ABSTRACT
Though only arising in the aftermath of the First Crusade, the military-religious orders soon came to dominate the crusading movement. While not technically crusaders themselves, not having sworn a crusade vow, these groups of soldier-monks would become mainstays of each major crusade expedition to the Eastern Mediterranean. The military orders retain an enduring appeal. They are the subject of two regular conferences, one in the UK, the other in Poland, and feature regularly in crusade scholarship and other connected fields. The early memorialisation of the orders in Britain, which, along with the US, has been the country addressed most by scholars of crusade medievalism thus far, is dealt with in the first chapter of this volume. It focuses on how the military orders were remembered in four popular historical works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when they first became the subject of antiquarian study.
