he socioeconomic ladder, but peasants who joined the crusade were able to rise in society and become what Prawer calls burgesses; they were the heralds of an early middle class.
It was from the transplanted Europeans in the Holy Land that the idea of the chivalric military orders emerged, such as the Templars, the Hospitalliers, and the Teutonic Knights. The members of these orders, which were by and large faithful to their ethnic origins, in large part formed the landed nobility that comprised the Europeans in the area. It was from this group, too, that castles, churches, and other European style fortifications were built in the Holy Land. These orders were not of the highest tier of nobility in Europe but rather a second tier that achieved prominence in many parts of the Holy Land. But there were also settlements with definite loyalties to ethnic and state origins: Venetian, Italian, German, and French communities were extensions of their European roots. Inevitably, these communities attained a measure of independence, but elements of administration of European origin were always present, and the attitudes of the Europeans who settled in the "reclaimed" lands were such that the native residents were viewed as conquered peoples. Indeed, Prawer asserts that the imposition of European sway over existing Jewish, Moslem, or Oriental Christian communities had the effect of institutionalizing a system of apartheid, with the conquering Europeans the favored sect.
It would seem to follow that the history of Europeans in the Holy Land would parallel the development of Europeans in Europe, but Prawer says that the intellectual life of Europeanized colonies in the Holy Land lagged behind that of Europe itself. The fervor that motivated the first crusaders to reclaim Jerusalem from the Moslems was gradually transmuted into the desire of subsequent settlers to the east to simply take what they could usually material from the Moslems they en...