The only core element of the ritual that was virtually universal in the twelfth century was dubbing. Derived from the French word ‘adouber’ (to arm), this meant literally to invest someone with a weapon, in most cases by belting (or girding) a sword to his body. For men like William, it seems to have been the receipt of these two objects, the knightly belt and sword, which signified their transformation into knights. The dubbing might be followed by one final act – the ‘collée’ – a form of ritualised blow to the body that could vary from a light, almost genteel, tap on the shoulder, to a forceful cuff to the head. Its origins and meaning remain obscure, one theory suggesting that the strike was supposed to remind a warrior of his duties, another arguing that this symbolised the last blow a knight would receive without retaliation. It would be a century before the ‘collée’ was typically delivered to the shoulder with the flat of a sword blade – the classic image of ‘dubbing’, now immortalised in modern imagination and still enacted by the English monarchy when conferring a knighthood.
Thomas Asbridge in The Greatest Knight