International Mobility in the Military Orders (twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)

Book excerpt: International Mobility is an anthology of essays by an international team of experts on the travels of the brothers of the international military religious orders: the Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and others, during the Middle Ages. The military orders, particularly the Templars and Hospitallers, depended on intense West-East contacts and networks of extensive geographical proportions (from Spain to the Middle East, from Scotland to Northern Africa) for the exchange of personnel, resources, and monies. To date there has been no comprehensive study of the international contacts, networks and mobility of these orders. The essays collected here consider these questions from a variety of perspectives: general aspects and individual cases; the mobilization of resources for the East; regional studies - mobility and the military orders in the West; and national considerations in the international arena.