ABSTRACT
The religious institution which developed into the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem had its origins in a pilgrim hospice which was dependent on the Benedictines of Jerusalem during the decades before the Latins took the city in 1099; there was also a separate female house, but after the Latin conquest it ceased to function as a hospice. In addition to the fully-professed religiosi taking the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, other categories of men and women were associated with the Hospital under some form of obedience with a very wide regional variety in their condition and much confusion in the terminology involved. The Hospital established itself on the Greek island of Rhodes in about 1309 but there was never any sign there of a female house or of individual women Hospitallers. The Hospitallers maintained generally friendly relations with the Greeks on Rhodes.
