The earliest knights were warriors who held land in exchange for the promise of military service to their king, a practice usually dated to the time of Charlemagne, who died in 814. Nothing like a true code of chivalry existed at that early date. Only in the waning years of the Middle Ages do we encounter the idealized standard of knightly conduct that is the subject of much European literature.

 

Knightly Orders

 

Early in the twelfth century, crusading knights in Jerusalem established the first orders of chivalry. These were large companies of knights whose duties went beyond the defense of the king and country. The knights of an order answered to an elected leader, a grand master, whose authority came from the pope himself. The papacy approved knightly orders as if they were religious orders like the Benedictines, complete with their own spiritual rule.

 

Most of these knights were recruited from among the ranks of the feudal nobility. In many cases, they were the younger sons of barons, the landed aristocracy having evolved from simple feudal knighthood into a social hierarchy of dukes, counts, and other vassals. Under the Frankish system of feudal succession by male primogeniture, younger sons were excluded from inheriting familial property. Trained as knights but lacking land, they sought their fortunes further afield. In the twelfth century, the eastern Mediterranean was about as far afield as a man from western Europe, even Italy, could get.

 

In addition to its knights, a “military-religious” order of this kind had serving brothers, clergy, and others in its large organization. It also had a distinctly Catholic character, as the knights, when invested, took a form of religious vow, almost as if they were monks, hence the oxymoronic phrase “monks of war.”

 

Apart from religious zeal, each knightly order had characteristics that made it unique. The Knights of Saint John, or Hospitallers, were known for operating large, well-equipped hospitals. The Knights of Saint Lazarus had hospices for Lepers. Initially, the Order of the Temple, or Templars, protected pilgrims; these knights came to be known for their financial activities. The Teutonic Knights, as their name implies, were mostly German; this order was founded under the auspices of the Hohenstaufen dynasty which came to rule the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily.

 

All were crusaders, yet each of the orders eventually established conventual houses, and commanderies, in Europe. The orders survived the fall of the Holy Land, which found the knights displaced from that region as it came under Muslim control.

 

In this way, the knightly orders achieved a presence in the Kingdom of Sicily, but here their sovereignty was not absolute as it had been in Palestine. In the thirteenth century, Frederick II lent royal patronage to the Teutonic Order much favored by his dynasty, giving them estates throughout his Kingdom of Sicily. In 1530, one of his successors, Charles V, who was likewise Holy Roman Emperor, gave Malta to the Hospitallers as a fief in exchange for the annual feudal rent of a falcon, hence they became known as the Knights of Malta. In the same vein as the military-religious orders were the monastic orders in Spain: Santiago, Alcantara, Montesa, and Calatrava. Founded as part of the Reconquista against the Moors, these institutions, to which Portugal’s Order of Saint Benedict of Aviz may be added, enjoyed the support of royal dynasties.

 

Most of the orders of chivalry mentioned here flourish in some form and are still bestowed today. Apart from the survival of these orders formed during the Middle Ages, their historical, chivalrous tradition encouraged the foundation of modern institutions, such as the Constantinian Order and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, which looked to medieval knightly orders of this kind for inspiration.

 

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Women and Chivalry

 

Southern Italy has a long tradition of women connected with chivalry. In 1112, Adelaide del Vasto, the widow of Roger I, who ruled Sicily and Calabria, raised her son, Roger II, later the first King of Sicily, to knighthood on a stone dais next to Palermo’s cathedral. The Lombard princess Sichelgaita of Salerno, the wife of Robert “Guiscard” Hauteville, elder brother of Roger I, led knights in battle.

 

Adelaide and Sichelgaita were not alone. Exceptionally for a woman of the thirteenth century, Macalda of Scaletta was afforded a military education, as if destined to be a knight, and could wield a sword. The War of the Vespers of 1282 found her governing Catania while her husband, Alaimo of Lentini, was away in Messina doing battle against his Angevin adversaries. Macalda was a chess master and played against the emir Margam bin Sebir, who was held captive in Messina following an Aragonese raid on his Tunisian dominions. Macalda’s eventful life bears the marks of what today would be called feminism.

 

Beyond southern Italy, there seem to have been a few notable cases of women taking up arms in a manner resembling knightly combat. In 1149, Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, founded the Order of the Hatchet in recognition of some women who had defended Tortosa, a Catalonian town, against the Moors. In 1233, the Order of Saint Mary was founded in Bologna. This included women in the rank of militia or soldier. Bologna was a papal city, and Pope Sixtus V finally suppressed what was left of this largely ceremonial order in 1558. It was during the fifteenth century that Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, formulated an idealized “code of chivalry” for the knights of his Order of the Golden Fleece. This was almost an anachronism, for by then the Middle Ages were at the beginning of their end.

 

Yet it reflected the authority of a sovereign as a “fount of honor.” This right of fons honorum also extended to the creation of titles of nobility. It is what permits the head of the House of the Two Sicilies to bestow honors.

 

Categories

 

Today there may be said to be three general “categories” of orders of knights and dames. Court orders, or “collar” orders, include the Order of Saint Januarius of the Two Sicilies and older institutions such as England’s Order of the Garter founded in 1348, established to associate aristocrats with the crown. An early Neapolitan example was the Order of the Knot founded by King Louis I of Naples in 1352; its symbol was similar to the heraldic “Stafford knot,” or “knot of Savoy.” In 1381, another Angevin monarch, Charles “the Short” of Durazzo, who was briefly king of both Naples and Hungary, founded the Order of the Ship; its insignia was the image of a galley suspended within an anchor, and for a short time its “chapel” was the Church of Saint Nicholas in Bari. The Order of the Ermine was founded by King Ferrante (or Ferdinand) I Trastámara of Naples in 1464; this was dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. Its insignia was the figure of an ermine, or stoat, representing fealty, suspended from a chain. The motto of this ephemeral order, inspired by an order of the same name bestowed by the Duke of Brittany, was Malo mori quam foedari (Better death than dishonor). The same Neapolitan sovereign bestowed the Order of the Urn, l’Ordine della Giara, which, like the orders of the Knot, the Ship, or the Ermine, might well have been revived by his successors in Naples but was not.

 

Military-religious orders, as we have seen, are rooted in the crusading tradition. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Constantinian Order was part of the military-religious chivalric tradition except for the anomalies of it being founded after the Middle Ages and its grand master being a duke or king.

 

Orders of merit, as their name implies, were founded in modern times to recognize military or civil achievement. France’s Legion of Honor, founded in 1802 and still bestowed today, is generally considered the first true order of merit. In the Two Sicilies, the Order of Merit of Saint Ferdinand was in this general category, and the Order of Francis I even more so. When one reads a press report about a prominent man or woman being invested in an order by a head of state, this is the form of knighthood that most often comes to mind. These are “secular” orders bestowed irrespective of the conferee’s faith or social status.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Investiture

 

The ceremony of investiture varies with the type of honor involved. The investiture of knights and dames of the Order of Saint Januarius and the Constantinian Order is a religious rite celebrated in a church. That of the Royal Order of Francis I is a simple secular presentation, though sometimes held in conjunction with the others.