Administrative Regulations for the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem dating from the 1180s

Codex Vat. Lat 4852 comprises important Hospitaller documents, most of which were reproduced by Delaville le Roulx in the four-volume cartulary of the Order (Cart Hosp). He overlooked, however, fos. 83r-104r, which contain a set of regulations for the Hospital in Jerusalem in an Old French translation which was almost certainly carried out for Guillaume de Saint-Etienne towards the end of the thirteenth century.¹ The original regulations may be dated on internal grounds to the 1180s: after 1181 (when Cola was acquired by the Order) and before the capture of Jerusalem in 1187. It is likely that they relate to the rule of Roger des Moulins, that is, before 1183.² No other version of these regulations is known to exist, in Latin or French, except a very fragmentary Latin manuscript in Marseilles.³