The sense of honor which formed its very essence was further developed by the social atmosphere of a monarch's court.

It became the virtue of the nobly born and chivalrously nurtured, as appears very remarkably in this passage from Rabelais[3]: 'En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: Fay ce que vouldras.

Parce que gens liberes, bien nayz, bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies honnesties, ont par nature ung instinct et aguillon qui toujours les poulse a faitctz vertueux, et retire de vice: lequel ils nommoyent honneur.' Now in Italy not only was Chivalry as an institution weak; but the feudal courts in which it produced its fairest flower, the knightly sense of honor, did not exist.[4] Instead of a circle of peers gathered from all quarters of the kingdom round the font of honor in the person of the sovereign, commercial republics, forceful tyrannies, and the Papal Curia gave the tone to society.

In every part of the peninsula rich bankers who bought and sold cities, adventurers who grasped at principalities by violence or intrigue, and priests who sought the aggrandizement of a sacerdotal corporation, were brought together in the meshes of diplomacy.

The few noble families which claimed a feudal origin carried on wars for pay by contract in the interest of burghers, popes, or despots.