Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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The development of arms that did not need as much specialized training

but were very effective against mounted knights made knighthood obso-

lete as a practical military force. Gunpowder ﬁ rst created cannons capable

of breaking sieges, but soon after, gun makers created small arms that re-

quired minimal training and had none of the art and beauty of the knight’s

weapons. Gunpowder was dirty and loud; it was the weapon of craftsmen.

By the middle of the 15th century, knights were unimportant to the out-

come of a battle. By the close of the century, knighthood was an expensive

aristocratic hobby.

Becoming a Knight

Knighthood training could only be given to boys from noble families.

They had to own land (or hold it in ﬁ ef from the king), and they must have

the right to a coat of arms. Only the king could grant the right to a heraldic

coat of arms. The coat of arms indicated that the family owed feudal service

to the king and must provide a certain number of knights in time of war.

A landless but noble family, perhaps a family that had recently lost its land,

could still train a son as a knight. He would be known as a knight errant, a

knight without a manor to support him.

The training for knighthood often meant living away from home for

much of a boy’s childhood. The most common placements were an uncle,

most likely his mother’s brother, or a powerful lord who had an informal

school for knights at his court. The boys trained by the count were often

the sons of his knights and vassals, and their presence and good treatment

ensured their fathers’ unbroken loyalty.

The ﬁ rst task for a future knight was to learn to ride a horse very well.

Boys learned to ride ponies from the youngest possible ages. They learned

basic riding (mounting, dismounting, jumping, and maneuvering) until it

was second nature. A squire or full knight was expected to ride effortlessly.

There was also weapons training with wooden swords and lances. Boys

trained several hours a day in sword use, wrestling, and boxing. On their

ponies, they aimed wooden lances at targets to practice handling a lance

and a horse at the same time. The practice target was called a quintain. The

quintain had a central pole with an arm that had a target and, on the other

side, an arm with a large hanging sandbag. The rider had to hit the target

and avoid the sandbag.

In some cases, boys training to be knights learned to read and write.

They learned their prayers like other schoolboys, and they were taught

the Latin military classics, such as the wars of Julius Caesar. At the height

of the fashion for courtly love, young men were expected to read epics

and romances.

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An older boy took a turn as a page, serving at table. He was being

trained in matters of social hierarchy and manners. Pages also helped

knights dress and carried messages. Although they were being groomed

to take a leading role in society, they were trained to serve and not to con-

sider any kind of service beneath them. An ideal page was perfectly unob-

trusive and polite, even if he was violent in combat training.

As teenagers, knights in training practiced wearing armor for many hours

so the weight did not tire them. They learned to climb ropes or ladders in

full armor and to jump on and off a horse easily. They continued advanced

weapons practice and studied tactics through chess. They learned skills for

hunting deer and boar.

In the last stage, they became squires for particular knights and began to

accompany them to tournaments or war. This stage could last for an indeﬁ -

nite amount of time. For aristocrats, knighthood would come soon. Less

wealthy young men could be squires for several years. One advantage of

their service as squires was the travel; squires came to know knights from

many countries, and, if they stood out as good future knights, they were

themselves known by the time they became full knights.

The ceremony of creating a noble knight was called dubbing. Warriors

who were merely trained soldiers could not be dubbed; they had to be

from noble families. The dubbing ceremony was originally a matter of giv-

ing good weapons to a new ﬁ ghter, commissioning his sword in the lord’s

service. In the original, simple ceremony, an established knight or lord gave

a young man a sword and a pair of spurs, with a kiss and a declaration that

he was now a knight. The ceremony was this simple on the battleﬁ eld if a

squire had shown bravery and was made a knight on the spot.

During the 12th century, the ceremony grew more complicated. By the

late 13th century, the ceremony was a complicated ritual with religious

symbolism, and it remained elaborate until the end of the period. It was

no longer a practical matter of being designated a ﬁ ghter for the king; it

was a rite of passage for the sons of noblemen. When a boy had trained

with a group of young men, they were often knighted in the same cere-

mony, with the lord who had supervised them doing the knighting. If one

young man was royal, he would be knighted ﬁ rst and might in turn knight

his friends. There was signiﬁ cance in who dubbed a young man a knight,

where, and when. Tournaments were common times to be knighted; the

young man’s father might sponsor the event in his honor. Some candi-

dates made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where it was a special blessing to be

dubbed a knight.

Geoffroi de Charny, one of most honored knights of 14th-century

France, wrote a treatise on knighthood a few years before his death in battle.

The ceremony he described was by then traditional, and each step had a rich

One of the greatest honors was to be knighted on the ﬁ eld of battle. A man given this

honor was nearly always of noble birth and had completed basic knight training;

usually, he was a squire who fought as well as the knights he served. (The British

Library/StockphotoPro)

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symbolic meaning. In Charny’s description, the ceremony began the previ-

ous day, with confession of sin to a priest, Mass, and a long bath in which

the young man pondered his sins. When he climbed out of the bath, he was

to leave those sins behind. He went to rest in a bed dressed with new sheets

until some knights came to dress him for the ceremony.

The knights dressed him in a symbolic set of clothing. First, they put on

him a new white shirt that symbolized purity from sin and, next, a red tunic

that symbolized a willingness to lose blood in defense of the weak. Black

hose meant that death could come at any time but that this fear must be

trampled underfoot. A white girdle symbolized purity and chastity. Finally,

a red cloak symbolized humility.

The knights led the candidate to church in this dress and stayed with him

all night to pray against sin. Some candidates may have held a sword hilt as

a cross while praying. In the morning, they all went to Mass, and then to

the dubbing ceremony. There, the presiding knight gave the candidate a pair

of golden spurs to symbolize that the riches of the world must be trampled

underfoot. The knights who were assisting buckled them onto his feet. The

presiding knight then kissed the candidate and gave him a light tap on the

shoulder with the sword. In other versions, the presiding knight sometimes

slapped the candidate’s cheek. He declared publicly that the young man

was a knight, and the ceremony was over.

A large feast followed. In the Magna Carta, the king was restricted from

collecting occasional, extra taxes except on the occasion of his ﬁ rst daugh-

ter’s marriage or the knighting of his oldest son. A royal knighting meant

an extremely sumptuous feast, but any knighting required a large feast. The

feast could be costly enough that some men would remain squires most of

their lives if their families could not afford the ceremony.

Courtly Manners

The code of chivalry stipulated a set of manners when the knight was

not in battle. He was to make his manners pleasing to women. He had to

know polite replies and comments for conversation with ladies, and often

a knight was expected to know how to dance. A knight was not required

to know how to read, but he should be able to speak well and give witty

replies in company. He should keep himself clean and dress in ﬁ ne cloth-

ing that would please ladies when he was in the hall. Young knights in

the 14th and 15th centuries wore their hair long to the shoulder and may

have curled it with a hot iron. They were clean shaven. Silk clothing in ﬁ ne

patterns and bright colors was popular even for men, and shoes had long

points at the front.

By the 13th and 14th centuries, knights had to speak and act in very

pious ways. They were not to ﬁ ght during Lent or on Sunday, and they

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had to pray and go to confession. Knights were not supposed to chase after

wealth, especially at the expense of brave deeds. They were supposed to help

the weak, and some knights who took the code seriously rode off to help

catch thieves or outlaws who had molested women.

The knight was expected to fall in love with a lady, either married or single,

and to devote himself to winning her favor by doing great deeds and behav-

ing well. Stories and songs at court told about brave kings and knights who

fell in love with ladies—often ladies who were married either to their vassals

or their lords. The stories were written to amuse and please ladies, so they

portrayed beauty and virtue as more important than rank at a time when

rank meant everything. Many of these stories portrayed the knights of King

Arthur’s Round Table in contemporary France; Lancelot’s love for married

Queen Guinevere was a model for how knights ought to behave.

Courtly manners were not only about politeness and love. A knight had

to show outstanding courage; he had to take extra risks. Sometimes, in

order to demonstrate his love for a lady, he told her that he would under-

take an adventure to bring her honor and win her favor. One simple adven-

ture was the pas d’armes in which a knight, usually a knight errant, took up

a position by a bridge and challenged all who passed to ﬁ ght. Only other

knights were permitted to ﬁ ght with the knight; merchants and farmers

passed in peace because they were not noble. If he unhorsed an opponent,

tournament rules of ransom applied.

Monastic Knights

The Knights Templars and the Knights of the Hospital began a tradition

of religious orders of knights. These monastic knights embodied all the ide-

als of the Middle Ages. The ideals of monastic spiritual peace and warrior

strength came together in the notion that the monastic knights fought a

spiritual war with earthly weapons. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most

extreme voices for the monastic ideal, praised the idea of the Knights of the

Temple, calling them something new, unknown to past ages.

Monastic knights had to take the vows of both monks and knights. They

promised to be unmarried and chaste, to live in poverty and own nothing

but what the order gave them, and to follow the rigorous hours of prayer.

When they were in the chapter houses of the order, they lived in cells like

monks. Theoretically, their weapons and horses were not their own, but be-

longed to the order. They also took the vows of knighthood with an addi-

tional twist: they vowed to uphold the war mission of the order and to obey

the head of the order. They did not owe fealty to any prince, but only to the

order, and the order answered to the Pope.

There were three orders of knights during the time of the Crusades: the

Order of the Hospital, founded in 1113; the Order of the Temple, founded

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in 1118; and the Teutonic Knights, founded in 1190. Each had a different

mission and a history that played out very differently.

The Order of the Hospital began as the custodians of a hospital, a resting

place, for pilgrims to Jerusalem. They were primarily monks, but their vows

included a vow to take up arms to defend the hospital or the city of Jeru-

salem. They took in sick and wounded knights. Although the Hospitallers

began in robes like monks, they began to wear chainmail. Some knights

who felt themselves in need of penitence for violence joined the Hospi-

tallers order. When Jerusalem was retaken by the Saracens, the Hospitallers

moved to Acre as the Knights of Saint John, and some became the Knights

of Malta and the Knights of Rhodes.

The Order of the Temple began as a group of knights who took vows

as monks with a mandate to protect pilgrims and defend Jerusalem. At

ﬁ rst, they lived in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was mistakenly called

“Solomon’s Temple,” so they became known as the Knights of the Temple,

or Templars. Many of those recruited to the Templars were knights who

had been excommunicated by the church and wished to do penance. To take

the vows of a Knight Templar was to get an automatic pardon for past sin

and an automatic assurance of heaven if the vows were upheld. The knights

lived by a strict monastic rule of poverty, obedience, and discipline.

The master of the Templars was not responsible to the governments of

Palestine or Europe, but only to the Pope. In Europe, many wealthy people

willed tracts of land to the Templars in order to obtain Papal indulgences.

The order became conspicuously wealthy, managing farms all over Europe

and maintaining several international headquarters. They began to develop

international banking methods in order to transfer funds from one branch

of the Templars to another. The Templars became one of the greatest ﬁ -

nancial powerhouses in Europe by the 14th century, in spite of the vow of

poverty that individuals took.

The Templar knights were drawn into ﬁ ghting in Spain against the Mus-

lim government, helping the Christian kingdoms of the north take back

territory. Templars built castles in Spain and brought back some of the Ara-

bic culture to Europe. Gradually, many in Europe shifted from viewing the

order as the pinnacle of Europe’s ideal of spirituality to viewing them as un-

accountable, too powerful, and possibly corrupt. The downfall of the order

came when King Philip of France persuaded Pope Clement, the ﬁ rst Pope

to live at Avignon in French territory, to convict the Templars of corrup-

tion and sorcery. The order was disbanded, the king seized their property,

and the knights who headed the order were executed.

Last, the order of the Teutonic Knights was founded by a group of

German knights who had come to the Holy Land with King Frederick II.

Like the Hospitallers, its original purpose was the care of the sick and

wounded in Palestine, but, as the order grew, it also worked to defend

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against the heathen on Germany’s borders. The Teutonic Knights built

castles and established border states in lands formerly held by Slavs, Wends,

and Letts. The order became a secular power, a guard of Christendom’s

eastern border.

See also: Armor, Crusades, Monasteries, Tournaments, Weapons.