Knighthood: No Easy Endowment
Posted by Bruce Tulio in Uncategorized, tags: bruce tulio, history, kinghthood, UncategorizedThink of a knight and the popular image of a knight in shining armor, sitting astride his trusty steed with a sword or lance in hand and ready to serve and honor his king, may spring to mind. These were all essential characteristics of a knight, but becoming one was no easy feat, and definitely not possible for everyone.
Becoming a knight was conditional on a number of things, the first usually being a boy’s birthright. Another was being able to afford the huge expense required for training and equipment, which was possibly comparable to that of today’s professional hockey stars. While any free man had the potential to don the armor and serve his king, in reality the best way of entering the knighthood was to have a knight for a father.
So let’s say dear old dad happened to be a wealthy gent or a knight himself. Your family could afford to send you off to serve at the castle of a noble as the page. This at the tender age of seven, by the way. Pages were taught all the knightly necessities from lance practice, to swordsmanship, to mucking horse stalls. That’s right-for all the noble training, a page had to earn his keep by cleaning house, preparing the noble’s clothes, and other less chivalrous tasks. They did get backstage passes to tournaments, though. Someone had to attend to the knights in competition. But the end justified the means, right?
Life wasn’t all bad for a page, despite all the hard work required of the role. If a page could keep at it, keep learning and actually survive until 14 years of age, he would be promoted to the position of squire. This was an important development on the way to becoming a knight. Squires had to learn many things, including the art of Heraldry (making weapons), how to ride a horse, how to use various weapons, and the knight’s Code of Chivalry. There was also a great deal of social etiquette to learn to integrate into castle life, including learning how to dance.
After you had been extensively trained for a further seven years, you would then ascend from the role of squire to becoming a fully-fledged knight. Unless you had been exceptionally heroic in your service to the other knights (on the battlefield, for example), you would need to be twenty-one before you would be knighted. Another knight or nobleman would perform the knighting ceremony, unless you had proved to be an exceptionally worthy squire, in which case you could be bestowed the honor of knighthood by the king himself.
It all sounds so archaic, so classist, so…so similar to today’s corporate structure. Being a knight today, however, is not simply for European nobility anymore. Many Americans are skipping over the pond for their own knighting rituals. Most are famous-actors, musicians, writers. Some are knighted simply because they are rich and can afford to travel to such places where knighthood is still given out.
The majority of people who receive knighthoods today are experienced and socially responsible people. While they may not have learned to ride a horse and wield a sword, and they may not have complied with a knight’s Code, the people appointed as knights or dames have generally earned this honor by serving the greater good. This esteemed recognition has been given for their hard work.
So achieve your dreams, then share the wealth, and you may find yourself kneeling before royalty in about the time it takes a page to work his way up to a knight.
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