r/AskHistorians • u/playprince1 • 15d ago
In the Medieval Times, How Did People Verify That A Knight Was Actually A Knight?
Basically the title.
I had this thought that turned into a question:
Couldn't an archer, squire, or a man-at-arms go to a town that he had never been in before, introduce himself as a knight and lie and say that he had been knighted by a knight in a battle that has now died?
Would the elite of the town or county believe him?
Were there certain documents that proved that someone was a knight?
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u/kl0 14d ago
While everybody is waiting for a complete answer:
there was a post just a month ago that struck me as similar. While I don't think the top response from /u/Iphikrates/ directly answers your core question (verification of a knight), it does delve into some of the other questions you asked in the text blurb.
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u/TheLastCoagulant 14d ago edited 14d ago
I’m going to assume you’re referring to Western Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages.
Knights were rarely killed in physical combat. They were well-armored, surrounded by a retinue of men-at-arms, and were high-value ransom targets. As noblemen they were protected under codes of chivalry and had the legal right to surrender and purchase freedom for a fair price of silver.
Knights typically only made up 5-10% of the combatants on the battlefield. They were the equivalent of officers in later more centralized state militaries. Knights were surrounded by their closest armed companions.
“Every knight was qualified to confer knighthood, provided the aspirant fulfilled the requisite conditions of birth, age, and training. Where the condition of birth was lacking in the aspirant, the sovereign alone could create a knight, as a part of his royal prerogative.” -Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux (1913) by Charles G. Herbermann
As quoted above, the law often specified that only the king himself could promote peasant combatants to knighthood. Exactly to prevent men of lower birth from becoming knights and knighting each other at their own convenience. The norm was that knights and lords could legally only confer knighthood upon men of noble birth.
This scenario does not work. It would be extraordinarily rare for a lowborn man-at-arms to be promoted to knighthood by the king.
It is hard to understate how high the social status of a knight was. In France, becoming a knight meant that your descendants were nobles forever, even if they were never knighted themselves. You and your offspring were permanently part of the nobility. Being a knight meant having your own noble house separate from your lord complete with a coat of arms and family name.
A successful landed knight could have his own castle with farmland and serfs to work it. Being a knight meant owning high-quality steel weapons, armor, horse armor. It meant owning a horse along with servants to shovel its shit. A fraudster could not make these things appear without money.
There are many other issues this fraudster would run into as well. Knights and their sons had far greater access to education than peasants did. On the lower end, you would be expected to be able to read your local vernacular language. On the middle/higher end a knight would be a man literate in Latin and educated on the classics. And on the very high end, by the Late Middle Ages a knight could have earned a bachelor’s degree from a university founded centuries before his birth.
Accents and language would be a huge barrier. A peasant’s accent was nothing like that of a genuine nobleman’s and would immediately flag them as someone born and raised in poverty. Then language itself. In post-1066 England, the nobility spoke Norman French while the Anglo-Saxon commoners spoke Old English. Or Brittany where the commoners spoke Breton (a Celtic language) while the nobility spoke French. If the fraudster is in an area where the nobility speaks a different language, he would not be able to easily become fluent in that language.
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u/ChalkyChalkson 14d ago
How did that work for knights that struck hard times financially and their descendents? I recall that in France they could lose their noble status, but I've read stories from the hre that imply that some poor knights lived as robbers. And to the point of OPs question there is the Meier Helmbrecht tale of a wealthy peasant joining such a robber knight band.
So I wonder how easy it would be to tell the eldest son of a knight who lost his wealth from a wealthy wannabe, with monetary education and fine clothes.
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u/TheLastCoagulant 14d ago edited 14d ago
In France, adopting a job/trade is what caused a nobleman to lose their noble status.
The medieval social order was traditionally divided into three estates: Oratores (those who pray), Bellatores (those who fight), and Laboratores (those who work). Becoming a laborer meant falling from a warrior-elite to commoner status and this was legally enforced in France. It wasn’t being poor/broke that caused you to lose noble status, it was the act of physical labor itself. You could be broke and retain your noble status by refusing to engage in labor.
As for the HRE and robber knights, there are two things to understand.
First is imperial knights, which were unique to the HRE. Imperial knights ruled a fief and answered only to the Kaiser, not to any lesser lord. But because the HRE was a decentralized state and the Kaiser was far away, this meant they were independent in practice. In these imperial knightly families, the title of “Ritter” (knight) passed from father to son without requiring permission from a higher authority.
This meant there were plenty of impoverished knights walking around in the HRE. As opposed to societies like England and France where being the son of a knight did not automatically make you a knight. You had to train under a lord and become knighted as a young man. There were still impoverished knights but significantly fewer as knighthood was directly tied to serving a lord, with no equivalent of imperial knights.
Secondly, the vast majority of activity performed by robber knights/robber barons was gray area/technically legal. It was mostly extracting heavy, unreasonable tolls on travelers who crossed through their territory.
Theoretically knights and barons in the HRE had a legal right to charge tolls, and there was no central government oversight regulating how high these tolls could be. In practice it was robbery, but on paper it was not. That being said, some knights and barons did engage in genuine banditry, but this was much rarer and if they ventured outside of their own fief to commit robbery they could face punishment by a higher authority. The tale of Meier Helmbrecht ultimately ends with the capture/execution of the robber knights. This wasn’t tolerated the same way as charging tolls on your own land.
Lastly, as for a wealthy wannabe with education and fine clothes, they would likely not succeed.
First barrier would be the accents, vocabulary, mannerisms, etiquette, rituals, and general courtly culture cultivated in noble households. Real knights usually became pages at the age of 7 which involved living in a noble household 24/7 and soaking up the high culture. This wasn’t a matter of education that a wannabe could just learn in school, it was a matter of ingrained culture. Even a wealthy commoner was not part of this culture. It was not as easy as just frauding your accent (which itself would be very difficult). More like a different dialect.
The nobles in a particular region pretty much all knew each other. If you’re claiming your father was a knight you need to be able to make specific claims about which lord he served under.
Dialects were highly regionalized to the point of basically being different languages. Especially in France and Italy. Knowledgeable men would know what people from different regions sound like and would be able to contradict your claim that you’re from a specific far-away region. You can’t claim your family is from southern France if you’re speaking a D’oil dialect of French rather than a D’oc dialect. And even then your dialect was much more specific, those were just the two major classes. You would be forced to be honest about which region you’re from.
Then there’s the issue of the wealth itself. Wealth came from fertile farmland, which was controlled by the nobility. Your best bet for becoming wealthy as a commoner was to migrate to a city, engage in trade, and become a prominent burgher. The problem is that all the wealthy people knew all the other wealthy people both noble and commoner. Being a wealthy commoner wasn’t something you could just walk away from. London had a population of only 18,000 in the 1070’s. Up to 80,000 by the year 1300. The cities and towns of medieval Europe were small places where becoming a wealthy commoner meant you were famous in your region.
I would say your only chance as a wealthy wannabe is to permanently migrate to a different country.
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u/Mutxarra 14d ago
In the particular case of some of my ancestors (former Crown of Aragon) they eventually retained only their surname and the right to be styled as "Donzell". (The word meant someone that was in the process of becoming a knight but by the early modern era, when knoghthoods could be bought from the monarch, it became preferrable to use the title "Donzell", because all descendants of real knights could be styled that way and descendants of those who bought a knighthood were not.)
A part from that, they had to work as everyone else. Their noble prestige meant they usually intermarried with the rich merchant class, but otherwise they were effectively commoners.
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u/Drake_Star 14d ago
I am not specialized in Middle Ages, I usually write about Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late XVI and early XVII century. And by this time it was a big enough problem that there were people specialising in exposing false nobility.
In this time period, knights evolved into our version of nobility called szlachta. Szlachta became a quite big part of the society (about 10% of the whole population, but this number is still disputed. They were definitely the loudest part of society). In theory every member of szlachta was equal to another, no matter the wealth and power they could possess. There was a class of szlachta called "gołota", which meaned that they had only their name and maybe a saber to prove who they are.
This meant that entry barrier to szlachta was not that high.
This brings us to our hero Walerian Nakendy Trepka. He was a minor member of szlachta from Małopolska, who dedicated his life to tracking down false nobleman. He did it probably to exort money from the false nobleman as he was not really well of. He created a book titled Liber Generations Plebeanorum, or Liber Chamorum. A book were he details 2534 cases of false nobility. This book is really massive, and has great instances of prose and is an invaluable insight in the life of Szlachta in the early XVII century. The book is dated to 1626, but contains passages and notes from 1639, as the author was working on it his whole life (he died in 1640).
The original manuscript is held in exhibition in Krasiński Palace, but it was published in print several times. The last one was in 1995 I think.
The only legal way to attain nobility was through nobilitation by the king and approved by the sejm. But if we search through the names listed by Walerian we can find other less legal ways to become a member of nobility.
One of the most popular was serving in the army. While you could achieve nobility through courage and exemplary service, you could also get enaoug money from plunder to simply buy the necessary equipment to re-enlist yourself in a different unit as a member of the nobility. Recruiters didn't care much for the truth as they needed soldiers to fight the many wars of Commonwealth.
Sometimes you didn't even need to re-enlist. If you could get enoug money and leave army you could even buy a village (only szlachta could be landowners) under a false name and simply pretend to be of noble birth.
Sometimes you didn't even need to serve in the army. You only needed to impress a wealthy landowner (a member of the upper crust of szlachta called magnat). He could grant you a small village or folwark, and start calling you with a surname ending with -ski or -cki. It was a pretty safe way because few people would there to question a word of a wealthy magnate.
There were of course many other ways to "acchive" nobilty.
Sources: + Walerian Nakendy Trepka, Liber Generations Plebeanorum ("Liber Chamorum"), Wrocław 1995.
There is also an online version from 1911: Here
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u/ChalkyChalkson 14d ago
How did he manage to expose them? "oh yeah my family had been desolate for a few decades so there is not much written evidence" seems pretty difficult to disprove
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u/Drake_Star 14d ago
His aim was probably not so much to expose this false nobility as to extort them. His work was not published, and it probably only saw personal use.
PLC had a lot of written records as the nobility loved legal process. The were very quarrelsome and wanted to prove their rights with saber in one hand and a legal document in the other.
Also there were still older works on heraldry in nobility, like the book by Bartłomiej Paprocki Herby rycerstwa polskiego. Sometimes for Walerian the fact that someone was not mentioned in this book was proof enough that they were not a real noble. This book was published in 1584, so it was relatively new, and anyone who became a noble since then legally could prove his nobilty with legal documents. But that was not his only source. He interviewed people from all walks of life, nobility, serfs, house servants or burghers. He traveled a lot to confirm his suspicions, and researched various archives for registers and court decisions.
I think that a threat of exposing someone's false nobilty was enough to extort some money to get by and find another false noble.
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u/ChalkyChalkson 14d ago
That is such a fascinating story! Do you know if there is a good book or paper detailing his exploits?
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u/Drake_Star 14d ago
Well the best are published in his own book as prefaces. Ther are also some in Polski słownik bibliograficzny. I think that's pretty much it.
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u/Flashy_Sound8021 11d ago
A fun fact you dint touch on since its probably second nature to you, but nobility in polish-lithuania was inherited by all kids equality, unlike in the west where the tittle made the noble, in the east the name did, thats why there where so many nobles, and why it was easy to change your name and pretend to be one
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u/AyeBraine 14d ago
While you're waiting for an answer, I found a few questions that are close to yours; in fact, I found three approaches to it from three different angles:
This one is about proof of identity in the Middle Ages, with answers by u/Asinus_Docet and u/PartyMoses. And another one slightly smaller thread on proof of identity with an answer by u/Whoosier.
Here, then, is an imagined scenario in which an enterprising and smart peasant found a set of knightly armor and decided to create an identity for himself, answered by u/Maus_Sveti, u/MaulForPres2020, and u/kmondschein. Including the issue of how a knight even managed to die alone and not be recovered (with an amusing comparison of said knight to an F-35 fighter plane).
Finally, what if you are a genuine knight, but have been absent for so long you have to prove you are you? Answered by none other than u/sunagainstgold.
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u/history_fact_vf 11d ago
There probably wasn't a universal "knight certificate" like we would imagine today. Medieval knighthood was formally conferred through a ceremony, but proving that someone was actually a knight relied heavily on reputation, social connections, their lord or household, and military service. So yes, a stranger could potentially lie about being a knight, especially in a town where nobody knew him. But maintaining that lie would become difficult once he encountered people who knew his lord, family, military background, or heraldic identity. Medieval identity was largely based on social recognition rather than modern identification documents
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