"In this book, Jonathan Riley-Smith provides an approachable and
expert introduction to the two most famous and most active military
orders, the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller, and their
activities in the Levant. It is a first-rate study, energetically
and engagingly written by the world's most accomplished historian
of the crusades." --Thomas Madden, St. Louis University
"The image of the military orders is mostly dominated by their
military, political, or economic role while their spirituality and
their religious character are often neglected. This book, from a
great authority on crusading and military orders, offers an
inspiring new perspective. Its chapters, concise and well-founded
studies concentrating on the inner life of Templars and
Hospitallers in the Holy Land, will thus contribute to a
considerably better understanding of their history." --Juergen
Sarnowsky, Universitaet Hamburg
"Jonathan Riley-Smith, Grand Master of Hospitaller studies since
the 1960s, offers the first systematic comparison of the two
earliest, most famous, and most researched Military Orders--the
Temple and the Hospital. Contrasting the Templars' exclusive
commitment to warfare with the Hospitaller dedication to the care
of the sick and poor as well as to warfare, Riley-Smith
persuasively argues that this disparity influenced decisively not
only the internal stratification and the governance of the two
Orders, but also their chances of survival. The book, which will
have a major impact on future studies, amounts also to an act of
love for the Hospital." --Benjamin Z. Kedar, The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem
"There is no historian better equipped to define the nature of
the two great orders of the Hospital and the Temple than Jonathan
Riley-Smith. In this concise analysis he brings to bear his great
depth of experience not only to show the similarities and
differences between the two orders, but also to place them firmly
in their contemporary context." --Malcolm Barber, University of
Reading, UK
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.
General
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