Teutonic Knights

by William Urban

  Although there were members who were priests, hospital orderlies, and female nurses, the Hospital of St Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem was primarily a military order. Therefore its membership was largely made up of knights who required horses, weapons, and the equipment of war. Those items had to be maintained personally, so that armour would fit, the swords would be of the right weight and length, and the horse and rider accustomed to one another. Care was taken to avoid acquiring pride in these articles; the rules proscribed gold or silver ornaments or bright colours.

  Each knight had to have supporting personnel, usually at a ratio of ten men-at-arms per knight. The men-at-arms were commoners and often members of the order at a lower level. Known as half-brothers, or grey-mantles (from the colour of their surcoats), these took on their duties either for a lengthy period or for life as each chose. They served as squires or sergeants, responsible respectively for providing the knight with a spare horse and new equipment when needed, and for fighting alongside him.4

  The knights had to keep themselves in fighting trim, which would have been a serious problem if they had been strictly cloistered. They were permitted to hunt – an unusual privilege specifically conferred by the papacy – because hunting on horseback was the traditional method of training a knight and had the additional benefit of acquainting him with the local geography. To forbid hunting would have been impractical and also very unpopular among German knights who had grown up amid extensive forests still filled with dangerous beasts and plentiful game. The knights were permitted to hunt wolves, bears, boars, and lions with dogs, if they were doing it of necessity and not just to avoid boredom or for pleasure, and to hunt other beasts without dogs.

  The rule warned the knights to avoid women. In the cloister that was no problem, but this was often difficult when travelling or on campaign. At times they had to stay in public hostels or accept hospitality, and it would have been very impolite to turn down a beaker of ale or mead when offered. Moreover, when recruiting members or on diplomatic business they often resided in their host’s castle or villa, because it was impractical to travel on to a neighbouring monastery and thereby miss the banquet, where business was usually conducted on an informal basis. Realising that their duties prevented the knights from living a life of retirement from the world, the rule simply warned them to shun such secular entertainments as weddings and plays, where the sexes mingled, where alcoholic beverages flowed freely into gaudy drinking cups, and where light amusement was all too enticing. They were explicitly warned to avoid speaking to women alone, and, above all, speaking to young women. As for kissing, the usual form of polite greeting among the noble class, they were forbidden to embrace even their mothers and sisters. Female nurses were permitted in the hospitals only when measures were taken to avoid any possibility of scandal.

  Punishment for those brothers who violated the rules could be light, moderate, severe, or very severe. Those condemned to a year of punishment, for example, would have to sleep with the servants, wear unmarked clothing, eat bread and water three days of each week, and were deprived of the privilege of holy communion with their knightly brethren. That was a moderate punishment. For more severe infractions there were irons and the dungeons. Once the punishment was served, the culprit could be returned to duty (although barred from holding office in the order) or he could be expelled. For three offences only was there no possibility of forgiveness – cowardice in the face of the enemy, going over to the infidels, and sodomy. For the first two the offender was expelled from the order; for the last he was sentenced to life imprisonment or execution. The most common offences, always minor, were punished by whipping and deprivation of food.

  Officers

  No medieval organisation – or even state – had a large officialdom. The Teutonic Knights were no exception. The chief officer was originally called the master, but once the order saw a need for executive officers in Germany, Prussia and Livonia, it seemed appropriate to designate them as masters and to call the officer superior to them the grand master; this was the customary title of the heads of the other military orders, and its use would signify a claim that the Teutonic Knights’ own grand master was the equal of the leaders of the Templars and Hospitallers. Also, it emphasised the primary role of defending the Holy Land over demands by regional masters for access to the order’s resources.

  The grand master was elected by the grand chapter (or general chapter) to serve for his lifetime or until he resigned. The election process was formal and complex. The second-in-command to the late grand master set a date and a location for a meeting of all the nearby knights who could be spared from their duties and also summoned representatives from the more distant provinces. When the high officers and representatives were assembled, he recommended a knight to serve as first elector. If the members approved of his choice, that knight then nominated a second elector, and the members either voiced their approval or required him to submit other names until agreement was reached. The two then chose another, and the members expressed their will until eight knights, one priest, and four members from the lower ranks had been selected as an election panel. This electoral college then took an oath to do its duty, without prejudice or previous commitment, to select the best man available for the vacant office. In closed session the first elector made the initial recommendation to the panel. If that nominee did not win a majority of the votes, then the others in turn proposed names until a choice had been made. When the college announced its decision to the chapter, the priests broke into Te Deum Laudamus and escorted the new master to the altar to take his oath of office.

  The grand master was primarily a diplomat and overseer. Election ennobled him far beyond the status of his birth. He met with the important nobles and churchmen of the areas where the order was active and carried on an extensive correspondence with the more distant potentates and prelates, including the emperor and the pope. He also travelled widely, visiting the various convents of the order, inspecting discipline, and seeing that the order’s resources were being properly managed.

  The grand master appointed the officials who served as his inner council. The grand master, the grand commander of the forces in the Holy Land, and the treasurer, were each responsible for one of the three keys to the giant chest that kept the treasury of the order. This responsibility underlined the limits on the authority which was entrusted to any one individual, whatever his office. Important decisions were always made by a group, often by the grand master and his subordinate officials, but also often including the membership assembled as a grand chapter.

  The treasurer was responsible for monetary affairs. Although the knights had taken oaths of poverty, the Teutonic Order could not survive without food, clothing, weapons, good horses, and the services of artisans, teamsters, and sea captains that often only money could buy. In theory only the chief officers were supposed to know the financial status of the organisation, but those who attended the grand chapter were given sufficient information to make responsible plans for building castles, churches, and hospitals, and embarking on military campaigns, and they passed on their information to fellow knights and priests.

  The grand commander was responsible for day-to-day supervision of activities that were not directly related to warfare. He directed the minor officials in their functions, supervised the treasurer in collecting and dispersing funds, conducted correspondence, and kept records. His duties were obviously much the same as those of the grand master, although on a lesser scale, and he commanded the order’s forces in the Holy Land when the grand master was absent. There were also regional commanders in the Holy Roman Empire (Austria, Franconia, and so forth), and local castellans who presided over the many convents and hospitals.

  The marshal was responsible for military preparation. His title, which originally referred to a keeper of horses, indicates how important the equipping and training of the cavalry was to battlefield success, and he gave more time to that duty than to his other responsibilities. In theory
the master of the robes and the commander of the hospital were subordinate to him, but in practice they were essentially self-sufficient. It is perhaps better to think of the titles as honorific rather than as the equivalent of heads of modern bureaucracies. Together they formed an experienced inner council that the grand master could rely on for advice and counsel.

  Business involving the order’s subjects, trading partners, and other rulers was conducted in a court atmosphere, the grand master hearing requests, listening to arguments, and making responses after decisions had been reached. The decisions were carefully recorded and filed away. Eventually the archives of the order encompassed hundreds of thousands of documents. The most important were kept by the grand master’s scribes for easy reference; others were stored in local convents.

  Few of the members had reason to interest themselves in the details of administration. The priests had their own duties to perform. The sergeants (or men-at-arms) were limited to minor responsibilities of little prestige, such as managing small estates and caring for equipment. Few of the knights had sufficient intelligence and experience to hold high office or were of sufficiently high birth to be given responsibility without having proven themselves beforehand. Noble birth was almost essential to advancement. Nobles were assumed to have inherited ability in the same way that war-horses inherited strength and courage; and because they had important relatives and experience in court life, they could win advantages for the order that mere ability and piety could never achieve. Not all ‘nobles’ were equally noble, and few ordinary knights were of truly noble birth – German knights were often descendants of burghers, gentry, and even the so-called ‘serf knights’ or ministeriales, whose growing importance never quite erased the memory of their distant lowly origins. The number of knightly members from prominent families was always small, and a few of them were directed to the monastic life only because they lacked the qualities necessary to survive outside a cloister.

  Whatever stain remained on one’s reputation from being of ministeriale birth, or even of burgher origin, largely vanished in the ceremony of induction. The sacrifices were great, not just in the vows which were taken, but in the 30 – 60 Marks which had to be contributed as ‘dowry’, often in the form of land. This was no paltry sum, but relatives undoubtedly contributed willingly because membership not only enhanced the family prestige, but promised them likely financial and political profit as well. In addition, if the knight was bankrupt, joining the Teutonic Order expunged his debts.

  Daily activities for the knights were scrupulously planned along lines that can still be recognised in most armies today – keep the soldier busy, keep him out of trouble. The greatest difference between a Teutonic Knight and a modern soldier was not in weapons and equipment, but in the former’s total commitment to a dual calling. Being a friar as well as a warrior, he was expected to attend the short but regular services at the times specified by the Church and endure a discipline that would be beyond bearing in any modern military organisation – because it was a lifelong obligation. Poverty, chastity and obedience were real sacrifices made by real men.

  Religious Life

  The total commitment to a religious as well as a military life was emphasised to the knight when he applied for membership. After he had passed the preliminary interrogations, he was brought before a chapter and asked:

  The brethren have heard your request and wish to know if any of these things apply to you. The first is whether you have taken an oath to any other order, if you are betrothed to a woman, if you are another man’s serf, if you owe money to anyone or have debts to pay that might affect the order, or if you are in bad health. If any of these is so, and you do not admit it, when it becomes known you may be expelled from the brotherhood.

  The recruit then took the following oath: ‘I promise the chastity of my body, and poverty, and obedience to God, Holy Mary, and you, to the Master of the Teutonic Order, and your successors, according to the rules and practices of the Order, obedience unto death’.

  Because there are historians who say that the order was a political organisation with little or no religious meaning, it is important to remember that the Teutonic Knights differed little from any other religious order that did not require its members to withdraw from the world but sought to improve it. By the same standards we would have to assume that the papacy was no more than a political organisation (although the activities of some popes of this era tempt one to that conclusion, the assumption would be incorrect). But there was a mixture of religious and secular ideas and interests that cannot be blithely separated without making a caricature of the Teutonic Order. The corporate prayer included in the Statutes, though written at a slightly later date, illustrates this amalgam of ideals better than a long dissertation:

  Brothers, beseech our Lord God, that he comfort Holy Christianity with His Grace, and His Peace, and protect it from all evil. Pray to Our God for our spiritual father, the Pope, and for the Empire and for all our leaders and prelates of Christianity, lay and ecclesiastical, that God use them in His service. And also for all spiritual and lay judges, that they may give Holy Christianity peace and such good justice that God’s Judgement will not come over them.

  Pray for our Order in which God has assembled us, that the Lord will give us Grace, Purity, a Spiritual Life, and that he take away all that is found in us or other Orders that is unworthy of praise and opposed to His Commandments.

  Pray for our Grand Master and all the regional commanders, who govern our lands and people, and for all the brothers who exercise office in our Order, that they act in their office of the Order in such a way as not to depart from God.

  Pray for the brothers who hold no office, that they may use their time purposefully and zealously in worship, so that those who hold office and they themselves may be useful and pious.

  Pray for those who are fallen in deadly sin, that God may help them back into his Grace and that they may escape eternal punishment.

  Pray for the lands that lie near the pagans, that God may come to their aid with his Counsel and Power, that belief in God and Love can be spread there, so that they can withstand all their enemies.

  Pray for those who are friends and associates of the Order, and also for those who do good actions or who seek to do them, that God may reward them.

  Pray for all those who have left us inheritances or gifts that neither in life nor in death does God allow them to depart from Him. Especially pray for Duke Friedrich of Swabia and King Heinrich his brother, who was Emperor, and for the honourable burghers of Lübeck and Bremen, who founded our Order. Remember also Duke Leopold of Austria, Duke Conrad of Masovia, and Duke Sambor of Pomerellia . . . Remember also our dead brothers and sisters . . . Let each remember the soul of his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters. Pray for all believers, that God may give them eternal peace. May they rest in peace. Amen.

  Understanding the religious idealism of the Teutonic Order is fundamental to comprehending the ways it carried out its mission. It was an important aspect to all the military orders, as important as radical Protestantism was to Cromwell’s Roundheads, or communion in both kinds to a Czech Hussite. If the narrative sources do not dwell upon this religiosity, it is no surprise. No author has yet been able to make an endless round of prayer, contemplation, and corporate worship into interesting reading. But the order’s chroniclers constantly referred to the piety of individuals and of convents, even to the point of disturbing their narratives. It should be borne in mind that even medieval historians had a good sense of what made a good story, and they knew that dramatic events captured the ears of their audience. The Old Testament was dearer to their heart than was the New – and that, perhaps, is the key to the religious thought of the military orders.

  The total involvement of the individual in a religious life is not often found today, and many find it difficult to believe that people once seriously considered it normal behaviour. Therefore some people living today regard those who are deeply rel
igious in the medieval sense as freaks or hypocrites. We easily accept contradictions in our own behaviour but demand a consistency from medieval man that makes him either a saint or a brutal impostor. The knights and priests born between 1180 and 1500 were neither. They were complex personalities who had varying reasons for entering a religious life, but certainly almost all of them saw themselves as part of a divine plan that made order out of chaos and gave reason to their lives. Whatever else they might do in this world made little sense when compared to the vast span of eternity that lay ahead in the death that waits inevitably for each one of us. To them any other behaviour, particularly any behaviour that ignored the fate of one’s immortal soul, was foolish and dangerous.

  Firm in the belief that they had chosen the right path, the knights followed it, convinced that destiny had really given them no choice. Success or failure, victory or defeat, were incidental and in the hands of God. Pride in their achievements, they knew, would bring swift retribution in the form of battlefield defeat but would not slow the divine plan for an instant. Their duty lay in acceptance and obedience – and, fortunately for them, the divine voice usually told them what they wanted to hear.

  Warrior Monks

  The accuracy of the foregoing passages notwithstanding, life in a convent of Teutonic Knights was not dull. To be sure, northern winters were long and dark, just as summers in the Holy Land were long and hot, but there was always much to do. As Voltaire remarked at the conclusion of Candide, work is the cure for poverty, vice and boredom. Without much question, the ultra-catholic priests and officers of the Teutonic Order would have agreed with that deist’s analysis of the human condition.