The standard of morals was set by the
church, and according to her interpretation of Christianity, continence
was so subsidiary to orthodoxy, that what would now be considered a
crime, was in the Middle Ages an irregularity which need not weigh on
the conscience. Evidence of this is amply supplied by the social
history of the time, and the fact is fully illustrated by the
romances. The authors of these compositions, from their tendency to
idealization, held up to their readers a higher view of virtue in every
respect than was practised in actual life, and in their writings,
conjugal infidelity is of constant occurrence. The fictitious
personages who indulge in licence are but dimly conscious of
wrong-doing, and almost the only evidence of a realization of their
fault is in the Quest of the Saint Greal, when Launcelot and other
noble knights acknowledge that the attainment of the sacred prize is
not for them as being "sinful men," and the quest is achieved by the
spotless Sir Galahad, who, impersonating the purifying influence of
Christianity, forms the most striking character conceived by the
fertile imagination of the Middle Ages. The virtue of constancy was far
more admired than that of chastity, and it is said of Guenever, whose
sin had brought such calamity upon the Round Table, that "as she was a
true lover, so she had a good end.
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