The Hospitallers as Feudal Lords

Abstract

The Order of St. John in Syria was a landlord in feudal states. It therefore shared with other land-owners certain rights over its tenants and owed certain duties to the rulers. But any study that concerns feudalism has great difficulties for the modern historian, who has lost the exact meaning of terms which were commonplace: justice, coutume, ligence, even service. Lack of evidence and the absence of any satisfactory study of feudalism in Latin Syria will make our conclusions tentative.