Military order

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Flag of the Knights Templar
Flag of the Knights Templar

A military order is a Christian order of knighthood that is founded for crusading, i.e. propagating and/or defending the faith (originally Catholic, after the reformation sometimes Protestant), either in the Holy Land or against Islam (Reconquista) or pagans (mainly Baltic region) in Europe, but many became secularized later.

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[edit] History

Catholic military orders appeared following the First Crusade. The foundation of the Templars in 1118 provided the first in a series of tightly organized military forces which protected the Christian colonies in the Outremer, as well as fighting non-Christians in the Iberian Peninsula and Eastern Europe.

The principal feature of the military order is the combination of military and religious ways of life. Some of them, like the Knights of St John and the Knights of St Thomas, also cared for the sick and poor. However, they were not purely male institutions, as nuns could attach themselves as convents of the orders. One significant feature of the military orders is that clerical brothers could be, and indeed often were, subordinate to non-ordained brethren.

  • Joseph von Hammer in 1818 compared the Catholic military orders, in particular the Templars, with certain Islamic models such as the Shiite sect of Assassins. In 1820 José Antonio Conde has suggested they were modelled on the ribat, a fortified religious institution which brought together a religious way of life with fighting the enemies of Islam. However popular such views may have become, others have criticised this view suggesting there were no such ribats around Palestine until after the military orders had been founded. Yet the innovation of fighting monks was something new to Catholicism.
  • The role and function of the military orders has sometimes been obscured by the concentration on their military exploits in Syria, Palestine, Prussia, and Livonia. In fact they had extensive holdings and staff throughout Western Europe. The majority were laymen. They provided a conduit for cultural and technical innovation, for example the introduction of fulling into England by the Knights of St John, or the banking facilities of the Templars.

Because of the necessity to have a standing army, the military orders were created, being adopted as the fourth monastic vow.

[edit] List of military orders

[edit] Orders founded in Outremer

[edit] Orders founded within Europe

[edit] Iberia

[edit] Prussia

[edit] Occitania

[edit] Italy

[edit] Later orders (14th–16th centuries)

[edit] Other use

It is possible for a non-crusading order to be founded explicitly as a military order. This is the case of the Orden Militar de la Constancia ('the Military Order of Loyalty'), founded by the authorities in the Spanish protectorate zone of Morocco on 18 August 1946. Awarded to military officers and men, Moroccan and Spanish, in a single class. Obsolete 1956. It was in the military orders, where the perfect fusion of the religious and the military spirit was realized, that chivalry reached its apogee. It was during this apogee when the secular brotherhood was created.

The Dutch Military Order of William and the Austrian Military Order of Maria-Theresia are not military orders although they use that name. They are orders of merit, not societies of knights or warrior-monks like the original military orders.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_order"
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