ABSTRACT
Welfare and warfare: the main functions of military orders were of a practical nature, involving physical tasks, and rather different from the activities pursued in contemplative religious houses. Assumptions about illiteracy were being made, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a period of increasing reliance on written records, and the military orders were not immune to this trend. The first concerns literacy, which in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries commonly meant at least an ability to read and understand Latin. Direct statements about the extent of literacy among lay brothers, in the sense of an ability to read Latin, are few and not altogether consistent. In studies of more modern periods, when literacy did not involve Latin, an ability to write one's name has often been used as a criterion, and it might be argued that for the Middle Ages it could indicate an acquaintance with writing, if not with Latin.
