The Byzantine hospital organization and the Knights of St John in Jerusalem

Abstract

Towards the second half of the 12st century, the order of the Hospitallers in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem finished the construction of the great hospital that granted it the high degree of recognition and prestige in the medieval world. Within the set of the studies which attended the medical work of the order, the diet imposed to the patients of the domus Dei has been a subject used to indicate the origin of the medical knowledge and the therapeutically organization adopted by the Hospitallers. In this way, the similarities between the allowed foods and those prohibited in different medical treatises that circulated in the medieval world, with those that the Hospital assigned in his palace to the sick have been pointed out. In this work we consider the problems that arise from this kind of interpretations and we indicate an alternative interpretation about the origin of the hospital model adopted by the order.