In 1967 Jonathan Riley-Smith began a distinguished scholarly career with the publication of The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c. 1050–1310. Forty-five years later he has returned to the same theme, indeed to the same manuscript, with the publication of the book under review. It is more than second edition of that earlier volume, but it is also less than a new book. Rather, it is a thorough rewriting of The Knights of St John – the material has been carefully rearranged, the scholarly apparatus updated, and new information scattered throughout. But for all these changes and updates, it is recognisably the same book. The question to be answered, then, is whether the 2012 Knights Hospitaller represents a significant improvement on the 1967 Knights of St John. In terms of scholarship and its evidentiary base, it does. As a self-contained book, however, it falls short of the standards of the original work.

The most obvious change from the book's earlier incarnation is that the author has significantly rearranged the chapters. The chronological narrative section, which opened the original volume and contained roughly 40 percent of its content, now falls into two different sections, one at the beginning of The Knights Hospitaller and one at the end. Between these two parts Riley-Smith has inserted more analytical chapters examining the legal, economic and spiritual movements characteristic of the Hospitallers. The arrangement makes a certain dramatic sense, since the book now ends with the fall of Acre and the order's relocation first to Cyprus and then to Rhodes. In terms of overall presentation, however, it seems to have created more problems than it solves. Readers new to the Hospitallers – the audience for whom the book is clearly intended – will encounter unfamiliar concepts and ideas introduced into the text long before they are explained. The frequent use of phrases such as ‘as we shall see’ indicates that the author was not unaware of the problem. This separation of the narrative from the analytical material leads to interpretive problems, too. The fascinating presentation in the book's central chapters of attempts to reform the order around 1300 occurs independently of what was surely their most immediate impetus: the loss of Acre in 1291.

As for the narrative itself, the first four chapters of The Knights Hospitaller present the history of the order from its foundation before the First Crusade to 1244, the year that the Frankish armies in the Levant suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of La Forbie. The story of the Hospitallers, however, is only one aspect of the larger history of the Frankish Levant, and for most of the twelfth century – at least in Riley-Smith's retelling – not a very important part of that history. The Hospital, he argues, only embraced its military calling gradually, a process that reached its culmination perhaps as late as 1206, when they adopted the Statutes of Margat (pp. 50–1). Even then, Riley-Smith stresses, their order was never as martial in outlook as the Templars'. Rather, the Hospitallers sought to maintain a balance between two distinct callings: first, the provision of medical care for sick and poor pilgrims, and second, the defence of the crusader states. Throughout the twelfth century, it was the former occupation that predominated.

Riley-Smith makes this case most directly and aggressively in the second part of the book, entitled ‘The mission’. Substantively, the two chapters in this section represent the monograph's most innovative moments, particularly chapter v, ‘Nursing the sick and burying the dead’. It is an earnest plea by the author for readers to view the Hospitallers not primarily as warriors but rather as caregivers. Conceptually, the knights saw themselves as serfs, ruled over by the poor and the sick, and ‘in their loving respect for the poor the Hospitallers foreshadowed the Franciscans’ (p. 69). It is a note that Riley-Smith, who is himself a member of the Order of St John, sounds periodically throughout the text, and an idea that students of the crusades – not to mention historians of the mendicant orders – will find difficult to accept. One might legitimately wonder whether Riley-Smith's experience of the modern Knights of St John might have trumped his historical judgment, leading to observations such as this one: ‘I am inclined to believe, in fact, that until 1270 [the Hospitallers] were spending almost as much on acts of mercy as they were on warfare’ (p. 80). One might wonder as well whether Riley-Smith has given full due to the order's critics, such as Gerhoh of Reichersberg (who famously learned to view the entire crusading enterprise with deep scepticism).

On the positive side, the book is clearly and cogently presented. Characteristic of the author's previous work, almost all of the arguments are supported in endnotes with multiple references to primary materials, using the most recent published versions of sources and drawing on the most recent historiography. In the text itself Riley-Smith occasionally enters into dialogue with his colleagues, sometimes modifying his original ideas, sometimes standing by his original positions. One does wish that a book such as this one, intended as an introduction to its topic, had preserved the illustrations from the original volume and perhaps had expanded upon them with photos of the ongoing archaeological digs at Acre – surely one of the most picturesque survivals from the medieval world. On the whole, however, The Knights Hospitaller succeeds best in that it reminds readers just how good the original book remains. Had The Knights of St John simply been reissued – with an updated bibliography and a new chapter stressing the pastoral role of the Hospital – it would have proved a far more compelling publication. Students of the crusades will none the less appreciate the opportunity to see again the world of the Hospitallers through the eyes of that order's most eloquent and enthusiastic chronicler.