian chivalry. At the root of the mediaeval monastery’s attitude lay the remembrance that man had lost earthly paradise because of woman. Frederick W. Locke has summed up the case with clarity and succinctness: ‘Behind this mediaeval attitude towards women was a monastic tradition whose influence upon letters and institutions cannot be overestimated. In contrast to the monastery, the mediaeval nobility showed no reservations about women.
