Skip to content

The Monks of War : The Military Religious Orders

The Monks of War : The Military Religious Orders Paperback - 1996

by Desmond Seward

  • Used
  • very good
  • Paperback

Description

Penguin Publishing Group, 1996. Paperback. Very Good. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.Dust jacket quality is not guaranteed.
Used - Very Good
$6.09
FREE Shipping to USA Standard delivery: 4 to 8 days
More Shipping Options
Ships from ThriftBooks (Washington, United States)

Details

About ThriftBooks Washington, United States

Biblio member since 2018
Seller rating: This seller has earned a 4 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.

From the largest selection of used titles, we put quality, affordable books into the hands of readers

Terms of Sale: 30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.

Browse books from ThriftBooks

Summary

The military religious orders emerged during the Crusades as Christendom's stormtrooopers in the savage conflict with Islam. Some of them stille exist oday, devoted to charitable works. The Monks of War is the first general history of these orders to have appeared since the eighteenth century.

The Templars, the Hospitallers (later Knights of Malta), the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of the Spanish and Portugese orders were "noblemen vowed to poverty, chastity and obedience, living a monastic life in convents which were at the same time barracks, waging war on the enemies of the Cross." The first properly disciplined Western troops since Roman times, they played a major role in defending the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, in the "Baltic Crusades" which created Prussia, in the long reconquest of Spain from the Moors, and in fighting the "Infidel" right up to Napoleonic times. This celebrated book tells the whole enthralling story, recreating such epics as the sieges of Rhodes and Malta and the destruction of the Templars by the Inquisition. Acclaimed on publication, it has now been revised and updated, with a concluding chapter to take events into the 1990s.

From the publisher

Desmond Seward was born in Paris and educated at Cambridge University. He is the author of Richard III: England's Black Legend, The Monks of War, and The War of the Roses.

Categories

Media reviews

"Undeniably the work of someone who knows and accepts the standards of critical history, but … who sees the past also as an epic or a colourful spectacle"
—Professor David Knowles in The Times Literary Supplement

"His scholarship is great, his theme both interesting and largely unexplored and his judgment sound"
Economist

"The book is excellent and firmly based on the primary sources of which Seward has a remarkable grasp."
New Society

"Compulsive reading, attractively written, and retaining one's fascinated interest throughout"
Catholic Herald