Course XXV - Teaching 8: Hernan of Salza and the Teutonic Order

At the end of the tenth century and beginning of the eleventh century, when the first crusades started their conquest of the Holy Land for Christendom, as a result and effect of them and very especially by lack of previsions in their execution, a phenomenon took place in those days: the number of sick, destitute and poor people that being unprotected would pullulate in Jerusalem and other cities. Some characteristic diseases of the East and wounded people that lacked attention were a favorable source of infections, plagues and other calamities that at the end moved humanitarian feelings in certain persons that did their best to alleviate this critical situation of their fellow men.
So, very important Religious-Military Orders came into being in the Middle Ages, which under their martial and religious emblems actually fulfilled a deep social mission.
In 1128, a German called Wuldpott and his wife founded a hospital in the city of Jerusalem to protect all those pilgrims of German origin, as well as to assist their most important needs. Next to this hospital they built an oratory dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Other Germans contributed with his wealth to develop so noble cause and consolidated this Institution that they called Brothers of Saint Mary. In 1190, after the siege to the city of Tyre, a group of German citizens, from the cities of Bremen and Lübeck, with sails of their ships erected a huge tent for German-spoken people wounded. Because these people were guided by similar purposes to those of the founders of the hospital mentioned in the precedent paragraph, they joined to them. According to different sources, these were the true origins of the Military-Religious Order we deal with.
If Hernan of Salza was not the direct founder of the Teutonic Order, however he granted to it its greatest brilliance and his true spiritual sense. Staying in Orient with his brothers in religion he knew some versed Arabians that instructed him about the ancient Universal science. They recognized in him an extraordinary being and thought of initiating him in their science. So, they took him to Hoggard for his initiation in the Ancient Mysteries.
Hernan of Salza understood that the true wisdom was to watch over the Holy Sepulcher; not only the material sepulcher of Jesus, but also the Mystical Sepulcher of Christ. Perchance is not the human body a material sepulcher where the vivifying spirit remains hidden?
In 1189-1191, during the siege of the city of Saint John of Acre, Frederic of Suabia, raised this association to Military Order and named it Teutonic House of the Holy Virgin of Jerusalem, but later it was only known by the name of Teutonic Order, or Order of the Teutonic Knights.
Since the very beginning the constitution of this Order was sponsored by Great Lords of the time and the Pope Clement III, who authorized its constitution on the basis of Saint Augustine’s rule.
Those who constitute this Order were called Brothers. In regard to the assistance of wounded and sick people, protection of the poor, widows and orphans, they had analogous rules to those of Hospitalarians’; as to the ecclesiastical and military aspect, they would adopt rigid norms established by Templars, with their own privileges that the Pope granted to Orders of this kind.
They would use a white robe with a black cross on the chest. The white color as symbol of Faith and Purity; the cross on the chest characteristic of the crusades, and the black color, as well as orange color, constituted emblematic colors of the Germans. The Golden Cross of Jerusalem was added later, in the times of Hernan of Salza.
To enter this Order it was indispensable to be a German Noble (simple citizens were only allowed to enter with lower grades), to be celibate and devoted to leaving aside to any engagement and affection not originated in the Order and its inherent duties; to renounce to any aspiration to possessions of the Order, which in return only could provide him with the most elementary means of subsistence and a room. Also they had to satisfy any demand required to accede at large to similar Orders of Knighthood to the above mentioned.
The chief would take the name of Great Master of the Order and had different assistants with characteristic names according to his appointed functions.
For the first time forty German Nobles were ordained as priests. The King of Jerusalem donated the cross to the first Noble, the Duke of Suabia; the second Noble and the rest of thirty eight Knights received the cross from other Lords of lineage. In this Order, as well as in the Order of Malta, there were three divisions.
The election of the Great Master was made through vote of the Knights and his hierarchical emblems were a ring and a seal; in no way he would abandon his attributes, except at the point of death, for then he delivered those attributes to the Knight he appointed Regent of the Order. Meanwhile the new Great Master was elected, but his appointment depended upon the acceptance of the Knights.
The Regent would call to elect the Great Master through a system of appointments of assistants that permitted to gather the votes of all Brothers of the Order; before the election, the established rules were read, all Brothers recited 15 times the Dominical Prayer and at once they served food to 30 poor people. He who was elected Great Master would occupy his post and would receive the ring and the seal, which were investitures of his authority.
Hernan of Salza understood that the inactivity of his Knights in Jerusalem would be self-defeating because many other religious Orders stayed there and constituted a European colony. So he transferred his Order to Venice; he expected to give a land to the Order in the North, and eventually to establish it there. And this took place when the rebellious emperor of Germany made peace with the Papacy.
The Order had begun to act in the city of Venice and the sphere of its activities and influence increased more and more, becoming more and more powerful. In certain cases, this Order would settle differences between the Emperor and the Pope.
So Hernan of Salza, Great Master of the Order, was the true arbiter between the Pope Honorius III and the Emperor Frederick II, and precisely the solution given by him to their discrepancies was satisfactory, and the Order acquired new possessions in Italy, Hungary and Germany. The Pope authorized the Great Master to add to the Order the emblem of the Great Golden Cross, and to the Emperor the emblems of the Imperial Eagle.
Continuously urged by the Popes, both the Emperor and several Orders tried the expulsion of barbarians that had still Prussia under control. The intervention of the Teutonic Order in 1228, instigated by the Pope Gregory IX, started the conquest of Prussia; barbarians were ousted and the Order, settled there, led the political destinies of Prussia until the end of 1618. From this conquest on and under different Great Masters, its power increased more and more, and besides Prussia, the Order also influenced Hungary, Poland, Livonia and the Dukedoms of Curland and Semigal.
The Order also reinforced its hosts and power by incorporating to it the Order of Brothers of the Militia of Christ, which on the white robe had the red cross and a sword outlined, and this is why it was called Order of Sword-bearers, instituted by the Bishop Albert of Alperdern in Livonia, in 1204, and that by having the same purposes, in this sense exercised the power and influences of the Teutonic Order.
The history of the Teutonic Order, dominating Prussia for three centuries, had the greatest temporal power, and the whole history of Central and Oriental Europe it is closely linked with the developing influence of this Order, In 1253, with the Great Master Peppon of Ostende, the built the city of Köeningsberg, and in 1275 with the Great Master Hartman of Heldhugen, established in Venice, founded the city of Marienbourg.
As reflux produced in Europe by struggles derived from Reformation of the Catholic Church, these events had repercussion on the public life of the Order and in this time the loss of great part of its immense temporal power starts. So in 1525, because its Great Master Albert Margrave of Brandenburg espoused the religion reformed by Luther and married the daughter of the king of Denmark, a schism took place in the Order headed by the Teutonic Master of Livonia Walter Kletemberg, who became independent of the Great Master and with such a character he was recognized by Charles V. Meanwhile many annoyed Catholic Lords left their respective castles where independently, for long, every Lord within his own fief tried to preserve the remaining traditions of the Order.
In 1618 they lost Prussia and from this time the Order stopped being an organization of political character. A part of it established itself in Franconia, but in spite of the loss of its domains, it continued existing. So in 1805, as a result of the treaty of Presburg, clause of it grants to the Emperor of Austria the tiles, rights and incomes of the Great Master of the Order.
In the beginning of the nineteen-century, Napoleon officially abolished the Order.
In the times of the Crusades, in Holy Land, when the fervor of the war was over, preferably they would deal with defending the people and developing more a more their moral conditions, and with the adoption of cultivated manners. In peace, after having banished superfluous atrocities of the war, they would inspire a mutual fraternity as much great as noticeable in those times of universal isolation by practicing, preaching and teaching good. From these impressions and attributes as a whole, in whose crucible were harmoniously melt their martial and religious instincts, they made a higher ideal type come into being that exalted the imagination by offering in their lives various conceptions and purer and loftier emotions than those that can be found in ordinary life.
Following with their similar organization to that of Persian sects, they had three grades: Page, Squire and Knight. The two first would correspond to the noviciate and to that of Knight, whom he would give the knowledge of the major mysteries.
The Squire was subject to Trials before being promoted to the category of Knight, which consisted of a rigorous fast the day before his consecration and in spending the white night, which consisted in being the whole night on his knees at the foot of altars, in the deepest darkness.
Weapons and emblems of his new condition also have a wider sense than that justified by their use. The spurs of the Knight, that the horse has to obey, represented inner raptures of his soul, inciting him to love God in depth and to defend his law with courage and determination. The double-edged sword, symbol of strength, means that he will know how to humiliate his courage and to control his pride, which is considered inseparable from him, through a virtuous practice of humility and self-denial for his neighbor.
All his actions were ruled by principles that would aim at developing higher conditions in a human being, whose importance and value they knew and appreciated.