What Are "Requests" in Laravel?

I'm working through a Laravel tutorial and it references "Requests." I followed along and I created a "CreatePage.php" file in a brand new "Requests" folder and it looks like this:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Requests;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\FormRequest;

class CreatePage extends FormRequest
{
    /**
     * Determine if the user is authorized to make this request.
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }

    /**
     * Get the validation rules that apply to the request.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'name' => 'required', 
			'body' => 'required'
        ];
    }
}

Does this need to be cited in a Controller or a Model? I ask because the "rules" seem to imply that if my user doesn't include a value for either the name of the body columns, then they're going to get an error. That error doesn't show up.

What are "requests" and how do they need to be referenced so the rules actually apply?