中古盛期的歐洲對招呼和款待旅人，給予食宿歇腳的方便已建立了一個源遠流長的傳統，因為有實際上的需要，所以產生了款待旅客的主保聖人這種觀念。那時候，款客和慈善的機構多為修道院所附設的療養院，起初它們的任務較單純，而且很少有收容病患的。到了1070年以後，由僧侶於耶路撤冷所成立的聖約翰療養院開始運作，不只照顧朝聖者，也招呼貧困潦倒的旅客和等待求濟的窮苦人家；十字軍的興起之後，更廣事收容照料傷病。因此到了十二世紀之後，歐洲的療養院正式具備了公益性質的醫院功能，成為聖約翰療養院於各地的分支或模仿機構。本文介紹聖約翰療養院從簡單的慈善收容所過渡到綜合性的醫院和收容所的轉變，而該院的正式團員稱為Hospitallers；又因為配合十字軍征戰的關係，部份團員以參戰的騎士面目出現各地，尤其專門對付伊斯蘭軍隊。此外，文章亦分析聖約翰療養院所從事的項目，其實含有奠基於基督教對人性尊嚴和基本權利的肯定，故而有哀矜、社會公益、平等待遇的做法；就這幾點宗精神而言，正好補下德希達在討論款客哲待時只看到其中政治權力鬥爭的對立，而不願面對的消弭緊張之宗教和諧動力之推己及人的愛的彰顯。

During the High Middle Ages, Europe started its hospitality programs to provide accommodations to travelers, pilgrims and occasionally people who fell ill. Consequently, the partron saint of travelers was given birth to in order to cope with such needs and desire. Hospice institutions initially were mostly subsidiaries of monasteries and they rarely functioned as infirmaries. After 1070, however, when St. John of Jerusalem Hospital began its operation, not only were pilgrims taken care of, but the poor were given alms and the ill were attentively treated. With the rise of the Crusades, the wounded, too, were taken care of by St. John’s Hospital. After the 12th century, therefore, hospitals throughout Europe served the charity and infirmary functions, patterning after St. John of Jerusalem Hospital. This article introduces the transition of St. John’s from its charity capacity to infirmary and acute hospital accommodations; members of the institution are then called Hospitallers. Later on, some of the Hospitallers assumed the acts of chivalric knights, specifically functioning to fight against the Islamic soldiers, including human dignity, basic human rights as according to the teaching of Christian love, hence the extended ideas of misericordia, social commonwealth and egalitarianism. Such religious fraternity, in stark contrast to Derrida’s notion of hospitality based on power struggle, manifests the harmonizing effect and the neighborliness of the Christian belief.