It will be necessary for you therefore to abandon all your desires to fulfil those of another and to endure other hardships in the Order, more than I can describe to you. Are you willing to suffer all these things?’

 

Once committed there was no turning back. The novice had to promise that he was neither married, nor in debt, nor subject to any other lord—let alone another Order. At a later date when distinctions of noble birth were all important for the knights militant, his family tree and necessary quarterings were investigated before he might even be interviewed. If he was received he swore to live and die in the service of the Order, in chastity and without personal property, and to regard the sick and the poor as his lords and masters. It was a hard oath for a young man to take, but at this date in history it was most definitely meant, and rigorously enforced. Some of the violence and love of battle that marked the militant arm of the Knights of St John must surely be ascribed to a repression of the natural instincts; a repression that could only find its release in that death of which ‘the little death’ is no more than a pale mirror.

 

 

 

Chapter 4

ETERNAL WARFARE

 

The Second Crusade in 1148 which had been largely prompted by the fall of Edessa—that ancient Christian city known as the ‘Eye of Mesopotamia’—was a complete failure. It was indicative of what was to come in the years ahead. The Latin kingdoms in the East could never be held if the surrounding Moslem sea were to unite and come against them in one great flood tide. As Sir Ernest Barker commented, ‘…the ignominious failure of a crusade led by two kings brought the whole crusading movement into discredit in western Europe.’ The Hospitallers had been prominent in the campaign, and Raymond de Puy himself was one of those present at the council of war when the fatal decision was taken to attack Damascus. It was the inability of the army to take the city that led to the collapse of the Crusade, and there were some who held that the Hospitallers were largely to blame. It is a curious fact that it is not until thirty years later that one finds the first mention in the statutes of the Order of there being a military arm attached to it. By the 1160s, however, one hears of the office of a Marshal, a purely military title. It is quite clear by now that the Hospitallers had followed the Templars into becoming ‘soldiers of Christ’ as well as being ‘servants of the poor’.

By the end of the twelfth century the Order of St John was rivalled only by the Templars in its wealth and power. It had come a long way from the simple hospice run by Brother Gerard, and was now in possession of such great castles as Krak des Chevaliers, Margat, and Belvoir. Even in Jerusalem there appears to have been a powerful military arm attached to the great hospital. Their original vocation nevertheless was still impressed upon them—that it was the sick and the poor who gave the orders, and it was the duty of the brethren to obey them. Revenues were set aside from various estates to ensure that white bread, for instance, was given to the patients; and clothing, blankets, food and wine were regularly distributed free. Unlike the Templars, who made a distinction in dress between those who were entered as knights and those admitted as sergeants (because they were not of noble blood), the Hospitallers all wore the black mantle. It was not until the second half of the thirteenth century that the caste system hardened. By this time the military side of the Order had become predominant, all the principal offices being held by knights. The Marshal was ranked second only to the Grand Master, At one time or another the Order of St John had as many as fifty castles in the Levant, some little more than fortified towers, but others immense complexes dominating the whole of the surrounding countryside.

Military architecture developed under the Knights of St John and the Templars to an unprecedented extent, far eclipsing anything hitherto known in western Europe. The castle which had first been introduced by the Normans into England during the conquest was essentially a circular earth-mound surrounded by a dry ditch. The mound was flattened at the top which was then surrounded by a wooden palisade. This was perfectly adequate against the attacks of men armed with the simple weapons of the time and had enabled the Normans to dominate the country. The logical extension was to convert the palisade into a stone wall, and then to put buildings inside it. In other parts of the countryside, where some natural hill or rock stronghold presented itself, they had little more to do than adapt and improve upon the position.

The Crusaders in the East found castles and fortifications already erected by the Byzantines and the Moslems. By a sophisticated graft of western upon eastern styles they evolved some of the grandest and most powerful castles in the world. This indeed they had to be for the Latins lived surrounded by an actively (or always potentially) hostile population. The main advance in military architecture was the use of flanking towers to protect the line of a wall.