Knights Templar

Examples of Knights Templar in the following topics:

• The Fourth Crusade

  • The Knights Templar were recognized, and grants of crusading indulgences to those who opposed papal enemies are seen by some historians as the beginning of politically motivated crusades.
  • In the Iberian peninsula, Crusader privileges were given to those aiding the Templars, the Hospitallers, and the Iberian orders that merged with the Order of Calatrava and the Order of Santiago.

• The Last Byzantine Dynasty

  • In 1261 CE, Michael's forces succeeded in capturing Constantinople while the Latin knights were off fighting elsewhere.
  • In order to protect his empire from further attacks by Western knights, he attempted to end the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
  • With a decreasing source of food and manpower, the Palaiologoi were forced to fight on several fronts, most of them being Christian states: the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Empire, the remnants of the Latin Empire and even the Knights Hospitaller.

• Feudalism

  • The king was the absolute "owner" of land in the feudal system, and all nobles, knights, and other tenants, termed vassals, merely "held" land from the king, who was thus at the top of the feudal pyramid.
  • Below the king in the feudal pyramid was a tenant-in-chief (generally in the form of a baron or knight), who was a vassal of the king.
  • Holding from the tenant-in-chief was a mesne tenant—generally a knight or baron who was sometimes a tenant-in-chief in their capacity as holder of other fiefs.

• The Crusades

  • The Crusades were a series of military conflicts conducted by Christian knights for the defense of Christians and for the expansion of Christian domains between the 11th and 15th centuries.
  • There were other crusades against Islamic forces in southern Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily, as well as campaigns of Teutonic knights against pagan strongholds in Eastern Europe.
  • Increasingly in the 11th century, foreign knights, mostly from France, visited Iberia to assist the Christians in their efforts.
  • It became acceptable for the pope to utilize knights in the name of Christendom, not only against political enemies of the papacy, but also against Al-Andalus, or, theoretically, against the Seljuq dynasty in the east.

• The First Crusade

  • During the crusade, knights, peasants, and serfs from many regions of Western Europe travelled over land and by sea, first to Constantinople and then on toward Jerusalem.
  • Pope Urban II planned the departure of the crusade for August 15, 1096; before this, a number of unexpected bands of peasants and low-ranking knights organized and set off for Jerusalem on their own, on an expedition known as the People's Crusade, led by a monk named Peter the Hermit.
  • The response was beyond expectations; while Urban might have expected a few thousand knights, he ended up with a migration numbering up to 40,000 Crusaders of mostly unskilled fighters, including women and children.

• Crisis and Fragmentation

  • In part sparked by the massacre of the Latins of 1182 CE, and in part motivated by the tempting wealth of Constantinople, the Western European knights sacked Constantinople in what is known as the Fourth Crusade.
  • Constantinople became the capital of a new empire, called the Latin Empire, ruled by Western knights.

• Post-Byzantine Egypt

  • In the Middle Ages, soon after the mamluks took up the practice of chivalry, or furusiyya in Arabic, they came to be known as knights (or faris in Arabic), although unfree until after their service.
  • The faris or "knight" in the Muslim world was trained in the use of various weapons and in wrestling.

• The Golden Age of India

  • The game of Chess also likely originated during this period, where its early form, Chaturanga, contained game pieces for infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots, which would each evolve into the modern pawn, knight, rook, and bishop, respectively.

• Art and Culture Under the Nerva-Antonines

  • Notwithstanding his philhellenism, however, in all other everyday life matters Hadrian behaved as a Roman civic traditionalist, who demanded the use of the toga by senators and knights in public and strict separation between the sexes in the public baths and theaters.

• Erasmus

  • He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.