Such was the general state of chivalry in northern and southern Italy; but there were some circumstances common to every part of the peninsula. The nobility invested each other with festive and religious ceremonies, with the bath[235], the watching of arms, and the sacred and military shows, or with a simple stroke of a sword, and the exhortation, "Sii un valoroso cavaliere," two ancient knights buckling on his golden spurs. In the year 1294, Azzo, Marquis of Este, was knighted by Gerard, Lord of Camino, at a public solemnity held at Ferrara. Cane, Lord of Verona, in 1328, gave the honour of knighthood to thirty-eight young nobles, and presented them with golden belts, and beautiful war-horses.[236] In Italy there was the usual array of knights and squires, of cavalieri and scudieri; but I can find no mention of pages distinct from the squires, and attending their lords; except, indeed, they were the domicelli, or donzelli, who, however, are supposed by Muratori to have been the squires of noble rank. All the armour-bearers of the knights were not noble or of gentle birth, or we should not very often meet, in the Italian annalists of the middle ages, the expression "honourable squires." In the fourteenth century knights had four titles, agreeably to the various modes of their creation:--Cavalieri Bagnati, or Knights of the Bath, who were made with the grandest ceremonies, and supposed, from their immersion, to be freed from all vice and impurity; the Cavalieri di Corredo, or those who were invested with a deep-green dress, and a golden garland; the Cavalieri di Scudo, or those who were created either by people or nobility; and the Cavalieri d'Arme were those who were made either before or during battle.[237] Many orders of knighthood were known in Italy: some (but their history is not interesting) were peculiar to it; and others, such as the order of the knights of Saint John and of the Temple, had their preceptories and commanderies in that country. And, to enlarge upon a circumstance alluded to in another place, it is curious to notice the dexterity with which chivalry accommodated itself to the manners and usages of any particular society. The commercial cities in the north of Italy vied in power with, and were superior in wealth to, the feudal nobility. Chivalry was esteemed as a graceful decoration by every class of men, and by none with more ardour than by new families, whom opulence had raised into civic consideration. The strictness of the principles of knighthood opposed their investiture; but those principles, were made to give way; and commercial pride was satisfied with the concession of aristocratical haughtiness, that the _sons_ of men in trade might become brothers of the orders of chivalry. [Sidenote: Political use of knighthood.]