Teutonic Knights Read Free

the course of time their talents and knowledge of the land won recognition, and rather than being undervalued their contributions to the defence of the Holy Land were somewhat exaggerated – this was good for recruiting new and more wealthy volunteers. By the 1130s the order was on its way to fame and prosperity. Recruits flooded in, usually bringing ‘dowries’ in the form of land and money that were necessary to support the order’s dedicated warriors in the Holy Land.
    The Knights of Saint John, better known as the Hospitallers, were the second military order. Their foundation was earlier than the Templars’, however, dating to about 1080, and papal recognition came sooner, too, in about 1113, but they assumed a military function only in the 1130s. As their name implies, their original purpose was to provide medical services to pilgrims and crusaders.
    There was considerable scepticism among traditional churchmen about permitting clerics to shed blood; the knights were merely friars, not priests, but they had taken vows and were therefore clerics. One of the oldest traditions of Christendom was non-resistance to evil – it took very little reflection for any Christian to remember that Christ had reproved Peter for raising his sword to defend his Lord from arrest and crucifixion. On the other hand, bishops and abbots had led armies since time immemorial, and numerous popes had blessed armies fighting enemies of the faith. St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153), one of the dominant personalities of his time, provided the ultimate rationale for the military orders in a treatise entitled De Laude Novae Militiae (‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’). He proclaimed, first, the importance of the holy places for reflection and inspiration. He wrote that such places were essential to the salvation of those pilgrims who travelled long distances and endured great hardships in order to pray at sites significant to the life of Christ and His saints. St Bernard attributed special significance to the Holy Sepulchre, Christ’s tomb, a place where all pilgrims longed to pray. Then he made the obvious connection to the importance of crusaders maintaining access to those sites, a task that Turkish rulers were already making more difficult. Of course, dynastic politics in the kingdom of Jerusalem were not helping the situation; the patriarch of Jerusalem lacked the means to support a conventional force of knights or mercenaries; and not even St Bernard had been able to persuade secular rulers to work together during the Second Crusade (1147 – 8). The military orders were the obvious best means of carrying out St Bernard’s perception of the crusaders’ mission – to make the land and sea routes safe for pilgrims.
    The military orders met practical, religious and psychological needs, and were perfectly suited to providing garrisons for the castles in the Holy Land during those long, boring and dangerous times between crusading expeditions. Eric Christensen, whose excellent book The Northern Crusades cannot be praised sufficiently, summarises this in a chapter entitled ‘The Armed Monks: Ideology and Efficiency’. 2 Rulers learned that the military orders were willing to serve in places that secular knights would not, or could not. The military orders also responded to deeply felt needs of the human psyche – they reconciled the apparent contradictions between spiritual and earthly warfare. Christians did not have to remain passive when confronted by great evils; nor did they have to wait for a shift in public opinion or the presence of a great leader to raise an armed force. The military orders made the crusade an on-going operation, one that never ceased or rested.
    The armament of the knights of the military orders always remained essentially that current in Western and Central Europe, reflecting minor changes generation by generation. In general each warrior wore mail armour, a helmet and greaves, carried a spear and