the capture of the city by the Crusaders the Eastern Christians were gradually returned. Gerard remained behind with some fellow serving brothers to tend to the sick in the hospital. After the success of the First Crusade and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Gerard continued his work at the hospital, now under vastly more beneficent conditions. Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, gave some property to the hospital, and his successor Baldwin I of Jerusalem granted it one-tenth of the spoils of a victory at the Battle of Ramla in 1101. Also in 1101, Roger Borsa, Duke of Apulia, gave a gift of 1000 bezants to Dagobert of Pisa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, with the specification that one third of the gift was to go to the hospital. The patriarch unfortunately kept the gift for himself, contributing to his downfall. By 1113, the hospital was a wealthy and powerful organisation within the kingdom of Jerusalem, and Gerard expanded its operations far beyond the limits of the city, establishing daughter hospitals at Bari, Otranto, Taranto, Messina, Pisa, Asti and Saint-Gilles, placed strategically along the pilgrim route to Jerusalem. The hospital soon overshadowed the abbey of St. Mary of the Latins, which was still its nominal parent organisation, and it may be that because of this, it was deemed appropriate to establish the hospital as a sovereign entity in its own right. This happened in 1113, when Pope Paschal II in Pie Postulatio Voluntatis recognised the hospital as a new religious order. The brothers serving in the hospital were now known as the Hospitallers of St John, and Gerard as the Rector of the Hospital. The Order adopted a rule that adopted components from the Rule of St Benedict and the Rule of St Augustine. The order was now independent, subject only to the papacy (and no longer subject to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem), and free to elect Gerard's successor, and free to receive and own property. Gerard lived for another seven years. He died in his seventies on 3 September, between 1118 and 1121. He was succeeded by Raymond du Puy. Legacy and veneration The order continued to flourish under Raymond, who first used the title of Grand Master after Roger II of Sicily used this address in letters to Raymond. It was also Raymond who militarised the order. According to descriptions of the operations of