crossbow, or harquebus. Thus, the essence of knightly warfare remained
close combat in full armor, either on horse or on foot.
The knight also remained until the fifteenth century the most valued
and privileged form of soldier on the field of battle, though much of the
prestige the classic knight enjoyed was derived from the high social status
knights had collectively achieved and the intimate relationship that had
come to exist between the ideology of knighthood and that of nobility. Un-
like the protoknights and their preclassic successors, who were for the most
part men of humble birth and standing, the classic knight was always a no-
bleman and usually a territorial lord, and moreover formed part of a no-
bility whose greater members, from the emperor down to the most lowly
baron, were invariably admitted to the order of knighthood when they
reached legal adulthood. Furthermore, the ideology of chivalry, or “knight-
liness”—created only in the twelfth century—had come to be the dominant
ideology of the nobility as a whole, and its code of conduct was universally
recognized, if not always followed.
The history of knighthood (a term reserved for the status of knight,
per se) is the history first of the perfection of its military character to the
level of its classic characteristics, then of its social elevation to the condi-
tion of noble dignity and its simultaneous association with the ideology of
chivalry, and then of the gradual demilitarization of that dignity to the
point where it became purely honorific and served only to convey rank
within the nobility. These periods correspond to quite different stages in the
history of the status, which for clarity must be designated by different
names, and discussed separately as six distinct phases that may be recog-
nized in the history of the status: (1) protoknighthood (ca. 740–1000/
1100), (2) preclassic knighthood (950/1100–1150/1200), (3) protoclassic
knighthood (1150/1200–1250/1300), (4) high classic knighthood (1250/
1300–1430/50), (5) late classic knighthood, (1430/50–1600/25), and (6)
postclassic knighthood (1600/25–present). Each of these phases may be di-
vided into two or three subphases, which may be designated earlier or
early, middle, and later or late.Protoknighthood (ca. 740–ca. 1000/1100)
During the earliest stage in the history of knighthood, the term normally
used to designate these warriors in the sources (still exclusively in Latin)
was caballarius, and the caballarii were still nothing more than elite heavy
cavalrymen, with no distinctive social position or professional code.
Throughout this phase the social condition of the protoknights remained
humble, and the great majority seem to have been free but ignoble and
landless dependents of the noble magnates, maintained in their households
as military servants. Finally, throughout this phase protoknights remained264 Knights