What is "military order"

Military \Mil"i*ta*ry\, a. [L. militaris, militarius, from miles, militis, soldier: cf. F. militaire.]

1. Of or pertaining to soldiers, to arms, or to war; belonging to, engaged in, or appropriate to, the affairs of war; as, a military parade; military discipline; military bravery; military conduct; military renown.

   Nor do I, as an enemy to peace, Troop in the throngs of military men.
   --Shak.

2. Performed or made by soldiers; as, a military election; a military expedition. --Bacon. Military law. See Martial law, under Martial. Military order.

   1. A command proceeding from a military superior.

   2. An association of military persons under a bond of certain peculiar rules; especially, such an association of knights in the Middle Ages, or a body in modern times taking a similar form, membership of which confers some distinction.

      Military tenure, tenure of land, on condition of performing military service.

n. An order of knighthood which has a military (typically crusading) as well as a spiritual vocation

A military order is a confraternity of knights, originally established as Catholic religious societies during the medieval Crusades for protection of Christians in response to the aggression and persecution of the Islamic conquests (623–1050) in the Holy Land and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as by Baltic paganism in Eastern Europe. Most members, often referred to as knights, were laymen, not priests, but sometimes cooperated with the clergy, taking vows such as poverty, chastity, and obedience according to monastic religious vows.

It was in the military orders, in fusion of religious and military spirit, that chivalry reached its apogee. Its traditions eventually influenced many subsequent secular Western fraternities, or brotherhoods, and most importantly the honour systems of honourfic orders of today.

Prominent examples include the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar in Outremer, as well as the Teutonic Knights in the Baltics.

Many were suppressed by the Pope before 1500 with few establishments afterwards, while others evolved into Roman Catholic ceremonial, missionary, charitable organisations. Some persisted longer in its original functions, while growing into honorific chivalric orders with charitable aims in modern times, such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, both Papal orders of knighthood conferred still today.

Parallel institutions of unilateral Roman Catholic adherence exist in continuous or revived forms among current and former European royal houses.

Military order may refer to:

A military order or command is a binding instruction given by a senior rank to a junior rank in a military context. Though not all senior ranks in all military have the right to give an order to all lower ranks. A general order is a published directive by an officer in commander, which is binding on all ranks under his command, and intended to enforce a policy or procedure.