Crusading Knight Orders [templars, Hospitallers, Teutons, Holy Sepulchre]

CRUSADING KNIGHT ORDERS

INTRODUCTION

A military order is a Christian order of knighthood that is founded for crusading, i.e. propagating and/or defending the faith (originally Catholic, or Orthodox, after the reformation sometimes Protestant), either in the Holy Land or against Islam (Reconquista) or pagans (mainly Baltic region) in Europe, but may become 'secularized' later.

History

Christian military orders appeared following the First Crusade. The foundation of the Templars in 1118 provided the first in a series of tightly organized military forces which protected the Christian colonies in the Middle East, as well as fighting non-Christians in Spain and Eastern Europe.

The principle feature of the military order is the combination of military and religious ways of life. Some of them like the Knights of St John and the Knights of St Thomas also cared for the sick and poor. However they were not purely male institutions, as nuns could attach themselves as convents of the orders. One significant feature of the military orders is that clerical brothers could be, and indeed often were, subordinate to non-ordained brethren.

Joseph von Hammer in 1818 compared the Christian military orders, in particular the Templars, with certain Islamic models such as the shiite sect of Assassins. In 1820 Jose Antonio Conde has suggested they were modelled on the ribat, a fortified religious institution which brought together a religious way of life with fighting the enemies of Islam. However popular such views may have become, others have criticised this view suggesting there were no such ribats around Palestine until after the military orders had been founded. Yet the innovation of fighting monks was something new to Christianity.

The role and function of the military orders has sometimes been obscured by the concentration on their military exploits in Syria, Palestine, Prussia, and Livonia. In fact they had extensive holdings and staff throughout Western Europe. The majority were laymen. They provided a conduit for cultural and technical innovation, for example the introduction of fulling into England by the Knights of St John, or the banking facilities of the Templars.

List of military orders

(The starting dates given are for militarisation)

1120 Knights Templar - the first purely military order

1136 Knights of St John - (Knights Hospitaller, or later Knights of Rhodes and Knights of Malta) a military/hospitaller order originally founded in 1099

1142 Knights of St Lazarus - a hospitaller/military order

1158 Order of Calatrava

1170 Order of Santiago

1173 Order of Montjoie - Castilian, absorbed by Order of Calatrava 1221

1176 Order of Aviz - Portuguese

1193 Teutonic Order

1201 Order of San Jorge de Alfama - Order of St. George of Alfama was amalgamated with the Aragonese Order of Montesa

1202 Livonian Brothers of the Sword - by 1237 it had been absorbed by the Teutonic Order

1216 Order of Dobrzyń - order absorbed by the Teutonic Order in 1228

1227 Knights of St Thomas of Acre - a hospitaller/military order of English origin

1261 Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary

1275 Order of Santa Maria de Espana - a Spanish seafaring military order

1317 Order of Montesa - first members comes from Order of Calatrava ; Knights Templar's assets in Kingdom of AragÐ"Ñ-n.

1323 Order of Christ - assets of Knights Templar ; first Grand master from Order of Aviz

1342 Order of the Holy Sepulchre - a military confraternity, rather than an order

1408 Order of the Dragon (Ordo Draconis)

1459 Order of Our Lady of Bethlehem

1464 Knights of St. George - Austria

1561 Order of St. Stephen - a Tuscan seafaring military order intended to augment the Knights of St John

1578 Order of Sagred Spirit -France.

Other use

It is possible for a non-crusading order to be founded explicitely as a military order. This is the case of the Orden Militar de la Constancia (Spanish 'the Military Order of Loyalty'), founded by the authorities in the Spanish protectorate zone of Morocco on 18th August 1946. Awarded to military officers and men, Moroccan and Spanish, in a single class. Obsolete 1956.

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), popularly known as the Knights Templar, was one of the most famous of the Christian military orders. It existed for about two centuries in the Middle Ages, created in the aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096 to ensure the safety of the large numbers of European pilgrims who flowed towards Jerusalem after its conquest.

The Templars were an unusual order in that they were both monks and soldiers, making them in effect some of the earliest "warrior monks" in the Western world. Members of the Order played a key part in many battles of the Crusades, and the Order's infrastructure innovated many financial techniques that could be considered the foundation of modern banking. The Order grew in membership and power throughout Europe, until it was charged with heresy and other crimes by the French Inquisition under the influence of the French King Philip IV (Philip the Fair) and was forcibly disbanded in the early 1300s.

Organization

The Seal of the Knights Ð'-- the two riders have been interpreted as a sign of poverty or the duality of monk/soldier.The Templars were organized as a monastic order, following a rule created for them by their patron, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a member of the Cistercian Order. Each country had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region, and all of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the Order's