An Analysis On The Subsistence Of The Lower Knights In The Middle Ages

In the middle ages, the political and economic structure of aristocratic society in WesternEurope adopts the system of feudal fief, like the form of pyramid. At the bottom, it is made upof a large number of poor knights who have a small amount of fief. At the same time, thearistocracy uses the system that the eldest son inherits all the property, instead of distribution,in order to maintain the feudal structure. As a result, there are a number of knights who arewithout the right of inheritance about property and land. From the angle of choosing the waysof survival, there is no difference between the knights who have a small mount of fief and thelandless knights, so together, they constitute the lower knights. The knights of this particularclass enjoy the honors brought by its status, but they have to face the financial embarrassment,which motivates them to struggle to survive and get wealth.Due to the restriction of the economic, religious, as well as the self-education and someother objective factors, the lower knights can not adopt other ways of survival from thesubjective view, so they have to choose a variety of ways relating to their own combat abilityto pursue wealth. The ways of plunder in the war, tournament, attaching to Lords are theirpreference. But in the reality, they also take the ways of depending on ladies by marriage toget rich, robbing civilians which does not meet the chivalry, or joining the orders andmercenaries.William Marshall, who is born in a small noble family without the right of inheritance, isa typical representative of this class. During his extraordinary life experiences of struggle, healmost adopts all of the ways of survival mentioned above, and finally he achieves a raresuccess, becoming the outstanding examples of lower knights. Besides, through the ways ofsurvival, we can also have a view of the other social sides about Western Europe.The ways of survival, with the character of force adopted by the lower knights, has ahuge impact to medieval society in Western Europe in a objective way. At the back of thesocial phenomenon of formation of Holy War ideology of Christian and production ofchevalier literature, we can see the motivation of survival of these knights. In addition, thishuge impact is not only restricted in the middle ages but also has a profound impact on latergenerations of Europe. The lower knights who have fought hard to survive in the middle ages have left influence on the modern Western European’s entrepreneurial spirit of sport, andwarlike characteristics and so on.