The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta (SMOM), known also as The Knights Hospitallers, the Knights of St. John, the Knights of Rhodes, the Knights of Malta, and about a dozen variations thereon, is a Roman Catholic religious order and the oldest and perhaps most important of the three great orders of crusading knights, the other two being The Knights Templar and The Teutonic Knights.
In popular culture, the Knights Hospitallers are much less used than their brother orders, the Templars and The Teutonic Knights. They tend to be used more as local color, their distinctive habits adding a note of pageantry to a historical setting. When they do appear, they are apt to appear as gentler, more likable figures than those other knights.
Media[]
- David Thewlis plays a nameless but profound Hospitaller in Kingdom of Heaven. At various points he is implied to be an angel. Some extended material calls him Brother John. Which tells us next to nothing, other than that he bears the same name as the Saint upon which the Order is based, fueling the angelic implication further. In the DVD commentary screenwriter William Monahan outright conforms his nature:
- In The Maltese Falcon: They were the original owners of The Black Bird.
- A sort of appearance in the Belisarius Series. The military religious order founded by Michael of Macedonia on the suggestion of Aide are called the Knights Hospitaller most of the time, though the imagery used (especially the red cross on white) is usually that of the Knights Templar. One edition even slips up and calls them Templars in one instance.