bodiment of their own traditional military ideal, and therefore to be con-
ferred by a special ritual called adobement(French; dubbing) on the eldest
sons of nobles when they attained their majority. The prestige of knight-
hood was thus on the rise in both clerical and noble circles, and this would
lead before the end of the century to the formulation of a complex new
code of behavior for the nobility as a whole associated with knighthood
and actually called “knightliness” or “chivalry.” Nevertheless, in 1120
knights in general were still much less highly regarded than monks and
clerics, and the small body of knights founded in Jerusalem to defend pil-
grims initially lacked both the organization and the legitimacy conferred on
contemporary monastic and clerical bodies by their constitutions, or
“rules” of life.
The number and variety of monastic and quasi-monastic rules grew
steadily in the early twelfth century, however, as different groups of men
and women sought different ways to lead an ideal Christian life and
founded new religious “orders,” whose houses followed the same rule and
increasingly submitted to a single central government as well. The most in-
fluential of the new orders of the latter type throughout the twelfth century
was certainly that based in the Abbey of Cîteaux in northern Burgundy
(founded in 1098), and in its four eldest daughter houses of La Ferté
(1113), Pontigny (1114), Clairvaux (1115), and Morimond (1115). The
Cistercians (as their members are called) were militant Benedictine monks
Orders of Knighthood, Religious 369A meeting of a branch of the Knights Templar with the grand master seated in the center. The order, founded in 1118,
was originally formed to protect pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land. (Hulton Archive)