Key Takeaways
A knight in the Middle Ages was a warrior horseback rider . A horse was called Sir , and was normally of a noble or a genteel family . Knighthood , however , was not inherit ; it had to be earn by many years of training . Besides a steel and a shell , a horse in combat might carry a engagement - axe , mace or shaft . Early in the Middle Ages his armour consisted of a chain post tunica and a helmet , but by the destruction of the Middle Ages the horse was encased in piece of paper - metallic element armor from brain to metrical unit .
The present - day title of horse is an honor pass to persons who have reach preeminence in their work .
Training For Knighthood
When a boy who had been selected to be trained as a knight was seven or eight , his father get off him to live in a castle of a lord , usually a noble to whom the father owned fealty , or allegiance . For seven or eight age , the son function in a castle as a page . He learned to ride and hunt down , and was teach meter reading , writing and arithmetical . The ladies in the palace instructed him in music and dance . From the chaplain he took lesson in religion . To see humbleness and obedience , he ran errands for the ladies and served at meals .
A page recieves his education.
At the age of 15 or 16 the male child became a squire ( from Old Frenchescuier , meaning buckler toter ) . For five or six years he act as man to his lord or knight , whom he called Master . The squire would look on and serve his master and fight alongside him in conflict . The master would prepare the squire in the humanistic discipline of warfare . A squire might also see to rail falcons for falconry , a favorite medieval sport , and on winter day might read the democratic court games ofchess , checkers and backgammon .
A squire serves his master before becoming a knight.
If a squire was deemed restricted by his lord , at the age of 20 or 21 he became a knight in a ceremony of enthronisation . The ceremony was predate by a serial of sober rituals , beginning with the bath of purification , emblematic of bathing away sin and worldly pleasure . The squire then fast for 24 time of day , travel along by an all - night vigil in which he prayed before an altar . In the morning he dressed in his armour and , in the ceremonial , get a symbolic setback from his master , who would move him lightly on the neck or shoulder with the flat of a blade . At the stroke , the master would declare , " In the name of God I dub thee horse . "
A worthy squire becomes a knight.
Knighthood could also be conferred on the field of battle . When a squire register unusual valor on the theater of operations , his lord could hit him thinly with his brand or the palm of his hand and dub him knight .
Tournaments
A tournament , or tournament , was a competition in the economic consumption of battle attainment . The earliest ones were set up by knights during times of peace as a agency of go along state of war - ready and fending off tedium . Tournaments at first differed little from real battles . The knights would form into two groups and charge each other in a free - for - all fighting . contender used blunted weapons , and safety zone were rope off where horse could put on or repair their armour . Captured knight had to pay ransom to guarantee their freedom .
Despite the rubber measure , men were often kill in tournaments . Church officials , who see at the tournament as homicides being committed for mutant , forced the knights to modify the tournament . By the twelfth century the aggregated battle of the knight , which came to be phone the scrimmage , was preceded by a series of more controlled single combats yell tilt , or rock . In a joust , two armoured knights spurred their horses into a headlong charge , trying to knock each other from the saddle with their hard lances . The knight who fell washors de combat(out of fighting ) .
In metre the melee was extinguish . The tournament became an luxuriant festival satisfy with pageant , where noble and their ladies would occur from great distance to share in the spectacle . Trumpets sounded by heralds opened the tournament , which was hold in the lists ( exhibition theatre ) . Each knight brought his entourage of servants , who set up his marquee , or collapsible shelter , hoisted his banner , and displayed his buckler . The shield bore the heraldic symbols that identified the horse .
Chivalry
By the 11th C , a computer code of behavior for knights called chivalry had evolve . It was base on a combination of military ideal , Christian values and etiquette . ( The parole fall from the Frenchcheval , meaning horse . ) Chivalry required a knight to be bold , lofty , truehearted , generous to a fallen foe and reverent to God . A knight was supposed to protect the weak and observe women .
In practice , few knights lived up to the nonsuch of chivalry . Most horse paid footling heed to the code when dispense with serfs and other persons not of stately parentage , who were often victims of theft , brutality , and rapine by horse . When dealing with noblemen and other horse , however , a horse generally abided by the standard required of chivalry .
The life story of the knights inspired a whole body of lit relating to chivalry . The lit included poems of courtly honey written in France by jongleur ( known as troubadours in southern France and trouvres in northerly France ) . The literature also include manychansons de geste(songs of heroic actions ) , such as Chanson de Roland .
Minstrels would often tell romantic and grand stories of the horse errant ( from Old Frencherrer , to travel ) , who rode through the land seeking gallant adventure , defending merchants from robber , rescuing fair ma’am , and helping the oppress . Tales of the fabled or semilegendary past times were pop , especially those relating toKing Arthurand his Knights of the Round Table .
Chivalry reached its height in the twelfth and 13th centuries . It became so elaborated and unreal that it was open to laugh at . Cervantes satirise its magnification in " Don Quixote . "
History of Knights
The knight emerge in Europe in the 9th C , when fundamental regime were washy and there was little protection from brigand , sea raiders and neighboring lords set on swag . Each village , urban center or monastery required auspices by armed men . The most effective warriors in that geological period were armored cavalryman . The introduction of the stapes into Western Europe in the eighth century had made it possible for cavalrymen to practice their weapons with wondrous striking force . The armor of the period — a string mail tunica and conical helmet with nose guard — made the cavalryman even more formidable .
Nobles vied for the service of these warriors and cater them with grants of land . By the 11th hundred the English were using the terminal figure horse for the armored cavalryman . In France a knight was a chevalier ; in Spain , a caballero , from the Spanishcaballo , buck ; in Germany and Austria , ritter , from Germanritt , ride .
In the twelfth century the adoption of the longbow in England and the crossbow in the quietus of Europe — both powerful weapons that shot missile that easily penetrated Ernst Boris Chain mail — threatened the mastery of the knight . In the thirteenth century knights began wearing denture armor in combination with chain mail . The amount and thickness of the armor was gradually increased as crossbow and longbows increased in effectivity ; by the fifteenth hundred a knight was entirely encase . The knight was lost on foot and when put on could only move ponderously .
The Battle of Crcy ( 1346 ) , during the Hundred Years ' War oppose between France and England , was a turning point in the use of knight in warfare . The English foot , armed with longbows , easily defeat a French cavalry strength three time its sizing , mow down 1,500 knights and Lord .
In the 14th C the use of infantrymen arm with pikes and fighting in close constitution doom the knight . Swiss pikemen stunningly demonstrated their effectualness when , in a series of fight during against Charles the Rash of Burgundy , they destroy every impenetrable cavalry force beam against them . berm - displace guns by the middle of the 15th C impart to the effectiveness of the infantry .
By the close of the fifteenth hundred , country establish professional Army of infantryman , rendering the knight obsolete .
