Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance

by P. L. Jacob

Fig. 152.—Surrender of the Town of Montefrio, near Granada, in 1486. The alcids and Moorish chiefs, after the siege, delivering the keys of the town to Ferdinand the Catholic and Queen Isabella.—Bas-relief on the stalls of the choir of the high altar of the cathedral, carved in wood in the Sixteenth Century.

Other orders of knighthood, having more or less of a religious character, were founded in the Middle Ages, or during the Renaissance period: the principal were, in Spain, the Order of the Knights of Calatrava; in Germany, the Order of the Teuton Knights; the Order of the Golden Fleece in the Low Countries, in Spain, and in Austria; that of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in Savoy; that of St. Stephen in Tuscany; and in France, those of St. Michael and of the Holy Ghost, which were merely honorary orders, although the first Order of the Holy Ghost, founded in 1352 by Louis d’Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, had for its object the re-establishment of an essentially military knighthood, as a means for bringing about a new crusade.

The Knights of Calatrava, on whom their founder, Don Raymond, Abbot of Citeaux, imposed the regulations of his own monastery, distinguished themselves by many brilliant feats of arms, particularly against the Moors of Spain and Africa (Fig. 152); and the princes in whose cause they had fought in these wars—termed, like the Crusades in the East, holy—granted them large possessions and considerable privileges. They were bound by a triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, and, like the Templars, wore a red cross embroidered on a white mantle. From the days of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, the sovereigns of Spain have always been the grand masters of this order, which acquired and long retained a considerable amount of importance, even when it had ceased to signify anything but an indication of nobility. The order of Alcantara, which had a similar origin to that of Calatrava, ran a like career and was in like manner doomed to decay. Spain, too, was the only country that possessed a military order for ladies. After the heroic defence of Placentia against the English by the women of that city in 1390, John I., the sovereign of Castile, created in their honour the order of the Ladies of the Sash, which was united at a later period to the Order of the Belt, founded in the fourteenth century to do battle against the Moors.

The Teutonic Knights, whose order had been founded in 1128, at Jerusalem, by the German Crusaders, obeyed the rules of St. Augustin. They were subject beside to special statutes somewhat similar to those of the Knights of St. John and of the Temple, whose privileges they also enjoyed. Their first grand master, Henri Walpot, established his residence near St. Jean d’Acre.

This order was divided, like that of St. John, into knights, chaplains, and serving brethren. Its members wore a white mantle with a rather broad black cross, picked out with silver, on the left sleeve. To gain admission into the order it was necessary for the candidate to be over fifteen years of age, and to be of a strong, robust build, in order to resist the fatigues of war. Its knights, bound by a vow of chastity, were expected to avoid all intercourse with women; they were not even allowed to give their own mothers a filial kiss when they saluted them. They possessed no individual property; they always left their cell doors open, so that everybody might see what they were doing. Their arms were free from both gold and silver ornaments, and for a long period they spent their lives in great humility. Their most celebrated grand master, Hermann de Salza, received in 1210, from Pope Honorius III. and the Emperor Frederick II., whom he had reconciled, large possessions and high honours.

The Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, and in 1283 became masters of the whole territory between the Vistula and the Niemen. In 1309 they abandoned Venice, where, twenty years earlier, their grand master had fixed his ordinary residence, and selected Marienburg as their head-quarters. At that date the order had reached the culminating point of its prosperity, and its sway in Germany had the most fortunate results for Prussia. But luxury soon began to undermine the religious faith of the knights; and internal struggles, caused by the elections of their grand masters, introduced fresh elements of decay into their organization.

Fig. 153.—Sancha de Roxas, who died in 1437, wearing the scarf which was the insignia of the military order bearing his name (Fifteenth Century).—From the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.

Dragged into endless conflicts with Lithuania and Poland, the order lost its banners, its treasure, and its principal defenders in the disastrous battle of Grümwald, in the year 1410, and would have been utterly ruined but for Henry von Plauen. After the death of this illustrious grand master, the knights, to whom the treaty of Thorn had restored their territorial possessions, lost them one after the other in the few years that elapsed between 1422 and 1436. For thirteen years Casimir IV., King of Poland, summoned into Prussia by the inhabitants, who had rebelled against the despotic sway of the knights, laid waste the country that he had undertaken to protect. The order, driven out of Marienburg and Konitz, only retained possession of Eastern Prussia, and held even that under Polish rule; its grand master, whose head-quarters were now at Königsberg, was, in fact, a prince and a councillor of Poland. As Prussia was a fief of the Church, the grand master of the Teutonic Order was bound by vow to preserve it to the Church and to his own order. Albert of Brandenburg, its last grand master, was bound by this oath, and by the triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, which he had taken on entering the order. To rid himself of the fetters of these oaths he joined the Lutheran Church, and divided the possessions of his order with his uncle, the aged Sigismund, King of Poland, who for these considerations bestowed on him the title of hereditary Duke of Prussia. This was the origin of the royal family of Prussia. After this easy acquisition of title and territory, Albert of Brandenburg married the daughter of the King of Denmark. As a matter of course, the Order of the Teutonic Knights became extinct.