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The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. By MALCOLM BARBER. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xxi + 441 pp. $69.95 cloth.
The military expedition of Pope Leo IX against the Normans of southern Italy marked the end of the Church's reserve toward war. Pope Gregory VII started a "holy war" against Emperor Henry IV and canonized a knight who had lost his life during the Milan upheavals. The new monastic reform orders drew their members from the knightly class and Bernard of Clairvaux often used military allegories in addresses to his monks. Thus, the First Crusade and continuing pilgrimages to the Holy Land effectively prepared the foundation of the "Order of the Temple" in 1118, which soon became a powerful military and religious force, until its suppression by the French pope, Clement V, in 1312.
Among the numerous works dealing with the history of the...