Templars and Hospitallers: the military-religious orders in Scotland, 1128-1564
A letter of Andrew Forman, archbishop of St Andrews from 1514 to 1521, addresses the case of a rash layman:
N., lay reader of our diocese, has shown by his petition that he has incautiously and frivolously sworn a certain vow, which was made in the presence of many people, of going abroad to the house of Saint John of Jerusalem at Rhodes in support of the Holy Land and in the aid and defence of those Christians fighting for God in that place.
‘N’ had vowed to join the Knights Hospitaller, an order of soldiermonks then based on Rhodes and fighting a naval war against the Ottomans. On account of ‘N’s’ poverty and old age, Forman released him from his vow in return for alms, prayer and fasting. The archbishop’s letter survives in the St Andrews Formulare. Scribes and notaries copied documents into these formularies to serve as models should they ever need to write such a document themselves. That a scribe chose to copy this letter suggests it was not so uncommon for men to pledge to join the Hospitallers in early 16th-century Scotland, or to want a way out of their vow. In fact, since the 12th century, Scotland had been home to outposts of military-religious orders like the Knights Hospitaller and Knights Templar, and many Scots had joined their ranks.
The military orders originated in the Levant after the First Crusade. The crusader states of Palestine and Syria that emerged following the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 suffered from a chronic shortage of manpower. Many of the crusaders quickly returned home and there were not enough troops to defend these new territories and guard the pilgrimage routes from bandits. This need for soldiers, coupled with the new doctrine of holy violence that the crusade had brought, allowed for the creation of military orders, men who swore vows of poverty, chastity and obedience like monks, but also fought like knights.
The Templars acquired their first Scottish preceptory at Balantrodoch, now Temple in Midlothian, by the late 12th century
The Templars were the first of these orders, founded primarily to guard the pilgrim routes by Hugh de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer in 1120. The Hospitallers had begun their history as a hospital in Jerusalem that had been founded by merchants from the Italian city of Amalfiin the 1070s. The brethren initially only cared for pilgrims but by the 1130s had also taken on a military role. The Order of St Lazarus developed out of a leper hospital outside Jerusalem’s walls. The earliest documentary evidence for the Lazarites is from the 1130s, but a patent roll of Edward III in 1347 says they were part of the ‘first army against the Saracens’, suggesting they were formed shortly after the First Crusade. The Hospital of St Thomas of Acre, founded around the time of the Third Crusade and militarised by the 1230s, was the only English military order.
These foundations soon spread to Europe, receiving donations of lands and property and establishing farming estates called preceptories to fund their campaigns in the East. Many other orders were created, such as the Knights of Santiago in
