1st Edition

Military Orders and Crusades

By Alan Forey Copyright 1994
    328 Pages
    by Routledge

    The first eight studies in this volume seek to address a series of questions concerning the emergence and the role of the military orders in the 12th and 13th centuries: the reasons for the appearance of the institution, the recruitment and instruction of novices, and, though the military orders were predominantly male organisations, the role of women within them. Dr Forey then turns to the orders’ role in the Crusades, both against the infidel and in ’Holy Wars’ against Christians, and their activities in ransoming captives. The last studies focus on the development of the Order of St John, and on two minor military orders; one of these, that on St Thomas of Acre, draws attention to the relations between England and the Holy Land, the subject also of the final paper, on the crusading plans of Henry III.

    Contents: The emergence of the military order in the twelfth century; Recruitment to the military orders (twelfth to mid-fourteenth centuries); Novitiate and instruction in the military orders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; Women and the military orders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; The military orders and the Spanish reconquest in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; The military orders and the ransoming of captives from Islam(twelfth to early fourteenth centuries); The military orders and holy war against Christians in the thirteenth century; the military orders in the crusading proposals of the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries; The militarisation of the hospital of St John; Constitutional conflict and change in the hospital of St John during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; The order of Mountjoy; The military order of St Thomas of Acre; The crusading vows of the English King Henry III; Index.

    Biography

    Alan Forey

    'The author is a meticulous scholar' The Catholic Historical Review