Victor Mallia-Milanes (ed.), The Military Orders: Volume 3 – History and Heritage, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. xvii + 306, £55.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-7546-6209-7.

Abstract

This volume records the proceedings of the third international conference on the military orders held on 7–10 September 2000 at the Museum of the Order of St John, Clerkenwell, London. Once again the organising London Centre for the Study of the Crusades, the Military Orders and the East Mediterranean Region in the Middle Ages succeeded in uniting no less than thirty well-known experts who focused their discussion on the general theme of ‘History and Heritage’. The thirty papers published in this collection reveal the continuing scholarly interest in the Military Orders as well as the large variety of topics that still demand further research. Eighteen articles concentrate on the Order of St John, six on the Temple and three on the Teutonic Order. Like the two volumes comprising the contributions of the previous conferences in 1992 and 1996, ‘History and Heritage’ will certainly be highly appreciated by medievalists specialised in the history of the crusades because of the outstanding quality of the assembled papers. They all cover recent trends of research and offer a strong basis for continuing study of the subjects treated. For those interested in medical history, however, this third volume has much less to offer than its predecessors. These put a special emphasis on Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick (Volume 1) as well as Warfare and Welfare (Volume 2). The present volume, as its title indicates, mainly deals with the Orders’ historiography, questions concerning liturgy and fiction, and heraldry and piety. Furthermore, the major part of the contributions concentrate on the settlement of the Orders in different regions of Europe and the Holy Land, or on special aspects regarding the history of a single commandery and its dignitaries. Most of the papers do not pay any attention to medicine, healthcare or the functioning of the Orders’ hospitals at all. It is, therefore, surprising that the book contains two studies of outstanding interest for medical historians. Ann Williams’ article (pp. 55–62) examines the final illnesses of the Grand Masters of the Order of St John from Pierre de Aubusson (d. 1503) to Nicolas Cotoner (d. 1680) and the development of funerary rites surrounding the burial of the Order’s highest ranking dignitaries, who at the same time occupied the islands of Rhodes and Malta as ‘rulers in their own rights’ (p. 55). In some cases the accounts allow a detailed reconstruction of the Grand Masters’ last days, burial practice and the reaction of the public. The author is conscious of the fact that on the basis of Hippocratic/Galenic traditions the descriptions of the mortal illnesses of the Grand Masters cannot be clearly identified. Yet, it is interesting to see what the sources reveal about the symptoms and the roles of the medical practitioners. Moreover, Ann Williams reveals that the double function of the Order’s Grand Master as head of a religious community as well as head of state becomes particularly obvious in the way the burial ceremony is performed. The descriptions of the mourning inhabitants of Rhodes and Malta in the Order’s accounts do not differ from those in royal records. A more than valuable complement to the written source is the erudite bioarcharcheological analysis of latrine soil from the thirteenth-century hospital of St John at Acre (pp. 213–23) presented by Piers D. Mitchell, Jacqui P. Huntley and Eliezer Stern. The authors demonstrate that the examination of latrine soil not only proves what kind of foods people were eating, but also what kind of parasitic helminthes infested their intestines. In the special case of a hospital latrine such as that in Acre it is even possible to gain further information about the medical treatment of the patients. One of the remarkable results of the analysis is that the fish bones and scales present in the latrine soil confirm that the patients observed a diet. Fish tapeworm ova have been identified by the researchers in the same samples. A number of figures additionally exemplify the information given in the text. Among the altogether brilliant articles of the volume this one is really trend-setting.