PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ARE GENERALLY UNINTERESTING and undesirable: yet there are two points which suggest themselves as to the present work requiring a few words of comment. The first of these is, that it may be deemed almost unnecessary to produce another book upon a subject so thoroughly dealt with as the history of the Order of St. John has been by writers of high ability and reputation, especially in the comprehensive work of General Porter and the able summary of the Rev. F. C. Woodhouse. As the first mentioned of these valuable books, however, last saw the light in 1884, and the other appeared in 1879, the vast increase in the work and importance of the English Order since the spread of the Ambulance movement has excited a desire to know more about its rise and progress than either volume can satisfy; for the doings of the last ten years are the legitimate sequel of a chain of events dating back to the era of the first crusade, and the home of the Ambulance work in England is still that edifice which was originally founded for similar purposes in the twelfth century. This leads to the second observation, that little field for original authorship is left to be occupied. The statements of former writers have been repeatedly examined and tested; all that can be done at the present day is to repeat facts and to summarize narrative—to lead the reader to conclusions, by directing him to unimpeachable authorities.
With regard even to the dedication of the Order it would be possible to occupy space by referring to the controversies of the seventeenth century as to the legend of a hospital, called after the Asmonean prince John Hyrcanus, already existing in Jerusalem when the pious merchants of Amalfi began to establish their charitable design of a refuge for pilgrims, and hence the choice of St. John as patron; it, however, is now generally admitted that the St. John at first adopted as sponsor was the Greek patriarch John, distinguished by the epithet Eleemon, of whose career Mr. Duckworth has recently given a short sketch, and that it was to his charitable fame that the hospital owed its ascription. This much, however, is certain, that by the time that the Crusading Army under Godfrey of Bulloin captured the holy city from the Moslem, St. John the Baptist had been adopted as the patron saint of the Hospital; and his image, already worn by patients suffering from epilepsy, became the authorized badge of those engaged in general hospital work.
The term hospital, however, did not for many years after this convey the idea of a building devoted to medical science alone, but more generally of a house of refuge. Thus the historian of Yorkshire says that at Hexton in that county was a “hospital” built in the time of King Athelstan for defending travellers from wolves, as is expressly stated in the public records.
This hospice for the entertainment of wayfarers and the reception of the sick, which was in existence in 1099, was naturally enough placed in as close vicinity as possible to those sacred spots to which tradition from the earliest ages of Christianity had caused the pious steps of pilgrims from every country of the West to be directed. For thirty-four years before this, from the period of the capture of Jerusalem by the Turcomans, pilgrimage had assumed a new phase in Palestine. In addition to the incommodities inseparable from distant travel in semi-barbarous regions, pilgrims were ill-treated by the new masters of the soil. The very permission to enter the city and view the Holy Sepulchre depended on the caprice or the covetousness of a Turkish chief, so that many unfortunate persons who had sold everything to enable them to make the pilgrimage to Zion, after enduring the hardship of the long voyage, the sickness, robbery, and other dangers of the way, found themselves at the gates of Jerusalem without sufficient money to gain an entrance, and were obliged to return without a sight of the object of their arduous undertaking; or possibly died of want, uncared for and friendless, without reward for their labour and suffering. Save for the assistance afforded by Gerard, the first administrator of the Hospital, and his associates, pilgrimage would have been an impossibility, owing to the hardships and indignities to which the devout Christians were exposed.
The original buildings of the Hospital were probably meagre, but ere long they enlarged their bounds to the extent thus described by Porter:
“To the south of the church of the Holy Sepulchre there is a plot of ground nearly square, about five hundred feet a side, which is bounded on the north by what was formerly the Street of Palmers, now known as the Via Dolorosa; on the west by Patriarch Street, now Christian Street; on the south by Temple Street, now David Street; and on the east by the Malquinat or Bazaar. Within this area stood the later buildings of the Order. North of the Street of Palmers and to the east of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stood the churches and hospitals of St. Mary ad Latinos and St. Mary Magdalene (also ad Latinos), the original establishments of the Amalfi merchants. To the south of the Street of Palmers, in the western angle of the square, stood the church of St. John Eleemon and its hospice.”
Such was the situation as it existed prior to the formation of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099. Between that time and the middle of the twelfth century the Order under Raymond du Puy had developed the church of St. John Eleemon into a fine building, the conventual church of St. John the Baptist. On the east of that they had erected another large church called Santa Maria Majora with a monastic quadrangle to the south of it, and along the south of the whole square looking towards Temple Street ran the noble hospital of St. John. When Jerusalem was captured by Saladin, the church of St. John the Baptist was by the Saracens converted into a madhouse (in Turkish Muristan). “The Muristan” was granted to Germany in 1869, but a view of the gateway of St. John as it appeared before that year is taken from Pierotti’s “Jerusalem.” Together with a local habitation the Hospitallers gained from the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem a constitution. Gerard was appointed first Master, having been one of the prominent members of the old charitable guild, if not the originator of the Hospice, though the latter supposition is scarcely credible if we adopt the date usually assigned by historians of 1048. Raymond du Puy succeeded to the Mastership in 1118, at which time Baldwin II. was the Latin King of Jerusalem. The Hospital had been recognized by the Archbishop of Caesarea in 1112, and had much increased in credit and useful work.
Baldwin, however, was anxious to stamp upon it a military character (as was also done upon the Order of the Temple in 1130), and it seems probable that the circumstances of the time, the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, a small and isolated territory, being day by day more continuously beset by its Mahometan enemies, rendered it a matter of necessity that its adherents of every grade should take up arms in its defence. Under its new organization the Order was divided into three classes, first of whom in rank and position were the Knights of Justice. Admission to this grade was only given to those who could produce satisfactory proofs of the nobility of their descent. Every candidate must have already received the accolade of knighthood from secular hands, before he could be enrolled as a Knight of Justice in the Order of St. John. The second class comprised the strictly ecclesiastical portion of the convent, and was eventually subdivided into two distinct grades, the Conventual Chaplains, who performed the religious functions of the Order at Headquarters, and the Priests of Obedience, who carried on similar duties in other priories and commanderies of the Order throughout Europe. The third class were denominated Serving Brothers; these too were subdivided into two grades—the Servants at arms or Esquires, and the Servants at office. The Servants at arms performed the duties of Esquires under the Knights of Justice, and if they were eligible became in due time enrolled among their number. The Servants at office were men of a lower class in life, who performed the duties of domestics within the convent and hospital. This class, though wanting the position and dignity of their nobler brethren, possessed numerous privileges and emoluments which rendered admission into the Order even in this grade very advantageous to men of the humbler ranks of society.
The habit was a black robe with a cowl, having a cross of eight points in white linen upon the left breast. This at first was worn by all Hospitallers to whichever of the three classes they belonged, but at a later period (under Pope Alexander IV.) the combatant knights were distinguished by a white cross upon a ground gules. The first appearance of a force of Hospitaller knights in active warfare was certainly at Antioch in it 1119, and the details of the military constitution of the Order of St. John were complete in 1128. The two colleges of military knights, known respectively as the Temple and the Hospital, remained, during the rest of the history of the Christian monarchy in the Holy Land, the chief prop of its tottering throne: much jealousy, however, existed between the rival Orders, and the Hospital had not only to defend itself from its avowed enemies without, but from the intrigues and conspiracies within the Christian ranks, aggravated by the jealousy of the regular clergy, who were offended by the patronage extended by the Sovereign Pontiff to these military clerics, as well as to the similar corps of the Teutonic knights and knights of St. Lazarus. That in all these quarrels and jealousies the Order of the Hospital was invariably in the right would be absurd to assert, but it may be said, and supported even by the testimony of their opponents, that its members never lost sight of the charitable and hospitable purposes for which they had been originally incorporated, and that they were never disgraced by that treacherous correspondence with the enemy of which at times members of other professing Christian bodies were confessedly guilty. The ever increasing disunion among the Christian communities led, however, to the capitulation of Jerusalem in 1187, and deprived the Order of St. John of that home which for upwards of a century had been a shelter not only to their own people but to all whose needs demanded aid. The buildings, which had risen in extent and beauty since the first foundation by the Amalfi brethren, once more reverted to the Moslem, in whose hands they remained until they fell into ruin.
The members of the Order betook themselves straightway to a town and castle called Margat; and when the third crusade, in which our English King Richard Coeur de Lion bore so prominent a part, had captured the ancient city of Ptolemais, they established their headquarters there, from which the town derived its later name of St. Jean d’Acre; this was in 1192, and it continued to be their abode for close upon a century. Admitting that worldly policy and rivalry with other conventual bodies had somewhat besmirched their ancient fame, the Hospitallers were still held in such general estimation that, after the capture of Jerusalem, Sultan Saladin not only granted them possession of their convent and hospital for another year in order that the charitable work might not be too rudely interrupted, but even made, as is reported, liberal donations towards that work. One who was not likely to be desirous of unduly praising a rival Order, Thierry, Grand Master of the Templars, gave in a letter to Henry II. of England the following report of the events of that period:
“Know, great king, that Saladin has taken the city of Jerusalem and the tower of David: the Syrian Christians are allowed to guard the Holy Sepulchre only till the fourth day after next Michaelmas: and the Hospitallers are permitted to stay a year longer in their house to take care of the sick. The knights of that Order who are in the castle of Beauvoir distinguish themselves every day by their various enterprises against the Saracens. They have lately taken two caravans from the infidels, in the first of which they found the arms and ammunition which the Turks were transporting from the fortress of La Fere after they had demolished it. Carac, in the neighbourhood of Mount Royal, Mount Royal itself, Sapheta of the Temple, another Carac, and Margat which belongs to the Hospitallers, Castel Blanco, Tripoli, and Antioch still hold out against the efforts of the Turks. Saladin has caused the great cross to be taken down from the dome of the church that was built on the ground of Solomon’s temple, and for two days together it was dragged ignominiously through the streets, trampled under foot, and defiled with dirt. They have washed the inside and outside of that church with rose-water by way of purification, in order to make a mosque of it, and there they have solemnly proclaimed the law of Mahomet. The Turks have laid siege to Tyre ever since Martinmas, a great number of military engines play upon it night and day, throwing in continually square stones of vast bigness. Young Conrad, son of the Marquis of Monserrat, has shut himself up in the place and makes a gallant defence, being well seconded by the knights of St. John and the Templars. On the eve of St. Silvester seventeen Christian galleys with these brave friars on board sailed out of port, with ten Sicilian vessels commanded by General Margarit, a Catalan by nation, and attacked the fleet of Saladin in a manner before his eyes. The infidels were defeated. The great admiral of Alexandria and eight Emirs were made prisoners. They took eleven ships and a great number ran aground on the coast, which Saladin set on fire and burnt to ashes, for fear they should fall into the hands of the Christians. That prince appeared the next day in his camp, mounted on the finest of his horses, whose tail and ears he had cut off, making thus a public acknowledgment of the defeat he had received and of the trouble it gave him.”
I have quoted this passage at length because it contains a tribute to the Order from an impartial source, not only as to the value of their hospital work, but also as to their having already become proficient in that naval warfare which was ultimately to raise them to the position of maintainers of the peace of the Mediterranean Sea, a position to which the English navy has succeeded.
It is to be feared that the luxury and licence which characterized the Christian occupation of Acre had a deleterious influence upon the discipline of the Order. The Templars and Hospitallers turned their swords against one another, the Order of the Temple being jealous of the superior wealth of their rivals. Matthew Paris, the historian, estimates at this period the property of the Hospital at 19,000 manors and of the Temple at only 9,000. The soil of Palestine was dyed with fraternal blood at Margat and elsewhere, and the result was encouragement to the mutual enemy of both Orders.
Nor was the morality of Acre in the days of its prosperity at all what a Christian capital ought to have exhibited. Each race and division of the Latins, people of seventeen different countries speaking different languages and governed by different laws, occupied a separate and distinct portion of the town, having no community of interest with each other and rendering allegiance to no common supreme head. Every species of vice and extravagance consequently flourished unchecked, and the general demoralization was such that the city became a perfect sink of iniquity.
The Pope, who had but a short time before come forward as the defender of the Knights Hospitallers from the high-handed censure of the Emperor Frederick and borne testimony to their good service, took occasion, in addressing the Grand Master de Comps in 1238, to accuse the knights generally, on authority which he asserts to be undeniable, of harbouring within their convents women of loose character, of possessing individually private property, despite their vow of poverty, of assisting the enemies of the Church with horses and arms, and of other crimes. Yet on the other hand we have the testimony of many eminent soldiers and ecclesiastics to the merit and charitable piety of individual members of the Order, and a general concurrence in the view that if it needed reformation it was still maintaining, comparatively speaking, the promise of its earlier day. Pope Alexander (1259) confessed that the Order suffered a disadvantage from the want of a distinctive garb, which made it easy for those who were not professed to pass themselves off as knights of the Hospital, and for those who had joined the Order and lost their first love for its work to evade their obligations. He therefore granted to the Master and brethren permission to decree and make inviolate the regulation, that the knights should wear black mantles “that they may be distinguished from the other brethren” and in campaigns, and in battle should wear surcoats of a red colour, with a cross of white, in accordance with that on the standard. This command relates, it must be observed, to the Knights of Justice only. The Convent then consisted but of three classes—knights, clerics, and servitors. Ladies now were added, and took their share in the charitable employment of the Hospital and rivalled in religious zeal the most sanctified of the brethren. Three hundred years after this, in the Grand Mastership of Cardinal Verdala, the remains of one of these holy women, St. Ubaldesca, were transported to Malta, and received all the honours due to the relics of a Saint.
The King of Hungary thus describes his impression after visiting some of the principal houses of the knights: “Lodging in their house I have seen them feed every day an innumerable multitude of poor, the sick laid in good beds and treated with great care, the dying assisted with an exemplary piety, and the dead buried with proper decency. In a word, the Knights of St. John are employed, sometimes like Mary in contemplation and sometimes like Martha in action, and this noble militia consecrate their days either in their infirmaries or else in engagements against the enemies of the cross.”
Whatever deterioration may have affected the morals and discipline of the Hospitallers at Acre, it is sufficiently clear from history that it had not, like Capua with Hannibal’s soldiers, enervated their courage. The gathering storm of Saracen success burst upon the devoted city at last: the rivalry between Templar and Hospitaller was merged in the effort on the part of each to outshine the other in daring and endurance. Again and again were the hordes of Orientals repulsed by the diminishing but undaunted band of soldier monks; and, though it is almost impossible to say who of the devoted garrison had the honour to prolong the resistance to the last, yet John de Villiers, Grand Master, and his few surviving knights, we are assured, left no combatants behind them when they had fought their way to their boats and hoisted sail in their galleys for a port of refuge in the island of Cyprus.
THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS WAS not on the whole a suitable place for the headquarters of the Order. Limasol was no fort of strength; and the claims of the king of the island prevented the knights from having as free a hand as they desired. They determined to find a better place of rendezvous; and, though at first baffled in their attempts, in 1310, under Fulco de Villaret, 24th Grand Master, they accomplished the capture of the island of Rhodes, in climate and situation exactly what they required. Its fertile soil, fine harbour, and vicinity to the mainland were strong recommendations, and the growing importance of the Order rendered the nominal suzerainty of the Greek emperor a mere shade, which passed away even before the fall of the Empire itself. Forts and hospitals soon arose side by side, and Christian refugees were brought from provinces subdued by Turkish arms to aid in forming a bulwark against Mahometan conquest. A fleet of galleys, which had been commenced at Cyprus, assumed formidable dimensions in the new harbour, and effectually checked the supremacy of the Turkish corsairs.
Much of the ability to carry out these designs for the general weal of Christendom was derived from the aggrandizement of the Order of St. John at the expense of their old rivals, allies, and enemies, the Templars. When the two fraternities quitted the soil of the Holy Land the knights of the Temple, holding that all prospect of the fulfilment of their original vow to protect the Holy places was at an end, at once betook themselves to their European preceptories, and became obnoxious to the governments under which they settled by the wealth and oriental ostentation which, like the Nabobs of a later day, they brought into social and political life. Their enemies only waited until public feeling had been sufficiently excited to render their destruction an easy task. The Pope and the King of France (Clement V. and Philip the Fair) took the lead in a campaign of extermination carried out with ruthless barbarity. The kings and nobility of the various countries in which the Templars flourished fell upon the rich spoil thus thrown into their hands, but the Pope interposed to restrain the total secularization of such enormous revenues, and therefore a considerable portion of the property of the Templars was ultimately conferred upon the Order of St. John, who were considered to have earned it by their praiseworthy determination to maintain inviolate those obligations which could only be fulfilled by continued stay in some Eastern city such as Rhodes, where they remained an abiding menace to the infidel and a moral support to Christendom. It was at this time (the beginning of the fourteenth century) that the Order was divided into Languesex officio