Karl Borchardt is a professor at the University of Würzburg and a retired employee of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich. His major topics of interest include the Hospitallers and other military-religious orders, the Middles Ages from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, historical auxiliaries such as diplomatics, epigraphics, heraldry, and regional history in Central Europa, especially in Franconia and Silesia. PhD: Die geistlichen Institutionen in der Reichsstadt Rothenburg ob der Tauber und dem zugehörigen Landgebiet von den Anfängen bis zur Reformation. 2 parts. Veröffentlichungen der Gesellschaft für Fränkische Geschichte IX/37 (1988). Habilitation: Die Cölestiner: Eine Mönchsgemeinschaft des späteren Mittelalters. Historische Studien Ebering 488 (2006). Important books, collective volumes and editions: Die geistlichen Ritterorden in Mitteleuropa, Mittelalter, ed. Karl Borchardt and Libor Jan, Země e kultura ve střední Evropě 20 (2011). Documents concerning Cyprus from the Hospital’s Rhodian Archives: 1409-1459, ed. Karl Borchardt, Anthony Luttrell and Ekhard Schöffler. Cyprus Research Centre: Texts and Studies on the History of Cyprus 66 (2011). Comptes de la commanderie de l’Hôpital de Manosque pour les années 1283 à 1290, ed. with Damien Carraz and Alain Venturini. Documents, études et répertoires publiés par l’Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes 86 (2015). Documents concerning Central Europe from the Hospital’s Rhodian archives, 1314-1428. The Military Religious Orders (2021).
Helen J. Nicholson is Emerita Professor of History at Cardiff University. She has researched and published extensively on the crusades, the Templars and Hospitallers, and warfare in medieval Europe. Her books include The Knights Hospitaller (2001), The Proceedings Against the Templars in the British Isles (2011), and Myth and Reality: Studies on the Templars and Hospitallers, Medieval Narratives, and the Trial of the Templars (2026).
Dr. Juergen Sarnowsky was professor for medieval history at the University of Hamburg (1996-2021). He studied in history, philosophy, and physics at the Free University of Berlin, his PhD dissertation dealt with the commentary of Albert of Saxony on Aristotle’s Physics (1985), followed by the ‘habilitation’ on the Teutonic Knights (1992) and a book on the administration of the Hospitallers on Rhodes (2001). Jurgen Sarnowsky published on intellectual history, travellers, military orders, the Hanseatic League, urban history, and England, and he led six research projects on the edition and presentation of medieval sources (the Stabilimenta of 1489/93 of the Hospitallers, Debt and Letter Registers of the Teutonic Knights [8 vols.]).
He is the editor of three webpages on military orders:
Virtuelles Preußisches Urkundenbuch [for the Teutonic Knights]
He was the head of the “Hanseatic History Society” (2019-2026) and still presides the “Historical Commission for Regional Research on Eastern and Western Prussia” (since 2019).
