This is the first volume of a major work which makes full use of the very rich documentary material still surviving and relates it to the evidence of the chronicles. Oriental sources are not disregarded and use is made of Arabic material and the latest archaeological discoveries in the Near East. Jonathan Riley-Smith has concentrated upon the Order as an institution in the crusader states and as a powerful international religious corporation. He considers its growth to power, its participation in the politics of the Latin settlement in the East, its organization, its position as an exempt Order of the Church, its properties and its methods of administration as a landlord in feudal states. Here the Order of St John is treated in a way that is neither hostile nor romantically partisan, and the author's conclusions differ from those of other historians. In his description of the Hospitallers' policies, the place they occupied in the government of Latin Syria, their privileges and the way they lived, he shows how it was that they - individuals as well as the corporate body - played such a significant part in the history of the Christian East in the 12th and 13th centuries.
This book should appeal to all those interested in the Knights of St John, the international Orders of mediaeval Christendom or the extraordinary states established by western Europeans on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.