Knight: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:26, 27 April 2006

Revision as of 19:49, 27 April 2006

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The night before his knighting ceremony, the squire would take a cleansing bath, fast, make confession, and pray to [[God]] all night in the [[chapel]], readying himself for his life as a knight. Then he would go through the knighting ceremony the following day. Knights followed the code of chivalry, which promoted honor, honesty, respect to God, and other knightly virtues. Knights served their lords and were paid in land, because money was scarce.

Later, as military technology and society evolved, knighthood became irrelevant to warfare (the [[Battle of the Golden Spurs]] in 1302 was seen as a landmark: the largest knightly army in [[christendomChristendom]], fielded by the [[France|French]] king, was destroyed by [[infantry]]; soon [[firearm]]s would revolutionize war still further), while its theoretically irrelevant link with nobility (generally only nobles were knighted, and in noble families most males were expected to be) encouraged it to survive with an essentially civilian [[ethos]] of [[social stratification]]. In various traditions, knighthood was reserved for people with a minimum of noble quarters (as in many orders of chivalry), or knight became essentially a low degree of nobility, sometimes even conferred as a hereditary title below the [[peerage]].

Meanwhile monarchy strived, as an expression of [[Absolutism]], to monopolize the right to confer knighthood, even as an individual honour. Not only was this often successful, once established, this prerogative of the [[Head of State]] was even transferred to the [[succession#Political succession|successors]] of [[dynasty|dynasties]] in [[republic]]an [[regime]]s, such as the British [[Lord Protector of the Commonwealth]].