Chivalric order Chivalric orders are societies and fellowships of knight s founded in imitation of the military orders of the Crusades . After the crusades , the memory of these crusading military orders became idealised and romanticised . Modern historiography tends to take the fall of Acre in 1291 as the final end of the age of the crusades . In contemporary understanding , many further crusades against the Turks were planned and partly executed throughout the 14th century and well into the 15th century . The late medieval chivalric orders understood themselves as reflecting an ongoing military effort against Islam , even though such an effort , with the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Fall of Constantinople in the 1450s , was without realistic hope of success . During the 15th century , orders of chivalry became a mere courtly fashion that could be created " ad - hoc " , some of them purely honorific , consisting of nothing but the badge . These institutions in turn gave rise to the modern - day orders of merit . Distinction . Heraldist D ' Arcy Boulton ( 1987 ) classifies chivalric orders in the following manner : Based on Boulton , this article distinguishes : Medieval orders . Confraternal orders . Confraternal orders are orders of chivalry with the presidency attached to a nobleman : Fraternal orders . Fraternal orders are orders of chivalry that were formed off a vow & for a certain enterprise : Votive orders . Votive orders are orders of chivalry , temporarily formed on the basis of a vow . These were courtly chivalric games rather than actual pledges as in the case of the fraternal orders . Three are known from their statutes : Cliental pseudo - orders . Cliental pseudo - orders are not orders of chivalry and were princes ' s retinues fashionably termed orders . They are without statutes or restricted memberships : Honorific orders . Honorific orders were honorific insignia consisting of nothing but the badge : Together with the monarchical chivalric orders ( see above ) these honorific orders are the prime ancestors of the modern - day orders of knighthood ( see below ) which are orders of merit in character . The distinction between these orders and decorations is somewhat vague , except that these honorific orders still implied a membership in a group . Decorations have no such limitations , and are awarded purely to recognize the merit or accomplishments of the recipient . Both orders and decorations often come in multiple classes . Modern orders . Most orders created since the late 17th century were no longer societies and fellowships of knight s who followed a common mission , but were established by monarchs or governments with the specific purpose of bestowing honours on deserving individuals . In most European monarchies , these new orders retained some outward forms from the medieval orders of chivalry ( such as rituals and structure ) but were in essence orders of merit , mainly distinguished from their republican counterparts by the fact that members were entitled to a title of nobility . While some orders required noble birth ( such as the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary , established in 1764 ) , others would confer a title upon appointment ( such as the Military Order of Max Joseph , established in 1806 ) while in yet other orders only the top classes were considered knights ( such as in the Order of St Michael and St George , established in 1818 ) . Orders of merit which still confer privileges of knighthood are sometimes referred to as orders of knighthood . As a consequence of being not an order of chivalry but orders of merit or decorations , some republican honours have thus avoided the traditional structure found in medieval orders of chivalry and created new ones instead , e . g . the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , the Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria , or the Legion of Merit of the United States . Imitation chivalric orders . Some organisations claim to be chivalric orders but are actually private membership organisations that have not been created by a state or a reigning monarch . The answer to the question of whether an order is legitimate or not varies from nation to nation , François Velde wrote an " order of knighthood is legitimate if it is defined as legal , recognized and acknowledged as such by a sovereign authority . Within its borders , a sovereign state does as it pleases . Most , if not all , modern states have honorific orders and decorations of some kind , and those are sometimes called orders of knighthood . " Exactly what makes one order legitimate and another self - styled or false is a matter of debate with some arguing that any monarch ( reigning or not ) or even the descendants of such can create an order while others assert that only a government with actual internationally recognized authority has such power ( regardless of whether that government is republican or monarchial in nature ) .