Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

For the next two centuries, powerful, mounted warriors dominated battlefields, while also beginning to burnish their status in society at large. The battle of Lechfeld did not cause that shift. But it did show which way the wind was blowing.7 The European knight was coming of age. From the tenth century, the status and importance of knights rocketed across the medieval west. Within a couple of generations, Frankish-style heavy cavalry evolved to become preeminent on battlefields from the British Isles to Egypt and the Middle East. As they did so, the social cachet of being able to fight in the saddle also soared. By the twelfth century, the knight was a man whose importance in wartime was rewarded with landed wealth and high rank during peacetime. And around him was emerging a distinctive cult of knightliness known as chivalry, which would inform art, literature, and high culture long beyond the end of the Middle Ages. Indeed, the tropes and rituals of knighthood and chivalry persist in many western countries right down to the present day. In terms of popular perception, the knight is arguably the most distinctive legacy the Middle Ages have left to us.