The book is the first to comprehensively explore the history of one of the oldest spiritual and knightly orders of the Catholic Church - the Order of the Hospitallers, or St. John's. Nowadays it is widely known under the name of the Order of Malta. His fate was intertwined not only with the history of Palestine, the Byzantine Empire, and many states of Western Europe, but at the end of the 18th century with the fate of the Russian Empire, when Russian Emperor Paul I became the 72nd Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Most recently, celebrations were held in Europe to mark the 900th anniversary of the Order of the Hospitallers, but it turns out that it has an older history. This topic is raised for the first time in Russian historical literature. The book is intended for specialists, students and graduate students of humanities faculties of universities, as well as a wide range of readers, whom it will introduce to the unknown side of the history of the East, Byzantium and the West.