(Web Editor's Note: a more formal version of the Whichard Lecture is
reprinted here with the writer's permission.
'The Order of the Hospitallers was founded upon hospitality and beyond this exercises military functions and makes many gifts...the Templars were founded particularly as a knighthood and in all their bailliages, three times a week, they make a general gift to all those wishing to receive it and to the poor they give continuously a tenth of all their bread.'1 In 1306 or early 1307, James of Molay, as yet unaware that he was the last master of the Order of the Temple, arrived in France from Cyprus, bringing with him two mйmoires on the subject of the crusade, which had been requested by the pope, Clement V. The theme of one of these was the current question of whether the two great military orders of the Temple and the Hospital should be united, much discussed since at least the Council of Lyons in 1274. Molay himself was strongly opposed to the idea, but nevertheless he dutifully set out the arguments, carefully weighting his material to demonstrate how disadvantageous such a union would be. As he saw it: 'When pilgrims of the Lord, whoever they are, great or small, come to the Holy Land, they always find refreshment, comfort, help or succour from either one or other of the orders. And if there had been only one religion, perhaps they would not have found so much comfort or such comprehensive help.'
Although the arguments which the master put forward were basically self-interested, since he clearly saw a threat to his own authority in such a union, his view of the respective functions of the orders was in fact a fair reflection of their differing origins. These had grown out of the success of the First Crusade, which had taken Jerusalem in 1099. In the following decade, three Latin states - Jerusalem, Tripoli and Antioch - were added to the lordship carved out by Baldwin of Boulogne at Edessa in 1098. This meant that the Latins held all the places which, according to an anonymous guide of the mid-fourteenth century, should be visited by an assiduous pilgrim: that is, Jerusalem and the immediate vicinity, especially Mount Sion, the Mount of Olives, and Bethany, Bethlehem and Hebron to the south, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee to the north, and the River Jordan to the east.2 Immediately after the capture of Jerusalem such pilgrims began to arrive in unprecedented numbers, and they continued to do so over the nearly two centuries of the western occupation of the Palestinian mainland. However, in the early twelfth century there was almost no infrastructure to cope with them; demand had been stimulated, but appropriate facilities were lacking. In these circumstances the secular and ecclesiastical authorities strove to utilise to the full the few possibilities which did exist, so that within a generation the Hospitallers, who already ran a small hospice before the crusaders' arrival, had transformed this into a major 'palace of the sick', while the Templars had been persuaded that the protection of pilgrims travelling to the holy places was a charitable goal of equal importance.
Interest in pilgrimage in the west had been growing well before the Latin conquest, and a hospice had been established in Jerusalem sometime before 1071 as part of St Mary of the Latins, a Benedictine monastery situated south-west of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The monastery had been endowed by Amalfitan merchants, who were then the leading Italian traders in the Muslim east, and appear to have been able to acquire the necessary permission from the Fatimid rulers. By c. 1081 two other hospices linked to St Mary had been built, one run by female Benedictines for women pilgrims in honour of St Mary Magdalene, the other exclusively for men.3 According to William, Archbishop of Tyre, who, although he wrote in the 1170s, was a well-informed observer, born in the east, the latter had been set up because 'there was no one to offer a roof to our unfortunate people, ground down and ill to the limits of their endurance'. As a consequence, 'the most holy men who lived in the monastery of the Latins arranged for a hospital to be built within the area assigned to them, mercifully providing food and shelter for the needs of such people. Here they brought both the healthy and the sick in case they were found on the roads at night and killed. In that place, they administered whatever there was from the remains of the fragments derived from both monasteries, the male and the female, for their daily sustenance'.4 Later evidence suggests that they took in women as well as men, although it is not clear if this was the case at the beginning.
King, patriarch, and visiting pilgrims quickly appreciated its value, especially given the otherwise ruined state of Jerusalem in the early twelfth century. King Baldwin's confirmation of their possessions in 1110 summed up his anxieties: 'I wish that they might always exist for the feeding and needs of the poor', while two years later, the Patriarch, Amulf of Chocques, quoted from the Psalms, 'Blessed is he who considers the needy and the poor'. Similarly, pilgrims saw and benefited from their activities and often made donations, especially in extremis. In 1126 two witnesses testified that they were present 'when Bernard William, who is said to be from Fraxino, undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and detained at Tripoli by an illness from which he died', had granted 'to God and St John and the Hospital at Jerusalem established in the service of the sick', all that he possessed at Oliana (near Lerida) in Catalonia.5 Led by a south Italian or Provenзal called Gerard, who had looked after the hospital before the crusader era, it therefore began to attract donations on a sufficient scale for it to end its dependence upon the monastic way of life of St Mary of the Latins in favour of closer links with the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Originally it had been dedicated to the Cypriot holy man, St John the Almoner, appropriately in William of Tyre's view, since he was 'a man particularly excelling in works of piety, whose pious zeal and liberal almsgiving will be recalled for ever in every church of the saints'. However, in 1102-3, the acquisition of its own church nearby, a fifth-century Byzantine building dedicated to St John the Baptist, seems to have led to a change of allegiance. In 1113 Pope Paschal II recognised the Hospital's importance as an entity in its own right when, in Pie postulatio voluntatis, he took it directly under papal protection, confirmed its possessions, granted exemption from tithes, and allowed the brothers the right to elect their own master. These privileges were so that they could support what the pope describes as their xenodochium 'for the sustenance of pilgrims and the needs of the poor'.6
Sometime between c. 1130 and 1153, a Rule containing nineteen clauses was put together; the strong Augustinian influence suggests that it reflects earlier practices however, since the canons of the Holy Sepulchre with which the Hospitallers were associated, had followed the Augustinian Rule since 1114. Here, in clause 16, was expressed the key concept of the order, that of 'our lords the sick', a phrase that was to become common in the rules of the local hospitals which multiplied very rapidly in Latin Christendom during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: 'when the sick man shall come there, let him be received thus, let him partake of the Holy Sacrament, first having confessed his sins to the priest, and afterwards let him be carried to bed, and there as if he were a Lord, each day before the brethren go to eat, let him be refreshed charitably according to the ability of the House; also on every Sunday let the Epistle and the Gospel be chanted in that House, and let the House be sprinkled with holy water at the procession.'7 The concept was institutionalised through the recitation of a special prayer after compline (that is, at about eight o'clock) in the great hall of the sick in the Hospital. The earliest surviving version dates from c. 1197, but it must have been in use well before this. A second version, dating from c. 1305, was still recited in the hospital at Limassol, built after the fall of Acre in 1291. It consisted of a series of invocations to pray for peace, for the fruit of the earth, for the hierarchy of the Church, for kings, counts, and barons on both sides of the sea, for pilgrims who travel by sea and by land, for those who give alms to the order, for those held captive by the Saracens, for the sick themselves and all the sick of the world, for the Master and brothers of the Hospital, and for the souls of deceased relatives and all the departed. Each of these was preceded by the words, Seignors malades, proiй's...8
According to William of Tyre, until the arrival of the Latins in 1099, 'there were neither revenues nor possessions in this venerable place which in this way charitably stretched out its hand to mankind, but that each year the Amalfitans, both those at home and those away engaged in trade, made a monetary collection which those who went to Jerusalem offered to the abbot of the time. Consequently the brothers and sisters could provide food and shelter and, from the remainder, bring other kindnesses to the Christians coming to the hospital'. Such an unsophisticated approach could not survive for long in the new circumstances. Even though the confirmation of Hospitaller xenodochia in the bull of 1113 in seven key places along the Mediterranean pilgrimage routes - Bari, Otranto, Taranto, Messina, Pisa, Asti, and St Gilles - cannot be authenticated by other documents, it is clear that, from 1099 onwards, the Hospital began to acquire substantial endowments in the west. It is indeed possible that Pope Urban II had seen the potential value of the Hospital as early as 1095 and that Daimbert of Pisa, papal legate and Patriarch of Jerusalem between 1099 and 1101, had begun to put this into practice.9 By 1121 at the latest, for example, the order was using its extensive establishment at St Gilles as its administrative centre in the west. It has been argued that the popes quite consciously set out to ensure that the Hospital was well-provided for in the west, having recognised the potential of its role in the crusader states. Certainly this was how William of Tyre saw it: in his opinion, both the Hospital and the Temple outgrew their modest beginnings, largely as a result of papal privilege, a development of which he did not approve.
But the archbishop was not being realistic; the Hospital needed its western possessions to support its charitable activities in the East, at the heart of which stood its great hospital complex, laid out in the area south of the Holy Sepulchre now known as the Muristan, probably in the northwestern part, west of the church of St Mary Major. This appears to have been enlarged in the 115Os, so that about a decade later the German pilgrim, John of Wьrzburg, saw various buildings in which 'a very great multitude of sick people is collected', both men and women, numbering, he was told by attendants, in the region of 2,000. Their care and feeding was a 'vast expense'. Beyond these many poor were fed at the door by stewards and dispensers of the order.10 This is a huge figure, well beyond the capacity of any hospital in the west at this time and, it has been suggested, may have been inflated by short-term crisis; Theoderich, a German monk on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1169, shortly after John of Wьrzburg's visit, saw a thousand beds in the main hospital.11 An anonymous cleric, who stayed in the Hospital for a period in the early 1180s, described the palacium infirmorum in which he said there were eleven wards, as well as a separate palacium for women. However, he maintained that there were 'many times' when this was not sufficient for the numbers requiring help, and on these occasions the brothers themselves would give over their own dormitory to provide the extra space.12 The main hall, which Theoderich seems to have been describing, was a large rectangle about 70 metres long by about 36.5 metres wide, divided by three rows of piers supporting arches about 5.5 metres high. This was probably part of the mid-century enlargement, still unfinished when the city fell in 1187. A lane led east to the church of Saint Mary of the Latins, passing numerous smaller buildings which might have been those referred to by John of Wьrzburg. The Hospitallers themselves seem to have lived to the south-east of this where they also had their stables. Numerous cisterns, many of which long predated the crusaders, were needed to cope with the evidently massive demand for water.13
Simultaneously, the Hospitallers had built another great complex inside the north wall of the main port of the kingdom of Jerusalem at Acre which, after the loss of Jerusalem in 1187 became the new headquarters. Extensive archaeological work has uncovered parts of this complex, the buildings of which were largely grouped around a courtyard with what was maybe a refectory and kitchen to the south, a large dormitory to the east, warehouses to the west, and a set of seven halls to the north. This compound had five towers, one on each corner and one in the centre; after 1187 the south-west tower seems to have been the residence of the Master.14 The dormitory was probably for the brothers, although it may have been used for pilgrims as well, but the location of the main infirmary remains a matter of conjecture. It was thought that this was a separate building near the south-east corner, converted from an Arab caravanserai, but recent excavations have uncovered a very large two-storied building on the west side of the courtyard. The upper hall could have formed the main hospital accommodation, while the basement may have been used for storage. To the north was a latrine tower connected to a cess-pit and a large drain.
Overseas visitors were awed by the great hospitals at Jerusalem and Acre, as indeed they were meant to be. Theoderich was deeply impressed by the manner in which, he said, it expended its wealth for the relief of the poor and the sustenance of the destitute. Back home in the west donors therefore could be sure that their gifts were being put to their intended use. Moreover, the order had a spread of lesser hospices in the east, which included a smaller hospital in Jerusalem run by Germans for pilgrims from their own country, but ultimately responsible to the Hospital, Nablus and Toron elsewhere in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Mount Pilgrim in the County of Tripoli, Turbessel in the County of Edessa, and the city of Antioch.15 One of these was at Abu Ghosh, about eight miles to the north-west of Jerusalem, on one of the roads to Ramla. Contemporaries identified this as the Biblical Emmaus where, as Theoderich says, 'The Lord appeared to the two disciples on the actual day of his resurrection', the story told in chapter 24 of Luke's Gospel. The church built over the spring at Abu Ghosh was therefore an important place of pilgrimage and the Hospitallers, who held this place from at least the 1160s, provided shelter and care in the converted caravanserai connected to the church beyond the east end.16
Both the Templars and the Hospitallers were innovatory institutions and, as such neither had exact models to follow. Both therefore added to their regulations as circumstances demanded, and a further set of statutes promulgated in 1182 under the mastership of Roger des Moulins (1177-87) gives some idea how the Hospital ran this huge operation. For the hospital at Jerusalem, four doctors should be engaged 'who are qualified to examine urine, and to diagnose different diseases, and are able to administer appropriate medicines'. In addition sergeants were used as nursing staff: 'in every ward (rue) and place in the hospital, nine sergeants should be kept at their service, who should wash their feet gently, and change their sheets, and make their beds, and administer to the weak necessary and strengthening food'. The patients were to be provided with beds long enough and wide enough to be convenient for rest, each bed was to have its own coverlet and sheets, each sick person was to have a sheepskin cloak and woollen cap and boots 'for going to and coming from the latrine'. Cradles for babies of female pilgrims born in the hospital were to be provided by the bed, so that there was no danger of the baby being smothered by the mother. The sick must have fresh meat three days per week (pork or mutton), or chicken if they were unable to eat other kinds of meat. Impoverished couples who wished to marry were to be given food and provisions with which to celebrate the marriage.17
As well as describing the way that the sick and poor should be cared for, the Rule of 1182 also laid down that abandoned children should be received and nourished. The description given by the anonymous cleric implies that the Hospitallers expected to receive such children quite regularly, either brought in by those who found them or left secretly by mothers who could not cope. Nurses were employed at a salary of twelve talents a year to look after these infants in their own homes. The quality of care was regularly checked: 'in case they are negligent in looking after the little ones, as is usual with that which belongs to others, the nurses are held to bring them frequently to the hospital, so that the sisters of the house can see each one as if giving maternal care and commit those badly looked after to the custody of other nurses. For there are in the hospital sisters who are matrons of advanced years, continent widows, honest, religious women. This was a description of the hospital at Jerusalem, but it seems to have been general policy. In Edessa, Count Joscelin II's grant to the hospital established at Turbessel in 1134 had stated that 'the poor and sick, widows and orphans' should be cherished and protected from want and poverty and molestation by the infidel. By 1190 Pope Clement III found it necessary to issue permission for the Hospitallers to baptise children 'often left at your gate, or born in the Hospital, who, as happens many times, die without the sacrament of baptism'.18
All this was to be supported by the payment of responsions from the order's priories in both east and west. Most were required to send set quantities of cotton or fustian cloth for coverlets, but the Prior of Mount Pilgrim 'should send to Jerusalem two quintals of sugar for the syrups, and the medicines and electuaries of the sick'. A statute of 1176 or 1177 ordered that the grain produced on the two casalia Sainte Marie and Caphaer (north of Jerusalem) should be supplied to brother Stephen, the hospitalarius, and his successors, to make white bread for the poor and the sick of the hospital. Nor were they to suffer from any failure of the crops, for in these circumstances the treasurer was required to provide the money to buy them elsewhere. Individual donors also contributed. A royal confirmation of 1182 shows that Joscelin III, titular Count of Edessa, continued his family's support with a grant of one quintal of sugar each Easter 'for the use of the sick' at the hospital in Acre.19
The attitudes which lay behind these regulations can be discerned in an Anglo-Norman rhymed version of the Rule of Raymond du Puy, translated and glossed by an anonymous chaplain of the order, and probably reflecting practices at the order's English headquarters at Clerkenwell. It dates from the decade or so before 1187. As the author saw it, nobody should be turned away from the Hospital's doors, for to do so would be the equivalent of acting like Dives in the famous story in Luke, chapter 24, where Lazarus, the beggar covered in sores, is refused the left-overs from the rich man's feast. 'If they have little and we excess, it is not a good thing; in fact it is a bad thing. For all is theirs; let us give to them all except what we use ourselves.'20 In the parable, it is Dives who is dragged to Hell, while Lazarus is carried to Heaven by Abraham. This story was vividly depicted in romanesque sculpture along the pilgrimage routes, mostly notably on the north door of the cathedral at Autun in Burgundy, the south door of the abbey-church of Moissac on the River Tam, and the south transept door of the church of Saint Sernin at Toulouse. Significantly, both were situated at key points on the pilgrim routes. For the chaplain therefore there can be no holding back. 'If the house is under the patronage of St John, then it must be wide open and welcoming; let those who dwell there make a fair countenance to strangers.' According to the clerical witness of the early 1180s, the Hospitallers at Jerusalem took this open door policy quite literally. Quoting Acts 10.34, God is not a respecter of persons, they admitted Muslims and Jews as well as Christians, 'wishing no one to perish'. The only exclusion was that of lepers, who were, in fact, already provided for by the Order of St Lazarus, an offshoot of the Temple.
James of Molay, therefore, was quite correct in his perception of the fundamental mission of the Hospital, and of the ways in which this differed from that of the Templars; nevertheless, it does seem that the charitable impulses of the two orders were originally connected. Indeed, the development of the Hospital may have inspired the co-founders of the Temple, the French knights, Hugh of Payns and Godfrey of St Omer, to dedicate themselves to help pilgrims. In 1119 or 1120, King Baldwin II, acutely aware of the military deficiencies of the military establishment of the Latin East, seems to have convinced these men and their companions to take an oath to provide a military escort for pilgrims en route to the holy places, in particular on the road from the port of Jaffa up to Jerusalem. The early Templars therefore seem to have been a lay confraternity not dissimilar from the early Hospitallers, performing complementary charitable services for pilgrims, a role confirmed by the official recognition they received from the papal representative at the Council of Troyes in 1129. In this context, the famous will of Alfonso I of Aragon of 1131 in which the childless king left his lands to be divided between the canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who served and guarded the Sepulchre, the Hospital of the poor in Jerusalem, and the Templars who defended the Christian name there, makes better sense than historians have usually believed, for the three elements of liturgical, charitable, and military functions all stem from the same root, and thus offer the balanced rule of the true Christian kingdom.21
Once the resources were available, protection of the pilgrim routes developed quite naturally into a much larger military role for the Templars. In the course of the twelfth century, the order was able to take control of a number of major castles in Jerusalem, Tripoli, and Antioch, encompassing the entire length of the Latin settlements from Baghras in the north to Gaza in the south, while its knights and sergeants were present in all the important military campaigns. By the 1180s therefore the Order of the Temple looked very different from the small group formed by Hugh of Payns; even so, the protection of pilgrims remained central to the order's activities and ethos. Two examples, separated by almost a century, emphasise the continuity of this role. Inspired by the vision of Christ's baptism and the 'Spirit of God descending like a dove', many pilgrims wished to bathe in the Jordan, an ambition which could only be achieved by crossing the rocky desert of Judaea. By the 1170s at the latest the Templars had established fortresses along this route specifically for the care of pilgrims. About half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho stood Adummim, 'the Red Cistern', a spacious rectangular enclosure with a tower and cistern, large enough to accommodate both pilgrims and a garrison, while another six and a half kilometres to the east, the Templars had built a tower at Bait Jubr at-Taktari which, as it was much smaller than the Red Cistern enclosure, was presumably for the Templars' own knights, ten of whom were permanently assigned to patrol the road. At the end of the route, the Templars had refortified the enclosure at the foot of the Mount Quarantene, at a place known as 'the Gardens of Abraham', where many pilgrims were able to spend the night before descending to the Jordan. Theoderich describes this place as a well- watered refuge, protected on three sides, with the fourth patrolled by the knights of the two orders. At the river itself the Templars had another tower, intended to guard against sudden raids at the place of baptism.22 On a much grander scale was the fortress of Safad, rebuilt by the Templars in the early 1240s to dominate the Galilean Plain. The anonymous account of this work (dating from the early 1260s) extols the military importance of the castle in the conflict with Damascus, but at the same time shows how an equally important part of its function was to reopen the pilgrim sites of Galilee to the Latins. 'Now the famous places which are in the district of the castle of Safad can be visited.'23
On the other hand, King Alfonso's will in 1131 makes no mention of the Hospitallers as fighting knights, yet in the 1160s John of Wьrzburg saw a military role as integral to the order. 'And apart from all these expenses to do with sick people and the other poor, the same house has many men instructed in every martial art, for the defence of the land of the Christians against Saracen attacks, and keeps men in its castles everywhere.' Although the chronology and extent remain matters of controversy, the Hospitallers probably took on a military role during the 1130s. Their first known castle in the East was that of Beit-Jibrin, near Ascalon, given to them by King Fulk in 1136, while in the early 1140s Count Raymond II of Tripoli ceded them Crac des Chevaliers among other properties on the borders of the county. By the 1160s they were in a position to supply as many as 500 knights for King Amalric's campaigns in Egypt, although they are unlikely all to have been professed brethren.24 These developments were evidently controversial, for the Egyptian campaign burdened the order with heavy debts, and for a time weakened its ability to carry out its original functions. Pope Alexander III more than once ordered the Hospitallers to keep a sense of proportion: in c. 1178, for example, he warned Roger des Moulins to take care 'lest on account of [the practice of] arms, the care of the poor should in some way be diminished'.25 Most historians have seen Alexander as percipient. The sets of statutes enacted by the Hospital between 1203 and 1310 pay less attention to the needs of the sick than to military affairs. The statutes of 1203-6 are the first to mention 'brother knights'; in 1182 there were only 'clerical and lay brethren', although a brief reference to 'armed brothers' acknowledges their existence.26 It may be significant that the main addition to the complex at Acre in the first half of the thirteenth century was the vaulted west wing, which has been identified as a chapter hall rather than a refuge for pilgrims.
Although it is probable that the order was influenced in this by the success of the overtly military Templars in attracting support, it is equally likely that the Hospital's own needs provided some of the original impetus, for as its establishments increased in number and scope they obviously needed protecting. Abu Ghosh, for instance, was within the territories controlled by the order's castle at Belmont, which also encompassed another hospital at Aqua Bella for the order's own sick and elderly brethren. In the County of Tripoli, Crac des Chevaliers, granted to the Hospitallers as part of a package of rights in 1144, provided security for the so-called 'baptismal chapel', situated about forty metres beyond the north-east wall, and apparently intended for the use of the Christian peasant dependants of the order. Fragments of frescoes found here show that the west wall was decorated with the Virgin and Child and St Pantaleon, the Christian physician martyred for the faith in c.305. The acquisition (and later development) of Crac des Chevaliers is the most famous manifestation of the militarisation of the order, but the message of the chapel is equally clear, for St Pantaleon was famous in the East as the holy man who treated the sick without payment.27 Indeed, for the Hospitallers, their medical and military roles were evidently interrelated. The anonymous account of the early 1180s describes their field hospitals, tents in which emergency treatment could be given to battle casualties by the order's surgeons before the wounded men were moved either to Jerusalem or to one of their other permanent hospitals. Some casualties were, of course, beyond help, and both orders also collected bodies after battles. The Toulousain cleric, William of Puylaurens, describes how after the death of Peter II, King of Aragon, at the battle of Muret in September, 1213, when the king's forces had been defeated by Simon de Montfort's crusaders, the Hospitallers 'asked for and were conceded the body of the king, which they found naked on the field, and took it away'. The Templars provided a similar service for the other side in the Albigensian conflict for, in the following year, after Baldwin, the brother of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, had been hung as an alleged traitor to the southern cause, they were allowed to take the body down from the tree and bury it in the cloister of their preceptory of Lavilledieu. As his will of 1218 shows, Raymond VI himself wanted to be buried in Hospitaller ground and when he lay dying four years' later, the brothers placed their mantle on him. After his death they took his body back to their house at Toulouse, but they were never able to give him ecclesiastical burial as he was an excommunicate.28
The care of captives was a logical extension of this: under the Hospitaller statutes of 1182 the Almoner was obliged to give captives twelve denarii on their release, recognition of the difficulties faced by many, often after long years in Muslim prisons. Ransoming seems to have been less common, although in times of emergency such as in the aftermath of the disasters of 1187 the order helped redeem some of the mass of poor captives, while sometimes it was also involved in negotiations for the release of individuals. In the latter case the Hospital could usually rely on grateful relatives to show their appreciation, even though circumstances sometimes frustrated their efforts. In 1227, William of Queivilliers (near Pйronne in northern France) travelled to the East in an effort to obtain the release of his father, Peter, held prisoner by the Muslims in the castle of Saфne in Syria. Through the Hospitaller prior in France he had arranged for the Master, Garin of Montaigu, to act for him, 'but when we were negotiating, it happened that my father paid the debt of the flesh; who, had he lived a little longer, would without doubt have been liberated with the help of the master'. He therefore confirmed the grant he had already agreed to make, because of the 'immense charity' of the Hospital in this matter. Families were equally grateful for the order's services when it was known that their relative was already dead. Early in 1229, Hartmann IV together with Hartmann V, his nephew, Counts of Kyburg (in Swabia), made a grant to the order, 'since the Hospitallers have celebrated worthy obsequies in the funeral of my brother [Werner], and afterwards, when peace had been made between the Christians and the Gentiles, they buried his bones, as befitted their devotion, honourably in the holy city of Jerusalem'.29 Indeed, since 1143, the Hospitallers had maintained a cemetery for the burial of pilgrims at Akeldama, south of the city, just beyond the Pool of Siloam.30
When the Latin states in Palestine and Syria fell to the Mamluks in 1291, the brethren of both orders retreated to Cyprus together with the other Christian survivors. They already had a presence there and they attempted to continue to function within the spirit of their foundation and traditions, the Templars by organising raids on the Egyptian and Syrian coasts and by an abortive attempt to garrison the island of Ruad off the Tortosa in 1302, the Hospitallers by beginning to build a new pilgrim hospital at Limassol in 1297, which was operative by 1301 at the latest. However, neither found their activities in Cyprus to be a long-term solution to the loss of Palestine and Syria. In 1307 the Templars in France were arrested by officials of King Philip IV and accused of blasphemy and obscenity. Although the resulting trial had more to do with the financial needs of the government on the one hand and the superstitions of King Philip on the other than with any offences committed by the Templars, the damage had been done. A beleaguered Pope Clement V tried to take control of the situation by ordering the general arrest of the brethren, but was able to do nothing to save the order once the French government had extracted a multiplicity of confessions, mostly by force. Although a spirited defence by some Templars prolonged the trial, in 1312 the pope felt obliged to suppress the order, transferring its lands to the Hospitallers since that seemed to accord best with the wishes of the original donors. As for the Hospitallers, the settlement in Cyprus has been rightly described as an 'interlude'.31 It is not clear how much progress had been made with a new hospital by 1306 when the Hospitallers began the conquest of Rhodes, held by the Byzantines. Success in taking the city itself was achieved in August, 1309, although the island was not fully under the order's control until 1310. A hospital began to function almost immediately, although initially by making use of existing structures. In 1314 an annual sum of 30,000 besants - drawn from designated estates on the island - was allocated for new buildings and, by the mastership of Roger of Pins (1355-65), the order had a fully-functioning, purpose-built hospital. This continued in use until 1483, even though a completely new hospital was started in 1440.32
Building new hospitals was for both prestige and practical purposes. It was intended that, as in the past, travellers and patients should spread news of this work in the west, so that donations towards the war with the Ottomans would continue to flow. At the same time this may also have been a response to growing demand, perhaps because of the promotion of Rhodes as a pilgrimage centre in its own right. The second new hospital was projected by the Grand Master, Antoni Fluvi, in 1437 and completed by 1489. The decision to build was reinforced by the issue of a new set of statutes in 1440, which returned to the medical traditions of 1182. The hospital was built around a courtyard in a style ultimately derived from the infirmaries of Benedictine monasteries, but more immediately in the order's own manner as seen at Jerusalem and Acre in the twelfth century. The central feature was the great hall on the first floor on the eastern side, which was 51 metres long by 12.25 metres in width, divided down the middle by a range of octagonal pillars, their capitals decorated alternately with the cross of the order and the arms of Pierre Aubusson, the reigning grand master at the time of its completion. This formed a huge hospital ward, complete with curtained beds and privies built into the wall. The chapel was the very centre of the ward, above the main entrance, and there was a refectory adjacent to the southern end. Along the northern wall of the courtyard were private rooms, presumably for high-status visitors or even for the order's own officers. Around the courtyard at ground level were the service rooms and next to these an auxiliary courtyard leading to gardens used for growing medicinal herbs and vegetables.33
Niccolт da Martoni, a notary from the small town of Carinola, just to the north of Naples, was among those who admired the new building and the services it offered. Niccolт visited Rhodes in July, 1394 and January, 1395, on his way to and from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The hospital, he says, 'had a great number of beds for pilgrims and the sick, in which there are great alms, with doctors always prepared and other things necessary for the sick'. Fourteen paupers were fed and served at table in the hall of the Knights three days each week, while on the other three days outdoor relief was provided for those who came the hospital, some of whom, he thought, borrowed other people's children to carry in their arms in the hope of obtaining more bread.34 A century later, a Czech pilgrim, John of Lobkowicz, was equally impressed. He saw a high quality building clad in dressed stone and decorated internally with fine painting. All Christians who were ill, whatever their social status, were provided with a comfortable bed, access to a balcony and privies, and fed on a diet specially prescribed by the doctors. The resident doctors had the support of a pharmacy, also endowed by the Hospitallers. 'And none need pay anything for his stay there, except he freely of his goodwill gives anything to the servant that has waited upon him.' The Knights made sure that he retained this favourable image of them: on the return journey he and his companion were given the exceptional privilege of two rooms in the Infirmary itself, followed by an audience with Pierre Aubusson and his councillors.35
The continuity of Hospitaller tradition is evident, for the statutes of 1440 echo those of the mid-twelfth century, laying down that, on entry, the sick should confess their sins, take communion, and make their wills in the presence of the prior and the notary. The prior and the chaplain were responsible for hearing mass in the chapel each morning, for administering the sacraments to the sick, and for burying the dead and celebrating the offices for them. Based on figures derived from evidence in 1314 and 1478 it has been calculated that the Rhodes hospital on its own absorbed about 7.5% of the Convent's budget at Rhodes.36 The Rhodes Infirmary though, appears to have been mainly for the sick and convalescent; by the 1390s the Admiral Domenico d'Allemagna had endowed the hospice of Sainte Catherine just behind the sea-wall, where high-status pilgrims travelling to and from Jerusalem were accommodated. There does not, however, seem to have been a specific house for poorer pilgrims who often found difficulty in obtaining lodgings, a circumstance which suggests that the propaganda value of institutions designed to impress the wealthy and influential remained a priority for the order.37
Despite the increased military emphasis from the second half of the twelfth century therefore, the Hospital always tried to maintain a great hospital at its headquarters, whether at Jerusalem, Acre, Limassol, Rhodes or, after 1530, Malta. Even though it is apparent that in Rhodes at least, the medical staff and the military brethren had become quite distinct and separate elements, this central hospital remained the most striking symbol of the order's commitment as well as a practical means of helping the sick and poor. However, the hospital and the military and naval operations were massively expensive and could only be maintained through the system of responsions, sent by the commanderies in the west. Although the papacy and the early Hospitallers may have intended to establish hospitals at important points along the pilgrim routes to Compostella and Rome, and at the ports of embarkation for the East, it soon became evident that the primary function of the western houses had to be that of supply rather than care, or at least that care had to be provided with an eye to income as well. When Henry II, Count of Champagne, was about to set sail from Marseille on crusade in the spring of 1190, he was approached by Ogier, Prior of nearby St Gilles, with a request for a donation. The prior knew the susceptible state of mind of those in Henry's position, and the consequence was a grant of a chapel and cemetery at Bar-sur-Aube, the village of Courcelles, and a vineyard at Roivos.38
The Hospital's commandery at Toulouse offers a good example of the way the order in the west functioned. The city had to cope with the needs of a population which had risen to about 25-30,000 by the mid-thirteenth century, as well as large numbers of pilgrims on the way to and from Compostella. The order had been granted a former hospital at Saint Remezy in c.1114-16 and it became one of the larger providers with perhaps sixty or more beds. The acquisition of the Templar house after the suppression added considerably to this capacity: in 1446 the former Temple had 'almost one hundred beds, as well as many other utensils necessary for the hospital'. Nevertheless, it was only one of the fifteen known hospitals in the city in 1246, apart from the more specialist houses such as those for lepers, and therefore did not play the key role that it did in Jerusalem, Acre, or Rhodes. Its presence was important though because it served a focus for what might be called 'social services', many of which were profitable to the order. A range of grants reflect this role, which was of great social value, but by definition was of little relevance to the poor. Most commonly, grantors sought a kind of insurance, which would ensure that they would be kept in their old age, or if that proved not to be necessary, that they would be taken into the house on the verge of death and buried in the order's ground. Others made provision for widows or offspring to be cared for should they themselves die prematurely. Even so, some displayed a distinct reluctance to enter the religious life, even stipulating that 'if they died as seculars they should be buried in the cemetery of the Hospital'.39 It may well be that the house at Toulouse provided for the needy both inside and at the gates in the way envisaged by the author of the Anglo-Norman translation of the Rule, but it is equally clear that socio-economic role of the Hospitallers' western houses was much more complex than that.
The enterprise shown by the Prior of St Gilles and the multi-faceted relationships with the local community seen at Toulouse enabled the Hospital to build up a formidable structure of commanderies in the west in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Often these appear little different from more conventional monastic orders. In 1231, Walter, Count of Brienne, granted the Hospital 500 arpents of woodland in his forest at Bateis in order to construct a chapel and associated buildings, 'where they will cause to be celebrated the divine offices for myself and my ancestors'. At times the Hospitallers seem to have been too obliging in acceding to requests from seculars, being several times reproved by the papacy for interring alleged heretics and excommunicates in their cemeteries.40 There were, too, a limited number of houses for women, not for nursing staff as might be thought, but for female contemplatives who had joined the order.41 They do not seem to have undertaken an active role in the charitable work of the Hospital. Nevertheless, the Toulouse hospital shows that some western commanderies continued to provide for the sick while, because of the nature of the order, it tended to acquire other houses established for charitable purposes, either because this had been the donor's wish, or because the house would have failed otherwise. The geographical spread of these hospitals was impressive. In c.1159, for instance, Wladislaus II, King of Bohemia, endowed the order with a church and hospital near the bridge at Prague. The charters of the order show that hospitals were taken over in places as far apart as Poggibonsi in Tuscany (1191), Wьrzburg in Franconia (1215), Boxerols in Aragon (1227), and Gramat in the Lot region (1259).42 Moreover, most of the leper houses under the Hospital's wing were acquired in this way rather than being Hospitaller in origin. The evidence suggests that in the later middle ages the order was less active in adding to its network, partly because of the financial crises it had to face in the second half of the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, new hospices were built, often on the initiative of wealthy individual Hospitallers or groups of brethren: at Aix-en-Provence in 1325, at Santa Caterina at Venice, based on the former Templar house there, from 1358, at Toulouse in 1408, and at Puente la Reina in Navarre in c.1445.43
Like the Hospitallers, the economic strength of the Temple was founded upon its houses in the west. According to the Rule, the order's western provinces were divided into seven as early as the 1160s, encompassing France, England, Poitou, Aragon, Portugal, Apulia, and Hungary (which probably meant Dalmatia).44 By the thirteenth century Provence and northern and central Italy had become key elements in the system. Inevitably, the primary purpose of these western preceptories was to supply the almost limitless demands of warfare against the Muslims, but they too contributed to an infrastructure which enabled pilgrims and crusaders to overcome the formidable problems of travel to the east. While medical care remained largely in the hands of the Hospitallers or other specialist institutions, the Templars were able to offer finance, shipping, and shelter for pilgrims. Although the many other needs of the order as well as the uneven pattern of donations made it impossible to create a structure entirely geared towards pilgrims (even had the Templars so desired), the order nevertheless succeeded in planting preceptories along the important pilgrimage routes. In the thirteenth century they took particular interest in developing their Italian possessions, for the Adriatic ports were becoming increasingly important for contact with the Holy Land. Therefore, despite the accusations that they had failed in their mission which followed the loss of Palestine and Syria in 1291, the Templars continued to expand this provision for pilgrims. One such example comes from the north east of the peninsula. In April, 1305, Boniface, Bishop of Parenzo, taking account, as he said, of the fact that the order had no houses in Istria, granted the Templars the possession of the monastery of San Michele in Lemmo, which had been neglected, so that they could build a complex there for pilgrims setting out for and returning from the Holy Land.45
Although this was the most obvious charitable role of the Templars, they also understood their obligations to the poor as a whole. The Latin Rule of 1129 sets this down: 'Although without doubt the reward of poverty, namely the Kingdom of Heaven, is due to the poor, we order you, to whom the Christian faith speaks clearly about them, to give a tenth of all your daily bread in alms.' At the same time food provided for the brothers themselves was deemed sufficient for a surplus to be left for distribution to the poor.46 Templar witnesses in the early fourteenth century testify that this almsgiving was maintained throughout the order's existence: western preceptories handed out food three times a week on a regular basis, while in times of crisis, such as famine, much larger quantities were distributed. In 1307, Ramon Sa Guardia, Preceptor of Mas Deu in Roussillon, reminded King James II of Aragon, that at various times the Templars of Gardeny, Huesca, Monzon, Miravet, and Mas Deu, had fed thousands of the needy.47
The Hospitallers and the Templars are best known for their key military role in the defence of Latin Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean, a role maintained by the Hospitallers in Malta down to 1798. Yet both were, as Pope Innocent II said of the Templars, 'kindled by the flame of charity', and many thousands of crusaders and pilgrims and their relatives had cause to be grateful for their hospitality, protection, medical care, negotiating skills, and spiritual comfort.
1. Le Dossier de l'Affaire des Templiers, ed. and trans. G. Lizerand, Les Classiques de l'Histoire de France au Moyen Age (Paris, 1964), 2-15.
2. Guide-Book to Palestine, trans. J.H. Bernard, Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 6 (London, 1894).
3. See A. Luttrell, 'The Earliest Hospitallers', Montjhoie. Studies in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer, eds. B.Z. Kedar, J. Riley-Smith, and R.Hiestand (Aldershot, 1997), 37-54, and R. Hiestand, 'Die Anfдng der Joharnniter', Die geistlichen Ritterorden Europas, eds. J. Fleckenstein and M. Hellman, Vortrдge und Forschungen, 26 (Sigmaringen, 1980), 31-80.
4. Guillaume de Tyr, Chronique, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medjaevalis, 63/63A, 2 vols. (Turnliout, 1986), 816-17.
5. Cartulaire gйnйral de l'Ordre des Hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jerusalem, 1100-1310, ed. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 4 vols. (Paris, 1894-1906), 1, Nos. 20, 25, 75, pp. 22, 26, 72.
6. Ibid., No.30, pp. 29-30.
7. Ibid., No.70, pp. 62-8. Translations from The Rule, Statutes and Customs of the Hospitallers, 1099-1310, trans. E.J. King (London, 1934).
8. L. Le Grand, 'La Priиre des Malades dans les Hфpitaux de l'Ordre de Saint-Jean de Jйrusalem', Bibliothиque de l'Ecole des Chartes 57 (1896), 325-338.
9. See M. Matzke, 'De origine Hospitalariorum Hierosolymitanorum - Vom klцsterlichen Pilgerhospital zur internationalen Organisation', Journal of Medieval History, 22 (1996), 1-23.
10. Peregrinationes tres. Saewulf John of Wьrzburg, Theodericus, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 139 (Turnhout, 1994), 131.
11. Ibid., 157-8.
12. B.Z. Kedar, 'A Twelfth-Century Description of the Jerusalem Hospital', The Militaiy Orders, vol. 2, Welfare and Warfare, ed. H.J. Nicholson (Aldershot, 1998), 3-26.
13. C. Schick, 'The Muristan, or the Site of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem', Palestine Exploration Fund. Quarterly Statement, 1902, 42-56.
14. See Z. Goldman, Akko at the Time of the Crusades. The Convent of the Order of St. John (Akko, 1987).
15. Cart. gйn., 1, Nos. 5, 79, 104, 244, 258, pp. 9, 74-5, 89-90, 183-4, 195-6.
16. Peregrinationes tres, 184; D. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. A Corpus, vol. 1, A-K (excluding Acre and Jerusalem) (Cambridge, 1993), 7-17.
17. Cart. gйn., 1, No. 627, pp. 425-9. See, too, a further set of statutes, recently discovered, which probably date from after 1206, A. Luttrell, 'The Hospitallers' Medical Tradition: 1291 - 1530', The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. M. Barber (Aldershot, 1994), 67.
18. Cart. gйn., 1, Nos. 104, 898, pp. 90, 570.
19. Ibid., 1, Nos. 494, 625, pp. 339-40, 424.
20. K.V. Sinclair, 'New Light on Early Hospitaller Practices', Revue Bйnйdictine 96 (1986), 118-24.
21. Cart. gйn., 1, No. 95, pp.85-6. See J. Richard, 'Hospitals and Hospital Congregations in the Latin Kingdom during the First Period of the Frankish Conquest', Outremer. Studies in the History of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem presented to Joshua Prawer, eds. B.Z. Kedar, H.E. Mayer, and R.C. Smail (Jerusalem, 1982), 89-100.
22. Peregrinationes tres, 175-7. See D. Pringle, 'Templar Castles on the Road to the Jordan', The Militaty Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. M. Barber (Aldershot, 1994), 148-66.
23. De constructione castri Saphet', ed. R.B.C. Huygens, Studi Medievali, ser. 3, 6 (1965), 355-87.
24. See J. Riley-Smith, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c.1050-1310 (London, 1967), 71-3.
25. Cart. gйn., 1, No. 527, pp. 360-1.
26. Ibid., 2, No. 1193, p. 37.
27. See J. Folda, 'Crusader Frescoes at Crac des Chevaliers and Margat Castle', Dumbarton Oaks Papers 36 (1982), 192-6. 28. Guillaume de Puylaurens, Chronique 1203-1275, ed. and trans. J. Duvernoy (Paris, 1976), 84-5, 88-9, 112-13; Cart. gйn., 2, No. 1617, p.246, for the will of Raymond VI.
29. Cart. gйn., 2, Nos. 1861, 1937, pp. 363-4, 394-5.
30. Ibid., 1, No. 150, pp. 121-2.
31. Riley-Smith, chap. 7.
32. A. Gabriel, La Citй de Rhodes: MCCCX-MDXXII, 2 vols. (Paris, 1921-3), 2, piиces justicatives, Nos. I, VI, pp. 221, 223-4.
33. Ibid., 2, 13-36, piиces just., Nos. II, III, IV, pp. 221-2. See F. Karassava-Tsilingiri, 'The Fifteenth-Century Hospital at Rhodes: Tradition and Innovation', The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, 89-96.
34. E. Legrand, 'Relation du Pиlerinage Jйrusalem de Nicolas de Martoni, notaire italien: 1394-1395', Revue de l'Orient latin 3 (1895), 584-5, 640.
35. John of Lobkowicz, 'What a Pilgrim saw at Rhodes', trans. C. von Schwarzenberg, Annales de l'Ordre Souverain Militaire de Malte 26 (1968), 103-6.
36. See A. Luttrell, 'The Hospitallers' Medical Tradition', 73.
37. Gabriel, 2, 102-6.
38. Cart. gйn., 1, No. 888, p. 564.
39. See J. Mundy, 'Charity and Social Work in Toulouse, 1100-1250', Traditio 22 (1966), 203-87.
40. Cart. gйn., 2, No. 1985, p.420; 1, No. 572, p. 388, 2, No. 1392, pp. 146-7.
41. See A.J. Forey, 'Women and Military Orders in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries', Studia Monastica 29 (1987), 67-77.
42. Cart. gйn., 1, No. 278, p. 208, 2, Nos. 1445, 1857, 2923, pp. 177-8, 361, 872-4.
43. See Luttrell, 'Medical Tradition', 78-9, and 'The Hospitallers' Hospice of Santa Caterina at Venice: 1358-1451', Studi Veneziani 12 (1970), 369-83.
44. La Rиgle du Temple, ed. H. de Curzon, Sociйtй' de l'Histoire de France (Paris, 1896), 80.
45. F. Bramato, Storia dell'Ordine dei Templari in Italia, vol. 2, Le Inquisizioni. Le Fonti (Rome, 1994), no. 470, p. 180.
46. La Rиgle du Temple, 37.
47. H. Finke, Papsttum und Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols. (Mьnster, 1907), 2, p.72.
M. Barber, The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the
Temple (Cambridge, 1994).
A.J. Forey, The Military Orders from the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries (London, 1992).
A. Gabriel, La Citй' de Rhodes: MCCCX-MDXXII, 2 vols. (Paris, 1921-3).
A. Luttrell, 'The Hospitallers' Medical Tradition: 1291-1530', The Military Orders. Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. M. Barber (Aldershot, 1994), 64-81.
T.S. Miller, 'The Knights of Saint John and the Hospitals of the Latin West', Speculum 53 (1978), 709-33.
J. Riley-Smith, The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050-1310 (London, 1967).