The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer.

  • Palmer, Abram Smythe.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/542 (page 3)
    THE HISTORICAL IDEA OF A GENTLEMAN 1 Professor von Ihering in his learned researches into the origin of social forms {Zweck im Recht, vol. ii.) has shown that politeness and refinement of manners may be ultimately traced up to the primeval city which was the cradle of the world’s civilization, science and reUgious ideas—ancient Babylon. Having remarked that the words ‘ courtesy ’ (Ger. hilhsch, hub-isc, befitting the court, hof) ‘ urbanity ’ (Greek dcrretos) bear witness to the Court and the city having been the original home and historic centre of good manners, he traces the growth of good breeding as follows : ‘ There was only one resi- dential city in the Middle Ages which could compare with Athens and Rome—Constantinople ; and from Constantinople the Western countries have obtained their courtly manners ; in not one of their courts have they originated—all have either directly or indirectly borrowed them from the Byzantine Court. ‘ The first to do this was Theodoric, who had been educated at the Byzantine Court, and presented his Ostro-Goths with the Byzantine Court ceremonials. By the same route, and by marriage ^vith Byzantine princesses, good manners reached the other Courts of the Middle Ages ; Constantinople was the High School of good breeding—a place of education for the ‘ unlicked cubs ’ of the North. But even in Constantinople Court ceremonial was not original ; its history dates back to the Imperial Court of Rome, from that to the then Persian Court, which, in its turn, received it through Cyrus and Darius from the Babylonian Court. The spirit which ani- 1 In] a minute historical investigation which Sir George Sitwell contributed to The Ancestor (No. i, 1902) he states that ‘Gentleman’ was first used as descriptive of rank and status in 1413, and that no class of gentleman so called was known before the third decade of the XV century. He concludes that the title was given, not with reference to bearing arms or holding property, but as connoting ‘ a freeman whose ancestors have always been free ’ (pp. 60-103).