A detailed study of the Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land, covering both their military and administrative affairs. The Teutonic Order was founded in 1190 to provide medical care for crusaders in the kingdom of Jerusalem. In time, it assumed a military role and played an important part in the defence of the Christian territories in the EasternMediterranean and in the Baltic regions of Prussia and Livonia; in the Levant, it fought against the neighbouring Islamic powers, whilst managing their turbulent relations with their patrons in the papacy and the German Empire. Asthe Order grew, it colonised territories in Prussia and Livonia, forcing it to address how it distributed its resources between its geographically-spread communities. Similarly, the brethren also needed to develop an organisational framework that could support the conduct of war on frontiers that were divided by hundreds of miles. This book - the first comprehensive analysis of the Order in the Holy Land - explores the formative years of this powerful international institution and places its deeds in the Levant within the context of the wider Christian, pagan and Islamic world. It examines the challenges that shaped its identity and the masters who planned its policies. Dr NICHOLAS MORTON is Lecturer in History at Nottingham Trent University.

The story of the Templars is one of the most desolate and obscure in the history of the medieval West: created as a military-religious order to defend the Holy Land. After becoming one of the most powerful and influential institutions of all Christianity, the Temple was put under procedure at the beginning of the 14th Century and then suspended in 1312, because of the serious charges weighed against its members. The last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, chose to die as a testimony of his innocence, contrasting the guilt of brothers who had been imputed to them, heresy, adherence to an anti-Christian beliefs, corruption of morals, and idolatry. The Templars have been linked with the shroud of Turin, the Holy Grail, and the Ark of the Covenant. None of these can be substantiated. What can be substantiated is that, though arrested, tortured, and burned at the stake, Pope Clement V absolved them from heresy in 1308, as discovered in a secret Vatican parchment in 2001, and released to the public in 2007.

A detailed study of the Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land, covering both their military and administrative affairs.

In this book, Jonathan Riley-Smith attends to the Templars' and Hospitallers' primary role as religious orders, not as military phenomena or economic powerhouses.

This book is an essential exploration into the history of a legendary group of Crusaders, which are prominently featured in Dan Brown's recent best seller, The Da Vinci Code. The Knights Templar rose from humble beginnings to become the most powerful military religious order of the Middle Ages. Formed to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, they participated in the Crusades and rapidly gained wealth, lands, and influence. Seemingly untouchable for nearly two centuries, they fell from grace spectacularly after the loss of the Holy Land. In the ensuing centuries the Templars have exerted a unique influence over European history; orthodox historians see them as nothing more than soldier-monks whose arrogance was their ultimate undoing, while others see them as occultists of the first order. With clarity and ease, Martin navigates between the orthodox and the speculative, the historical and the myth, to bring alive the story of the Templars. Like those other legends of the Middle Ages -- the characters of the Arthurian tales -- The Knights Templar holds captive the imagination of all those intrigued by conspiracy and how history and myth intertwine to become the stuff of legend.