This study of the female members of the Order or Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in the High Middle Ages analyses their presence in the context of female monasticism and compares their position to the position of women in other religious military orders. Introducing questions of gender into the history of the military orders.

Known worldwide among scholars of medieval Europe for her books on the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar, the trial of the Templars in Britain and Ireland, and women and the crusades, Professor Helen J. Nicholson has drawn together in this volume a selection of her shorter publications, previously published in academic journals, scholarly collections, or online. Reflecting almost thirty years of published research, this collection includes articles focusing on women’s depiction in contemporary writing on the crusades and their involvement with the military religious orders, the Templars’ and Hospitallers’ relations with the rulers of Latin Christendom and with their noble patrons and their operations in Britain and Ireland. Women, the Crusades, the Templars and Hospitallers in Medieval European Society and Culture will interest scholars, students, and other researchers studying the military religious orders, the crusades and women’s lives in medieval Europe and the crusader states.

The first eight studies in this volume seek to address a series of questions concerning the emergence and the role of the military orders in the 12th and 13th centuries: the reasons for the appearance of the institution, the recruitment and instruction of novices, and, though the military orders were predominantly male organisations, the role of women within them. Dr Forey then turns to the orders’ role in the Crusades, both against the infidel and in ’Holy Wars’ against Christians, and their activities in ransoming captives. The last studies focus on the development of the Order of St John, and on two minor military orders; one of these, that on St Thomas of Acre, draws attention to the relations between England and the Holy Land, the subject also of the final paper, on the crusading plans of Henry III.

“Warrior monks”—the misnomer for the Iberian military orders that emerged on the frontiers of Europe in the twelfth century—have long fascinated general readers and professional historians alike. Proposing “ecclesiastical knights” as a more accurate name and conceptual model—warriors animated by ideals and spiritual currents endorsed by the church hierarchy—author Sam Zeno Conedera presents a groundbreaking study of how these orders brought the seemingly incongruous combination of monastic devotion and the practice of warfare into a single way of life. Providing a detailed study of the military-religious vocation as it was lived out in the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara in Leon-Castile during the first century, Ecclesiastical Knights provides a valuable window into medieval Iberia. Filling a gap in the historiography of the medieval military orders, Conedera defines, categorizes, and explains these orders, from their foundations until their spiritual decline in the early fourteenth century, arguing that that the best way to understand their spirituality is as a particular kind of consecrated knighthood. Because these Iberian military orders were belligerents in the Reconquest, Ecclesiastical Knights informs important discussions about the relations between Western Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages. Conedera examines how the military orders fit into the religious landscape of medieval Europe through the prism of knighthood, and how their unique conceptual character informed the orders and spiritual self-perception. The religious observances of all three orders were remarkably alike, except that the Cistercian-affiliated orders were more demanding and their members could not marry. Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara shared the same essential mission and purpose: the defense and expansion of Christendom understood as an act of charity, expressed primarily through fighting and secondarily through the care of the sick and the ransoming of captives. Their prayers were simple and their penances were aimed at knightly vices and the preservation of military discipline. Above all, the orders valued obedience. They never drank from the deep wellsprings of monasticism, nor were they ever meant to. Offering an entirely fresh perspective on two difficult and closely related problems concerning the military orders—namely, definition and spirituality—author Sam Zeno Conedera illuminates the religious life of the orders, previously eclipsed by their military activities.

The great religious orders of Christianity - the Benedictines, the Dominicans, the Franciscans and the Jesuits - are well known for their monasteries, their learning and their missions around the world. But in the Middle Ages, to some extent surviving to this day, there was another kind of religious order, one whose members' profession was to bear arms in defence of Christendom. From humble beginnings in the early 12th century, caring for the sick in the Holy Land and protecting pilgrims, the military religious orders spread out across Europe. Not only did they fight for the holy places, they helped push back Islam in Spain and what is now Portugal, and spread Christianity to the lands across the Baltic, then still pagan. The Knights of St John, the Knights Templar, the Knights of Santiago and of Calatrava, the Teutonic Knights and others played a fearsome, sometimes brutal and often neglected role in the history of Christianity. The wars, which they fought in the name of Christ, helped shape the world as we know it.

Proceedings of a conference on a theme, the 34 essays by specialists from 15 countries prevent various facets of the struggles waged for the possession of the Holy Land between the 10th and 13th centuries, and of the activities of the military orders elsewhere in Europe.

This volume brings together recent and new research, with several items specially translated into English, on the sisters of the largest and most long-lived of the military-religious orders, the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. It explores the roles which the Hospitaller sisters performed within their Order; examines the problems of having men and women living within the same or adjoining houses; studies relations between the Order and the patrons of its women's houses; and looks at the career of a prominent woman within the Order during the Middle Ages.