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==History and evolution of medieval knighthood== <!-- 'Feudal Society' section in the 'Middle Ages' article links here --> ===Pre-Carolingian legacies=== {{further|Bucellarii}} In [[ancient Rome]], there was a knightly class ''[[Ordo Equestris]]'' (order of mounted nobles). Some portions of the armies of [[Germanic peoples]] who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, and some armies, such as those of the [[Ostrogoths]], were mainly cavalry.<ref>Petersen, Leif Inge Ree. ''Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States (400–800 A.D.)''. Brill (September 1, 2013). pp. 177–180, 243, 310–311. {{ISBN|978-9004251991}}</ref> However, it was the Franks who generally fielded armies composed of large masses of [[infantry]], with an infantry elite, the [[comitatus (classical meaning)|comitatus]], which often rode to battle on horseback rather than marching on foot. When the armies of the Frankish ruler [[Charles Martel]] defeated the [[Umayyad Caliphate|Umayyad]] Arab invasion at the [[Battle of Tours]] in 732, the Frankish forces were still largely infantry armies, with elites riding to battle but dismounting to fight. ===Carolingian age=== In the [[Early Middle Ages|Early Medieval]] period, any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or ''miles'' in Latin.<ref>{{cite book|first=Stephen |last=Church|title=Papers from the sixth Strawberry Hill Conference 1994|year=1995|publisher=Boydell|location=Woodbridge, England|isbn=978-0-85115-628-6|pages=51}}</ref> The first knights appeared during the reign of [[Charlemagne]] in the 8th century.<ref name="Duck">{{cite web |url=http://www.ducksters.com/history/middle_ages/history_of_knights.php|title=Middle Ages: History of the Medieval Knight|last=Nelson |first=Ken |publisher=Ducksters. Technological Solutions, Inc. (TSI) |date=2015}}</ref><ref name="OrignsOsu">{{cite web |url=http://origins.osu.edu/review/knighthood-it-was-not-we-wish-it-were|title=Knighthood As It Was, Not As We Wish It Were|last=Saul |first=Nigel |publisher=Origins |date=September 6, 2011}}</ref><ref>Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D.{{cite web |url=http://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/knight.htm|title=How Knights Work|publisher=How Stuff Works |date=January 22, 2008}}</ref> As the [[Carolingian]] Age progressed, the Franks were generally on the attack, and larger numbers of warriors took to their [[Horses in the Middle Ages|horses]] to ride with the Emperor in his wide-ranging campaigns of conquest. At about this time the Franks increasingly remained on horseback to fight on the battlefield as true cavalry rather than mounted infantry, with the discovery of the [[stirrup]], and would continue to do so for centuries afterwards.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=307&HistoryID=aa89>rack=pthc|title=The Knight in Armour: 8th–14th century|publisher=History World }}</ref> Although in some locations the knight returned to foot combat in the 14th century, the association of the knight with mounted combat with a spear, and later a lance, remained a strong one. The older Carolingian ceremony of presenting a young man with weapons influenced the emergence of knighthood ceremonies, in which a noble would be ritually given weapons and declared to be a knight, usually amid some festivities.<ref>{{cite book|title=Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Bmpw8LIwMUgC|first=Joachim|last=Bumke|year=1991|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley, US and Los Angeles, US|isbn=9780520066342|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Bmpw8LIwMUgC/page/n238 231]–233}}</ref> [[File:Bayeux Tapestry scene57 Harold death.jpg|thumb|A Norman knight slaying [[Harold Godwinson]] ([[Bayeux tapestry]], c. 1070). The rank of knight developed in the 12th century from the mounted warriors of the 10th and 11th centuries.]] These mobile mounted warriors made Charlemagne's far-flung conquests possible, and to secure their service he rewarded them with grants of land called [[benefices]].<ref name="Duck" /> These were given to the captains directly by the Emperor to reward their efforts in the conquests, and they in turn were to grant benefices to their warrior contingents, who were a mix of free and unfree men. In the century or so following Charlemagne's death, his newly empowered warrior class grew stronger still, and [[Charles the Bald]] declared their fiefs to be hereditary, and also issued the [[Edict of Pîtres]] in 864, largely moving away from the infantry-based traditional armies and calling upon all men who could afford it to answer calls to arms on horseback to quickly repel the constant and wide-ranging Viking attacks, which is considered the beginnings of the period of knights that were to become so famous and spread throughout Europe in the following centuries. The period of chaos in the 9th and 10th centuries, between the fall of the Carolingian central authority and the rise of separate Western and Eastern Frankish kingdoms (later to become [[France]] and [[Germany]] respectively) only entrenched this newly landed warrior class. This was because governing power and defense against [[Vikings|Viking]], [[Hungarians|Magyar]] and [[Saracen]] attack became an essentially local affair which revolved around these new hereditary local [[lord]]s and their ''[[demesne]]s''.<ref name="OrignsOsu" /> ===Multiple crusades and military orders=== [[File:OsmanenDeutscheKavallerie-1-.jpg|thumb|Hungarian knights routing Ottoman sipahi cavalry during the [[Battle of Mohács]] in 1526]] Clerics and the Church often opposed the practices of the Knights because of their abuses against women and civilians, and many such as St. [[Bernard de Clairvaux]] were convinced that Knights served the devil and not God, and needed reforming.<ref>{{cite book|author=Richard W. Kaeuper|title=Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-m4zosAOchQC&pg=PA76|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-924458-4|pages=76–}}</ref> In the course of the 12th century, knighthood became a social rank with a distinction being made between ''milites gregarii'' (non-noble cavalrymen) and ''milites nobiles'' (true knights).<ref>{{cite book|first=Stephen |last=Church|title=Papers from the sixth Strawberry Hill Conference 1994|year=1995|publisher=Boydell|location=Woodbridge, England|isbn=978-0-85115-628-6|pages=48–49}}</ref> As the term "knight" became increasingly confined to denoting a social rank, the military role of fully armoured cavalryman gained a separate term, "[[man-at-arms]]". Although any medieval knight going to war would automatically serve as a man-at-arms, not all men-at-arms were knights. The first military orders of knighthood were the [[Order of the Holy Sepulchre (Catholic)|Knights of the Holy Sepulchre]] and the [[Knights Hospitaller]], both founded shortly after the [[First Crusade]] of 1099, followed by the [[Order of Saint Lazarus]] (1100), [[Knights Templar]]s (1118), the [[Order of Montesa]] (1128), the [[Order of Santiago]] (1170) and the [[Teutonic Knights]] (1190). At the time of their foundation, these were intended as [[Monasticism|monastic orders]], whose members would act as simple soldiers protecting pilgrims. It was only over the following century, with the successful conquest of the Holy Land and the rise of the [[crusader states]], that these orders became powerful and prestigious. The great European legends of warriors such as the [[paladin]]s, the [[Matter of France]] and the [[Matter of Britain]] popularized the notion of [[chivalry]] among the warrior class.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.themiddleages.net/people/charlemagne.html |title=The Middle Ages: Charlemagne |access-date=2015-11-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171109080754/http://themiddleages.net/people/charlemagne.html |archive-date=2017-11-09 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="Arty">{{cite web |url=http://www.nobleworld.biz/images/Hermes.pdf|title=King Arthur in the Lands of the Saracen|last=Hermes|first=Nizar |publisher=Nebula |date=December 4, 2007}}</ref> The ideal of chivalry as the ethos of the Christian warrior, and the transmutation of the term "knight" from the meaning "servant, soldier", and of ''chevalier'' "mounted soldier", to refer to a member of this ideal class, is significantly influenced by the [[Crusades]], on one hand inspired by the [[Military order (society)|military orders]] of monastic warriors, and on the other hand also cross-influenced by Islamic ([[Saracen]]) ideals of ''[[furusiyya]]''.<ref name="Arty" /><ref>[[Richard Francis Burton]] wrote "I should attribute the origins of love to the influences of the Arabs' poetry and chivalry upon European ideas rather than to medieval Christianity." {{Cite book| editor=Charles Anderson Read |year=2007 |title=The Cabinet of Irish Literature, Vol. IV |last=Burton |first=Richard Francis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=93XtaGIOPhMC&q=antar+2007+chivalry |page=94 |publisher=Read Books |isbn=978-1-4067-8001-7}}</ref>
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