The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, mainly known as the Knights Templar, was a French military order of the Catholic faith, and one of the wealthiest and most popular military orders in Western Christianity. They were founded c. 1119 to defend pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, with their headquarters located there on the Temple Mount, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.
The Hospitallers of St Thomas of Canterbury at Acre, usually called the Knights of St Thomas, was a Christian military order of the Catholic Church. Membership was restricted to Englishmen.
A military order is a Christian religious society of knights. The original military orders were the Knights Templar, the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Order of Saint James, the Order of Calatrava, and the Teutonic Knights. They arose in the Middle Ages in association with the Crusades, in the Holy Land, the Baltics, and the Iberian peninsula; their members being dedicated to the protection of pilgrims and Christians, as well as the defence of the Crusader states. They are the predecessors of chivalric orders.
The crusading movement encompasses the framework of ideologies and institutions that described, regulated, and promoted the Crusades. The crusades were religious wars that the Christian Latin church initiated, supported, and sometimes directed during the Middle Ages. The members of the church defined this movement in legal and theological terms that were based on the concepts of holy war and pilgrimage. In theological terms, the movement merged ideas of Old Testament wars, that were believed to have been instigated and assisted by God, with New Testament ideas of forming personal relationships with Christ. The institution of crusading began with the encouragement of the church reformers who had undertaken what is commonly known as the Gregorian Reform in the 11th century. It declined after the 16th century Protestant Reformation.
During the period of the Crusades, turcopoles were locally recruited mounted archers and light cavalry employed by the Byzantine Empire and the Crusader states. A leader of these auxiliaries was designated as Turcopolier, a title subsequently given to a senior officer in the Knights Templars and the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, in charge of the coastal defences of Rhodes and Malta. In addition to the two Military Orders, the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem employed king's Turcoples under the direction of a Grand Turcopolier.
Hugh Nigel Kennedy is a British medievalist and academic. He specialises in the history of the early Islamic Middle East, Muslim Iberia and the Crusades. From 1997 to 2007, he was Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Arabic at SOAS, University of London.
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller, is a Catholic military order. It was founded in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century and had headquarters there until 1291, thereafter being based in Kolossi Castle in Cyprus (1302–1310), the island of Rhodes (1310–1522), Malta (1530–1798), and Saint Petersburg (1799–1801).
Malcolm Charles Barber is a British medievalist. He has been described as the world's leading living expert on the Knights Templar. He is considered to have written the two most comprehensive books on the subject, The Trial of the Templars (1978) and The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple (1994). He has been an editor for The Journal of Medieval History and written many articles on the Templars, the Cathars, various elements of the Crusades, and the reign of Philip IV of France.
Peter JacksonFBA is a British scholar and historian, specializing in the Crusades, particularly the contacts between the Europeans and the Mongols as well as medieval Muslim India. He is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at Keele University and editor of The Cambridge History of Iran: The Timurid and Safavid Periods.
Jean de Villiers was the twenty-second grand master of the Knights Hospitaller, serving from 1285 until 1293. He was elected Grand Master after the death of Nicolas Lorgne. De Villiers was Prior of France beginning in 1282 and he remained in France to deal with existing problems of the Order. Jacques de Taxi became Grand Master ad interim, perhaps through 27 June 1286, while awaiting the arrival of the newly elected Grand Master in the Holy Land. De Villiers was present at the Siege of Acre in 1291, but escaped just before the city fell to the Mamluks. He was succeeded by Odon de Pins.
Jonathan Simon Christopher Riley-Smith was a historian of the Crusades, and, between 1994 and 2005, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge. He was a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
The Militia or Order of the (Holy) Faith of Jesus Christ was an ephemeral military order founded in Languedoc in or shortly before 1221. It owed its origins probably to Folquet de Marselha, the Bishop of Toulouse; Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, leader of the Albigensian Crusade; and possibly to Dominic of Caleruega, the founder of the Friars Preachers.
The Confraternity of Belchite was an "experimental" community of knights founded in 1122 by Alfonso the Battler, king of Aragon and Navarre, and lasting until shortly after 1136. Members could enlist permanently or for a set time, vowing "never to live at peace with the pagans but to devote all their days to molesting and fighting them". When the Emperor Alfonso VII confirmed the charter of the confraternity, he specified that it existed "for the defence of Christians and the oppression of Saracens". A Christian organisation dedicated to a holy war against Muslims (reconquista), its impetus and development coincide with that of the international military orders and it introduced the concept of an indulgence proportional to length of service.
Graham Anthony Loud is a professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Leeds. Loud is a specialist in the history of southern Italy during the Central Middle Ages, and also in German history in the Staufen period.
Peter Biller is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of York, where he has taught since 1970. Biller is general editor of the York Medieval Press, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research interests include academic thought, heresy, inquisition including AHRB funded research on inquisition trials, and medicine in medieval Europe. He is a member of the board of Bollettino della Società di Studi Valdesi. He is married to mathematician Miggy Biller.
André Raymond was professor emeritus at the University of Provence. He was an expert on the history of the city in the Arab world.
Helen J. Nicholson FRHistS FLSW is Emerita Professor of Medieval History and former Head of the History Department at Cardiff University. She is a world-leading expert on the military religious orders and the Crusades, including the history of the Templars.
Joseph of Chauncy, also known as Joseph of Cancy, was an English religious knight. He was Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in England from 1273 to 1281. He served as Royal Treasurer of the Order from 1273 to 1280.
This list of works on the history of the Crusades and their mainly Muslim opponents, provides a select bibliography of modern works that are frequently cited in books, papers and articles that discuss these "holy wars". Thousands of histories on these topics have been published between the 11th and 21st centuries; this page only lists modern works on the topic. Works included are referenced in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly secondary sources or journals. Included works are: published by an independent academic or notable non-governmental publisher; authored by an independent and notable subject matter expert; or have significant independent scholarly journal reviews.
