Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

390 Orders of Knighthood, Secular
dynasty of the founder. These latter usually gave the president a leading, if
not dominant, role in their activities. Monarchical societies were invariably
founded by a king or an effectively sovereign prince and were intended
above all to promote and reward loyalty to him. They were therefore instruments
of the state, rather than mere private societies of nobles or soldiers
like all of the others. The first known society of this type (the Castilian
Order of the Band) was founded only in 1330, but most of the more
important societies founded after that date were of the same type, so it is
useful to sort all military and noble societies into monarchical and nonmonarchical
categories. In practice, the great majority of monarchical orders
were also confraternal in nature, but at least two were not, and the
two non-confraternal monarchical societies (the Castilian Order of the
Band and the Hungarian Company of the Dragon) constituted the balance
of the category of non-confraternal societies, after the temporary fraternal
and votal types.
All of the remaining societies were therefore both confraternal and perpetual,
and many of them were also monarchical. Societies that were not
monarchical fell into two general categories: those founded by a prince but
not annexed to his throne and those not founded by a prince. The former societies
may be termed princely noble confraternities. Though not actually
governed by their prince, they were always closely associated with his court
or dynasty, and may be placed in a broader category of courtly or curial bodies.
This category also includes all of the monarchical societies and most of
the noble groups as well. Thus, the dichotomy curial/noncurial cuts across
most of the other categories established.
The curial societies labeled princely noble confraternities were either
sportive or political in their goals and activities. The former were dedicated
largely to organizing tournaments, and they differed from the noncurial societies
founded for the same ends only in enjoying princely patronage. The
political curial societies (including the political princely confraternities and
all of the monarchical societies), by contrast, were the only lay bodies that
even approached the religious orders of knighthood in the extent of their
endowment and organization and the high level of their goals. The generic
designation “order” is restricted to them.
The only confraternal noble societies that did not fit into any of these
classes were what may be called the normal noble confraternities, which
were not in any way associated with a royal or princely court. Like their
princely, curial analogues, these also fell into sportive and political-military
subtypes, which were designed to fulfill many of the same purposes, but
served the interests of regional nobilities rather than those of kings and
princes. The middle of the fourteenth century to the second half of the fifteenth
seems to have been their heyday. In Germany, the sportive subtypes