Knights of Malta

The Order of St John predates the Crusades themselves. Around 1023, merchants from the Italian city of Amalfi established a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to St John the Baptist, to care for sick and injured pilgrims visiting the holy city. This hospital — staffed by Benedictine monks — was the seed from which the entire Hospitaller tradition grew.

When the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, a French monk named Gerard was running the hospital. Gerard reorganised and expanded the institution, attracting donations from across Europe and developing a network of hospitals along the pilgrimage routes. In 1113, Pope Paschal II issued a papal bull formally establishing the Hospital of St John as an independent religious order, answerable directly to the papacy. Gerard became its first Master.

Under Gerard's successor, Raymond du Puy, the order took on its military character — adding armed knights to protect pilgrims and defend the Crusader states alongside its hospital work. This dual identity — warrior and healer — is the defining tension of the Hospitallers throughout their history, and what distinguishes them philosophically from the purely military Templars. The white eight-pointed cross (the Maltese cross) that became their symbol encodes this duality: eight points representing the eight beatitudes, worn by men who were simultaneously monks, soldiers and nurses.

The Hospitallers grew rapidly through the 12th century, acquiring castles, estates and revenues across Europe and the Holy Land. Their greatest fortress, Krak des Chevaliers in modern Syria, is considered the finest surviving example of Crusader military architecture — a castle so well built that T.E. Lawrence called it "perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world."

When Acre — the last Crusader city — fell in 1291, the Hospitallers retreated first to Cyprus and then, in 1309, conquered the island of Rhodes from the Byzantine Empire. Rhodes would be their home for over two centuries — and the period when they transformed from a land-based military order into a formidable naval power, the dominant Christian force in the eastern Mediterranean.

On Rhodes, the Hospitallers organised themselves into Langues (tongues) — divisions based on the native languages of their knights, each responsible for a section of the city's defences. They developed sophisticated naval tactics, built a powerful fleet and made Rhodes one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world. They also continued their hospital work — the hospital at Rhodes was one of the most advanced medical institutions in the medieval world, with separate wards for different conditions, regular medical inspections and a remarkably modern approach to patient care.

In 1522, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent besieged Rhodes with an army of approximately 100,000 men against a Hospitaller garrison of perhaps 7,000. After a six-month siege, the Hospitallers negotiated an honourable surrender — the only time in their history they would capitulate to a military force. Suleiman, reportedly impressed by the knights' courage, allowed them to leave with their weapons, their archives and their sick. They spent the next seven years as a homeless order, wandering between Sicily, Crete and various Italian cities, before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V granted them the island of Malta in 1530 — in exchange for the annual tribute of a single Maltese falcon.

The Great Siege of Malta is one of the most dramatic military engagements of the 16th century — and one of the most consequential. In May 1565, an Ottoman fleet of approximately 180 ships carrying some 40,000 troops arrived at Malta. They were commanded by Mustafa Pasha and the corsair admiral Dragut, and they came to finish what Suleiman had begun at Rhodes. Against them stood approximately 500 Knights of Malta, perhaps 6,000 Maltese soldiers and militia, and several thousand Spanish troops.

The siege lasted four months. The Ottomans took Fort St Elmo after a brutal struggle that killed nearly every defender — and then discovered that the three remaining fortresses, Birgu, Senglea and St Angelo, were far more formidable. The Grand Master, Jean de Valette — 71 years old, a veteran of the fall of Rhodes — refused every Ottoman demand for surrender and personally led sorties from the walls. When Dragut was killed by a cannonball early in the siege, the Ottoman command lost its most capable leader.

In September, a Spanish relief force arrived from Sicily. The Ottomans, exhausted and decimated by disease as well as battle, withdrew. Of the 40,000 Ottoman troops who had landed, approximately 24,000 were dead. The Knights had lost the majority of their garrison. But Malta held. Across Europe, the news was received with something approaching religious ecstasy — the Ottoman advance into the western Mediterranean had been stopped.

Grand Master de Valette immediately began building a new fortified city on the peninsula that had anchored the defence — named Valletta in his honour, it remains the capital of Malta today. De Valette died before its completion. The city he designed became one of the finest examples of Renaissance military architecture in the world, and Malta's most visited heritage site.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta today is one of the most unusual entities in international law. It has no territory — its headquarters occupy two buildings in Rome granted extraterritorial status by Italy — yet it is recognised as a sovereign subject of international law, maintains diplomatic relations with over 110 countries (including the Holy See, most of Europe and Latin America), issues its own passports, prints its own stamps and coins, and holds permanent observer status at the United Nations.

Its approximately 13,500 knights and dames are organised into three classes: professed knights who take religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (a small minority); knights and dames of honour and devotion who commit to living as Catholics according to their state of life; and knights and dames of grace and devotion, admitted for exceptional service. The order also works with approximately 95,000 permanent volunteers and 52,000 medical personnel worldwide.

The order's primary mission today is humanitarian and medical — consistent with its founding purpose. It operates hospitals, medical centres and social care institutions in over 120 countries. It provides disaster relief, refugee assistance, hospice care for the terminally ill and services for the elderly and disabled. In many countries it operates national ambulance services. The Maltese cross — the eight-pointed white cross on red — appears on ambulances, hospitals and aid convoys across the world.