Dominus Jhesus novum genus militie constituit et elegit: “the Lord Jesus has set up and chosen a new sort of knighthood”. The military orders’ relations with women from the twelfth to the sixteenth century ‒ a survey

Abstract

The normative texts of the Military Religious Orders generally sought to limit or even prevent all interaction between the professed Brothers and women, and the primitive rule of the Order of the Temple indicated that women should no longer be admitted to the Order. The reason for this restriction was to prevent the Brothers being distracted from their spiritual vocation through the physical presence of women. In practice, however, the evidence of charters, estate inventories, and narrative accounts reveal that all the Military Religious Orders admitted women in some capacity – as sorores, donatae, consorores and corrodians – and interacted with women on a daily basis. Fully professed sisters of the Military Orders followed a lifestyle like that of nuns, focused on prayer rather than action. However, lay women appear in the primary sources as patrons, tenants, and employees of the Military Orders and even occasionally took up arms to support their military activities. The Military Orders also patronised female saints, both saints in heaven (such as the Blessed Virgin Mary) and holy women on Earth (such as Dorothea of Montau). This article sets out to survey the various ways in which the Military Orders interacted with women and involved them in their work.