Editing Knight (section)

===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&gtrack=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" />