As one of the greatest of the military orders that were generated in the Church, the Order of the Hospital of St John was a major landowner and a significant political presence in most European states. It was also a leading player in the settlements established in the Levant in the wake of the crusades. It survives today. In this source-based and up-to-date account of its activities and internal history in the first two centuries of its existence, attention is particularly paid to the lives of the brothers and sisters who made up its membership and were professed religious. Themes in the book relate to the tension that always existed between the Hospital's roles as both a hospitaller and a military order and its performance as an institution that was at the same time a religious order and a great international corporation.
This fourth collection of Dr Luttrell’s studies on the military order of the Hospital concerns its activities on the island of Rhodes, acquired between 1306 and 1310, where it struggled to contain the naval aggression of the Anatolian Turks and to settle the island and organise its society and economy. At the same time it had to exploit its Cypriot possessions and its European provinces in order to secure the manpower and resources needed to sustain its Eastern activities. The author has spent over 40 years working in the Hospital’s archives on Malta and elsewhere throughout the West, studying the Hospitallers’ military and naval affairs, their spiritual and medical activities, and the organisation of their Western priories and commanderies. These studies illustrate the workings of an extensive multi-national corporation dedicated to the defence of Christendom.
This short study of the history of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, is intended as an introduction to the Order for academics working in other fields, as well as the interested general reader. Beginning with a consideration of the origins of the Order as a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem in the eleventh century, it traces the Hospitaller's development into a military order during the first part of the 12th century, and its military activities on the frontiers of Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean, Spain and eastern Europe during the middle ages and into early modern period: its role in crusades and in wars against non-Christians on land and at sea, as well as its role in building and maintaining fortresses.
A military history of the medieval Catholic order that arose during the Crusades in the Holy Land. The Knights of St John evolved during the Crusades from a monastic order providing hostels for Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. The need to provide armed escorts to the pilgrims began their transformation into a Military Order. Their fervor and discipline made them an elite component of most Crusader armies and Hospitaller Knights (as they were also known) took part in most of the major engagements, including Hattin, Acre and Arsuf. After the Muslims had re-conquered the Crusader Kingdoms, the Order continued to fight from a new base, first in Rhodes and then in Malta. Taking to the sea, the Hospitallers became one of the major naval powers in the Mediterranean, defending Christian shipping from the Barbary Pirates (and increasingly turning to piracy themselves as funding from their estates in Europe dried up). They provided a crucial bulwark against Islamic expansion in the Mediterranean, obstinately resisting a massive siege of Malta by the Ottoman Turks in 1565. The Order remained a significant power in the Mediterranean until their defeat by Napoleon in 1798. Praise for The Knights Hospitaller “John's book gives us a rare insight into the monastic order that gave birth to the Knights Hospitaller, charting their history and exploits from their formation to the Napoleonic wars at the end of the eighteenth century. History doesn’t get any better than this.” —Books Monthly “In the process of telling this story, Carr also gives us an overview of military practice and trends in the Mediterranean world from the Crusades through the age of Revolution. This is a good read for anyone unfamiliar with the knights.” —New York Military Affairs “A deftly written, impressively comprehensive history that is thoroughly “reader friendly” in organization and presentation.” —Midwest Book Review
The monk and the knight -- the two quintessentially medieval European heroes -- were combined in the Knights Templar and in the other military orders founded in the era of the Crusades. With characteristic eloquence, Bernard of Clairvaux voices the cleric's view of knights, warfare, and the conquest of the Holy Land in five chapters on the knights' vocation. Then the cistercian abbot who never visited Palestine and discouraged monks who proposed doing so, in another eight chapters, provides a spiritual tour of the pilgrimage sites guarded by this 'new kind of knighthood and one unknown to ages gone by.'
The Knights of St John of Jerusalem, also known as the Hospitallers, were a military religious order, subject to monastic vows and discipline but devoted to the active defence of the Holy Land. After evacuating the Holy Land at the beginning of the fourteenth century, they occupied Rhodes, which they held into the sixteenth century, when their headquarters moved to Malta. Branches of the order existed throughout Europe, and it is the English branch in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that is examined here. Among the major subjects researched by O'Malley are the recruitment of members of the Hospital and their family ties; the operation of the order's career structure; the administration of its estates; its provision of spiritual and charitable services; and the publicity and logistical support it provided for the holy war carried on by its headquarters against the Ottoman Turks. It is argued that the English Hospitallers in particular took their military and financial duties to the order very seriously, making a major contribution to the Hospital's operations in the Mediterranean as a result. They were able to do so because they were wealthy, had close family and other ties with gentle and mercantile society, and above all because their activities had royal support. Where this was lacking or ineffective, as in Ireland, the Hospital might become the plaything of local interests eager to exploit its estates, and its wider functions might be neglected. Consequently the heart of the book lies in an extended discussion of the relationship between senior Hospitaller officers and the governing authorities of Britain and Ireland. It is concluded that rulers were generally supportive of the order's activities, but within strict limits, particularly in matters concerning appointments, the size of payments to the east, and the movement and foreign allegiances of senior brethren. When these limits were breached, or at times of political or religious sensitivity such as the 1460s and 1530s, the Hospital's personnel and estates would suffer. In addition, more general areas of historical debate are illuminated such as those concerning the relationship between late medieval societies and the religious orders; 'British' attitudes to Christendom and holy war, and the rights of rulers over their subjects. This is the first such book to be based on archival records in both Britain and Malta, and will make a major contribution to understanding the order's European network, its place in the ordering of Latin Christendom, and in particular its role in late medieval British and Irish society.
