Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

394 Orders of Knighthood, Secular
duke of Chablais and Aosta in 1364, founded the Order of the Collar, under
the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By the end of the year 1381,
when the Order of the Ship (dedicated to the Holy Trinity) was founded by
King Carlo III in Naples to replace the defunct Company of the Knot, five
more princes had founded orders that were probably monarchical: Duke
Louis II of Bourbon, the Order of the Golden Shield (1367); Duke Louis I
of Anjou, the Order of the True Cross (1365/75); Enguerrand VII of
Coucy, count of Soissons and titular duke of Austria, the Order of the
Crown (1379); Duke Albrecht III “with the Tress” of Austria, the Order of
the Tress around 1380; and (probably) Duke Wilhelm I of Austria, the Order
of the Salamander around 1380.
Of the fourteen orders founded by 1381, however, the great majority
were maintained for less than two decades, and only two or three of them
were still maintained in their original condition by 1410: the Garter and
the Collar and possibly the Salamander (which may have lasted to 1463).
Furthermore, between 1381 and 1430, the foundation of fully realized neo-
Arthurian orders ceased completely, and only two orders that were certainly
monarchical are known to have been founded: the Order of the Jar
of the Salutation or of the Stole and Jar in 1403 by Ferran, duke of Peñafiel
and future king of Aragon and Sicily (from 1412), and the Company of the
Dragon in 1408 by Sigismund or Zsigmond von Luxemburg, king of Hungary
and future king of Germany (1416) and Bohemia (1419) and Roman
emperor (1453). The former remained a vestigial society down to 1458,
when it was given new statutes by King Alfons “the Magnanimous” and
lasted to 1516. The latter was at first no more than a military-political
league, but was converted into a monarchical order for Sigismund’s several
kingdoms under new statutes of 1433 and seems to have survived in that
condition to 1490.
A second wave of foundations of true monarchical orders of knighthood
seems to have been set off by the creation and lavish endowment of the
Order of the Golden Fleece by Philippe “the Good,” duke of Burgundy, in
1430. Its statutes were based primarily on those of the Garter, but borrowed
freely from those of the two other monarchical and knightly orders still surviving
at the time of its foundation: those of the Collar and of the Stole and
Jar. The foundation of a truly grand order by a prince of ducal rank whose
lands lay mainly within the Holy Roman Empire seems to have encouraged
other imperial princes to create monarchical orders of their own.
What appears to have been a monarchical order had been founded in
virtually every imperial principality of the rank of duchy or electorate by
1468. Nevertheless, these orders bore only a general resemblance to the
Order of the Golden Fleece. None of them was limited to knights, and only
four of them (the orders of the Eagle, the Towel, St. George and St.