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Order, that they act in their office of the Order in such a way as not to depart from God.
    Pray for the brothers who hold no office, that they may use their time purposefully and zealously in worship, so that those who hold office and they themselves may be useful and pious.
    Pray for those who are fallen in deadly sin, that God may help them back into his Grace and that they may escape eternal punishment.
    Pray for the lands that lie near the pagans, that God may come to their aid with his Counsel and Power, that belief in God and Love can be spread there, so that they can withstand all their enemies.
    Pray for those who are friends and associates of the Order, and also for those who do good actions or who seek to do them, that God may reward them.
    Pray for all those who have left us inheritances or gifts that neither in life nor in death does God allow them to depart from Him. Especially pray for Duke Friedrich of Swabia and King Heinrich his brother, who was Emperor, and for the honourable burghers of Lübeck and Bremen, who founded our Order. Remember also Duke Leopold of Austria, Duke Conrad of Masovia, and Duke Sambor of Pomerellia . . . Remember also our dead brothers and sisters . . . Let each remember the soul of his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters. Pray for all believers, that God may give them eternal peace. May they rest in peace. Amen.
    Understanding the religious idealism of the Teutonic Order is fundamental to comprehending the ways it carried out its mission. It was an important aspect to all the military orders, as important as radical Protestantism was to Cromwell’s Roundheads, or communion in both kinds to a Czech Hussite. If the narrative sources do not dwell upon this religiosity, it is no surprise. No author has yet been able to make an endless round of prayer, contemplation, and corporate worship into interesting reading. But the order’s chroniclers constantly referred to the piety of individuals and of convents, even to the point of disturbing their narratives. It should be borne in mind that even medieval historians had a good sense of what made a good story, and they knew that dramatic events captured the ears of their audience. The Old Testament was dearer to their heart than was the New – and that, perhaps, is the key to the religious thought of the military orders.
    The total involvement of the individual in a religious life is not often found today, and many find it difficult to believe that people once seriously considered it normal behaviour. Therefore some people living today regard those who are deeply religious in the medieval sense as freaks or hypocrites. We easily accept contradictions in our own behaviour but demand a consistency from medieval man that makes him either a saint or a brutal impostor. The knights and priests born between 1180 and 1500 were neither. They were complex personalities who had varying reasons for entering a religious life, but certainly almost all of them saw themselves as part of a divine plan that made order out of chaos and gave reason to their lives. Whatever else they might do in this world made little sense when compared to the vast span of eternity that lay ahead in the death that waits inevitably for each one of us. To them any other behaviour, particularly any behaviour that ignored the fate of one’s immortal soul, was foolish and dangerous.
    Firm in the belief that they had chosen the right path, the knights followed it, convinced that destiny had really given them no choice. Success or failure, victory or defeat, were incidental and in the hands of God. Pride in their achievements, they knew, would bring swift retribution in the form of battlefield defeat but would not slow the divine plan for an instant. Their duty lay in acceptance and obedience – and, fortunately for them, the divine voice usually told them what they wanted to hear.
    Warrior Monks
    The accuracy of the foregoing passages notwithstanding, life in a convent of