The Teutonic Order of Knights - Crusades History

Teutonic Order, also called Teutonic Knights, formally House of the Hospitalers of Saint Mary of the Teutons in Jerusalem, German Deutscher Orden, or Deutscher Ritter-Orden, or Haus der Ritter des Hospitals Sankt Marien der Deutschen zu Jerusalem, Latin Domus Sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum in Jerusalem, religious order that played a major role in eastern Europe in the late Middle Ages and that underwent various changes in organization and residence from its founding in 1189/90 to the present. Its major residences, marking its major states of development, were: Acre, Palestine (modern ʿAkko, Israel), its original home beginning with the Third Crusade (1189/90–c. 1291); Marienburg, Prussia (modern Malbork, Pol.), the centre of its role as a military principality (1309–1525); Mergentheim, Württemberg, Ger., to which it moved after its loss of Prussia (1525–1809); and Vienna, where the order gathered the remains of its revenues and survives as a purely hospital order (from 1834).

In 1189–90, when crusading forces were besieging Acre, some German merchants from Bremen and Lübeck formed a fraternity to nurse the sick there. After the capture of Acre (1191), this fraternity took over a hospital in the town and began to describe itself as the Hospital of St. Mary of the German House in Jerusalem. Pope Clement III approved it, and it adopted a rule like that of the original Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (i.e., the Knights of Malta).

The death of the Hohenstaufen emperor Henry VI in 1197, when he was planning a great expedition to Palestine, caused an important change: a number of German crusaders who had arrived in Palestine decided to return home. In order to fill the gap, the German princes and bishops, together with King Amalric II of Jerusalem, in 1198 militarized the fraternity, making it a religious order of knights. The new order was put under a monastic and military rule like that of the Templars. It received privileges from Popes Celestine III and Innocent III and extensive grants of land, not only in the kingdom of Jerusalem but also in Germany and elsewhere. Innocent III in 1205 granted the Teutonic knights the use of the white habit with a black cross.

The knights left Palestine forever toward the end of the Crusades, with the final fall of the country to Islām (1291).

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