ABSTRACT
The first section of this chapter offers an overview of the available data on the spirituality of the Teutonic brethren in Italy, based mostly on liturgical sources. In this field, a mixture of “Teutonic,” local and international elements can be observed. The second section is entirely dedicated to the transgressions committed by the brethren, documented specially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Teutonic Order was not a “shelter for criminals” as some historians have thought, and those cases of indiscipline can be related to the general moral decline in the fifteenth century and to the difficulties the Order's superiors had monitoring its Italian bailiwicks.
