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By Sam Conedera SJ
"Warrior monks"-the misnomer for the Iberian army orders that emerged at the frontiers of Europe within the 12th century-have lengthy involved basic readers historians alike. presenting "ecclesiastical knights" as a extra exact identify and conceptual model-warriors lively by way of beliefs and non secular currents counseled via the church hierarchy-author Sam Zeno Conedera offers a groundbreaking learn of ways those orders introduced the doubtless incongruous blend of monastic devotion and the perform of battle right into a unmarried approach of life.
Providing a close examine of the military-religious vocation because it was once lived out within the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara in Leon-Castile throughout the first century, Ecclesiastical Knights presents a helpful window into medieval Iberia. Filling a niche within the historiography of the medieval army orders, Conedera defines, categorizes, and explains those orders, from their foundations until eventually their non secular decline within the early fourteenth century, arguing that that the right way to comprehend their spirituality is as a specific form of consecrated knighthood.
Because those Iberian army orders have been belligerents within the Reconquest, Ecclesiastical Knights informs very important discussions in regards to the kin among Western Christianity and Islam within the center a while. Conedera examines how the army orders healthy into the spiritual panorama of medieval Europe in the course of the prism of knighthood, and the way their special conceptual personality expert the orders and religious self-perception.
The non secular observances of all 3 orders have been remarkably alike, other than that the Cistercian-affiliated orders have been extra hard and their contributors couldn't marry. Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara shared an analogous crucial project and objective: the safety and enlargement of Christendom understood as an act of charity, expressed essentially via struggling with and secondarily throughout the care of the unwell and the ransoming of captives. Their prayers have been basic and their penances have been geared toward knightly vices and the upkeep of army self-discipline. peculiarly, the orders valued obedience. They by no means drank from the deep wellsprings of monasticism, nor have been they ever intended to.
Offering a completely clean point of view on tough and heavily similar difficulties in regards to the army orders-namely, definition and spirituality-author Sam Zeno Conedera illuminates the spiritual lifetime of the orders, formerly eclipsed by means of their army actions.
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46 For Bernard, it was essential that the new knights be dedicated not only to temporal warfare but also to the battle against sin and vice represented by the fallen angels. ”51 The principal difference between him and the worldly knight is his faith and the right intention of his heart. Bernard answers objections against the use of force with copious references to Scripture. This line of argumentation was merely following the trajectory of thought on holy warfare that the Gregorian Reformers and crusading had already launched.
176 Given that most of the military orders followed or at least borrowed heavily from the Rule, this argument has some merit. One innovation of the Cistercian Order, the conversus, created a greater flexibility of categories of membership and opened up the possibility of religious life to those who lacked the gifts or the inclination to be monks. Structurally speaking, therefore, the Cistercians were more disposed than anyone else to create space for the military brethren. The length of time needed to establish the status of Calatrava, and the ultimate ambiguity of the brothers’ position, however, is evidence that not everyone was quite comfortable with the arrangement; the sentiments of Isaac of Stella may have resonated widely.
Twelfth-century writers could endorse the fairly novel view of warfare as an act of love. They could not, however, so readily accept the participation of monks or canons in combat. The attitude of St. Bernard, Peter the Venerable, and others has already been made clear: the fight against powers and principalities through prayer and fasting was superior to the fight against flesh and blood by the sword. They endorsed the Temple because it aimed to renew and convert knighthood from malitia to a true militia of Christ.