The Teutonic Knights were founded much later than the
Templars or Hospitallers and won their greatest fame and fortune fighting,
conquering and ruling in northeastern Europe rather than the Holy Land. However, they had their roots in the siege of Acre and throughout the 13th
century they played a very important role in the history of the crusader
states. Dr. Schrader provides a short history of their role in the Latin
East in three parts, starting today with the foundation and early years.
The Teutonic Knights evolved out of a “fraternity” of German
crusaders who took part in the siege of Acre during the Third Crusade. These crusaders, predominantly from the free
Hansa cities of Bremen and Luebeck, established a hospital to care for the sick
in the siege camp. The Hospitallers were, of course, present at the siege, so
the need for an additional hospital appears to have been driven by the fact
that many German crusaders were not comfortable speaking Latin or French, the
languages of the Hospital. They preferred entrusting themselves to the care of
men who spoke German.
The German Hospital (as it was called at that time) soon
acquired such a good reputation that the son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa,
the Duke of Swabia, leading the remnants of his father’s crusade, chose to be
treated there when he became deathly ill during the siege of Acre. He also wrote to his brother, the Holy Roman
Emperor Henry VI, requesting that he petition the papacy to recognize
the German Hospital as a religious order.
He then requested that the German Hospital assume responsibility for his
burial.
The problem with that was that fraternity running the German
Hospital was not yet composed of monks so the Hospitallers challenged
their right to conduct a burial. Feeling threatened by the Hospitallers, the
Germans turned to the Knights Templar for protection. The Templars took the
German brothers under their wing, granting them the right to wear the white
habit of the Templars, but with a black half-cross (rather than the red Templar
cross) inside a circle. What is more, a Templar, a certain Henry Walpot, was
appointed the first “Master.”
Meanwhile, back in the West the pope granted the emperor’s
request to recognize the German Hospital as a religious order, and told them to
adopt the Rule of the Hospitallers. For the next eight years, the German
Hospital, which had been granted land inside the re-captured city of Acre by King Guy de
Lusignan, remained a hospital. Its
reputation with German pilgrims was high. Whether they died in the Holy Land or
returned home, many German pilgrims bequeathed wealth and land to the German
Hospital.
In 1198 a large contingent of German knights raised by
Emperor Henry VI arrived in Acre as the spearhead of a new crusade. The death
of the Emperor led to the premature dissolution of this crusade, but a few of
knights chose to remain in the Holy Land to continue fighting for the recovery of the
holy sites. They pleaded for the militarization of the German Hospital. This was
granted, and the Templar Rule was adopted for the fighting elements.
The new character of the Order, now known as the Teutonic
(German) Order (Deutscher Orden or sometimes Deutscher Ritter-Orden) did not
lead to an explosion in manpower. On the
contrary, in 1210 the Order was able to muster only ten knights. One is reminded of the
Templars whose strength was initially just nine nights.
The new master, however, was a certain Herman von Salza, the
son of a Thuringian family in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor, who is
believed to have gone to the Holy Land in the entourage of the Count of
Thuringia. Herman proved to be a man of
exceptional ability, particularly as a diplomat, and he was able to vastly
increase the wealth, prestige and influence of the fledgling order.
One of his first acts appears to have been a break with the
Templars themselves as it was in exactly 1210 that the Templars complained to
the pope that the Teutons were wearing the while mantle of the Templars
“illegally.” I.e. because they were no longer subordinate to the Templars, they
no longer had the right to wear the white mantle. The pope agreed with the
Templars. Salza ignored both the Templars and the Pope.
Presumably they could get away with this because they
already enjoyed the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor, Fredrick II
Hohenstaufen. By 1217, Frederick was allowing the Teutonic Knights to draw
income from his own revenues to pay for their (illegal) white mantles. The
Hohenstaufen support for the Teutonic Knights went back, of course to the Duke
of Swabia, but Fredrick II had his own reason to favor them: he was employing
Salza as his envoy to the German princes in efforts to drum up support for the
latest crusade and ― more importantly ― as his spokesman for his excuses to the
pope for his own absence from that crusade.
The Teutonic Knights, few in number though they were, took
part in the Fifth Crusade, and this proved to be decisive in their fortunes.
The Fifth Crusade was a debacle. After the crusaders captured the Egyptian city
of Damietta, the Sultan of Egypt al-Kamil offered to restore Jerusalem and the entire Muslim-occupied lands of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem in exchange for the return of Damietta to Egypt. The
leadership of the crusade, notably Cardinal Pelagius, refused. The subsequent
attempt to seize Cairo got mired down, the Egyptian navy successfully cut off the
crusaders’ supplies, and forced them to sue for terms. The survivors were
allowed to leave on the condition of returning Damietta, and so the crusade
ended with nothing but shame and casualties ― except for the Teutonic Knights
and Herman von Salza. Salza had urged
the acceptance of al-Kamil’s terms, thereby setting himself apart from the bulk
of the leadership, while his knights had distinguished themselves in the
fighting.
Recruits, grants, and privileges flooded in. The Order officially
started to accept “confratres” ― secular men and women who, without taking
monastic vows, affiliated themselves with the order for a limited period of
time rather than for life. This significantly inflated their manpower
reserves. Meanwhile, the pope granted
the Order a variety of privileges ― including all the privileges previously
reserved for the Templars and Hospitallers. Frederick II likewise showered the
Teutonic Knights with gifts of land and taxation rights, while the Patriarch of
Jerusalem sang their praises.
Yet the Holy Land remained imperiled and Jerusalem and other
holy sites were still in Muslim hands. The Teutonic Knights, like the Templars
and Hospitallers, set about preaching and recruiting for yet another crusade. After
the disastrous results of the two preceding expeditions (the hijacking by
Venice of a crusade intended to restore Christian rule in the Holy Land for an
attack on Constantinople and the fiasco on
the Nile) the response was understandably anemic.
Frederick II, who had twice sworn to lead a crusade, kept
putting off the date of departure, and he again employed Herman von Salza as
his envoy to the pope to receive the necessary dispensation. It was possibly Salza that came up with the
idea of Frederick’s marriage to the heiress of Jerusalem, Yolanda (Isabella
II). The idea, whether it originated
with Salza or the pope, was that Fredrick’s marriage to Yolanda would increase the
emperor’s personal (material) interest in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and make him
more ready to actually undertake the crusade he had committed himself to.
In any case, Salza undertook the role of marriage broker, negotiating between his comrade-in-arms from the Fifth Crusade, John de Brienne, King of Jerusalem by right of his deceased wife Marie de Montferrat, and Frederick II Hohenstaufen. In the course of this activity, Salza evidently promised John de Brienne that he would remain King of Jerusalem as long as he lived, to be succeeded by any issue from Yolanda’s marriage to Frederick. In the event, however, the marriage was not yet consummated before Fredrick dismissed John de Brienne as superfluous and demanded homage from the barons of Jerusalem.
In any case, Salza undertook the role of marriage broker, negotiating between his comrade-in-arms from the Fifth Crusade, John de Brienne, King of Jerusalem by right of his deceased wife Marie de Montferrat, and Frederick II Hohenstaufen. In the course of this activity, Salza evidently promised John de Brienne that he would remain King of Jerusalem as long as he lived, to be succeeded by any issue from Yolanda’s marriage to Frederick. In the event, however, the marriage was not yet consummated before Fredrick dismissed John de Brienne as superfluous and demanded homage from the barons of Jerusalem.
Frederick’s actions made a life-long, bitter enemy of his
father-in-law, John de Brienne (who would soon lead papal armies against
Frederick’s kingdom of Sicily). They also put Herman von Salza in an awkward
position. Nicholas Morton points out in The Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land
1190-1291 that neither John de Brienne nor the pope seemed to blame Salza
for the Emperor’s actions, suggesting that he had not been complicit in a plot
to mislead Brienne, yet his honor and reputation as a negotiator were at stake.
Apparently the Emperor, while contemptuously dismissing his father-in-law, felt
sufficient qualms about sullying the reputation of his friend and supporter
Salza to compensate him for the loss of reputation with yet more marks of
favor.
Significantly, it was at precisely this time, 1226, that the
Teutonic Knights sought and received from Frederick II the right to colonize
Prussia. It was to be in Prussia that the Teutonic Knights build a completely independent state, and where they survived as a major political power until the
15th century. But that was in the future and beyond the scope of
this short essay.
Principle source: Morton, Nicholas. The Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land, 1190-1291. Boydell Press,
2009.
Join us next week to learn more about the Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land. Meanwhile, discover the crusader states at the end of the 12th century in Dr. Schrader's award-winning novels set in Outremer:
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