This volume is the most recent compilation of
papers presented at the annual conference on the
military orders held at St. John’s Gate in Clerkenwell,
London. The
volume is a refreshing look at the work being done on
the military orders as the articles cover a broad
range of topics and geographical areas ranging from historiographical hotspots in Western Europe, the Mediterranean
and the Holy Land to less explored regions such as
Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, and Croatia. Also notable is the number
of articles that make extensive use of archaeology
and textual analysis. On
the other hand, although the range of topics is broad,
most of the articles focus on the Templars or Hospitallers, especially the latter, with limited attention
devoted to the smaller orders or even the Teutonic
Knights. Second,
in spite of the title, only four of the articles
explicitly deal with the orders’
maritime operations; the bulk of the volume is devoted
to activities on land.
The book is divided into
two sections. The first, dealing with “General Issues,” includes
eight essays, while the second, “Specific Issues,” has the
remaining nineteen. The editor notes in her brief introduction that
dividing the articles was difficult, hence these two broad classifications. But
as she does not give any criteria as to why essays fall into one category
of the other, the layout at times seems rather arbitrary. For example,
why place Piers Mitchell’s essay, “A Comparison of Health
at a Village and Castle in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Twelfth
Century” in the “General” section while reserving Theresa
Vann’s article on
“The Fifteenth-Century Maritime Operations of the Knights of Rhodes” for
the section on “Specific Issues”?
The articles themselves range in quality from good
to excellent, as there is nothing here that can be deemed unworthy
of inclusion. In what follows, I will highlight only the most salient
points of each piece as anything other than that would be beyond the scope
of this review. The “General Issues” section can be
broken down into two groups of four articles each. The first group
has relatively long articles that strongly engage their subject matter
beginning with Alan Forey’s “Milites ad terminum in
the Military Orders during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” (chapter
1) which highlights the service rendered to the orders by temporary members. Darius
von Güttner Sporzyński follows
with a wonderful summary of some of the “Recent Issues in Polish
Historiography of the First Crusade” (chapter 2). Jürgen Sarnowsky’s “The
Military Orders and their Navies” (chapter 6) is an exceedingly
able introduction to the maritime activities of the Templars, Hospitallers,
and Teutonic Knights. And Section I concludes with Luís Adão da Fonseca’s
analysis of the role of the “Portuguese Military Orders and Oceanic
Navigations,”
(chapter 8) in which he argues that the history of
Portuguese expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth is inextricably linked
to the history of its military orders, notably Santiago and the Order
of Christ. The remaining four articles in Section I all make
contributions, oftentimes on important and captivating topics,
but they are often too brief to be effective. A good example is
the above mentioned article by Piers Mitchell (chapter 3) which offers
a fascinating look at peasant diets in the Levant using archaeological
remains, but which ends all too quickly (6 pages that include two images
and a chart). Karl Borchardt’s “Competition
between the Military-Religious Orders in Central Europe, c. 1140
– c. 1270” (chapter 4) is likewise limited by its brevity,
but in this case there may be little else to be done due to a poverty
of sources. In
“The Military Orders and the Chronicle of Morea,”
(chapter 5) Kristian Molin does
a close textual analysis on the various versions of the Chronicle to
argue that the military orders were almost invisible in the Peloponnese
over the course of the thirteenth century, only to increase their presence
in the fourteenth. Finally, Christer Carlsson gives
us a tantalizing look at the evolution of the orders in Scandinavia, particularly
in the later Middle Ages, and his research hints
at the wealth of untapped sources that await further study concerning
the history of the orders in the northern latitudes.
For Part II, “Specific Issues,” I have
tried to organize the essays by subject matter in order to highlight some
of the dominant themes explored at the conference. This is my own
classification and as with any classification, most of the articles straddle
multiple categories. There are five articles that explore the relationship between
the orders and secular powers or surrounding communities (chapters 13,
15, 22, 24, and 25). Ignacio de la Torre’s analysis of the
financial services rendered by the Templars to the English and French
crowns is a fine introduction to a host of complex issues and a good starting
point for anyone interested in the Templars’ banking activities. Moving
south, Carlos Barquero Goñi explores the
relationship between the Hospitallers and the
Catholic Kings of Spain. Nicholas Morton, in “The Teutonic
Knights during the Ibelin-Lombard Conflict,” challenges
the prevailing view that the Teutonic Knights consistently supported Frederick
II in his civil war with barons of the Levant. Instead, he argues
that the order took a more pragmatic approach, careful not offend those
upon whom they depended. The last two essays in this category, H.J.A
Sire’s “The Priory of Vrana: The
Order of Saint John in Croatia” and Emmanuel Buttigieg’s “Encounters
with the ‘Other’: Hospitallers and
Maltese before the Great Siege of 1565,” contextualize how the Hospitallers negotiated with and adapted to local situations.
Another five articles examine to varying degrees
the internal workings of the military orders (chapters 10, 16, 17, 18,
and 21). Myra Bom’s piece,
“The Hospital of St. John, the Bedroom of Caritas,” focuses
on an anonymous text describing the Hospital in Jerusalem and linking
it to the “intellectual understanding of charity.” (p. 86) Zsolt Hunyadi’s,
“Hospitaller Estate Management in the Medieval Kingdom of
Hungary, (Thirteenth to Fourteenth Century),” once again takes us
to an underexplored region in the historiography of the military orders. “Aspects
of Non-Noble Family Involvement in the Order of the Temple” by Jochen Schenk
and “Regulations Concerning the Reception of Hospitaller Milites in
the First Half of the Fifteenth Century” by Pierre Bonneaud both
assess the place of nobility in the membership of the two biggest orders. Finally,
we have Anne Gilmour-Bryson’s “Templar Trial Testimony: Voices
from 1307 to 1311,” a captivating essay which surveys the dominant
themes in the Templar depositions as the order neared its suppression
in 1312.
There are four articles that revolve
around specific figures associated with the different orders (chapters
9, 12, 14 and 27). The first of these, by Luis García-Guijarro Ramos,
attempts a new interpretation of Hugh de Payns letter
to his brethren helping to define their new role as purveyors of sacred
violence. Malcolm Barber continues with an article which offers
a more balanced interpretation of the reputation of Gerard de Ridefort,
Master of the Temple at the time of Hattin and one of those who has borne the heaviest burden
for the defeat of the Crusader forces in the eyes of modern historians. The
third article in this section, David Bryson’s “Murder in the Preceptory:
The Strange Case of Peter of Valbéon,
Preceptor of the Hospitaller House of St. Naixent (Dordogne),
1277-1304,” is framed as a murder mystery in the context of the
Anglo-French struggle over Gascony in the early fourteenth century. Finally,
Victor Mallia-Milanes, in “A Man with
a Mission: A Venetian Hospitaller on Eighteenth
Century Malta,” examines the life of Massimiliano Buzzaccarini Gonzaga
and the relationship between Malta and Venice.
Architecture and archaeology are the basis of three
other articles (chapters 11, 19 and 26). Denys Pringle’s study
of the Jerusalem Hospital fills in some lacunae in our understanding of
the building including the place of a conventual church
and “other conventual buildings, including
the dormitory, refectory and chapter house.” (p.
109) “ Funerary Monuments of Hospitaller Rhodes:
An Overview” by Anna Maria Kasdagli examines
the resting places of Hospitallers, notably the masters, on the island of Rhodes. Its
findings’, however, are limited and the author herself admits that
more research is needed before we are able to
extract all the information that the tombs have to offer. Finally,
Christopher Gerrard and Robert Dauber offer
a fascinating look at graffiti of ships found the Hospitaller preceptor
at Ambel in Zaragoza, Spain. The article
asks two important questions: what can these graffiti add to our naval
archaeology and who was responsible for drawing them in the first place?
The two articles that deal specifically with the
military activities of the Hospitallers in the
Mediterranean make up our last topical category. Michael Heslop’s “The
Search for the Defensive System of the Knights in Southern Rhodes” is
among the most engaging of all the contributions and he supplements his
analysis with excellent maps. Finally, Theresa M. Vann’s “The
Fifteenth Century Maritime Operations of the Knights of Rhodes” looks
at the naval policy of the Knights of Saint John, concluding that the
order based its strategy to defend Rhodes on a combination of fortification
and small fleets.