meaningful way without sorting them into types sharing at least limited
sets of characteristics. This can most readily be done on the basis of a se-
ries of dichotomies that ran in different directions through their ranks.
One of the most important distinctions is between the associations
that were endowed with statutes and a corporate organization, which can
be called societies, and those that lacked them, called groups. Simple
groups, whose members usually wore some sort of common badge, and in
some cases undertook a vow of loyalty either to a prince or to one another,
did not act together in a corporate way. A few of them—including those
that represented true orders that had ceased to function (e.g., the Castilian
Order of the Band after 1350 and the Breton Order of the Ermine after
1399)—were regarded as highly honorable, and referred to by the title “or-
der,” but these must be distinguished from true orders (which were all so-
cieties) by the term pseudo-order. The pseudo-orders fell into three classes:
ceremonial pseudo-orders, whose members were knighted in a special cer-386 Orders of Knighthood, Secular
A medieval woodcut depicting King Arthur and his valiant Knights of the Round Table, who served as a model for
secular orders. (Bettmann/Corbis)