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 in the Holy Land. In 800, Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, enlarged Probus’ hospital and added a library to it. About 200 years later, in 1005, Caliph Al-Hakim destroyed the hospital and three thousand other buildings in Jerusalem. In 1023, merchants from Amalfi and Salerno in Italy were given permission by the Caliph Ali az-Zahir of Egypt to rebuild the hospital in Jerusalem. The hospital, 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. In the year 1095, people were shocked in Western Europe by the words of Pope Urban II, “The Muslims have conquered Jerusalem”. Pope Urban wanted the Christians to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. People shouted, “God wills it”. 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 Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Initially, the group cared for pilgrims in Jerusalem, but the order soon extended to providing pilgrims with an armed escort, which soon grew into a substantial force.

In a Crusade, there were pilgrims who were going to pray in Jerusalem, groomers that cleaned the horses, wives, and children of the knights, and two kinds of knights: a mounted knight who rode on a horse and a foot soldier who walked on foot. Some of the knights went on Crusades to get rich or to steal a new home from the people they were fighting, but most of the knights went to get healed of their sins. The Hospitallers and the Knights Templar, formed in 1119, became 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.

Those seeking admittance to the Order were to take the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, and to follow the Augustinian rule. One also had to belong to the nobility. The recruitment of Knights from different areas of Western Europe would lead to the formation of seven Langue, whose number was increased to eight in the fifteenth century; langue being from France, Italy, Germany, England Aragon, Auvergne, Provance, and Castile. Each langue was assigned different responsibilities, a division that would later be seen also in Malta. 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 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 built by the Templars and the 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. Altogether there were six Crusades in a period of 176 years.

The Crusades lasted from 1095 until 1271. When the knights were attacked in a Crusade they used huge siege weapons. The ballista was the simplest weapon. It was like a giant crossbow that could shoot arrows 350-450 yards in length. The mangonel was called a wild donkey by the Romans. It was a medium-range catapult. The trebuchet was the most powerful siege weapon. It was a catapult that could fling rocks in a long-range. A battering ram was a log cut from a heavy tree. The battering ram got its name because the Romans said it looked like a ram. It was then tied onto a penthouse to protect the knight from arrows and it took twelve men to swing it.

All these siege weapons were used to get into Jerusalem by the knights of the Crusades. Other knights would try to dig underground and then set fire to the wall supports underground in hopes that the wall would collapse. Another way, knights tried to get into Jerusalem was to put long ladders against the wall and trying to climb them without being pushed over or having boiling liquids poured onto them or being killed by a knight on the wall.

The knights also built huge staircases, called siege towers, that were pushed against the wall and the knights walked up the staircases. When they reached Jerusalem however, they waited a while before attacking to starve their enemy, but it didn’t work so they just attacked. The knights captured towers built on the walls. Religion was important to the knights in the middle Ages. One of the results of the Crusades was the founding of new Christian religious Orders. Most of the monks were former knights who fought against each other in the Crusades. The knights did capture Jerusalem for a short period of time, but the Muslims kept on re-taking Jerusalem. The knights gained temporary power but lost many soldiers and so did the Muslims during the deadly Crusades of the middle ages.