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The history of the Knights Hospitaller in the Levant is concerned with the early years of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitaller, through 1309. The Order was formed in the later part of the eleventh century and played a major role in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in particular, the Crusades.
When I began research 50 years ago, the early history of the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem had not been seriously considered since the turn of the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries.1 My book2 was intended to be the first in a series of volumes, each by a different author, covering the history of the Hospital from
- Foundation & Independence
- Organization & Recruitment
- The Crusades
- Relocation: Rhodes
- The Hospitallers & The Byzantine Empire
- Relocation: Malta
The order was first established at the Hospital of Saint John in Jerusalem c. 1080 CE (or even earlier) by a group of merchants from Amalfi in Italy. The John it was originally dedicated to was the 7th-century CE patriarch John the Almsgiver, but he was later replaced as patron by the more universally known and more popular Saint John the Baptist. ...
The leader of the order was the Master who was elected by a committee of brother knights and who held the position for life. The next most important position was that of Grand Commander, the man responsible for administration, supplies, and weapons. The Marshal looked after all military and disciplinary affairs. Other senior officers included the C...
The Hospitallers, like other orders such as the Knights Templar, provided a vital few hundred knights to western Crusader armies, especially from the Third Crusade(1187-1192 CE) onwards when they often formed the flanks of armies on the battlefield. Indeed, the great Muslim leader Saladin offered a bounty to any man who took a Hospitaller prisoner;...
When Jerusalem fell once again into Muslim hands in 1187 CE and the Crusaders were forced to withdraw, the Hospitallers moved their base, first to Acre in 1191 CE, and then, when the Latins were kicked out of the Holy Land altogether in 1291 CE, the Knights Hospitaller moved to a new headquarters on Cyprus. Unfortunately, the island lacked a suffic...
The Hospitallers had a close relationship with the Byzantine Empire. With an outpost in the capital Constantinople, Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (r. 1143-1180 CE), for example, employed the order's prior as a diplomatic envoy. The order helped to restore John V Palaiologos (r. 1341-1391 CE) to the throne and received the gratitude of his son and succe...
The Ottomans, eager to once and for all remove the Christian thorn from the Mediterranean flank of their empire, attacked Rhodes in 1455 CE and again in 1480 CE. It was to be third time lucky in 1522 CE, and the Hospitallers were, once again, obliged to look elsewhere for their permanent headquarters. After brief pauses on Sicily and on the Italian...
- Mark Cartwright
The history of the Knights Hospitaller in the Levant is concerned with the early years of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitaller, through 1309. The Order was formed in the later part of the eleventh century and played a major role in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in particular, the Crusades.
Siege of Acre (1291) The Knights Hospitaller (also known as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Order of St. John, Knights of Malta, and Chevaliers of Malta; French: Ordre des Hospitaliers) was a Christian organization that began as an Amalfitan hospital founded in Jerusalem in 1080, to ...
About this book. 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.
Jan 7, 2014 · 07 January 2014. Cite. Permissions. Share. Extract. Forty-five years after publishing his thesis on the early history of the Knights of St John, Jonathan Riley-Smith has revisited the subject in an updated, reshaped and significantly re-imagined account, adopting, as he writes, ‘a somewhat different standpoint’ (p. viii).
