THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM
This order, also called the Order of Rhodes and more widely known as the
Order of Malta, from the locations of its headquarters after it was
forced to leave the Holy Land, is the oldest order of knighthood in
existence, antedating even that of the Order of the Garter by more than
two hundred years. It is also the most illustrious and meritorious of
the religious military orders. Its origin goes back to the hospital for
Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem, established in the first half of the
11th century by a group of merchantmen from Amalfi, Italy. When the
crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 the hospital was headed by a layman
named Gerard whose birthplace is variously given as Martiques in
Provence, Amalfi in southern Italy and Tonco in Piedmont, all in line
with the respective nationality of the historians who wrote his life.[4]
This saintly man organized the hospital staff into a community of lay
brothers for whom he drew up appropriate constitutions which were
approved in 1113 by Pope Paschal II. The fraternity became known as the
Hospitallers of St. John, after the patron saint of the church which was
attached to the hospital. This patron was St. John the Almoner,
Patriarch of Alexandria, who had provided the means for rebuilding the
churches of the Resurrection and of Calvary in Jerusalem. Later the
Hospitallers adopted the better known St. John the Baptist as their
patron saint.
Whereas Gerard was the founder of the Order of St. John, his successor
Raymond du Puy, a knight from Provence, became its organizer. While he
was Master of the Hospital (1120-60), the community, although continuing
its hospital work, began also to engage in services of a military
character. The military duties consisted at first in providing armed
protection for the sick and the poor and military escorts for the
pilgrims. Soon the brotherhood took part in the defense of the Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem and in the battles against the Moslems and thus
became a full-fledged military order. But the order never forsook its
humble beginnings; its militarization only added a new objective to its
activities, as expressed in the age-old motto: _Obsequium pauperum et
tuitio fidei_—service of the poor and protection of the faith.
During the process of militarization three classes of brothers
developed: the knights who led in the fighting and held most of the
higher administrative functions at headquarters and in the other houses
of the order; the chaplains who took care of the spiritual needs of the
other members of the order and of the patients in the hospitals; the
sergeants-at-arms, who were the serving brothers. In the beginning,
persons not belonging to the military aristocracy or nobility could
enter the class of knights, but as from Master Hugh Revel (1258-77) the
rule was laid down that such as desired to be admitted as knights should
prove nobility on both father’s and mother’s side. When occasionally a
few knights were received into the order who were not fully qualified
with regard to their armorial bearings, they were called
Knights-of-Grace (admitted by favor) in contrast to the duly qualified
members who were called Knights-of-Justice, a distinction which has
prevailed until recently.
The number of professed knights was always quite limited, scarcely in
excess of 500 or 600 knights. Since the order was essentially a lay
organization, the number of professed priests always remained very
small. The professed chaplains served mainly in the Convent, that is,
the general headquarters of the order, and were therefore called
Conventual Chaplains. The _cura animarum_ in the houses outside the
Convent was for the most part exercised by priests who did not belong to
the order, but were engaged by the order according to its needs; since
they were throughout the time of office under the jurisdiction of the
grand master they were called Chaplains of Magistral Obedience.
The professed sergeants-at-arms assisted the knights; they were at first
quite important and numerous but eventually almost completely faded out
of the picture, being replaced by hired help. In fact, the knights
employed a considerable number of men for all their enterprises, both
charitable and military: physicians and other personnel in the hospital
were engaged on a paid basis, the soldiers who formed the body of the
order’s army were mercenary troops as were the sailors on their fleet in
the days of Rhodes and Malta.
At the top of this hierarchical pyramid stood the Master. His official
title, ever since the days of Blessed Gerard, was Master of the
Hospital. Although often referred to, even in earlier days, as the Grand
Master, he did not formally assume the latter title until 1489. After
the order had settled on Malta, the Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt
(1601-1622) was given the title of prince of the Holy Roman Empire by
the Emperor and the Pope bestowed on him and his successors a rank equal
to a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church with the title of Eminence.
Besides these sonorous titles, the grand master, like all other
professed members of the order, also uses the religious title Frà
(Brother) which is put before his baptismal name. To date there have
been seventy-six grand masters.
The monastic habit of the order was a wide black cassock with a slit on
each side for the arms. In the days of Blessed Gerard a plain white
cross was sewn on the breast; Master Raymond introduced the
eight-pointed white cross which has become the emblem of the order down
to the present day. Since these bell-like cloaks were rather cumbersome
in battle, Pope Innocent IV in 1248 granted the knights permission to
wear a black surcoat over armour when on active service. Pope Alexander
IV in 1259 changed the color of this tunic to red, with a plain white
cross. The choir dress of the professed knights is even at present a
black mantle with the Maltese cross and a very elaborate maniple.
The headquarters of the order, wherever they might be, in Jerusalem,
Acre, Rhodes or Malta, were called the Convent. In its developed form
this Convent consisted of the palace of the grand master, the living
quarters of the knights and their assistants, the stables for the
horses, the church and the hospital.
Even by modern standards the hospital in Jerusalem was quite large;
Master Roger des Moulins in a letter of 1178 puts the number of patients
at 950. According to the statutes of 1182, the medical staff consisted
of four physicians and a number of male nurses. Special regulations were
laid down concerning hygiene. A wise rule was that each patient, after
admittance, should hand over his valuables to the hospital authorities
so as to prevent protests and reclamations in case of loss or theft. A
religious in charge registered all the belongings of a patient and gave
them back after he was dismissed. The statutes of the hospital in
Jerusalem served as a model for, and sometimes were literally copied by,
other hospital organizations in the Middle Ages.[5]
In view of the fact that before the crusades hospitals in the more
modern sense of the word hardly existed, the charity work of the Knights
of St. John—and to a lesser extent that of the other orders founded in
the Holy Land—has been hailed as a kind of innovation. Historians agree
that the Hospitallers must be credited with having created the hospital
in the organized sense.
Whenever the knights of St. John had to transfer their Convent, they
considered it one of their first duties to attach to it a well-equipped
hospital for “our lords the sick.” The hospital in Rhodes, restored by
the Italian government under Mussolini to its original condition, was a
large and beautiful building. On Malta the hospital or “Sacra
Infirmeria” developed into a center for medical sciences, particularly
surgery and ophthalmology.
The militarization of the order had a double effect. Knights from every
country in Europe enrolled under the red banner with the white cross. At
the same time the military reputation of the order greatly increased the
number of donations and legacies which had been given already at the
time the order was devoted to charity work. These possessions scattered
throughout the Near East and Europe called for administration and
management. Although the supervisory system was very complicated and
only gradually developed, it may be said in general that the order was
divided in bailiwicks and priories which were roughly equivalent to
provinces in other orders and each priory comprised a number of
commanderies. The house of a commander might be a manor, a castle, a
walled-in-portion or a fortified church with an annex. Each house
contained, besides the chapel and the living quarters for the household,
a number of rooms, to be used as a ward for travellers and as a hospital
for sick pilgrims.[6]
The functions of the priors and commanders were manifold: they collected
the revenues of the estates of the order, they gave protection to the
pilgrims, occasionally they built or maintained roads and bridges and
their “mansiones” were recruiting stations for the order. When the days
of the great pilgrimages were over, several hospices of St. John grew
into regular hospitals.
The territorial organization of the order achieved its final completion,
when it was divided into _langues_ or tongues. When the headquarters of
the order were in Rhodes and Malta, the knights of each _langue_ lived
together in their own residence, called _auberge_ or inn, so that the
Convent consisted of a number of national “monasteries.”
Although the training of the Knights of St. John was mainly aimed at
making them good fighters—a life not particularly conducive to
sanctity—yet the chronicles of the order boast a number of men and women
noted for their holiness. To mention a few: Gerard, the Founder, and
Raymond du Puy, who have been always revered as Blessed; St. Hugh,
Commander of Geneva; the sergeant-at-arms Blessed Gerard Mercati who,
however, died as a Franciscan; and the most renowned among the women
saints, St. Ubaldescha, St. Toscana and St. Fiora of Beaulieu.[7]
The military and political history of the Order of St. John is an
eight-hundred-years-long Odyssey which can be best characterized as the
road from Jerusalem to Rome by way of Acre, Rhodes, Malta, and a number
of other places, including a curious detour by Russia. The Hospitallers
stayed in the Holy Land for almost two centuries, until 1291; they then
had their headquarters on the island of Rhodes for another two hundred
years (1309-1522), and afterwards transferred to the island of Malta for
two centuries and a half (1530-1798), finally moving to Rome in 1834.[8]
In the Palestinian period the Hospitallers fought for the defense of the
Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; together with the Templars they supplied the
best-trained and disciplined troops and, especially in the times of
disaster, their forces were the most stable and reliable. During the
last forty years of the kingdom the defense of the country rested almost
completely upon these two military orders.[9]
In the armies of the Christians in the Holy Land the knights formed a
sort of division, composed of between 300 and 500 knights and a number
of hired soldiers. This division was sometimes used as a flank, but more
often as a vanguard or rear guard. Besides, the knights built and
garrisoned an impressive number of fortresses of which the most powerful
were Margat and Crac.
Only seven knights of St. John, including the master, survived the fall
of Acre in 1291. They found asylum on the island of Cyprus. During their
years there, the knights began to build up a naval force. With this they
conquered the island of Rhodes, where they were firmly established in
1308. Thus they became known as Knights of Rhodes.[10]
At Rhodes the knights reached the peak of power and influence, never
quite attained in the same measure before or after. And this is all the
more remarkable because the number of knights on the island never
exceeded three hundred. By building enormous fortifications they made
the island an almost impregnable bastion against the attacks of the
Mamelukes of Egypt and Syria and the Turks of Constantinople. With their
naval power they started a new type of warfare against the old enemies.
In Rhodes the knights became a sovereign power like the sea republics of
Italy or the Hanseatic cities in Germany.[11] Their navy flew its own
flag, a white cross on a red field, they minted their own money, they
concluded treaties with other sovereign states on the basis of equality
and they had their diplomatic representatives at many courts. After
repulsing numerous attacks, the knights finally were overwhelmed by a
strong expeditionary force under Sultan Soliman I and capitulated Dec.
21, 1522.
Once again the remaining knights drifted around in search of a dwelling
place; they established their capital successively in Crete, Messina,
Baia, Viterbo, and Nizza. Finally, on March 24, 1530, they obtained from
Emperor Charles V, in his capacity as king of Sicily, the island of
Malta and adjacent islands as a “perpetual and free feud.” The only
obligation attached to this transfer was that the knights should
annually, on the feast of All Saints, offer a falcon or a hawk to the
King of Sicily, whoever he might be. Thus the Order of Saint John became
a feudatory of the kingdom of Sicily territorially, but as a religious
order it continued dependent on the authority of the Holy See. From
their key position in the Mediterranean, the knights watched the
movements of the Turkish fleet and engaged in battle the corsairs from
Tripoli and the other Barbary States. Twice a year the order equipped a
“caravan,” namely a naval expedition, to ferret out pirates along the
coastline of the Mediterranean. As in Rhodes, in Malta the knights
sustained several attacks from the Turks, the most memorable of which
was the “Great Siege” (1565). The knights were victorious on all
occasions. However, in the eighteenth century a decline in spirit and in
discipline set in. What the Turks failed to achieve, Napoleon did; on
his way to Egypt, without striking a blow he captured the fortress of
Malta, believed to be impregnable (June 12, 1798). The weak Grand Master
Ferdinand von Hompesch soon resigned and the order established a
provisional headquarters at Trieste which at the time was under Austria.
A peculiar situation then arose: an orthodox emperor made himself Grand
Master of this thoroughly Catholic Order of St. John. Paul I of Russia,
who for some time had in mind using the Hospitallers and their island
bastion for political purposes, had managed to establish a grand priory
in Russia. The Russian knights in 1798 elected Paul as Grand Master, but
he died in 1801 without being able to do anything on behalf of the
order. With England taking Malta from the French in 1800, the old
capital was lost for good.
Upon the loss of Malta the order reached the lowest point in all its
glorious history. The order’s headquarters shifted from Messina to
Catania to Ferrara and finally in 1834 they were established in Rome.
The knights had one more grand master after Paul I, but when he died in
1805, the Pope allowed them only to elect lieutenant grand masters who
were to be ratified by him. This state of affairs continued for
seventy-four years until Leo XIII by a Bull of March 29, 1879,
re-established the office of grand master with headquarters in Rome.[12]
From then on the order regained part of its old vitality. It had lost
its territorial sovereignty, military activities had ceased, but it now
reverted to its original objective: _obsequium pauperum_. The order
became again a welfare and charity organization. Looking back over its
long history one might say that at first its master was the
superintendent of a hospital, then he became a commanding army general
(to which office he subsequently added that of an admiral), and in this
age the grand master has become the president of an international
Catholic White Cross which at times collaborates with the international
Red Cross.
The order has built and maintains an impressive number of hospitals—in
Italy alone there are 19 with a total of 5,290 beds; it takes care of a
number of children’s homes, child centers and trade schools for
abandoned children. During the two world wars, the order established
military hospitals and had a number of ambulance trains and airplanes
for the transport of wounded soldiers; in catastrophes such as
earthquakes or other disasters it provides food and medical help. It
also extends financial and medical assistance to the Catholic foreign
missions.[13]
Expenses involved in these activities are paid out of the revenues from
the remaining properties of the order and the contributions of its
members throughout the world.
The present organization of the Order of Malta consists of three large
categories, each subdivided into a number of ranks.[14] They are the
Knights of Justice, who take the three monastic vows and form the
strictly religious nucleus of the order; the Knights of Honour and
Devotion who are required to furnish proof of ancient nobility; the
Knights of Magistral Grace who are affiliated to the order and are
somewhat reminiscent of the old class of sergeants-at-arms. Besides,
there are three other groups: the Chaplains, Dames of Honour and
Devotion, and the Donates. The grand master may bestow on persons
outside the order the Cross of Merit of the Order of Malta, an honour
which may be conferred also on non-Catholics and consists of five
classes.
The Order of Malta is divided into five grand priories and fourteen
national associations, including the “Association of Master Knights of
the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in the United States of America.”
Those knights who do not belong to any of the priories or associations
depend directly on the grand master and are called _Knights in Gremio
Religionis_.[15]
The Order of St. John, although deprived of its territory, retains its
sovereign character. The palace of the grand master and the other houses
in Rome are extra-territorial, that is to say enjoy the same privilege
as that accorded to the other foreign embassies and legations; the order
issues its own diplomatic passports and entertains diplomatic missions
and legations in several countries.[16]
Recently the legal status of the Order of Malta in the Church has been
defined with greater precision. Pope Pius XII, on Dec. 10, 1951,
appointed a special tribunal of five cardinals, presided over by the
Dean of the Sacred College, Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, in order to
determine the nature of the order and the extent of its competence both
as a sovereign and as a religious institution, as well as its
relationship to the Holy See. After long discussions the commission of
cardinals on Jan. 24, 1953, gave the following unanimous verdict:[17]
The Order of Malta is a sovereign order, inasmuch as it enjoys certain
prerogatives which, according to the principles of international law,
are proper to sovereignty. These rights have been recognized by the Holy
See and a number of states. However, these rights do not comprise all
the powers and prerogatives that belong to sovereign states in the full
sense of the word.
Insofar as the Order of Malta is composed of knights and chaplains, it
is a “religio” and more precisely a religious order, approved by the
Holy See, according to the _Codex juris canonici_, Can. 487 and 488, nn.
1 and 2. The purpose of this order is, besides the sanctification of its
members, also the pursuit of religious objectives, charity, and welfare
work.
The sovereign and the religious character of the order are intimately
related, inasmuch as the former serves to attain the objectives of the
order as a religious institution and its development in the world.
The Order of Malta depends on the Holy See and, as a religious order, on
the Sacred Congregation of Religious.
Those persons who have obtained marks of distinction from the order and
the associations of these persons depend on the order, and, through it,
on the Holy See.
Questions concerning the institution’s character as a sovereign order
are treated by the Secretariat of State of His Holiness. Those of a
mixed nature are received by the Sacred Congregation of Religious in
accord with the Secretariat of State.
The present decisions do not interfere with the order’s acquired rights,
customs and privileges which the Popes have granted or recognized,
inasfar as they are still in force according to the norms of canon
law[18] and the order’s own constitutions.[19]
THE ORDER OF THE TEUTONIC KNIGHTS
The origin of the Order of the Teutonic Knights was practically the same
as that of the Order of Saint John: the Teutonic Order sprang from a
fraternity of lay men engaged in charitable work. A number of crusaders
from Bremen and Lübeck in Germany, under the leadership of a certain
Meister Sigebrand, operated a field hospital during the dreadful winter
of the Siege of Acre (1190 A.D.), when the Christian army through famine
and sickness was almost decimated. Pope Clement III, recognizing the
remarkable services of the confraternity, gave it his approbation in
1191; the first Superior of this religious congregation was Conrad,
chaplain of Fredrick of Swabia. During the next eight years a number of
German knights joined, and the community gradually assumed the character
of a military order of knighthood, becoming known as the Teutonic
Knights of the Hospital of Saint Mary of Jerusalem. The Pope approved
the Order in 1199 with Henry Walpott of Bossenheim as first master. The
new order was organized along the same lines as the Hospitallers; it
comprised professed knights, priests and lay brothers and its purpose
was to care for the poor and the sick as well as to wage war against the
foes of Christendom. Like the Hospitallers, the knights followed the
Augustinian rule, but whereas the former wore a black mantle with a
white cross, the Teutonic Knights adopted a white mantle with a black
cross. Only German candidates were eligible for the new order, which
rapidly grew in numbers and influence. This may have been due to the
fact that the German knights, always resentful of the predominantly
Latin influence in the existing military orders, were only too happy to
have an organization of their own and thus gave it strong support. The
fourth Master, Hermann of Salza (1210-1239), shifted the military
activities of his order from Palestine, first to Hungary, and then to
the northeastern frontier of Germany, where the order engaged in
fighting the heathen Prussians. But although the Knights operated mainly
in Prussia, their general headquarters still continued at Acre, until
the latter fell in 1291, after which they transferred to Venice.
Finally, in 1309, the seat of the order was established in the famous
fortress of Marienburg in Prussia.[20]
In 1236 the Teutonic Order absorbed the remnants of the Brothers of the
Sword, an order of knighthood which had been founded some thirty-four
years earlier for the purpose of subjugating and christianizing the
peoples of the Baltic countries of Livonia, Lettonia and Esthonia (now
known as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).
Thus the Teutonic Knights prevailed in these countries. By donations and
conquest the knights gradually increased their holdings, until they
included large parts of Prussia, Kurland and Lithuania. Although these
followers of Christ used the unorthodox methods of fire and sword for
the propagation of the faith, it cannot be denied that they greatly
contributed to the pacification and civilization of the peoples under
their jurisdiction. They encouraged cultivation of the land and built a
great number of towns and villages, providing each with a church. In
some places they erected schools and, faithful to the original purpose
of their order, they established hundreds of hospitals and hospices. In
this respect it is worthy of note that the Teutonic Knights were the
first to establish a mental hospital (Dollhaus) in Germany, namely at
Elbig in 1316. The knights also proved to be clever businessmen inasmuch
as they sponsored profitable markets in foreign countries for the
produce of their land.
For more than a century after the final subjugation of the Prussians in
1283, the Teutonic Knights were the undisputed rulers of a vast and
well-organized domain that stretched along the coast of the Baltic Sea,
from the river Oder to Leningrad. The grand master, residing in his
fortified convent of Marienburg and then from 1457 on at Königsburg, was
_de jure et de facto_ a sovereign, equal to the other princes of the
Empire, and only nominally subordinate to the Emperor. But in the
fifteenth century decline set in. The first blow was struck in 1410,
when in the battle of Tannenberg the Knights were overthrown by the
Polish troops. In 1525 the Order received the _coup de grâce_; its grand
master Albrecht of Brandenburg embraced the Protestant religion,
secularized the possessions of the Order in East Prussia which once he
had vowed to protect, and styled himself Duke of Prussia.[21] When later
this duchy was united with Brandenburg, the foundations were laid for
the kingdom of Prussia and eventually for the German Reich of the
Hohenzollerns. In 1561, when Gotthard Kettler, “Landmeister” of Livonia,
followed Albrecht’s apostasy, the Teutonic Order ceased to be a
sovereign power. However, the loss of sovereignty did not mean the end
of the Teutonic Order, for—although a skeleton of its former glory—it
still possessed large estates and strongholds in Western Germany.
(During the Reformation the Teutonic Knights in the Netherlands
separated themselves from their Catholic brethren. This Protestant
branch was suppressed by Napoleon but was re-established at the time of
the Restoration and is known as the bailiwick of Utrecht.) After the
loss of Prussia the general head of the order became known as “Hoch-und
Deutsch Meister” (Grand-and Teutonic Master). From 1590 on, these grand
masters were almost without exception members of the imperial house of
Hapsburg, which meant that the former independent Teutonic Order became
more and more an appendix of the Austrian crown. Nevertheless, the order
was not completely secularized. True, community life soon ceased to
exist, but the knights still took religious vows. The next blow was
dealt by Napoleon, who suppressed the Teutonic Order in Germany and
confiscated its possessions. The order was now restricted to the
confines of the Austrian empire. Around 1839, attempts were made to
revive the languishing order by dedicating its members—priests and
professed knights—to its original objective, namely ambulance service
and works of charity. Besides, the professed knights, instead of
fighting the infidels, took upon themselves the obligation of serving as
officers in the Austrian army.
The question of profession was settled by a papal indult in 1886
(_Neminem profecto latet_, March 16, 1886), according to which the
knights of the Teutonic Order were to take simple perpetual vows which,
however, included the same rights and obligations as solemn vows.
When the Hapsburg dynasty fell after the first World War, only a handful
of knights were left. On April 30, 1923, the grand master Eugene,
Archduke of Hapsburg-Lothringen, commander in chief of the Austrian
forces on the Italian front in World War I, resigned and was succeeded
by Bishop Norbert Klein.
In 1929 a radical change took place in the entire structure of the
order. The erstwhile military order of the Teutonic Knights was
transformed into a religious community of priests and lay-brothers with
solemn vows similar to any other religious congregation in the Catholic
Church. It assumed the title of _Ordo_ _Teutonicus Sanctae Mariae in
Jerusalem_ (officially designated by the initials O.T.) and is listed in
the _Annuario pontificio_ as a mendicant order. This new community—with
a very old past—devotes itself to parish work and works of charity; it
is divided into five provinces (Austria, Bavaria, Italy, Yugoslavia and
the practically extinct province of Czechoslovakia) with a total
membership of 93, of whom 70 are priests. (See the _Catalogus ordinis
teutonici_, Jan. 1, 1950). A congregation of sisters is affiliated to
the Order, also divided into five provinces with a total membership of
572, mostly dedicated to hospital work.
The superior general has the old title of Grand Master (Hochmeister,
Supremus Magister); he has abbatial rank and enjoys the privilege of the
_pileolus violaceus_. So far his residence is in Vienna, Austria. The
professed knights of the old guard who were still alive when the
transformation was effected became members of the new outfit with the
title of Ordensritter (Knights of the Order). Since the last grand
master, Eugene of Hapsburg, died in January, 1955, only one of the old
knights is left. It is all that remained of an order which at one time
counted its knights by the hundreds. However, as a remnant of the old
prerogatives, the new Teutonic Order has the right to bestow knighthood
on eminent Catholic men, either lay or clerical, and on great
benefactors of the order. These honorary knights are called
_familiares_. Before 1952 the order had made use of this privilege in
only three cases.
THE ECCLESIASTICAL ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD