Militarization, 1126–1182

Abstract

A ‘folk-memory’ of the early stages of the Order’s militarization lingered until the late fifteenth century. One version of it is to be found in the historical introduction to an edition of the statutes made by William Caoursin, the vice chancellor on Rhodes, and published in 1496:

Devout persons on pilgrimage dedicated themselves to the service of the Holy House [the Hospital] and, induced by divine zeal, took up arms for the defence of the Catholic faith and also to protect pilgrims and the [Holy] Places from the incursions of the barbarians. At length these men, imitating the most famous Judas Maccabeus and the most devout John [the Baptist], engaged with all care in hospitaller work and in the bearing of arms in defence of the divine cult and the Catholic faith.¹

Another version, written slightly later by a Hospitaller priest, survived in only one manuscript, which is now lost but was in England in the seventeenth century:

When…the riches of this holy Order had grown greatly, it hired knights…to protect its properties…and to drive back the pagans. For the priests themselves, occupied with the sacred mysteries and preaching, could not do what the knights practised. Then in an act of utter madness, motivated by greed, the knights were raised up…and the priests were disregarded. Accordingly it was decreed that the knights themselves should become members of the Hospital and defend the Christian Order. Whence it was established that these men, fighting for the name of Christ, were to wear the cross on their chests.²