CONCLUSION
1. For example, G. Duby, Hommes et structures (1973): 344, and F. Cardini (1976). Summarily stated, the complex question of the social, legal, and political nature of knighthood is given a chronological locus by Duby, The Three Orders (1980): 293, with the conclusion: "in the eighth decade of the twelfth century, at the end of Louis XII's reign, . . . knighthood became a genuine institution."
2. P. Zumthor (1987) 72-76.
3. The implications of literary references to social condition are complex, hence it is problematic to think of "classes" in medieval society. The term "class" is used hereafter for its convenience, but with the caveat that its sense differs from its modern use, since the term ordo of the sources referred to functions rather than fixed and uniform social estates. "Estate" is probably a good rendering for the Latin ordo in its broadest acceptation: cf. H. Fuhrmann (1986): 177. J. Flori (1983; 1986), a student of Duby and, indirectly, of Génicot, while reiterating Génicot's warnings that generalizations are difficult because social situations varied greatly from region to region, denies that the state of knight was recognized at all before the year 1000. See, for example, Flori (1986): 3 and passim for numerous citations of uses of the term around the year 1000 with varying connotations sometimes implying noble status. On the question of chivalry and knighthood see F. Cardini's (1982) bibliographic study. Bumke (esp. 1964, and chap. 7 added to 2d ed. 1977, "On the State of Research into Knighthood" in 1982 trans. 124-161) insists on-necessary distinctions and on the non-existence of a knightly "class" as such. He points out approvingly (1982: 140) that in Fleckenstein (1972) the term Ritterstand does not even appear. Linda Paterson, Forum for Modern Language Studies 17 (1981): 126, resumes Flori's argument thus: "before 1180 a knight in the eyes of French epic poets and their audiences is not a member of some 'order of chivalry' or homogeneous social class, but a professional horseback warrior with special equipment." Hence, when it appeared—through literary and cultural impact rather than social change—the chivalric ideology had a novel significance. Compare G. Duby, The Three Orders (1980) 294: "Thanks to the vocabulary of the charters, we can fix two chronological markers in a very fluid evolution: beginning in 1025, the word miles slowly came into usage to distinguish the members of one social group from other men (whereas in German-speaking Lorraine this term penetrated only after 1170 and really became established only after 1200). After 1175 the title miles regularly preceded the patronymic of all knights and was connected, as a rule, with the title dominus, 'messire.'" See M. Keen (1984), chap. 8 "The Idea of Nobility," especially p. 148, on the problematic character of the aristocratic status in the later Middle Ages.
4. For recent contributions to a still wanting history of the practice of dubbing see M. Keen (1984) chap. 4, "The Ceremony of Dubbing to Knighthood," 64-82, and the more extended J. Flori (1986), especially 319-329, together with Flori's previous "Les origines de l'adoubement chevaleresque. Étude des remises d'armes dans les chroniques et annales latines du IX e au XIII e siècle," Traditio 35 (1979): 209-272.
Liturgical acts and symbolism varied greatly and their practice is still largely unclear. For the German area see an expert discussion of the social implications of dubbing in J. Bumke (1964) chap. 5, especially 83-96, with rich bibliographic references. Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogue du milieu du X e à la fin du XI e siècle: croissance et mutation d'une société (1975) 31, 805-807, 875, assumed, perhaps too hastily, that such ceremonies existed in Catalonia from the end of the eleventh century. A significant early figuration of the ceremony is in section 21 of the celebrated Bayeux tapestry (see figures 1-2): Edward the Confessor of England had purportedly sent Harold Godwinson, son of the earl of the West Saxons, to William of Normandy with the message that William would be Edward's successor. To impress on Harold, a powerful pretender to the throne, the symbolic meaning of being invested as a liegeman to his new lord William, the latter dubbed him knight—an investiture act not yet current in England—and exacted from him a solemn oath of fealty. When at Edward's death two years later Harold succeeded to the throne, William invaded England and killed Harold at Hastings. The inscription over the figures in the tapestry reads: "Hic Willelmus dedit Haroldo arma."
An example of the elaborate nature of the ceremony, once it became established, was the great court festival at Mainz in 1184 for the initiation of Barbarossa's sons. The Hennegau Chronicle (Chronica Hanonia) of Gislebert de Mons reports that seventy thousand milites assembled for the occasion, including noblemen and ministeriales (Bumke 1982: 142). See an extended study of that festival and another one held in 1188, again at Mainz, in J. Fleckenstein (1972): Barbarossa's imperial court "had adopted chivalric norms for itself" (1029), and Fleckenstein relates this phenomenon to French cultural impulses by tracing it back to Barbarossa's having held court at Besançon in Burgundy in 1157 (1040-1041). Dubbing might or might not confer aristocratic status. Barbarossa had also been dubbed knight, and he derived from his family a habit of chivalrous ceremonials: the first recorded chivalric tournament was held in Würzburg in 1137 by Dukes Frederick and Konrad of Swabia, Barbarossa's father and uncle (Otto of Freising, Gesta Frederici 1.27). See J. Bumke (1982): 93 f., 143.
5. Like the decisive oath by the senior to defend the vassal, the practice of immixtio manuum is known in Italy, too, but some historians consider it ended by the middle of the tenth century within the Italic Kingdom: see Storia d'Italia, eds. Romano and Vivanti, 5.1: 263, 277.
6. B. D. Lyon (1957), especially 243 on fief-rentes as new forms of enfeoffment by annual money grants rather than land grants.
7. G. Duby, The Three Orders 299, with reference to the Cistercian monk Hélinand de Froidmont's On the Correct Princely Conduct, of those years ( Patrologia Latina [henceforth PL ] 212: 743 f.). The type of dubbing that marked the investiture of a knight derived from the ceremonial granting of feudal nobility as part, in turn, of the ritual recognition of authority in the emperor, king, pope, or bishop. The ritual climaxed in the tapping with the sword on the shoulder and girding with the sword belt as symbol of power: see Robert de Blois, Ensoignement des princes, ed. J. H. Fox (1948): 94, ll. 73-78: "Senefie que toz li mons / Doit le chevalier honorer, / Quant Ie voit espee porter / Cinte, que nus ne la çognoit / Jadis, se chevalier n'estoit." (It signifies that the whole world must honor the knight when he is seen carrying the sword at his waist, which no one used to wear without being a knight.) The first detailed description of a dubbing ceremony seems to be the knighting of Geoffrey the Fair of Anjou in 1128 at Rouen on the eve of his marriage to Matilda, the daughter of Henry I of England, as related in [Jean de Marmoutier's] Chroniques des Comtes d'Anjou, eds. Halphen and Poupardin (1913): 179 f. See M. Keen (1984) 64 f. But P. van Luyn, "Les milites dans la France du XI e siècle. Examen des sources narratives," Le Moyen Age 77 (1971): 5-51, 193-238, has discovered eleven more cases from the period 1070-1125. Cf. Bumke (1982): 133 f.
8. A good presentation of the matter is in M. Keen (1984): 144 f. As to the cost of horse and armor, see H. Fuhrmann (1986): 177: "in the eighth century a full set of equipment for a cavalryman was equivalent in value to forty-five cows or fifteen mares. In the eleventh century a horse was worth five to ten oxen, and a mail-shirt anything from twenty to a hundred oxen. When in 1100 Count Robert of Flanders undertook to provide 500 knights, it was assumed that each would have three horses, and this seems to have been normal for the Staufer period: one to travel on, one to fight on and one to carry baggage. It has been calculated that an estate would have to be a minimum of 400 acres in order to support a knight who was ready to fight at all times."
9. Duby, Hommes et structures (1973): 347-352.
10. Génicot, L 'économie namuroise (1960). It deserves stressing that for our purpose the specialist's insistence on local peculiarities and circumstances as the only scientific way to understand reality is not completely helpful where general causes should be invoked, since broad historical phenomena do have general causes.
11. Given the state of our knowledge of medieval society, the social status of freedom that plays a striking role in Génicot's researches is still rather unclear. Serfdom meant different things in different areas and different times, and the relationship between serf and master could vary radically. The widest divergences probably obtained between western and eastern parts of Europe, especially Russia, as Suzanne Massie has brilliantly illustrated, perhaps in a somewhat generalized manner, in her celebrated Land of the Firebird (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980). See J. Flori (1986) 223-230 for a description of different situations as to the status of knights vis-à-vis the nobility in the main regions of France, Flanders, England, and Germany in the twelfth century.
12. Duby, Hommes et structures (1973): 160.
13. Our knowledge of administrative and fiscal practices in Catalonia 1151-1213 is now solidly documented through the archival researches of Thomas N. Bisson, Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia under the Early Count-Kings (1151-1213), 2 vols. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1984). Ramon Berenguer IV's (Count of Barcelona 1131-1162) first fiscal officer was the able knight Bertran de Castellet. The vicars of royal domains were usually of baronial or knightly class. The bailiffs, operating under temporary tenures of one to three years, could be rich peasants or Jews. The best general historical survey of this geographic area is now T. N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Pierre Bonnassie's numerous studies are also valuable for this area and southern France.
14. John T. Noonan, Jr., "The Power to Choose," Viator 4 (1973): 419-434; J.-B. Molin and P. Mutembe, Le rituel du mariage en France du XII e au XVI e siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974); Marie-Odile Métral, Le mariage: les hésitations dans l'Occident (Paris: Aubier, 1977); G. Duby, Le chevalier, la femme et le prêtre: le mariage dans la France féodale (1981); Jean Leclercq, Le mariage vu par les moines au XII e siècle (Paris: Cerf, 1983).
15. The policy was meant to counter the feudal thrust toward hereditariness of royal benefices, which resulted in eventual independence for the vassals. "Bishops are given the secular office of count. This appointment of high ecclesiastics without heirs was intended to put a stop to the tendency of functionaries of the central authority to turn into a 'hereditary, landowning aristocracy' with strong desires for independence": N. Elias, Power and Civility (1982): 20. It did not quite work out that way, however, since the count-bishops tended to become just as independent as the secular princes, and could also turn their domains into hereditary ones.
16. See beginning of my chapter 7 on the Italian cathedral schools.