The Knights Hospitaller: Religion, Church Relations, and Patronage

The Knights Hospitaller began as a religious community devoted to caring for pilgrims and the sick in Jerusalem. From the twelfth century, the order also developed a military role, but it continued to define itself through religious life and charitable service. Its members and institutions spread from the Holy Land to Cyprus, Rhodes, Malta, and European priories, which were regional bodies that administered the order’s houses and property. This history focuses on the medieval order and its institutions in Malta up to the French occupation of 1798, when the order lost its base on the island.

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A religious community with several kinds of service

The order grew out of the hospital associated with the Benedictine monastery of St Mary of the Latins in Jerusalem. The hospital served Christian pilgrims, and its head, Gerard, sought recognition for it as an institution distinct from the monastery. In 1113, Pope Paschal II issued the bull Pie postulatio voluntatis, formally recognizing the hospital and placing it under papal protection. The order’s identity as a religious community therefore preceded its development as a military force.

Members were brothers of the order, but not all performed the same work. The community came to include priest brothers or chaplains, brothers of arms, and brothers who carried out other forms of service. The community included several forms of religious and practical service. Their religious life included worship and the spiritual care of the sick, while their charitable and military functions required people with different responsibilities. The order’s rule set out expectations for members, and tied their daily conduct to the institution’s religious purpose.

The rule attributed to Raymond du Puy, drawn up in the twelfth century and approved by Pope Eugene III before 1153, drew on monastic traditions associated with St Augustine and St Benedict. It addressed profession, behaviour, the service of churches, care of the sick, alms, preaching, food and clothing, discipline, personal property, and prayers for deceased brothers. It also required brothers to wear the cross as a sign of their religious commitment. The rule thus joined spiritual obligations to the order’s practical work: care for the sick was a religious duty, while collecting alms and managing the order’s resources helped sustain that care.

Papal authority, privileges, and church relationships

The 1113 papal bull gave the hospital a direct institutional relationship with the pope. It protected the institution, exempted its lands from tithes, and allowed its professed brothers to elect their own superior. The bull also placed several hospices in southern Italy under the Jerusalem hospital’s governance. These rights gave the order room to govern its community and property, but did not make it independent of the Catholic Church.

The order’s relationship with other church authorities changed over time. Its origins lay within a Benedictine religious setting, and the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem recognized the hospital as a distinct institution. Papal protection then established a separate basis for its authority. As the order expanded, its own religious personnel and institutions developed alongside the wider church structure. In 1154, Pope Anastasius IV formally established a category of priest brothers or chaplains. Their responsibility included the order’s divine service, while the rule also specified the conduct expected of brothers in churches and the care to be given to the sick.

On Malta, church jurisdiction could involve both the order’s leadership and local ecclesiastical authorities. In 1574, Pope Gregory XIII established the Roman Inquisition on the island and sent Pietro Dusina as a mediator between the Grand Master and the bishop. The new papal tribunal replaced the earlier inquisition in Malta, which had been run by the Bishop of Palermo. The episode shows that the order’s religious authority did not remove the need to negotiate with bishops or settle overlapping claims within the Catholic Church.

Churches and chaplains from Jerusalem to Malta

Worship was organized around the order’s own communities as they moved between territories. In Jerusalem, the hospital became closely associated with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1311, after establishing itself on Rhodes, the order founded a hospital there, renewing its charitable work in a new setting. Chaplains served the religious needs of the brothers, while the order’s churches gave its community a setting for worship and observances for the living and the dead.

On Malta, the order’s conventual church was the principal church of its resident community. St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta was completed in 1577. In 1604, each of the order’s langues received a chapel there. A langue, or “tongue,” was a regional grouping of members and properties; the groups helped organize the order’s administration and representation. The chapels connected that structure to worship. Their dedications included St Michael for Provence, the conversion of St Paul for France, and St Catherine for Italy. In this way, the church presented the order as one religious community while giving its regional groupings their own devotional identities.

The order’s devotion also reflected its origins and history. St John the Baptist was its patron, and the Virgin of Philermos was another important devotional figure. When the Hospitallers left Rhodes after the Ottoman conquest in 1522, they carried the icon of the Virgin of Philermos with them. Such objects and dedications linked the order’s religious life to its successive homes without changing its institutional name as an order of St John of Jerusalem.

Regional patronage and the resources of the order

Religious patronage depended on material support as well as devotion. Papal recognition, gifts of property, and income from lands helped the order maintain its houses and institutions. Across Europe, the order organized its holdings through priories, bailiwicks, and commanderies, which were local or regional units of administration. These holdings connected supporters and properties far from the order’s central community to its work in the eastern Mediterranean and, later, on Rhodes and Malta.

From the early fourteenth century, the langues gave this far-flung organization a framework for dividing responsibilities. The groupings were based broadly on region and language, rather than matching linguistic boundaries exactly. Each had a leader and a role in the order’s central administration. Their auberges were communal residences and meeting places. On Malta, the arrangement took shape first in Birgu and later in Valletta, where the langues’ chapels gave their regional organization a visible religious presence.

Patronage also shaped the order’s churches and their decoration. At St John’s Co-Cathedral, the chapels’ dedications connected worship to the identities of the langues, and the church came to contain works by artists including Caravaggio. The church, its chapels, and its art served the religious community while also expressing the order’s wealth and standing. That display belonged to a particular historical setting: the order’s resources and political position changed over the centuries, and its European holdings did not remain intact through the Reformation.

The Reformation and the division of the order

The Reformation disrupted the order’s network in northern Europe. In England, Henry VIII’s government confiscated the order’s property around 1540, bringing the English langue’s institutional activity to an end. In parts of the German-speaking lands, commanderies adopted Protestant forms of Christianity. The Bailiwick of Brandenburg became Protestant but continued to contribute financially to the wider order for a time. These changes weakened the Catholic order’s claim to a unified network of houses and members across Europe.

The order responded in part by reorganizing its regional groupings. In 1784, Grand Master Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc re-established an Anglo-Bavarian langue, which included Bavarian and Polish knights. This late reorganization did not restore the properties lost in England. By then, the order remained a Catholic institution whose European resources had been reshaped by religious division, while its principal headquarters stood in Malta.

The French occupation of Malta in 1798 ended the order’s rule on the island and dispersed its members. The preceding centuries had made the Hospitallers at once a religious community, a charitable institution, and a political power. Their rule and papal privileges shaped how they governed themselves; their chaplains and churches maintained religious life; and their European and island institutions gave patronage a regional form. Those functions changed across the order’s different homes, but religious commitment remained central to its organization.