International Mobility in the Military Orders (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries): Travelling on Christ's Business

Abstract

A new series about religion and culture in the middle ages launches itself with these informative essays about the infrastructure of religious military orders between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The Templars, Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights possessed rights and interests in more than one state and these had to be defended and managed by brethren travelling by sea and road alongside better known travellers such as pilgrims, merchants, Jews or mendicant friars. This theme of international mobility by the Templars, Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights in particular is well served by these contributions by seventeen scholars from different academic generations as well as residents of nine different countries. Included are two essays about the order of St Lazarus and one about the order of Avis. The Templar historian, Alan Forey, provides a general introduction and is aided in the volume's conclusion by its editors, Jochen Burgtorf and Helen Nicholson. The book is well designed and produced. It is an antidote for those who might pigeon-hole the brethren of religious military orders as fighters in the fall of this citadel or the siege of that island! Unwittingly, indeed, this book exemplifies the spirit of C.S. Lewis's colleague who opined that ‘The typical knight of the Middle Ages was far more interested in pigs than in tournaments’.