The Knights Hospitaller, also called the Hospitaller Knights of Saint John, the Knights of St. John, or the Knights of Malta were a Western Christian military order founded in 1023 to protect pilgrims heading to the Holy Lands. They were officially founded in 1130 in Acre when the St. Johns' Minor Chapter House was built by the Republic of Venice. Not only providing military aid but also medical assistance, the Knights became a charitable order in 1830 after being driven out of Malta, their last fort, by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798.
History[]
Hospitaller knight
The Hospitaller Knights of Saint John were founded in 1023 by Blessed Gerard Thom, providing housing and medical aid to pilgrims that headed to the Holy Lands on pilgrimages. Consisting mainly of Frenchmen, the Knights Hospitaller were granted a charter in 1099 after gaining funding from the Papal States and they became a military order as well.
From 1099 to 1291, they were based in the city of Acre, with their first minor chapter house built in 1130 by the Republic of Venice so as to provide aid to their citizens as well as to take advantage of using Hospitallers as soldiers in their wars. One of their Grand Masters, Garnier de Naplouse, abused his patients and used them to test medicines, proving that the Knights were not always the lenient, holy warriors that they appeared to be.
After the stronghold of Acre fell to the Mamelukes in 1291, the Knights Hospitaller fled to Rhodes, a large island off the coast of Turkey. Rhodes held out against attacks by the Ottomans for many years but in 1522 they were forced out by Suleiman the Magnificent, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (which conquered the Mameluke Sultanate and the other Turkish empires). Once more evicted, they headed to Malta, a small island south of the Italian island of Sicily. Malta proved to be an important base, with the city of Valetta defended by Fort St. Elmo.
In 1565 the Ottomans again tried to assault Malta and drive the Knights out once more. However, this time they were pushed back. Sahin the Falcon was sent to take the fort with a large army, but Morgan Black and Alain Magnan's defenders, assisted by a Spanish navy under Garcia of Toledo, pushed the Ottomans back and destroyed their great bombards. A day later, the last Ottomans were pushed from their toehold and forced to retreat to Tunis. The victory at Malta guaranteed not only the survival of the Hospitallers, but the decline of the Ottoman Empire]]. Six years later, the Hospitallers defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto along with the Spanish Navy and the Holy Roman Empire, and during the 1600s and 1700s they hunted down the Barbary States' pirate navies in the Mediterranean Sea.
However, the Knights of Malta Order ended in 1798 when Napoleon Bonaparte, the dictator of the French Republic, invaded the island to use as a base against the Mamelukes of Egypt during his Egyptian Campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars. The Maltese Hospitallers were defeated and their order ceased to be an independent country, and they were reduced to a charitable organization. In 1830 they started chapters in many countries to work as medicians, and not as soldiers. Currently, 80,000 people work for the order in both Catholicism and Protestantism.
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