All the main ports of embarkation for pilgrims were soon equipped with a Hospital operated by the Order of St John; Marseilles, Bari, and Messina, to name but a few.

The Order that Gerard founded anticipated by many centuries all subsequent organisations devoted to the care of the poor and the sick throughout the world. In his ideals he echoed the Founder of Christianity. Members of the Order were enjoined to consider the poor as ‘our lords, whose servants we acknowledge ourselves to be.’ They were also to dress as humbly as did the poor. The nobility of Gerard’s aims and life would be hard to equal at any time, but in the twelfth century, when the western world was based on the feudal concept of lord and serf, they were exceptional. His epitaph is hardly an exaggeration: ‘Here lies Gerard, the most humble man in the East and the servant of the poor. He was hospitable to all strangers, a gentle man with a courageous heart. One can judge within these walls just how good he was. Provident and active in every kind of way, he stretched out his arms to many lands in order to obtain whatever was needed to feed his people.’

He was succeeded by an almost equally remarkable man, Raymond de Puy. The latter built upon Gerard’s foundations, but in doing so changed the direction of the Order so that for centuries to come its hospitaller side—although always strong and important—became overshadowed. While the original members of the Order of St John had been concerned only with the Hospital, the feeding of the poor and treatment of the sick, a new branch was to be grafted on to it which would be mainly concerned with the protection of pilgrims on the route from the sea to Jerusalem. The military protection of pilgrims might seem little more than a logical extension of the Order’s principal rule—to look after the poor—but it was to evolve into a militant Christianity designed to fight Moslems wherever they might be found. The establishment of the military Orders in the East was in itself an inevitable outcome of the sack of Jerusalem, which had inspired a fanatical hatred of Christians throughout the Moslem world. One good deed may sometimes lead to another, but it is certain that an evil one will almost inevitably breed its fellow.

The transition of the Servants of the Poor into the Soldiers of Christ really began in the early twelfth century. In 1136 the Hospitallers were given the important castle of Bethgeblin in the south of Palestine to hold against the Moslems, who had control of the port of Ascalon. This in itself is evidence enough that the military arm of the Order had already come into being—for who would give a fort to a company of Hospitallers? It is clear that Raymond de Puy had already applied to the Pope for the right to develop a military arm of the Order, and that permission had been granted for him to do so. The establishment of the Knights Templar, a purely military Order designed to fight against the enemies of the Faith, had already set a precedent.

The Templars, or ‘The Poor Knights of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’, were the brainchild of a French knight who had seen the necessity of a special fighting body to protect the pilgrims in the Holy Land. Much that was later to be adopted by the Order of St John may have stemmed from the Templars; for instance the institution of a ‘Grand Master’ as head of the Order, whereas among the Hospitallers their head had previously only been known as ‘the Administrator’. Thus on to a hospital tending for the poor and the sick was grafted the whole fiery body of medieval chivalry and feudalism.

Politically, these Latin knights and barons now busy establishing themselves as eastern rulers from Antioch to Jerusalem brought no more than the same simple conceptions of justice, law and order, as obtained in their own northern lands. At the same time the military Orders, that of the Templars, of St John, and a little later of the Teutonic Knights (who started as a Hospitaller Order but soon became only military) developed a style of discipline coupled with their medieval notions of chivalry that was something new. The Templars bore on their surcoats the red cross on a white ground which had originally been adopted for the soldiers of the First Crusade; the Knights of St John a white cross on a red ground—‘The white Cross of Peace on the blood-red field of War’; and the Teutonic Order a black cross on a white field. All co-religionists, all defenders of the Holy Places and of the pilgrims, they were often at loggerheads with one another. The dissensions between those hot-blooded nobles, only too conscious of their birth, their quarterings, and their battle honours (as well as the different ‘clubs’ to which they belonged), was not to be conducive to a sensible and united policy towards the affairs of the East.

Outremer (Overseas) as the Latin colonies were called was always destined to be a failure. Dependent on a long line of communications across the Mediterranean from Europe, and established in shifting pockets of territory that were almost constantly harassed by an enemy who had the hinterland to himself, it is surprising that Outremer held out as long as it did. This, despite their constant dissensions, must be held to the credit of the crusaders and their fighting qualities. At the same time, man being man the world over, it was also to some extent largely the internal quarrels of the various Moslem states that prevented a concerted drive to get rid of the Christians. Whenever a Moslem leader of any real calibre emerged and united his co-religionists, the Europeans were almost invariably destined for disaster.

At this stage in their history the rules of the Order of St John seem to have been fairly simple. Their first duty was the care of the poor. This in its turn meant the necessary collection of alms and of their tithes, whether in the Levant or in Europe. The brothers who worked in the Hospital were both priests and laymen. In the early stages there seems to have been little distinction between fighting laymen and those who merely served in the Hospital.