Category: Military Orders

Categories: Orders of Knighthood | Knights | Crusades | European Military History

Part of Project: European Aristocrats. It is acknowledged that not all members of the Military of Orders of Knights were Aristocrats but most of the remaining source material deals with nobility. Military Orders of Knighthood

This category deals with the military orders (Latin: Militaris ordinis) established as Catholic religious societies during the medieval Crusades for protection of Christians travelling in the Middle East, often on pilgrimage or church led colonization.

Five major chivalric orders were formed in the Kingdom of Jerusalem between the late 11th century and the early 12th century: the Knights Hospitaller (Order of Saint John) (circa 1099), the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre (circa 1099), the Knights Templar (circa 1118), the Knights of the Hospital of Saint Mary of Jerusalem (Teutonic Knights) (1190) and the Knights of Saint Lazarus (1123). Later, various Popes raised other Orders.

Most members, often referred to as knights, were laymen, not priests, but sometimes cooperated with the clergy, taking vows such as poverty, chastity, and obedience according to monastic religious vows.

Many were suppressed by the Pope before 1500 and a few establishments later disbanded. Some of the Orders, or members of them, evolved into Roman Catholic ceremonial, missionary or charitable organisations. Some grew into honorific chivalric orders with charitable aims in modern times, such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, both Papal orders of knighthood conferred still today.

Related: Category: Catholic Religious Orders

Source Material:

For a List of the Orders see wikipedia.

Original source material, depending on the Order, is available although often of variable quality. Please take care with source material and check the source. There is a great deal of myth surrounding some of these Orders, particularly the Knights Templar.

This category is managed by the Military and War Project in association with the Categorization Project. For assistance with this or related categories ask in G2G making sure to tag your question with both categorization and Military_and_War.

This page was last modified 20:34, 1 June 2021. This page has been accessed 585 times.