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.
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