knights and knighthood 427for European monarchs. The king was sacred, pious,
and potentially saintly. As a “good” Christian monarch,
he persecuted JEWSand HERETICS, went on CRUSADE,
deferred to the pope, and dispensed justice to the poor.
He could work MIRACLESin France and ENGLANDby
curing with his royal touch. He was also supposed to be
a warrior who would personally lead his feudal vassals
to war. Victory in any such war meant that the objec-
tive was just. Ideally, the king was to guarantee a gen-
eral prosperity, feed the hungry, and care for the sick.
The king was at the theoretical summit of fief holding.
All the land in the kingdom might depend on him,
directly or indirectly. He was the lord over all the
inhabitants of the kingdom. All JUSTICEderived from
the king as the source of all LAW. Only his Christian
conscience, according to some extreme theorists, could
limit his power and excesses. The 14th and 15th cen-
turies were marked by negotiations and conflict
between kings and subjects on these very questions.
The realities of power relationships among nobles,
townsmen, and monarchs became the subject of fre-
quent wars fueled by an increasing need for consensual
taxation. There was a great increase in the pomp of rit-
ual at coronations and at royal funerals as monarchs
tried to dramatize their legitimate authority and assert
their right to vast power.
See alsoCHARLEMAGNE;HINCMAR OFRHEIMS; PARLIA-
MENT,ENGLISH; POLITICAL THEORY AND TREATISES.
Further reading:Richard A. Jackson, ed., Ordines
Coronationis Franciae: Texts and Ordines for the Coronation
of Frankish and French Kings and Queens in the Middle
Ages,2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1995–2000); Robert Folz, The Coronation of
Charlemagne, 25 December 800, trans. J. E. Anderson
(London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1974); Ernst H. Kan-
torowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval
Political Theology(1957; reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 1966); Janet L. Nelson, Politics and
Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London: Hambledon,
1986); Thomas Renna, “Kingship, Theories of,” DMA
7.259–71; Frans Theuws and Janet L. Nelson, eds., Ritu-
als of Power: From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages
(Leiden: Brill, 2000).
king’s evil SeeLEPROSY.
kinship SeeFAMILY AND KINSHIP IN WESTERNEUROPE.
knights and knighthood The western European lay
aristocracy of the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries was
viewed at one time as a fairly homogeneous elite of
landholding knights whose principal business was WA R-
FARE. But this aristocracy actually varied enormously in
wealth and power. Some were landless household
knights, while others occupied lands that owed little
service to anyone. In a classic system of feudal relations,
a knight was a FIEFholder who rendered homage and
service to his lord in return for a fief. That lord in turn
was a fief-holding vassal of a higher lord, and the vassal
knight was served by knights further down an imagined
feudal hierarchy.NOBLES AND KNIGHTS
This neat hierarchical concept has been largely rejected
for most of western Europe in the period before about- The so-called warrior aristocracy might best be
viewed as at least two distinct groups: knights and
nobles. The knights occupied an intermediate level in
society, above the PEASANTRYbut below an aristocracy.
Nobles were wealthy hereditary landholders who exer-
cised broad jurisdictional and legal powers. Knights
were military retainers, often of humble means, but
defined by their military vocation and ability rather
than any lineage.
MILITARY ROLE AND IDEOLOGY
In this social and organizational milieu, the knight, or
chevalier,was the armored warrior mounted on HORSES.
The equipment necessary for a knight were his equipped
warhorse, his own arms, and a hauberk, helmet, shield,
lance, and sword. Such equipment must be possessed by
the noble landowning class as well as their military
retainers. A ceremony of INVESTITUREwith arms of dub-
bing was common to all. In this way they could be
grouped into a single elite of mounted, armed warriors,
different in wealth and power but having a single ideol-
ogy of knightly war.CHANGE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES
Intermarriage, more common from the 12th century on,
with nobles allowed some of the lower class of knights to
rise to the prerogatives of nobility. In the later Middle
Ages, lesser knights began to become part of the older
aristocracy. They acquired privileges and jurisdictional
rights, married into the old or right families, and some-
times erected fortified dwellings or CASTLESon their
lands. All were called lords. The CRUSADES further
increased their value for the church and society in gen-
eral, as corroborated, portrayed, and enhanced in the
EPIC LITERATURE and Arthurian ROMANCES themed
around the culture of knighthood. At the same time, the
social dominance of all these knights was challenged in
the Middle Ages by their devolving role in military tac-
tics, the rise of prominent MERCHANTtownsmen, and
attempts by monarchs to increase their power over their
kingdoms by destroying or corrupting the sources of
knightly prestige.
See alsoCAVALRY; CHIVALRY; HERALDRY AND HERALDS;
NOBILITY AND NOBLES; SOCIAL STATUS AND STRUCTURE;
TOURNAMENTS; WEAPONS AND WEAPONRY.