KNIGHTS (ante). According to Tacitus. the origin of knighthood was among the ancient German tribes, and consisted in conferring upon selected persons the privilege of citizenship. under the direct supervision of dip authority of the state. The ceremony included the investiture of the candidate with a buckler and javelin, and appears to have implied that, whereas ne was before only a member of his immediate family, he now became a servant, or cui,itt (Saxon), of the state. But both the institution and the cere mony have been traced back as far as the foundation of Rome, when Romulus is said to have created the rank, the curia electing 300 equates, as they were called, from eguus, a horse. In England king Allred is said to have been the first to create a knight with the sword of state, in the case of Athelstane, A.D. WO. In the time of Henry III. of England the institution seems to have been based on a property qualification, since all persons possessed of ten pounds yearly income were forced to be knighted under pen alty of a fine. The institution of knighthood as an order was, generally speaking, an event of the middle ages, and grew out of the disturbed condition of society, and the necessity for the weak to be protected by the strong. The feudal barons were at this time mostly marauding robbers,whose hands were against all men, and who particularly devoted themselves to plundering their neighbors of their women and their wealth. The church being specially the object of their predatory excursions, that institution, with a view to the protection of its enormous and increasing riches, turned the warlike spirit of the age to its advantage, and, by introducing the religious element into the investiture of knighthood, brought to the ceremony a specific character of solemnity which created a tenacious bond of attachment between the two. With that keen shrewdness which has
always characterized the Roman Catholic church, the latent spirit of respect for woman which existed in the middle ages, even among the rude and savage populations of cen tral Europe, was made a powerful element in -the foundation of the new order. The virgin Mary became the special tutelary divinity of knighthood, and by parity of reason ing, the sex was added to the church, in the esteem of the order, as being under its pro tection.
This deference to woman and the church became thereafter the chief impelling motive, under whose impulse the knights of the middle ages were incited to deeds requiring the greatest daring, self-denial, and tenacity of purpose. Not unnaturally, and particularly among the rash and the young, abuses crept into the system, and wild and foolish exploits brought the order into such disrepute that it became possible for Miguel Cervantes, at the close of the 16th c., to compose his wonderful burlesque of knighthood. the immortal Don Quixote, and for that work to meet with public acceptance. Yet it is to be remembered that. in no other instance, save perhaps those of the Roman Catholic church and the masonic order, has any merely human institution survived so long and accomplished so much of material good to mankind—on a basis of purely abstract quali ties. The institution of the later orders of knighthood was occasioned by a desire to construct a reputable system of recognition of merit. Some of these were distinctively charitable in their nature, others simply orders of merit. Of these the names of 240 have been preserved in history.