ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses why and how the Hospitallers in Pomerania were transferred from the eastern to the western priory. From the 1180s the Hospitallers in central Europe had two priories, a western one called Alamania for Germany and an eastern one, mainly for Slav countries, usually called Bohemia, sometimes Moravia and sometimes Polonia. In 1238 the three Hospitaller centres in Pomerania — at Stargard on the River Ihna, at Schlawe and at Stargard on the River Ferse-together with the house at Posen in Poland belonged to the eastern priory, as four letters of Gregory IX demonstrate. The Hospitallers who received the Eastern Pomeranian properties which Grimislaw donated may have come from Zagost. In the early thirteenth century the political situation as well as the social and ethnic structure of the Pomeranian regions changed. The term Slavia included the Griffin territory of Western Pomerania, since the Griffins were Danish vassals.
