ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a prosopographical study of the Order's personnel in Italy, based on the available primary sources. Its first section outlines general statistics such as the number of brethren and their hierarchies, while the second focuses on the geographic and social origins of those men and on their careers in Italy and elsewhere. A major change can be noted with the handover of the Italian bailiwicks to the masters of Germany: after that, most of the brethren came from a lower rural nobility of Franconia, Hesse and Thuringia or from the cities of Frankfurt, Mergentheim and Nuremberg. Italy was only a stage in the career of most of these brethren, among Holy Land, Germany and Prussia.
