Chivalry

        -     --                                  Chivalry

          Chivalry was a “military institu­tion or order, the           members of which called Knights were pledged to the protection of the church and to the defence of the weak and the oppressed.”

Chi­valry has been very aptly regarded as the flower of feudalism. “Chivalry was, in the conception of the time, an order of merit. Its members were called Knights.”

The word Chivalry originally meant simply a body of mounted troops; it being a deriva­tive of the medieval French word—’cheval’ mean­ing ho.se, hence French Chevalier, Spanish Caballers, Italian Cavaliere and the English Cavalier. But gradually the word Chivalry came to mean an institution graced with such moral adornments as truth, honour and courtesy.

It “was an important medieval institution with political, religious and juridical aspects. It was a fellowship of the nobility without fixed form or precise organisation, but with rules of conduct and professional duties attached to membership in it.”