An introduction to the times of Blessed Gerard

Abstract

During the tenth and eleventh centuries, pilgrimage started to become institutionalised and various pilgrim ways led to Santiago, Rome and, most important of all, Jerusalem. Merchants from Amalfi had, in the first half of the eleventh century, received permission from the Muslim rulers of the city to build their own compound, including a trading post and retreat house, from which sometime later the Blessed Gerard would create his independent hospital of St John, while his successor, the Blessed Raymond du Puy would further establish a military branch to the hospital, turning it into the military Order of St John. In the Holy Land, some Arab rulers engaged in the economics of accommodating pilgrimage, which is, after all, big business, while others worked against the flow of pilgrimage. This article will sketch the Zeitgeist at Jerusalem before and during the early times of the Blessed Gerard and ends just before the First Crusade arrived in 1099.