Pete posted: " The Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, better known as the Knights Hospitallers, was founded in the 12th century in Jerusalem as a religious order providing medical services to pilgrims. It later expanded its remit to milit" Pete's Favourite Things
The Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, better known as the Knights Hospitallers, was founded in the 12th century in Jerusalem as a religious order providing medical services to pilgrims. It later expanded its remit to military protection of pilgrims travelling in the Holy Land.
The reputation of the order spread and priories were set up in European countries to support the work of the order, including the Priory of St John in Clerkenwell London.
Following the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291, they moved first to Acre on the coast but when that fell the same year they transferred their headquarters to Cyprus. However, they found themselves caught up in local politics and sought to move again.
They moved to Rhodes in 1310, and 4 years later had taken control of the whole island. In 1312 they were strengthened when on the dissolution of the Knights Templar, much of the Templar's lands and property was gifted by the Pope to the Hospitallers. In 1334 they fought off an invasion attempt by the Byzantine Empire to recapture the island, which had once been part of the Byzantine lands. They took control of Smyrna on the mainland following the crusade of 1344, which they held until it was captured by the Mongols in 1402. In the 15th-century they withstood frequent attacks from pirates and in 1444, by the Sultan of Egypt and in 1480, by the Ottomans. However, in 1522, a huge army commanded by Suleiman the Magnificent arrived and quickly besieged the vastly outnumbered knights. The siege lasted 6 months and then the knights were allowed to leave and sail to Sicily.
In 1530 the Knights were given control of the Island of Malta. they began building a new harbour and fortresses In 1565, Suleiman sent a force estimated at 40,000 to conquer Malta. The defenders consisted of 700 Knights and 8000 soldiers. In the initial battles, around half of the Knights were killed and it began to look as though the order would lose another home. Some reinforcements arrived from the Viceroy of Sicily and on the 23rd August the invaders launched their biggest attack yet. It was repulsed, although only just. On the 1st September they launched another attack, but rumours began to circulate amongst the besieging army about the arrival of Sicilian reinforcements and already dispirited by the lack of progress and their losses they broke off the siege and left the island. In fact, the rumoured replacements were only a very small detachment. Malta had held. It is reported that at the end of the siege, the defenders had only 600 men capable of bearing arms and that of the 40000 invaders who had arrived on the island only 15000 made it back to Constantinopole. Such was the destruction done during the siege that the Knights had to build a new capital city, harbour and fortress which they called Valetta, after the Grandmaster of the order, Jean de Valette. Deprived of their original role of protection, they turned to the sea and the Knights became renowned as one of the strongest naval forces in the Mediterranean, protecting ships from pirates and corsairs.
Harbour at Valetta (Wikimedia Commons-Public Domain)
However, the siege of Malta was to prove the order's high point. Dwindling resources and declining support, coupled with decreasing numbers weakened the order. The order in England was suppressed in 1540 with the dissolution of the Monasteries. Some branches of the order in Northern Europe joined the reformation and broke with the catholic order headquarters on Malta. In 1792 the revolutionary government seized the order's holdings and property in France and finally, Napoleon captured the island in 1798 and the knights were ejected from the island.
The order struggled on as a dispersed order, including a large community in St Petersburgh, who elected Tsar Paul I as their grandmaster. By the early part of the 19th-century it was reduced pretty much to just the Russian Grand Priory. However in 1810, Tsar Alexander I took control of all the property of the order in Russia and there is no evidence after 1813 of any new members being admitted to the order. Some historians claim this was not the end of the order, but that it continued in a number of different guises, even beyond the revolution in 1917. However, in 2014, Grand Duchess Maria Romonov, a claimant to the Russian throne, issued a statement saying that no chivalric orders associated with the Knights of St John of Malta existed after Tsar Alexander's edicts of 1810.
No comments:
Post a Comment