The Monks of War

by Desmond Seward

  CHAPTER6: THE ORDENSLAND

  1. This point is made by Carsten in The Origins of Prussia, p. 7.

  2. ibid., pp. 30 and 52.

  3. Only about 100 knightly families received estates from the Order during its first 50 years in Prussia; ibid., p. 54.

  4. 'As late as the fifteenth century one of the Grand Masters was "neither doctor nor clerk", that is to say he could neither read nor write.' Treitschke, Das deutsche Ordensland Preussen, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, p. 97.

  5. 'In this essentially political world, only one science was diligently fostered, that of historiography.' ibid., p. 98.

  6. 'Not all these classes, however, were represented. Only knights and a few townsmen were found in the Eastern Baltic lands.' See Hermann Aubin, 'The lands east of the Elbe and German colonisation eastwards', Cambridge Early History, vol. I, pp. 367–8.

  7. 'In the year 1343 when the aforesaid Master [Burkhardt von Dreileve] had descended upon the schismatics [i.e. Russians] with an armed fleet, behold, on the eve of St George's Day the converts of the diocese of Reval fell back into their old religion; they killed their own lords and all Germans including little children, dashing babies against rocks or throwing them into the water or into fires, and doing to women that of which I am ashamed to speak, cutting them open with swords and impaling on spears the infants hiding in their wombs . . .' Hermann von Wartberge, 'Chronicon Livoniae', S.R.P., vol. II, p. 70.

  8. '. . . Rutenos . . . subditores et co-operatores paganorum . . .' Hermann von Wartberge, op. cit., p. 115.

  9. A reysa in 1387 is described by Hermann von Wartberge. 'On the sixth day before St Valentine's, Wilhelm [von Freimersen] the Master of Livonia went briskly ('strenue ivit') with his men against the Lithuanians at Opythen where for nine days he killed, burnt, laid waste and destroyed all things.' ibid., p. 115.

  10. 'Wynricus de Knyprode . . . vir decorus et personatus, magne relligiositatis [sic] et multe prudentie.' See 'Historia Brevis Magistrorum Ordinis Theutonici Generalium', S.R.P., vol. IV.

  11. For a brief but illuminating summary of Templar and Hospitaller possessions in Pomerania and Brandenburg, see Carsten, op. cit., p. 13.

  12. See 'Le Livre des faicts du Marechal Boucicaut: Comment messire Boucicaut alla la troisème fois en Prusse, et comment il voulut venger la mort de messire Guillaume de Duglas', S.R.P., vol. II.

  13. 'A.D. 1390. In this yer Ser Herry, erl of Derby, sailed into Prus, where with help of the marschale of Prus and of a kyng that hite Witot, he ovyrcam the kyng of Lettow and made him for to fle. Thre of his dukes he took and foure dukes he killed with many lordes and knytis and swieris mo than thre hundred.' (King Henry's contribution has been somewhat exaggerated!) See John Capgrave, Chronicle of England, ed. Hingeston (London, 1858).

  14. See Metcalfe, A Great Historic Peerage, the Earldom of Wiltes and Burke's Landed Gentry – 'Scrope'. Sir Geoffrey's brother was the future Archbishop Scrope of Shakespeare's Henry IV who was executed for high treason.

  15. So folk songs called him, according to Treitschke, op. cit., p. 85.

  16. '. . . the man whose heart was as hard as his name, Henning Schindekopf'. ibid., p. 75.

  17. '. . . une secte que après leur mort ils se font ardoir en lieu de sepulture, vestus et aournez chascun de leurs meilleurs aournemens, en ung leur plus prochain boi ou forest qu'ilz ont, en feu fait de purain bois de quesne . . .' See Guillebert de Lannoy et ses voyages en 1413, 1414 et 1421, ed. J. Lelewel (Brussels, 1844), p. 38.

  18. 'Crist ist enstandin' see Johann von Pusilge in 'Annalista Thorunensis' III–IV, S.R.P., vol. III, p. 316.

  19. See 'Banderia Prutenorum', S.R.P., vol. IV, compiled in 1448 by the Pole, Johannes Dlugosz, at Cracow where the captured banner was probably still hanging.

  20. However, it was identified and brought back to the Marienburg for burial even if '. . . the Tartars and the Cossacks practised their hideous tricks of mutilation upon the Grand Master's body'. Treitschke, op. cit., p. 115.

  21. 'They besieged the castle with every kind of siege engine, bombards and other weapons of great strength and power, day and night for two months or more.' See Conrad Bitschin, the fifteenth-century continuer of Petrus von Dusburg, S.R.P., vol. III, p. 485.

  CHAPTER 7: THE CRUSADERS WITHOUT A CAUSE

  1. The former Hochmeister was accused of scheming to regain power with Polish assistance in 1414 and imprisoned for nine years. Even Treitschke (op. cit., I, p. 125) believed this charge to have been unjust.

  2. Though written over 400 years later, the epic Konrad Walenrod by the great Polish Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz reflects his countrymen's traditional hatred of the Order. The Hochmeister is made to say of Litwa:

  Burned are its towns, a sea of blood is spilled:

  These are my deeds, my oath I have fulfilled.

  3. The plague was dysentery – one casualty was the Livonian Landmeister himself, Cysus von Rutenberch. See Dyonisius Fabricius, 'Livonicae Historiae compendiosa series', S.R.L., vol. 2, p. 460.

  4. See Conrad Bitschin, op. cit., p. 502.

  5. There is a brief account of this episode in the late Professor R. W. Seton-Watson's History of the Roumanians (Cambridge University Press, 1934), P. 35.

  6. 'The Emperor and the Empire looked on inert while the impotence of a theocracy that had been too rigid and the lawless arrogance of the mercantile patriciates and the squires were betraying New Germany to the Poles.' Treitschke, op. cit., p. 135.

  7. 'The rough fellows broke into the cells, tied up the knights, and proceeded to cut off their beards.' Treitschke, op. cit., p. 133.

  8. Boswell, Cambridge Mediaeval History, vol. VIII, p. 578.

  9. 'He gathered together a vast army for the purpose, up to 100,000 men, such as none of the Masters before him in Livonia had been able to do.' See Dyonisius Fabricius, op. cit., p. 461. This figure is hardly credible.

  10. Two hundred years later he was still remembered. 'Walter Plettenberg is the Man, whom those Nations prefer to all their other Heer-Meisters for Valour, Wisdom and Good Fortune.' Blomberg, An Account of Livonia, p. 11.

  11. 'The Livonians waged a fierce and famous war against the Russians . . . against the hereditary enemies of pious Catholics . . .' Levenclavius, 'De Moscovitarium bellis adversus finitimos gestis', H.R.S.E., vol. I.

  12. There is a good summary of the war in J. Fennell's Ivan the Great of Moscow (Macmillan, 1961).

  13. There is a dramatic account in Wal, op. cit., vol. 6.

  14. For Plettenberg's campaigns, see Levenclavius, op. cit.

  15. See The Travels of Sir Jerome Horsey, Kt., ed. A. Bond (Hakluyt Soc., 1856).

  16. Ivan was merely treating Livland in the way that he was accustomed to treat his own rebellious subjects. For the Russian point of view see I. Grey, Ivan the Terrible (Hodder & Stoughton, 1964).

  17. For Caspar von Oldenbock see Balthasar Rüssow, 'Chrónica der Provintz Lyfflandt', p. 65. Also Dyonisius Fabricius, op. cit., p. 476, who says that the Russians retired 'cum ignominia'.

  CHAPTER8: THE RECONQUISTA

  1. For Calatrava, see J. F. O'Callaghan, 'The Affiliation of the Order of Calatrava with Cîteaux', a series of articles in Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis, which is the only comprehensive study of this brotherhood.

  2. ibid., vol. 16, p. 285. 'There should be no hesitation in affirming that it [the spirit of Calatrava] was essentially a Cistercian spirit based not only upon the fundamental texts of the Benedictine Rule and the Carta Caritatis, but also upon the less tangible principles of twelfth-century chivalry, seen by the Cistercians as another means of reforming and purifying the lives of men . . .'

  3. See O'Callaghan in Analecta, vol. 16, pp. 33–8.

  4. ibid., vol. 16, p. 31.

  5. The definitive modern work is Lomax, La Orden de Santiago 1170–1275.

  6. A thirteenth-century Castilian translation of the Rule of Santiago is printed in Lomax, op. cit., p. 221.

  7. See Lomax, p. 238, for a deed of 1190 in which Vitalia, w
ife of Frey Vitalis de Palombar, is received into the Order.

  8. See J. F. O'Callaghan, 'The Foundation of the Order of Alcántara', Catholic Historical Review, vol. 47.

  9. See Joseph da Purificão, 'Catalogo dos Mestres e administradores da illustre e antiquissima Ordem Militar de Aviz', C.A.R.H.P., vol. 2.

  10. The Master of the Portuguese Templars, Gualdim Paes, who reigned for nearly half a century and died in 1195, achieved almost folk-hero status by his exploits against the Moors. See 'Catalogo dos Mestres da Ordem do Templo Portugueza, e em outras da Hespanha', C.A.R.H.P., which credits him with 'immortal gloria'.

  11. As in other military brotherhoods, caballeros who sought a more contemplative life could, with their Master's permission, transfer to a house of clerigos or to another Order. Lomax (op. cit., p. 94) cites the examples of Maestre Fernando Díaz, who became a canon of Santiago, and of a brother who joined the notoriously severe hermit Order of Grandmont.

  CHAPTER 9: THE GREAT ADVANCE

  1. Rades, 'Discordia y scisma en la Orden', Chrónica de Calatrava, p. 21.

  2. Iberian Hospitallers frequently failed to send Responsions (revenues) to the convent and often ignored the Grand Master, so occasionally one of their priors was nominated 'Grand Commander in Spain', with authority over all peninsular brethren of St John. See Riley-Smith, op. cit., p. 369.

  3. See Cocheril, 'Essai sur L'Origine des Ordres Militaires dans la Péninsule Ibérique'.

  4. There is a colourful account of this battle in Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, pp. 28–30.

  5. This point, that brethren protected colonists and aided agriculture, is made by Almeida, Historia da Igreja em Portugal, vol. I, p. 552.

  6. 'In fine, he acted the part of a good Man and a Just Prince' John Stevens, The General History of Spain (London, 1699).

  7. Fighting did not make them forget religious duties; in 1245 the Cistercian Chapter-General described Calatrava as 'membrum nobile et speciale Ordinis Cisterciensis'. See O'Callaghan, op. cit., vol. 16, p. 287.

  8. Significantly, this Master was long remembered in his Order as 'el Josue español'. See Lomax, 'A Lost Mediaeval Biography: the Crónica del Maestre Pelayo Pérez', in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XXXVIII (1961).

  9. There was of course some rivalry, with inevitable wrangling over lands and jurisdiction. See Lomax, op. cit., ch. VI, under 'La rivalidad con Calatrava' and 'disputas territoriales y fiscales'.

  10. An agreement between these bankers – Don Bono, Don Jacobo and Don Samuel – and the Master of Santiago is printed in ibid., pp. 270–71.

  11. São Thiago was not properly independent until John XXII's bull of 1317. See F. de Almeida, op. cit., vol. I, p. 330.

  12. 'Thus, the Reconquista degenerated into a series of tournaments between Christian and Moorish knights, while the ideal of the monk-warrior "religioso-guerrero" which had inspired the brethren changed slowly into the courtier knight of the romances.' Lomax, op. cit., P. 99.

  13. See Rades, 'Deposicion del Maestre', Chrónica de Alcántara, p. 15.

  14. Almeida, op. cit., vol. I, p. 340.

  15. During the many revolts in fourteenth-century Aragon '. . . among the few who firmly supported the king were the Castellan of Amposta, the Master of Montesa and the comendador major of the Order of Santiago in Aragon'. See Luttrell, 'The Aragonese Crown and the Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes 1291–1350'. The same authority makes the point that by the mid-fourteenth century the Aragonese Hospitallers, firmly controlled by the king, had almost become a national as well as an international Order, pp. 17–18.

  16. See Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, pp. 50–51 – 'vn llano cerca de Vaena'. Also O'Callaghan, op. cit., vol. 16, p. 260.

  17. See Rades, Chrónica de Alcántara, p. 23 – '. . . le hizo degollar y aun hizo quemar su cuerpo'. Also Stevens, op. cit., p. 261 – 'D. Gonzalo Martínez or Núñez of Calatrava was impeach'd of several hainous Crimes and being Summon'd to appear and answer for himself, fled to the King of Granada . . . Nevertheless in the Spring the King went into Andaluzia and besieg'd the Master of Calatrava in Valencia a Town within the Bounds of the Antient Lusitania. He was taken, condemn'd as a Traytor, Beheaded and Burnt for a Terror to others.' (Here Mariana has confused Calatrava with Alcántara.)

  18. Torres y Tapia, Crónica de la Orden de Alcántara, vol. II , p. 50.

  19. See Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the time of Edward III and Richard II.

  CHAPTER 10: KINGS AND MASTERS

  1. Doña Leonor de Guzmán retained the seal of Santiago on behalf of her son, after the death of her brother, the Master Alonso Meléndez de Guzman. See Ayala, Crónica del Rey Don Pedro (1779), vol. I, p. 22. A footnote cities the Bullarium of Santiago.

  2. Rades, Chrónica de Alcántara, p. 25 – Don Fernán Pérez Ponce was Dona Leonor's cousin.

  3. See Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, p. 54 – 'Don Iuan Núñez de Prado degollado'.

  4. ibid., p. 56 – 'El Rey mato a don Pedro Estevañez'. Rades says that King Pedro 'le dio de estocadas delante de la Reyna su madre, y fue luego muerto'. However, Ayala (op. cit., p. 208) says that he was clubbed to death with a mace by the squire of his rival as Master, Diego García de Padilla, outside the castle.

  5. Ayala, op. cit., pp. 240–42 – the slave was 'un mozo de su camera'.

  6. 'El Rey Bermejo' and his court seem to have been shot to death with javelins. See Ayala, op. cit., p. 347 – '. . . E el Rey don Pedro le firio primera de una lanza . . .'

  7. In 1362, ibid., p. 336, also Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, p. 57 – 'El Rey Moro [Abu Said] hizo el Maestre muy amoroso recibimiento y le trato muy honrradamente' because he was a brother of Blanche de Padilla.

  8. Diego García de Padilla had been asked to advocate. Rades, op. cit., p. 58.

  9. Ayala, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 21, 22 – 'que el Rey Don Enrico le guardaria al seguro que le avia fecho'.

  10. Yet a contemporary critic of Juan Núñez of Calatrava had written 'Fué este maestre muy disoluto acerca de las mujeres'. O'Callaghan, op. cit., vol. 16, p. 25.

  11. See 'Catalogo dos Grampriores do Crato da Ordem de S. João de Malta' in C.A.R.P.H., vol. 4.

  12. See Torres y Tapia, Crónica de la Orden de Alcántara, vol. II, p. 179 – '. . . eran tantos los dardos, saetas, y lanzas que los Moros arrojaban, que se escaparon pocos de sus manos, y á ellas murio el Maestre.'

  13. In 1444 abbot John VI of Morimond conducted a visitation of Montesa and found novices so poverty-stricken that he ordered all future postulants to obtain this sum from their relatives, to maintain them until they acquired a commandery. O'Callaghan, op. cit., vol. 16, p. 14, n. 6.

  14. 'Their Badge a Red Cross with a white Twist in the middle.' Stevens, op. cit., p. 248.

  15. See MacDonald, Don Fernando de Antequerra.

  16. 'The increasing laxity in the Order of Calatrava must be traced chiefly to the admission to the ranks of men unworthy and unsuited to wield the spiritual and temporal swords in defence of Christendom . . . There were two major inducements: the opportunities for satisfying both personal ambition and greed.' O'Callaghan, op. cit., vol. 16, p. 285.

  17. See Múñoz de S. Pedro, Don Gutierre de Sotomayor, Maestre de Alcántara.

  18. See Highfield, 'The Catholic Kings and the Titled Nobility of Castile'.

  19. See MacDonald, op. cit.

  20. Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, p. 66. 'This don Enrique de Villena, Master of Calatrava, was greatly learned in the human sciences, that is to say in the liberal arts, astrology, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic and the like; in law and necromancy so much so, as is said and written with such admiration by so many people, that he is thought to have made a pact with the Devil.'

  21. See O'Callaghan, 'Don Pedro Girón, Master of the Order of Calatrava 1445–66', Hispania, vol. 21, 1961–2.

  22. 'His Manners and course of Life were wholly addicted to Debauchery and Lewdness.' Stevens, op. cit., p. 381.

  23. 'Then a Cryer proclaimed Sentence against the Kin
g, laying to his Charge many horrid Crimes. While the sentence was reading they leasurely stripped the statue of all its Robes, and at last with Reproachful Language threw it down from the Scaffold.' ibid., p. 407.

  24. 'Not long before the Master's Death, in the Territory of Jaén, there appeared such a multitude of Locusts that they hid the sun.' ibid., p. 408.

  25. Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, p. 78. 'Aqui yaze el muy magnifico y muy virtuoso Sennor el noble don Pedro Girón, Maestre de la Cauallería de la Orden de Calatrava, Camerero Mayor del Rey de Castilla y de León, y del su conseio: el equal en veynte annos que fue maestre, en mucha prosperidad esta orden rigio, defendio, y acrescento en muy grand puianza. Desta presente vida fallescio a dos dias de Mayo, Anno del Sennor De MCCCCLXVL.'

  26. Rades, Chrónica de Alcántara, p. 45. 'Ocasion de las discordias entre el Maestre y el Clauero.'

  27. ibid., p. 49. 'Dan al Maestre unos grillos de hierro por principio de la cena.'

  28. ibid., p. 47. 'Duquesa de Plasencia pretende el Maestradgo para su hijo.'

  29. 'Coplas que fizo por la muerte de su padre'. See Oxford Book of Spanish Verse (1965), p. 43. The translation is from Gerald Brenan's The Literature of the Spanish People (Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 99.

  CHAPTER 11: TRIUMPH AND NEMESIS

  1. Rades, Chrónica de Calatrava, p. 81. 'En tiempo de paz siempre residio en al Convento de Calatrava; y alli continuava el Choro y guardara en todo la vida reglar come buen reglar.'

  2. Pope Sixtus IV allowed freyles caballeros to wear clothes of whatever colour they wished, but they retained the white cloak with its distinguishing cross. O'Callaghan, op. cit., vol. 16, p. 37.

  3. These figures, which are often quoted, are those given by Marineo Siculo in Obra de las Casas Memorables de España.

  CHAPTER 12: READJUSTMENT AND THE TEMPLAR DISSOLUTION

  1. This was Fra' Foulques de Villaret, later Master. Riley-Smith, op. cit., p. 330.

  2. ibid., p. 328.

  3. ibid., pp. 210–13.

  4. See 'The Preceptory of Locko', V.C.H., Derbyshire, vol. 2, pp. 77–8.