Help with Crusader Knights' Insignias and uniforms, please

[Dewbakuk]

Given the Teutonic Knights were Orthodox and not Catholic, would they have followed the same Rule's or would they have their own?

Not my field either but this is an interesting thread

[redrob]

The Teutonic Knights were certainly not Orthodox Christian. They were VERY Catholic.

Re - Shields - according to recent (ish) research it looks as though quite a few nobles joining the Teutonic Knights carried their own arms. We know this because the Grand Master and the Treasurer had to issue instructions against doing so on a regular basis. It is quite possible this was the same among other orders.
Crusading Knights fighting alongside them would of course retained their own arms and distinctions. This would included members of the English royalty who fought in the Baltic Crusades.

Re- Flags- Go for the flags from the Danish site and not the ones from the Grimsby site which are by and large wrong. Rune Kramm used The Banderia Prutenorum as his source and this is contemporary with the  15th Century.
Unfortunately the Grimsby flags are beset by a lack of understanding of heraldry and the personal arms of the first Crusaders are simply made up. There are illustrations of (admittedly stylised) arms of the first crusaders on t'web.
As a point of interest the Flag of Jerusalem was plain white until 1162.
 

[Dewbakuk]

The Teutonic Knights were certainly not Orthodox Christian. They were VERY Catholic.

It appears so! I was talking about these yesterday with a manufacturer who told me they were a branch of Orthodox, I stand corrected 

[vonplutz]

Sure, I have the Upton Ward translation, which has Matt Bennett's great article on medieval cavalry charges in the back - printed by Boydell, 1992. It includes the Primitive Rule as well as later developments. Of particular note here is the section on Hierarchical Statutues c.1165.

However, I do not believe some other monastic, as opposed to Mendicant, orders were any less hierarchical. As you probably know, the Templar Rule was based on the Cistercian Rule and it distinguished between brother knights and serjeants from the get go. Whilst the Rule of St. Benedict intended a flat structure and not impose a supra-communal hierarchy, this does not seem to match the system developed later by the Cluniacs and Cistericians.

Hope that helps and isn't too off topic 

I'll get my hands on the translation and article thank you. I guess I was painting with too broad a brush basing too much off the rule of Benedict. Just shows that I need to sharpen my knowledge of medieval monasticism and focus a little less on Anglo-French relations. Thanks for the insightful discussion though sadly we shouldn't keep derailing this thread.

[janner]

It appears so! I was talking about these yesterday with a manufacturer who told me they were a branch of Orthodox, I stand corrected 

Come on, name and shame them 

[Dewbakuk]

That would be mean, although their range was very recently expanded 
He'll probably be at Derby Worlds though so I'll have another 'chat' with him today 

[ErikB]

Teutonic Knights were Catholic, as were many of the people who they fought.  Here's a polish book, very good, but the Order are clearly the bad guys. 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Teutonic-Knights-Henryk-Sienkiewicz/dp/0781804337

I found a wiki article that listed the ranks in the Hospitallers (and mapped to their modern Army/Marine equivalents).  There were actual ranks, not just Noble/Office vs. Common/Enlisted.  I cannot seem to find it again, sorry.

[janner]

Polish nationalist novelist says, 'it was the other guy that started it, we were always the good guys'. 

In other breaking news, Pope declares that he is Catholic and a bear found defecating in the woods...

The comments on the Amazon page are quite entertaining though 

The most interesting one for me, apart from those railing against German aggression, was the one who compared it with Walter Scott's novels. 

[Paul]

Here´s a site where the question could be answered
http://www.flagsforum.com/index.php
They´ve got a section just about heraldry.