Orders of chivalry first appeared in the 14th century as secular orders of knighthood which were clearly distinguished from the earlier military monastic orders. They were associations of knights identified by the wearing of a particular device or badge, bound together by solemn vows of loyalty to their sovereign or master (usually the founder of the order and his heirs after him) and of companionship toward one another. Admission was nominally elective, but usually followed the sovereign's preferred choice: elevated birth and proven military achievement were the crucial qualifications. Besides the great princely orders, the late Middle Ages witnessed the foundation of many lesser knightly orders or confraternities with their own regulations and special devices. We hear also from this time of a number of ‘votal’ orders, temporary associations whose statutes and emblems committed their companions to achieving certain stipulated deeds of arms, usually in the tourneying lists and in honour of ladies.
The most famous and long lived of the princely orders were the Garter, founded by Edward III of England, probably in 1348, and the Golden Fleece, founded by Philip ‘the Good’, Duke of Burgundy, in 1430. Numerous other foundations of the 14th and 15th centuries included the Order of the Band and of Castile (1330), of the Star in France (1351), of the Knot of Naples (1352), of the Ermine of Brittany (1381) ; the Orders of the Dragon of Hungary (1408) and of the Swan of Brandenburg (1444) ; René of Anjou's Order of the Crescent (1448), and King Louis XI of France's Order of St Michael (1469).
The Burgundian writer Olivier de la Marche (1426-1502) lays down as a principle that for an association of knights with an identifying device to be properly called an order, its statutes must provide for regular chapter meetings, and for a limit on the number of companions admissible. An association of knights which had a badge or emblem but lacked one or both of these requirements he classified as a confraternity or a devise, and as of lesser status. The Garter and the Golden Fleece typified for him orders proper, their statutes providing for regular chapter meetings and limiting the number of companions, to 26 (including the sovereign) in the Garter's case, and originally to 25 in that of the Golden Fleece (raised to 31, including the sovereign, in 1433). Some other orders had a substantially larger companionship; papal letters concerning the foundation of the French Order of the Star speak for instance of ‘a congregation of 200 knights’.
The communal and ceremonious activities of the orders naturally loom large in their statutes, which commonly included sumptuary regulations (the robes, mantles, and badges and insignia of the order): directions for chapter meetings (usually at the feast of the order's patron saint, for example St George for the Garter) and for the liturgical offices and the banquet accompanying these meetings; regulations for providing masses for recently departed companions; procedures for election to vacancies and rules about qualifications for candidature. Other matters recurrently regulated by the statutes of orders have a sharper military and political tone. Loyal service, and in particular armed service, to the sovereign was expected of every companion. If for honourable reason he was unable to discharge it, he would be expected to resign the order and return its badges and insignia, as the French Knight Enguerrand de Coucy returned his Garter in 1377 because of his overriding obligation to King Richard II's enemy, the king of France. At chapter meetings the conduct in the field of individual companions was closely scrutinized; thus in 1433, for instance, the chapter of the Golden Fleece ruled that Jean de Montaigu must resign the order in consequence of his flight from the battle of Anthon. Conversely, several orders, including the Star, the Knot, and the Crescent, maintained a ‘book of adventures’ recording acts of special prowess of individual companions (none have survived).
The mottoes, badges, and insignia of princely orders illuminate the military and political purposes of their founders. Thus the Garter motto, ‘honi soit qui mal y pense’, asserted the justice of Edward III's cause in his war with France, ‘retorting shame and defiance upon him that should dare to think ill of so just an enterprise’ (the story of the king at a ball picking up the fallen garter of the Countess of Salisbury is late and apocryphal). The sash of Alfonso XI's Order of the Band was given to knights ‘who had done some good deed of arms against the enemies of the King … in such a way that each one of the others wanted to do well in chivalry to gain that honour and the King's good will’. Thus the purpose behind the foundation of the great chivalric orders was the desire of princes, through these honorific companionships, to bind to their service and policies individual members of the aristocracy, and so enhance their own dignity and repute in the eyes of their mightier subjects and of the chivalrous world at large. Membership of their orders was not restricted to their subjects and vassals, and the election of ‘stranger knights’ could be significant, diplomatically as well as chivalrously. The admission of a fellow sovereign to a princely order was an important symbol of commitment to alliance. Under Edward IV no fewer than eight foreign sovereigns came in this way to be admitted to the Garter, including Charles ‘the Bold’ of Burgundy and Ferdinand of Spain. A number of the greater princely orders long survived the Middle Ages, but most lost in time their knightly military significance.
Bibliography
- Boulton, D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre, The Knights of the Crown (Woodbridge, 1987).
- Keen, M., Chivalry (New Haven, 1984).
- Kruse, H., Paravincini, W., and Ranft, A., Ritterorden und Adelsgesellschaften im spätmittelaterliche Deutschland (Frankfurt, 1991).
- Vale, J., Edward III and Chivalry (Woodbridge, 1982).
- Vale, M., War and Chivalry (London, 1981)
— Maurice H. Keen
