We all know knights as the noble mounted warriors in Medieval Europe, all covered with armor and trained to be the best fighters of their times. But what were the origins of this military and social institution that existed for many centuries?
The process of the formation of knights as we now imagine them took long time. It started when the decaying Western Roman Empire was invaded by the barbarians of various tribes, mostly Germanic ones. They settled in Western Europe, and created their own kingdoms and duchies in the 5th century AD when Rome was there no more. Those new realms were initially organized just as the barbarian hords preciding them – with every free man being both a farmer or craftsman and a warrior. However, as they settled in former Roman lands, this started to change rapidly, specialization was increasing.
Most of former Frankish or Visigothic barbarians became farmers, who were called for war only occasionally as a part of the militia of a county or a duchy, but some had become full-time warriors called “milites” in Latin, retinue of the king. The king also had numerous senior vassals like dukes, who were initially leaders of tribes or clans, and counts who were appointed to govern some territories – and each of them was also emulating the king by the creation a loyel retiune of professional warriors.
Those retinues had becoem much more than just warriors – they became the closest allies of a king or duke, the most loyal of his men, and thus they were also often assigned not merely military functions, but also those of police, court and tax collector. Unlike former universal levy of barbarian tribes, those new warriors, milites, were seen by the surrounding commoners with a mix of fear and hatred – not only they were enforcing laws, not always popular ones, and collecting taxes, but they had also lots of other privileges, and a much higher quality of life.
Yes, there should be no surprise that, compared to common peasants or fraftsmen, milites were rich and lived in luxury. After all, a king or duke cannot pay to his most loyal men, to those who are the base of his power, just by giving them food and clothes. No, they were receiving lots of gifts. And where from those gifts came? Usually those were war trophies. It was very common for the lords between some 400s and 700s AD to organize military campaigns against their neighbors solely to loot and plunder, and then to redistribute the trophies among their milites.
But, as time was going, it had become less and less common – the times were changing, and instead of chaotic conflicts of everyone against everyone a strong political system was emerging, formed to big extent by the diplomatic efforts of the Catholic church that was trying to pacify the warlords and to bring more peace and stability in the ravaged lands. And when there was complex politics it had become effectively impossible to just attack neighboring duchy every year or two, so the flow of trophies reduced significantly, but still something had to be donated to milites, but what? Trophies are few, money are few, but there was one thing that was both in abundance and in value – land. At that time there were still huge uninhabited territories in Europe, and so by 700s AD it had becom common to give to lords and milites land in posession instead of gifts, and lords then divided it among their own milites, and this was the beginning of feudalism.
Almost beginning – at that time it was much more common to give land as benefice, a lifetime posession that returned to sovereign after the death of a miles or lord. However, by 800s most of those posessions were transformed into hereditary fiefs, land posessions that remained in the family if the heir pledged an oath of fealty to the same sovereign as his ancestor. Charles the Bald, the King of West Francia and future Emperor, even issued a special decree that transformed all the remanining benefices into hereditary fiefs, as a part of his military and economical reforms to fight against the Viking invasions.
It is also worth mentioning that originally milites fought on foot, and many could have no horse at all. The situation was cnahging, and by 800s, especially after the Edict of Pîtres by the same King Charles the Bald that demanded every man who had a horse or could afford one to serve as a warrior against the Viking raids, effectively cementing the requirements of who can be a knight and what knight should look like.