Our Rich History

Our story begins in the year of our Lord 1023 in the city of Jerusalem.

It was then that the Muslim ruler of the city granted a delegation of Christian merchants from Amalfi, Italy the permission to build a hospital, church, and monastery near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

We know the Hospital of St. John was built in the mid-11th century but records do not survive of exactly when it opened or how it was initially staffed and managed.

The Hospital of St. John was built and this marks the founding of both the Hospital and of the organization that ran it, the Order of St. John, also known as the Knights Hospitaller.
From its beginning, the Hospital of St. John served the poor of all origins and faiths without cost, and during the next few years it grew substantially, housing as many as 2,000 patients.

A valuable chronicle surviving from the 1070s states that the hospital’s leader then was Brother Gerard, who would have been in his mid-30s and would continue in this role until his death in 1120 at around age 80.

The Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller reflects in our very name our distinctive heritage as both healers and warriors. There may have been a security function for the original Hospital in Jerusalem prior to 1099, especially as it operated day and night.

Security services would have grown as properties were donated to the Order in the following years, but this is a far cry from knights fighting in battle as a military order. After the capture of Jerusalem by Latin Christians in 1099, the Order of St. John grew rapidly with properties and members across the Holy Land and throughout Europe.

A red-letter date in the history of the Order is February 15, 1113. On that day in Benevento, Italy, Pope Paschal II granted the Hospitallers direct papal patronage and independence from local civil and ecclesiastical authorities wherever they operated.

Since that red-letter day in 1113, the Order of St. John has been sovereign and it remains so today.