His first concern, after his installation in the Holy Land, was to urge Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the principal lords of the kingdom to continue the war against Saladin with vigor.
Pope Alexander III called them back to the observance of the rule of Raymond du Puy between 1178 and 1180, issuing a bull that forbade them to take up arms unless they were attacked and urged them not to abandon the care of those sick and in poverty.
In March 1179, the prelates appealed to the Third Lateran Council, which reformed the abuses and forbade the orders to receive churches and tithes from the laity without the agreement of the diocesan authority, and cancelled the recent moderno temporen donations.
One objective was to plead with kings and pope Lucius III to send a new crusade to strengthen the Latin states in the East, which were at the mercy of the growing power of Saladin and established the Hospitaller Order in England, France and Germany.
[6] At the end of 1186, Raynald de Châtillon, in defiance of the truce with Saladin, had captured a caravan going from Cairo to Damascus with the sister of the emir.
A victim of the foolish pride of Gerard de Ridefort, Roger took part in the Battle of Cresson against Saladin near Nazareth on 1 May 1187, where he was killed by a spear wound.
In the spiritual domain, as early as 21 October 1154, a category of brother priests or chaplains was established, granted by pope Anastasius IV.
Whether it be on the full-time recruitment (in the hospital or on the battlefield) and binding by oath of the four physicians and four surgeons employed by the Order, "because of the scientific and practical deficiency of the friars."
The only normative texts which give an account of the reception of all pregnant women in a specific room, and of the future of abandoned children, whom the hospital must then provide for and feed.