Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

THE KNIGHT WAS DEFINED BY HIS MARTIAL CALLING. HE WAS
identified by bis arms, armour and mount, acquiring his status
and position by dint of his participation in war and his deeds
on the battlefield.
This was not always the case. Not every knight could be a great
warrior, and the knight could not for ever be at war. As a man of status,
wealth and position, however, he bad an equally important position
within the social labric of medieval life.
The development ol the knight, and his role within military society, fed almost
inevitably into his role and position within the wider political and social system of
which he was a part. As has been suggested in the Introduction, the knight at the
beginning of the middle ages was of low status, and a distinctive entity from the
aristocracy and nobility. He was an armed retainer, a military man in the service of
another. Whilst he might possess land, this was not a grant out of which he was
expected to provide martial equipment, which was still provided by his lord. Instead,
and like early medieval warrior retainers, it was a reward for service and a source ot
income, received in rents taken from vLLleitu, the peasants who actually worked the
land. The income ot many ot these early knights was little more than that earned by
the more economically successful peasant. Studies of the Domesday Book, the great
survey of lands and rights carried out in England in 1086, have shown that a quarter
of the knights listed did not hold land producing sufficient income to sustain a knight.
Indeed, whilst the social origins of these early knights are difficult to pin down, and
vary according to the region considered, it would appear that most were drawn out of
the peasantry in rural areas. In those regions which had urban populations, such as
Italy and the Languedoc ot southern France and Burgundy, they were drawn out of
a group of minor nobility.
Because the term miled — 'knight' — defined a role in society rather than a status
within the social hierarchy, it meant that men from a wide variety ot social, economic
and cultural backgrounds became connected by a shared method of fighting and a
common experience of warfare. This was not only important for the way in which
knighthood became a pan-European phenomenon, but it also enabled the aristocracy
to adopt the role ot mi/itej tor themselves. By the middle of the 12th century they had
become a militarized aristocracy, a warrior nobility which blurred the distinctions
between the nobles or nobilited and the milited. Those who represented themselves as
knights ranged in social rank from kings all the way to household knights who held