The Military Orders Volume IV

On Land and By Sea

Judi Upton-Ward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754662877
• eBook ISBN: 9781317023975
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

In the last two decades there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the Military Orders. With a history stretching from the early twelfth century to the present day, they were among the richest and most powerful orders of the church in medieval Europe. They founded their own states in Prussia and on the Mediterranean islands of Rhodes and Malta. They are of concern to historians of the Church, art and architecture, government, agriculture, estate management, banking, medicine and warfare, and of the expansion of Europe overseas. The conferences on their history, which have been organized in London every four years, have attracted leading scholars from all over the world. The present volume records the proceedings of the Fourth Conference in 2005 and is essential reading for those interested in the progress of research on these extraordinary institutions.

The twenty-seven papers published here represent a selection of those delivered at the conference. Architecture, archaeology and the part which the orders played in Europe are well represented, along with work on northern and eastern Europe. Four papers deal specifically with military or naval matters, while another four deal with the spiritual life of the brothers and sisters. Family relationships represent a growing field of interest. The majority of the papers focus on the Hospitallers, but the volume includes studies on the Templars and the Teutonic Order, as well as the Portuguese military orders.

PART I
General Issues

Chapter 1

Milites ad terminum in the Military Orders during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Alan Forey

All military orders had outsiders in their service. Many were paid employees, but there were also some who gave assistance without remuneration. The functions which the latter undertook might include military duties. This service could be given on a permanent basis: although it is usually difficult to discover the tasks undertaken by donati, a Hospitaller statute in 1292 allowing them to be recruited freely in spain because it was a frontier region implies that at least some were engaged in military undertakings.¹ Others served for a shorter period. It is clear from papal letters and chronicles that most orders received assistance in this form. In 1220, for example, Honorius iii offered indulgences to those who assisted for a time in guarding frontier castles belonging to Calatrava, and six years later the same pope gave permission to the swordbrethren to receive the aid of crusaders who offered to defend the Order’s strongholds in Livonia.² In 1238, Gregory iX granted an indulgence to mounted and foot troops who died after entering Muslim lands ‘for the love of Christ and Christianity’ with the Order of Alcántara.³ Among the crusaders reported by Peter of Dusburg to have assisted the Teutonic Order at an early stage in Prussia was Burchard of Querfurt, who stayed for a period at Kulm, while Otto of Brunswick similarly spent time at Balga in 1239–40.⁴ And, given the Teutonic Order’s role in Prussia, all crusaders going there could be said in a sense to have been assisting that Order. Entering into the temporary service of a military order was sufficiently common for it to appear in thirteenth-century literary sources, such as La Chevalerie d’Ogier de Danemarche and La fille du Comte de Pontieu: in the latter, the count did penance by serving with the Templars for a year.⁵ Those giving temporary unpaid military assistance could include troops of various kinds, including turcoples,⁶ but the present paper will focus mainly on those who gave knightly service. The purpose is not to discuss the origins and antecedents of the service provided by these milites, but merely to consider its characteristics, whether all knights served on the same terms, and to what extent some kinds of knightly service were being given throughout the period up to the end of the thirteenth century.

The early rule of the Temple, which provides the earliest detailed evidence of those serving for a term,⁷ may be used to provide a benchmark. Milites ad terminum in the Temple were expected to serve for an agreed period; they were to share in conventual life by attending the normal canonical hours; they were subject to restrictions, similar to those imposed upon brothers, with regard to clothing, hairstyles and entering towns; and, although they were to come equipped with their own horses and arms, other provision – including replacement horses – was to be made for them by the Templars. The value of their horses was to be recorded in writing. The rule does not state whether a written contract of service was drawn up,⁸ yet clearly these knights were closely integrated into the life and work of the Order, and were maintained by it.

It is not easy to identify a similar type of knightly service in the regulations of other orders, or to affirm that all those serving with the Temple adhered to the terms detailed in the early Templar rule. The Swordbrethren adopted the Templar rule, presumably including the clauses about milites ad terminum⁹, but the regulations of other orders are not very explicit. The rule of Santiago includes a clause about the remembrance to be made on the death of ‘any of those who stay for a time with the brothers’,¹⁰ and that of the Teutonic Order similarly refers to the obsequies of ‘any military person (militarium personarum aliqua), who out of charity associates himself with the brothers’.¹¹ it may be argued that the word ‘militarium’ carries the connotation of knight – in vernacular versions of the rule, the words ‘Ridder’ and ‘Ritter’ are used – and the clause in the rule of the Teutonic Order was clearly based on that in the Templar rule which states that on the death of a miles ad terminum a pauper should be maintained for seven days and thirty paternosters should be recited for his soul.¹² Yet, although the statement in the rule of Santiago shows similarities to Templar decrees, it does not refer specifically to those engaged in fighting. Nor is there any other reference to men serving for a term in either the rule of Santiago or the Order’s thirteenth-century statutes.¹³ Although the Teutonic Order originally adopted Templar regulations about knights, its surviving rule does not include any of the other Templar pronouncements about milites ad terminum; in 1244, innocent IV gave permission for changes to be made in the rule of the Teutonic Order, and it was possibly then that these clauses from the Templar rule were deleted.¹⁴ Statutes issued by Conrad of Feuchtwangen in 1292 admittedly decree that those serving out of charity should not go out of the house without permission and should never visit taverns; and the punishments for various offences were set down.¹⁵ Yet while these regulations bear similarities to those in the Templar rule, they applied to turcoples and knechte, who were squires or servants, and do not mention milites. The only Hospitaller rulings on those serving out of charity similarly refer only to servientes, who could be occupied in a variety of tasks.¹⁶ Silence in regulations is not necessarily significant – Hospitaller statutes, for example, provide no details about the terms under which servientes without pay were engaged – but the general lack of comment, and in particular the wording of the regulations of the Teutonic Order, raise questions about the significance of milites ad terminum in the Templar sense.

Sources referring to knights and nobles who did in practice assist orders for a period provide few details about conditions of service. Little more than the fact that they served is normally known, and sometimes even that is not certain. That Walter of Hereford assisted the Templars in about 1160 is suggested merely by the fact that a document issued in his name in Jerusalem was witnessed by several brothers of that Order.¹⁷ Some, such as García Ortiz, at the Templar house at Corbins in Catalonia in 1148,¹⁸ or Burchard of Querfurt and Otto of Brunswick later in Prussia, were said to have spent a year with an order,¹⁹ but this length of service does not necessarily signify that a contract for a period of service had been agreed. A year was a common period for crusading,²⁰ and it was sometimes necessary to serve for a year to obtain an indulgence. In 1158, Adrian IV decreed that those who assisted the Templars in Spain instead of going to the Holy Land could obtain remission of sins if they served for a year at their own expense, and a year’s service was similarly demanded by Innocent IV of those providing assistance to the Order of Santiago in 1250.²¹

References to obedience to an order’s officials are also vague. In ?1134, Raymond Berenguer IV of Barcelona undertook to serve at the Templar castle of Grañena ‘under obedience to the master’, but the exact terms are not explained; and the promise was in any case not fulfilled.²² Orderic Vitalis reports that in 1120 Fulk of Anjou, after a period spent with the Templars, returned to the West ‘with their permission’, but does not elaborate.²³ In the Baltic, crusading troops were certainly at times expected to serve under the command of military orders: in 1260, Alexander IV nominated the provincial master of the Teutonic Order as the captain and ‘principal leader’ of crusaders who were to confront the Mongols; and Henry of Livonia related that earlier in the century Volquin, the Master of the Swordbrethren, led and commanded the army on all campaigns in Livonia.²⁴ Yet, in practice, leading nobles with sizeable followings were no doubt reluctant to assume a subordinate role; and even if they accepted the leadership of others in the field, it does not follow that they also subjected themselves to restrictions off it.

The surviving sources are, of course, limited, but it is clear that the status of temporary volunteers varied considerably. When alluding to those enrolling out of charity or for pay, the rule of the Teutonic Order left arrangements to the official in charge, ‘since it is difficult to define particular agreements’.²⁵ Adrian IV’s bull about crusaders assisting the Templars in Spain distinguishes between those who served at their own expense and those whose costs were met by the Order, while in 1250 innocent IV referred both to those who maintained themselves while assisting the Order of Santiago and to those who were financed by others.²⁶ Enrolment as a miles ad terminum in the Templar sense was probably more likely to attract individual crusaders than those who came in large contingents; and while knights, such as Becket’s murderers, who attached themselves to a military order as a form of penance, may have led the life of Templar milites ad terminum,²⁷ no doubt some who gave military assistance to these foundations were more concerned to obtain an indulgence than to share in conventual life. Certainl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• List of Contributors
• Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Part I General Issues
• 1 Milites ad terminum in the Military Orders during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
• 2 Recent Issues in Polish Historiography of the Crusades
• 3 A Comparison of Health at a Village and Castle in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Twelfth Century*
• 4 Competition between the Military–Religious Orders in Central Europe, c. 1140–c. 1270
• 5 The Military Orders and the Chronicle of Morea
• 6 The Military Orders and Their Navies
• 7 A New Chronology for the Scandinavian Branches of the Military Orders
• 8 The Portuguese Military Orders and the Oceanic Navigations: From Piracy to Empire (Fifteenth to Early sixteenth Centuries)
• Part II Specific Issues
• 9 Ecclesiastical Reform and the Origins of the Military Orders: New Perspectives on Hugh of payns’ Letter
• 10 The Hospital of St John, the Bedroom of Caritas*
• 11 The Layout of the Jerusalem Hospital in the Twelfth Century: Further Thoughts and Suggestions
• 12 The Reputation of Gerard of Ridefort
• 13 The London and Paris Temples: A Comparative Analysis of their Financial Services for the Kings during the Thirteenth Century
• 14 Murder in the Preceptory? The Strange Case of Peter of Valbéon, Preceptor of the Hospitaller House of St Naixent (Dordogne), 1277–1304
• 15 The Teutonic Knights during the Ibelin—Lombard Conflict*
• 16 Hospitaller Estate Management in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary (Thirteenth to Fourteenth Centuries)
• 17 Aspects of Non-Noble Family Involvement in the Order of the Temple
• 18 Templar Trial Testimony: Voices from 1307 to 1311
• 19 Funerary Monuments of Hospitaller Rhodes: An Overview
• 20 The Search for the Defensive System of the Knights in Southern Rhodes
• 21 Regulations Concerning the Reception of Hospitaller Milites in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century
• 22 The Hospitallers and the Catholic Kings of Spain, 1474–1516
• 23 The Fifteenth-Century Maritime Operations of the Knights of Rhodes
• 24 The Priory of Vrana: The Order of St John in Croatia
• 25 Encounters with the ‘Other’: Hospitallers and Maltese before the Great Siege of 1565
• 26 Building Biographies: Graffiti, Architecture and People at the Hospitaller Preceptory at Ambel (Zaragoza), Spain
• 27 A Man with a Mission: A Venetian Hospitaller on Eighteenth-Century Malta
• Select Bibliography
• Index