Knighting is a ritual dedicated to creating knights. The concept, therefore, might adequately describe very different sets of physical gestures and spoken words, dedicated to creating different kinds of knights – conceivably, one society’s knighting ritual might not be recognized as such by members of another society. When we as historians seek to decide if a form of knighting existed at a given time and in a given place, we need to keep an open mind. We also inevitably face all the questions connected with ritual on the one hand and with knighthood on the other (including, in the first case, whether participants’ understanding of a given act differed from that of observers, including the authors of our sources, and in the second, whether knighthood was understood as a kind of order, with its own rite of initiation and code of behaviour). Moreover, when we discuss knighting we need a way to select evidence systematically: in principle, all surviving sources that have something to reveal about ritual, about coming of age, and about social status are relevant. It is therefore advisable to proceed step by step. The following checklist is intended for comparing possible records of knighting, in order to judge if they do indeed, collectively, indicate that knighting was practised at the time and in the place on which those records shed light. The checklist consists of two groups of questions: one group on form, the other on function. It is intended to be practical rather than exhaustive:

1. Form (what was done). Can we identify a practice that seems elaborate, formal and recognizable enough to qualify, potentially, as a ‘ritual’? Focus on visible, audible and tactile features, especially:

• a) times, places

• b) gestures, words, objects deployed (especially, of course, deliveries of arms)

• c) participants (status, age, gender, lay or cleric)

• d) number of candidates (i.e. single individuals or groups)

2. Function (why was it done). Did the act create ‘knights’? If so, in what sense, and how consistently?

a) Were there different kinds of knightings, for different kinds of knights? Did the act involve a declaration of majority (here called ‘basic knighting’)? Was it understood as a rite of initiation into a kind of order (here called ‘developed knighting’)? Did it involve ennoblement?