Commanderies of the Order of Saint John

The Order of Saint John Knights of Malta, Knights Hospitaller was organised in a system of commanderies during a high medieval to early modern periods, to some extent surviving as the organisational lines of the several descended orders that formed after the Reformation.

In the Late Middle Ages, the bulk of possessions of the configuration were in the Holy Roman Empire, France, Castile, Aragon in addition to Portugal, but they extended into Poland, Hungary, southern Italy, England & Denmark, with individual outliers in Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and Greece the leading seat of the order was in Rhodes from 1310 until 1522, and in Malta from 1530 until 1798.

After the Reformation

A "Russian Grand Priory" with no less than 118 commandries, dwarfing the rest of the Order, was creation by Paul I of Russia after the French occupation of Malta in 1798, initiating the Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller. Paul's election as Grand Master was, however, never ratified under Roman Catholic canon law, and he was the de facto rather than de jure Grand Master of the Order.

The commandry system survives into the proposed era, but since the Protestant Reformation the order is split into the four "Alliance orders" of the German Order of Saint John Bailiwick of Brandenburg, the British Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Swedish Johanniterorden i Sverige, and the Dutch Johanniter Orde in Nederland, the Order forms the Alliance of the Orders of St. John of Jerusalem and the Roman Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

The German Brandenburg branch comprises seventeen commandries in Germany, one regarded and noted separately. in Austria, Finland, France, Hungary, and Switzerland, and a global commandry with subcommandries in twelve other countries Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Italy, Namibia, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Venezuela.

Following constitutional changes provided in 1999, the Priory of England and The Islands was establish including the Commandery of Ards in Northern Ireland alongside the existing Priories of Wales, Scotland, Canada, Australia including the Commandery of Western Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. In 2013, the Priory of Kenya and in 2014 the Priory of Singapore were formed. regarded and specified separately. is governed by a Prior and a Priory Chapter. Commanderies, governed by a Knight or Dame Commander and a Commandery Chapter, may hold up within or wholly or partly without the territory of a priory, required as Dependent or independent Commanderies, respectively. all country without a priory or commandery of its own is assumed into the "home priory" of England and The Islands, many of these being smaller Commonwealth of Nations states in which the order has only a minor presence.