Helen Nicholson offers a masterly synthesis and summary of the present state of knowledge and debates on various aspects of warfare in medieval Catholic Europe between AD 300 and 1500. Nicholson provides a general overview of the subject, with greater detail on topics of particular interest. Individual chapters consider the theory of warfare, military personnel, buildings and equipment, as well as the practice of warfare by land and sea.

Founded to support Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land and most famous for their support for crusading, the Military Religious Orders' activities and interests stretched far beyond the frontiers of Christendom. Representing some of the most recent advances in research, in this volume eleven scholars from Europe and North America explore important and hitherto under-researched aspects of the Orders' history, scrutinising their relations with the papacy, their organisational structure, their devotional practices, their fortresses and their presence in the localities of Western Europe....