Memory forms a central part of institutional identity, underpinning what the members of an institution believe their function to be. It is not static, but is continually re-created to meet new challenges. In the context of the military-religious orders, predominant memory was not individual or based on a person’s own experiences but a collective record constructed by the group. What was included and what was excluded from these memories dictated which vision of the past would shape the future. This article explores the military religious orders’ institutional memory through memorialisation within the military-religious orders’ chapels, their historical writing, their liturgy, and the cult of saints developed by these orders, arguing that military-religious orders used memory to shape their understanding of their orders’ function, direct that function in the present and point towards future development: memory must serve the future as much as it reflected the past
