From the beginning of this phase around 1430, the principal locus of
traditional chivalric knighthood in most kingdoms was the monarchical or
comparable princely curial order, and the principal model for all of the
later orders was the Golden Fleece, founded by Duke Philippe “the Good”
of Burgundy in 1430. The Burgundian dukes of the Valois line founded in
1363 had all been patrons of chivalry, and the enormous wealth and con-
sequent prestige they acquired along with the various principalities of the
Netherlands and the Rhineland that they added to their original dominion
gave a considerable boost to the chivalric revival that followed the foun-
dation of their elaborate order. The kings of France themselves felt obliged
to found new orders of knighthood on the Burgundian model both in 1469
(the Order of St. Michael the Archangel) and again, when membership in
that order had been too widely distributed, in 1578 (the Order of the Holy
Spirit), and the grand duke of Tuscany founded the last of the religious or-
ders of knighthood, that of St. Stephen, in 1561. Of the older religious or-
ders, however, only that of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (based
from 1530 on the island of Malta) carried on the crusading tradition after
about 1525. Most of the newer curial orders dissolved around that time as
a result of the Reformation in Germany.
The chivalry of the late classic phase was not different in conception
from that of the high classic phase, but the glorification of the knight that
continued throughout this period (in some courts, at least) was essentially
reactionary and had less and less to do with contemporary military reality.
Latin princes and nobles of ancient lineages continued to believe that the
knight represented the epitome of what a nobleman should be, whatever
his lordly rank, and the ideology of chivalry continued to unify the noble
estate in many kingdoms until relatively late in the sixteenth century. Older
romances of chivalry continued to be printed and reprinted through much
of the century, and the greatest Italian poems of that century, Ludovico Ar-
iosto’s Orlando Furiosoof 1516 and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Lib-
erataof 1575, were essentially chivalric. The last great chivalric romance
to be composed in English was Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene of
1590–1596, dedicated to Elizabeth I. The sixteenth century was thus a sort
of Indian summer for both knighthood and chivalry.Postclassic Knighthood (1600/25–present)
The decline of the general belief in chivalry was first heralded in a major
way in Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote,of 1605–1615, though
the aging knight of that name is nevertheless portrayed as a noble and sym-
pathetic exemplar of a worthy code that has merely ceased to command
general respect. The seventeenth century was nevertheless marked not only
by a clear decline in the popularity of romances and other chivalric works,284 Knights