Ordene de chevalerie
Li rois trestout ce escouta,
Et en aprés li demanda
S'il i failloit plus nule chose.
"Sire, οΉ, mes fere ne l'ose.
— Que ce est donc? — Ce est colee.
— Por qoi ne le m'avez donee
Et dite la senefiance?
— Sire, fet il, c'est remembrance
De celui qui l'a adoubé
A chevalier et ordené,
Mes mie ne la vous donron,
Quar je sui ci en vo prison,
Si ne doi fere vilonie
Por chose c'on me face et die;
Si ne vous vueil por ce ferir.
Bien vous devez atant souffrir.
The King listened to all this and then asked him if anything was lacking. "Sire, yes, but I dare not do it. — What is it, then? — It is the accolade. — Why have you not given it to me and told me its meaning? — Sire, he said, it is a reminder to the knight of him who dubbed him and ordained him, but I will not give it you, for I am here in your prison, and I should commit no wickedness, whatever is said or done to me; for this reason, I do not wish to strike you. You must just accept this.
The Ordene de chevalerie (or Ordre de chevalerie) is an anonymous Old French poem written around 1220. The story of the poem is a fiction based on historical persons and events in and around the Kingdom of Jerusalem before the Third Crusade. The title translates to Order of Knighthood.
It is one of the earliest and most influential surviving didactic texts devoted to chivalry and it achieved a wide reception both in France and elsewhere. It is an explicitly Christian work that seeks "to assign to knighthood its proper place in a Christian society".