"The Roots of Chivalry " Topic

"Chivalry has come to be very watered down in modern day times. For the most part we think of chivalry as the way a man behaves toward, and around, women. And while this does characterize chivalry it is actually a very small component of what chivalry was.

Chivalry was an all encompassing guide for living. This included combat, horsemanship, law, religion, management of people and lands, and well just about every aspect of a knight's life.

There has been a long-standing debate about chivalry and whether anybody actually followed any of it and I believe it was something that knights aspired to. Let me explain why I think so…"
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Amicalement
Armand

The author doesn't seem to understand the basic principles of feudalism, never mind knighthood (which was a state most of those soldiers often given the name never reached).

The Plague was influenced by the "enlightenment"? I never heard.

"Knighthood" was a very recent intrusion on "feudalism". About the time that mounted warriors were starting to be admitted as a lower order "noble class", it got co-opted into that nobility and separated itself from "men-at-arms", who remained ignoble. So, as Gildas has it, most soldiers seen as "knights" today were never knighted.

Yup Gilda has it, but 'homines ad arma' come from the nobility – in the widest sense of the word. Everybody from the younger sons of parish gentry making a career as soldiers (sometimes for want of any other options) right up the king …they 're all men-at-arms.
Almost all the men who had knightservice obligations were not knights, were never going to be knights;in fact they not infrequently went out of their way to avoid knighthood…every English king from Henry III onward (if not before) complained about it….but they still had to discharge their knightservice obligations
A very modest proportion sprang from the 'lower orders', but not that many and they mostly rose though soldiering careers.