conquest of any enemy with whom their sovereign might become embroiled. Further development of almost all orders of knighthood is one of monotonous regularity. Those which did not become extinct were completely secularized, some during the course of the Reformation and others during the French Revolution. The latter abolished all orders of knighthood in France, but in 1802 Napoleon re-established an order of knighthood—that of the Legion of Honor. It was merely an order of merit, and served as a model not only for the newer but also reverted upon the older still existing orders. A few orders of knighthood did not become reduced to mere orders of merit and did retain a link with the Church. These include the Order of Malta, that of the Teutonic Knights, the Holy Sepulchre, and the Iberian military orders, which will be the subject of the subsequent articles. THE ECCLESIASTICAL ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD Part II THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM This order, also called the Order of Rhodes and more widely known as the Order of Malta, from the locations of its headquarters after it was forced to leave the Holy Land, is the oldest order of knighthood in existence, antedating even that of the Order of the Garter by more than two hundred years. It is also the most illustrious and meritorious of the religious military orders. Its origin goes back to the hospital for Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem, established in the first half of the 11th century by a group of merchantmen from Amalfi, Italy. When the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 the hospital was headed by a layman named Gerard whose birthplace is variously given as Martiques in Provence, Amalfi in southern Italy and Tonco in Piedmont, all in line with the respective nationality of the historians who wrote his life.[4] This saintly man organized the hospital staff into a community of lay brothers for whom he drew up appropriate constitutions which were approved in 1113 by Pope Paschal II. The fraternity became known as the Hospitallers of St. John, after the patron saint of the church which was attached to the hospital. This patron was St. John the Almoner, Patriarch of Alexandria, who had provided the means for rebuilding the churches of the Resurrection and of Calvary in Jerusalem. Later the Hospitallers adopted the better known St. John the Baptist as their patron saint.