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Updated: July 28, 2025
There were two very celebrated bodies of knights that occupied positions of honor in this march. They were the Knights Templars and the Knights of St. John, or Hospitalers, the order that has been described in a previous chapter of this volume. The Templars led the van of the army, and the Hospitalers brought up the rear.
The Hospitalers grew out of a monastic association that was formed before the First Crusade for the succor of the poor and sick among the pilgrims. Later the society admitted noble knights to its membership and became a military order, while continuing its care for the sick.
By that sort of piety to which senescent female sinners everywhere and at all times devote themselves she secured new friends. She was an active fanatic and was constantly seen in the churches, at the confessionals, and in intimate intercourse with the pious brothers and hospitalers. If she had lived another decade she would probably have been canonized.
While, therefore, the three great orders had much in common, there was this difference in their original foundation. The Hospitalers were at first a nursing order, and gradually became military; the Templars were always purely and solely military; while the Teutonic Knights were from the first both military and nursing.
The Knights Templars might begin as the humble guardians of the holy places: the Knights Hospitalers may have been the poor brothers of St. John bound to the service of the sick and helpless among the pilgrims of the cross.
The order still exists and it is considered a distinction to this day to have the privilege of wearing its emblem, the cross of Malta. Before the Hospitalers were transformed into a military order, a little group of French knights banded together in 1119 to defend pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem from the attacks of the infidel.
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