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the order, and the banner was black and white.

The Order of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, or the Hospitallers, was originally founded in 1070 as a purely hospitaller order for the succour of pilgrims in the Holy Land, but by the end of the first quarter of the i2th century there appears to have been some form of military organization developing, possibly only a constable and one or two oificers responsible for paying and controlling mercenaries to defend the order’s possessions. Between 1136 and 1142 the order received as gifts a number of key fortresses and, by 1157 at the latest, was engaged in warfare, not just defending its possessions. In 1168 it was able to send 500 knights on the invasion of Egypt, which suggests that by mid-century it was fulfilling a military as well as hospitaller role.

The Pope granted the order a red banner with a white cross in 1130; sometime between 1120 and 1160 it was laid down that a white cross should be worn on the black mantle of the St Augustine Order, of which the Hospitallers were a branch. The cross was probably a plain Latin one until the mid-i3th century. In 1248 the mantle was replaced by a black surcoat with the white cross on the breast, but in 1259 this was changed to a red surcoat.

The third major military order in the Holy Land was the Teutonic Order, founded as a hospitaller order following the Cistercian rule during the siege of Acre in 1189-90. The order was recognized by the Pope in 1191 and in 1198 became a military order. As the Templars and Hospitallers were already well established in Syria, the Teutonic Knights concentrated on the Antioch and Tripoli regions, but in 1210 most of the knights and their Hochmeister were killed. A new headąuarters was then established near Acre, but the Teutonic Knights were always overshadowed by the other two orders in the Holy Land and their real greatness was founded in northern Europę.

In 1230 twenty knights and 200 sergeants were sent to Prussia to convert the pagan tribes to Christianity and by 1237 had succeeded in redu-cing all resistance and had begun to colonize the region. The Order then moved into Livonia but in 1242 the Prussian tribes rebelled and a crusade of 60,000 Germans and Bohemians was launched to save the Order and its conquests. The territories were under fuli control again by 1260 and the

Face and reverse of a pair of poleyns, attributed to the mid-I3th century. Again, the datę is suspect, but these illustrations do show details not normally visible in other sources, eg, the ribbing to strengthen the piąte and the manner in which the mail of the chausses was attached at top and bottom. The rivets at the sides may also have helped secure the poleyns to the mail.