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The 'Knights Hospitaller' (also known as the ''Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta'', ''Knights of Malta'', ''Knights of Rhodes'', and ''Chevaliers of Malta''; French: '''Ordre des Hospitaliers''') is an organization that began as an Amalfitan hospital founded in Jerusalem in 1080 to provide care for poor and sick pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade it became a religious/military order under its own charter, and was charged with the care and defense of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Following the loss of Christian territory in the Holy Land, the Order operated from Rhodes, over which it was sovereign, and later from Malta where it administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily.

Contents

History

Foundation and early history

Knights of Cyprus and Rhodes

Knights of Malta

Turmoil in Europe

The loss of Malta

Nazi-members of the SMOM

Modern successors

Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Revival in Britain as the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem

Protestant continuation in continental Europe

Mimic orders

See also

References

External links

History

Foundation and early history

In 600, Abbot Probus was commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great to build a hospital in Jerusalem to treat and care for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. In 800, Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, enlarged Probus' hostel and added a library to it. About 200 years later, in 1005, Caliph Al Hakim destroyed the hostel and three thousand other buildings. In 1023, merchants from Amalfi and Salerno in Italy were given permission by the Caliph Ali az-Zahir of Egypt to rebuild the hospice in Jerusalem. The hospice, which was built on the site of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist, took in Christian pilgrims traveling to visit the Christian holy sites. It was served by Benedictine Brothers.
The monastic hospitaller order was founded following the First Crusade by the Blessed Gerard, whose role as founder was confirmed by a Papal bull of Pope Paschal II in 1113. Gerard acquired territory and revenues for his order throughout the Kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond. His successor, Raymond du Puy de Provence, established the first significant Hospitaller infirmary near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Initially the group just cared for those pilgrims who made it to Jerusalem, but the order soon extended into providing an armed escort to pilgrims. The escort soon grew into a substantial force.
Together with the Knights Templar, formed in 1119, they became one of the most powerful Christian groups in the area. The order came to distinguish itself in battles with the Muslims, its soldiers wearing a black surcoat with a white cross.

By the mid-12th century, the order was clearly divided into military brothers and those who worked with the sick. It was still a religious order and had useful privileges granted by the Papacy. For example, the order was exempt from all authority save that of the Pope, and it paid no tithes and was allowed its own religious buildings. Many of the more substantial Christian fortifications in the Holy Land were the work of either the Templars or Hospitallers. At the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem the Hospitallers held seven great forts and 140 other estates in the area. The two largest of these, their bases of power in the Kingdom and in the Principality of Antioch, were the Krak des Chevaliers and Margat. The property of the Order was divided into priories, subdivided into bailiwicks, which in turn were divided into commanderies. Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor, pledged his protection to the Knights of St. John in a charter of privileges granted in 1185.

Knights of Cyprus and Rhodes

The rising power of Islam eventually pushed the Knights out of their traditional holdings in Jerusalem. After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Jerusalem itself fell in 1187), the Knights were confined to the County of Tripoli, and when Acre was captured in 1291 the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. Finding themselves becoming enmeshed in the politics of that kingdom, their Grand Master Guillaume de Villaret created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting Rhodes to be their new home. His successor Fulkes de Villaret executed the plan, and on 15 August 1309, after over two years of campaigning, the island of Rhodes surrendered to the knights. They also gained control of a number of neighboring islands, as well as the Anatolian ports of Bodrum and Kastelorizo.
The Knights Templar were dissolved in 1312 and much of their property was given to the Hospitallers. The holdings were organized into eight tongues (one each in Aragon, Auvergne, Castile, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Provence). Each was administered in turn by a Prior or, if there was more than one priory, by a Grand Prior. At Rhodes and later Malta, the resident knights of each "tongue" were headed by a Bailli. The English Grand Prior at the time was Philip Thame, who acquired the estates allocated to the English tongue from 1330 to 1358.
On Rhodes, now known as the ''Knights of Rhodes'', they were forced to become a more militarized force, fighting especially with the Barbary pirates. They withstood two invasions in the 15th century, one by the Sultan of Egypt in 1444 and another by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1480 who after the fall of Constantinople made the Knights a priority target.
In 1494 they created a stronghold on the peninsula of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum). They used pieces of the partially destroyed Mausoleum of Maussollos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to strengthen Bodrum Castle.[1]
However in 1522 an entirely new sort of force arrived when 400 ships under the command of Sultan Suleiman delivered 200,000 men to the island. Against this force the Knights, under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms and the walls of the city. The siege lasted six months, at the end of which the survivors were allowed to leave Rhodes and retreated to Sicily.

Knights of Malta

After seven years of moving from place to place in Europe, the Knights were established on Malta in 1530, when the Holy Roman Emperor, King Charles V of Spain, as King of Sicily, gave them Malta, Gozo and the North African port of Tripoli in perpetual fiefdom in exchange for an annual fee of a single Maltese falcon, which they were to send on All Souls Day to the Viceroy of Sicily, who acted as the King's representative. (This historical fact was used as the plot hook in Dashiell Hammett's famous book ''The Maltese Falcon''.)
It was from here that the Hospitallers continued their actions against the Muslims and especially the Barbary pirates. Although they had only a small number of ships, they nevertheless quickly drew the ire of the Ottomans who were less than happy to see the order resettled. Accordingly, Suleiman assembled another massive invasion force in order to dislodge the Knights from Malta, and in 1565 invaded, starting the Great Siege of Malta. This siege proved one of the great victories of history for an undermanned and vastly outnumbered defense force, numbering some 700 knights and about 8000 soldiers.
At first the battle looked to be a repeat of the one on Rhodes. Most of the cities were destroyed and about half the knights died in battle. On 18 August the position of the besieged was becoming desperate: dwindling daily in numbers, they were becoming too feeble to hold the long line of fortifications. But when his council suggested the abandonment of Il Borgo and Senglea and withdrawal to Fort St. Angelo, Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette remained obdurate. The Viceroy of Sicily had not brought help. Possibly the orders of his master, Philip II of Spain, were so obscurely worded as to put on his own shoulders the burden of a decision – a responsibility which he was unwilling to discharge because defeat would mean exposing Sicily to the Turks. He had left his own son with La Valette, so he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of the fortress, and Malta in Turkish hands would soon have proved a curse to Sicily and Naples. Whatever may have been the cause of his delay, the Viceroy hesitated until the indignation of his own officers forced him to move, and then the battle had almost been won by the unaided efforts of the Knights.
On 23 August came yet another grand assault, the last serious effort, as it proved, of the besiegers. It was thrown back with the greatest difficulty, even the wounded taking part in the defence. The plight of the Turkish forces, however, was now desperate. With the exception of Fort St. Elmo, the fortifications were still intact. Working night and day, the garrison had repaired the breaches, and the capture of Malta seemed more and more impossible. The terrible summer months had laid many of the troops low with sickness in their crowded quarters. Ammunition and food were beginning to run short, and the Turkish troops were becoming more and more dispirited at the failure of their numerous attacks and the unending toll of lives. The death of Dragut, a corsair and admiral of the Ottoman fleet and skilled commander, on 23 June, had proved an incalculable loss. The Turkish commanders, Piyale Pasha and Mustafa Pasha, took few precautions, and, though they had a huge fleet, they never used it with any effect except on one solitary occasion. They neglected their communications with the African coast and made no attempt to watch and intercept Sicilian reinforcements.
On 1 September they made their last effort, but all threats and cajoleries had little effect on dispirited Turkish troops, who refused any longer to believe in the possibility of capturing those terrible fortresses. The feebleness of the attack was a great encouragement to the besieged, who now began to see hopes of deliverance. Perplexity and indecision of the Turks were cut short by the news of the arrival of Sicilian reinforcements in Mellieħa Bay. Unaware of the small size of this new force, they hastily evacuated and sailed away on 3 September.
At the moment of the Turkish departure the Order had left 600 men capable of bearing arms, but the losses of the Ottomans had been yet more fearful. The most reliable estimate puts the number of the Turkish army at its height at some 40,000 men, of which but 15,000 returned to Constantinople. The siege is portrayed vividly in the frescoes of Matteo Perez d'Aleccio in the Hall of St. Michael and St. George, also known as the Throne Room, in the Grand Master's Palace in Valletta. Four of the original modellos, painted in oils by Perez d'Aleccio between 1576 and 1581, can be found in the Cube Room of the Queen's House at Greenwich, London. After the siege a new city had to be built – the present city of Valletta, so named in memory of the Grand Master who had sustained this siege.
In 1607, the Head of the Order, the Grand Master, was granted the status of Reichsfürst (Prince of the Empire, even though their territory was always south of the Empire). In 1630 the Grand Master was awarded ecclesiastic equality with the cardinals and the unique hybrid style His Most Eminent Highness, reflecting both qualities qualifying him as a true Prince of the Church.
Following the Christian victory over the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the knights continued to attack pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a centre for slave trading, selling captured Africans and Turks and conversely freeing Christian slaves. Malta remained a slave market until well into the 18th century. It required a thousand slaves to equip merely the galleys of the Order.

Turmoil in Europe

The Order lost a number of its European holdings following the rise of Protestantism, but survived on Malta. The property of the English branch was confiscated in 1540. In 1577, the German Bailiwick of Brandenburg became Lutheran, but continued to pay its financial contribution to the Order until the branch was turned into a merit Order by the King of Prussia in 1812. The "Johanniter Orden" was restored as a Prussian Order of Knights Hospitaller in 1852.

The Knights of Malta had a strong presence within the Imperial Russian Navy and the pre-revolutionary French Navy. When De Poincy was appointed governor of the French colony on St. Kitts in 1639, he was a prominent Knight of St. John and dressed his retinue with the emblems of the order. The Order's presence in the Caribbean was eclipsed with his death in 1660. He also bought the island of Saint Croix as his personal estate and deeded it to the Knights of St. John. In 1665, St. Croix was bought by the French West India Company, ending the Order's exploits in the Caribbean.
In 1789, France erupted in revolution and anti-clerical and anti-aristocratic furor, forcing many French knights and nobles to flee for their lives. Many of the Order's traditional sources of revenue from France were lost permanently.
The decree of the French National Assembly Abolishing the Feudal System (1789), abolished the Order in France:
''V. Tithes of every description, as well as the dues which have been substituted for them, under whatever denomination they are known or collected (even when compounded for), possessed by secular or regular congregations, by holders of benefices, members of corporations (including the Order of Malta and other religious and military orders), as well as those devoted to the maintenance of churches, those impropriated to lay persons and those substituted for the portion congrue, are abolished (...)'' (The Decree Abolishing the Feudal System, August 11, 1789, J.H. Robinson, ed., Readings in European History 2 vols. (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 2: 404-409)
The French Revolutionary Government seized the assets and properties of the Order in France in 1792.

The loss of Malta

Their Mediterranean stronghold of Malta was captured by Napoleon in 1798 during his expedition to Egypt. As a ruse, Napoleon asked for safe harbor to resupply his ships, and then turned against his hosts once safely inside Valletta. Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim failed to anticipate or prepare for this threat, provided no effective leadership, and readily capitulated to Napoleon – arguing that the order's charter prohibited fighting against Christians. He resigned his office and retreated into obscurity. The order continued to exist in a diminished form and negotiated with European governments for a return to power. The Tsar of Russia gave the largest number of knights shelter in St. Petersburg and this gave rise to the Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller and recognition within the Russian Imperial Orders.
In 1798, following Napoleon's taking of Malta, the order was dispersed, but with a large number of refugee knights sheltering in St Petersburg, where they elected the Russian Emperor, Paul I as their Grand Master – a rival Grand Master to Ferdinand Hompesch, then held in disgrace. Hompesch abdicated in 1799, under pressure from the Austrian Court, leaving Paul as the De facto Grand Master. As De-facto Grand Master, in addition to the Roman Catholic Grand Priory, Paul I created a Russian tradition within the Hospitaller Order – the "Russian Grand Priory" of no less than 118 Commanderies dwarfing the rest of the Order. The Priory was open to all Christians – which whilst it could not be accepted as a canonical part of the Roman Catholic Order, it was never-the-less a de-facto part of the ancient Order. Following Paul's murder in 1801, in 1803 a Catholic master was restored to the Order in Rome. De facto Paul created a new Order of Saint John because his election as Grand Master could never be accepted under Roman Catholic Canon law. It could therefore be said that in 1803 there have been created a Russian ecumenical and a Roman Catholic Order of Saint John (see also H.J. Hoegen Dijkhof, The legitimacy of Orders of St. John: a historical and legal analysis and case study of a para-religious phenomenon).
By the early 1800s, the order had been severely weakened by the loss of its priories throughout Europe. Only 10% of the order's income came from traditional sources in Europe, with the remaining 90% being generated by the Russian Grand Priory until 1810. This was partly reflected in the government of the Order being under Lieutenants, rather than Grand Masters in the period 1805 to 1879, when Pope Leo XIII restored a Grand Master to the order. This signalled the renewal of the order's fortunes as a humanitarian and religious organization. Hospitaller work, the original work of the order, became once again its main concern. The hospital and welfare activities, undertaken on a considerable scale in World War I, were greatly intensified and expanded in World War II under the Grand Master Fra' Ludovico Chigi della Rovere Albani (Grand Master 1931-1951).

Nazi-members of the SMOM

Chigi della Rovere Albani awarded the Grand Cross of Honour and Devotion to Italian dictator Mussolini (Peyrefitte, Roger. Knights of Malta. Translated from the French by Edward Hyams. Secker & Warburg, London, 1960, page 96). On November 17, 1948 SMOM awarded one of its highest honors, the Grand Cross of Merit, to Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazi chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. On Dec 4, 1932 Franz von Papen was succeeded as Chancellor by Kurt von Schleicher. Determined to gain revenge on Schleicher, Papen came to terms with Hitler (Jan. 4, 1933) and persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler to Chancellor. In April 1933 von Papen was elevated to Knight Magistral Grand Cross of SMOM.

Modern successors

Sovereign Military Order of Malta

In 1834, the revived Order established a new headquarters in Rome. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, better known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), remains a Roman Catholic religious order which claims sovereignty under international law and has been granted permanent observer status at the United Nations, although its claims of sovereignty are disputed by a handful of scholars.
SMOM is the continuation of the Order in unbroken succession. The word 'revived' in the paragraph above refers to its regaining its sense of purpose by continuing and expanding the purely hospitaller whilst dropping the military role.

Revival in Britain as the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem

The property of the Order in England was confiscated by Henry VIII because of a dispute with the Pope over the dissolution of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which eventually led to the dissolution of the monasteries. Although not formally suppressed, this caused the activities of the English Langue to come to an end. A few Scottish Knights remained in communion with the French Langue of the Order. In 1831, a British Order was founded by Frenchmen claiming to act on behalf of the Order in Italy, and eventually became known as the Most Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem in the British Realm. It received a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria in 1888 and spread across the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, and the United States of America. However, it was only recognized by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in 1963. Its most well-known activities are based around St. John Ambulance.

Protestant continuation in continental Europe

Main articles: Order of St. John (Protestant Continental Europe)

Following the Protestant Reformation, most German chapters of the Order declared their continued adherence to the Order while accepting Protestant theology. As the Balley Brandenburg des Ritterlichen Ordens Sankt Johannis vom Spital zu Jerusalem, the order continues today, gaining increasing independence from its Catholic mother order. The Protestant branch spread into several other countries (i.e. Hungary, the Netherlands, and Sweden). These sub-branches are now autonomous as well.
This branch holds the official title Brandenburg Bailiwick of the Knights' Order of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem.
All four branches are in loose alliance with the British order in the Alliance of Orders of St John of Jerusalem.

Mimic orders

Following the end of World War II, and taking advantage of the lack of State Orders in the Italian Republic, an Italian had given himself an identity of a Polish Prince, and did a brisk trade in Maltese Crosses as the Grand Prior of the fictitious "Grand Priory of Podolia". Others followed suit such as one claiming to be the Grand Prior of the Holy Trinity of Villeneuve. The former was successfully prosecuted for fraud, and the latter gave up after a police visit. However, the latter organisation resurfaced in Malta in 1975, and then by 1978 in the USA, where it still continues.
The large passage fees collected by the American Association of "SMOM" in the early 1950s may well have tempted a man named Charles Pichel to create his own "Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller" in 1956. Pichel avoided the problems of being an imitation of "SMOM" by giving his organization a mythical history by claiming the American organization he led was founded within the genuine Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller in 1908; a spurious claim, but which nevertheless misled many including some academics. In truth, the foundation of his organisation had no connection to the genuine Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller. Once created, the attraction of Russian Nobles into membership of Pichel’s 'Order' lent some credence to his claims.
These organizations have led to scores of other mimic, or self-styled, Orders. Two offshoots of the Pichel Order were successful in allegedly gaining the patronage of two exiled monarchs: the late King Peter II of Yugoslavia, and King Michael of Romania. The former Order, based in California, gained a substantial following under leadership of the late Williams Formhals, who for some years, and with the support of historical organisations such as The Augustan Society, claimed to be a Polish prince of the Sangusko family.

See also

★ List of Grand Masters of the Knights Hospitaller

★ List of the priors of St John of Jerusalem in England

★ Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller

★ Krak des Chevaliers

★ Knights Templar

★ Teutonic Knights

★ Francesco Ghetaldi-Gondola

References

★

★ The Knights Hospitaller, , Helen J., Nicholson,, , 2001, ISBN 1-84383-038-8

★ The Church Visible: The Ceremonial Life and Protocol of the Roman Catholic Church, , James-Charles, Noonan, Jr., Viking, 1996, ISBN 0-670-86745-4

★ The Templars, , Piers Paul, Read, Imago, 1999, ISBN 85-312-0735-5

★ Some Notes About the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in the U.S.A. "Nobilta" (Rivista di Araldica, Genealogia, Ordini Cavallereschi September/October 1999). Istituto Araldico Genealogico Italiano., Vol VII, No. 32. Reference by Carl Edwin Lindgren relating only to the Order in the United States.

★ God's War: A New History of the Crusades, , Christopher, Tyerman, Allen Lane, 2006, ISBN 0-7139-9220-4

★ Peyrefitte, Roger. Knights of Malta. Translated from the French by Edward Hyams. Secker & Warburg, London, 1960, page 96.

External links

★ A Research Website on the Order of St John

★ The Acquisition of Sovereignty by Quasi-States: The case of the Order of Malta by Dr Noel Cox

★ WorldStatesmen

★ Sovereign Military Order of Malta - official site

★ Venerable Order of St John - official site

★ Alliance of Orders of St John of Jerusalem - official site

★ Castle Consuegra, ceded to the Knights Hospitaller in 1183 by King Alfonso VIII

★

★ http://www.orderofsaintjohn.info

★ http://www.fanaticus.org/DBA/armies/IV56.html

★ The Knights of Malta - article

★ Dr H.J. Hoegen Dijkhof (attorney) The legitimacy of Orders of St. John: a historical and legal analysis and case study of a para-religious phenomenon - PhD study of the Leiden University discussing how to determine if an Order of St. John has a legitimate character