Teutonic Knights Read Online Free PDF

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