![]() It was the squire who raised the knight when he fell and who bore his body away if he were wounded or killed in battle. He stood by to give aid in conflict should his lord be overmatched and to lend his horse should the master lose his own. He saw to it that the knightly sword and other arms were polished until they shone. He assisted him in putting on his armor-originally suits of chain mail but by the late Middle Ages suits of plate armor. In addition to his other duties, he had to carve the meat at the dinner table and to accompany his knight to war. He now learned to handle sword and lance and to bear the weight of the heavy armor. But above all else he learned to ride a horse.Īt the age of 14, he became a squire. He also learned to sing and to play the lute, to hunt and to hawk. He was taught by his mistress and her ladies to honor and protect all women. He received Christian religious instruction from the chaplain and training in arms from the squires. He waited on them at the dinner table and went with them to various affairs. It was his duty, and it was considered a privilege, to accompany them at all times. ![]() There he served the lord and lady as a page. This education usually began at the age of seven, when the young man was taken from his home and sent to the castle of some famous nobleman, perhaps his father’s lord. In his training to become a knight, a young man would serve in the household of a knight who was a high-ranking nobleman, first as a page, or personal attendant, and then as a squire, or armor bearer. These traditions were recorded in the literature of the period and most likely reflected practices that emerged by the 13th century. Once the tradition of knighthood reached full bloom, a well-defined routine of education and training developed. During the 11th century, Christian thinkers developed an ideology that bestowed a sacred function on the knights. As a result, a single warrior class, with clear social divisions within it, emerged to lead European society. The class of knights also came to merge with the noble class. Knights gradually came to be landowners in their own right. A knight often served as a vassal: he received land from his superior, known as his lord, in exchange for his service as a warrior. Knights served in the armies and in the garrisons of the castles of high-ranking nobles, who themselves came to assume the designation of knight. Replacing an earlier class of soldiers, the knight appeared during a period of widespread violence and the reorganization of social structures and land ownership. ![]() Knighthood flourished before the time of guns and gunpowder, when battles still were won by hand-to-hand conflicts of heavy-armored cavalrymen. In time, elaborate rules of knightly behavior and duties emerged and were enshrined in the literature of the period. ![]() The word knight is derived from the Old English word cniht, the equivalent of the Latin word caballarius, meaning “horseman.” At first a figure of almost humble status, the knight gradually obtained noble rank. Knighthood emerged as a distinct order in around the year 1000, and the knight came to be defined as a warrior mounted on a horse and dressed in a suit of armor. The most significant military figure of the European Middle Ages was the knight.
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