Ep. 1 (128) - A Chivalric Order

Hello and welcome to a new season of the History of the Germans, the Teutonic Knights or to give them their full title, the knights of the hospital of St. Mary of the House of the Germans in Jerusalem. Even though the state they had created in Prussia has been wiped off the map with all its cultural markers, the Teutonic Knights are not forgotten. Less shrouded in nonsense than the Templars, less devoted to social causes than the Knights of St. John they still loom large not just in German history but even more so in Polish and Russian history. Both of these nations have placed victories over the Teutonic Knights at key junctions of their national narrative.

But were the Teutonic knights these near invincible, cruel faceless war machines that Sergei Eisenstein had charging over the ice to the sound of Prokofiev brilliant score? That is what we will try to find out over the next few episodes. Expect your fair share of heroic battles, chivalric entertainment all intermingled with twisted theology and astute commercial activity. I hope you will enjoy it.

But before we start let me tell you again that the History of the Germans and its offshoot podcasts are all advertising free. And that is more important than ever. Even if I look at just the last 12 months, podcast advertising has become more and more irritating. Publishers who have spent excessive amounts on hosts and production are forced to cram in more and more advertising to make back their investments. Podcasting networks who by the way take a cool 50% of all advertising revenues, convince independent podcasters to have their shows interrupted mid-sentence to push some crypto currency or the ubiquitous online mental health services. I find this worrying as it will drive people away from listening to openly available podcasts like this one. The author and journalist Cory Doctorow had described this process as follows: quote “Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” This is a family podcast so I will not use the term he coined for this, but if you are interested there is a link to his blogpost in the show notes.

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Back to the show.

And we start at the beginning:

n the year of His incarnation: 1190

It is a long way from Bremen and Lubeck merchants rigging a shelter for the sick and wounded to armed men clad in white robes embroidered with black crosses charging their enormous warhorses at lightly armed peasants across a frozen Baltic landscape.

To understand why in the medieval mind these two activities were just two sides of the same medal, we need to go back a few more centuries further and talk about the values and behaviours of the medieval ruling elite that goes by the term of chivalry.

The Teutonic Knights were a chivalric military order and the reason they and the other chivalric orders like the Templar and the Knights Hospitallers came to into existence is down to this rather convoluted and contradictory worldview.

Chivalry traces back to three sources. One were older Germanic and Scandinavian ideas about what it meant to be a warrior. Then there are the core teachings of the church and we have the concepts of courtly love and behaviour that emerge out of nothing during the 12th and 13th century.

In Germanic tribal culture, being a warrior was seen as the pinnacle of human achievement that required lifelong training that started in early childhood. But fighting skills wasn’t all. They differentiated between honourable warriors and well-trained thugs. And the key difference between the two was loyalty, meaning loyalty to the tribe, to the leader and to the warriors under ones command. So loyalty went both ways. The warrior would defend the king, earl or chieftain with his life. In return the leader would ensure the warrior gets an opportunity to become rich. Plunder had to be divided justly between the leader and his men and sometimes women. And if the leader was either unable or unwilling to provide the opportunities for enrichment, that leader could and would be replaced.

This warrior culture relished fighting almost as fighting for fighting’s sake. They embraced not just the physical challenge, but also the inevitable consequence, i.e., lots of fighting means lots of death. But falling in battle held little threat for Norsemen, Goths, Franks, Lombards and Burgundians since an honourable death led straight to a seat at the feasts in Valhalla, where one could continue straight away with the fighting and drinking, presumably now without the risk of actual death.

If one had the misfortune of being defeated and not dying in the battle, there were two potential outcomes. If one had fought valiantly and the lack of dying was down to simply being unlucky, the warrior would be executed in a way that was considered a honourable death that got him safely into Valhalla. If he had behaved cowardly, for instance had surrendered, the warrior was refused such honour and was sold into slavery instead.

That changed around the 9th century. Warriors that were captured were now neither executed nor sold but ransomed back to their families. Why that happened isn’t quite clear.

It may be that the emergence of a Carolingian empire fostered some notion of unity amongst the Frankish aristocrats. Even when fighting over a plot of land, a girl or an insult, both sides in the conflict were members of the same elite, the Frankish nobility. And this elite mingled across ever larger distances, made friends and married each other’s sisters.

Another component was that the church had banned Christians from keeping or enslaving fellow Christians. Enslaving pagans was perfectly fine, just not Christians. And that meant any enemy who was captured could not be turned into profit any other way than by sending him back for ransom.

And lastly, that dying business had become a lot less fun now that the gates of Valhalla had been shut for good. A ruthless warrior was now going straight to hell unless he had done penance before it was all over. Seeing the pearly gates vanishing in the distance a defeated knight was better off to yield, pay ransom and have another go at either the same enemy or eternal salvation. And in turn the victor was now expected to accept the submission of his fellow knight and treat him with respect whilst they were waiting for the cash to arrive.

This practice of capturing and ransoming enemies sounds like a material improvement to the violent nature of the early medieval world. But unfortunately it had unintended consequences that led to more, rather than less violence.

As we get into the 10th and 11th century feuding became more and more common in particular in France. The reason for that was that the risk involved in feuding had reduced dramatically. Advances in armour had reduced the risk of getting killed in fighting, and that would only be a risk where the feuding lords did indeed meet in open battle rather than just burning down each other’s villages. The higher survival rate and the practice of releasing fellow aristocrats for ransom meant they would be back in their castle a few months later once a cash had been exchanged.

At that point the downside of armed conflict with your neighbour became solely financial. And proud knights were trained not to look after the pennies, so that feuds proliferated. In particular in areas where the central authority was weak or even non-existent like France from the 10th century and the empire after the death of Henry III in the 11th century. More feuds meant more dead peasants, more burned down villages, churches and even monasteries.

The latter is where the strain of chivalry comes in, the Christian religion. The way this is usually told is that the church was seeking ways to restrain the amount of violence by making the chevaliers swear an oath not to fight from Thursday to Sunday, to spare women, children, unarmed prelates, and even merchants etc., etc. And, yes, it is true that many bishops and abbots called large gatherings where the knights present were made to swear solemn oaths before holy relics to keep the peace sanctioned by eternal damnation.

But to claim there was a huge standoff between the bellicose warrior aristocrats and the peace-loving churchmen is just plain wrong. The bishops and abbots were the brothers and cousins of the knights and counts. They had grown up together and often shared the same upbringing, education and training.

And not just that. These thuggish plunderers were as devoted Christians as everybody else in medieval western Europe. These men cared deeply about their souls and struggled quite profoundly with the chasm that existed between their profession and lifestyle on one side and the teachings of the bible, not only the new testament’s turning the other cheek, but even the Old Testament’s, though shalt not kill and though shalt not covet your neighbours house, wife, servants, ox, donkey or anything.

We hear of knights wholeheartedly repenting their sins. That usually meant donating land or rights to monasteries. In some cases knights would end their years as monks relentlessly praying for forgiveness.

One of these repentant sinners was an early grand masters of the Teutonic Knights, Konrad, the Landgrave of Thuringia. Konrad had captured and completely destroyed the city of Fritzlar in some feud or war. After that he was so wrecked by guilt for what he had done, he went to Fritzlar to do penance. Here is what happened according to the chronicle by Nicolaus of Jeroschin, quote: “Bareheaded and barefoot he walked around the churchyard at the head of a procession and then he lay down at the door of the churchyard in that town and offered to allow himself to be beaten by the people there with a rod which he was carrying as recompense for the humiliation and the crimes he had inflicted on them. When no-one hit him he did not give up: he went from house to house through the town falling on his knees at every door. He pleaded with the occupants to come out and beat him as much as they wished for his sins. He shed many tears begging them to forgive him for the guilt he had incurred and that is what happened. Many people wept with him out of sympathy for the violent emotions called forth by his penitence. The prince went right through the city and was not beaten at all except by an old woman who struck him so hard on the body with the sharp rod that she drew blood, taking revenge for his sin. The lord suffered this patiently.”

We do not know whether or not that was indeed what happened and whether he did this voluntarily may be debated. But this was a story the Teutonic Knights told each other about their venerable forebearers as an example of knightly behaviour. We can assume that a high aristocrat, cousin of the emperor humiliating himself in such a fashion shows that penance for acts of violence was something the knights had to and were willing to accept.

And it also shows the fundamental contradiction at the centre of chivalry.

On the one hand knights have been trained and conditioned to be warriors. That was the way to gain the respect of your fellow men, to defend your family and to become wealthy. It wasn’t just a skill, but a way of life, a way of life every male in their family had lived since time immemorial and that chivalric literature celebrated.

But on the other hand the knights realised that all this violence was in total contravention of their religious beliefs. Jesus had preached about peace, about turning the other cheek, had steadied Paul’s sword and let’s not forget accepted the state’s violence against the son of god. And even the more warlike old testament is full of suggestions to turn swords into ploughshares.

This is an unsustainable situation. The elites of western europe are told every Sunday at mass that their main raison d’etre will land them in hell. And the people who told the warriors that they should cut the fighting were the bishops and abbots, who in turn were their own brothers, sons and cousins.

In light of that these Truces of God take on a very different meaning. If the rule is that one isn’t allowed to kill peasants from Thursday to Sunday, it implies it is perfectly ok to kill them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. If the murder and rape of women, children and prelates is banned, it implies that slaughtering adult males must be acceptable, provided it is a Tuesday.

This inverse interpretation of the Truce of God provided relief from spiritual torment for many, but the more thoughtful souls realised that this was a mere fig leaf.

And by the 11th century the third pillar of chivalry was erected. This one does not trace back to an ancient cultural notion but is a genuine invention of the Middle Ages, the idea of courtly love. Courtly love is the concept that a good knight would become an even better knight through the devotion to a woman, ideally a lady of much higher social standing who was completely unobtainable.

This concept of male devotion is a very European cultural ideal that you will not find to the same degree in other cultures and that has also largely disappeared in the modern world. Imagine a first class footballer like Ronaldo, Messi, Tony Kroos or Sergio Agüero would declare on television that his unrequited love for Kate Middleton is what had made him so great.

The place where all these different strains of chivalry come together is the tournament. A tournament provided the opportunity to display one’s skill as a warrior by competing with fellow aristocrats who all had willingly accepted the risk of getting maimed or killed in the process. No women, orphans and prelates anywhere in sight. A victor could display knightly magnanimity towards his defeated opponent by letting him live and gain riches by accepting the other’s weapons and horse as ransom for his release. And finally a knight could dedicate his performance to a lady of his choosing, thereby declaring his devotion. Ut despite all its advantages in bridging the inherent contradictions in chivalry, the church still banned them as frivolous wastes of blood and money.

This is the situation on the verge of the crusades. The social elite, the warrior class of Europe had developed a code of conduct that was sending them to hell and all attempts at finding a compromise with the church had failed.

call for the first crusade in: 1095

The first crusade had been a truly unbelievable success. Sending out an army for thousands of miles without functioning supply lines to take on an enemy that was economically and militarily far superior would normally be called a suicide mission. And for many that is what it turned out to be. But some made it to Jerusalem and even conquered the city. And that is where the problems began.

The kingdom of Jerusalem had a serious security problem. Once the city was taken and the pilgrims had prayed at all the holy sites, most of the crusaders returned home. After all they had not come to settle in the Holy Land, just to free the sites.

At the same time as the military leaders and their retinue shipped in for France and England, the arriving ships brought new, mostly unarmed pilgrims keen to pray not just at the Holy Sepulchre but in Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee and Jericho to name a few. Travelling there was extremely dangerous. The Muslim neighbours of the crusader state had remained unsurprisingly hostile, but more importantly, the kingdom of Jerusalem lacked the resources to clear the roads of thieves and brigands. Pilgrims tell of bodies of murdered travellers lining the roads as it was too dangerous to stop and bury them.

agne, Hugh de Paynes vowed in: 1119

This new religious confraternity were a huge success. Whilst a crusade was by definition a temporary endeavour, the Templars were a permanent outlet for young men seeking to combine their training as efficient killing machines with piety. More and more of these joined. At the same time, the pilgrims who had enjoyed the protection of the Templars, their friends and family back home and after a while anyone who wanted to make a contribution to the crusading effort donated whatever they could. That could range from ones best cloak, to a horse, a small plot of land to the king of Aragon who wanted to grant the Templars a third of his kingdom.

There was however one major problem with all this. The Templars had quite early on decided they wanted to be a religious community. A broadly sensible thing to do as the idea was to create a lasting organisation and nothing in the medieval world was more built for eternity than monasteries. The issue was that there had been a longstanding rule that clerics were not allowed to yield swords. And this rule had generally been observed. Even though there were many a warlike bishop, they would go to some lengths to remain at least within the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Some bishops would just act as generals directing operations without taking up a sword themselves, others would get into the melee with axes, clubs and maces, as long as these weren’t swords.

That is where our least favourite saint, St. Bernhard of Clairvaux comes in. He is well aware of the sound theological basis for the ban on violence (you know stuff like turn the other cheek, thou shalt not kill, love thy enemy, swords to ploughshare). But that cannot hold back this fervent warrior of Christ. He fully embraces this new Knighthood exclaiming (quote):

“What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!”(end quote)

I am pretty sure I have heard something similar not too long ago.

As we know, Saint Bernhard of Clairvaux is the most powerful man in europe, more powerful than either pope or emperor. Two years after Bernhard publishes his praise of the Templars, pope Innocent II recognises them as a military religious order, a religious community that is allowed to kill heathens, pagans and all other sorts of misguided souls. Moreover he allowed them to build their own oratories, relieved them from paying the tithe and freed from the authority of any bishop, being subject to the pope alone.

That was in: 1139

But as you probably know, the Templars weren’t the only early military order. There were also the Knights of St. John or Knights Hospitaller as they are known too.

Their origin is too driven by the practicalities of medieval Palestine. It wasn’t only the roads that were dangerous in the Holy Land. There was also the heat and diseases the pilgrims bodies weren’t used to. Many travellers set out for the Holy Lands were already elderly, doing penance for a long life of contraventions against the rules of the church. A lot of them died there.

t the time of Muslim rule. In: 1023

And they would have remained just another pious order had it not been for the leadership of a French knight, Raymon de Puy. It is during his tenure as Grand master that the Hospitallers gradually transformed into a military order, offering support to the pilgrims en route, manning castles and ultimately sending 500 knights and retinue into a campaign in Egypt. Knights were admitted as brothers since 1150 but it took until 1204 before the statutes were formally turning the Knights Hospitallers into a military order.

By: 1190

The first crusade took place in 1195 to 1199, a period which is still dominated by the Investiture Controversy. Henry IV is still emperor and he is not inclined to help the hateful pope Urban II. Many of the great imperial princes fear that if they leave on crusade, the emperor or his enemies will seize their lands.

That being said, there are many people of the lower classes who catch the crusading fever and set off barefoot to walk to Jerusalem, the vast majority of them perishing en route or sre finally routed by the Turks in Anatolia.

Of the few nobles who set out for Jerusalem, most see their endeavour descending into an orgy of blood and horror when they brutally ransacked the Jewish communities in the Rhineland. They find their route blocked at the Hungarian border and made to return home. If you want to hear that again, it was in episode 38 – The First Crusade.

ard of Clairvaux - set off in: 1147

One young prince who had been with Konrad during the Second Crusade, will make his own go at it some 40 years later. Frederick I, Barbarossa led an army much larger than his uncle Konrad’s through Hungary, Bulgaria, the Byzantine empire and through Anatolia without severe losses. He even conquered the city of Konya the place Konrad III had so desperately hoped he could get to before his supplies ran out. But just as the army was descending the Cilician gates heading into the safety of Armenia the aged emperor took a dip in the river Saleph, a dip from which he did not resurface. This was a clear sign of God’s displeasure with the whole enterprise and the enormous army rapidly dissolved. Only a rump entity led by Barbarossa’s son, duke Frederick of Swabia pressed on further to Acre. If you want to hear that story again, it was in Episode 65 – The Third Crusade

Acre is where the armies of the Third Crusade, those of king Philipp Augustus Of France, Richard the Lionheart of England and the remainder of the great imperial host had gathered. Jerusalem and the rest of the crusader state had fallen to Saladin a few years earlier. The Latins were clinging on to a small stretch of land along the coast. Acre was a great fortress that once taken would make a suitable temporary capital of the kingdom.

This is the year: 1190

According to the chronicler Peter of Duisburg this modest hospital under a sail from a cog was a hit with all the great princes assembled before Acre. He lists them all, from Lord Eymar of Caesaria to Bishop Conrad of Wurzburg, all praising the good work being done here. And urging duke Frederic of Swabia to write to his brother, the emperor Henry VI to endorse this new order and compel the pope to grant them a charter that puts them on par with the Templars and Hospitallers.

If that had been true, it would have been truly remarkable. Just remember who founded the field hospital of the Germans before Acre? It wasn’t some great prince, not even a lord, a knight, an aristocrat as well connected as Hugh de Paynes of the Templars or Raymond de Puy of the Hospitallers. No none of the above. At least some other kind of important crusader, a bishop, abbot, the patriarch maybe. All the sources are unanimous, it was some unnamed merchants from Bremen and Lubeck who set up the hospital, cared for the sick and thereby founded the Teutonic Knights. And they had come here, not on the hard route through the Balkans and Turkey, no, these guys had come by ship. They had taken their cogs and sailed them through the Channel, across the bay of Biscay, down the Spanish coast, through the straits of Gibraltar via Sicily and Cyprus to Palestine. And now their old worn-out sail protects exhausted and delirious wounded men from the unrelenting sun.

This is a modest start. These guys may well get some sponsorship from Frederick of Swabia who was an able commander and surely recognised how important it was to have a hospital staffed with personnel who spoke his soldiers native tongue. So he may well have given them support and advised his brother of their existence and that it would be worth to give them imperial endorsement.

But that suddenly the crème de la crème of Europe would have gathered around a field hospital to give them a leg up into the big league, that sounds a bit far-fetched.

pital under its protection in: 1191

It seems as if the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans as it was called had played a role in Henry VI. plans for his crusade. At least the hospital received generous donations from the emperor. He may have also suggested to those men who set out for Acre to join this new order.

This sponsorship by the Hohenstaufen family was crucial for the rise of the Teutonic Knights from relative obscurity. But it cannot explain what would make a German knight in search of redemption for his sins and looking for a chance of guilt-free killing choose to join a humble hospital rather than the glamorous Templars or Hospitallers.

Was it the language issue. Sure that matters when you are lying in agony on a blood splattered mattress and want to hear some reassuring words, but does it matter what language they speak when you are feasting, hunting and fighting with the finest knights in Christendom.

Was there a major rift between the French and English crusaders on one side and the Imperial Germans on the other? Well, it was the siege of Acre where Richard the Lionheart insulted the duke of Austria which led to his imprisonment and final ransom by emperor Henry VI. That story had surely made its way to Palestine. But it is unlikely to have led to resentment. Richard the Lionheart may be an English hero in the eyes of 19th century British historians, his contemporaries disliked him profoundly. The reason he was captured in Austria was purely down to the fact that he travelled via Vienna. He would have been apprehended pretty much anywhere he would have tried to get home. He chose this detour via the Alps to avoid the kingdom of France where his arch-enemy Philipp Augustus would have never released him.

To understand the appeal of the Teutonic Knights, we have to get back to the whole theme of chivalry. The code of conduct of chivalry applied only to noble knights, noble ladies and presumably noble orphans and prelates. Non-aristocrats were neither protected by it nor invited to participate. Only warriors who had been born free and had received the elevation to true knight could join the club.

Now in Germany there were many men who looked like knights, who lived in castles and had armour and warhorses. But what they weren’t knights. They were the Ministeriales, these serf knights who were at least originally not fee men. Even though many of them had been living an aristocratic lifestyle for several generations had married into true aristocratic families, they could not quite shake their servile origins.

It is likely that true aristocratic orders like the Templars and the Hospitallers were reluctant to take on the great- grandson of a slave. The Teutonic knights were free of such snobbish behaviour. After all their founders were some merchants who may well have been from ministeriale families tehmselves. Becoming a Teutonic knight elevated someone from serf knight to true knight. We will see that throughout its history the Teutonic Knights – with few exceptions – recruited mainly from the lower nobility and even their masters, including their greatest master, Hermann von Salza, had been Ministeriales.

And that is who we are going to talk about next week, Hermann von Salza, the man who put the Teutonic Knights on the map. Thanks to Hermann von Salza, the difference between the Teutonic Knights and the other orders is not limited to their recruitment policy. Expect us zipping across the map from Palestine to Egypt, Sicily, Rome, Greece, Armenia, Transylvania and finally Prussia. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go, there are two last items on the agenda. First, I want to again thank those amongst you who have signed up on Patreon at patreon.com/historyofthegermans or who have made a generous one-time donation at historyofthegermans.com. I really, really appreciate your generosity.

And lastly you can find a bibliography in the show notes and in historyofthegermans/resources/bookrecommendations. Check it out. There are a few more English language ones available.