Foundation and early history ''. Bull issued by Pope Paschal II in 1113 in favour of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which was to transform what was a community of pious men into an institution within the Church. By virtue of this document, the pope officially recognized the existence of the new organisation as an operative and militant part of the Roman Catholic Church, granting it papal protection and confirming its properties in Europe and Asia. In 603,
Pope Gregory I commissioned the
Ravennate Abbot Probus, who was previously Gregory's emissary at the Lombard court, to build
a hospital in
Jerusalem to treat and care for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. In 800, Emperor
Charlemagne enlarged Probus's hospital and added a library to it. About 200 years later, in 1009, the
Fatimid caliph
al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the hospital and three thousand other buildings in Jerusalem.
Merchants from
Amalfi in southern Italy were given permission by the
Egyptian Fatimid Caliph
al-Mustansir Billah () to build a monastery in Jerusalem, near the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The monastery, known as the
abbey of St Mary of the Latins (to distinguish them from local
Syriac Orthodox Church hierarchy), was served by the
Order of Saint Benedict and took in Christian pilgrims travelling to visit the Christian holy sites. The increase in the number of pilgrims led the Benedictine monks to establish two hospitals in the late 1060s,
one for men and one for women, with the former known as the
Hospital of St John. They did this with the support of a wealthy Amalfian named Mauro of Pantaleone. In the early 1070s the hospital was visited by Archbishop John of Amalfi during his pilgrimage. In later centuries, to help raise money in Europe, the Order of St John made claims that the hospital had been founded more than a century before Christ by the high priest
Menelaus and the Greek
King Antiochus of Jerusalem, with financing from
Judas Maccabeus, and that it was first headed by
Saint Stephen and had been visited by Christ and the Apostles. A historian of the Order in the 13th century wrote that this version was not true. In any case, the Hospitallers rose to fame and prestige in a short amount of time. By the time of the success of the
First Crusade in 1099, the Hospital of St John was already well known among pilgrims and was regarded as a separate organization from the monastery of St Mary. The monastic brothers at the hospital saw it as their duty to provide the best possible treatment to the poor. They were given an endowment by
Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade, before he died in 1100. The
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem,
Ghibbelin of Arles, formally recognized it as a separate entity from the monastery when he reformed the Catholic hierarchy in
Palestine, and a step towards this was taken by
Pope Paschal II when he recognized the abbey of St Mary as a church of the
Holy See, placing it under his protection and exempting it from paying tithes on its land, on 19 June 1112. The monastic Hospitaller Order was formally created when the Pope issued the
papal bull Pie postulatio voluntatis on 15 February 1113 to the head of the Hospital of St John,
Blessed Gerardo Sasso. The Pope subordinated the hospital to his own authority and exempted it from paying tithes on the lands it owned, and gave the right to its professed brothers to elect their master. He also placed several other hospitals and hospices in southern Italy under the governance of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem, as they were located at port cities from which pilgrims traveled to the Holy Land. Gerard acquired territory and revenues for his order throughout the
Kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond. Under his successor,
Raymond du Puy, the original hospice was expanded to an
infirmary and by then was subordinated to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Around this time the Hospital of St John became connected with that Church, and documents often referred to "the Holy Sepulchre and the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem." Initially, the Hospitallers cared for pilgrims as well as others (including Muslims and Jews) in Jerusalem, but the order soon extended to provide pilgrims with an armed escort before eventually becoming a significant military force. Thus, the Order of St. John imperceptibly became militaristic without losing its charitable character. archer guiding a Knight Hospitaller and Northern Italian Crusader through
Wadi Numeira to the
Kerak plateau King
Fulk of Jerusalem constructed several
castles to defend the kingdom's southern border from attacks by the Fatimid garrison at
Ascalon, and allowed the Hospitallers to manage one of them in 1136, the castle of
Bethgibelin. This castle also allowed them to defend the pilgrim route between
Jaffa and Jerusalem. Later in the century, the Hospitallers were given control over more castles in
Syria than they had in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the next several decades after 1136 the Order was granted more castles and towns by nobles that needed assistance in defending them, especially in the
County of Tripoli and the
Principality of Antioch. Those notably included the
Krak des Chevaliers in 1142, which they received from
Raymond II, Count of Tripoli. According to one estimate the Hospitallers had 25 castles as of 1180. In addition to defending them, the Hospitallers also undertook construction projects to build new castles or repair and expand existing ones, with an example of the latter being Krak des Chevaliers. One of the first battles that the Knights Hospitaller fought in was the
Siege of Ascalon in 1153. After a group of Knights Templar, led by their Grand Master,
Bernard de Tremelay, entered the besieged fortress and were all killed, King
Baldwin III of Jerusalem wanted to withdraw, but Raymond du Puy convinced him to continue, and the fort surrendered to the Crusaders on 22 August 1153. It is not clear if the role of the Hospitallers was only advisory or if they were involved in the fighting at Ascalon. The Hospitallers and the
Knights Templar became the most formidable military orders in the Holy Land.
Frederick Barbarossa, the
Holy Roman Emperor, pledged his protection to the Knights of St. John in a charter of privileges granted in 1185. In order to protect the road of the
Camino de Santiago, the Order of Saint John generously received the hospital, commandery and convent of San Juan de Acre in
Navarrete, La Rioja, founded in 1185 by
María Ramírez de Medrano, Lady of
Fuenmayor, built by her son Martín de Baztán y Medrano, bishop of
Osma in Soria. Active in the
Kingdom of Toledo (a border area with Islam from the 12th to the 13th centuries) since 1144, the order had their largest holding in the kingdom in the
Campo de San Juan. The statutes of
Roger de Moulins (1187) deal only with the service of the sick; the first mention of military service is in the statutes of the ninth grand master,
Fernando Afonso of Portugal (about 1200). In the latter, a marked distinction is made between secular knights, externs to the order, who served only for a time, and the professed knights, attached to the order by a perpetual vow, and who alone enjoyed the same spiritual privileges as the other religious. The order numbered three distinct classes of membership: the military brothers, the brothers infirmarians, and the brothers chaplains, to whom was entrusted the divine service. 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 in Syria. An Irish house was established at
Kilmainham, near Dublin, and the Irish Prior was usually a key figure in Irish public life. The Knights also received the "Land of Severin" (
Terra de Zeurino), along with the nearby mountains, from
Béla IV of Hungary, as shown by a charter of grant issued on 2 June 1247. The
Banate of Severin was a
march, or border province, of the
Kingdom of Hungary between the
Lower Danube and the
Olt River, today part of Romania, and back then bordered across the Danube by a powerful
Bulgarian Empire. The Hospitaller hold on the Banate was only brief.
Knights of Cyprus and Rhodes After the fall of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291 (the city of Jerusalem
had fallen 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 Cypriot politics, their Master,
Guillaume de Villaret, created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting
Rhodes, then part of the Byzantine Empire. He also reorganised the order into eight
langues, or "tongues", corresponding to a geographic or ethno-linquistic area:
Aragon,
Auvergne,
Castile, England,
France, the
Holy Roman Empire,
Italy and
Provence. Each was administered by a
Prior or, if there was more than one priory in the langue, by a Grand Prior. Guillaume's successor,
Foulques de Villaret, executed the plan to take Rhodes, and on 15 August 1310, after more than
four years of campaigning, the
city of Rhodes surrendered to the knights. They also gained control of a number of neighbouring islands and the
Anatolian port of
Halicarnassus and the island of
Kastellorizo. Not long after, in 1312,
Pope Clement V dissolved the Hospitallers' rival order, the
Knights Templar, with a series of
papal bulls, including the
Ad providam bull that turned over much of their property to the Hospitallers. At Rhodes, and later Malta, the resident knights of each langue were headed by a
bailiff. The English Grand Prior at the time was
Philip De Thame, who acquired the estates allocated to the English langue from 1330 to 1358. On Rhodes, the Hospitallers, by then also referred to as the
Knights of Rhodes, and in 1374 they took over the defence of nearby
Smyrna on the Anatolian coast, which had been conquered by
a crusade in 1344; the knights held the city until it was
besieged and taken by Timur in 1402. On the peninsula of Halicarnassus (present-day
Bodrum), the knights reinforced their position with the construction of
Petronium Castle, utilizing pieces of the partially destroyed
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to strengthen their rampart. In the 15th century, the knights fought frequently with
Barbary pirates, also known as Ottoman corsairs. They withstood two invasions by ascendant Muslim forces, one by the
Sultan of Egypt in 1444 and another by
Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed the Conqueror in 1480, who, after
capturing Constantinople and defeating the Byzantine Empire in 1453, made the Knights a priority target. In 1522, an entirely new sort of force arrived: 400 ships under the command of Sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent deployed as many as 100,000 men to the island, and possibly up 200,000. Under Grand Master
Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, the knights, though well-fortified, only had about 7,000 men-at-arms. The
siege lasted six months, after which the defeated surviving Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to
Sicily. Despite the defeat, both Christians and Muslims seem to have regarded
Phillipe Villiers as extremely valiant, and the Grand Master was proclaimed a Defender of the Faith by
Pope Adrian VI.
Knights of Malta ,
Gozo and
Tripoli to the Order of St John by Emperor
Charles V in 1530. In 1530, after seven years of displacement from Rhodes,
Pope Clement VII – himself a knight – reached an agreement with
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain and Sicily, to provide the knights permanent quarters: In exchange for providing Malta,
Gozo, and the North African port of
Tripoli in perpetual
fiefdom, Charles V would receive an annual fee of a single Maltese falcon (the
Tribute of the Maltese Falcon), which they were to send on
All Souls' Day to the king's representative, the Viceroy of Sicily. In 1548, Charles V raised
Heitersheim, the headquarters of the Hospitallers in Germany, into the
Principality of Heitersheim, making the Grand Prior of Germany a
prince of the Holy Roman Empire with a seat and vote in the
Reichstag. The knights would stay in Malta for the next 268 years, transforming what they called "merely a rock of soft sandstone" into a flourishing island with mighty defences, whose capital city,
Valletta, would become known as
Superbissima, "Most Proud", among the great powers of Europe. However, the
indigenous islanders were initially apprehensive about the order's presence and viewed them as arrogant intruders; they were especially loathed for taking advantage of local women. Most knights were French and excluded Maltese from serving in the order, even being generally dismissive of local nobility. However, the two groups coexisted peacefully, since the Knights boosted the economy, were charitable, and protected against Muslim attacks. in
Valletta, an example of 18th-century Baroque architecture built by the Order. Hospitals were among the first projects to be undertaken in Malta, where French soon supplanted Italian as the official language (though the native inhabitants continued to speak
Maltese among themselves). The knights also constructed fortresses, watch towers, and naturally, churches. Its acquisition of Malta signalled the beginning of the Order's renewed naval activity. The Order may have played a direct part in supporting the Malta native
Iacob Heraclid who, in 1561,
established a temporary foothold in
Moldavia. The Hospitallers also continued their maritime actions against Muslims and especially the
Barbary pirates. Although they had only a few ships, they quickly drew the ire of the
Ottomans, who were unhappy to see the order resettled. In 1565 Suleiman sent an invasion force of about 40,000 men to besiege the 700 knights and 8,000 soldiers and expel them from Malta and gain a new base from which to possibly launch another assault on Europe. The Viceroy of Sicily had not sent help; possibly the Viceroy's orders from
Philip II of Spain were so obscurely worded as to put on his own shoulders the burden of the decision whether to help the Order at the expense of his own defences. A wrong decision could mean defeat and exposing Sicily and Naples to the Ottomans. He had left his own son with La Valette, so he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of the fortress. Whatever may have been the cause of his delay, the Viceroy hesitated until the battle had almost been decided by the unaided efforts of the knights, before being forced to move by the indignation of his own officers. The Turkish commanders,
Piali Pasha and Mustafa Pasha, were careless. They had a huge fleet which they used with effect on only one occasion. They neglected their communications with the African coast and made no attempt to watch and intercept Sicilian reinforcements. on 21 August 1565 On 1 September they made their last effort, but the morale of the Ottoman troops had deteriorated seriously and the attack was feeble, to the great encouragement of the besieged, who now began to see hopes of deliverance. The perplexed and indecisive Ottomans heard of the arrival of Sicilian reinforcements in Mellieħa Bay. Unaware that the force was very small, they broke off the siege and left on 8 September. The
Great Siege of Malta may have been the last action in history in which a force of knights won a decisive victory against a numerically superior force that made use of firearms. The building and fortification of Valletta, named for
Grand Master la Valette, was begun in 1566, soon becoming the home port of one of the Mediterranean's most powerful navies. Valletta was designed by
Francesco Laparelli, a military engineer, and his work was then taken up by
Girolamo Cassar. The city was completed in 1571. The island's hospitals were expanded as well. The
Sacra Infermeria could accommodate 500 patients and was famous as one of the finest in the world. In the vanguard of medicine, the Hospital of Malta included Schools of Anatomy, Surgery and Pharmacy. Valletta itself was renowned as a centre of art and culture. The
Conventual Church of St. John, completed in 1577, contains works by
Caravaggio and others. In Europe, most of the Order's hospitals and chapels survived the Reformation, though not in Protestant or Evangelical countries. In Malta, meanwhile, the
Public Library was established in 1761. The
University was founded seven years later, followed, in 1786, by a School of Mathematics and Nautical Sciences. Despite these developments, some of the Maltese grew to resent the Order, which they viewed as a privileged class. This even included some of the
local nobility, who were not admitted to the Order. In Rhodes, the knights had been housed in
auberges (inns) segregated by Langues. This structure was maintained in
Birgu (1530–1571) and then Valletta (from 1571). The auberges in Birgu remain, mostly undistinguished 16th-century buildings. Valletta still has the auberges of
Castile and Portugal (1574; renovated 1741 by Grand Master de Vilhena, now the Prime Minister's offices),
Italy (renovated 1683 by Grand Master Carafa, now an art museum),
Aragon (1571, now a government ministry),
Bavaria (former Palazzo Carnerio, purchased in 1784 for the newly formed Langue, now occupied by the Lands Authority) and
Provence (now
National Museum of Archaeology). In the Second World War, the
auberge d'Auvergne was damaged (and later replaced by Law Courts) and the
auberge de France was destroyed. coin of the Knights Hospitaller, depicting the
head of
John the Baptist on a platter. , on a
bombard In 1604, each Langue was given a chapel in the conventual church of Saint John and the arms of the Langue appear in the decoration on the walls and ceiling: • Provence:
Michael the Archangel,
Jerusalem • Auvergne:
Saint Sebastian,
Azure a dolphin or • France: conversion of
Paul the Apostle,
France • Castile, León and Portugal:
James, brother of Jesus,
Quarterly Castile and León • Aragon:
Saint George [the church of the Langue is consecrated to
Our Lady of the Pillar Per pale Aragon and Navarre] • Italy:
St Catherine,
Azure the word ITALIA in bend or • England:
Flagellation of Christ, [
no arms visible; in Rhodes the Langue used the arms of England, quarterly France and England] • Germany:
Epiphany,
Austria born by a double-headed eagle displayed sable 17th century In 1605,
Tomás Fernández de Medrano, Lord and Divisero of Valdeosera and a Knight of the Order of Saint John under the habit of Prince
Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, printed a
brief from
Pope Paul V in
Latin and
Spanish for King
Philip III of Spain and the Order of Saint John, titled:
Brief of Our Most Holy Father Pope Paul V in Confirmation of the Privileges of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem by Tomás Fernández de Medrano at his own expense, secretary to the Serene Princes of Savoy and the Holy Chapters and Assemblies of Castile on behalf of his King and knights of the Order of Saint John. It is dedicated to the Duke of Lerma, as protector of all religions and in particular, the Order of Saint John. In 1607, the Grand Master of the Hospitallers was granted the status of
Reichsfürst (
Prince of the Holy Roman Empire), even though the Order's territory was always south of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1630, he was awarded ecclesiastic equality with
cardinals, and the unique hybrid style
His Most Eminent Highness, reflecting both qualities qualifying him as a true
Prince of the Church.
Reconquista of the sea With their diminished strength and relocation to Malta in the central Mediterranean, the knights found themselves devoid of their founding mission: assisting and joining the crusades in the
Holy Land. Revenues subsequently dwindled as European sponsors were no longer willing to support a costly and seemingly redundant organization. The knights were forced to make do with their maritime location and turn to combating the increased threat of piracy, particularly from the
Ottoman-endorsed
Barbary pirates operating out of North Africa. Boosted by an air of invincibility following the successful defence of their island in 1565, and compounded by the Christian victory over the Ottoman fleet in the
Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the knights set about protecting Christian merchant shipping to and from the
Levant and freeing the captured Christian slaves who formed the basis of the Barbary corsairs' piratical trading and navies. This campaign became known as the "corso". in 1652 Yet the Order soon struggled on a now reduced income. By policing the Mediterranean, they augmented the assumed responsibility of the traditional protectors of the Mediterranean, the naval city states of
Venice and
Genoa. Further compounding their financial woes; over the course of this period, the exchange rate of the local currencies against the 'scudo' that were established in the late 16th century gradually became outdated, meaning the knights were gradually receiving less at merchant factories. Economically hindered by the barren island they now inhabited, many knights went beyond their call of duty by raiding Muslim ships. More and more ships were plundered, from whose profits many knights lived idly and luxuriously, taking local women to be their wives and enrolling in the navies of France and Spain in search of adventure, experience, and yet more money. The Knights' changing attitudes were coupled with the effects of the
Reformation and
Counter-Reformation and the lack of stability from the Roman Catholic Church. All this affected the knights strongly as the 16th and 17th centuries saw a gradual decline in the religious attitudes of many of the Christian peoples of Europe (and, concomitantly, the importance of a religious army), and thus in the Knights' regular tributes from European nations. That the knights, a chiefly Roman Catholic military order, pursued the readmittance of England as one of its member states – the Order there had been suppressed under King
Henry VIII of England during the
dissolution of the monasteries – upon the succession of the Protestant queen
Elizabeth I of England aptly demonstrates the new religious tolerance within the Order. For a time, the Order even possessed a German
langue which was part
Protestant or Evangelical and part Roman Catholic. The moral decline that the knights underwent over the course of this period is best highlighted by the decision of many knights to serve in foreign navies and become "the mercenary sea-dogs of the 14th to 17th centuries", with the French Navy proving the most popular destination. This decision went against the knights' cardinal reason for existence, in that by serving a European power directly they faced the very real possibility that they would be fighting against another Roman Catholic force, as in the few Franco-Spanish naval skirmishes that occurred in this period. The biggest paradox is the fact that for many years the Kingdom of France remained on amicable terms with the Ottoman Empire, the Knights' greatest and bitterest foe and purported sole purpose for existence. Paris signed many trade agreements with the Ottomans and agreed to an informal (and ultimately ineffective)
cease-fire between the two states during this period. That the Knights associated themselves with the allies of their sworn enemies shows their moral ambivalence and the new commercial-minded nature of the Mediterranean in the 17th century. Serving in a foreign navy, in particular that of the French, gave the knights the chance to serve the Church and for many, their king, to increase their chances of promotion in either their adopted navy or in Malta, to receive far better pay, to stave off their boredom with frequent cruises, to embark on the highly preferable short cruises of the French navy over the long caravans preferred by the Maltese, and if the knight desired, to indulge in some of the pleasures of a traditional debauched seaport. In return, the French gained and quickly assembled an experienced navy to stave off the threat of the Spanish and their Habsburg masters. The shift in attitudes of the Knights over this period is ably outlined by Paul Lacroix, who states: With the knights' exploits growing in fame and wealth, the European states became more complacent about the Order, and more unwilling to grant money to an institution that was perceived to be earning a healthy sum on the high seas. Thus, a vicious circle occurred, increasing the raids and reducing the grants received from the nation-states of Christendom to such an extent that the balance of payments on the island had become dependent on conquest. The European powers lost interest in the knights as they focused their intentions largely on one another during the
Thirty Years' War. In February 1641 a letter was sent from an unknown dignitary in the Maltese capital of Valletta to the knights' most trustworthy ally and benefactor,
Louis XIV of France, stating the Order's troubles: Maltese authorities did not mention the fact that they were making a substantial profit policing the seas and seizing infidel ships and cargoes. The authorities on Malta immediately recognised the importance of corsairing to their economy and set about encouraging it, as despite their vows of poverty, the Knights were granted the ability to keep a portion of the
spoglio, which was the prize money and cargo gained from a captured ship, along with the ability to fit out their own galleys with their new wealth. The great controversy that surrounded the knights'
corso was their insistence on their policy of 'vista'. This enabled the Order to stop and board all shipping suspected of carrying Turkish goods and confiscate the cargo to be re-sold at Valletta, along with the ship's crew, who were by far the most valuable commodity on the ship. Naturally, many nations claimed to be victims of the knights' over-eagerness to stop and confiscate any goods remotely connected to the Turks. In an effort to regulate the growing problem, the authorities in Malta established a judicial court, the Consiglio del Mer, where captains who felt wronged could plead their case, often successfully. The practice of issuing privateering licenses and thus state endorsement, which had been in existence for a number of years, was tightly regulated as the island's government attempted to haul in the unscrupulous knights and appease the European powers and limited benefactors. Yet these efforts were not altogether successful, as the Consiglio del Mer received numerous complaints around the year 1700 of Maltese piracy in the region. Ultimately, the rampant over-indulgence in
privateering in the Mediterranean was to be the knights' downfall in this particular period of their existence as they transformed from serving as the military outpost of a united Christendom to becoming another nation-state in a commercially oriented continent soon to be overtaken by the trading nations of the
North Sea.
Turmoil in Europe wearing the Crown of the Grand Master of the
Order of Malta (1799).Even as it survived in Malta, the Order lost many of its European holdings during the
Reformation. The property of the English branch was confiscated in 1540. The German
Bailiwick of Brandenburg became
Lutheran in 1577, then more broadly Evangelical, but continued to pay its financial contribution to the Order until 1812, when the Protector of the Order in Prussia, King
Frederick William III, turned it into an order of merit;
The Order's presence in the Caribbean was eclipsed with De Poincy's death in 1660. He had also bought the island of
Saint Croix as his personal estate and deeded it to the Knights of St. John. In 1665, the order sold their
Caribbean possessions to the
French West India Company, ending the Order's presence in that region. The decree of the French National Assembly in 1789 abolishing
feudalism in France also abolished the Order in France: The French Revolutionary Government seized the assets and properties of the Order in France in 1792.
Loss of Malta and decline ,
Valletta, Malta, 8 May 2005. Their
Mediterranean stronghold of Malta was captured by
Napoleon in 1798
during his expedition to Egypt. Napoleon opened negotiations with the fortress capital of Valletta. Faced with vastly superior French forces and the loss of western Malta, the Grand Master negotiated a surrender to the invasion. He resigned as Grand Master on 6 July 1799. The knights were dispersed, though the order continued to exist in a diminished form and negotiated with European governments for a return to power. The Russian Emperor,
Paul I, gave the largest number of knights shelter in
Saint Petersburg, an action which gave rise to the
Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller and the Order's recognition among the Russian Imperial Orders. The refugee knights in Saint Petersburg proceeded to elect Tsar Paul as their Grand Master – a rival to Grand Master von Hompesch until the latter's abdication left Paul as the sole Grand Master. Grand Master Paul I created, in addition to the Roman Catholic Grand Priory, a "Russian Grand Priory" of no fewer than 118 Commanderies, dwarfing the rest of the Order and open to all Christians. Paul's election as Grand Master was never ratified under Roman Catholic canon law, and he was the
de facto rather than
de jure Grand Master of the Order., Malta, showing
Fort Saint Angelo, belonging to the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta. By the early 19th century, 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. The Hospital of Saint John, built between 1099 and 1291, was rediscovered in the Christian Quarter of the
Old City of Jerusalem. From 2000 to 2013, it was excavated by the
Israel Antiquities Authority. It had been able to accommodate up to 2,000 patients, who came from all religious groups, and Jewish patients received
kosher food. It also served as an orphanage, with these children often becoming Hospitallers when adults. The remaining vaulted area was discovered during excavations for a restaurant, and the preserved building will be incorporated in the project. ==Successors of the Knights Hospitaller==