The Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, to give it its full title, is today, as the final chapter indicates, perhaps more active and certainly more widespread than at any time in its 900 years’ history. It seemed at that moment that the Order had reached its conclusion, yet the story continues to relate its survival and then its almost miraculous renewal in the twentieth century.Įrnle Bradford has written a concise and moving history of the Order of St John and not the least of his achievements is to have included all the essential facts within the narrow space of some 300 pages.

We follow the saga of the great sieges of Rhodes and of Malta, to end, alas, in the cession of the island to Napoleon, the darkest hour in the history of the Knights of St John. The military progress and prowess of the Knights Hospitaller of St John, as they were then known, is recorded with historical accuracy while in every chapter the golden thread of the Order’s unwavering fidelity to its saintly founder’s injunction: ‘to care for our Lords the sick and our Lords the poor’ is always present. Anyone who undertakes to write the history of the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta is at once faced with formidable difficulties: for indeed the history of this illustrious Order is in the large part the history of the Mediterranean covering some 700 years, not to mention the activities of the Order in other parts of Europe and the New World: thus from its earliest beginnings in the eleventh century until the present day-a span of more than 900 years!Įrnle Bradford has already given evidence of this scholarship in his previous books, The Great Siege and Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea, and it is not surprising, therefore, that in his latest book The Shield and The Sword he has once again demonstrated his skill as a narrator and his integrity as an historian.įrom the very first pages we sense the thrill and drama of these medieval Knights who were members of a religious order, with their heroic courage, their idealism, their profound Christianity and inevitably their human weaknesses.

The shield and the sword ernle bradford