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The Knights of Saint John and the Hospitals of the Latin West

THE Knights of Saint John, founded after the conquest of Jerusalem (1099), were renowned in Europe as Christian soldiers. They were, however, equally famous for their charities, especially for their great Hospital in Jerusalem. As modern scholarship has demonstrated, the Knights' Hospital influenced many new institutions in the cities of the high Middle Ages and encouraged the development of organized centers to treat the ill.' Scholars have maintained that the Knights of Saint John, known also as the Hospitallers, were the first Latin Christians to organize a hospital for the sick, and they assert that the roots of the new institution are to be found either in Islamic society or in Byzantium.2 In this study I propose to examine the Hospitallers and their infirmary in more detail, concentrating on two important questions. First, to what extent was the Knights' Hospital in Jerusalem indeed something new to Latin Christians, and to what extent was it a natural outgrowth of native European movements? Second, what impact did Byzantium and the Islamic world have on the Hospitallers' house of the sick? While exploring these questions I shall also emphasize the role of demographic pressures and disease in stimulating hospital development.3