Chivalry, Knighthood, and Castles

Whenever anything is written about knights, or chivalry, or castles, or the Middle Ages, the word feudal or the phrase feudal system is sure to appear. It is easier to understand what the feudal system was if one starts with the word itself. From an old Germanic word meaning cattle or property, ther came the Latin word feodum, and from that came the words feudal and feudalism.

The feudal system was based on relationships between people which, in turn, determined their rights and property. In Western Europe, from the ninth century into the fifteenth century, feudalism was the system of government and the way people lived in their relations with each other. The system was not called feudalism then, but that is the name historians later gave to it. It began when strong central governments broke down, so that officials and nobles in small areas became powerful and important. At the same time there grew up new kinds of personal relationships between kings and various degrees of nobles. Kings, princes, dukes, and counts gave certain rights to less important nobles in return for their support, and this created a whole way of life that determined how everyone lived, from the king to the poorest serf, or peasant.

Feudalism differed greatly from the strong empire, ruled from Rome by the emperor and his court and army, which had preceded it. Eventually, it also came to an end when kings in the various European countries became strong enough again to rule over countries of the size we know today. During the 500 or so years that the feudal system existed, it included the customs and practices called chivalry and knighthood. Castles and their builders, owners, and defenders played a very important part in the system.

Two other key words in understanding the feudal system are vassalage and fief-holding. Vassalage was an honorable and personal relationship between two men of the ruling class. A duke, for example, would become the vassal of a king. The king, who owned all or most of the land in the country, could confer authority and lands upon the duke. The king, on his part, needed the support of dukes and other nobles in war and in ruling the country. The noble would appear before the king and kneel in front of him. Placing his hands between those of the king, the noble would acknowledge that he was the king's vassal and pledge his faith to him against all men. The king would then accept the noble's pledge, raise him to his feet, and kiss him. This act by the noble was called homage. Then the noble, on the Gospels or some sacred relic, took a solemn oath to live up to his earlier promises. This was the oath of fealty.

The acts of homage and fealty created an arrangement that was of mutual advantage to the king and the noble. The king gave certain authority to the noble to rule within his territory and promised to protect him. Usually he also granted a fief, which meant he gave the noble the use of a certain piece of land. It was here that the vassal governed from a castle. There was almost none of today's business, manufacturing, or commerce. The serfs tilled the land on the noble's fief, or manor, and gave part of the crops, as well as their labor on other projects, to the noble in return for his protection and the right to farm the land.

The noble, in turn, promised to support the king in any way and to supply knights to help fight for the king. Usually the arrangement was specific as to just how many knights and how many days a year they had to serve the king. Sometimes the knights or other soldiers had to be supplied to defend one of the king's castles.

The most powerful nobles, the dukes, the earls, and the counts, often held several fiefs and they in turn accepted lesser nobles as their vassals and granted them the same rights in some of their lands that they had received from the king. Thus, when the king called on a very important noble for the knights he had promised, that nobleman in turn called on his own vassals to supply the fighting men they had promised. It was in this way that a general system of government was established throughout a country and that armies were raised when there was a war. The various nobles, all of them trained to be warriors, lived on the lands granted then by the lord next above, up to the king himself. They ruled the lives of all the people on their land. Nearly everyone helped in farming and, for the most part, food and clothing materials came from the manor lands around the castle.

During the feudal era, and growing out of its system of personal relationships between people of greater and lesser standing, there arose the idea of chivalry and the ideals it stood for. Chivalry, originating in France and Spain and spreading to the rest of the continent and to England, was strongest in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Again, as iwth feudalism, the meaning of chivalry is clearer when the word itself is traced back. In French, cheval means horse, and a man who was of the noble class, who could afford one or more horses (which were rather scarce and expensive in those days), and was trained to fight as a cavalryman, was a chevalier. Such people built up the customs, habits, and ideals of chivalry.

In this code of behavior the chief virtues were piety, bravery, loyalty, and honor. The people of Western Europe were by this time Christians. Everything they did was done in the name of the Christian God, and the church exercised considerable influence over the conduct of knights and other members of the noble, military class. Above all, a warrior knight was expected to be brave, no matter what the odds against him in battle, and to be completely loyal to his master-a higher noble, or the king himself. Perhaps the best example of this is in the French epic poem, the Song of Roland. According to the poem, the rearguard of Charlemagne's army was exposed to attack by the Saracens through treachery. Roland, refusing to summon help and loyal to the emperor to the end, charged the enemy with those who would follow him although he knew it meant certain death. His honor would not let him go back on his oath to his king.

Chivalry helped lessen the harshness of the warfare of the time, for emphasis was laid on the courteous treatment of prisoners. Even so, kings, and nobles were held for ransom when captured, and the code of chivalry applied only between members of the noble, ruling class. They did not have to apply this code to the common people under them. The chief occupation of the nobles was warfare, so they seem to have thought nothing of the violence and bloodshed that accompanied it. A warrior was supposed to fight as hard as he could, and it was perfectly proper to burn the homes of the enemy and seize his posseions. The whole idea of chivalry in warfare implied nothing more than the respect of one warrior for another. In fact, warfare between nobles became so fierce that at one time in the Middle Ages the church attempted to limit such private battles. Fighting was prohibited from Wednesday or Thursday evening until Monday morning and on certain religious holidays. Excommunication from the church was the punishment for those whoviolated the truce. This was called the Truce of God.

A knight of the Middle Ages could be defined as a member of the nobility who was trained and armed as a warrior on horseback. Almost without exception he had to be born a member of the noble class, but that did not make him a knight. He had to earn this rank through long and hard training. He began to learn to ride a horse and to use arms almost as soon as he could walk. During his younger years he would be called in France a valet, which meant a little vassal, and in England a page.

When he was about 14 he got a new title-squire. After that he was attached to a knight and accompanied him and assisted him. In battle, the squire carried the knight's reserve ofarms and led his extra horse, if he had one. He helped put on the knight's armor, and aided him if he was wounded. In time of peace, he practiced with all the weapons of the day and fought sham battles with other squires. Finally, when he was well-trained and especially if he had already proved himself a warrior in battle, he was rewarded with knighthood.

There was a special ceremony for this, and a solemn one it was. Usually the ceremony was performed by the boy's father, or by his overlord. The new knight was presented with the arms and was given the "accolade", a blow on the neck or shoulders, delivered either with the hand or the flat of a sword. In the later days of feudalism, this ceremony was preceded by a night-long vigil before a church altar. In some cases, a squire who showed particular bravery was made a knight right on the field of battle. In Great Britain men are still made knights by touching him on the shoulder with a sword.

A knight was a full-fledged warrior and a member of the ruling class. Then, or when he succeeded his father, he would be a vassal of some higher lord. He would probably hold a fief, which for the more important noble knights included a castle. He was obligated to fight for the king or his overlord, to help garrison a castle, or to see to it that the lesser knights under him served the king or garrisoned a castle when ordered to do so in accordance with their sworn promises.

When not engaged in actual warfare, knights often took part in tournaments. These might be called a combination of our presentday track and field meets and military maneuvers. At first they were battles in a very real sense, except that they were planned in advance and there were rules agreed upon. Toward the end of the twelfth and into the early thirteenth century a tournament was a serious and bloody affair between two groups of knights. If lances were broken, combat was continued with swords. The victor could claim the horse and arms of his opponent unless the latter ransomed them for a sum of money. It was good training for soldiers in a way, but it was dangerous. Later, the tournaments became somewhat more like boxing or fencing matches, so that skill was tested, but actual injuries with sword and lance were not inflicted. Often such affairs were held in an open space in front of a castle.

As time went on there came to be more knights than there were castles or fiefs for them to rule and to get a living from. A noble might have several sons who became knights, but usually only the eldest inherited the land or became the next vassal to hold the fief. After the Crusades began, when the nobility of Europe tried to win back the Holy Land from the Saracens, these knights and others formed themselves into some famous orders of knighthood. The first of these were the Knights Templars, organized to defend pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. They were called this because they established their headquarters in a house near Soloman's Temple. The Knights Hospitalars were a similar order. When Palastine was retaken by the Turks, they went to Cyprus and then conquered the island of Rhodes where they remained for 200 years. Later they retreated to the island of Malta where they withstood the attacks of the Turks and became known as the Knights of Malta.

The castle is a fine symbol of the age of chivalry and knighthood. Once again, the history of a word shows this as well as anything can. The word used for the part of the castle in which the lord dwelt was, in French, donjon. (In English this became dungeon, but it was only later that the word came to mean a dark, sinister prison.) The word donjon is derived from the Latin dominum, which expresses lordship. The holder of the castle was a member of the aristocracy, which was a purely military class. He ruled the lands dominated by his castle, so long as he was faithful to the higher lord whose vassal he was- or until some more powerful noble was able to besiege and capture the castle.

The castle was both a home and a fortress for the ruling lord. From it, with his own retainers and knights who owed service to him, he could rule his territory. The farm lands around the castle provided him with food and clothing. The castles, by the way they were situated on high ground or overlooking river crossings, and by the people dependent on them, determined who ruled a particular part of a country.

The great importance of castles was taken into account in the feudal system and in the relationships brought about by vassalage. First of all, all castles, in a sense, belonged to the king. At least, castles were not supposed to be built without his permission, although in some countries at some periods the great nobles were so powerful that they could defy the king and do as they pleased. A king was anxious to have powerful lords on his side and to make sure that they built and kept in repair strong castles in their lands. At the same time, though, if a noble became strong and controlled one or more great castles, he might be tempted to turn against the king and defy him. In part, then, the Middle Ages was a constant struggle between the king, representing a central government, and nobles who wanted to do as they pleased in their own territories. In all such struggles, castles played key parts as the only great military defenses of the period.

One of the duties of those who held fiefs was to furnish castle guards, knights, and other soldiers to garrison a castle, because a castle had to be able to defend itself at all times. A knight, as part of his fief, might be required to help guard a castle of the noble over him, or of the king himself. For instance, the Earls of Richmond required about 30 knights to serve in their castle every two months. In another cas a group of knights took turns, ten of them serving to garrison a castle of the King of England for three months at a time. Later, kings and great barons accepted money in place of special services and then used the money to hire soldiers to guard their castles. In the twelfth century in England, the normal rate for hiring a knight to perform such service was six or eight pence a day.

These are but few examples of the rules and customs of the feudal era concerning castles. They help show the important place castles held in the whole system, and it is no wonder, then, that for hundreds of years great effort was expended to make castles bigger and stronger.