Master of the Order of the Hospital (1177-1187).
Roger was a member of the order in Outremer by March 1175 and master two years later. He traveled to the West twice: to Sicily on Hospitaller business in April 1179, and again in 1184 as part of a delegation soliciting help against Saladin. In 1183 he and the Hospitallers fought against Sal-adin with the army of Jerusalem under the regent, Guy of Lusignan. Roger witnessed Baldwin IV’s will in 1185, which named the king’s nephew (Baldwin V) as heir and appointed Count Raymond III of Tripoli as regent.
After Baldwin V died in 1186, Baldwin IV’s sister Sibyl claimed the throne, flouting the terms of the will. Roger supported the faction in the kingdom (led by Raymond) that was opposed to Sibyl and her husband, Guy of Lusignan; at their coronation in Jerusalem, he refused to surrender his key to the treasury containing the royal crowns, finally throwing it away. It was retrieved by Gerard of Ridefort, the master of the Temple, and the coronation proceeded. Roger was killed fighting against Saladin’s troops at the battle at the springs of Cresson (1 May 1187). Roger’s death left the Hospitallers without a master until the election of Warner of Nablus, former prior of England and grand commander of France, in 1189.
-Theresa M. Vann
Bibliography
Ligato, Giuseppe, “II magister ospedaliero Ruggiero des Moulins nella crisi finale del regno latino di Gerusalemme (1182-1187),” Antonianum: Periodicum philosophico-theologicum trimestre 71 (1996), 495-522.
Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The Knights of St. John in Jerusalem and Cyprus (London: St. Martin’s, 1967).
Sire, H. J. A., The Knights of Malta (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
World History
