Military Orders

Military Orders, religious associations whose members united in themselves the double characters of monk and knight. These orders arose about the period of the Crusades, the first to be formed being the Hospitallers (q.v.). Their primary duties were to tend sick pilgrims at Jerusalem, afterwards to protect them also on their way to the holy city. The order of the Templars (q.v.) soon followed; their purpose was to protect pilgrims, a duty to which was afterwards added that of guarding the Temple at Jerusalem. The orders of Alcantara, of Calatrava, and of Santiago of the Sword, in Spain, had for their immediate object the defence of their country and creed against the Moors. These orders, as well as that of St Bennet of Aviz in Portugal, which was instituted with a similar view, differed from the Templars and the Knights of St John (Hospitallers) in that their members were permitted to marry. The same privilege was enjoyed in the Savoyard order of Knights of St Maurice, and the Bavarian order of St Hubert. On the contrary, the Teutonic Knights (q.v.), who had their origin in the Crusades, but afterwards made the south-east and east shores of the Baltic the theatre of their activity, were bound by an absolute vow of chastity. These religious associations have mostly been abolished or have fallen into disuse, though some still subsist as orders of knighthood. See Bertouch, Gesch. der geistl. Genossenschaften (1888), and Lawrence-Archer, The Orders of Chivalry (1888).