Brothers and Sisters of the Teutonic Order
The Teutonic Order was, in its formal constitution, a society of brethren. The brethren were bound to one another by the three monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and they were subject to the Rule of St Augustine and to the detailed customary laws of the Order. Within the broader fraternity, however, the brethren were divided into three distinct estates, unequal in number, in social origin, in political weight, and in their constitutional rights and duties: the knight-brothers, the priestly brothers, and the serving brothers. The three estates were the constitutional backbone of the Order, and the relations between them were the subject of detailed regulation in the Statuten and in the customary laws of the various convent castles.
The present article is concerned with the three estates of brethren and with the related categories of lay associates, half-brothers, familiares, and sisters. The detailed treatment of the process by which a young man was admitted as a knight-brother is given in the related article on becoming a Teutonic knight. The detailed treatment of the priestly estate is given in the related article on the priestly brothers.
The Knight-Brothers
The knight-brothers (Ritterbrüder) were the Order’s aristocracy. They were the only estate entitled to hold the supreme magistracy of the Order, the office of Hochmeister, and they were entitled, by the constitutions, to hold the senior administrative and military commands of the Order, including the five offices of Grossgebietiger, the regional Komture, and the principal field commands.
The knight-brothers were recruited from the German aristocratic and ministerial classes, and they were required to provide proof of free birth, of legitimate descent, and of a minimum of four generations of noble ancestry on both the paternal and the maternal sides. The candidates were typically young men in their late teens or early twenties, and the process of admission typically took two to three years. The process of admission is described in detail in the related article on becoming a Teutonic knight, but the substantive requirements were the same throughout the Order’s history: the candidate had to be free, legitimate, noble, unmarried, of sound health, and unencumbered by debt or by outstanding feudal or familial claims on his person.
The knight-brothers wore the white habit of the Order, with the black cross on the shoulder, and the white surcoat over their armour in the field. In winter they wore a white cloak. The knight-brothers slept in the dormitory of the convent castle, took their meals in the refectory, attended the canonical hours in the chapel, and shared the daily life of the convent on the same footing as the priestly brothers. The constitutions of the Order, in fact, required that the knight-brothers should not be distinguished from the priestly brothers by any external mark of dress within the convent: the two estates wore the same habit and shared the same dormitory and refectory.
The knight-brothers were a small fraction of the Order’s total membership. The Order’s Prussian state in the late fourteenth century had at most some seven hundred knight-brothers resident in the various commanderies, and the total number of knight-brothers in the whole Order at any one time was probably fewer than two thousand. The relative scarcity of the knight-brothers, however, was matched by the substantial political weight of the estate, and the knight-brothers held, between them, the entire supreme command of the Order.
The Priestly Brothers
The priestly brothers (Priesterbrüder) were the second estate of the Order. They were ordained priests who served the Order’s chapels, heard the brethren’s confessions, preached to the brethren and to the lay population, managed the Order’s extensive charitable foundations, and performed a wide range of administrative and intellectual functions. The priestly brothers were, in the early years of the Order, recruited from the same aristocratic and ministerial classes as the knight-brothers, but in the later years the recruitment base was broader, and the priestly brothers came from a wider range of social backgrounds.
The priestly brothers were, by the constitutions of the Order, eligible to hold any office of the Order except the supreme magistracy. Several of the most distinguished administrators of the Order were priestly brothers — most notably the chancellors of the Order, who were usually priestly brothers, and the bishops of the Order’s ecclesiastical foundations, who were frequently drawn from the priestly estate. The priestly brothers also held the chairs of theology in the Order’s convent schools, the librarianships of the Order’s substantial libraries, the secretariats of the principal commanderies, and a substantial fraction of the Order’s chaplains and preachers.
The priestly brothers wore the same white habit as the knight-brothers, and the two estates were distinguished, in the constitutions, only by the tonsure and by the clerical dress worn in the chapel. The priestly brothers were a much larger estate than the knight-brothers. In the Prussian convent castles of the late medieval period, the priestly brothers were typically a third to a half of the resident brethren, and the priestly estate was, in numerical terms, the largest of the three. The detailed treatment of the priestly estate, of the work of the priestly brothers, and of their constitutional position, is given in the related article on the priestly brothers of the Order.
The Serving Brothers
The serving brothers (Graumäntel, or “grey mantles”) were the third estate of the Order. They were lay brothers recruited from the burgher and peasant classes of the German lands, and they served the Order in a wide variety of capacities: as squires to the knight-brothers, as armourers, farriers, smiths, masons, carpenters, bakers, brewers, clerks, treasury officials, hospital attendants, agricultural workers, and so on. The serving brothers were, in the constitutions of the Order, not eligible to hold any of the senior offices of the Order, and they were excluded from the chapter general of the knight-brothers.
The serving brothers wore a grey habit, rather than the white habit of the knight- and priestly brothers, and they were distinguished, in the convent, by the colour of their dress. The serving brothers slept in a separate dormitory, took their meals in a separate part of the refectory, and attended a simplified version of the daily offices. The serving brothers were, in a constitutional position analogous to that of the lay brothers of the older Benedictine and Cistercian orders, and the Teutonic serving brothers retained many of the customary privileges and disabilities of the medieval lay brother.
The serving brothers were, in the Prussian convent castles of the late medieval period, often a majority of the resident brethren. The work of the Order in the rural economy, in the workshops, in the stables, in the granaries, and in the hospitals depended heavily on the serving brothers, and the smooth running of the Order’s administration required a substantial body of trained serving brothers in each convent castle. The serving brothers were bound by the same three monastic vows as the knight- and priestly brothers, but the implications of the vow of poverty were less onerous, and the serving brothers were permitted a small personal property and a small personal allowance.
The Half-Brothers and the Lay Associates
Beneath the three estates of professed brethren, the Order admitted a substantial body of lay persons in various forms of semi-membership. The Halbbrüder (half-brothers) were a particular Teutonic institution: laymen who were bound to the Order by a special form of contract, who lived in the convent castle, and who served the Order in a defined capacity, but who did not take the full monastic vows. The half-brothers occupied a position intermediate between the serving brother and the lay associate, and they were a substantial presence in the larger convent castles.
The Konfratres (lay associates) and the Konfrieres (lay sisters) were laymen and laywomen, often of high social standing, who were bound to the Order by a special form of contract and who received, in return, the spiritual benefits of the Order’s prayers and the right to be buried in the Order’s habit. The lay associates did not live in the convent castle, did not take monastic vows, and were free to marry, to hold property, and to pursue their own careers. The Order’s network of lay associates was one of the most important sources of its political influence in the German lands, and the most powerful princes of the Empire were often numbered among the lay associates of the Order.
The Familiares were yet another category: laymen and laywomen who were attached to a particular convent castle by a special bond of service, and who enjoyed the spiritual benefits and the legal protection of the Order in return for a defined annual payment. The familiares were, the precursor of the modern foundation member, and the Teutonic familiares were a substantial body in the larger convent castles.
The Sisters of the Order
The Order also maintained, from the early thirteenth century, a women’s branch: the Schwestern (sisters) of the Order. The sisters lived in separate convents, took the same three monastic vows as the brethren, and were subject to the same basic constitutional framework. The sisters were recruited from the same aristocratic and ministerial classes as the knight-brothers, and the women’s branch of the Order was, in the early years, a substantial institution.
The sisters were organised in provincial chapters, on a parallel with the men’s branch, and they were governed by a Meisterin (mistress) appointed by the Grand Master. The most substantial women’s convents were in the Rhineland, in Westphalia, in Thuringia, in Franconia, in Austria, and in the Latin East, and the sisters ran a network of hospitals and hospices for women that complemented the Order’s male charitable foundations.
The women’s branch declined in the late medieval period, as the Order came to depend increasingly on the male military and administrative cadres. By the fifteenth century the sisters’ convents were, in many cases, no more than small foundations with a handful of professed sisters, and the women’s branch of the Order was effectively moribund by the time of the Reformation. The Order’s surviving institutions in the Catholic lands of the German-speaking world were, however, from the seventeenth century onward, increasingly staffed by sisters, and the sisters’ branch of the Order was, in a sense, revived in the early modern era under very different constitutional forms.
The Constitutional Significance of the Three Estates
The three estates of brethren were the constitutional backbone of the Teutonic Order. The knight-brothers provided the military and political leadership; the priestly brothers provided the religious, intellectual, and administrative backbone; the serving brothers provided the manual and technical labour; and the lay associates, the half-brothers, the familiares, and the sisters provided the network of support that linked the Order to the wider society of the German lands.
The system was not, of course, free from tension. The constitutional distinction between the knight-brothers and the priestly brothers was a constant source of friction, particularly in the late medieval period, when the priestly brothers were numerically the largest estate and yet were excluded from the supreme magistracy. The serving brothers, for their part, occupied a constitutional position that was inferior to the two upper estates, and the customary disabilities of the serving brothers were, in a few respects, a source of grievance. The system worked, on the whole, because the Order was a close-knit community in which the brethren lived together, ate together, prayed together, and worked together, and because the constitutional distinctions of the Order were softened, in practice, by the daily life of the convent.
The three estates of brethren, and the related institutions of lay associates, half-brothers, familiares, and sisters, were the human material of the Teutonic Order. The Order’s constitutional structure, the Order’s military and administrative reach, the Order’s religious and intellectual life, and the Order’s economic and political influence all depended, in the end, on the quality of the brethren whom the Order was able to recruit, to train, and to retain. The Order’s success in recruiting a substantial body of knight-brothers from the German aristocracy, in building up a substantial body of priestly brothers from the broader educated classes, and in mobilising a substantial body of serving brothers from the burgher and peasant classes, was the foundation of all its later achievements.
Sources
- Boockmann, Hartmut. Der Deutsche Orden: Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte. Munich: Beck, 1981.
- Favreau-Lilie, Marie-Luise. Die Ritterbrüder im livländischen Zweig des Deutschen Ordens. Cologne: Böhlau, 2003.
- Strehlke, Ernst, ed. Tabulae ordinis Theutonici. Berlin: Weidmann, 1869.
- Urban, William. The Teutonic Knights: A Military History. London: Greenhill, 2003.
Related Reading
For the constitutional context, see the parent pillar on the structure and daily life of the Order, the article on the hierarchy of the Order, and the article on the daily rules of the Order. For the recruitment of the knight-brothers, see the article on becoming a Teutonic knight. For the priestly estate, see the article on the priestly brothers. For the rule followed by all three estates, see the article on the Rule of St Augustine and the article on the three monastic vows. For the Order’s territorial framework, see the article on convent castles.