ABSTRACT
We have now got a very long way from our original" body of horsemen equipped for battle", and it is necessary to return to it in order that we may trace the process by which a military force characterized by the complete barbarism and sanguinary brutality of the decadent ninth century became (at any rate in theory) transmuted and converted before the thirteenth century into a class of "perfect gentlemen " fully qualified in spirit if not in technical skill, to be medical missionaries. We must fix our eye on the word " knight", which, it will have been noted, occurs in aU definitions of chivalry that we have examined. The English word "knight" is, indeed, the equivalent of the French word "chevalier" j and the English term "knighthood" stands as a synonym for the French "chevalerie", as for the Spanish "caballeria", and the Italian "cavalleria". Now, before the Norman Conquest there was no such equivalence. For the Continental cavalier was, as his name implies, a horseman,s and the Anglo-Saxon" knight" was not. The Anglo-Saxon " knight" or " cniht ", was, at first, merely any young man; later the name was applied more particularly to a young man who acted as servant or attendant to a lord; next it was still further specialized to denote one who rendered military service, and it was translated into Latin by the word miles which had similarly become specialized in the meaning of soldier; finally, at the time of the Norman Conquest, it had come to signalize peculiarly those subordinate fighting men of the minor landholding class who had commended themselves to some lord and so fought under his banner. In short, the term had become feudalized: it connoted the military tenants of earls and thegns, bishops and abbots, and other eminent local potentates. But still the " cnihtas " fought on foot. It was the Normans who brought
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The knight of the early Norman period-whether in England or on the Continent-was a purely feudal personage. He held a parcel of land on condition of military service; he was bound by the terms of his tenure to follow his lord into the field forty days each year, fully equipped, and adequately accompanied, at his own expense; further, he had to attend his lord's court, pay certain reliefs and aids, submit to various rights as to worship, marriage, escheat, forfeiture, and so on. He was not an attractive individual. No one loved him. It is difficult, indeed, to say by whom he was most detested-by the King and the officials of the nascent National State; by the Pope and the clergy of the dominant Catholic Church; or by the commonalty of the subject Third Estate of citizens, burgesses, peasants. The King found him an intolerable nuisance: he was useless and inefficient in war, turbulent and rebellious in peace, an insuperable obstacle to tranquillity and good government. The Church suffered incalculably at his hands: he was greedy and aggressive, constantly on the alert to rob bishoprics and monasteries, defiant of ecclesiastical discipline and much inclined to secure control of the spiritual power by putting his creatures into holy orders. To the commonalty he was an unmitigated terror, a mere bandit, unrestrained by any consideration of mercy or of honour.
