ABSTRACT
In the German-speaking area, the Order of St John did not become established until after the Second Crusade. The first donations, from which commanderies were to develop, began to be received from 1155 on, but the majority of the Order's houses were not founded until the thirteenth century. Administrative structures took shape only gradually. The year 1187 witnessed the first mention of a Prior for Germany, and there is evidence of a magnus praeceptor sacrae domus Hospitalis Iherosolimitani in Alemania, Bohemia, Moravia et Polonia in 1250. The Chapter General of 1301 also placed the Priories of Hungary and Dacia (that is, Scandinavia) under the German Grand Prior. This is a special case in that the priors were not directly subordinate to the head of the Langue as was the usual practice, but to a 'colleague' in office, namely the German Grand Prior, who in turn answered to the Grand Bailiff, the superior of the German Langue at the Order's headquarters. If the German Langue extended in practice throughout central and northern Europe, the German Grand Priory-with well over a hundred commanderies from the Netherlands to Pomerania and from Switzerland to northern Germany — comprised an enormous area which was scarcely possible for one person to administer. The Grand Prior had to delegate tasks to Vice Priors and to make a division into Upper and Lower Germany. Eventually, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, bailiwicks began to form which did not, however, achieve the firmly established status to which they had become entitled in other Langues of the Order. The bailiwicks concerned were Westphalia, Cologne, Utrecht, Wetterau, Franconia, Thuringia and Brandenburg, of which only the latter was able to gain an autonomous status for itself within the framework of the Grand Priory. 1
