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CONCLUSION Ores Leissons Ia Vanite, Et Tenons Ia Verite WILLIAM of S CONCLUSION Ores leissons Ia vanite, et tenons Ia verite WILLIAM OF S. STEFANO Long before the disastrous Battle of Battin the Latin Kingdom ... was beginning to lean more and more upon the military religious orders ... Continually reinforced from Europe by a regular flow of recruits of the very best military type, their efficiency was unimpaired by the adverse Oriental environment, and they remained the only really stable and wholesome elements in the state ... there can be no two opinions as to the entirely devoted and self-sacrificing manner in which they carried out their arduous duties. 1 The great Orders of chivalry, Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, became as much states within a state, having their own policy ... often dictated by their financial interests and opposed to the most evident needs of the country .... They did not care about this derisory state except in so far as they could occasionally make it serve their ends, involving it in their personal wars for their particular interests. 2 These irreconcilable views of the Military Orders are extreme expressions of two schools of history. To the first have belonged nearly all the historians of the Military Orders, the majority of whom, it should be remembered, were themselves connected with descendant branches of the Order of St. John. To the second has subscribed nearly every historian of the Crusades and the crusader states. The supporters of the first argue that the members of the Military Orders were robust exponents of a worthwhile ideal. While admitting that they were often selfish and disorderly, they believe that their qualities far outweighed their defects. They claim that they made up the back­ bone of a decaying state, arguing that they were largely responsible for its survival over two centuries. In short, they take too uncritical a view of the Military Orders, who, it must be admitted, are not at first sight attractive. The early purity of their ideals was soon corrupted. Overmighty subjects in the Latin East, they shared the vices of all great mediaeval institutions: selfishness, greed and an obsession with litigation. Too often their disputes dissolved into fratricidal violence. It has been suggested recently that in their structure and purposes 1 King, Knights Hospitallers, p. ;oo. 2 Grousset, croisades, III, pp. xxvili-xxix. K.S.J.-Q 2 473 474 CONCLUSION they expressed knightly ideals in an accentuated form and that their savagery was a concomitant of extreme chivalry. 1 We would argue that it was a product of conditions in Latin Syria, where in the thirteenth century all institutions tended to express themselves in physical violence. The second school of historians maintains that the Orders were entirely selfish and egotistical. Concerned only with self-aggrandise­ ment, they were too short-sighted to look to the true interests of the Holy Land. This view, however, ignores the serious way in which they approached their responsibilities. No one can question the great expenses undergone by the Hospitallers in the care of the sick or by all Orders in the prosecution of war. On campaign and in council we have seen them taking a position that was rational, can often be shown to have been sensible and realistic, was consistent and, while it was unpopular with westerners, was often that held by the Syrian barons themselves. The Orders certainly weakened Latin Syria and their own position by their violent political disputes; but the questions that almost always divided them, relations with the Saracens and the succession to the throne, were important matters to all institutions in the settlement. The Templars were baronial and anti-monarchical, the Hospitallers royalist; but these were both valid viewpoints. It can be reasonably argued that the basic, perhaps unconscious, motives behind these were selfish; but the consistency with which the Templars and Hospitallers held their points of view does suggest that a kind of corporate political philosophy had grown up within each Order. The survival of the Holy Land was after all the reason for their existence. This they knew well. And they also knew how ruthless was public opinion in the West: all too ready to judge them by immediate results. They could not take a line openly opposed to the necessities of the Latin East; it is arguable that they never did so. In fact both views of the Military Orders have oversimplified their history. One is too partisan, the other too critical. Both, and this is where they share a fundamental failing, credit them with more effi­ ciency, more wealth and more power than they actually possessed. This distortion of history is excusable, for contemporaries themselves 1 Waas, KreNZziige, II, p. 55· See also B. Schumacher, 'Die Idee der geistlichen Ritterorden im Mittelalter', in Altpremsische Forschungen, II (192.4). CONCLUSION 475 exaggerated their strength; but it is not supported by the evidence. Their organisation has been called a 'hierachy of iron'. I But all great institutions in the Middle Ages suffered from inefficiency, incompe­ tence and corruption within their ranks. The Order of St. John was greater than most, and we have shown how, in spite of all the attempts of the Chapter General, the vast international machine was rarely able to function as its creators intended. The Convent in Syria relied upon responsions from Europe that were not often paid in full, while its organisation was too adversely affected by the failings of individual Masters and officers. A study of the Order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries reveals inherent contradictions. It was highly organised, perhaps over­ organised, but it was inefficient. It was rich in lands and properties and absolved from much secular taxation, but it suffered from a chronic shortage of money. It was a great exempt Order of the Church with wide-ranging privileges from the papacy, but in those states where it was most powerful it was never able to exercise these privileges in full. In Syria it possessed great palatinates in the north, in which it could behave as an independent prince and from which it directed a highly aggressive war against small Muslim neighbours. But in the Holy Land itself, the kingdom of Jerusalem, its estates were never inde­ pendent of the crown and, faced by two great Saracen powers, it sup­ ported a policy of integration into Oriental politics by means of alliances, being suspicious of Crusades that could upset a delicate status quo. Its political influence in the twelfth century has been exaggerated. It achieved power slowly and haphazardly, its rise accompanied by humiliating reverses. Its emergence as one of the few institutions governing the settlement came about by default as others grew weaker in the collapse that followed the Battle of Hattin, while the monarchy passed to an absentee dynasty in the West. We can find no constitutional basis for the position held by the Masters in the government of the settlement. At this very moment, moreover, the Order of St. John became dependent upon supplies from Europe whose transhipment could be hindered by the actions of developing national governments. Its international organisation was a creation I Grousset, croisades1 foe. cit. CONCLUSION of the twelfth century that was already out of date in political terms by the thirteenth. If historians have exaggerated the Order's strength, they have under­ emphasised its real historical importance. Not only was it one of the most important institutions in the Latin East, but its officers were great men in many western states. It was one of the first internationally organised exempt Orders of the Church. Its ideal of the care of the sick poor set a standard that was followed by many in the later Middle Ages. It proclaimed, perhaps most characteristically, the crusading ideal: that mixture of charity and pugnacity that had so profound an influence on all western thought in the High Middle Ages. It was an instrument of the popes in the centuries of their political pre-eminence, while in its internal history it reflected the changing social and economic structure of Europe: the rise of the knightly class, but also the emer­ gence of a capitalist monetary economy. It was, however, only with its move to Rhodes that its headquarters became independent of secular control; and this new independence naturally changed its character. But if in its first centuries its central organisation was still answerable to a lay government, never again were its members to be able to fulfil their vocations in the truest sense, for they were never able to return to that Promised Land whose welfare had been the reason for the Order's existence. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away. APPENDIX THE POSSESSIONS OF THE ORDER OF ST. JOHN IN THE LEV ANT IN the documents of the Order of St. John, historians have an unparalleled source for the possessions of an important institution in the Latin East. 1 It is now possible to map the estates of the Hospital, for distinguished topo­ graphical works in the last seventy years have identified most of the places. First and most important of these is the map of the kingdom of Jerusalem composed by Prawer and Benvenisti. I have consulted both these scholars and their advice and help has been of great value. 2 I have also used the studies of Beyer, Rohricht, Abel, Deschamps and Dussaud and an earlier map of Palestine by Johns. 3 The northern crusader colonies have not yet received such treatment. Rohricht's articles were again valuable, but Dussaud's conclusions were the basis for identifications in Tripoli, Antioch and Edessa.
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