Knighting, Homage, and the Meaning of Ritual: The Kings of England and Their Neighbors in the Thirteenth Century

Traditionally, historians of thirteenth-century English politics have focused on legal, fiscal, and administrative reform; the development of institutions and mechanisms to counterbalance the power of the monarch; and the conventions surrounding issues of aristocratic property and inheritance. By contrast, questions of symbolism of ritual, sacrality or ceremonial, were thought to have at best a decorative, never a formative, function. This essay uses acts of knighting and homage involving the kings of England and their neighbors in Britain and mainland Europe to outline the continuing importance of ritual and symbolism in England. This, in turn, makes it possible to deal with a series of more general questions about the importance of such acts in a wider European context, dealing specifically with ritual ambiguity, the role of the audience in defining the meaning of ritual, and the relationship between political symbolism and other means of political communication.