Obverse: + FRATЄR: FVLCO: CVSTOS, Grand Master, kneeling left with a patriarchal cross on the left, flanked by an alpha and omega.

Reverse: + HOSPITALIS: IHЄRVSALЄM, interior view of the Holy Sepulchre.

Diameter: 42 mm. Weight: 42.9 g. [Jerusalem, circa 1305-1309].

An extremely rare magisterial bulla of the Grand Master Foulques de Villaret of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem also known as the Knights Hospitaller. Foulques was a native of Languedoc-Roussillon, France, and was the 25th Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. Under his leadership they successfully conquered Rhodes, in the years 1308 and 1309. Other islands were also taken, including the Anatolian port of Halicarnassus and the island of Kastellorizo. Foulques then moved the Orders headquarters from Jerusalem to Rhodes. During his reign the Hospitallers benefitted greatly from the suppression of the Knights Templar - the Templars' assets were assigned to the Hospitallers by the Pope in 1312. Unfortunately for Foulques – he proved an unpopular leader. After an assassination attempt by his own men in 1317, he fled to Lindos – having to formally resign in 1319.

The origin of the Hospitallers lies in an 11th century hospital founded in Jerusalem by Italian merchants from Amalfi, to care for sick and poor pilgrims. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the hospital’s superior, a monk named Gerard, intensified his work in Jerusalem and founded hostels in Provençal and Italian cities on the route to the Holy Land. The order was formally named and recognized on February 15, 1113, in a papal bull issued by Pope Paschal II. Raymond de Puy, who succeeded Gerard in 1120, substituted the Augustinian rule for the Benedictine and began building the power of the organization. It acquired wealth and lands and combined the task of tending the sick with defending the Crusader kingdom. By the second half of the 12th century the Order had established itself as a reliable source of well-armed and well-trained knights immensely useful to Crusader armies - especially from the Third Crusade 1187-1192 onwards when they often formed the flanks of armies on the battlefield. Indeed, the great Muslim leader Saladin offered a bounty to any man who took a Hospitaller prisoner; such was their importance to the Crusader armies. Along with the Templars, the Hospitallers became the most formidable military order in the Holy Land.

The Grand Master's seal was attached by a thread to all official documents issued by the Order to authenticate them. In the heat of the Mediterranean wax seals were likely to soften and break and so seals were generally made of lead instead, and were known as bullae. According to Colonel E. J. King, the Master's bull, or 'Great Seal', produced for the sealing of official documents, was probably in use from at least 1113, when Pope Pascal II confirmed the foundation of The Order of St. John. They continued to be produced until the 19th century, their design altering little over this period.

On the obverse of this seal, the Master of the Hospital is depicted facing left, kneeling in prayer before a patriarchal cross. Next to the cross are marked the letters alpha and omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet and symbols of the eternity of Christ and God. There is Latin inscription around the edge which reads: + FRATЄR: FVLCO: CVSTOS - naming Brother Fulco - while Custos is the Latin root of our English word ‘custodian’ and was used on all great seals to describe the role of the Grand Master.

On the reverse of this seal is the body of a dead man on a mattress or a bier (a movable frame on which a coffin or a corpse is placed before burial or cremation). He is wrapped in swaddling with a cross at his head. He is lying beneath an architectural feature formed of three domes. There is a lamp hanging from the middle one and a censer is swinging over the dead man’s feet. The Latin inscription reads: HOSPITALIS: IHERVSALEM: Jerusalem Hospital. Jerusalem was the location of the Order’s first hospital, where they cared for pilgrims who had come to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site at which Christ is believed to have been crucified and buried, and to have risen.

An extremely rare example of a lead bulla dating from the time of the Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes and the dissolution of the Templars – even the British Museum don’t have one in their collection! Excellent condition with clear details.