The Monks of War Read online

  The Monks of

  War

  The Military Religious

  Orders

  Desmond Seward

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © Desmond Seward 1972

  First published 1972 by Penguin

  This edition published in 2014 by:

  Thistle Publishing

  36 Great Smith Street

  London

  SW1P 3BU

  www.thistlepublishing.co.uk

  For Peter Drummond-Murray of Mastrick,

  Slains Pursuivant of Arms

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE MONKS OF WAR

  Desmond Seward was born in Paris and educated at Ampleforth and Cambridge. Since the first edition of The Monks of War appeared in 1972 he has become a Knight of Malta, which has deepened his knowledge of the military religious orders. His most recent book is a study of the Wars of the Roses (published by Constable in London and by Viking in New York), which examines the impact of the wars on the lives of five men and women.

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations and Maps

  Acknowledgements

  Abbreviations

  Author's Note

  I INTRODUCTION

  1 The Monks of War

  II LATIN SYRIA 1099–1291

  2 The birth of a new vocation

  3 The bulwark of Jerusalem

  4 Armageddon

  III THE CRUSADE ON THE BALTIC 1200–1560

  5 The Crusade on the Baltic

  6 The Ordensland: an army with a country

  7 The Crusaders without a cause

  IV THE RECONQUISTA 1158–1493

  8 The Reconquista

  9 The Great Advance

  10 Kings and Masters

  11 Triumph and Nemesis

  V READJUSTMENT 1291 –1522

  12 Readjustment and the Templar dissolution

  13 Rhodes and the Sea Knights

  14 The Three Sieges

  VI THE LAST CRUSADE 1523–1571

  15 The battle for the Mediterranean

  VII BAROQUE PALADINS 1571–1789

  16 Baroque Paladins

  VIII SURVIVAL – AGAINST ALL ODDS 1789–1995

  17 Survival – against all odds

  Appendices: Orders of St John in the Modern World

  Notes

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

  INSET

  1. The Castle of Krak-des-Chevaliers in Palestine.

  2. The Marienburg in West Prussia.

  3. Tannhäuser in the habit of a Teutonic knight c. 1300.

  4. Retablo by Sancho de Zamora of Frey Don Álvaro, Master of Santiago (1445–53), with St Francis.

  5. Miniature, c. 1430, of Frey Don Luís de Guzmán, Master of Calatrava.

  6. Frey Don Juan de Zúñiga, Master of Alcántara (1478–94), attending a lecture by Elio Antonio de Nebrija.

  7. A doorway at the Priory of the Order of Christ at Thomar.

  8. Fra' Luís Mendes de Vasconcellos, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta (1622–3).

  9. Grand Master Manuel Pinto da Fonseca (1741–73).

  10. A seventeenth-century galley of the Knights of Malta.

  11. The Auberge of Castile in Valetta.

  12. The Palace of the Grand Priory of Bohemia, Prague.

  13. Church of the Bohemian Knights of Malta, Prague.

  14. Archduke Karl being invested as a Teutonic Knight by Archduke Maximilian-Franz, 1801.

  15. Corpus Christi procession of Teutonic Knights and Knights of Malta at Vienna, 1934.

  16. King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Ena, with the Prince of the Asturias, 1924.

  17. Knights of Malta investiture at Versailles, 1990.

  18. Fra' Matthew Festing, as Grand Prior of England, taking the oath of allegiance, 1994.

  OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. A Templar in his everyday habit.

  2. A Hospitaller in his habit.

  3. The head of St John the Baptist on the seal of a thirteenth-century Hospitaller Prior of England.

  4. A Teutonic Knight.

  5. The commandery of the Teutonic Knights at Reden, West Prussia.

  6. Brass of the Teutonic Knight Kuno von Liebenstein, c. 1396.

  7. Hochmeister Ulrich von Juningen.

  8. Friedrich of Saxony.

  9. An early Knight of Calatrava.

  10. Fifteenth-century sea-battle between Knights of Rhodes and Turks.

  11. Fra' Guillaume Caoursin presents his account of the Siege of Rhodes.

  12. Siege of Rhodes, 1480.

  13. Capturing a Barbary corsair in the seventeenth century.

  14. A Knight of Malta, still wearing the Crusader surcoat in 1721.

  15. Book plate of the last Hoch und Deutschmeister, c. 1894.

  16. Hospitallers practising their vocation.

  MAPS

  1. Latin Syria and the Crusader States in the twelfth century.

  2. Latin Syria and the Crusader States, c. 1229.

  3. The Lands of the Teutonic Order, c. 1407.

  4. The Iberian Peninsula, c. 1474.

  5. The Levant, c. 1480.

  6. The Siege of Malta, 1565.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Since this book was first published in 1972 scholars have shed new light on the history of most military religious orders, while considerable changes have taken place within those which survive. I am more than ever conscious of my temerity in attempting to provide an introduction to a subject which ranges over so many centuries and so many countries.

  I still recall with gratitude the advice and encouragement given to me by Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith and Dom Alberic Stacpoole of Ampleforth Abbey when I was writing the first edition, although I realize that the former may not agree with every conclusion which I have reached in this new version.

  My first debt is to Monsignor A. N. Gilbey, a Conventual Chaplain Grand Cross ad honorem of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, who persuaded me to revise the book. I must also thank Peter Drummond-Murray, the SMOM's Delegate for Scotland, for help at every stage and for reading the proofs. Other British Knights of Malta whom I would like to thank are Julian Allason and Charles Wright for their comments on the typescript and for supplying me with otherwise unobtainable information.

  In addition I am indebted to Count Ciechanowiecki, Vice President of the SMOM's Polish Association; to Fra' John Macpherson, former President of the SMOM's Canadian Association, and to Dr Robert Pichette, the Canadian Association's Historian. I am no less indebted to Pater Dr Bernhard Demel, OT, Archivist of the Teutonic Order's Zentralarchiv at Vienna.

  I am grateful to HSH Franz Prince Lobkowicz, Lieutenant Grand Prior of the SMOM's Grand Priory of Bohemia, for photographs of its church and palace at Prague; to the Bailiff Prince Guy de Polignac, President of the SMOM's French Association, for a photograph of his Knights at Versailles; and to Sir Reresby Sitwell for the photograph of the seventeenth-century painting of a galley of the Order of Malta in the collection at Renishaw.

  There could have been no more supportive editor than Janice Brent nor a more expert picture-researcher than Lily Richards.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  C.A.R.H.P.

  Collecçam de documentos e memorias da Academia Real da Historia Portuguesa (Lisbon 1720)

  Dugdale

  Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale, 8 vols (London 1817–30)

  H.R.S.E.

  Historiae Ruthenicae Scriptores Exteria, 2 vols (Berlin 1841)

  M.L.A.

  Monumenta Livoniae Antiquae (Riga and Leipzig 1835–47)

  M.P.L.

  Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris 1844–55)

  R.H.C.<
br />
  Recueil des historiens des croisades (Paris 1841–1906):

  R.H.C. oc.

  Historiens occidentaux, 5 vols (1844–95)

  R.H.C. or.

  Historiens orientaux, 5 vols (1872–1906)

  R.H.C. arm.

  Documents arméniens, 2 vols (1869–1906)

  R.H.C. Lois

  Lois. Les Assises de Jérusalem, 2 vols (1841–3)

  S.R.L.

  Scriptores Rerum Livonicarum, 2 vols (Riga and Leipzig 1848–53)

  S.R.P.

  Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, 6 vols (Leipzig 1861–74)

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  In order to emphasize the brethren's monasticism, the title Fra' is used throughout (except for Frey when writing of Spanish Knights). This is an abbreviation of the official Latin Frater, for which Br. is hardly satisfactory; Fr. was the normal usage in most military orders but is too easily confused with 'Father'. I have therefore employed Fra', which is still the prefix for professed brethren of the only military order to survive in anything like its original form, the Knights of Malta. It is worth emphasizing that Middle English could refer to the Hospitallers and the Templars as 'freres' or 'friars' – the Templars were sometimes called 'Red Friars'.

  For the sake of clarity, in the chapters on the Iberian orders I have used Castilian, Portuguese and Catalan names rather than English since Juan, João and Joan, Alfonso, Afonso and Alfons are an aid to identification amid a multitude of Johns and Alfonsos. For the same reason, the Portuguese branch of the Order of Santiago is referred to throughout as 'São Thiago'.

  I

  INTRODUCTION

  Rejoice, brave warrior, if you live and conquer in the Lord, but rejoice still more and give thanks if you die and go to join the Lord. This life can be fruitful and victory is glorious yet a holy death for righteousness is worth more. Certainly 'blessed are they who die in the Lord' but how much more so are those who die for Him.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  1

  THE MONKS OF WAR

  This is an introduction to the military religious orders, the first general history of them since the beginning of the eighteenth century. It concentrates on the period up to the Counter-Reformation when they were monks with swords. However, many of these orders still exist, notably the Knights of Malta; although nowadays occupied exclusively with charitable works, they cherish their history and traditions. An account of their later role is given in the last chapter.

  The knight brethren of the military orders were noblemen vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience, living a monastic life in convents which were at the same time barracks, waging war on the enemies of the Cross. In their chapels one saw monks reciting the Office, but outside they were soldiers in uniform. The three great orders were the Templars, Hospitallers (Knights of Malta) and Teutonic Knights, though Santiago and Calatrava were no less formidable. Most of them emerged during the twelfth century to provide the Church with stormtroopers for the Crusades. They were the first properly disciplined and officered troops in the West since Roman times.

  On many occasions they tried, literally, to fight their way into heaven. During countless wars they never doubted that theirs was a religious calling. 'Who fights us, fights Jesus Christ,' claimed the Teutonic Knights. For the Holy War was once an ideal admired by all Western Christians, and the crusade an inspiration which endured for centuries.

  The brethren fought and prayed in many lands – and on many seas. As Edward Gibbon wrote, in Crusader Palestine, 'the firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the Knights of the Hospital of St John and of the Temple of Solomon; on the strange association of a monastic and a military life which fanaticism might suggest but which policy must approve'. Because of their sacrifices, Outremer, land of the Crusades – and in some ways precursor of Israel – endured for nearly two centuries. After the kingdom of Jerusalem had finally fallen, the Hospitallers, first from Rhodes and then from Malta, devoted themselves to guarding the shores of the Mediterranean and protecting Christian merchantmen against Turks and Barbary Corsairs.

  The soldier monks waged another holy war in northern Europe, against the pagans of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, where they played a vital role in shaping the destinies of Germany and Poland. All these countries were influenced by them – racially, economically and politically. The heritage of the Drang nach Osten, today's Oder–Neisse line, was largely bequeathed by the Teutonic Knights whose lands, the Ordensstaat, reached almost to St Petersburg. It was they who created Prussia, by conquering the heathen Baltic race who were the original Prussians and by the most thorough colonization seen in the entire Middle Ages. Their forest campaigns against the Lithuanians have been called the most ferocious of all medieval wars. The Polish Corridor was a legacy of the Knights' seizure of Danzig (Gdansk) from Wladysiaw the Dwarf in 1331. The first Hohenzollern ruler of Prussia was also the last 'Hochmeister' to hold sway in that country. Field Marshal von Hindenburg's victory over the Russians among the Masurian lakes in 1914 was deliberately named Tannenberg after a battle there five centuries earlier, in which a Hochmeister had been killed and his Knights almost wiped out by Slavs. Their black-and-silver cross was chosen as the model for the Iron Cross and is still the emblem of the German Army.

  In Spain the brethren of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcántara spearheaded the Reconquista. They consolidated the Christian advance, ranching sheep and cattle on the lonely meseta where no peasant dared settle for fear of Moorish raiders. From Portugal other brethren initiated the expansion of Europe with expeditions which were half-missionary and half-commercial. Enrique the Navigator, Master of the Knights of Christ – successors to the Portuguese Templars – presided over a research centre at Sagres where he employed the foremost geographers of the day and from where he sent out ships on voyages of discovery under the Order's flag.

  It is surprising that so few historical romances have been written about them. The Götterdämmerung-like fight to the death by the Templars and Hospitallers at the fall of Acre in 1291, Hochmeister Ulrich von Juningen's refusal to leave the doomed field of Tannenberg, and the Knights of Malta too badly wounded to stand waiting in chairs at the breach of Fort St Elmo for the Turks' final assault are only the best known among many scenes of epic heroism. The end of the Templars – whose last Master, Jacques de Molay, was burnt alive over a slow fire – has inspired the odd novel, but it needs an opera to do it justice. (Of the other twenty-one Masters of the Temple, five died in battle, five of wounds and one of starvation in a Saracen prison.) Eisenstein made the Teutonic Knights' defeat on the ice of Lake Peipus in 1242 the plot for his film Alexander Nevsky. There is also Henri de Montherlant's play, Le Maître de Santiago, but little else.

  Whatever their order, the Knights' inspiration was the same on the banks of the Jordan or the Tagus, on the Mediterranean or the Baltic. They were as much a part of monasticism as the friars – if mendicant defended it. 'Take this sword: its brightness stands for faith, its point for hope, its guard for charity. Use it well . . .' says the Hospitaller rite of profession. The Bible may tell us that those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword, but the Knights saw themselves as warriors of Christ. They do indeed deserve the title 'monks of war'.

  II

  LATIN SYRIA

  1099–1291

  The Crusades and the international orders:

  Templars – Hospitallers – St Lazarus –

  Montjoie – St Thomas

  . . . such are they whom God chooses for himself and gathers from the furthest ends of the earth, servants from among the bravest in Israel to guard watchfully and faithfully his Sepulchre and the Temple of Solomon, sword in hand, ready for battle.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  2

  THE BIRTH OF A NEW VOCATION

  The three greatest military orders, the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights, were founded in the twelfth century, an earlier renaissance which saw the birth of Gothic architecture, the zenith of papal monarchy, and
an intellectual revolution that would culminate with Aquinas. Perhaps its most outstanding figure was the Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux, last of the Fathers of the Western Church. The Templars had been in existence for a decade when he met their founder, Hugues de Payens, in 1127 but this meeting was the real moment of the military brethren's genesis, for St Bernard at once understood how Hugues's inspiration matched the conflicting vocations of chivalry and the cloister.

  The Abbot of Clairvaux, the greatest moral force of his day, proclaimed the superiority of love to knowledge and presided over the change in religious emotion when the humanity of Christ was at last fully appreciated: a crucifix of the tenth century has a figure of Christ the King in majesty, Christos Pantocrator the terrible judge, while one of the twelfth has a compassionate representation of the tortured man. Later Francis of Assisi brought this message to the masses with explosive results, but in the first half of the century popular enthusiasm found an outlet in new monastic orders, especially the Cistercians. Bernard joined them in 1113, when they were confined to one monastery, Cîteaux, and at his death in 1153 there were 343 such houses.

  The ascetic impulse produced a papal revolution. Gregory VII (1073–85) set the papacy firmly on a course towards the position of leader and judge of Western Christendom, demanding that temporal power be subordinated to spiritual just as the body depends on the soul, envisaging a papal army, the militia Sancti Petri. Europe listened with new respect. When in 1095 Pope Urban II called upon the faithful to recover Jerusalem – occupied by the Moslems since 638 – his appeal inspired extraordinary enthusiasm. Palestine's importance was heightened by the new appreciation of Christ's humanity; the scenes of the Passion were still pointed out at Jerusalem. That His City should belong to infidels was contrary to the law of God. Fortunately the Moslem world was in chaos, from India to Portugal. Syria was more vulnerable than it had been for a century, broken up into principalities ruled by Turkish atabegs, while the Fatimid Caliphate at Cairo was in terminal decline. The Crusaders stormed Jerusalem in July 1099.