<P> The Knights Templar, the largest and most influential of the military orders, was suppressed in the early fourteenth century; only a handful of orders were established and recognized afterwards . However, some persisted longer in their original functions, only later evolving into purely honorific and / or ceremonial chivalric orders with charitable aims in modern times, such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, both of which are still conferred as Papal orders of knighthood . Notably, the Teutonic Order became exclusively monastic except a limited associated confraternity of honorary Knights . </P> <P> In 1053, for the Battle of Civitate, the Knights of Saint Peter (Milites Sancti Petri) was founded as a militia by Pope Leo IX to counter the Normans . </P> <P> In response to the Islamic conquests of the former Byzantine Empire, numerous Catholic military orders were set up following the First Crusade . The founding of such orders suited the Catholic church's plan of channeling the devotion of the European nobility toward achieving the Church's temporal goals, and it also complemented the Peace and Truce of God . The foundation of the Knights Templar in 1118 provided the first in a series of tightly organized military forces for the purpose of opposing Islamic conquests in the Holy Land and in the Iberian Peninsula--see the Reconquista--as well as Islamic invaders and pagan tribes in Eastern Europe which were perceived as threats to the Church's supremacy . </P> <P> The first secularized military order was the Order of Saint George, founded in 1326 by King Charles I of Hungary, through which he made all the Hungarian nobility swear loyalty to him . Shortly thereafter, the Order of the "Knights of the Band" was founded in 1332 by King Alfonso XI of Castile . Both orders existed only for about a century . </P>

Knights catholic military order linked to the crusades