The Livonian Brothers of the Sword was founded in 1202 by Albert, third bishop of Riga and Prince-Bishop of Livonia, with papal sanction from Pope Innocent III granted in 1204. A Catholic military-religious order of German knights operating in Terra Mariana, the region of present-day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, it followed monastic rules adapted from the Knights Templar, with vows of obedience, poverty and celibacy, and its main duty was protecting priests and missionaries in pagan territories. After a devastating defeat at the Battle of Saule in 1236, its surviving members were incorporated the following year into the Teutonic Order, becoming the Livonian Order by 1237.
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