ABSTRACT
The noviciate of the knight was borrowed from the noviciate of the monk. Jacques de Vitry describes them as "in turn lions of war and lambs at the hearth; rough knights on the battlefield, pious monks in the chapel; formidable to the enemies of Christ, gentleness itself to His friends." When the success of the First Crusade had set up the feudal Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, many of the soldiers of the cross went home. The restoration of the command of the Mediterranean to the Christian powers, partial as it might be, was owed very largely to the military monks. Thus Christian monks ruled a great European state, the first time that such sovereignty had been on any considerable scale. The Teutonic Knights, after extending the bounds of Christendom and building up a great monk-state, have been the main original creators of one of the chief European powers.
