Templar and Hospitaller cooperation in the 12th century Orient.

Contradictory views merit examination of the cooperation between the Templar and Hospitaller military orders buring the Crusades. The rules laid down by the Orders contain much information on their mode of coexistence in the East. 

The Templar navy - the early phase

During the twelfth century the Frankish navy seems never to have passed an embryonic stage, which compelled the kings of Jerusalem to constantly search for external alliances. There was no direct reason for the Templars to invest in maritime activities in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe directly after the First Crusade. Their first objective was pacification of the roads of the kingdom of Jerusalem. 

Development of the novelty of the right of clerical self-defense 1120-1176

Sometime between 14 January and 13 September 1120 (...) at the hands of Patriarch Warmund, Hugh of Payns, Godfrey of Saint-Omer, and certain other French knights pledged to live “more canonicorum regularium” (as regular canons, not monks, as is so commonly thought) and accordingly took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In return, Warmund and his fellow bishops enjoined upon these consecrated knights, for the remission of their sins, the principal task of keeping roads and highways safe for pilgrims against thieves and highwaymen. (...) These new armed, consecrated knights, soon to be known as ‘Templars’, were revolutionary indeed and required nearly another twenty years before they were approved completely by Rome.

Nablus 1120: the medieval ban of clergy bearing arms lifted

"It is revealing that in recovering this canon (on the prohibition of clergy bearing arms; TN) from earlier legislation, Gregory IX and Raymond of Peñafort went all the way back to the council of Poitiers in 1078, convened during the pontificate of Gregory VII (...) In sum, then, between 1049 and 1095, no fewer than thirteen councils and synods had damned clerical armsbearing. At nine of these thirteen assemblies, three different popes and six papal legates presided. The reforming papacy seemingly could not have been clearer on this issue. After that there is almost nothing in the decrees of the seven so-called ecumenical or general councils held between 1123 and 1312. (...)