The Catholic military orders are among the most famous fighting forces of the medieval
period, serving as the tip of Christendom’s lance for several centuries and earning them
a reputation which lasts even today. However, like many idealised groups and individuals
from eras before our own, these martial orders have accrued a great deal of myth, legend,
and fabrication which must be dispelled so that the truth can be revealed. In this miniseries
on the religious military orders of Latin Christendom, we will cover the three most
famous: the Teutonic knights, Templars, and the subject of our first video - the Hospitallers,
a perfect example of how war changes everything affected by it.
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The order of the famous Hospitaller knights did not begin with caparison-clad horses,
fully armoured warriors, and lances couched towards a heathen enemy. Instead, in many
ways one of the most famous holy orders began in a far more humble and peaceful manner.
Rather than warriors, the Hospitallers had their origins as an order of caretakers who
nevertheless harkened back to pre-Roman history for mythical origins.
It is said that long before Christ died on the cross, a legendary Greek king known as
Antiochus, whose realm occupied Jerusalem, wished to viciously punish a Jewish high priest
known as Melchior for desecrating the tomb of David. However, divine intervention supposedly
persuaded the king to have mercy on the condemned man, and instead build a hospital in Jerusalem.
This hospital would later shelter the Virgin Mary, the apostles, and even Christ himself.
The mythology of King Antiochus’ foundation of this earliest Hospitaller institution is
almost certainly false, but what became the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Jerusalem
may have had charitable hospices assisting Latin pilgrims as early as 603, when Pope
Gregory I founded one there. Centuries passed with little detail, during which the proto-Hospitallers
provided for Christian pilgrims in Muslim-controlled Jerusalem. As aid, the hospices received contributions
from wealthy European benefactors such as the Amalfitan merchant Mauro of Pantaleone.
With their assistance and funds, many further hospitals were probably established and disbanded
on nearby sites in Jerusalem, but we know little of the detail. However, the ‘Hospital
of Saint John’ proper was founded between 1063 and 1070 in Fatimid-controlled Jerusalem,
serving as a combination of an infirmary for the sick and a waystation or lodging house
for weary travelling pilgrims - the medieval period was an age in which these two functions
often fused. 70 years later, a chronicler known as William of Tyre referred to the hospital
as a xenodochium ‘in which were gathered many people, well and sick’.
Everything changed for the Hospital in the year 1099, when Latin crusaders first laid
siege to Jerusalem during the First Crusade. Most of the city’s small Christian population
had already been expelled from the city, but the hospital’s head - Gerard - stayed behind
to tend the sick. At this point, we receive another foundation legend rooted within the
siege itself. Gerard, who understandably had sympathies with his fellow Christians suffering
in siege outside the walls, supposedly took loaves of bread to the walls and threw them
at the starving army outside. To do this, he pretended that the loaves were rocks to
attack the enemy force, but he was in fact feeding them.
Muslim guards realised what was happening and brought Gerard to their commander, but
when they did all of the bread carried by Gerard had miraculously turned to stone. The
rector was freed, and when Jerusalem was conquered he received gifts from the crusader leaders
for this assistance. Over a decade later, the Hospital of Saint
John gained its independence from the larger churches surrounding it when Pope Paschal
[pascal] II issued the Pie postulatio voluntatis on February 15th 1113. This took the Hospital
and everything it acquired under the Pope’s personal authority, and directed these resources
towards the sustenance of pilgrims and the poor. Payment of tithes to the church were
halted, the order was granted the right to elect its future masters from its own ranks,
and the pro-Hospitaller [proto?] order was elevated higher than any similar institution
in Europe at the time. Following the First Crusade and especially
after the order became an independent entity, it also began to militarise and take the form
which we know it as commonly. From a simple hospital taking care of the sick, the order
began to morph truly into the Knights Hospitaller. When the crusade concluded with the seizure
of Jerusalem in 1099, many of the victorious crusaders went home. However, relatively large
contingents of knights did stay in the holy land to continue their holy duties, and it
is here that we can find the origins of the order’s knights.
A seventeenth-century manuscript remnant tells us that when the Hospitaller’s wealth had
grown to massive levels, it hired some of these leftover crusader knights, tasking them
with protecting the order’s property and with the pious goal of driving back the pagans.
Gradually, it is said that the martial elements which were brought into the order came to
dominate it, and the normal priests were sidelined in positions of authority.
Another account by one ‘William Caoursin’ - vice chancellor of Rhodes - tells us a more
heroic tale of his order’s origins. He recounts instead that ‘devout persons on pilgrimage’
took up arms for defence of the Catholic faith, induced by divine zeal. As might be expected,
different versions inform us of different motivations and intentions, but what is certain
is that a number of post-crusade warriors took up the cross for the Hospital as brothers
at arms. By 1136, the order’s military strength,
administrative prowess, and wealth had advanced to the extent that they were able to take
up the defence and maintenance of Bethgibelin Castle, which was granted to them by the King
of Jerusalem. Six years later, they were entrusted with even greater responsibilities over the
frontier between Islamic-held lands and the County of Tripoli. Count Raymond II bestowed
upon the Hospitallers castles at Crac de Chevaliers, Anaz, Tell Kalah, Qalaat el Felis and Mardabech.
They were to be held by the order as quasi-independent fiefs in return for defending the border against
Muslim forces, particularly Zangi of Mosul. Now with the foggy beginning of the order’s
history established, we will go over its responsibilities of care and protection, looking at how the
Hospitallers accomplished each one in turn. Christian teachings had always focused on
a concern for the poor and needy. However, as Western Europe developed economically throughout
the eleventh century, the prominence of towns and the poverty they often generated was becoming
more visible. Jerusalem was one of these towns, having received many ill, impoverished or
elderly pilgrims. The Hospitallers brought this reverence of
poverty to a new level, portraying themselves as the ‘serfs and slaves’ of his ‘lords’,
who were the sick people of the world. In that way, it seems that brothers of the order
imagined themselves as the property of their patients. To this end, an orderman’s clothes
were generally humble and minimal, he was expected to wash patients and remake their
beds. This even extended to noble ‘brothers of the sword’, who would routinely surrender
their war-horses to provide transportation to injured men after battles.
During their time in the Levant, the Hospitallers operated various institutions which were focused
on treating diseases which were actually curable, compared to conditions like leprosy, which
at the time were not. The order’s main hospital in their first headquarters of Jerusalem occupied
a large space to the south of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It possessed 11 wards
and could, in a standard situation, take in as many as 1,000 patients. In a crisis situation
it could even be enlarged to deal with double that total, such as in the aftermath of the
Battle of Mont Gisard [french?] in 1177 when it admitted an extra 750 wounded in a short
period, in addition to 900 regular patients. While a single main hospital in Jerusalem,
and later in Acre, was the centre of the Order’s operations, it was by no means the only one.
The Hospitallers also ran the German hospital of St Mary in Jerusalem, the infirmary of
Aqua Bella, various graveyards to bury the dead, and even a mobile medical train which
accompanied and supported Christian armies on campaign.
The bulk of the work of healing the sick was performed by relatively highly educated physici
- essentially physicians who were employed and had something like medieval university
degrees. Meanwhile, nursing was performed by servants of both sexes who had to make
the beds, feed the patients, talk to them, and perform other daily tasks.
Very much contrary to most medical services of the middle-ages, the order also operated
a makeshift ambulance service throughout the holy city. A twelfth century directive to
Hospitaller brothers states that: “If the nature of the illness of the poor deprives
them of strength, so that they cannot make the effort to reach the hospital of St John,
mercifully seek them through the city and have them conveyed there by servants.”
Beyond their duties to the sick and poor, Hospitallers assisted the population with
a facility which might best be compared to modern day food banks. The poor of Jerusalem,
and especially new mothers and their babies, could go to the order’s almonry and receive
money and food to sustain themselves as best they could. Also in service of young people
was the large orphanage which the Hospitallers founded in Jerusalem. Babies were allotted
well-paid wet nurses who were regularly subject to inspection by sisters of the order. When
the children grew up they, including girls, were educated, and therefore could make a
life for themselves in the world or continue to serve the order. Their motivation for particularly
focusing on children was as follows: “recalling in loving memory that whereas animals are
born with protection against inclement weather - beasts with hair, birds with feathers, fish
with scales, tortoises with shells, man alone is born naked and defenceless.”
With their civilian and charitable services outlined, we will now detail the more famous
branch of the Hospitaller order - those forces focused on defending Christians and engaging
in military action alongside the Templars and other similar organisations. In the later
thirteenth century, Master of the Order Hugh Revel believed that there were around 300
full Hospitaller brothers in the east. It is likely that this was the maximum number
of knights in residence at any given time in the order’s Levantine history, primarily
due to shortage of funds. These brothers in the east were recruited from amongst fit and
relatively young men from Western Europe, while older members of the Hospitaller order
remained in Europe itself, administering the always-expanding support and recruitment network.
France and England were the primary manpower reserves from which the Hospitallers drew,
followed by Bohemia and Hungary. While the Holy Roman Empire also had great potential,
there was reluctance for Germans to join an order which was so close to the Papacy when
it and the Empire were quarrelling. Contrary to the popular perception, sword brothers
of the Hospitaller Order were not solely recruited from the noble classes during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. That preference for those of knightly rank who brought a considerable
donation only began during the 1260s. Before that point, all recruits simply had to be
free, born legitimately, ’spiritually clean’, fit to fight, and not in financial debt.
A number of other small groups lingered on the edge of being a full Hospitaller brother.
These included but were not limited to the donats, noblemen who wished to join the order
fully and had travelled to the holy land, but had to wait in a queue before they could
take their oaths. Due to their almost permanent lack of full
brothers, when disaster struck in battle it could cripple the order’s military strength.
However, appeals to Europe often made good the losses. After the disasters of 1187 against
Saladin, a body of newly recruited Hospitallers from the west quickly came to the holy land
and filled the void. When the scarcity of full Hospitaller brothers
is revealed, it can raise eyebrows and questions as to just how the order managed to maintain
itself as a military power. The answer is that these oathed warriors only formed the
core of any Hospitaller army, whose numbers commonly had to be padded out with other warriors.
Most of the holy land’s major interfaith confrontations required a unified Christian
response, which would commonly include the crusader state armies along with both the
Templars and Hospitallers. However, the Hospitallers themselves could
muster more than just their few hundred brothers. In fact, a vast majority of the order’s
soldiers were actually mercenaries, many of them either indigenous light horsemen known
as turcopoles, or similarly armed Latin units who fought for pay. Mercenary units of engineers
and siegecraft specialists were also employed to breach enemy fortifications. On many occasions
the order possessed siege weaponry which skilled artisans would have been required to maintain
and use.
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