 |
| Gerusalemme nel
codice di Federico di Montefeltro (Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana Urb. Lat. 277, fol. 132 v.). Al
centro l'ospedale dell'Ordine di San Giovanni. |
The origins of the Order of St. John remain somewhat obscure,
and the homelands of the founder Girardus, perhaps an
Italian, and of the first Master Fr. Raymond de Podio,
possibly French or Provençal, are unknown. The emergence of
the Hospital was an aspect of the profound religious revival
in the West which generated a reformed papacy, monastic
renewal based on Cluny, lay movements for the support of
charity and hospitals, and the first crusade. Probably in
about 1070 various merchants from Amalfi, and perhaps from
elsewhere in Southern Italy, founded a hospice for Latin
pilgrims in Jerusalem which was attached to the Benedictine
house of Sancta Maria Latina; subsequently a second house
was established for women. These hospices were for pilgrims
and especially for the poor rather than for the medically
sick. Their staff may have been lay brethren under some vow
of obedience. The hospices seem not to have had their own
incomes or endowments, their resources coming from the
Amalfitans and the Benedictines and perhaps also from
pilgrims and other visitors ( 2).
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The crusaders' conquest of 1099
brought fundamental change to
Jerusalem which became a Christian
city. The number of Latin pilgrims
and poor increased, the Holy
Sepulchre was occupied by Latin
canons and the Greek Patriarch was
replaced by a Latin one. The
Benedictines of Sancta Maria Latina
lost their predominance in Jerusalem.
The Latin hospice survived under its
competent leader Girardus; it was
detached from Sancta Maria Latina
and was somehow associated with the
Holy Sepulchre nearby. It expanded
greatly and reincorporated the
female.
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Bolla di
Pasquale II "Pie postulatio". |
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hospice,
while support and donations were received in
Syria and in the West, especially from those who
had themselves benefitted from the Jerusalem
hospital. For several years that organization
was not entirely independent but formed part of
a broad Holy Sepulchre movement which had
inspired the crusade itself. This movement had
several branches: an ecclesiastical group formed
by the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, a
charitable element in the adjacent hospital, and
a military wing consisting in the 1110s of
knights owing obedience to the Prior of the Holy
Sepulchre. These knights apparently lived in the
Hospital quarters until 1120 when they moved to
the Temple area and established themselves there
as a military order, the Templars (3).
In Syria the Hospital was accepted as a separate
entity, but the earliest donations in the West
showed monies for the Holy Sepulchre and the
Hospital being collected jointly and men making
gifts which were often addressed ambiguously to
God, to the Holy Sepulchre, to Saint John, to
the poor and sick in Jerusalem or to some
combination of these. Many Western Latins knew
that there was a hospital in Jerusalem but were
slow to recognize it as an independent
institution.
In 1113 Girardus secured an important papal
privilege which recognized the Hospital's
independence; its members were considered to be
in some sense technically religious and they
were given the power to elect their own ruler.
This document did not create an "order"; indeed
orders were not really defined before the
thirteenth century. Nor did the privilege grant
a "sovereignty", since the Hospital was always
subject to the pope and even after 1113 it was
still to some extent subordinate to the
Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was in effect its
bishop. The pope also confirmed the Hospitallers
in possession of their properties both in Asia
and the West; these were said to include a
xenodochium or hospice at Saint Gilles in
Provence and six others in Italy, but it seems
likely that all or most of them did not exist
or, if they did, that they were not in
Hospitaller hands in 1113. The Hospital may have
been attempting to secure various hospices which
had been founded for, and sometimes dedicated to,
the Holy Sepulchre; alternatively, certain
xenodochia planned in 1113 had not yet been
founded (4).
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What in
particular was new about the Hospital was the
idea of practical service to the poor and sick
for their sake rather than the performance of
charitable tasks as a means of securing the
carers' own salvation (5).
For decades after 1113 the Hospital's activity
was centred on its hospital. Travellers'
accounts were full of admiration for its medical
and charitable activities, and returning
pilgrims and crusaders made generous donations
to the Order. The doctors, medicines and diet in
the hospital, and its size and efficiency were
regarded with astonishment (6).
In 1143 a separate German hospice of Sancta
Maria Alemannorum was subordinated to the
Hospital of Saint John by the pope with the
proviso that it continue to be managed by
Germans and to serve them (7).
After the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 a central
Conventual hospice and hospital were established
in Acre, and after the loss of Acre in 1291, a
Conventual hospital functioned at Limassol on
Cyprus (8).
Meanwhile the Hospital's nature changed
profoundly. Priest-brethren received papal
sanction in 1154 and gradually it became a
predominantly military or military-religious
order. The holy land was in great need of
military defence. From 1120 this function, and
especially the protection of travelling
pilgrims, was the special task of the Templars;
that military force proved popular and the
Hospital may have felt the need to compete with
it for recruits and donations. There was nothing
unusual in an ecclesiastical corporation
providing military service, but the notion of
professed religious being bound to warfare and
the shedding of blood went beyond the dilemma
implicit in an armed crusade with religious
motives, and it provoked some controversy. The
Hospital gradually acquired castles and other
military responsibilities, though these did not
at first involve its own professed brethren in
fighting (9). The
Order's Rule, probably datable to the 1130s,
made no mention of fighting, of military members
or of noble requirements for membership (10),
and as late as 1178 the pope was reminding the
Hospitallers that their primary obligation lay
in their charitable activities (11).
However the Hospital probably had its own
military brethren by about 1160 and in 1168 the
Master was leading Hospitaller troops in battle(12).
At some |
point in the decades before 1206 the
Order's military brethren were divided
into two separate classes, the milites
or knights and the military sergeants(13).
Hospitallers and Templars were not
monks, since they did not live in a
closed or cloistered community or devote
themselves primarily to prayer;
liturgically they followed the canonical
ordo of seven hours rather than the
monastic ordo of nine hours. They were
religious who professed the vows of
poverty, chastity and obedience
according to a Rule approved by the
papacy. They took part in many crusades
of a certain type but not, technically,
as crusaders. The crusade was a holy war
but it was not perpetual; it took place
for a limited period when, and only when,
the pope proclaimed it; it might be
directed against the infidel, or against
schismatic Christians or, as in the
majority of cases, against Latins who
were enemies of the papacy. A man who
took the vow of the cross could perform
his crusading service, receive his
indulgence and return to normal life. By
contrast, the holy war of the military
order was perpetual; it was directed
exclusively against infidels rather than
Christians; and it did not depend on any
papal proclamation. A Hospitaller was
not a crusader; he had taken a vow of
obedience and was therefore not free to
take the crusader vow; the cross on his
habit was worn in remembrance of
Christ's suffering and was not a
crusading cross. The Hospitaller's
participation in a crusade was not that
of a crusader (14).
The charitable institution which
emerged from the Jerusalem hospital
became, alongside the Templars, a great
force in the Latin East, in its
political affairs, its military
expeditions and within its society as a
whole. Its Eastern operations may at
times have produced some wealth for the
Hospital in the Levant, especially if it
could profit from the Oriental spice
trade or from local sugar production (15).
Basically, however, the Order relied on
the Latin West for manpower, for funds
and for political support. In Western
Europe came donations, privileges and
exemptions. Lands were organized in
commanderies, priories and provinces
which recruited men and sent them to
Syria and which created wealth and
transferred it as responsiones or dues
to the Convent in the East. The
commandery had many functions:
it was a centre of liturgical life; it
managed estates to create surplus
wealth; it recruited and trained
brethren and it housed them in their old
age; it maintained, in certain places,
hospices, hospitals and parishes; and it
played a part in local society,
maintaining contact with, and securing
support from, the public as a whole.
Commanderies and priories varied
greatly; in some regions the priories'
estates and resources were very
extensive indeed (16).
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Along
with a great expansion in the Hospital's
power and importance came a change in
its leadership. The Templars had from
their foundation been knights, some from
leading families, but the social origins
of the earliest Hospitallers were
obscure and only a limited number of the
Hospital's brethren were fratres
milites. There was great diversity
between the priories and it was, in any
case, extremely difficult to define a
secular miles or knight. The 1206
statutes distinguished between milites
and the socially inferior and normally
less wealthy sergeants, and they
referred to the knighting of sons of
gentilz homes. Thirteenth-century
statutes spoke not of nobility but of
the obligation that a brother-knight be
a knight before being received into the
Order or, if he were not yet knighted,
that he be of knightly birth (17).
By the mid-fourteenth century a
knight-brother was supposed to be noble
through both parents (18)
but in practice many were country gentry
or belonged to an urban patriciate of
rich townsmen who may indeed have
claimed a form of nobility or at least
of knighthood. In addition to the three
categories of priest-brethren, milites
and sergeants, there were also
Hospitaller sisters whose numbers were
not inconsiderable. For example, in
England in 1338 there were approximately
116 professed brethren plus a few more
on Rhodes or elsewhere, and they
included 31 milites, almost all of them
from relatively obscure families, 34
priests, 47 sergeants and also 50
sorores; of these, seventeen sergeants
and six priests held commanderies (19).
The sisters did not fight or serve in
hospitals or hospices and they seldom
paid responsiones or attended chapters,
but they could be important in
maintaining the Hospital's contacts with
noble or gentry families who provided
donations or recruits for the Order.
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Rodi. La "Via dei Cavalieri". |
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[13]Cartulaire,
i, no. 527.
[14] A. Luttrell, "The Military
Orders: Some Definitions", in Militia Sancti
Sepulcri, ed. K. Elm - C. Fonseca (Vatican,
1998); for a different emphasis, J.
Sarnowsky, "Der Johanniterorden und die
Kreuzzuge", in Vita Religiosa in Mittelalter:
Festschrift für Kaspar Elm zum 70.
Geburtstag, ed. J. Felten - N. Jaspert (Berlin,
1999). Technically the Hospitallers were not
monks, not crusaders, not Vasalli Christi
and not members of a chivalric order, whose
members were not professed religious; nor
were most of them knights.
[15] A large quantity of the special
pottery used in sugar production has
recently been discovered in the excavations
of the Hospital's great palace at Acre.
[16] Most priories have been
neglected by historians, some having lost
their archives; they require much more
study.
[17] Cartulaire, ii, nos. 1143 (pp.
39-40), 3039 # 19 (1262); the precise dating
of these statutes is open to debate.
[18] A. Luttrell, The Hospitallers in
Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West:
1291-1440 (London, 1978), item XIV, 511.
[19] L. Larking, The Knights
Hospitallers in England being the Report of
Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master
Elyan de Vilanova for A.D. 1338 (London,
1857), provides slightly imprecise
statistics, some brethren being of uncertain
status; these are discussed in G. O'Malley,
The English Knights Hospitallers: 1468-1540
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis: Cambridge, 1999),
27-28.
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The end of Latin Syria came in 1291
with the fall of Acre, for which the
military orders received much, rather
unfair, blame. The Teutonic Order
retreated to Venice and then in 1309 to
Prussia. The Templars were attacked in
1307 and in 1312 were abolished by the
pope. The Hospital, uncomfortable and
inactive on Cyprus, invaded the Greek
island of Rhodes in 1306; the
inhabitants surrendered on terms,
probably in 1309. The Hospital thus
acquired a secure base, and after 1312
it was greatly enriched by the lands of
the Temple. In practice, Rhodes had been
surrendered by the Greeks; in theory,
the island was given to the Order by the
pope, who had the power to suppress the
Hospital at any moment if he so wished.
Technically Rhodes was held from the
pope but the Order, safe on an island it
could defend, was virtually independent.
The Master granted lands, raised taxes,
sent ambassadors, coined money, governed
the Greek church and generally acted
like a prince on his own island. If on
Rhodes he ruled as Master of an Order
with a central metropolis in the East,
his powers were much more limited in the
Order's many priories, in effect its
colonies, in the West, that is in
outremer or overseas in Hospitaller
parlance. The Hospital was an oligarchy;
the Master was bound by the Rule and
statutes, and he had to govern the Order
with the counsel and consent of its
leading officers who had elected him.
The Master who acquired Rhodes, Fr.
Foulques de Villaret, ignored these
restrictions and in 1317 he was deposed
and almost assassinated.
The Hospital's policies on Rhodes
were most effective. The order-state or
Ordensstaat par excellence was that in
Prussia where a military-religious order
created and governed an extensive,
efficient and wealthy state with a large
population, but Teutonic Prussia was
doomed to failure, for if it succeeded
in Christianizing its neighbours it
could no longer attack them; it lost its
purpose and during the fifteenth century
it gradually declined. The Hospital's
unique form of "island order state"
employed a subtler formula which endured
for many centuries. An island could be
defended relatively cheaply; it had no
Christian frontiers but the Turks were
close by and provided the Hospital with
a raison d'être to justify the receipt
of its Western revenues.
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An element
of warfare against the infidel was
necessary as a type of propaganda
exercise, but as long as sieges could be
resisted, as they were at Rhodes in 1444
and 1480 and at Malta in 1565 though not
at Rhodes in 1522 or at Tripoli in 1551,
the Order survived. The organization of
the "island order state" was conducted
effectively: one or two guard galleys
were maintained; Greek slaves from the
mainland were imported to settle the
island and expand its agriculture; trade
was encouraged in the safe harbour at
Rhodes in order to create wealth which
could be taxed; military and naval
services were imposed on the population;
massive stone walls defended the
Convent; the piratical corso secured
profitable booty; and good relations
with the Greek population ensured its
collaboration (20).
The Order, always dependent on Western
support, had an effective sideline in
the lucrative pilgrim traffic which
called at Rhodes, where the size and
magnificence of its Conventual hospital
created effective propaganda for the
Hospitallers. Medical service and the
care of the "poor of Christ" remained at
the core of the Hospitallers' spiritual
ideology which required that there
should always be a hospital in the
Convent or headquarters. In 1314 the
chapter-general allotted the
considerable sum of 6750 florins a year
to the hospital. An incomplete budget of
1478 apportioned 7000 florins, or 7.5
percent of a total of 92,000 florins,
for the hospital, the doctors and the
pharmacy, together with other sums for
foodstuffs, for nurses, for leprosy
cases and for foundlings and orphans. At
first the hospital on Rhodes was in an
existing house by the sea; then it was
in a relatively modest building; and
finally, late in the fifteenth century,
came the great hospital with its
licensed doctors, its medical
certificates and its tradition of care.
In the West the story was different.
Money and manpower were short while in
many cases secular local government was
taking over welfare and medical
activities. Apart from a few centres
such as the great commandery at Genoa,
hospitals and hospices together with the
giving of alms, went into sharp decline
in much of Western Europe (
21).
Rhodes increasingly came under attack in
the fifteenth century as the Ottomans
advanced into Anatolia and the Balkans.
After the 1480 |
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[20] A.
Luttrell, The Hospitallers of Rhodes and
their Mediterranean World (Aldershot, 1992),
item XIX.
[21] Idem (1999), item X.
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siege
the fortifications of Rhodes were enormously
strengthened to resist the ever-heavier Ottoman
cannon. Since the Order could hire mercenary
troops, the defence of the city required only a
limited number of Hospitaller brethren. These
were attracted to Rhodes largely by means of a
system of service and reward by which men,
predominantly knight-brethren, who went to serve
in the Convent acquired there an ancienitas or
seniority which gave them rights to vacant
commanderies or priories in the West. A few
opted instead for careers in the Convent, hoping
for office in the East or possibly even the
Mastership (22).
After 1347, the first year of successive
great plagues, the major economic and
demographic crisis of the fourteenth century
meant that the Hospital's incomes were seriously
reduced, that recruitment was down and that the
average age of brethren rose dramatically.
Hospitallers began to need several commanderies
in order to secure a satisfactory income,
competition for benefices increased and the
eventual consequence was that access to the
Order came to be much more carefully regulated.
There was a general trend in European society
towards the emergence of a more clearly-defined
noble class, and the Hospitallers had practical
reasons for regulating entry to the Order. By
the early fifteenth century some brethren were
seeking to exclude rich merchant candidates; the
Order evolved a system of proofs of nobility, or
at first simply of knightly origin, in order to
create a class or caste of families with access
to the Order as milites. Statutes of 1428 and
1433 reasserted the requirement that recruits
must submit to an inquiry to prove their origins
as "gentlemen" (23).
In 1442 Giovanni Martinelli of Florence was
received as a miles of the Italian langue on
Rhodes, but only on condition that within one
year he provide authentic proofs from the Prior
of Pisa and others that he belonged to the
knightly class - appartene ali stabilimenti di
esser fra chavalier (24).
In 1530 the Hospitallers moved to a new island
but, with comparatively insignificant variations,
they simply reproduced on Malta their successful
Rhodian "island order state" (25).
In a sense the history of Hospitaller Malta from
1530 to 1798 had been organized on Rhodes
between
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1309 and 1522. The
career of a man like Fr. Pietrino del Ponte, an
important figure at Rhodes and the first Master
elected in Malta, demonstrated such continuities
(26). A later Master,
Fr. Philippe de la Vallette, had fought in the
final siege of Rhodes in 1522 and his experience
proved invaluable during the siege of Malta in
1565. Enjoying less independence than Rhodes,
Malta was held as a fief of the Sicilian kingdom
on which it depended for its grain supplies; its
population was Catholic rather than Greek; and
the pope could interfere more effectively on
Malta. However Birgu, and later Valletta, were
fortified; the Turks were beaten back; the corso
was maintained; a great hospital was built;
society and commerce were prosperously organized;
and the Order continued to be useful as it
resisted or deterred Turkish assaults and
Barbary pirates. Until the collapse of the
anciene régime in France in and after 1792 the
essential incomes from the Western priories
largely continued to reach Malta. Thereafter
Napoleon expelled the Order from the island in
1798 and it ceased to be military, except in the
rather special sense that it remained noble.
For some decades after 1798 all seemed lost, but
the tradition survived. The social appeal of
nobility could be exploited; a convenient
doctrine of sovereignty was evolved; and, above
all, renewed emphasis was placed on medical and
charitable activities. In the age of the Red
Cross, of the United Nations, of NATO and other
such bodies, multinational institutions have
become attractive. In many countries, Britain
for example, the welfare state is increasingly
unable to meet constantly expanding demands for
medical and other care, and in consequence the
various branches of the Order of Saint John have
acquired an ever more important role as
efficient alternatives. This can be seen, for
example, with the Malteser Hilfdienst and the
Johanniter in Germany or with the Saint John's
Ambulance Service in Britain. That means that
the image of the ancient Hospitaller tradition
must be propagated in order to mobilize public
support not just by means of museums and other
heritage activities, but also through the
systematic, scientific history of the Hospital's
past and through its effective presentation (28).
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