The Knight

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
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Data:	04.09.2001
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The Knight
A knight is essentially a mounted warrior in the service of his liege-lord. The mounted warrior had a great advantage on the battlefield. Using the speed and momentum of a charge, the horse could trample his rider's enemies; the rider could use the long lance to injure his foes while he remained out of reach of their weapons. Then, with all speed, the knight could ride off, only to return for another deadly attack. This technique had the most devastating effect when the cavalry worked together in formation. The horse-mounted soldier was therefore of great significance to an army's leaders; thus the root of the French word for knight, chevalier, is the French word for horse, cheval. The ability to wield a sword or lance from horseback was a special skill that took practice and wherewithal, and it also took practice with comrades to learn to work together as a team. A lord would employ knights and give them the time and equipment they needed to practice; in return, they served their lord as vassals. The duties of a vassal could include not only fighting in his lord's army, but also guarding his castle, giving him financial aid, acting as his messenger or ambassador, and serving on his council. The knight was under his lord's protection, both legally and militarily. It was the relationship between himself and his lord that defined the knight's life. The lord's position gave him considerable control over the knight's life, career, and future, including the final say in whom the knight could marry and the disposition of his estate after his death. The lord technically owned the land used by the knight to raise revenues, and while the property usually remained in the knight's family for generations, it was the lord's prerogative to revoke a knight's right to the land and give it to someone else. A lord might also be a knight in the service of a higher authority, who in turn would serve his liege, all the way up to the king. This chain of service was the basis of feudalism, and its importance is revealed in the Saxon word for servant, cniht, which gives us our English knight. Today, the word "knight" conjures up far more than war and service. Loyalty, courtesy, honour, glory, courage -- all this and more come to mind when we think of the knight in shining armour. And, indeed, as history unfolded, the knight's role in society altered from that of a cavalry soldier to a model of behaviour. Yet, as we know, knights were only human, and did not always live up to the standards imposed on them by society. There is so much more to the true definition of a knight than can be covered in a single article. Through the course of Knight Life, I hope we can eventually come to a more complete understanding of whom and what the medieval knight really was.
Knighthood and Nobility
Thus, knights were not necessarily nobles, nor were nobles necessarily knights. The noble class and the knightly class slowly came to merge from the late 12th century onward. Nobles become knights with increasing frequency. The French prince (future king Louis VI) was knighted without the knowledge of his father who remains distrustful of a rather heterogeneous professional class, but thereafter every French king is knighted. Conversely, heredity enters the knightly class in the 13th century. The son of a knight is automatically a squire, thus making him eligible for knighthood on the basis of his ancestry; at the same time, knighthood is more and more restricted to descendants of knights by various legal restrictions imposed over the course of the 13th century. In the late 13th century, a decision of the Parliament in Paris forbade the count of Artois from making unfree men into knights without the king's consent; interesting to note, the two men who had been so knighted were allowed to remain knights subject to the payment of a fine. This marked both the closure of the knightly class as well as the beginnings of a new form of access, by purchase.
In England, the evolution was different: those who held land in knight's fee but did not wish to take up the profession could pay a tax. Knighthood did not become a hereditary class in England, and instead the knightly class (those eligible to be knights) became the nucleus of the gentry.
Orders of Knighthood
The origins of orders of knighthood are in the Crusades. In the Latin Orient, a new institution emerged, in which knights (professional soldiers) associated themselves under a strict, quasi-monastic rule of life, for the purpose of protecting pilgrims and defending Christian conquests in the Holy Land. In the 14th century, just as the original military-monastic orders were searching for a new mission after the loss of the Holy Land, kings began creating orders of their own, modelled in part on these original orders, but with a different purpose, to bind their nobility to themselves. Still later, in the late 16th century, these monarchical orders were imitated in form by the new orders of merit, which became common throughout Europe.
Because each institution tried to use the prestige of the previous one by imitating it, the term "order of knighthood" has been passed on and is now used for modern awards and decorations that are neither orders nor composed of knights. In modern society, only a very few orders survive from the times of the Crusades, and most "orders of knighthood" awarded by sovereigns or governments (such as the English Garter or the Spanish Golden Fleece) are, in spite of their historical connection, awards of merit.
Heraldry and Knighthood
The relations between heraldry, nobility and knighthood are often completely misunderstood. Briefly stated, heraldry appeared in the landed aristocracy and quickly spread to the knightly class in the 12th century, at a time when knighthood and nobility remain very distinct classes. Over the course of the 13th century, knighthood and nobility came to merge, just as heraldry spread far beyond either class to be used by all classes of society. Thus, heraldry is not particularly linked to nobility, although the most easily documented uses of heraldry are among nobles, simply because nobles were the elite.
The initial development of heraldry certainly owes a lot to the practices of the knightly class, in particular the growing fashion of tournaments, which became more and more popular from the 13th century, just as knighthood as a military institution was on the wane. Tournaments were the occasion to display coats of arms, and heralds, who were originally a specialized group of minstrels, became responsible for identifying and cataloguing the arms of participants. Their knowledge of coats of arms also helped them identify fighters in battle and dead on the battlefield, and for this reason heralds became associated with battles, truces, declarations of war, in an official capacity.