Knighthood between the nobility and the prince.

Military distinction and social hierarchy in the

Burgundian Low Countries

Frederik BUYLAERT & Bert VERWERFT (Ghent University)

With this lecture, we would like to focus on the issue of knighthood in the Burgundian Low Countries.
The problem that interests us in particular is the extent to which rulers may have used the granting of
knighthood to control the nobility. We will start with a historiographical introduction to the debate on
chivalry and state formation, and subsequently, we will provide a critical assessment of the established
paradigm with some quantitative and qualitative case-studies that mainly derive from the county of
Flanders, the most important principality of the later medieval Low Countries.

1. Historiographical introduction
It is commonly accepted that chivalry was of paramount importance for elite culture in later medieval
Europe. The ideological system that had come into existence in the high Middle Ages around the concept
of knighthood constituted a social and cultural framework that was shared by both the prince and the
noble lineages that were supposed to help him in the rule of the realm. In fact, the leading families of
large towns such as London, Bruges or Paris also seem to have been increasingly willing to partake in
chivalrous culture. The set of ideals and practices that constituted chivalry provided rulers and their
nobles with a common outlook, namely that both spiritual salvation and social promotion could be
attained through a martial lifestyle.
It is a well-known fact that only the prince and the most highborn lords of the realm had the
right to make someone a knight in most regions of Western Europe. As such, they seem to have had a
powerful tool at their disposal to convey honour as well as financial and political benefits. Knighthood
obviously conferred a very considerable social prestige to its beneficiary: knights received precedence in
processions, with church seatings, with table seatings and so on. For example, when Philip Vilain, a
Flemish nobleman returned home in 1453 from a military campaign as a newly dubbed knight, the local
authorities organised a lavish feast in his honour, during which he was presented with various costly
presents. Indeed, the acquisition of knighthood could entail considerable financial benefits. In the Low
Countries and France, the reception of a knightly title was one of the so- alled quatre cas féodaux, that
is, one of the four special occasions in which a nobleman was allowed to demand a special aide from his
subjects (the others were due when the lord left for the Holy Land, when he had to ransom himself or
when his daughter married). Next to this, k ighthood ould also e ha e o e s positio at ourt. The
court of the Burgundian Dukes was so intensely pervaded by the culture of chivalry that the higher
offices at court were exclusively preserved for knights. This also showed in the remuneration of lower
offices: knights were paid more than other courtiers who fulfilled identical duties.1
Given the considerable honorific, financial and political benefits that were inherent to
knighthood, it is unsurprising that is was much sought-after by every nobleman. As such, the right to dub

W. PARAVICINI, “oziale “ hi htu g u d soziale Mo ilitat a Hof der Herzoge o Burgu d , i : K. Krüger, H. Kruse &
1

A. Ranft (eds.), Werner Paravicini. Menschen am Hof der Herzöge von Burgund (Stuttgart, 2002) 372.

1
someone a knight provided the prince with a powerful instrument to reward his retainers. Furthermore,
the conferment of knighthood linked the giver and receiver into a reciprocal relation. The newly knighted
esquire was bound to the person who had knighted him by bonds of loyalty and gratitude and his future
deeds would also reflect on his benefactor. As such, the conferment of knighthood could be used as an
instrument to create noble factions. The best-known illustration of this logic is of course the
establishment of exclusive knightly orders in the later Middle Ages by secular rulers, such as the Order of
the Garter (founded by Edward III in the 1340s) or the Order of the Golden Fleece (founded by duke
Philip the Good in 1430).2 Indeed, one of the functions of those orders was to tie the most powerful lords
of the realm more closely to the prince. Thus, in theory, the right to knight someone endowed the prince
with considerable power, because it allowed them to manipulate the social and political hierarchy within
the ranks of the nobility by elevating some of his nobles above their peers.
Apart from influencing the established nobility, the prince could also use this prerogative to
create his own nobility. Whereas a highborn nobleman was only allowed to bestow a knightly title on
someone who was born and bred a nobleman, the prince had the right to knight a commoner. In the Low
Countries, this implied the ennoblement of that commoner. In most principalities that came to
constitute the Burgundian Low Countries in the fifteenth century, knighthood was so strongly conceived
as a noble privilege from the early fourteenth century onwards, that a knighted commoner was
henceforth considered to be noble. It is important to note that this ennoblement was strictly personal in
nature. If the children of such a knighted commoner wanted to have a realistic chance of inheriting the
noble status of their father, they needed large landed estates and all the other trappings of the
traditional nobility. Despite these limitations, it is clear that in theory, the prince could counterbalance
the networks of the established nobility by creating his own noble faction out of docile retainers.

For all those reasons, historians tend to study knighthood not only from a cultural angle, but also from a
social and political viewpoint. The prerogative to grant the title of knighthood seems to have provided
the prince with a powerful tool for state-building. Not only could he use that right to control the
established noble lineages, but also to redefine the very social composition of the nobility. In light of the
considerable powers that came with the right to confer knighthood, it is an important question whether
the prince was practically able to use this right as he saw fit. To phrase the problem differently: to what
extent was the established nobility of the late medieval Low Countries able to put constraints on the free
implementation of this particular right by the Dukes of Burgundy?
The Fifteenth Century Conference is a highly appropriate forum to tackle this issue. As is well
known, the historians of fifteenth-century Western Europe have a strong tradition of comparative
research into the social and political structures of England, France and the Low Countries. On this side of
the Channel, there is for example the work of John Armstrong in the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-
seventies, that of Maurice Keen and Malcolm Vale in the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties. More
recently, comparative studies of state formation, warfare and court history in England and the Low
Countries have been published by David Grummit and Steven Gunn in collaboration with various Belgian
and Dutch scholars. However, where the nobility is concerned, the British historiographical tradition

See F. PILBROW, The k ights of the Bath: du i g to k ighthood i La astria a d Yorkist E gla d , i : P. Coss &
2

M. Keen (eds.), Heraldry, pageantry and social display in medieval England (Woodbridge, 2002) 198-99.

2
differs strongly from that in the Low Countries. The history of England in particular, provides evocative
illustrations to the fact that even the oldest and most powerful state of medieval Europe became
hamstrung if it lost the support of the nobility. ‘esear h o the Baro s Wars, the demise of Eward II and
of Richard II and the War of the Roses have imbued the British scholarly tradition with a very healthy
respect for the landholding aristocracy as a bulwark against high-handed princes. This has also shaped
the debate on chivalry to a very large extent. Scholars accept that many aspects of chivalrous culture
might have been important to shore up processes of state formation on the British Isles, but they are
also careful to point out that the prince could not afford to ignore the wishes of the lords of his realm. A
typical illustration is a recent publication of Katie Stevenson on chivalry in Scotland in the middle of the
fifteenth century: she sketches an image of a chivalric culture that is largely controlled by the Scottish
magnates and in which James II had to tread very carefully in his attempts to shore up his royal power
with knighting ceremonies and tournaments.3
Belgian-Dutch scholarship, however, has cultivated a very different perspective. Under the
influence on French historiography on the otorious crisis of feudalism , it is usuall assu ed that the
nobility of the Low Countries was brought to the verge of bankruptcy at the turn of the fifteenth century.
Inversely, the fifteenth century is primarily seen as the age that saw the emergence of the first strong
sovereign dynasty in this region. The hitherto independent principalities of Brabant, Flanders, Holland,
Hainaut and so on, were now united under the banner of the Dukes of Burgundy. As rulers of a
composite union, the Dukes wielded far greater power than their predecessors had done in the
fourteenth century. In fact, the Burgundian state soon proved to have sufficient financial and military
power to hold its ground against the neighbouring kingdoms of France and England.

In this new European power block, internal opposition did not come primarily from the nobility, but from
powerful cities such as Ghent, Bruges, Liége or Brussels, who frequently rebelled against their

K. STEVENSON, Co testi g hi alr : Ja es II a d the o trol of hi alri ulture i the s, Journal of Medieval
3

History 33 (2007), 197-214.

3
Burgundian overlord. In fact, it has been frequently suggested that the Dukes recruited the nobility as an
ally against the towns. Impoverished nobles supposedly gave up their independent position vis-à-vis the
prince in return for a state pension and their ranks, depleted by the fourteenth-century crisis, were
reinforced by the large-scale ennoblement of state officials. In this context, historians are inclined to
think that the right to confer knighthood was of considerable importance to the Burgundian state
formation process. With the granting of a knightly title by the Duke, nobles received financial and
honorific incentives to act as loyal servants to the Burgundian state, and many loyal commoners were
now dubbed as to include them in the e ergi g state o ilit . In short, the flourishing of chivalric
culture at Burgundian court is commonly understood as a vital part of the state formation process: the
granting of knightly titles helped the prince to reconfigure the remnants of an impoverished old nobility
into a obeisant workhorse of the princely dynasty.

2. A critical reassessment: the evidence from Flanders

a) The decline of chivalry

Coherent as this historiographical narrative may be, our research suggests that a revision is in order.
First, we must question the assumption that the fifteenth century saw a renaissance of chivalrous culture
under the aegis of the Burgundians. While it is certainly true that the famous Burgundian court was
completely imbued with the cultural practices of chivalry,4 it seems that the unification of the Low
Countries under the banner of the Burgundian Dukes has in fact led to a marked decrease in the number
of knights in this region. The case of the Flemish nobility provides a telling example:

The Flemish nobility and chivalry (1350-1500)

300
Number of
250
noble
lineages that
200 did not
include
150 knights

100
Number of
50 noble
lineages that
included
0
knights

For a general discussion, see W. BLOCKMANS & E. DONCKERS, “elf-representation of court and city in Flanders and
4

Bra a t i the fiftee th a d earl si tee th e turies , i : W. Blo k a s & A. Ja se eds. , Showing status:
representation of social positions in the late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 1999) 85

4
In the later Middle Ages, the Flemish nobility usually consisted of something close to 250 noble lineages.
This graph shows the number of noble lineages that had at least one member with a knightly title per 25
years between 1350 and 1500. In the third quarter of the fourteenth century, 76 percent of all noble
families included a knight in their ranks, but at the end of the fifteenth century, this had declined to 50
percent of all noble lineages.
Much suggests that this evolution was caused by the increasing distance between local elites and
their ruler. The decline of knightly titles in the county Flanders started in the last decades of the
fourteenth century. This was precisely the period in which the county of Flanders fell to the Burgundian
dynasty. In 1384, Louis of Male, count of Flanders, died and Flanders was now inherited by his daughter
Margaret, wife to Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. The new count of Flanders spent most of his time in
France and Burgundy and populated his court first and foremost with French-speaking noblemen. With
the departure of the princely court, it is understandable that fewer and fewer Flemish noblemen
received a knightly title. This hypothesis is confirmed by a comparison with the county of Holland, a
principality in the Northern Low Countries that was integrated in the Burgundian union in 1428. At the
beginning of the fifteenth century, approximately 70 percent of the nobility of Holland had a knightly
title, a figure that closely matches that of the nobility of fourteenth-century Flanders. After the
integration of the county in the Burgundian union and the disbanding of the comital court in The Hague
in the 1420s, however, this plummeted to a mere fifteen percent of the Holland nobility.5 The fifteenth
century saw the collapse of chivalrous culture in Holland, a region that was to become the heartland of
the fa ous urgher ulture of the Earl Moder Dut h ‘epu li .

That the number of knights declined even more drastically in fifteenth-century Holland than had been
the case in Flanders, can be explained by the different attitudes of the Burgundian dynasty towards both
principalities. Despite the fact that they had to divide their attention over the increasing number of
principalities that constituted their empire, the dukes of the Burgundian dynasty were careful to pay
regular visits to the county of Flanders, as it was the richest, most populous and most rebellious
principality of the Low Countries. Because the Burgundian court often settled for a while in the large
Flemish towns of Ghent and Bruges, about half of the nobility could continue to attend court and
cultivate a chivalric profile. Holland however, was deemed less important and only very rarely received a
personal visit from the Dukes after their acquisition of the county. In consequence, the dissolution of a
regional princely court was more strongly felt in Holland than it had been in Flanders. Only the most
powerful nobles of Holland, who took pains to visit the Burgundian courtly residences in the Southern
Low Countries, now received the title of knight.
Thus, while the Burgundian court is famous among historians for its affinity with chivalrous
culture, the ascent of the Burgundian state seemed to have provoked a general decline of chivalry in the
Low Countries. In the fourteenth century, each principality of the Low Countries had been ruled by its
own dynasty, which resided continuously in that particular region, but in the fifteenth century, all those
regional courts were suspended in favour of one centralised court. The dukes of Burgundy were careful
to maintain their contacts with their subjects by constantly moving their court from one region to

For this analysis, see A. JANSE, ‘idderslag e ridderlijkheid i laat- iddeleeu s Holla d , The Low Countries
5

Historical Review 112 (1997) 317-35.

5
another, but this could not fully compensate the fact that the various principalities did no longer have
their ruler in near-permanent residence. As long as their prince lived in their midst, a knightly title seems
to have been a very attainable goal for the majority of the noble lineages in the Low Countries, but in the
fifteenth century, it became increasingly exclusive to those nobles who had the wealth and the leisure to
attend the itinerant Burgundian court.

b) Knighthood and and social hierarcy among the established nobility

The question that must now be answered concerns the noble lineages who did continue to include
knights in their ranks. Do we have to understand those titles as an indication that those families were
particularly favoured by the prince? Established historiography is inclined to say yes. However, we
unearthed indications that the prince was not at liberty to confer knighthood as he pleased. The nobility
seems to have been determined to keep a close watch on who entered the chivalrous community. A
highly informative testimony in this respect comes from Guillebert de Lannoy, a highborn nobleman who
fulfilled several diplomatic missions for duke Philip the Good. Between 1439 and 1442, he presented the
Duke with a treatise named The i stru tio of a ou g pri e, adheri g to the popular genre of the
specula principum, the irrors for pri es. Interestingly enough, Guillebert de Lannoy admonished
the prince that he was only allowed to knight a person if it met with the approval of his nobles:

Et ai si se souloit fai e a ie e e t, ais de p ése t l’e fait hevaliers ceulx qui le requièrent
sa s les i fo e e i st ui e de e ue audit o d e appa tie t. Ca de d oit ul ’y dev oit est e
e eu se p e ie s ’e avoit li e e des p i es, les uelz pou ie e dev oie t souff i u’elle
fust donnée aux personnes non habiles et indignes de si noble estat, car ilz devroient considérer
ue hevalie s so t leu s e es a l’ayde de uoy ilz deffe de t et ai tie e t la foy de Dieu,
l’église et justi e.
Et pour ces raisons e dev oit hevalie est e fait se il ’avoit corps, lignage, meurs et conditions
dessus déclairees, et ue de leu ve tu, ha de e t et vailla e, du a t le te ps u’ilz so t
escuiers, en apparust aux princes, par le rapport de VI ou de VIII chevaliers et escuiers notables. 6

Guillebert de Lannoy stresses that the judgment of who was worthy of this noble privilege did not reside
with the prince, but with a group of uncontested nobles. As he put it: … no one should be knighted if he
does not have the physical prowess, the lineage, the morals and customs discussed above, and their
virtue, perseverance and bravery as squires should be attested to the prince by six or eight knights or
notable squires. Of ourse, De La o s work is a prescriptive treatise, but his statement that o e s
elevation to the status of knight had to be approved by a group of six or eight nobles does not seem to
have been a figment of wishful thinking. The author seems to refer to an established social practice.
Occasionally, a fifteenth-century nobleman would be asked to prove his noble status, for example,
whenever he claimed fiscal immunity as a nobleman. Surviving documents show that those nobles did so

6
C. POTVIN & J.-Ch. HOUZEAU (eds), Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy, voyageur, diplomate et moraliste (Leuven,
1878) 414.

6
by asking six or seven uncontested nobles to vouch for them.7 This suggests that the nobility put marked
constraints on the princely prerogative to dub someone a knight.
That the prince was not at complete liberty to rearrange the social hierarchy by dubbing his
favourites, can be confirmed if we zoom in on the so-called battle of Gavere, a massive battle that was
fought in 1453 and in which Duke Philip the Good scored a decisive victory against the urban militia of
the rebellious town of Ghent. At the eve of this important battle, the Duke and his military commanders
knighted approximately 80 persons who had supposedly distinguished themselves in combat. However,
this massive distribution of knightly titles seem to have had little impact on the existing social hierarchy.
We can study this for a specific part of the Burgundian army, that is the company of Thibaud de
Neufchâtel, a highborn nobleman from the duchy of Burgundy. In his capacity as the field marshal of
Burgundy, Thibaud led a division of no less than 1163 combatants. The muster roll of his company
survives, which gives us a highly reliable survey of the hierarchy of all the nobles under his command on
the fourteenth of July, that is, ten days before the battle of Gavere was fought.8

1. Le marquis de Rentelin, chevalier banneret

2. Mo seig eu d’Au e ies, hevalie a e et
3. Monseigneur de Beauchamp, chevalier banneret
4. Monseigneur de Rougemont, escuier banneret
5. Antoine de Ray, escuier banneret
6. Guillaume de Ray, escuier banneret
7. Ferry de Cusance, escuier banneret
8. Le conte de Petite Pierre, escuier banneret
9. Hoste de Ribaupierre, escuier banneret
10. Guillaume de Valengin escuier banneret
11. Messire Jeha d’Escornay, chevalier bacheler
12. Monseigneur de Habarc, chevalier bacheler
13. Mo seig eu d’Espi y, hevalie a hele
14. Messire Herman de Serainghe, chevalier bacheler
15. Messire Adam Ancellin, chevalier bacheler
16. Mo seig eu le Bo g e d’Es e
17. Monseigneur le Baudram, son filz
18. Le seigneur du Fay
…

This muster roll meticulously lists in a hierarchical order all noblemen who commanded one or more
horsemen. As you can see, a group of high-born noblemen who were not yet knighted (the numbers 4 to
10), were listed before noble knights from less important families. Interestingly, the massive knightings
that followed the Battle of Gavere on the 23rd of July did little to change the social hierarchy in this
company. The names of the persons that now received knighthood are underlined. It is clear that the
honour of knighthood was first and foremost conferred to that group of seven noblemen who were not

For an example, see BRUSSELS STATE ARCHIVE, Fonds de Lalaing – charter collection, nr. 45.
7

BRUSSELS STATE ARCHIVES, Chambre des Comptes, Acquits de Lille – cartons, 1149D.
8

7
yet knights, but whose lineage, wealth and power had already given them precedence over most other
noblemen in that company. Among the lower ranking noblemen (from the number 16 onwards), who
often had contributed the same amount of horsemen to the company, a knighting was a much rarer
phenomenon. This allows us to conclude that massive knighting after battle not so much reshaped the
established hierarchy among the nobility as to confirm the pre-existing hierarchy. The new knights were
usually scions of the leading noble houses.

c) The creation of new nobles

The last question that must be answered is how often the Dukes made use of their prerogative to knight
a commoner, thus elevating that commoner into the nobility. Again, we used the nobility of the county
of Flanders as a testcase.

The social renewal of the Flemish nobility

(1350-1500)
300
Nieuwe adel
1476-1500
250
Nieuwe adel
200 1451-1475
Nieuwe adel
150 1426-1450
Nieuwe adel
100 1401-1425
Nieuwe adel
50
1376-1400
0 De adel van
1350-13751376-14001401-14251426-14501451-14751476-1500 1350-1375

As you can see, the social composition of the nobility was in a state of constant flux. Per 25 years,
approximately 15 percent of the old noble lineages became extinct, but there was also a constant influx
of new families into the Flemish nobility. Approximately 40 percent of this influx concerned the
immigration of noble lineages from other principalities. The remaining 60 percent, that is, approximately
130 families, consisted of Flemish commoners who had succeeded to become noble. We made a
prosopographical study of this group of ennobled commoners, which shows that no more than 43 of
those families distinguished itself in princely service.9 As such, no more than one fifth of all newcomers in
the Flemish nobility may have thanked its social promotion to the Burgundian dukes. The state formation
process certainly exerted some influence on on the social composition of the nobility, but the massive
ennoblement of state officials is a phenomenon that only occurred in the Early Modern era. Even if all

9
This amounts to 20,6 percent of the 209 lineages that came to belong to the Flemish nobility in 1376-1500.

8
those 43 families were knighted by the prince, that would only amount to one knighted commoner per
three or four years.

3. Conclusions
With this lecture, we tried to provide a critical assessment of a historiographical tradition that tends to
understand chivalry as an intrinsic part of the state formation process in the Burgundian Low Countries.
It is ertai l ot our i te tio to de that the pri e s right to k ight o e of his subjects was
unimportant: indeed, he often rewarded faithful servants with a knightly title, thus endowing them not
only with a considerable social promotion, but also with very real financial and political benefits. Yet, our
case-studies suggest that it would be a mistake to think that the prince was at complete liberty to
distribute knightly titles as he saw fit. The established nobility was clearly determined to keep a close
watch on who was to receive this noble honour. This observation allows us to conclude that the
Burgundian Low Countries showed a strong resemblance to England and Scotland, where the king had to
be careful not to ignore the wishes and interests of the nobility.
A second conclusion must be that historians would do well to reconsider the impact of state
formation on chivalrous culture in the Low Countries. Chivalrous culture famously flourished at the
Burgundian court, which has led historians to speak of a Burgundia re aissa e of hi alr i the Lo
Countries, but it seems clear that the political unification of the Low Countries under Burgundian rule has
caused a structural decline of chivalry. In the early twentieth century, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga
famously described the Burgundian court as the last bulwark of chivalry in a rapidly modernizing society,
but it seems that it was precisely the coming of Burgundy heralded the waning of the age of chivalry.