A knight-villein (''Cavaleiro-vilão''H. V. Livermore:
A History of Portugal
', Cambridge University Press, p.148. in Portuguese, ''caballero villano'' in Spanish) was a free plebeian horsemen who owned land, weapons and a horse, despite not being part of the

nobility Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy (class), aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below Royal family, royalty. Nobility has often been an Estates of the realm, estate of the realm with many e ...

, being prominent in medieval

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, Castile and

Leon Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fro ...

. Knights-villein provided military service directly to the king, and in exchange were entitled to the same set of privileges as minor nobles for doing so: among others, they did not pay scutage, and their testimony was considered proof in courts. Commoners usually fought on foot, but if their property indicated a certain level of affluence they were obligated to own a horse and considered knights-villein, the highest class of free commoners, just below the nobility. The town charter of

Penela Penela () is a municipality located in Coimbra District, in Portugal. It contains the town of Penela with about 3,300 inhabitants. The town's main tourist attraction is the Penela Castle. The population of the municipality in 2011 was 5,983, in an ...

reads: "all those that dwell here and have two yoke of oxen and ten sheep and two cows and a bed of cloth, he that has more, let him get also a horse". In medieval Portugal, two-thirds of knights-villein were obligated to partake for a set number of weeks in a ''fossado'' (raid) on

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

territory, being entitled to a share of captured loot, but fined 15 ''soldos'' if they did not respond to the call to arms in case of foreign invasion. They often organized raids on Muslim lands of their own initiative, and settled in or around the frontier towns in southern or eastern Portugal, giving them a military character. Between the capture of

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of . The fourth-largest urban area in Portugal after Lisbon, Porto Metropolitan Area, Porto, and Bra ...

in 1064 and the capture of Lisbon in 1147, the conquest of land from al-Andalus to Portugal was mostly undertaken by minor nobles and knights-villein from the towns or rural communities.José Augusto de Sotto Mayor Pizarro:
The Participation of the Nobility in the Reconquest and in the Military Orders
', University of Porto, at brown.edu.

References

{{reflist Medieval society Middle Ages Knights Medieval history of Portugal Reconquista Medieval history of Spain

See also

References