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Cheers for the reply Grant, I'm going to look into the Sheela-na-gig thing, though I must confess I had always thought that the Sheela-na-gig was a pagan earth mother thing, similar to the paleolithic Venuses of Lespugue & Kostenki (in the Ukraine) I didn't realise there was Christian connections.
To answer your questions the Teutonic Order was founded at the Seige of Acre in 1190 (Third Crusade, the fun one with Richard the Lionheart, Saladin etc. etc.) because it was thought that the Templars and Hospitalers, who were mainly French & English, were failing to address the needs of Germanic Knights. The Order initially was neither particularly big or powerful as the two older orders pretty much had the holy land sewn up between them. This change in 1238 when the Order began a crusade in the Baltic against Northern European Pagans. The conquered Prussia and Lithunia and got fought against Poland and Russian states like Novgorod (this is what Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky portrays, though the film itself had more to do with Russian worries about the Nazis).
As to their relation with the Templars and the Hospitalers the Teutonic Order is comparable with them and they are considered to be the big three of the military orders, though there were others. They do however seem to be the least well known and it seems that the Northern Crusades are almost forgotten history. Also as far as I am aware the Order was the only organisation of its kind to effectively rule entire countries (like Prussia & Lithuania).
As for Joan of Arc I'm not really familiar with a link and a quick look through William Urban's Teutonic Knights hasn't really turned anything up. The only thing I can think of is that the Knights sort of set up a Crusading Holiday camp in the Baltic, they through great parties, had some brilliant hunting and it was a good place for nobility from Northern Europe to get themselves "blooded" and contribute to the crusade cause (and presumably earn themselve indulgences and other such brownie points with the papacy). I do know that during the 100 years war during outbreaks of non-conflict quite often both English and French troops would head North for some pagan target practice but as for a direct link I can't really find one. Strictly speaking an ostensibly military order couldn't be seen to be to partisan in a conflict like that. |
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