The knights of Christ. Demorge A.

How to Christian to Christian? How to ensure an armed force, inclined to correctly and constantly stand on the defense of Christianity and fulfill its mission of the fight against the infidels? Medieval Christianity answered the two of these questions, creating, not without some resistance, original institutions - military monastic orders. Hybrids, “monsters”, according to the expression of Isaac Stella, living as monks, according to the charter - Benedictine or Augustine, but not quite monks acting as knights, but not according to those representatives of the aristocratic caste who are always ready to grab among themselves, not worldly worldly knights woven by St. Bernard, and the knights of Christ, "dressed in armor of iron and armor of faith." Reconquisters and Crusades contributed to the fact that these orders spread widely in the Holy Land, in Spain and on the shores of the Baltic Sea. As the independence of the monarchies from the papal authorities, the growing distrust of the monarchs to these military forces, which sometimes became real states, as the ministry of the mission was increasingly replaced by simple militancy, the military-monastic orders gradually lost vitality and were forced to again turn to charitable activities. Then legends and rumors were born that the modern historian exposes, at the same time giving justice to these vivid evidence of the collective imagination of medieval people, making a great review of these legends.