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Knight
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A knight is a "gentleman soldier"[1] or member of the warrior class of the Middle Ages in Europe. In other Indo-European languages, cognates of cavalier or rider are more prevalent (viz French chevalier and German Ritter), suggesting a connection to the knight's legendary mode of transport.
The British legend of King Arthur was popularised throughout Europe in the Middle Ages by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae ("History of the Kings of Britain"), written in the 1130s. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur ("The Death of Arthur"), written in 1485, was important in defining the ideal of chivalry which is essential to the modern concept of the knight as an elite warrior sworn to uphold the values of faith, loyalty, courage and honour. During the Renaissance, the genre of chivalric romance became popular in literature, growing ever more idealistic and eventually giving rise to a new form of realism in literature popularised by Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. This novel explored the ideals of knighthood and their incongruity with the reality of Cervantes' world.
Some orders of knighthood, such as the Knights Templar have themselves become the stuff of legends, others have disappeared into obscurity. Today, a number of orders of knighthood continue to exist in several countries, such as the Order of the Garter, the Swedish Royal Order of the Seraphim, the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. Each of these orders carry their own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state to a selected person for some merit of achievement.
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