Visitations in Military Orders during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Abstract

Some military orders in Spain became affiliated directly or indirectly to the Cistercians and were therefore to be visited by the head of the mother house annually, although visits were usually to the headquarters of an order and it is not known whether there was provision for the regular visitation of individual encomiendas before 1300. Precise regulations for annual visitations within the order of Santiago were drawn up within a few years of its foundation. Detailed rulings of this kind are lacking in the rules and customs of the orders based in the Holy Land, but journeys made by masters and other leading officials with wide authority, such as masters deca mer, provided an opportunity for visits of provinces and houses, and in the Temple and the Teutonic Order the post of visitor emerged in the thirteenth century. The most precise information about visitations in the orders based in the Holy Land relates to annual visits by Hospitaller priors to houses under their control. Yet even in orders which had ...