The Accolade, by Edmund Blair Leighton

In the Middle Ages, the accolade was the central act in the rite-of-passage ceremonies conferring knighthood.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]} Image File history File links Download high resolution version (514x900, 108 KB) Summary The Accolade - Edmund Blair Leighton (1853-1922) Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Knight Edmund Leighton ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (514x900, 108 KB) Summary The Accolade - Edmund Blair Leighton (1853-1922) Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Knight Edmund Leighton ... The Accolade Edmund Blair Leighton (September 21, 1853—September 1, 1922) was a British painter of medieval scenes of chivalry. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... For other uses, see Rite of passage (disambiguation). ... Part of the ceremony of the Changing of the Guard in Whitehall, London. ... For other uses, see Knight (disambiguation) or Knights (disambiguation). ...

Ceremony

In the investiture of a knight, the accolade is the tapping of the flat side of a sword on the shoulders of a candidate to confer knighthood.^[1][4][8] Swiss longsword, 15th or 16th century Look up Sword in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about the body part. ...

It is a ceremony of knighting of an embrace about the neck.^[4] The "knight-elect" kneels in front of the monarch on a knighting-stool when the ceremony is performed.^[1] First, the monarch lays the flat side of the sword's blade onto the accolade's right shoulder.^[1] They then raise the sword gently just up over the apprentice's head and places it then on his left shoulder.^[1][4] The new knight then stands up after being promoted and the King or Queen presents him with the insignia of the order to which he has been appointed.^[1] Louis XIV, king of France and Navarre (Painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud, 1701). ... A blade is the flat part of a tool or weapon that normally has a cutting edge and/or pointed end typically made of a metal, most recently, steel intentionally used to cut, stab, slice, throw, thrust, or strike an animate or inainimate object. ... ... Chivalric Orders were created by European monarchs after the failure of the Crusades. ...

King John II of France in a ceremony of "adoubement", early 15th century miniature

There is not an agreement with historians on the actual ceremony and in what time period certain methods could have been used. It could have been an embrace or a slight blow on the neck or cheek. The kings of France, in conferring the gilt shoulder-belt, kissed the knights on the left cheek according to Gregory of Tours. In knighting his son Henry, with the cememony of the accolade, history records that William the Conqueror used the blow.^[4] John II the Good (French: Jean II le Bon) (April 16, 1319 – April 8, 1364), was King of France 1350–1364, Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou and Maine 1332–1350, Count of Poitiers 1344–1350, and Duke of Guienne 1345–1350. ... Saint Gregory of Tours (c. ... William I ( 1027 – September 9, 1087), was King of England from 1066 to 1087. ...

The blow when first utilized was given with a naked fist. It was a forceful box on the ear that one would remember. This was later substituted for a gentle stroke with the flat part of the sword against the side of the neck. This then developed into the custom of tapping on either the right or left shoulder or both, which is still the tradition in Great Britain today.^[4]

An early Germanic coming-of-age ceremony, of presenting a youth with a weapon which was buckled on him was elaborated in the 10th and 11th centuries as a sign that the minor had come of age. Initially this was a simple rite often performed on the battlefield, where writers of Romance enjoyed placing it. A panel in the Bayeux Tapestry shows the knighting of Harold by William of Normandy, but the specific gesture is not clearly represented. Another military knight (commander of an army), sufficiently impressed by a warrior's loyalty, would strike a fighting soldier on the head or his back and shoulder with his hand and announce that he was now an official knight.^[1] Some words that might be spoken at that moment were Advances Chevalier au nom de Dieu.^[1] In law, the term minor (also infant or infancy) is used to refer to a person who is under the age in which one legally assumes adulthood and is legally granted rights afforded to adults in society. ... For other uses, see Coming of Age (disambiguation). ... The Bayeux Tapestry (French: Tapisserie de Bayeux) is a 50 cm by 70 m (20 in by 230 ft) long embroidered cloth which depicts the events leading up to the 1066 Norman invasion of England as well as the events of the invasion itself. ... Harold Godwinson (Haraldur Guðinason), or Harold II (c. ... William I of England (c. ... (UTC):This page is about loyalty as faithfulness to a cause. ...

The increasingly impressive ceremonies surrounding adoubement figured largely in the Romance literature, both in French and in Middle English, particularly those which treated material from the Trojan War or the cycle that collected around the legendary personage of Alexander the Great.^[9] As a literary genre, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and verse narrative current in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. ... Middle English is the name given by historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the mid-to-late 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the... The fall of Troy, by Johann Georg Trautmann (1713–1769). ... For the film of the same name, see Alexander the Great (1956 film). ...

Promotion steps

The process of becoming a knight generally included through these stages:

• Page - A child started training at about the age of seven or eight, learning obedience, manners, and other skills.^[5]

• Squire - At 12 to 14 the young man would observe and help other knights (comparable to an apprenticeship). He would learn fighting techniques by handing them their arrows and watching how they fought. The apprentice would also go hunting with other knights to learn how to use weapons.^[5] This knight-to-be would go into recruit training to learn how to become a military fighter. At age 21 the adult male, if worthy, was bestowed the accolade of knighthood.^[5]

• Knight - A special kind of trained soldier, often cavalry, serving a lord (nobleman or royalty). Knights had particular status in feudal society.^[5]

A page is a young male servant. ... For other uses, see Squire (disambiguation). ... Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of skilled crafts practitioners, which is still popular in some countries. ... U.S. Army recruits learn about bayonet fighting skills in an infantry Basic Combat Training at Fort Benning, Georgia. ... This article is about a military rank. ... Not to be confused with Golgotha, which was called Calvary. ... Lordship redirects here. ... Nobility is a traditional hereditary status (see hereditary titles) that exists today in many countries (mainly present or former monarchies). ... Royalty may refer to either: the royal family of a country with a monarchy royalties the payment made to the owner of a copyright, patent, or trademark, for the use thereof This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Peasants plowing in front of a castle, French manuscript c. ...

Other meanings

Accolade was first used in 1623 and is French, from the Provençal acolada. This, in turn, came from the Latin ad ("to") + collum ("neck").^{[8] [10]} Provençal (Provençau) is one of several dialects of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France and other areas of France and Italy. ... For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ...

Accolade is akin to "dubbing" or "to dub" ^[1] since the tap on the shoulder with the sword is accepted to be the point at which the title is awarded.^[8][11]

Clergy receiving a knighthood are not dubbed. The use of a sword in this kind of a cememony is believed to be inappropriate.^[1] Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. ...

From about 1852, the meaning of "accolade" was extended to mean "praise" or "award" or "honor."^[8][10]

See also: Feudalism

Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste Feudalism, a term first used in the late modern period (17th century), in its most classic sense refers to a Medieval European political system comprised of a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the...

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Bloch, Marc: Feudal Society, tr. Manyon London:Rutledge, Keagn Paul (1965)
• Boulton, D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre. The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe, 1325-1520. 2d revised ed. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000.
• Robards, Brooks; The Medieval Knight at War, UK: Tiger Books, 1997, ISBN 1855019191

Encyclopædia Britannica, the eleventh edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

Notes