The origin of the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre goes back to the age of the Roman Empire: In the year 326 of our Lord, Emperor Constantine the Great ordered a sacral building to be erected over the rediscovered Holy Sepulchre and at the same time set up a special military force for its permanent protection. These guardians of the Holy Sepulchre fulfilled a double function: On the one hand, they performed the military and police-like duty of guarding and protecting. On the other hand, their assignment had at that time a politically important symbolic character going beyond the actual guarding. On Earth, the emperor combined in his person the supreme worldly power as well as the supreme ecclesiastical power. According to the ideas of that time, both powers even were linked unseparatably to each other; the task of the emperor was to realise the sacral celestial order in a world of changes being subject to time. His worldly empire was to correspond to this order, it had to correspond to this order to ward off the chaos of hostile human as well as of natural forces. The emperor was the supreme sovereign, was chief military commander, was supreme judge, but above all, and only this legitimised this culmination of worldly power in his office, he was the pontifex maximus - "the great bridge builder" - to the celestial world. Taking into consideration that the German emperors in the Middle Ages, about a thousand years after the emperor Augustus, did not proclaim a German Empire, but on purpose renewed the idea of a European Empire by becoming Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations, we can imagine how powerful this cultural idea was. This was not done to step into the political succession of the Roman Caesars of the Mediterranean World, but to take up the function of the pontifex maximus, as could be clearly noticed by everybody.
Goffredo di Buglione (Goffrey of Bouillon) takes up again the pontifical idea, for the first time after the recapture of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre in the year 1099 and founds the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre to protect the regained Holy Place because it had above all such a special symbolic meaning to the Occident. Seen as a military unit, the order did not develop any particular historical effect, compared for example with probably better known orders such as the Order of the Knights Templar, the Order of the Knights of Malta, or the Teutonic Order of Knights. Politically no importance is attributed to the Order - as in contrary for instance to the Teutonic Order and its importance for the later Kingdom of Prussia; instead, since then, the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre gave special emphasis to the spiritual and religious ideal as a Christian Order of Knights: being protector and guardian of the Holy Sepulchre in succession of Goffrey of Bouillon.
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Undoubtedly the Order served as an escort for Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. In many cases, the Order succeeded in buying the freedom of captured and displaced Europeans through diplomatic negotiations with the Saracens. Wealthy persons were obliged to reimburse the ransom money to the Order. The Order stood up, however, for people without means. There are different versions about the historical founding in the scientific literature, especially with regard to the further development in history. These different versions, typically not free from the influence of the author's nationality, in their entirety allow the following conclusion: The Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre was held in great esteem in the Occident because of its ideational background. Especially after the territorial loss of the Holy Land, groups of knights formed in the different European nations, which, bestowed with special privileges, developed their independent existence. The influence of the idea as such as well as the influence of particular Knights of the Holy Sepulchre may be seen from the fact that the Cross of the Order has been incorporated in a number of European coats of arms, for example in the shield of the Dukedom of Athens and in those of the kingdoms of Naples-Savoy, Cyprus, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil.
Already in the Middle Ages, the Order split up into two branches, one orientated towards the Holy See as the Western Roman-Latin one, and the other sticking to the pontifical imperial idea as the Eastern Roman-Byzantine branch. This division exists to this day, even though the historical contrast between empire and papacy has been overcome since long time. The Latin branch of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre is an institution of the Roman-Catholic Church, under the direct control of the Pope, its members are exclusively of Roman-Catholic denomination. The Byzantine branch of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre has been kept alive by the Habsburg emperors after the decline of the Eastern-Roman Empire and exists today as a Christian-ecumenical order of knights without any particular denominational bonds of its members.
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