ABSTRACT
Medieval warfare was dominated by the great proprietors. In the Chansons de Geste the king and his followers, the great lords and their honourable companions, ride out into battle. The act by which arms were bestowed on a young man for the first time had long been an important “rite of passage”. In the eleventh century, it became a distinct Christian ritual for the making of a knight. By the twelfth century the German ministerialis, who was a cavalryman of servile origins, was generally thought of as belonging to the same social community as the free knight and soon entered into nobility. Lords had always been able to afford the best military equipment for themselves, and by the end of the ninth century the diffusion of the stirrup and the development of the saddle meant that they adopted the style of the heavy cavalryman.
