Unless we modify this statement a great deal, we can not now accept it at all.

There was indeed a religious beauty, particularly mediaeval, but it was not that which created the romance of the period.

Indeed, that romantic literature was something of a reaction against the religious restraint upon imagination.
But if we mean by mediaeval faith only that which is very much older than any European civilization, and which does not belong to the West any more than to the East--the profound belief in human moral experience--then I think that the statement is true enough.

At no time in European history were men more sincere believers in the value of certain virtues than during the Middle Ages--and the very best of the romances are just those romances which illustrate that belief, though not written for a merely ethical purpose.
But I can not better illustrate what I mean than by telling a story, which has nothing to do with Europe, or the Middle Ages, or any particular form of religious belief.

It is not a Christian story at all; and it could not be told you exactly as written, for there are some very curious pages in it.