- há 11 horas
Categoria
📚
AprendizadoTranscrição
00:01In the Holy Land, a new kingdom built by Crusaders.
00:08Devout servants of the Holy State.
00:13A life of prayer lived by a solemn rule.
00:18The white cross, the black and the red.
00:24New orders of the cross and also the sword.
00:29They might have been called the Hospitallers, but these were warriors.
00:34These were warriors of God.
00:38Feared by their enemies, guardians of the poor and the sick.
00:44They cared for people who needed to be cared for, and they were there when people needed them.
00:49Dark times ahead for all the military orders.
00:53They'd been fighting for God and yet they had lost. So is that because we're sinners?
00:58New frontiers for the soldiers of Christ.
01:02It could have been a disaster for the Hospitallers, but they turned it into a trial.
01:09From the Middle East to the Aegean and beyond.
01:11The Order of the Knights Hospitaller.
01:23The Order of the Knights Hospitaller was renowned throughout the Middle Ages.
01:28Their plain robes and surcoats, black and later red, marked them out as devoutly religious.
01:36Dedicated to carrying out God's work with the sword if need be.
01:40The Order of the Hospitallers is clearly one of the best known, most identifiable of the military orders.
01:48They were respected by some contemporaries and by historians since, due to their reputation for caring and healing.
01:56But at the same time, this led them to being overshadowed, at least in the popular imagination.
02:03Their rival order, the Knights Templar, are often seen as the more famous and dashing medieval Christian warriors.
02:10It's always the Templars who were mentioned first.
02:14And the Hospitallers never had such a pronounced image.
02:19They've come down through history as the Hospital Order who cared for people, which for some reason is never seen
02:24as being as exciting as the people that ride out and do the death and glory charges.
02:29In fact, the Hospitallers did death and glory charges as well.
02:32In fact, the Hospitallers fought alongside the Templars in the Holy Land of the 12th and 13th centuries.
02:39The Hospitallers did have a slightly more specific image, although they did fight in most of the battles as well.
02:44And with a similar number of troops, they could be very aggressive.
02:48But because they had a whole medical wing to them as well, that did provide a rather different image for
02:53them in Western Christendom.
02:56The Hospitallers were among the longest lived of all the military orders, even the Templars.
03:02The Knights Hospitaller were by far the older of the two institutions compared to the Templars.
03:07They had been around in Jerusalem even before the first Crusades.
03:13The Templars were the first militarised order, formed probably in the 1120s, following the First Crusades' capture of Jerusalem in
03:221099.
03:24But the order of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem had already been formed for some decades, perhaps longer,
03:31although it wasn't yet a fighting order.
03:33There already was a hospital in Jerusalem run for Christian pilgrims by Christians from Western Europe.
03:43They were founded in the 1060s or possibly the early 1070s by a group of Amalfi merchants who wanted somewhere
03:51to stay in Jerusalem and wanted somewhere where poor pilgrims and travellers could stay.
03:57They were granted a site near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most important place for Christian pilgrims, who
04:05were often exhausted after long journeys.
04:07The Hospital of St John in Jerusalem became well respected and the members of the order became known as the
04:15Hospitallers.
04:18Over the next decades, the hospital grew in size and reputation, opening its doors to men and women of all
04:26faiths, not just Christian.
04:28The first 50 odd years plus of their existence, they were solely medical, providing health care, support, accommodation and medical
04:37attention if necessary for pilgrims visiting Jerusalem.
04:41The catalyst that transformed the Hospitallers was the First Crusade.
04:45After the capture of Jerusalem, the new Crusader states needed pilgrims and traders from the West.
04:52The first military order, the Knights Templar, began protecting the Holy Land's roads and frontiers, but they were few in
05:00number.
05:01Some of the Hospitallers, the members of the hospital staff, who were from the knightly class,
05:08or at least would have had some degree of military training because of their own family backgrounds, decided that they
05:15could also protect pilgrims.
05:17So that was the beginning of what you would call their militarisation.
05:23Templars and Hospitallers patrolled the borders of the Christian Holy Land.
05:27Like the Templars, the Hospitallers rapidly developed into a highly respected military force, with the emphasis on cavalry.
05:35The most important battlefield element being the armoured knight on horseback.
05:40Full scale battles were few. It was frontier work, often far from the major towns.
05:48Vitally important to both sides were outposts.
05:51The military orders operated many castles in the Holy Land, including some of the most important border strongholds.
05:58The Hospitallers were either given or built tens of castles on the frontiers of Kingdom of Jerusalem, Principality of Antioch
06:06and elsewhere.
06:08And these castles performed a crucial function because the Hospitallers could afford to maintain them, to garrison them and provide
06:15them with all that they needed.
06:16The Hospitallers castles were wonders of the world. They reflected the latest in castle building technology, so that they became
06:23places that they could take visiting pilgrims to, to show them the wonderful things that they were doing in the
06:30Lord's name in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
06:32And thereby they got more donations from the West because of these magnificent fortresses.
06:39Several of the most famous and impressive surviving castles and fortresses in the Holy Land and Lebanon and part of
06:47Syria are, or were, Hospitaller castles.
06:51Historian David Nicole is no stranger to the Middle East. He's journeyed extensively here during his research into the Crusader
06:59period.
07:00Of the surviving Crusader era castles, few are as spectacular as the one he's travelling to in northeastern Israel.
07:09One of the best known is of course Belvoir, overlooking the Jordan Valley, on the edge of an escarpment, right
07:16on a frontier, on a physical, identifiable, visible frontier, and on the top of a cliff.
07:22I mean, this is dramatic stuff.
07:24Belvoir, beautiful view, is the most preserved Crusader castle in Israel.
07:31Its Arabic name meant star of the wind.
07:34The castle stands on a promontory 500 metres above sea level.
07:39It's overlooking the Jordan Valley, then existing Jordan on the other side, and Saladin's castle of Ajlun facing this.
07:48Two castles strategically opposed to each other, in visual contact with each other.
07:53This was defensively vital, its location is strategic, and as a political statement, a statement of power and wealth by
08:01the Hospitaller's order, is second to none.
08:03The upper levels of the castle have been robbed away over centuries, but what remains is still massive.
08:11Testament to the Hospitaller's rapid growth in the few decades after they became military.
08:18Belvoir is extraordinarily important to the Hospitallers.
08:20We can tell it's important by the amount of effort and money that was put into it.
08:24I mean, the thing was only here, according to the historical record, for 21 years. All this in 21 years.
08:32The Hospitallers began building the castle in 1168.
08:37The castle of Belvoir was built at a time when the Kingdom of Jerusalem was coming under increasing attack,
08:42and people were looking increasingly to fortify the frontier, where previously it hadn't been quite so necessary,
08:48because they'd been on the offensive by and large. So Belvoir was crucial.
08:53At this time in the later 12th century, Muslim leader Salah Adin sought to recover the loss of Jerusalem and
09:01Palestine to the Christians.
09:03The job of the Hospitallers and other military orders was to delay his advance as long as possible.
09:10One of the major invasion routes into the Kingdom of Jerusalem was to go south of Lake Tiberias,
09:15and Belvoir, situated on a ridge high above that particular crossing, was very strategically located.
09:23In 1187, the inevitable came, and Salah Adin's forces laid siege to Belvoir.
09:30But they found the castle extremely strong and resilient to attack.
09:34In the First Crusade, the Franks had stormed Jerusalem's ancient walls after just a few days.
09:41But the Hospitallers' stronghold here was newly built, and its defences were state-of-the-art.
09:49Already atop the steep cliff, it was surrounded on three sides by a moat 20 metres wide and 12 metres
09:56deep.
09:57Within was a rectangular castle, with a tower at each corner and midpoint, and a fortified gateway.
10:06Inside the first wall was another, and then yet another with its own defensive corner towers.
10:13It's thought to be one of the earliest examples of a concentric castle,
10:18a design that became widespread in the later 12th and 13th centuries, both in the Holy Land and back in
10:25Western Europe.
10:26It wasn't just the castle's strength that made it a statement, here on the frontier.
10:31The kind of building stone the Hospitallers used may also have been chosen for its colour.
10:39You can read a certain amount into the use of dark grey, effectively black, volcanic basalt rock,
10:46which is most of this, certainly the lower parts of the castle.
10:49And the white stone, the more finely dressed stone above.
10:54Black and white, colours of the Hospitallers.
10:57Now, whether this was in actual fact a statement of identity or not, is impossible to say.
11:03It may have been just that they were using these two available rocks.
11:07But it doesn't alter the fact that you end up with a very striking, very visual, very powerful black and
11:13white castle.
11:14The Muslim army couldn't take Belvoir by storm, so all they could do was surround it and wait.
11:22Belvoir held Saladin up for months.
11:24They did not fall to siege easily, so the boasts that the Hospitallers made about them were well justified.
11:32In the end, Belvoir held out for an extraordinary 18 months.
11:36But in 1187, Saladin defeated the Crusader field army at Hattin.
11:43And across the Crusader Kingdom, the Muslim tide was, in the end, unstoppable.
11:49Well, in actual fact, this place only fell after the Battle of Hattin,
11:53which in turn led to the fall of Jerusalem, the fall of practically everything.
11:58So this place, on the eastern frontier, effectively, of the Kingdom, was left high and dry.
12:05It had to surrender. There was no point in it just going on to the bitter end.
12:10It would have ended up with just more deaths.
12:12Within months, most of the Christian-held castles fell to the Muslims.
12:18When the Christians returned just two years later, they needed a port.
12:23Acre, in the Holy Land's north, had fallen to Saladin along with almost everywhere else.
12:30The Third Crusade, led by, among others, Richard the Lionheart of England,
12:34recaptured the city in 1189.
12:38Jerusalem itself was never retaken.
12:40So Acre became the Crusaders' new capital.
12:44Much of the city as it appears today was rebuilt by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.
12:52But some parts remain from Crusader times.
12:55For a hundred years, Acre was the Crusader Kingdom's link to Western Europe.
13:01Most of its troops and supplies, not to mention pilgrims, entered the Holy Land here.
13:08For the military orders, too, it was an important base.
13:12Each of the main orders had a headquarters here.
13:16But Acre's value wasn't just as a military staging post.
13:21Its sheltered harbour was ideal for merchant shipping.
13:25The orders each had their own trading interests.
13:29And they, as much as the kingdom, needed the revenue from this to keep alive their holy war effort.
13:36In the 1990s, a discovery was made which offered a tantalising insight into the military orders in Acre.
13:44Beneath the streets of the old Crusader town, developers found a large network of tunnels, their purpose unknown.
13:53They took time to explore and even longer to unearth.
13:57The stonework was Crusader period.
14:01It wasn't until the layout of the tunnels was established that a clue was revealed as to who built them.
14:08These are the famous Templar tunnels running under a large part of the old city,
14:15from the harbour to where the Templars had their headquarters up the other end.
14:24Of all the military orders, the Templars attract more myths and rumours than any other.
14:31Stories emerged that the tunnels had been used for clandestine purposes or secret rituals.
14:37Professional historians' theories about the tunnels might not be so sensational, but they're no less fascinating.
14:45Seems much more likely to me that they were a very convenient way of bringing goods between the harbour
14:52to the main Templar centre and taking goods, indeed people, animals, whatever you wanted to move very conveniently.
15:01It's a private road.
15:03The fact that they were able to do this shows how wealthy and powerful they were.
15:08The tunnels extend for more than 300 metres and they would have been wide enough for supplies in large wagons,
15:16personnel or even cavalry.
15:18In the last chaotic days of Crusader rule, the tunnels might have offered a refuge or even an escape route.
15:26I think there's every good reason to believe the stories that they were used at the last siege of Acre
15:33in 1291.
15:34A few people escaped down to the harbour through here because, of course, above our heads in the old city,
15:41once the Mamluks had broken in and the city was going to fall, it would have been mayhem.
15:46Everybody trying to get down to the harbour to get aboard a ship to escape as best they could.
15:53People who had access to these tunnels were in a very, very lucky position.
15:57They could get down to the harbour.
15:58They probably had ships down there belonging to the Templars waiting for them.
16:02So, you know, this is a mark of prestige, these tunnels.
16:09When the Mamluks besieged the city, the Hospitallers, as well as the Templars and other military orders,
16:14were integral to its defence.
16:17They each had towers or points of the walls to defend.
16:20One by one, they were defeated.
16:23The Crusader city was mostly destroyed.
16:26The Templars' castle was the last to fall and it was obliterated.
16:32Most of the others, too, were gone.
16:34But one remains.
16:36Near the harbour, and like the Templar tunnel,
16:40much of it was buried under tons of earthen rumble.
16:43The sea had flooded and silted much of it.
16:47In the 1990s, Israeli archaeologists dug their way through this infill
16:52to explore what lay beneath.
16:55What they found astonished them.
16:58Incredibly, it was the castle of the Hospitallers, preserved almost intact.
17:04No one suspected so much of the medieval building still survived.
17:10Much of the complex was buried and built over after the Crusader period.
17:16Archaeologists were faced with the challenge of removing the rubble and earth, room by room.
17:22It's a task that British archaeologist Tim Sutherland can appreciate.
17:27In recent years, when this castle was reconstructed and, well, made safe again, basically,
17:32they emptied out all the rooms of all the rubble that had accumulated over, well, centuries.
17:37And there was all sorts of blocks and dust and dirt.
17:42They systematically cleaned out every room until we have what we see today.
17:47Some of it is still in its original condition, and it's never been cleaned.
17:51So there are huge parts of this building that have got huge amounts of archaeological rubble inside.
17:57It's pure archaeology right in front of our eyes.
17:59You can see all the archaeological layers as they've been deposited inside this big void.
18:04And you see the very broad brown band there with some big rocks in it.
18:09But also you can see some finer layers tipped in completely the opposite direction.
18:13And what's happening, people are bringing in barrow loads of rubbish from elsewhere.
18:16And it just builds up and builds up over the centuries
18:19until we've got this fantastic archaeological sort of display right in front of us.
18:23The painstaking work enables us now to see the Hospitaller stronghold
18:28as it may have appeared at the height of the Crusades.
18:31For a century, this was the Hospitaller's main base in the Holy Land.
18:36The enormous building conveys the power and wealth, not just of the Crusader state,
18:42but the independent military order that built it.
18:46We're now moving into the Hospitaller quarter.
18:49This is the part of the bustling medieval city and port of Acre,
18:55which belongs to the Hospitallers.
18:58There are other parts of the town that belong to the Italians or to the Templars.
19:03So each had their own area.
19:06Medieval Acre must have been a cosmopolitan place where East met West.
19:11And it's not just the Hospitallers here.
19:13You've got to remember that there's markets here, there's buying and selling.
19:19There's men, women, children, soldiers, merchants, animals, pack animals,
19:24full of noise, full of life, full of smells.
19:27Some of them very nice, exotic spices from the Orient,
19:30along with the silks and other valuable things that they're bringing from the East.
19:34In all, the complex is around 4,500 square metres.
19:39The central open courtyard lay under three to four metres of rubble fill.
19:45There were many rooms and even large halls.
19:48This wonderful space here, this hall, it's been identified as the refectory.
19:54That's where the Nightspot Hospitaller would have had their communal meals.
19:58And of course, the communal life is absolutely central to their ethos.
20:04The building of a team, to be quite honest, because they developed this very strong sense of brotherhood and identity.
20:12And the refectory and the communal meals would have contributed to that.
20:18You can imagine this place would never have been entirely quiet.
20:22There's always people coming and going, as there are today.
20:27This was the focus for all the Hospitallers' fundraising efforts back in Western Europe.
20:32And the site of their new medical facility, remembering the original hospital in Jerusalem.
20:38Again, it was not just for Christians, but for all the poor sick of whatever religion.
20:45In here, they would have their hospital, which is quite a structure by this time.
20:51The sounds from the city outside, perhaps chanting and prayers from the chapel, church bells and all the rest of
20:58it.
20:58This is never going to be a silent place.
21:02And in its strange religious way, very clearly military.
21:08These were serious guys.
21:13In the medieval world, especially in the Middle East, one of the most feared aspects of life was disease.
21:20With so many people living together, including the sick, the Hospitallers understood that hygiene had to be considered.
21:28You don't normally consider something so everyday when you look at a medieval castle in the Crusades.
21:34But here in Acre, the Hospitaller latrine is nothing short of epic.
21:41It's quite a spectacular building really, because not only are we in a huge vaulted hall, but we're in a
21:46multiple latrine building basically.
21:49So there's about 40 people could have used this at any one time.
21:54And we're talking about a big place out there that would have been full of hundreds of people.
21:57So there would have been a lot of people who needed to go to the toilet.
22:01Microbiology was still centuries ahead.
22:03But people knew enough to realise that human waste, if left, could become a problem.
22:09The design of the huge latrine was ingenious in dealing with this.
22:14Engineering wise, it's quite an interesting structure because the whole room slopes.
22:19So everything slopes down towards us here.
22:21And there'd be loads of seats on basically open pipes down into the room below.
22:25So everybody would be sitting here.
22:27And below us there's a massive vaulted room.
22:29And all this human waste would have gone straight down into this massive reservoir.
22:34And in there would have been everything that went through these holes.
22:38Now not only is there human waste, but there's everything that gets dropped down there.
22:42Just like today in the equivalent of mobile phones or whatever.
22:45Everything would have dropped into this hole.
22:47And you're certainly not going to go and get it back.
22:49Because it's a massive room full of human waste.
22:53So it went down there, you leave it there.
22:55Until the people went to clear it all out and put it on the fields or whatever they did with
22:59it.
22:59But beyond personal artifacts that might have been lost, archaeologists realized that there was a unique possibility here.
23:07The material inside the buried latrine had not been moved for centuries.
23:12The thought of excavating through layers of human waste isn't for everyone.
23:17But the results were to provide incredible insight into the lives of the medieval people who lived here.
23:25Piers Mitchell is a practicing medical doctor.
23:29But he's also a leading expert in paleopathology.
23:33He doesn't only study the material that archaeologists recover.
23:37The artifacts and bones.
23:39But the evidence of microorganisms.
23:42The bacteria preserved within them.
23:46When Piers heard of the excavations at Acre, he lent his expertise.
23:50It was rare to find a medieval latrine of this size that had been so well preserved, along with the
23:56material beneath it.
23:58So we've studied the soil that collected in the cistern underneath the latrines there.
24:05And the first thing we did was to look for the evidence of infectious diseases.
24:12Piers and his team were looking for evidence of intestinal parasitic worms.
24:18These lived in some of the food the Crusaders ate and digested before coming to rest down in the latrine.
24:25One of the reasons parasites are so good at spreading between humans is the survivability of their eggs.
24:33They have these tough walls around the eggs that allows them to be preserved for hundreds and often thousands of
24:39years.
24:40So they die after a year or two in the soil and become non-viable.
24:44But we can look at them down the microscope and identify the species of worms that were present in the
24:49people using the toilets.
24:51Because most species have different shaped eggs and different sized eggs.
24:54What Piers found opened up a fascinating but thought-provoking window into the everyday life of the medieval people here.
25:03We saw many eggs from roundworm and whipworm.
25:07These are parasitic worms that live in your intestines that are spread by feces contaminating your food or water.
25:14So generally if you're not washing your hands and if you're not cooking your food properly and so on, you
25:21can get reinfected with roundworm and whipworm.
25:23We also found the eggs of fish tapeworm, which is a parasite that's much more common in northern Europe.
25:29So it may well represent northern Europeans who came to the Holy Land and then used the latrines in acre.
25:37Fish would have been a major part of the diet of many people here along the Holy Land's coastline.
25:43Fish tapeworm is contracted by eating raw or undercooked fish.
25:48And in northern Europe in the medieval period it was common to have raw fish or smoked fish, pickled fish,
25:53salted fish and so on.
25:54Not necessarily cooked.
25:56And this would lead to a very long tapeworm, over 20 feet long.
26:00It would spiral around the insides of your intestines.
26:02And then they would release eggs into the feces and then if you went to the toilet by a lake
26:10where there were freshwater fish, then you can then restart the life cycle so that someone who then eats fish
26:15from that lake can get infected themselves.
26:19Parasites like these, along with dysentery, must have been a part of day-to-day life for most people in
26:25acre, crusaders or otherwise.
26:29All the military orders had to be able to care for their battle wounded.
26:34Despite their name, the Hospitallers were probably no more skilled at this than the Templars, Teutonic Knights or others.
26:41Like the Templars, the Hospitallers operated houses or convents in countries across Western Europe.
26:48Although somehow their presence may have been regarded as more benign than their fellow order.
26:55There were Hospitallers everywhere in Western Europe in the 13th century.
27:00The St Albans monk, Matthew Paris, who wrote about everything in Europe in the 13th century, said that they had
27:06far more manners than the Templars did.
27:09People were not always sure whose best interest the Templars served.
27:13Their own, it was suspected.
27:16By the early 14th century and their dissolution, all the Templars' vast estates and castles were forfeited.
27:23It was decreed by the Pope that their properties and lands across Europe and beyond should be given to the
27:30Hospitallers.
27:31But this wasn't always straightforward in some countries, including England.
27:37The handover from the Templars to the Hospitallers was not tidy.
27:42The King of England, it would appear, had wanted to keep those lands.
27:46King Edward II resisted for as long as he could.
27:49But even a King couldn't defy a papal decree.
27:53When the King had discovered he was going to have to give the Hospitallers something,
27:56he had instructed his keepers, either the sheriffs or their appointees,
28:00to clear everything out from the Templars' lands that moved and a few things that didn't.
28:04So all the cattle went, the sheep, all the stock, all the grain, everything growing in the fields, take it.
28:12Anything that's useful, just move it.
28:14So the Hospitallers walked into shells, buildings that had been allowed to fall down or things had been removed from.
28:20Nevertheless, one former Templar property the Hospitallers did eventually receive was the huge estate in southern England at Crescent.
28:30By the 1380s, the Order was holding its general chapter meetings here.
28:36And the enormous storage barns were collecting cash crops for the Order's own economic interests, not the King of England's.
28:46In England today, few other Hospitaller buildings now survive, at least as they appeared in medieval times.
28:54In central England, in the small village of Barrow-upon-Trent, there is one.
29:00It may once have been known as St. Helens or St. Luke's, but from the mid-1100s, it's been St.
29:08Wilfred's.
29:09The church is built on a promontory in the Trent Valley, and at the time of its building, it would
29:17have been the most important building in the area.
29:19It would have been seen from miles around.
29:21You could imagine that you were back in medieval times looking out from the church door, and we have a
29:26gargoyle.
29:27Very eroded, very faded, but I always imagine he must have seen so many things since he was put up
29:34there in the early medieval times.
29:35It would have been so interesting to hear his story.
29:39On any historic site, archaeologists have to try and understand stratigraphy, layers of evidence of human activity, beneath or above
29:49the surface.
29:51As an archaeologist, people normally consider what we do is just all under the ground.
29:56But the nice thing about an old historic building is that it's actually above the ground, and it's the same
30:01sort of stratigraphy.
30:03Obviously, the later things are usually on the top.
30:05But a building incorporates so many different aspects in terms of the walls and the structure and the roof, and
30:11even the floor.
30:14The church was built, we think, in Anglo-Saxon times, and we know it was given to the Knights Hospitallers.
30:22And it's been left as a purely a little rural country church since that time.
30:29St Wilfred's has some clues about its medieval past.
30:32Tim has come to see some of these for himself.
30:36I think the first thing you think of when you walk into a historic building like this is, you literally
30:42open the door, you get the creaking noise, and then it all opens up in front of you.
30:45And you never know quite what you're going to get, because every single church is different.
30:50At one time, this would have been the heart of the medieval village.
30:55It was originally the main building in the village. It was built as a stronghold, as a place for people
31:01to have markets.
31:02It was where they would have some sanctuary if there were any enemies around.
31:06It seems an echo of those turbulent times may still remain.
31:12One of the things I noticed as soon as I'm walking through the porch is, and it's quite common,
31:17are there are lots of little grooves carved in the walls.
31:20They're similar to markings found on some other churches in Britain.
31:25No one really knows what they are, but there's a theory that might explain them.
31:30When you consider that the hospitalers were a military order,
31:33we would assume that there would have been always some sort of military presence around the area, just by who
31:40they were.
31:40It does look like somebody's been sharpening blades and weapons.
31:46And sometimes you wonder whether this is to impart religious protection onto the implement they're about to use.
31:53So are they about to go to war?
31:55And they bring their knife or their blade or their weapon sword to the church,
31:59and then just hone it down a little bit just before they head off somewhere.
32:04And that's, psychologically, that may be a little bit more protection for them.
32:09The Victorians added a pulpit and pews, but some of the features and carvings are as they would have been
32:16in hospital at times.
32:17The church itself is full of little treasures that we've found over the years.
32:22I think the biggest one is probably our effigy, which is an early, very early, 1300s, 1340s, alabaster effigy of
32:32a priest.
32:33It may be a man called John de Belton, who came down from Crake in Durham, to help the hospitalers
32:39to develop the church.
32:41We have lots of grave slabs with the Knights Hospitaller grave markings on them.
32:46Anne Heathcote and the friends of St Wilfrid's plan to return the church to its original open plan, removing some
32:54of the Victorian features.
32:55So it will soon once more become the central meeting place and heart of the village, just as it was
33:02in Hospitaller times.
33:03What we want to do is to reclaim it as our community building for the whole of the village and
33:09for the whole of this area and anywhere else who wants to use it.
33:13But one intriguing feature will be preserved, a small hand-drawn image of a medieval warrior and the shield of
33:23the Knights Hospitaller.
33:24Some people have suggested it's Victorian graffiti.
33:28The drawing, which is near to the effigy, appears to show an early medieval knight in armour.
33:37I am told it's original, but it is intriguing.
33:42This is one of the real gems of the church and it would be nice to think that this is
33:47original.
33:49It does look like a 14th century knight. It's got the correct helmet, it's got the right spear, it's got
33:55the right outfit and also it's got what appears to be a hospital across on the shield.
34:00So this is just one of the other conundrums that's typical of this church. There are so many questions you
34:05can ask.
34:05I love these things. I think they're fantastic. And somebody's had a go at copying them. Obviously these are in
34:11pencil and they're nowhere near as good, even though they're relatively modern.
34:14So this is the interesting aspect of it. Is this original? Is it showing a Knight's contemporary with this part
34:24of the church, this phase of the church? And in which case, who was it and what does it represent?
34:30Of all the medical ailments, the hospitalers had to deal with in communities. One carried more dread than almost any
34:38other.
34:38Leprosy is certainly a disease which is feared and it's a disease which cannot be cured. And to that extent,
34:46it is one that inspires terror in many people.
34:49Leprosy was among the worst healthcare problems in the Holy Land and Europe throughout the Crusader period. And yet in
34:57an age rife with disease, it was not even the deadliest.
35:01There were many other diseases that were much more likely to kill you. So it would be much worse to
35:07have tuberculosis than to have leprosy. And they're very similar bacterial organisms.
35:12Leprosy doesn't normally kill you, as tuberculosis is very good at doing that.
35:16It was more how leprosy seemed to attack the things that made us human. Outwardly, at least.
35:23Because leprosy affects your face in a significant proportion of people, and it can make you go blind, it can
35:31cause ulcers and cause numbness in the hands and the feet, leading to difficulty mobilising.
35:39All these things mean that it was a very chronic and socially debilitating disease.
35:44The social consequences of leprosy are still prevalent in society today.
35:49It's now known as Hansen's disease, and it's treated relatively simply with antibiotics.
35:57But in medieval times, it was barely understood.
36:00So by the time you get to the late 13th and 14th centuries, people have a pretty good idea of
36:07what we today would call Hansen's disease.
36:10Whereas in the past, before that time, it might have been very, very hard actually to distinguish someone, say, with
36:19leprosy from a really bad case of, say, psoriasis, skin cancer or other problems.
36:25In a society before microbiology, people sought other explanations for the disease.
36:31There are different views in medieval Europe, expressed at different times and in different places, about leprosy.
36:39But some religious views about leprosy explained the punishment of the facial disfiguration as a gift from God, as a
36:49way of atoning for your sins while you were still alive, so that you could then go straight to heaven
36:54when you died, instead of having to atone for your sins after death, with a concept of purgatory, which was
37:01developing in the medieval period.
37:02The Bible told the story of the humble Lazarus, who suffered terribly in life, but who was then rewarded instantly
37:11in heaven.
37:12Whereas his tormentor, Dives, was condemned to purgatory.
37:16The parallel between Lazarus and Christ was clear to the medieval church.
37:22Medieval society places enormous emphasis on caring for the leper, because the leper is like Christ.
37:30The leper is a member of the body of Christ.
37:35And if you don't care for that individual, as Dives failed to care for Lazarus, then you yourself are going
37:43to be condemned to a long period in purgatory or even hell.
37:47So caring for the leper has a spiritual dimension.
37:52And people found leper hospitals with this concept at the back of their mind.
37:58There'd been a hospital or leprosarium outside Jerusalem since the 11th century.
38:04And in the 12th, the Order of St. Lazarus was set up dedicated to the care of people with leprosy.
38:11Many of its brothers, but not all, were often sufferers of the disease themselves.
38:17And, like the Hospitallers and Templars, the Knights of Lazarus took their place on the battlefields of the Holy Land.
38:24Because of the very nature of their condition, they were pretty fearless people.
38:30And in several battles, they all got wiped out because they thought, what could possibly be better than fighting a
38:36holy war?
38:37I don't have to think about my own life. I can fight until they kill me.
38:41And so there was a time when there were very few people in the Order of St. Lazarus left who
38:47had leprosy.
38:48So people from Europe who didn't have leprosy started joining the Order of St. Lazarus as a sign of tremendous
38:56piety.
38:56So it was regarded as even more spiritually intense.
39:00The late 13th century was a fateful time for all the military orders.
39:07In 1291, the Mamluk armies took Acre and the Holy Land fell back under Muslim control.
39:14Never again did Christian Crusaders return to try to recapture Jerusalem.
39:20Nor did any of the military orders.
39:231291 was a disaster for the military orders because that was their vocation and they lost it.
39:28And also the shock that they'd been fighting for God and yet they had lost.
39:32So is that because we're sinners? It's because the West didn't support us?
39:36The Hospitallers and the other military orders were forced to consider how to adapt
39:41and decide where next to wage their holy war in Christ's name.
39:45Some, like the Teutonic Knights, took an entirely different direction, northwards, to battle against the pagans of Prussia and Lithuania.
39:55The Hospitallers, though, realised they needed security and independence from a host kingdom which might turn the tables on them,
40:02just as the Templars had been undone by the French monarchy decades before.
40:08A large island in the Aegean Sea was to provide that independence.
40:12In 1310, the Hospitallers captured Rhodes.
40:17To do this they fought other Christians of the Eastern Byzantine Church.
40:22But they justified their actions as being necessary in order to continue their fight against the Muslims.
40:29The order was to call Rhodes home for more than 200 years.
40:34In 1480, they successfully withstood attack by an enormous Ottoman army of 160 ships and 70,000 men.
40:44Not only did they manage to defeat the attackers, they also managed to turn it into a fantastic propaganda victory
40:52back in the rest of Latin Christendom.
40:55The Hospitallers circulated their own account of the siege, helped by new technology, printing.
41:02The victory helped to justify their ongoing role.
41:06And of course, keep the donations coming in.
41:10Western Europe must have lapped up this account of what real knights could do,
41:15determine soldiers of God fighting against enormous odds and saving the city.
41:22This is perfect chivalry.
41:24For a time at least, the spectre of the loss of the Holy Land was laid.
41:30It shows God's fighting for us.
41:31Because of course, 1291, it seemed that God wasn't fighting for them, because they'd been defeated.
41:36Now they're saying God is fighting for us again.
41:38We are obviously doing the right thing. God is on our side this time.
41:42This time we're going to win.
41:44The Order could bask in their victory for a few decades.
41:48But when the Ottoman armies came again in 1522, the Order of St John was not so blessed.
41:55And it found itself homeless once more.
41:58Some organisations which exist today claim to have lineage back to the Orders of the Crusades.
42:05Some of the medical orders that were set up during the Crusades, such as the Order of St John and
42:10the Order of St Lazarus,
42:11have still kept on their medical role.
42:14There has been an eye hospital in Jerusalem run by the Order of St John for many years.
42:19The Order of St Lazarus has morphed and evolved over time, but they're still involved with the concept of caring
42:27for people with leprosy today.
42:29And so you can see how some of these orders for over eight centuries have now continued the concept of
42:36medical care which they were originally set up to do.
42:40The most well-known descendant of the Hospitallers to this day maintains a vital healthcare role in Britain and Europe.
42:50The St John's Ambulance Brigade is rooted in, it is a descendant of the Hospitallers, the medieval Hospitallers.
43:00And in fact, as the modern St John's Ambulance Brigade developed, I think it was quite a conscious decision to
43:10emphasise the heraldry,
43:13the imagery, which harked back to the medieval origins. It gives them one heck of a heritage.
43:21The Hospitallers cared for the poor sick. They cared for people who needed to be cared for.
43:26They were there when they were needed, and they're still there when they're needed.
43:29So they do continue the tradition of the medieval order.
43:43The St John's Ambulance Brigade
43:43The St John's Ambulance Brigade
44:12Transcription by CastingWords
Comentários