Knightly order

A chivalric order, order of chivalry, order of knighthood or equestrian order is an order, confraternity or society of knights typically founded during or in inspiration of the original Catholic military orders of the Crusades (circa 1099-1291), paired with medieval concepts of ideals of chivalry.

During the 15th century, orders of chivalry, or dynastic orders of knighthood, began to be created in a more courtly fashion that could be created ad hoc. These orders would often retain the notion of being a society or association of individuals, however, some of them were ultimately purely honorific, consisting of nothing but the badge. In fact, the badges themselves often came to be known informally as orders. These institutions in turn gave rise to the modern-day orders of merit of states.

In Dell'origine dei Cavalieri (1566), the Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino (1521–1586) distinguished knights and their respective societies in three main categories:

Over time, the above division became no longer sufficient, and heraldic science distinguished orders into: hereditary, military, religious and fees.

The Secretariat of the State of the Holy See - medieval pioneer - distinguishes orders in the following manner:

In a more generous distribution proposed in The Knights in the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Late Medieval Europe (1987), the Canadian heraldist D'Arcy Boulton classifies chivalric orders as follows:

Based on Boulton, this article distinguishes:

Another occurrent chronological categorisation is into:

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