'A few years ago,' writes Franco Sacchetti, towards the end of the fourteenth century, 'everybody saw how all the workpeople down to the bakers, how all the wool-carders, usurers money-changers and blackguards of all description, became knights.Why should an official need knighthood when he goes to preside over some little provincial town? What has this title to do with any ordinary bread-winning pursuit? How art thou sunken, unhappy dignity! Of all the long list of knightly duties, what single one do these knights of ours discharge? Iwished to speak of these things that the reader might see that knighthood is dead.And as we have gone so far as to confer the honour upon dead men, why not upon figures of wood and stone, and why not upon an ox?' The stories which Sacchetti tells by way of illustration speak plainly enough.There we read how Bernabo Visconti knighted the victor in a drunken brawl, and then did the same derisively to the vanquished;how Ger- man knights with their decorated helmets and devices were ridiculed--and more of the same kind.At a later period Poggio makes merry over the many knights of his day without a horse and without military training.Those who wished to assert the privilege of the order, and ride out with lance and colors, found in Florence that they might have to face the government as well as the jokers.
On considering the matter more closely, we shall find that this belated chivalry, independent of all nobility of birth, though partly the fruit of an insane passion for titles, had nevertheless another and a better side.Tournaments had not yet ceased to be practiced, and no one could take part in them who was not a knight.But the combat in the lists, and especially the difficult and perilous tilting with the lance, offered a favourable opportunity for the display of strength, skill, and courage, which no one, whatever might be his origin, would willingly neglect in an age which laid such stress on personal merit.