The Military Organisation of the Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land

2012 ◽  
pp. 144-158
Author(s):  
Nicholas Morton
Keyword(s):  
Holy Land ◽  
The Military ◽  
Teutonic Knights

The Emergence of the Military Order in the Twelfth Century

1985 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.J. Forey
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
First Crusade ◽  
Military Orders ◽  
Order Of Santiago ◽  
The Military

At the time when encyclopaedic works on the military orders began to be produced in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was widely held that the military order was an institution which had existed for most of the Christian era. Many of the orders catalogued in these volumes were reported to have been founded well before the period of the crusades, although there were often conflicting opinions about the precise antiquity of a particular foundation. Various dates were, for example, given for the establishment of the military order which the knights of the Holy Sepulchre were thought to constitute: although some held that it had been founded shortly after the first crusade, its creation was attributed by others to St James the Less in the first century A.D., while its origins were also placed in the time of Constantine and in that of Charlemagne. The foundation of the order of Santiago, which in fact occurred in 1170, was often traced back to the ninth century; yet while some linked it with the supposed discovery of the body of St James during the reign of Alfonso 11, others associated it with the legendary victory of Clavijo, which was placed in the time of Ramiro i. The accumulation of myth and tradition recorded in these encyclopaedias has exercised a prolonged influence on historians of the military orders: disproof has not always been sufficient to silence a persistent tradition. It is, nevertheless, clear that the Christian military order, in the sense of an institution whose members combined a military with a religious way of life, in fact originated during the earlier part of the twelfth century in the Holy Land.

The Military Orders in the Crusading Proposals of the Late-Thirteenth and Early-Fourteenth Centuries

Traditio ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 317-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Forey
Keyword(s):  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Secular Clergy ◽  
Military Orders ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Establishment ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Temple

The most outstanding event in the history of the military orders at the end of the thirteenth and start of the fourteenth centuries was, of course, the dissolution of the Temple. This was not, however, an isolated happening. Although the accusations which led to the abolition of that order had been publicly voiced only shortly before the Templars‘ arrest, the proceedings against the Temple took place at a time when criticism of the military orders in general was mounting, and this growth of hostile opinion no doubt facilitated Philip IV's attack on the Templars. Ever since their foundation the military orders had been subjected to some criticism, but much early censure had been of a kind which might be directed against any religious establishment, especially by members of the secular clergy who found that their authority and resources were being impaired by the privileges which the military orders and other religious institutions enjoyed: it was not primarily concerned with the orders’ contribution to the struggle against the infidel. But as the fortunes of the crusading states declined, the military orders became increasingly criticised for their inadequacies as defenders of Christendom. Defeat in the Holy Land had to be explained by faults on the Christian side rather than in terms of Muslim superiority, and the military orders were an obvious target for attack. The authors of the numerous crusading proposals which were put forward in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries were inevitably influenced by this growing criticism, and many crusading plans therefore included suggestions concerning the military orders. Those who drew up proposals did not themselves provide a reasoned or detailed account of the orders' faults or attempt to judge to what extent these failings contributed to Christian defeats, but the criticisms on which they based their plans were clearly not altogether groundless: although some strictures were ill-informed or excessive, the policies which the orders themselves pursued certainly provided a starting-point for the growth of hostile opinion. Yet some writers did not seek merely to remedy existing defects in the orders; they sought also to discuss what the role of the military order should be in the struggle against the infidel, and thus viewed the subject in a rather wider context.

On the Beginnings of the Communal Movement in the Holy Land: The Commune of Tyre

Traditio ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 443-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Eberhard Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Final Conclusion ◽  
General Context ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Advisory Groups ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Representative System ◽  
The Military

In a revolutionary paper read in the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1965, the foremost expert on the history of the crusaders' states, Joshua Prawer, has completely altered our outlook on, and considerably enlarged our knowledge of, the medieval communes established in the Holy Land during the time of the crusaders. This is not the place to discuss the merits of Prawer's paper in all details, especially as I have done this briefly elsewhere. Let it suffice here to say that by placing the history of the communes in the general context of the institutional history of the Latin Orient rather than by viewing them as isolated phenomena, as had been done by the late and regretted John L. La Monte, Prawer demonstrated ably and beyond any doubt that in the constitutional history of the Latin Kingdom and of the crusaders' states in general there were definite traces of Estates, elements of a development towards a Ständestaat This transition from a strong monarchy to a representative system of Estates, which is so familiar in European history, is hard to detect in the history of the Latin Orient because the reconquest of the Holy Land by the Muslims cut short this line of constitutional development. Thus, although the weakness of the monarchy in the thirteenth century was clearly seen, a true representative system never came into being in the East. But Prawer showed that the crusaders' states were well on their way towards such a goal and that from about A.D. 1240 the masters of the knightly orders and the administrative heads of the exempted Italian merchant colonies, as well as representatives of the urban brotherhoods (fraries), took part in the proceedings of the Haute Cour, the highest body of legislation and jurisdiction, although they did not formally vote. Under the procedure followed in the Haute Cour, the nobility debated separately and afterwards notified the representatives of the orders, the merchants, and the urban Frankish population of their decisions. But it is obvious that the latter by their mere presence must have influenced the proceedings because it was the orders, the merchants, and the bourgeois who controlled the military establishment and the economy. The fraternities, like any reasonably organized group, became part and parcel of the institutional framework of the state. In all likelihood Prawer's final conclusion is correct: had the crusaders' states survived for another hundred years, these representatives would have been transformed from advisory groups into well established and separate Estates with full power to vote in the Haute Cour.

scholarly journals Why the Crusades Failed? Narrating the Episode After the Fall of Jerusalem

ICR Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-550
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yaseen Gada
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
The Third ◽  
Latin West ◽  
The Military ◽  
East West

The fall of Jerusalem to the Muslims in 1187 CE1 stood as a severe psychological jolt on the Christian West as they lost after an 88-year-long hegemony over Jerusalem. The subsequent preaching for Crusades invoked the Holy Land but each time the outcome turned to disappointment. The Fourth Crusade resulted in the sack of Constantinople, an act that Christians bemoaned as the crusaders became killers of their fellow Christians. The increasing schism between Byzantium and the Latin-West was coupled with the unity and expansion of the Muslims in the East to ultimately end crusader rule in the Levant with the fall of Acre in 1291. Notwithstanding, the crusading ideology persists today and is often echoed in Muslim as well as non-Muslim voices. The present paper re-tells the story with new insights based on contemporary scholarship on the Crusades following the fall of Jerusalem to Muslim forces. It focuses mainly on the military history and narrates about the ‘how’, ‘what’, and ‘why’ from the Third through to the Ninth Crusade. It also attempts to show that the Crusades were more than just confrontations since considerable cooperation and cultural exchange developed between the protagonists from the reign of Salah al-Din, particularly after the Third Crusade. The paper envisions that the current East-West dissent may be alleviated if scholars and policy makers on both sides attempt to find concrete examples of positive cooperation instead of highlighting instances of conflict from their historical perspectives.  

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