Book Description

Founded to support Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land and most famous for their support for crusading, the Military Religious Orders' activities and interests stretched far beyond the frontiers of Christendom. Representing some of the most recent advances in research, in this volume eleven scholars from Europe and North America explore important and hitherto under-researched aspects of the Orders' history, scrutinising their relations with the papacy, their organisational structure, their devotional practices, their fortresses and their presence in the localities of Western Europe. Particular attention is given to the Templars' trial of 1307-12 and the question of how the surviving Orders reorganised themselves after the loss of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291. The majority of the papers consider the leading Military Orders, the Hospitallers and Templars, but there are also studies of the Orders of Mountjoy and of St Lazarus, showing how they adapted their activities to local requirements. These studies reflect the vitality of current scholarship on the Military Religious Orders.