“Thus purified and clothed, the candidate observed for four and twenty hours a strict fast.  When evening came, he entered church, and there passed the night in prayer, sometimes alone, sometimes with a priest and sponsors, who prayed with him.  Next day, his first act was confession; after confession the priest gave him the communion; after the communion he attended a mass of the Holy Spirit; and, generally, a sermon touching the duties of knights and of the new life he was about to enter on.  The sermon over, the candidate advanced to the altar with the knight’s sword hanging from his neck.  This the priest took off, blessed, and replaced upon his neck.  The candidate then went and knelt before the lord who was to arm him knight.  ‘To what purpose,’ the lord asked him, ’do you desire to enter the order?  If to be rich, to take your ease and be held in honor without doing honor to knighthood, you are unworthy of it, and would be, to the order of knighthood you received, what the simoniacal clerk is to the prelacy.’  On the young man’s reply, promising to acquit himself well of the duties of knight, the lord granted his request.

“Then drew near knights and sometimes ladies to reclothe the candidate in all his new array; and they put on him, 1, the spurs; 2, the hauberk or coat of mail; 3, the cuirass; 4, the armlets and gauntlets; 5, the sword.

[Illustration:  “The Accolade.”——­324]

“He was what was then called adubbed (that is, adopted, according to Du Cange).  The lord rose up, went to him and gave him the accolade or accolee, three blows with the flat of the sword on the shoulder or nape of the neck, and sometimes a slap with the palm of the hand on the cheek, saying, ’In the name of God, St. Michael and St. George, I make thee knight.’  And he sometimes added, ‘Be valiant, bold, and loyal.’

“The young man, having been thus armed knight, had his helmet brought to him; a horse was led up for him; he leaped on its back, generally without the help of the stirrups, and caracoled about, brandishing his lance and making his sword flash.  Finally he went out of church and caracoled about on the open, at the foot of the castle, in presence of the people eager to have their share in the spectacle.”

Such was what may be called the outward and material part in the admission of knights.  It shows a persistent anxiety to associate religion with all the phases of so personal an affair; the sacraments, the most august feature of Christianity, are mixed up with it; and many of the ceremonies are, as far as possible, assimilated to the administration of the sacraments.  Let us continue our examination; let us penetrate to the very heart of knighthood, its moral character, its ideas, the sentiments which it was the object to impress upon the knight.  Here again the influence of religion will be quite evident.