MILITARY ORDERS

MILITARY ORDERS were in crusading times associations of knights sworn to chastity and devoted to religious service; the Hospitallers, the earliest, tended sick pilgrims at Jerusalem; the Templars protected pilgrims and guarded the Temple; the Knights of St. John were also celibate, but the orders of Alcantara and others in Spain, of St. Bennet in Portugal, and others elsewhere, with different objects, were permitted to marry.