Rival Schools

Dr Rory Mclellan reveals the differences between the Templars and the Hospitallers

Were the Hospitallers in competition with the Templars?

They do end up competing a bit, because they’re both religious institutions and supposedly both working to look after the poor, as a charity, and defending pilgrims and the Crusader states. They’re also both landlords and they’ve got properties and they both have political power. This does lead them into conflict, as sometimes they disagreed about strategy and competing for land and donations from the same sorts of people.

So, they do end up having conflicts in the 1200s, the 1240s and 1250s onwards, as the Kingdom of Jerusalem starts falling into a lot of political disputes between internal factions. Sometimes, the Hospitallers back one faction and the Templars, the other.

The Templars became famous for their wealth and developing early banking practices, what about the Hospitallers?

They did have that similar sort of system, not as extensive and developed as the Templars’, but they were quite wealthy and even by the time they inherit the lands from the Templars, even before then, they were quite significantly wealthy. By the time they inherit the Templars’ lands, they were the richest religious order in England, for example, and most of that wealth was what they already had, before they got anything from the Templars.

How did the Hospitallers manage to evade the same fate as the Templars?

There are often attacks on these other orders. The Teutonic Knights order, around 1300, were quite in danger of being accused of similar things to the Templars, but both they and the Hospitallers had the advantage of… more visibly and actively trying to Crusade. So in 1306, the Hospitallers begin moves to take Rhodes [the island] from the Byzantines, they were other Christians [Eastern], but it takes them about four years to take the whole island. They’re also more actively staying in the East and fighting, while the Templars, though they have their headquarters in Cyprus, they haven’t done as much. They end up taking a small island off the coast of Syria in 1302, but there’s no water supply on it and they end up losing it after two years. While the Hospitallers take Rhodes, they’re defending Catholic-held parts of Greece, and they start naval campaigns. By the time the Templars are suppressed, the Hospitallers have their own base on Rhodes, and the Teutonic Knights have their base in the Baltic. The Templars are based in Cyprus, somebody else’s kingdom, and they were much more vulnerable, as they do not have an independent base. Once one king, Philip

IV, tries to take their lands, it’s easier for other kings to follow. It’s really that the Hospitallers seemed to be fortunate in having their own base and wouldn’t always have to appease local kings.