where they acted as the bankers of the French King. Their wealth
provoked jealousy: they were accused of numberless and nameless
crimes, and their enemies brought about their fall, first in France,
then in England, and finally the abolition of the Order by papal
decree in 1313. Such of their wealth as escaped the hands of the lay
authorities went to swell the possessions of the Hospitallers.

[Sidenote: Teutonic Knights.]

There were many other Orders of soldier-monks besides these two. The
best known are the Teutonic Knights, who originated during the Third
Crusade at the siege of Acre (1190) in an association of North German
Crusaders for the care of the sick and wounded. The Knights of the
German Hospital of St. Mary the Virgin at Jerusalem--for such was
their full title--gained powerful influence in Palestine; their Order
was confirmed by Pope Celestine III (1191-8), and in 1220 Honorius III
gave them the same privileges as were enjoyed by the Hospitallers and
Templars. Their organisation was similar to that of the older Orders.
Their prosperity was chiefly due to the third Grand Master, Herman von
Salza, the good genius of the Emperor Frederick II, and a great power
in Europe. Under him the Order transferred itself to the shores of the
Baltic, where it carried on a crusade against the heathen Prussians,
and here it united in 1237 with another knightly Order, the Brethren
of the Sword, which had been founded in 1202 by the Bishop of Livonia
for similar work against the heathen inhabitants of that country.

[Sidenote: Other military Orders.]

The Knights of the Hospital of St. Thomas of Acre was a small English
Order named after Thomas Becket and founded in the thirteenth century.