About the year 1050 some Italian merchants secured permission to build a convent in Jerusalem to shelter Latin pilgrims.  The hotels which sprang up after this were gradually transformed into hospitals for the care of the sick and presided over by Benedictine monks.  The sick were carefully nursed and shelter granted to as many as could be accommodated.  Nobles abandoned the profession of arms and, becoming monks, devoted themselves to caring for the unfortunate crusaders in these inns.  The work rapidly increased in extent and importance.  In the year 1099, Godfrey de Bouillon endowed the original hospital, which had been dedicated to St. John.  He also established many other monasteries on this holy soil.  The monks, most of whom were also knights, formed an organization which received confirmation from Rome, as “The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.”  The order rapidly assumed a distinctly military character, for, to do its work completely, it must not only care for the sick in Jerusalem, but defend the pilgrim on his way to the Holy City.  This ended in an undertaking to defend Christendom against Mohammedan invasion and in fighting for the recovery of the Holy Sepulcher.

After visiting some of these Palestinian monasteries, a king of Hungary thus describes his impressions:  “Lodging in their houses, I have seen them feed every day innumerable multitudes of poor, the sick laid on good beds and treated with great care.  In a word, the Knights of St. John are employed sometimes like Martha, in action, and sometimes like Mary, in contemplation, and this noble militia consecrate their days either in their infirmaries or else in engagements against the enemies of the cross.”

The Knights Templars were far more militant than the Knights of St. John, but they also were actuated by the monastic spirit.  Bernard tried to inspire this order with a strong Christian zeal so that, as he said, “War should become something of which God could approve.”  The success which attended its operations led as usual to its corruption and decline.  Beginning with a few crusaders leagued together for service and living on the site of the ancient Temple at Jerusalem, it soon widened the scope of its services and became a powerful branch of the crusading army.  It was charged by Philip IV. of France, in 1307, with the most fearful crimes, to sustain or to deny which accusations many volumes have been composed.  Five years later the order was suppressed and its vast accumulations transferred to the Knights of St. John.  “The horrible fate of the Templars,” says Allen, “was taken by many as a beginning and omen of the destruction that would soon pass upon all the hated religious orders.  And so this final burst of enthusiasm and splendor in the religious life was among the prognostics of a state of things in which monasticism must fade quite away.”