ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to lay out some general thoughts on the subject of religious military orders and frontiers. Even though three geographical regions will be focussed on – the Baltic, the Levant and particularly the Iberian Peninsula – the objective is not so much to compare the knights’ activities in these areas as to invert the perspective so as to use space – more exactly the notion of the frontier – as a heuristic tool. 1 In order to do so one must fi rst determine the spectrum of meanings related to the term ‘frontier’. On the basis of such a semantic analysis, I will then attempt to analyze which of these meanings coincide with conceptions of the religious military orders as developed by past and present historians. This exercise therefore necessarily implies historicizing research; it aims at putting historiographical strands within the fi eld of medieval studies into relation with the frontier. On a more concrete level, I would like to determine to which extent interreligious frontiers functioned as areas of exchange and communication and which role military orders fulfi lled in this very specifi c fi eld.
