The Knights which belonged to the great orders during the Middle Ages were regarded by the Church in a manner analogous to those monks whose three vows they professed and whose immunities they shared. They answered to the pope and to him only; they each had their chapels, their clerics, and their very own cemeteries, all of which were exempt from the jurisdiction of the secular clergy. Their landed property was free from tithes or any other taxes. They were not subject to the interdicts which the bishops in those days so freely employed as a means of controlling the people. However, they did not all follow the same monastic rule. The Templars as well as all the Orders derived from them followed the Cistercian Reform. On the other hand, the Hospitallers followed the Rule of St. Augustine. Nevertheless, in consequence of the relaxation which manifested itself among them after the period of the crusades, the Holy See introduced mitigations in favour of the non-clerical brethren.
For these it was difficult to maintain the rule of celibacy in all its rigour; they were permitted, in certain orders, to marry once, and that only with a maiden. Even where second marriages were tolerated, they had to vow conjugal fidelity, so that if they violated this obligation of the natural law they sinned doubly against the law and against their vow. Besides the three vows, the rule bound the brethren to the exercises of the monastic life and all it entailed, including the recitation of the Hours, for which, in the case of illiterates, a fixed number of Paters was substituted. It also prescribed their dress and their food, and their feast, abstinence, and fast days. Lastly, the rule imposed detailed obligations in regard to the election of dignitaries and the admission of members to the two ranks of combatants -- knights and men-at-arms -- and the two of non-combatants -- chaplains, to whom all sacerdotal functions were reserved, and casaliers, or tenants, who were charged with the management of temporal affairs.
Military organizations
The military organization of the orders was uniform, explained by that law of war which compels the belligerent to maintain his military apparatus on a level with those of his adversary, on pain of defeat. The strength of an army was in its cavalry, and to this type the armament, mounting, and tactics of the military orders conformed. The knights-brethren were the heavy cavalry; the men-at-arms-brethren, the light cavalry. The former were entitled to three horses a piece; the latter had to be content with one.
Among the former, only knights of tried prowess were admitted, or, in default of this qualification, sons of knights, because in such families the warlike spirit and military training were considered to be hereditary. The result was that the knights, properly so-called, were never very numerous; they formed a corps d'élite which carried the great mass of the crusaders. Gathered in convents which were also barracks, combining with the passive obedience of the soldier, the spontaneous submission of the religious, living shoulder to shoulder in brotherly union, commander and subordinate, these orders surpassed, in that cohesiveness which is the ideal of every military organization, the most famous bodies of picked soldiery known to history, from the Macedonian phalanx to the Ottoman Janissaries.
RB
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