Knights Hospitaller

The Order of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem (Latin: Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), also known as Order of Saint John, Order of Hospitallers, Knights Hospitaller, and the Hospitallers, was the name of the precedent medieval military organisation of the contemporary Sovereign Military Order of Malta, one of the most prominent of the Roman Catholic military orders and still today a sovereign subject of international law. It was headquartered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, until it became known by its current name.

The Hospitallers probably arose as a group of individuals associated with an Amalfitan hospital in the Muristan district of Jerusalem, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and founded around 1023 to provide care for sick, poor or injured pilgrims coming to the Holy Land. Some scholars, however, consider that the Amalfitan order and hospital were different from Gerard Thom's order and its hospital. After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the organisation became a religious and military order under its own Papal charter, charged with the care and defence of the Holy Land. Following the conquest of the Holy Land by Islamic forces, the knights operated from Rhodes, over which they were sovereign, and later from Malta, where they administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily. The Hospitallers were the smallest group ever to colonise parts of the Americas; at one point in the mid-17th century, they acquired four Caribbean islands, which they turned over to the French and Dutch in the 1660s.

Saint John

Saint John or St. John usually refers to John the Apostle of the Bible.

Saint John may also refer to:

People

Knight

A knight (/naɪt/) is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch or other political leader for service to the Monarch or country, especially in a military capacity. Historically, in Europe, knighthood has been conferred upon mounted warriors. During the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior. Often, a knight was a vassal who served as a fighter for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback. Since the early modern period, the title of knight is purely honorific, usually bestowed by a monarch, as in the British honours system, often for non-military service to the country. The modern female equivalent is Dame.