🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings from Arval!  Tim Pickles wrote:

> I must go back to my original point that whilst the concept of 'chivalry'
> most certainly existed there was no such thing as 'The Order of
> Chivalry'.

If you use that phrase in the limited sense of a formalized organization
with officers and a Rule, then you are correct that there was never a
universal order of chivalry.  But it is simply incorrect to say that "there
was no such thing as 'The Order of Chivalry'.  I refer you to Chretien de
Troyes, Honore Bonet, Ramon Lull, etc., all of whom wrote about a universal
order of chivalry, its rules and ethics.  

> The first secular Order of Chivalry in the modern sence was the Order of
> the Golden Fleece created by the Duke of Burgundy and imitated in the
> Garter...

Your chronology is wrong.  The Garter pre-dates the Golden Fleece; by about
a century, if I recall aright.  Other orders -- with officers, rules,
regalia, and all the other trappings of formal orders -- also pre-date the
Golden Fleece: The Spanish Order of the Band, the Hungarian Order of St.
George, the French Order of the Star, etc.  The best scholarship on the
subject can be found in "Knights of the Crown" by J. Darcy Boulton.  His
introduction is an excellent summary of the origins and roots of chivalric
orders of all kinds.

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Arval d'Espas Nord                                         mittle@panix.com