Templars and Hospitallers as Professed Religious in the Holy Land (Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies) (The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies) - Softcover

Riley-Smith, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268040583 ISBN 13: 9780268040581

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009

Synopsis

The Templars and the Hospitallers were the two earliest and most famous of the major Military Orders of the Roman Catholic Church from the early twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century. In this book, Jonathan Riley-Smith attends to the Templars' and Hospitallers' primary role as religious orders, not as military phenomena or economic powerhouses. In a prologue, four chapters, and an epilogue, Riley-Smith discusses the origins of the orders in dedication to the protection of pilgrims to the Holy Land (Templars) and to the care of the poor and the sick among them (Hospitallers). He examines their traditions and early history, the organization of their communities, modes of governance, and, in the fourth chapter, important differences between the orders and a brief account of their respective fates in the wake of the Crusades. The Templars were eventually persecuted by the Church and the order suppressed. Riley-Smith speculates that the violent end of the order was caused both by jealousy of its wealth and by internal problems of governance that left it vulnerable to accusations of conducting blasphemous rites. The Hospitallers survived in one form or another to the present day; vestiges of the original order inform the contemporary Knights of Malta.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Riley-Smith is Dixie Professor Emeritus of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of many influential books and essays, including The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268040583
• ISBN 13: 9780268040581
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 146