Paris, Gaston, ed. “Mainet, fragments d’une chanson de geste du XIIe siècle.” Romania
4(1875):305–37.
Speich, Johann Heinrich, ed. La destructioun de Rome (d’après le ms. de Hanovre IV. 578). Bern:
Lang, 1988.
Thomas, Antoine, ed. L’éntree d’Espagne, chanson de geste franco-italienne. 2 vols. Paris: Didot,
1913.
Horrent, Jules. “Chanson de Roland et Geste de Charlemagne.” In Les épopées romanes, ed. Rita
Lejeune. Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, Heidelberg: Winter, 1981, 1–
51; 3/2, fasc. 2. [A complete bibliography for all chansons de geste mentioned in this article can
be found in this volume.]
KNIGHTHOOD
. Since 1066, the English word “knight” has been used as the equivalent of the Latin
miles and the French cheval(i)er. Miles had been used from before 500 to ca. 950 to
designate a soldier or military retainer of any sort, but after 950, both miles and chevalier
were used especially to designate a particular type of mounted warrior, the professional
heavy cavalryman who fought with the expensive armor and weapons traditionally used
by Frankish nobles—helm, mail coat, lance, sword—and normally served as a vassal in
the retinue of a prince or lesser noble. This type of warrior had apparently arisen under
the Carolingians, but it was not until the second half of the 10th century that the vassalic
cavalrymen began to emerge as a distinct and increasingly hereditary social category in
France, forming a stratum of rural society between the noble landlords and their peasant
tenants. Unlike the former, most milites in 10th- and 11th-century France came from
undistinguished lineages, held little or no land, and possessed no rights of jurisdiction,
but unlike the peasants they retained their full rights as freemen, were not tied to the soil
or subjected to the jurisdiction of manorial courts, and served their noble lords (in whose
households most of them lived) in capacities that were regarded as relatively honorable.
The basic definition of the knight that emerged between 950 and 1000, that of a fully
equipped professional heavy cavalryman of free condition, was to change little before
1500, but the status, the number of men who enjoyed it, and the ideology and honor
associated with it were to change tremendously during those same five centuries. The
11th century, which saw the creation of a new regime based on the possession of castles
and armed retinues, naturally saw a rapid expansion in the number of knights, who were
now called upon to garrison castles. It also witnessed the general adoption of the stirrup
and the long Byzantine shield and the development both of the massed charge with
couched lance and of the form of mock war called a torneamentum, or tournament.
Finally, in the second half of the century, growing numbers of the nobility, who thought
of themselves as warriors and fought in precisely the same way as knights at the head of a
company of their knightly vassals, adopted the title miles as the formal designation of
their social condition. By 1220, virtually all adult members of the old nobility not
destined for the clergy assumed the title “knight” when they came of full age and were
given the equipment characteristic of knighthood in the rite of adoubement. Thus, formal
knighthood (Lat. militia, OFr. chevalerie) united the whole military class.
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