Forty papers link the study of the military orders' cultural life and output with their involvement in political and social conflicts during the medieval and early modern period. Divided into two volumes, focusing on the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe respectively, the collection brings together the most up-to-date research by experts from fifteen countries on a kaleidoscope of relevant themes and issues, thus offering a broad-ranging and at the same time very detailed study of the subject.

Jochen Schenk (PhD Cantab) was a lecturer of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow. His recent publications include Templar Families. Landowning Families and the Order of the Temple in France, c.1120-1312. He is also the author of a number of articles dealing, mainly, with the Order of the Temple's' social structure, the Templars' religious life, and the military orders' contribution to state building in the Latin East. He is currently working on a cultural history of the crusader states.

Mike Carr (PhD London) is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. His first monograph, Merchant Crusaders in the Aegean, 1291-1352, was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2015. He has published articles on his main interests, which include relations between Latins, Greeks and Turks in the eastern Mediterranean, the crusades, maritime history and the papacy. He is also the co-editor of the volume Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204-1453, with Nikolaos Chrissis (Ashgate, 2014).

Introduction (Jonathan Riley-Smith)

1. Anthony Luttrell (Bath), The Hospitaller privilege of 1113: Text and context
2. Sebastián Salvadó (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Reflections of conflict in two fragments of the liturgical observances from the Primitive Rule of the Knights Templar
3. Kevin James Lewis (University of Oxford), Friend or foe: Islamic views of the military orders in the Latin East as drawn from Arabic Sources
4. Betty Binysh (University of Cardiff), Massacre or mutual benefit: The military orders' relations with their Muslim neighbours
5. Stephen Bennett (Queen Mary), The battle of Arsuf: A reappraisal of the charge of the Hospitallers
6. Thomas W. Smith (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), Pope Honorius III, the military orders and the financing of the Fifth Crusade: A culture of papal preference?
7. Karol Polejowski (Ateneum University), Between Jaffa and Jerusalem - a few remarks on the defence of the southern border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the years 1229-1244
8. Vardit Shotten-Hallel (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Ritual and conflict in the Hospitaller Church of St John in Acre: The architectural evidence
9. Gil Fishhof (Tel Aviv University), Hospitaller patronage and the mural cycle of the Church of the Resurrection at Abu-Gosh
10. Anna Takoumi (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Tracing knights: The pictorial evidence of the Knights of St John in the art of the Eastern Mediterranean
11. Nicholas Coureas (Cyprus Research Centre), The manumission of Hospitaller slaves on fifteenth-century Rhodes and Cyprus
12. James Petre (University of Cardiff), Back to Baffes: A castle in Cyprus attributable to the Hospital revisited
13. Michael Heslop (Royal Holloway), Hospitaller statecraft in the Aegean
14. Pierre Bonneaud (Paris), A culture of consensus: The Hospitallers at Rhodes in the C15th
15. Emma Maglio (Aix-Marseille University), Holy spaces in the urban fabric: Religious topography of the town of Rhodes during the Hospitaller period
16. Gregory O'Malley (Hugglescote), Some developments in Hospitaller invective concerning the Turks, 1407-1530
17. Anne Brogini (University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis), Crisis and revival. The convent of the Order of Malta during the Catholic Reformation
18. Emanuel Buttigieg (University of Malta), The Hospitallers and the Grand Harbour of Malta: Culture and conflict
19. Theresa Vella (Malta), Piety and ritual in the Magistral Palace of the Order of St John in Malta
20. Victor Mallia-Milanes (University of Malta), Venice, Hospitaller Malta, and fear of the plague: Culturally conflicting views
21. William Zammit (University of Malta), Censoring the Hospitallers: The failed attempt at re-printing Ferdinando de Escaño's Propugnaculum Hierosolymitanum in Malta in 1756