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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Crusades |
 | | These members, whether knights drawn from the nobility, bailiffs, clerks, or chaplains, pronounced the three monastic vows but it was chiefly to the war against the Saracens that they pledged themselves. |
 | | Being favoured with many spiritual and temporal privileges, they easily gained recruits from among the younger sons of feudal houses and acquired both in Palestine and in Europe considerable property. |
 | | Recruited from among the younger sons of the noblest families of Europe, they owned immense estates in France as well as in Italy, and when the French Revolution broke out, the order quickly lost ground. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/04543c.htm (14151 words) |
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