ABSTRACT
The Hospitaller commandery of Strasburg was founded in 1371, although the fourteenth century is generally said to have been a time of crisis for the Order of St. John. The conquest of Rhodes in the early-fourteenth century was one of them, because from their bases on Rhodes, the Hospitallers continued the prestigious fight against the infidel. The traditional answer is that the Hospitallers had simply been bribed, especially since they had debts of more than 10,000 florins in Strasburg. The only concession made by Rulman Merswin was that the Hospitaller commander was to have a deciding vote in the election of a new proctor if the other two proctors failed to agree on a candidate. The notwithstanding, the catalogues of the Grunenworth library fail to reveal any leanings towards mysticism among the Hospitallers. But all late-medieval religious reforms aimed at better standards of both morals and management.
