Sources & Editorial Policy

Where this site comes from

This is an independent informational site. It is not an official publication of the Order. Every substantive claim should be traceable to an official text or to a named secondary work.

Editorial policy

Official sources are publications of the Order, the Holy See, or an organ of the Order. They are normative for the Order’s identity, history, calendar, and discipline. Secondary sources are independent academic or reference works. They are included for context, comparison, and details that official sources do not cover, and they are not official publications of the Order.

Where official sources disagree with one another, this site says so rather than harmonizing the difference. Where a claim rests only on a secondary source, the page marks it as secondary or describes it as a later account. Dates and statistics are date-stamped where they are likely to change.

The site avoids treating the male Order and the wider Trinitarian Family as the same thing. Nuns, sisters, oblates, hermitesses, and lay Trinitarians are described as distinct vocations within the Family, not as branches or members of the male Order.

Quotations from the Order’s prayers and liturgical texts are attributed. The English Trisagion texts are reproduced for devotional use with the wording notes on the Trisagion page.

Official sources

Secondary works

These works are independent scholarship or reference. They are useful for chronology, context, and disputed details, but they are not official publications of the Order.

  • Secondary Andrew Witko, The Order of the Holy Trinity and Captives: A History of the Trinitarians (2008).
  • Secondary Giulio Cipollone, Studi intorno a Cerfroid; Cristianità-Islam: Cattività e liberazione in nome di Dio; and the edited volume La liberazione dei captivi tra Cristianità e Islam.
  • Secondary G. Llona, Fundador y Redentor: Juan de Mata.
  • Secondary Juan Borrego, La Regla Trinitaria.
  • Secondary The journals Trinitarium and Studi Trinitari.
  • Secondary Alban Butler, Butler’s Lives of the Saints, ed. Paul Burns (2000).
  • Secondary The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), “Order of Trinitarians”; “Third Orders”; “Scapular”.
  • Secondary Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., 1911), “Trinitarians.”
  • Secondary Llamazares, “Instituciones trinitarias”.
  • Secondary James W. Brodman, Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic Frontier (1986), for comparative context on ransoming orders.
  • Secondary Cervantes Project, Texas A&M University, Chronology of Cervantes.
  • Secondary BBC Culture, “When Cervantes was captured by pirates” (2016).
  • Secondary Wikipedia, “Trinitarians”, used only as a cross-check for dates and bibliography.

Publication details are given for identification. This list is not exhaustive; consult the works themselves and the Order’s own publications for authoritative texts.

Images and fonts

Image credits and licenses are recorded in assets/img/SOURCES.md. The site uses public-domain and Creative Commons images, plus one Order-owned handbook cover reproduced for identification. Each caption identifies the work and, where required, the license.

The site self-hosts three SIL Open Font License families: Cormorant Garamond, Source Serif 4, and Outfit. The license texts are in assets/fonts/README.md. No third-party font service is contacted at runtime.

Corrections

Corrections and source suggestions are welcome through GitHub issues. Please include a link or citation to the official text or secondary work. The site is reviewed against the Curia and U.S. Province pages when those pages change.

Last updated 19 October 2026. This site is not an official publication of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives.