host desecration libel 351Further reading: Andrew Ayton, Knights and
Warhorses: Military Service and the English Aristocracy
under Edward III(Woodbridge, England: Boydell Press,
1994); R. H. C. Davis, The Medieval Warhorse(London:
Thames and Hudson, 1989); Ann Hyland, The Horse in the
Middle Ages (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press,
1999); John Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Inno-
vation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986);
Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change
(1962; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
Hospitallers (Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem,
Knights of Malta) The order had its earliest origins in
a hostel for sick pilgrims established in JERUSALEMby
merchants from Amalfi in about 1070. After the First
Crusade it was recognized as a religious order by Pope
Paschal II (r. 1099–1118) in 1113, enabling them to
amass property from donations and build an extensive set
of fortifications and castles in the kingdom of Jerusalem.
The order had adopted the AUGUSTINIAN RULEby 1153.
The goal of the new order was to continue to provide
charitable aid and housing to pilgrims in the Holy Land.
The master of the order, Raymond du Puy (d. 1160),
reorganized the order as a military force, effectively
turning its monks into soldiers. Thereafter, just as the
TEMPLARS, they were an important but undisciplined
military force for the crusader armies in PALESTINE. After
the crusaders were expelled from the Holy Land in 1291,
the Hospitallers moved their headquarters, first to CYPRUS
and then to RHODESbetween 1309 and 1522, when it was
conquered by the OTTOMANTurks. After their dissolution
much of the sequestered property of the Templars
accrued to the Hospitallers. To support their endeavors in
Palestine, they developed extensive landholdings across
Europe. A general chapter meeting periodically held the
supreme authority within the order. When Rhodes fell to
the Ottomans, they retreated to the island of Malta, they
became the Knights of Malta in 1530.
See alsoMILITARY ORDERS.
Further reading: Alan Forey, The Military Orders:
From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries(Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1992); Anthony Luttrell, The Hospi-
tallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece, and the West 1291–1440:
Collected Studies (London: Variorum, 1978); Anthony
Luttrell, Latin Greece, the Hospitallers, and the Crusaders,
1291–1440(London: Variorum, 1982); Helen Nicholson,
The Knights Hospitaller(Woodbridge: The Boydell Press,
2001); Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights of St. John in
Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050–1310(London: Macmillan,
1967).
hospitals The hospital establishments in the West
were linked with monasteries and were founded in the
Frankish period, though there were foundations or
almshouses as early as the fourth century. They were
under initially the responsibility of the clergy, but bene-
fited from a legal autonomy and links with the LAITYthat
allowed them to receive gifts and legacies, the essential
origins of their resources, freely. Not until the 11th and
especially from the 12th century, was there any real
growth in the number of hospitals and in particular in
the towns. This was linked to the rise of urban popula-
tions and new economic wealth that produced feelings of
guilt about its acquisition but also to a new sympathetic
charity for those left behind by economic and social
growth and change. The lay founders of these institu-
tions often wished to leave a memory of their own
names attached to foundations as graphic proof of their
virtue, prestige, charitable intentions, and generous
piety.
These establishments, despite their lay initial bene-
factions, were considered from the outset religious places
subject to canon and ecclesiastical regulation and laws.
Exempted from taxes and ecclesiastical tithes and pro-
tected from patrimonial alienation by MORTMAIN, they
enjoyed various liberties and fiscal privileges. Their bene-
ficiaries could be the victims of financial or any kind of
misfortune, sickness, and old age, as well as pilgrims. The
care they offered consisted primarily of providing to
whomever appeared in need of spiritual and moral nour-
ishment and some material comfort for the well-being of
both body and soul of pilgrims or the sick.
In the later Middle Ages, despite temporarily swollen
gifts during plagues, the temporal property and resources
of many hospitals generally declined during the recurrent
demographic and financial crises and wars that marked
the last centuries of the period. Their permanent rev-
enues collapsed, as did those from most all their landed
estates. Buildings were damaged or destroyed. Many of
even the largest and best established hospitals disap-
peared, while those often not much more than individual
houses totally vanished.
See alsoCHARITY AND POVERTY; NUNS AND NUNNERIES;
PILGRIMAGE AND PILGRIMAGE SITES.
Further reading:Nicholas Orme and Margaret Web-
ster, The English Medieval Hospital, 1070–1570 (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995); Demetrios J.
Constantelos, Byzantine Philanthropy and Social Welfare,
2d ed. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: A. D. Caratzas, 1991); S. D.
Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities
of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the
Cairo Geniza,Vol. 2, The Community(Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1971); John D. Thompson and
Grace Goldin, The Hospital: A Social and Architectural His-
tory(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975).host desecration libel This was a slanderous though
widely accepted story about JEWS who supposedly
desecrated consecrated hosts, in other words, what was