| a religious military order founded c1190 in the Holy Land by German crusaders that originally did charitable work among the sick and later fought against the Slavic and Baltic peoples in the eastward expansion of medieval Germany. |
| Teutonic Order n. An order of German knights, priests, and lay brothers founded in the late 12th century that sought to expand Christendom through missions and conquest and built numerous towns which it then governed as nobility. After being defeated by Poles and Lithuanians at the battle of Tannenberg (1410), its strength waned, and today it survives as a charitable clerical organization. |