Order of chivalry


An order of chivalry, order of knighthood, chivalric order, or equestrian order is a society, fellowship and college of knights, typically founded during or inspired by the original Christian military orders of the Crusades and paired with medieval concepts of ideals of chivalry.
Since the 15th century, orders of chivalry, often as dynastic orders, began to be established in a more courtly fashion than could be created ad hoc. These orders would often retain the notion of being a confraternity, society or other association of members, but some of them were ultimately purely honorific and consisted of a medal decoration. In fact, these decorations themselves often came to be known informally as orders. These institutions in turn gave rise to the modern-day orders of merit of sovereign states.

Overview

An order of knights is a community of knights composed by order rules with the main purpose of an ideal or charitable task. The original ideal lay in monachus et miles, who in the order – – is dedicated to a Christian purpose. The first orders of knights were religious orders that were founded to protect and guide pilgrims to the Holy Land. The knightly orders were characterized by an order-like community life in poverty, obedience and chastity, which was linked with charitable tasks, armed pilgrimage protection and military action against external and occasionally internal enemies of Christianity. Examples are the Knights Templar, Knights of the Holy Sepulchre officially called The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, founded in 1090, the Order of St. John and the Order of Malta. These communities only became orders in the sense of canon law through papal recognition of their own binding rules of order and through the dissolution of ecclesiastical diocesan organizations.
In addition to the religious orders of knights, courtly orders of knights emerged in many European royal houses from the middle of the 14th century. This enabled the monarchs and princes to create a reliable household power independent of the church and to combine their court life with knightly virtues. During this time, the Burgundian court culture was leading and so the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded there in 1430, was for many a model in the sense of a princely order based on the ideals of Christian chivalry.
In the course of time, many orders of knights have been dissolved due to a lack of people or the field of activity has changed. So in many areas the charitable aspect and nursing came to the fore. There were also dissolutions for political reasons, such as the Knights Templar in 1312 or many orders of knights as opposition by Nazi Germany. While the Knights Templar was not re-established, some orders were reactivated after the end of World War II and the fall of the Iron Curtain.
There are repeated attempts to revive or restore old orders of knights. Often, old knight orders are used today to honor personalities. For example, the British Queen Elizabeth II regularly appointed new members to the Order of the British Empire in the 21st century. In Central Europe, for example, the Order of St. George, whose roots also go back to the so-called "last knight" Emperor Maximilian I, was reactivated by the House of Habsburg after its dissolution by Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, to this day, deserved personalities in republican France are highlighted by being awarded the Knight of the Legion of Honour. In contrast, the knights of the ecclesiastical orders of knights such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of St. John mainly devote themselves to social tasks, nursing and care.

Terminology

Holy See

The Secretariat of the State of the Holy See – medieval pioneer of the original military orders – distinguishes orders in the following manner:
  • State orders or orders of merit: order of a sovereign state, rewarding military or civil merits of citizens, legally based on the sovereignty of their states
  • Pontifical equestrian orders
  • * collazioni diretti: conferred by the Pope
  • * subcollazioni: under the protection of the Holy See
  • Sovereign orders: the only extant one in this category is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, an international sovereign entity
  • Dynastic orders of a sovereign royal dynasty, either an active "dynastic state order", otherwise a "non-national dynastic order", as the head of a formerly reigning royal house operating under ius collationis, typically approved by Papal bulls in the case of older origins

    Sansovino

In Dell'origine dei Cavalieri, the Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino distinguished knights and their respective societies in three main categories:
  • "Knights of Collar", i.e. dynastic orders of knighthood
  • "Knights of the Cross", i.e. religious military orders
  • "Knights of Spur", i.e. knighted by the sovereign, later also by feudal lords and knights elderly
Over time, the above division became no longer sufficient, and heraldic science distinguished orders into: hereditary, military, religious and fees.

Boulton

In a more generous distribution proposed in The Knights in the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Late Medieval Europe, the Canadian heraldist D'Arcy Boulton classifies chivalric orders as follows:
  • Monarchical orders
  • Confraternal orders
  • Fraternal orders
  • Votive orders
  • Cliental pseudo-orders
  • Honorific orders
Based on Boulton, this article distinguishes:
  • Chivalric orders by time of foundation:
  • * Medieval chivalric orders: foundation of the order during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance
  • * Modern chivalric orders: foundation after 1789
  • Chivalric orders by religion:
  • * Catholic chivalric orders: membership exclusively for members of the Catholic Church
  • * Orthodox chivalric orders: blessed by the heads of Orthodox churches
  • * Protestant chivalric orders: blessed by the heads of Protestant churches
  • Chivalric orders by purpose:
  • * Monarchical chivalric orders: foundation by a monarch who is a fount of honour; either ruling or not
  • * Confraternal chivalric orders: foundation by a nobleman, either high nobility or low nobility
  • * Fraternal chivalric orders: founded for a specific purpose only
  • * Votive chivalric orders: founded for a limited period of time only by members who take a vow
  • * Honorific chivalric orders: consist only of honorific insignia bestowed on knights on festive occasions, consisting of nothing but the badge
  • * Self-styled orders: self-proclaimed imitation-orders without statutes or restricted memberships

    Military orders by time

Another occurrent chronological categorisation is into:

Monarchical orders

Late medieval monarchical orders (14th and 15th centuries)

Late medieval monarchical orders are orders of chivalry with the presidency attached to a monarch.