Between ideal and reality: Concubines, prostitutes, and dishonest women in the military orders’ everyday lives ‒ some considerations on an old issue

Abstract

Women were present in the lives of the military orders, but not every single woman had a positive role to play in the orders’ reputation. Some brethren did not respect the vow of chastity, in given periods and contexts not even a majority. There were two major issues related to that: the frequenting of prostitutes and living with concubines. In some orders, such as Santiago and later also the other Iberian congregations, it was permitted for the brethren to take wives, but this did not stop all those illicit practices. Generally, in the military orders, breaking the vow of chastity was considered much less of an offence than breaking the vows of obedience and poverty. Though, in all the orders, it was important to avoid the scandals and to judge the transgressions inside the convent. Those communities had a basic ideal of life, be it within the walls of a convent or in the theatre of battle, but circumstances also changed. The brothers’ everyday life was quite different from an ideal which was markedly monastic. Everyday life in a military order was much too complicated and related to the secular world to strictly follow those ideals. This does not mean that the brethren of the military orders were lascivious sinners and womanisers, but that, in some way, the spiritual and natural ways of life could coexist in those institutions.