1

Interpreting the regulations: the Hospitallers’ Interpretations of the Rule and the

Statutes in England and Wales

Helen J. Nicholson

Presented at the 48th

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 12 May 2013

Gregory O’Malley has discussed what the Hospitallers of the English langue knew about

their rule and statutes and concluded that they would have known the Rule, although possibly

not so well the statutes.1 What did they tell outsiders about their Rule, statutes and other

regulations? How did they present these regulations to the outside world and how far did they

adapt what they said to suit their actual circumstances?

Outsiders’ views

To judge from contemporary comment, the Hospitallers’ sister and rival order the Templars

had a lot to say about their Rule in justifying their actions, but the Hospitallers themselves did

not say so much. Nigel Wireker, a Benedictine monk at Christchurch, Canterbury, writing a

satire on religious life ‘shortly before 1180’, imagined his protagonist (Brunel the donkey)

considering the advantages of joining each of the existing religious orders. For example, he

could become a Templar and ride a gently walking horse:

Scandere trottantem prohibit quoque regula, nolo

Quod per me careat ordo rigore suo.

[And the Rule forbids me to mount a trotting horse; And I/ do not wish to weaken the Rule.]2

He next comments on the Hospitallers:

Rursum si fuero crucis Hospitalarius albae,

Ad Libanum mittar, ligna referre domum,

Cum lacrimis pergam scutica caedente trinodi

Et venter vacuus et cophinellus erit.

Multa licet subeant mihi, nil de jure licebit

Praeter mentiri magnificando domum.

Et si transgressus fuero semel atque secundo,

‘Vade foras’, dicent diripientque crucem.

[Again, if I am a Hospitaller with the white cross/ I’ll be despatched to Lebanon to

bring wood back to the house./ In tears I’ll go, slashed with stinging whips./ My

stomach will be empty and dried up./ Many things may happen to me, but I will have

1 Gregory O’Malley, Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, p. 52.

2 Nigello de Longchamps, Speculum Stultorum, ed. Francesca Albini (Genoa, University of Genoa,

2003), p. 124, lines 2061–2; The Book of Daun Burnel the Ass: Nigellus Wireker’s Speculum

Stultorum, trans. Graydon E. Regenos (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1959), p. 103.

2

no rights/ Except to lie by magnifying the house./ And if I transgress just once or

twice,/ They’ll say, ‘Get out!’ and take away the cross].3

So: this commentator saw that the Hospitallers had regulations which were very strictly

enforced, and breaking them would get a person thrown out of the order. But although he

depicted the Templars making much of their petty regulations about how fast horses should

go, he didn’t specify what the Hospitallers’ regulations were.

Of course the Hospitallers’ regulations focussed on the care of the poor sick. Their

medieval contemporaries in England and Wales did not have much to say about this. John of

Salisbury, in his Policraticus (written around 1159), referred to their ‘service of hospitality’,

but accused them of financing it by plunder, with the implication that they were plundering

their fellow Christians, and he went on to complain about their opening churches that were

under interdict in order to collect alms.4 In around 1460 the poet Dafydd Nanmor cited the

Hospital of St John as an example of generous hospitality,5 but this was in comparison to the

hospitality offered to guests by noble lords, not hospital care for the sick.

Contemporaries might have thought that the Hospitallers’ main regulation was to protect

their own interests, for in the sources their most frequent appearance was when they were

protecting their privileges. However, while outsiders were unclear on what the Hospitallers’

regulations stated, the Hospitallers themselves also sometimes appear to have been uncertain.

The Hospitallers’ regulations

In 1216 Pope Honorius III noted that the Hospitallers had been tying themselves up with a

great variety of vows, observing which was leading to a variety of different religious life-

styles, and so was causing scandal. He stated that they should all have the same vows,

because they should all be of one heart and mind. He absolved them of their diverse vows and

said instead they should work at fulfilling the observances of their order fully.

3 Nigello de Longchamps, Speculum Stultorum, p. 126, lines 2069–76; The Book of Daun Burnel the

Ass, p. 104.

4 Ioannis Saresberiensis Episcopi Carnotensis policratici : sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis

philosophorum, libri VIII, ed. Clement C. J. Webb (Oxford, 1909), vol. 2, p. 198: book 7, ch. 21. 5 ‘Megis ysbytau Ieuan/ Yw i dai o fwyd i wan’: Dafydd Nanmor, ‘Rhys orau ’nhir Is Aeron’, line 5,

in The Poetical Works of Dafydd Nanmor, ed. Thomas Roberts, rev. Ifor Williams (Cardiff:

University of Wales Press Board, 1923), p. 1, and p. 122, note on line 5; lines quoted in J. Evans,

‘Yspytty Ifan, Or the Hospitallers in Wales’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd

series, 6 (1860), 105–24,

at 109.

3

Ex parte vestra fuit propositum coram nobis quod quidam fratres vestri se diversorum votorum

vinculis abstrinxerunt, quorum observatione quedam vivendi diversitas oritur, et qu[odd]am

inter vos, qui vitam debetis ducere uniformem, scandalum generator. Unde nobis fuit humiliter

supplicatum ut super hoc paterna dignaremur sollicitudine providere. Ne igitur dissimilitudo

votorum hujus modi inter vos, pari voto religionis abstrictos, dissimilitudinem pariat animarum,

quibus cor unum et anima una in Domino esse deberet, ipsos ab illorum votorum exequtione

reddimus absolutos, qui vestre religionis observantias eo vigilantius enittantur perficere quo per

illas sibi predictorum votorum onera sentient dempta esse.6

In a second letter he also forbad the Hospitallers from making vows, abstinences or

observances outside the decisions of their chapter.

Cum nobis, secundum apostolum, cor unicum et anima debet esse una, nolentes ut ex

diversitate votorum vestre religionis idemptitus pati valeat sectionem, auctoritate vobis

presencium inhibemus ne aliquis fratrum vestrorum absque sui magistri licentia votum,

abstinentiam vel observantiam faciat, preter illam que a capitulo domus vestre regulariter

observatur.7

[since there ought, according to the apostle, to be a single heart and mind in us, not

wishing that from the diversity of vows the unity of your religious order could be

divided, by the authority of the present letter we forbid you that any of your brothers

without the leave of the master should take on any vow, abstinence or observance,

except that which is observed in accordance with the regulations, by the chapter of your

order.]

How far had the Hospitallers in England developed their own observances? As a

religious order which held property and rights all over Catholic Europe but whose vocation

was originally focussed on Jerusalem, the Hospitallers would have had to develop processes

and procedures to help brothers who lived in locations far from Jerusalem to remember the

Order’s true vocation, and to persuade patrons and potential patrons that they were

benefitting their locality and personal interests as well as helping Jerusalem. The abbey at

Sigena in the Iberian Peninsula had its own regulations, to meet the particular needs of this

6 Cart. Gen, vol. 2, p. 198, no. 1499: [It has been proposed to us on your behalf that certain of your

brothers are constraining themselves up with a variety of vows, from observance of which a diversity

of lifestyles is arising, and a certain scandal is generated among you, although you ought to follow a

uniform life. Whence we have been humbly supplicated to deign to provide paternal solicitude over

this matter. Therefore, so that the dissimilarity of vows of this type should not produce a dissimilarity

of minds by removing from an equal religious vow you, who ought to be one heart and one mind in

the Lord, we absolve you from executing those vows, who will struggle the more vigilantly to

perform the observance of your religious order, the more they feel the burdens brought through those

observances of the aforesaid vows are taken away.] 7 Cart Gen, vol. 2, p. 199, no. 1503.

4

house of sisters and brothers8 – so it was reasonable that other houses might need their own

regulations.

In 1338 in his report of the extent of the lands and holdings of the Hospital in England

and Wales, Prior Philip de Thame referred repeatedly to the founders of the Order as the

justification for the large expenses each commandery was incurring in supplying hospitality

to supervenientibus, ‘those coming over’—that is, apparently, anyone who arrived at the

house.9 He referred to expenses incurred

Ratione hospitalitatis, prout ordinatum est per fundatores dicte domus (Greenham,

Berks)

Ratione hospitalitatis, prout fundatores ejusdem domus ordinaverunt (Ansty, Wilts)

Causa hospitalitatis, prout ordinatum est per fundatores domus (Mayne, Dorset and

Yeaveley, Derbys)

causa hospitalitatis, prout constitutum est per fundatores dicte domus (Bodmiscombe,

Devon)

causa hospitalitatis, prout fundatores dicte domus constituerunt (Trebeigh, Cornwall)

ratione hospitalitatis, prout fundatores dicte domus constituerunt (Buckland, Somerset)

causa hospitalitatis, prout fundatores dicte domus ordinaverunt (Godsfeld, Hampshire,

Mount St John, Yorkshire and Shingay, Cambs)

ratione hospitalitatis, prout ordinatum est per fundatores domus (Poling, Sussex)

ratione hospitalitatis, prout ordinatum est per fundatores dicte domus (Quenington,

Gloucs)

pro distribution pauperum, per ordinationem fundatoris dictorum locorum ex antiquo

(Slebech, Pembs and south-west Wales) (the ‘ex antiquo’ argument is one which the

Welsh had used in 1282 when defending Welsh law against Archbishop Peckham)10

causa hospitalitatis, prout ab antiquo constitutum est (Halstan, Shropshire and North

Wales)

8 Cart. Gen. vol. 1, no. 859, pp. 532–47.

9 Lambert B. Larking and John Mitchell Kemble (eds), The Knights Hospitallers in England, Being

the Report of Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master Elyan de Villanova for AD 1338, Camden

Society, 1st series, 65 (1857), pp. 5, 8, 12, 14, 15, 18, 22, 25, 28, 36, 39, 43, 47, 50, 61, 76. For the

background to the report see Anthony Luttrell, ‘West-East Attitudes and Ambiguities: The

Hospitallers of Rhodes after 1306’, in Dies Amalphitana I: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, giovedi 7

maggio 2009: Consegna della reliquia di Sant’Andrea Apostolo, ed. Edward G. Farrugia (Rome,

2009), pp. 55–63 at p. 61: in 1338 Pope Benedict XII ‘launched very detailed inquests into the

manpower and finances of certain Hospitaller priories and appointed a commission of cardinals to

investigate the Order’. 10

Michael Prestwich, Edward I (London: Methuen, 1988), p. 191; Registrum epistolarum Johannis

Peckham, ed. C. T. Martin, Rolls Series 77, 3 vols (London, 1882–4), vol. 2, pp. 469–71

5

causa hospitalitatis, prout ordinatum fuit ab antiquo per fundatores domus (Beverley,

Yorks)

ratione hospitalitatis, prout dominus de Multon fundator dicte domus ordinavit, et per

bullas papales ordinationem suam fecit confirmari (Skirbeck, Lincs) – this is the only

occasion where the founder of the house was named: Thomas Multon son of Thomas

Multon, who made his gift in 1230.11

In other entries the prior simply refers to hospitality, without referring to the founders of

the house. But what did de Thame mean by ‘the house’? If he meant each individual

commandery, it is not clear that any of the founders did state this, except for Thomas Multon

– his hospital at Skirbeck was already a working hospice before he gave it to the Hospitallers,

and it continued to operate in the same way after his donation. John Stillingflete’s history of

the Hospital in England, written in 1434, did not mention hospitality as a motivation for

giving, nor did he mention Jerusalem or the poor, but simply asked the brothers to pray for

their patrons and benefactors whom he listed.12

If on the other hand de Thame was referring to the founders of the Order, did the

founders actually state that the Order owed hospitality to everyone? Pope Paschal II’s bull of

1113 which we are gathered here to commemorate, ‘Pio postulatio voluntatis’, refers to the

Hospitallers’ piis hospitalitatis … studiis and to Omnia … ad sustentandas peregrinorum et

pauperum necessitates, vel in Hierosolymitane ecclesie vel aliarum ecclesiarum parrochiis et

civitatum territoriis … eidem Xenodochio acquisita13

[‘pious exercises of hospitality’ and

‘everything for sustaining the necessities of pilgrims and the poor, acquired for the same

Hospital both in parishes of the Jerusalem churches or of other churches and the territories of

the cities’].So, they would acquire property to sustain the needs of pilgrims and the poor, both

in Jerusalem and other parishes and cities: did this mean that they would also help pilgrims

and the poor in other parishes and cities, or did Pope Paschal intend them only to help

11

See John Stillingflete, ‘Liber de nominibus fundatorum Hosp. S. Johannis Jerusalem in Anglia’, in

Monasticon anglicanum: a history of the abbies and other monasteries, hospitals, frieries, and

cathedral and collegiate churches, with their dependencies, in England and Wales; also of all such

Scotch, Irish and French monasteries, as were in manner connected with religious houses in England,

ed. William Dugdale, Richard C Taylor, Roger Dodsworth, John Stevens, John Caley, Henry Ellis,

Bulkeley Bandinel, 6 vols in 8 (London: Bohn, 1846), vol. 6.2, pp. 831–39, at p. 835. 12

Stillingflete in MA, 6.2, pp. 831–39. Stillingflete gave only one example of a donation for

hospitality: Drugo Barentyne gave the Templars at Sandford 20s a year and a bed for a sick or poor

man: ‘Drugo Barentyne dedit Templariis apud Saundforde xxs annui redditus, et unum lectum,

percipiendum de dono Hospitalis S. Johannis extra portum orientalem Oxon. pro infirmo ibidem, sive

pauper ibidem inveniendo’ (ibid., p. 833). 13

Cart. Gen., vol. 1, p. 29, no. 30.

6

pilgrims and the poor coming to Jerusalem? Whatever, there is no indication that the

Hospitallers had to help all and sundry: the emphasis is on the poor.

The Rule of Raymond du Puy states that all the brothers come to serve the poor (ad

servitium pauperum) and the poor are the Hospitallers’ lords.14

There is also reference to

priests visiting the infirm, the poor people at the Hospital, and infirm people being received

into the house and given a bed. There is only one hospital, at Jerusalem, and all surplus

income is given to it. Again: there is no indication that the Hospitallers should give

hospitality to all and sundry.

The statutes of March 1181/2 also referred to the poor.15

The statutes were for the honour

of God and the growth of the Order, ‘et l’acreissement et l’utilité des poures malades’ [and

the increase and benefit of the poor sick], and gave instructions ‘partout la où seroient li

l’Ospital des malades’ [everywhere where there may be the Hospitals of the sick], indicating

that there might be Hospitals in many places under the Hospital’s control. The regulations

about the day-to-day running of the Hospital specifically relate only to the Hospital in

Jerusalem: maintenance of medical staff and treatments, taking in foundlings, giving money

to poor couples so that they can marry and to prisoners when they are released from prison,

and feeding thirty poor people each day, including poor 5 clerks.16

The same can be said

about the administrative regulations from the 1180s, published by Susan Edgington: they

specifically refer to the Hospital at Jerusalem only.17

Subsequent development of the regulations during the thirteenth century could hardly be

called the founders’ instructions, but do demonstrate that hospitality was central to the Order.

None of these regulations indicate that the Hospitallers were bound to give hospitality to

everyone: only to the poor sick.

The Hospitallers in England had their own translation and adaptation of the Rule and statutes,

produced towards the end of the reign of King Henry II of England (1154–89) and before the

fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 was known in the West, so possibly in 1181–5. 18

Based

14

Printed as appendix to The Hospitallers’ Riwle (Miracula et Regula Hospitalis Sancti Johannis

Jerosolimitani), ed. K. V. Sinclair, Anglo-Norman Text Society 42 (London: 1984), pp. 70–73, here

p. 70, sections 1 and 2. 15

Cart. Gen. vol. 1, no. 627, p. 425–29. 16

Ibid., pp. 428–9. 17

MS Vat. Lat. 4852, published by Susan Edgington, ‘Administrative Regulations for the Hospital of

St. John in Jerusalem dating from the 1180s’, Crusades, 4 (2005), 21–37. 18

The Hospitallers’ Riwle (Miracula et Regula Hospitalis Sancti Johannis Jerosolimitani), ed. K. V.

Sinclair, Anglo-Norman Text Society 42 (London: 1984). For the date, see p. xlviii.

7

on the rule of Raymond du Puy and the 1181 statutes, it was composed in Anglo-Norman

French, in octo-syllabic rhyming couplets, a total of 1654 lines. The ‘Riwle’ begins with a

legendary history of the Order, taking it back to the centuries before Christ’s birth, and

retelling some gospel stories as if they took place in the Hospital in Jerusalem. We are told

that the Hospital was founded at Jerusalem to receive the poor and supply their needs (lines

55–6). ‘Meisun ert de hospitalité’ (line 69) – it will be a house of hospitality – but one for the

poor: all the poor who come there needing help will be received and provided for richly. This

is one of the earliest versions of the fictionalised history which the 12th

-century Hospitallers

produced for themselves, apparently a reaction to accusations (for example, from the English

clerk and courtier Walter Map)19

that as a new religious order they lacked spiritual validity:

lacking a long history, they invented one for themselves.20

Hence in 1338 when de Thame

claimed that they had given hospitality ab antiquo, he meant from before the time of Christ.

Having set out the Hospital’s fictional history (ends at line 576) the translator begins a

translation of the Rule (from line 625). The emphasis was more on the religious life than on

the vocation of the order, and not until line 745 did the author explain that the aim is to serve

the poor and sick (le povre et malade/ Ke la gisent parmi l’estrade) who have come for God’s

sake to Jerusalem and who are sick. Whatever their sickness is, they come to the Hospital.

The author explained that ‘we [the Hospitallers] are all serfs to them’ (a ceus seums dunc

trestuit serfs – line 757), and they pray for us, the Hospitallers, just as we serve them.

Everyone who needs aid can come and they will be cared for, no matter which country they

are from. Whether they are well or sick, if they are in need they will be helped.

K. V. Sinclair, editor of the text, believed that the references in the Riwle to the poor and

sick lying here in the street and on ‘these beds’ (Ke la gisent parmi l’estrade … mut en i ad

en ces grabaz: lines 743, 747) referred to the poor and sick being cared for in England, in the

house at Clerkenwell, north of the city of London. This isn’t clear in the text, as in line 745

we are told that these poor have come to Jerusalem, so ‘here’ would be the Hospital in

Jerusalem, not in Clerkenwell. Yet, by introducing it as ‘a house of hospitality’ from its

foundation, this document opened the way for the Hospital in England to develop beyond a

support-institution for the Hospital in the East. In fact, to judge from Walter Map’s

comments, written after 1179 and possibly after 1187, the Hospital was

19

Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. M. R. James, revised by C. N

Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), Dist. i, chap. 30, pp. 122–4. 20

The Miracula or ‘legends’ survive in various versions in manuscripts in French, Anglo-Norman

French and Latin: Antoine Calvet, Les Légendes de l’Hôpital de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem (Paris,

2000), pp. 7–8, 13–16. For recent discussion of the

8

Special caritatis habitaculum, spontaneous admittebant hospites, et iuxta doctrinam

discipulorum Domini transeuntes cogere satagebant in hospicium

[the special abode of charity; they willingly admitted guests, and in accordance with the

teaching of the Lord’s disciples they compelled passers-by to come into the hospice].21

Map did not mention Jerusalem here, and this description would fit the Hospitallers in

England and Wales in 1338 as well as it fitted the Hospitallers in Jerusalem in the 1100s.

The 1338 report indicates that the brothers in England and Wales had interpreted the

command to take in those in need to mean not only the poor and sick, but everyone who

needed hospitality. Yet surely the brothers should still have been oriented towards helping the

house in the East?

In fact, de Thame’s report of 1338 minimised income and maximised expenses, as if to

discourage further financial demands on the English and Welsh houses from the Master and

Convent on Rhodes. The English houses had been facing financial ruin in the 1320s and

1330s.22

The repeated justification of resources spent on hospitality and the widened

interpretation of what hospitality could mean may have been intended to explain their

financial straits and persuade the master and convent that the English houses could not

increase their responsions.

Sometimes the Hospitallers of the English tongue did publicly recall their obligations in the

East. In June 1360 King Edward III noted that the Hospitallers in Ireland had complained to

him about the loss of many of their lands and income. He noted that they maintained war

against the enemies of the Christian faith on Rhodes, while in Ireland they ‘hold a good

position there for the repulse of our Irish enemies, who daily maintain war upon our liege

people’.23

The Hospitallers were apparently claiming the king’s special favour on the basis

that they played a leading military role in Ireland, in addition to their holy war on Rhodes.

That said, on this occasion they did not mention their Hospital in the East or their care for the

poor sick; they were presenting themselves purely as a military order.

In the English Parliament of 1385 a ‘petition from the commons’ asked that the money in

the hands of the prior of St John of Jerusalem in England ‘called responsions’ be used to the

21

Walter Map, De nugis, Dist. i, chapter. 23; p. 68. 22

Letter of 1326 in Valetta, National Library of Malta, AOM 16, no. 17; Letter of 1328 in Larking

and Kemble, pp. 215–20; Clarence Perkins, ‘The Knights Hospitallers in England after the Fall of the

Order of the Temple’, English Historical Review, 45 (1930), 285–89. 23

‘bonum locum ibidem nobis tenent ad repulsionem hibernicorum hostium nostrorum guerram super

fidelem populum nostrum in dies machmant’m & perpetuacium’: TNA: PRO, C54/198, mem. 27

(Close Rolls, 34 Edward III); CCR, Edward III, AD 1360–1364, p. 39.

9

profit and honour of the lord king, to relieve and support his poor people, rather than being

sent to the East. King Richard II replied that he wished the money to be taken to the Convent

on Rhodes to maintain the war against the infidel; but if the prior preferred, he would take

advice from his nobles and his council as to how the money could be best used. The prior

responded that all those moneys had been paid from all time (note that long history again) to

the convent of Rhodes in aid of its support, and to maintain the war with the infidel,

hospitality and divine service, and so their withdrawal would lead to the speedy destruction

of that country, a frontier of Christendom. He prayed that these monies might continue to be

paid to the convent, as ordained at the foundation of the Hospital.24

Note this reference to the

foundation of the Hospital! – and in this case it could very well be a reference to Pie

postulatio voluntatis, in which Pope Paschal confirmed to the Hospital all the donations of

territory and income that they had received, and stated that no one should retain or reduce

them.

The Hospitallers re-codified their statutes in 1482, printed statutes were drawn up in

1489 and given papal approval in 1493. These included a significant section on hospitality,

setting out the regulations on care for the poor sick and referring back to the mythical

foundation of the Order in the period before Christ.25

These regulations stated that from the

time of Grand Master Philibert de Naillac (1396–1421) it had been established that

hospitality should be kept in the individual commanderies, according to the means of the

house.26

A regulation of 1420 seems to be meant. The statute does refer to alms, but doesn’t

specify that only the poor were to be recipients of the hospitality.27

The regulations then go

on to consider the more traditional area of hospital care in the infirmary, but also refer to new

infirmaries being set up (so, not only in the East).

24

Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento, collected by R. Blyke, P. Morant,

T. Astle, J. Topham, ed. J. Strachey, 6 vols, (London 1767–77), vol. 3, pp. 179, 213; new edition in

The parliament rolls of medieval England 1275–1504, ed. Chris Given-Wilson (London: Boydell and

Brewer, 2005); prior’s response in Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record

Office, prepared under the superintendence of the Deputy Keeper of the Records: Richard II, AD

1385–1389 (London, HMSO, 1900), p. 95. This problem arose again after the loss of Rhodes, when

King Henry VIII wished to confiscate the Hospitallers’ property and re-allocate the brothers to the

defence of Calais: O’Malley, pp. 179–86. 25

O’Malley, p. 52; Stabilimenta Rhodiorum militum: Die Statuten des Johanniterordens von 1489/93,

ed. Jyri Hasecker and Jürgen Sarnowsky, Nova Mediaevalia: Quellen und Studien zum europäischen

Mittelalter (Göttingen, V&R Unipress, 2007), pp. 132–41. 26

Ibid., p. 134. 27

Ibid., p. 292.

10

The fifteenth-century statutes, then, reflected what the Hospitallers in England and Wales

at least were already doing by way of hospitality by 1338. By 1420 the Order’s regulations

were catching up with reality.

Conclusion

We began with Nigel Wireker and Brunel the donkey, considering which religious order it

would be best to join. At last Brunel the donkey decides to set up his own religious order,

which he constructs from the practices of the already-existing religious orders. From the

military orders he’ll retain the Templars’ smoothly stepping horses and the Hospitallers’

privilege of telling lies.

Ordine de Templi sumamus equos gradientes

Leniter, ut lenis sit meus ordo mihi.

Ut mihi mentiri liceat quocumque locorum

Fratribus ex aliis hoc retinere volo.

[Let’s take from the Templars their horses stepping/ smoothly, so that my life may be smooth

for me. /From the other brothers, I wish to keep being allowed to tell lies, wherever I go.28

)

The material discussed here has shown the Hospitallers in England and Wales adjusting their

self-promotion to meet the needs of the Order. Nigel Wireker’s accusation of lying may

reflect a practice of adjusting their vocation to be whatever would have the best effect on

their audience: so, in 1338 they told the master and convent in Rhodes that their duty was

hospitality to those in England and Wales, but in 1385 they told the king of England that they

were bound to send resources to the east because they had a war to fight on Rhodes. And they

claimed a long history for their activities, back to before the time of Christ. However, this

ability to adjust and adapt their interpretation of the regulations made the Hospitallers more

effective in meeting the needs of their patrons and dependents, and the sick poor, both in the

west and the east. The fact that eventually the regulations would be adjusted to reflect what

the Hospitallers were already doing demonstrates the Order’s continuing ability to adapt to

survive in a changing world. This is how we can this year be celebrating 900 years of the

Order’s work since the issue of Pie Postulatio voluntatis.

28

Nigello de Longchamps, Speculum Stultorum, p. 148, lines 2421–4; The Book of Daun Burnel the

Ass, p. 116.