The hospitaller Order of St. John in Malta 1530-1798

Abstract

The Order of the Knights of St John was officially founded in Jerusalem in 1113 as a Hospitaller religious Order for pilgrims to the Holy Land. These places were a source of constant friction between Muslims and Christians, which soon led the Order to acquire a military role and share fully in the crusading activities of the twelfth century. In 1291, the last of the Christian possessions in Palestine fell to the Muslims, and the knights found themselves homeless. For a brief but uneasy period they remained the guests of the Latin king of Cyprus until 1309 when they took over the poorly defended island of Rhodes and established their convent there. The Order spent the following two hundred years in the Dodecanese just a few miles off the coast of Anatolia - the centre of the emerging Muslim Ottoman Empire. Although they never lost sight of their function as Hospitallers, the geographical position of Rhodes necessitated that the knights develop their naval force as fully as they could, and soon it became a potent and aggressive weapon, which came to cause considerable embarrassment to the fast growing Ottoman Empire. So much so, that in 1522 the Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent decided to expunge this thorn from his side. After a hard fought siege of six months, he forced the Order to sue for peace, granting honourable and generous terms, which enabled the Hospitallers to evacuate Rhodes with all their belongings and with all who chose to follow them.