Knights

One Opinion:

Beyond a doubt I would say Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was the wife of two kings, the mother of 2 kings, and the grandmother of a queen. She was the only woman to go on a crusade and she had a great influence on the political world of the middle ages.

Another Opinion:

I would say Margaret I of Denmark. She took over control of Denmark, despite the fact that the laws of the country forbade female monarchs, because the members of the nobility trusted and respected her. She ruled for decades, bringing Sweden, Norway, and Iceland into a personal union with Denmark called the Kalmar Union, which lasted for another century after she died.

Romeo and Juliet would probably be the most popular one.

Two important medieval plays were Everyman, and anonymous morality play, and Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, a very early musical comedy.

There is a link below

They could not go anywhere their horses could not go. They got bogged down in soft ground, especially marshy land. The horses could be disabled by caltrops or arrows, and they often would refuse to charge into areas where they felt unsure about their footing or obstacles. Once a horse was disabled, a knight could find himself cut off and unable to retreat quickly.

They could not swim, which meant that if they had their backs to a river, they were trapped.

Arrows could go through armor. This was true of arrows from longbows and from crossbows. The English longbows were much more effective than crossbows, because their rate of fire was a multiple of that of the crossbow, and they are said to have had much greater range. The result was that huge numbers of knights were killed by archers at such battles as the battle of Agincourt. Archers with long bows were relatively easy to equip, but they required years of training because of the strength needed to shoot the bow.

Knights were expensive to equip and maintain, both in wars and in peace. Their presence in an army meant large numbers of people had to be there to care for horses, armor, and the knights. Food had to be provided for all these people. This was a logistical consideration of some consequence.

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There were women who were knights, and there was at least one order of knights entirely made up of women who had distinguished themselves in combat.

Please see the link below to the related question, "Could women be knights in the medieval times?"

Although some would use the term "sword smith", most would simply be called swordmakers. Some use the term cutler, as a craftsman who makes the hilt or handle of a bladed object. However in the medieval era, Cutlers usually referred to the craftsmen who made knives, not swords.

Blacksmiths generally did not make swords; the secrets of making swordblades - particularly in the tempering of the blade once forged - were jealously guarded by guilds of blade-makers. The blacksmiths' trade was much more for iron-working for farms and building, than weapons.

Original answer:

blacksmiths?

The name "pinto mendez ferdinando" (which appears in various versions in various sources) occurs in Edgar Allan Poe's poem "A Valentine" which was written for Frances Sargent Osgood and which has her name concealed in the poem. The knight is the Portugese traveller Fernao Mendes Pinto (1509-1583) who has earned a reputation as an exaggerator of his travel tales, or, to put it more bluntly, as a liar. The reputation may well be undeserved as Pinto proved a rather astute observor of detail and is today considered rather reliable. In any case, this knight is referred to in Poe's poem with reference to the way Frances Osgood's name "lies" in the poem -- naturally -- that is, in its natural order; it is not scrambled or jumbled. (If you are familiar with the poem you will realize that the name is spaced into each of the twenty lines, beginning with the first letter of the first line, second letter of second line, third letter of third line and so on in natural order.)

The line from Poe's poem is "Its letters, although naturally lying/ Like the knight Pinto- Mendez Ferdinando-/ Still form a synonym for Truth" has a double sense. There is that play on words, the pun on "lying" which marks the name of Pinto but which proves opposite the reputation, Poe insists, of poet Frances Osgood. But there is also that sense of the three word name lying naturally in that its letters are not jumbled.

--SONNET CLV--

Feudalism in its earliest forms existed from very early times. There is no exact starting date. By the Ninth Century, Europe was a dangerous place with no central government as had existed in the Roman Empire. There was little to bind people together. They were isolated and vulnerable. The descendants of Charlemagne had divided the empire and as the practice of dividing kingdoms among sons continued those kingdoms grew smaller and weaker. Marauders grew plentiful: the Moors, the terrifying Vikings, and the Hungarians, to name the most prominent and dangerous. People were forced to defend themselves. The rich and powerful built fortified castles as protection against raids. Those petty kingdoms multiplied and often oppressed their own neighbors when they weren't being raided themselves. That control became hereditary and the rich and strong needed soldiers to maintain their power.

In order to find protection, an ordinary man had to give up his freedom, and sometimes the land his family had been farming for generations, and petition a great lord to take him into service as a vassal. He would gain the use of land for life (a fief) and protection for him and his family but had to swear life long allegiance to his lord. He would provide regular service as a knight when called for duty. When he died his son would swear allegiance to the lord and would be allowed the use of the land for his life. Less powerful lords would swear allegiance to the more powerful and they swore allegiance to the king. At that time there were many "kings" of small kingdoms. They took possession of all the surrounding land, forests, fields, rivers and even church lands. They could also grant fiefs other than land such as mill rights and fishing rights. Thus feudalism was born and developed slowly over the next few hundred years.

The kings and their vassals spent much of their time fighting. Eventually, the vassals acquired their own vassals and the peasants were required to raise the food and make the products needed to live. The lord owned everything. Towns developed in the areas surrounding the castles. Feudalism eventually grew into a complex system that governed life for hundreds of years.

It was an interesting period that still influences life today. The British aristocracy evolved under feudalism. There are thousands of good sites where you can read more about it.