Templars and Hospitallers in the Cities of the West and the Latin East (Twelfth to Thirteenth Centuries)

ISSN： 1476-5276

Source： Crusades, Vol.12, Iss.1, 2013-06, pp. : 103-120

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Abstract

Scholars usually consider the military orders as essentially involved in the agrarian economy and seigniorial society. However, this understanding is not entirely correct. All military orders were connected to the urban world from their origins and they built close spiritual and economic ties with urban societies. The aim of this article is to present some of the most recent research that has reappraised the role of the military orders in medieval towns. This survey is limited to the cases of the Temple and the Hospital, and it considers the question mainly in southern Europe (northern Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and southern France), including some brief comparisons with the Holy Land. The article first discusses the ways in which commanderies contributed to the “urban fabric” by examining the conventual buildings and the orders' policies of urbanization. Then, it turns to the social and spiritual networks and to the economic practices that the brethren managed to develop in places where several other churches were already deeply rooted. Finally, the study of urban commanderies enables us to better understand the transition from traditional monasticism to the new mendicant orders, with whom the military orders shared many similarities. Despite a few exceptions, it is nevertheless true that the economic activity and the spirituality of the military orders were in complete harmony with the urban expansion of the High Middle Ages.