The
Knights Hospitaller (also known as the
Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of
Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Order of St.
John, Knights of Malta, and
Chevaliers of Malta; French: Ordre des
Hospitaliers, Maltese: Ordni ta’ San
Ġwann) is a Christian
organization that began as an Amalfitan
hospital founded in
Jerusalem
in approximately 1080 to provide care for poor,
sick or injured pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the
Western Christian conquest of Jerusalem in
1099 during the
First Crusade, it
became a
religious/
military order under its own charter, and was
charged with the care and defence of the
Holy
Land.
Following the conquest of the Holy Land by
Islamic forces, the Order operated from Rhodes
, over which
it was sovereign, and later from
Malta
where it administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of
Sicily.
Foundation and early history
In 600,
Pope Gregory the
Great commissioned the Ravennate Abbot Probus, who was before
Gregory's emissary at the Lombard court, to build a hospital in
Jerusalem to treat and care for Christian pilgrims to the
Holy Land. In 800,
Charlemagne,
Emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire, enlarged Probus'
hospital and added a
library to it. About
200 years later, in 1005,
Caliph Al Hakim destroyed the hospital and
three thousand other buildings in Jerusalem.
In 1023, merchants from Amalfi and Salerno
in Italy
were given
permission by the Caliph Ali az-Zahir
of Egypt
to rebuild
the hospital in Jerusalem. The hospital, which was built on
the site of the
monastery of Saint
John the Baptist, took in Christian
pilgrims traveling to visit the Christian holy sites. It was served
by
Benedictine monks.
The monastic hospitaller order was founded following the
First Crusade by the
Blessed Gerard, whose role as founder was
confirmed by a
Papal bull of
Pope Paschal II in 1113. Gerard acquired
territory and revenues for his order throughout the
Kingdom of Jerusalem and beyond.
His
successor, Raymond du Puy de
Provence, established the first significant Hospitaller
infirmary near the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem. Initially the group cared for
pilgrims in Jerusalem, but the order soon extended to providing
pilgrims with an armed escort, which soon grew into a substantial
force.
knights Hospitaller in 1200
The Hospitallers and the
Knights Templar, formed in
1119, became the most powerful Christian groups in the area. The
order came to distinguish itself in battles with the
Muslims, its soldiers wearing a black surcoat with a
white cross. The Order's practice of acting first and legislating
later is epitomized by the fact that it was not until 1248 that the
pope, Innocent IV (1243-54), approved a standard military dress for
the Hospitallers to be worn in battle. Instead of a closed cape
over their armor (which restricted their movements) they should
wear a red surcoat with a white cross emblazoned on it.
By the mid-12th century, the order was clearly divided into
military brothers and those who worked with the sick. It was still
a religious order and had privileges granted by the
Papacy; for example, the order was exempt from all
authority save that of the Pope, and it paid no tithes and was
allowed its own religious buildings. Many of the more substantial
Christian fortifications in the Holy Land were built by the
Templars and the Hospitallers. At the height of the
Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Hospitallers
held seven great forts and 140 other estates in the area.
The two
largest of these, their bases of power in the Kingdom and in the
Principality of Antioch,
were the Krak des
Chevaliers
and Margat
in Syria
. The
property of the Order was divided into
priories, subdivided into
bailiwicks, which in turn were divided into
commanderies.
Frederick Barbarossa, the
Holy Roman Emperor, pledged his
protection to the Knights of St. John in a charter of privileges
granted in 1185.
Knights of Cyprus and Rhodes
The Knights' castle at Rhodes
knights Hospitaller 1250-1300
knights Hospitaller 1350-1400
The rising power of
Islam eventually expelled
the Knights from Jerusalem.
After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in
1291 (Jerusalem itself fell in 1187), the Knights were confined to
the County of Tripoli and, when
Acre
was captured
in 1291, the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. Finding themselves
becoming enmeshed in Cypriot politics, their Grand Master, Guillaume de Villaret, created a plan
of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting Rhodes to be their
new home. His successor, Fulkes de Villaret, executed the plan,
and on 15 August 1309, after over two years of campaigning, the
island of Rhodes surrendered
to the knights. They also gained control of a number of
neighboring islands and the Anatolian
ports of Bodrum
and Kastelorizo
.
Rhodes and other possessions of the
Knights Hospitaller of St. John.
The
Knights Templar were dissolved
in 1312 and much of their property was given to the Hospitallers.
The
holdings were organized into eight tongues (one each in
Crown of Aragon, Auvergne, Castile, England
, France
, Germany
, Italy, and
Provence). Each was administered by
a
Prior or, if there was more than one priory
in the
tongue, by a Grand Prior. At Rhodes and later
Malta, the resident knights of each
tongue were headed by
a
Bailli. The English
Grand
Prior at the time was
Philip De
Thame, who acquired the estates allocated to the English
tongue from 1330 to 1358.
On Rhodes the Hospitallers, then also referred to as the
Knights of Rhodes, were forced to become a more
militarized force, fighting especially with the
Barbary pirates. They withstood two
invasions in the 15th century, one by the
Sultan of Egypt in 1444 and another by the
Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed II in 1480 who, after
capturing Constantinople 1453, made
the Knights a priority target.
In 1494
they created a stronghold on the peninsula of Halicarnassus (now
Bodrum).
They used
pieces of the partially destroyed Mausoleum of
Maussollos
, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to
strengthen Bodrum
Castle
.
In 1522 an entirely new sort of force arrived: 400 ships under the
command of Sultan
Suleiman the
Magnificent delivered 200,000 men to the island. Against this
force the Knights, under Grand Master
Philippe Villiers de
L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms and their
fortifications. The
siege
lasted six months, at the end of which the surviving defeated
Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to
Sicily.
Knights of Malta
knights Hospitaller 1450-1500
After
seven years of moving from place to place in Europe the Knights
became established in 1530 when Charles V of Spain, as King of
Sicily, gave them Malta, Gozo
and the
North African port of Tripoli
in perpetual fiefdom in exchange for an annual fee
of a single Maltese falcon, which they were to send on All Souls Day to the King's representative,
the Viceroy of Sicily. (This historical fact was used as the
plot hook in
Dashiell Hammett's famous book
The Maltese Falcon.)
The Hospitallers continued their actions against the Muslims and
especially the
Barbary pirates.
Although they had only a few ships they quickly drew the ire of the
Ottomans, who were unhappy to see the
order resettled. In 1565 Suleiman sent an invasion force of about
40,000 men to besiege the 700 knights and 8,000 soldiers and expel
them from Malta and gain a new base from which to possibly launch
an another assault on Europe.
At first the battle went as badly for the Hospitallers as Rhodes
had: most of the cities were destroyed and about half the knights
killed. On 18 August the position of the besieged was becoming
desperate: dwindling daily in numbers, they were becoming too
feeble to hold the long line of fortifications.
But when his council
suggested the abandonment of Il Borgo and
Senglea
and withdrawal to Fort
St. Angelo, Grand Master
Jean Parisot de la
Valette refused.
The Viceroy of Sicily had not sent help; possibly the Viceroy's
orders from
Philip II of Spain
were so obscurely worded as to put on his own shoulders the burden
of the decision whether to help the Knights at the expense of his
own defences. A wrong decision could mean defeat and exposing
Sicily and Naples to the Ottomans. He had left his own son with La
Valette, so he could hardly be indifferent to the fate of the
fortress. Whatever may have been the cause of his delay, the
Viceroy hesitated until the battle had almost been decided by the
unaided efforts of the Knights, before being forced to move by the
indignation of his own officers.
23 August came yet another grand assault, the last serious effort,
as it proved, of the besiegers. It was thrown back with the
greatest difficulty, even the wounded taking part in the defence.
The plight of the Turkish forces, however, was now desperate. With
the exception of
Fort St. Elmo, the
fortifications were still intact. Working night and day the
garrison had repaired the breaches, and the capture of Malta seemed
more and more impossible. Many of the Ottoman troops in crowded
quarters had fallen ill over the terrible summer months. Ammunition
and food were beginning to run short, and the Ottoman troops were
becoming increasingly dispirited at the failure of their attacks
and their losses. The death on 23 June of skilled commander
Dragut, a corsair and admiral of the
Ottoman fleet, was a serious blow. The Turkish commanders,
Piyale Pasha and
Mustafa Pasha, were careless. They
had a huge fleet which they used with effect on only one occasion.
They neglected their communications with the African coast and made
no attempt to watch and intercept Sicilian reinforcements.
On 1 September they made their last effort, but the morale of the
Ottoman troops had deteriorated seriously and the attack was
feeble, to the great encouragement of the besieged, who now began
to see hopes of deliverance. The perplexed and indecisive Ottomans
heard of the arrival of Sicilian reinforcements in Mellieħa Bay.
Unaware that the force was very small, they broke off the siege and
left on 8 September. The
Great
Siege of Malta may have been the last action in which a force
of knights won a decisive victory.
When the Ottomans departed the Hospitallers had 600 men able to
bear arms. The most reliable estimate puts the number of the
Ottoman army at its height at some 40,000 men, of whom 15,000
eventually returned to Constantinople.
The siege is
portrayed vividly in the frescoes of Matteo Perez d'Aleccio in the Hall of
St. Michael and St. George, also known as the Throne Room, in the
Grand Master's Palace in Valletta
. Four of the original modellos, painted in oils by Perez d'Aleccio between 1576 and
1581, can be found in the Cube Room of the Queen's
House
at Greenwich, London
. After the siege a new city had to be built –
the present city named Valletta in memory of the Grand Master who had withstood the
siege.
In 1607 the Grand Master of the Hospitallers was granted the status
of
Reichsfürst (Prince of the
Holy Roman Empire, even though the
Order's territory was always south of the Holy Roman Empire). In
1630 the Grand Master was awarded ecclesiastic equality with
cardinals, and the unique
hybrid style
His Most Eminent Highness, reflecting both
qualities qualifying him as a true
Prince of the Church.
The Knights in the 16th and 17th centuries: A change in
attitudes
1500-1550
1550-1600
Following the Knights' re-establishment on Malta they had found
themselves devoid of their initial reason for existence; their
initial raison d'etre of assisting and joining the crusades in the
Holy Land was now an impossible mission
for reasons of military and financial strength along with
geographical position. With dwindling revenues from European
sponsors no longer willing to support a costly and meaningless
organisation, the Knights turned to policing the Mediterranean from
the increased threat of piracy, most notably from the threat of the
Ottoman endorsed
Barbary Corsairs operating from the North
African coastline.
Boosted towards the end of the 16th century
by an air of invincibility following the successful defence of
their island in 1565 and compounded by the Christian victory over
the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto
in 1571, the Knights set about protecting Christian
merchant shipping to and from the Levant and
freeing the captured Christian slaves that formed the basis of the
Barbary Corsair's piratical trading and navies. This became
known as the 'corso'.
Yet the Order soon struggled on a now reduced income.
By policing the
Mediterranean they augmented the assumed responsibility of the
traditional protectors of the Mediterranean, the naval city states
of Venice
, Genoa
, and
Florence
. Further compounding their financial woes;
over the course of this period the exchange rate of the local
currencies against the 'scudo' that were established in the late
sixteenth century gradually became outdated, meaning the knights
were gradually receiving less at merchant factories. Economically
hindered by the barren island they now inhabited, many Knights went
beyond their call of duty by raiding Muslim ships. More and more
ships were plundered, from the profits of which many knights lived
idly and luxuriously, taking local women to be their wives and
enrolling in the navies of France and Spain in search of adventure,
experience, and yet more money.
The knights’ changing attitudes were coupled with the effects of
the
Reformation and
Counter-reformation and the lack of
stability from the Roman
Catholic
Church. This affected knights strongly as the 16th and 17th
centuries saw a gradual decline in the religious attitudes of many
of the people of Europe (and, concommitantly, the importance of a
religious army), and thus the knights’ regular tributes from
European nations. That the Roman Catholic Order pursued the
readmittance of England as a member state — the Order there had
been suppressed, along with monasteries, under
Henry VIII — upon the succession of the
Protestant
Queen Elizabeth I aptly
demonstrates the new religious tolerance within the Order. The
Order even possessed a German tongue which was part Protestant and
part Roman Catholic.
The perceived moral decline that the Knights underwent over the
course of this period is best highlighted by the decision of many
Knights to serve in foreign navies and become "the mercenary
sea-dogs of the 14th to 17th centuries", with the French navy
proving the most popular destination. This decision went against
what the Knights stood for most, in that by serving for a European
power they faced the very real possibility that they would be
fighting against another Christian force, as in the few
Franco-Spanish naval skirmishes that occurred in this period. The
biggest paradox when studying this is the fact that for many years
the French remained on amicable terms with the Ottoman Empire, the
Knights' biggest foe and proported sole purpose of existence,
signing many trade agreements and agreeing an informal (and
ultimately ineffective) cease-fire between the two states during
this period. That the Knights associated themselves with the allies
of their sworn enemies shows their moral ambivalence and the new
commercial driven nature of the Mediterranean. Serving in a foreign
navy, in particular the French, gave the Knights the chance to
serve the church and for many their King, to increase their chances
of promotion in either their adopted navy or in Malta, to receive
far better pay, to stave their boredom with frequent cruises, to
embark on the highly preferable short cruises over the long
caravans favoured by the Maltese, and if the Knight desired, to
indulge in some of the pleasures of a traditional debauched
seaport. This decision shows the Knights' growing lack of
allegiance both to their Order and to their religion. In return the
French gained a quickly assembled and experienced navy to show
stability to their subjects and stave off the threat of the
Spanish. The shift in attitudes of the Knights over this period is
ably outlined by Paul Lacroix who states:
"Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave
them almost sovereign powers ... the order at last became so
demoralised by luxury and idleness that it forgot the aim for which
it was founded, and gave itself up for the love of gain and thirst
for pleasure.
Its covetousness and pride soon became
boundless.
The Knights pretended that they were above the reach of
crowned heads: they seized and pillaged without concern of the
property of both infidels and Christians".
With the Knights' exploits growing in fame and wealth, the European
states became more complacent about the Order, and more unwilling
to grant money to an institution that was perceived to be earning a
healthy sum on the high seas. Thus a vicious cycle occurred,
increasing the raids and reducing the grants received from the
European nation states to such an extent that the balance of
payments on the island had become dependent on conquest. The
European powers lost interest in the Knights as they focused their
intentions inland during the
Thirty
Years War.
In February 1641 a letter was sent from an
unknown dignitary in Valletta to the Knights' most trustworthy ally and
benefactor, Louis XIV of France, stating
the Order's troubles:
"Italy provides us with nothing much; Bohemia and
Germany hardly anything, and England and the Netherlands for a long
time now nothing at all.
We only have something to keep us going, Sire, in your
own Kingdom and in Spain."
It is important to note that the Maltese authorities would neglect
to mention the fact that they were making a substantial profit
policing the seas. The authorities on Malta immediately recognised
the importance of corsairing to their economy and sent about
encouraging it, as despite vows of poverty the Knights were granted
the ability to keep a portion of the 'spoglio', which was the prize
money and cargo gained from a captured ship, along with the ability
to fit out their own galleys with their new wealth. A
slave market in Valletta that rivalled the
Barbary Corsairs was established.
The great controversy that surrounded the Knights' 'corso' was
their insistence on their policy of 'vista'. This enabled the Order
to stop and board all shipping suspected of carrying Turkish goods
and confiscate the cargo to be re-sold at Valletta, along with the
ship's crew who were by far the most valuable commodity on the
ship. Naturally many nations claimed to be victims of the Knights'
over-eagerness to stop and confiscate any goods remotely connected
to the Turks. In an effort to regulate the growing problem, the
authorities in Malta established a judicial court, the Consiglio
del Mer, where captains who felt wronged could plead their case,
often successfully. The practice of issuing privateering licenses
and thus state-endorsement, which had been in existence for a
number of years, was tightly regulated as the island attempted to
haul in the unscrupulous Knights and appease the European powers
and limited benefactors. Yet these were not all successful as the
Consiglio del Mer contains numerous accounts from 1700 of
complaints of Maltese piracy in the region.
Ultimately, the
rampant over-indulgence of the Mediterranean was to be the Knights'
downfall in this particular chapter of their existence as they
turned from military outpost to another albeit limited nation state
in a commercially-orientated continent soon to be overtaken by the
trading nations of the North
Sea
, themselves adept at piracy.
Life in Malta
1600-1650
1650-1700
Having
chosen Malta, the Knights stayed for 268 years, transforming what
they called "merely a rock of soft sandstone" into a flourishing
island with mighty defenses and a capital city (Valletta) known as Superbissima, "Most Proud",
amongst the great powers of Europe.
In 1301, the Order was organized in seven
Langues, by order of
precedence: Provence, Auvergne, France, Spain, Italy, England, and
Germany. In 1462, the Langue of Spain was divided into
Castile-Portugal and Aragon-Navarre. The English Langue went into
abeyance after the order's properties were taken over by Henry VIII
in 1540. In 1782, it was revived as the Anglo-Bavarian Langue,
containing Bavarian and Polish priories. The structure of langues
was replaced in the late 19th century by a system of national
associations.
Not surprisingly, hospitals were among the first projects to be
undertaken on Malta, where French soon supplanted Italian as the
official language (though the native inhabitants continued to speak
Maltese amongst themselves). The
knights also constructed fortresses, watch towers and, naturally,
churches. Its acquisition of Malta signalled the beginning of the
Order's renewed naval activity.
The expansion and fortification of Valletta, named for Grand Master
la Valette, was begun in 1566, soon becoming the home port of one
of the Mediterranean's most powerful navies. The island's hospitals
were expanded as well. The main Hospital could accommodate 500
patients and was famous as one of the finest in the world. At the
vanguard of medicine, the Hospital of Malta included Schools of
Anatomy, Surgery and Pharmacy. Valletta itself was renowned as a
center of art and culture. The Church of St. John the Baptist,
completed in 1577, contains works by
Caravaggio and others.
In Europe, most of the Order's hospitals and chapels survived the
Reformation, but not in Protestant countries. In Malta, meanwhile,
the Public Library was established in 1761. The University was
founded seven years later, followed, in 1786, by a School of
Mathematics and Nautical Sciences. Despite these developments, some
of the Maltese grew to resent the Order, which they viewed as a
privileged class. This even included some of the
local nobility, who were not admitted to
the Order.
In Rhodes, the knights had been housed in Auberges (Inns)
segregated by Langues.
This structure was maintained in Birgu
(1530-1571)
and then Valletta (from 1571). The auberges in Birgu remain,
mostly undistinguished 16th c. buildings. Valletta still has the
auberges of Castile-Leon (1574; renovated 1741 by GM de Vilhena,
now the Prime Minister's offices), Italy (renovated 1683 by GM
Caraffa, now the post-office), Aragon (1571, now Ministry of
Economic Services), Bavaria (former palazzo Carnerio, purchased in
1784 for the newly formed Langue), Provence (now
National Museum of
Archaeology). The auberge of Auvergne was damaged in World War
II and replaced with Law Courts. The auberge of France was also
destroyed in World War II.
In 1604,
each Langue was given a chapel in the conventual
church of St. John
and the arms of the Langue appear in the decoration
on the walls and ceiling:
Turmoil in Europe
1700-1750
The Order lost many of its European holdings following the rise of
Protestantism and French
Egalitarianism, but survived on Malta.
The
property of the English branch was confiscated in 1540. In 1577, the German
Bailiwick of Brandenburg
became Lutheran, but
continued to pay its financial contribution to the Order until the
branch was turned into a merit Order by the King of Prussia in
1812. The "Johanniter Orden" was restored as a
Prussian Order of Knights Hospitaller in 1852.
The Knights of Malta had a strong presence within the
Imperial Russian Navy and the
pre-
revolutionary French Navy.
When De Poincy was
appointed governor of the French colony on St. Kitts
in 1639 he was a prominent Knight of St. John and
dressed his retinue with the emblems of the Order.
In 1651,
the Knights bought from the Compagnie des Îles de
l'Amérique the islands of Sainte-Christophe
, Saint
Martin
, and Saint Barthélemy
. The Order's presence in the Caribbean
was eclipsed with De Poincy's death in 1660.
He had
also bought the island of Saint Croix
as his personal estate and deeded it to the Knights
of St. John. In 1665, the order sold their Caribbean possessions to the French West India Company, ending
the Order's presence in that region.
The decree of the French National Assembly Abolishing the Feudal
System (1789) abolished the Order in France:
V. Tithes
of every description, as well as the dues which have been
substituted for them, under whatever denomination they are known or
collected (even when compounded for), possessed by secular or
regular congregations, by holders of benefices, members of
corporations (including the Order of Malta and other religious and
military orders), as well as those devoted to the maintenance of
churches, those impropriated to lay persons and those substituted
for the portion congrue, are abolished (...) (The Decree
Abolishing the Feudal System, August 11, 1789, J.H. Robinson, ed.,
Readings in European History 2 vols. (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 2:
404-409) The French Revolutionary Government seized the assets and
properties of the Order in France in 1792.
The loss of Malta
1750-1800
Count Vassiliev, a 19th century Knight
Commander
Their
Mediterranean
stronghold of Malta was captured
by Napoleon in 1798 during his expedition
to Egypt.
As a
ruse, Napoleon asked for safe harbour to resupply his ships, and
then turned against his hosts once safely inside Valletta. Grand Master
Ferdinand von Hompesch zu
Bolheim failed to anticipate or prepare for this threat,
provided no effective leadership, and readily capitulated to
Napoleon, arguing that the order's charter prohibited fighting
against Christians. In 1799, in disgrace and under pressure from
the Austrian court, he resigned his office and retreated into
obscurity.
The knights were dispersed, though the order continued to exist in
a diminished form and negotiated with European governments for a
return to power.
The Russian Emperor, Paul I, gave the largest number of knights
shelter in St.
Petersburg
, an action
which gave rise to the Russian tradition
of the Knights Hospitaller and the Order's recognition among
the Russian Imperial Orders. The refugee knights in St
Petersburg proceeded to elect Tsar Paul as their Grand Master – a
rival to Grand Master von Hompesch until the latter's abdication
left Paul as the sole Grand Master. As Grand Master Paul I created,
in addition to the Roman Catholic Grand Priory, a "Russian Grand
Priory" of no less than 118 Commanderies, dwarfing the rest of the
Order and open to all Christians. 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.
By the early 1800s, the order had been severely weakened by the
loss of its priories throughout Europe. Only 10% of the order's
income came from traditional sources in Europe, with the remaining
90% being generated by the
Russian Grand
Priory until 1810. This was partly reflected in the government
of the Order being under Lieutenants, rather than Grand Masters, in
the period 1805 to 1879, when
Pope Leo
XIII restored a Grand Master to the order. This signalled the
renewal of the order's fortunes as a
humanitarian and religious organization.
Hospital work, the original work of the order, became once again
its main concern. The Order's hospital and welfare activities,
undertaken on a considerable scale in World War I, were greatly
intensified and expanded in World War II under the Grand Master
Fra'
Ludovico Chigi
Albani della Rovere (Grand Master 1931-1951).
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta recently established a
mission in Malta, after signing an agreement with the Maltese
Government which granted the Order the exclusive use of Fort St.
Angelo for a term of 99 years. Today, after restoration, the Fort
hosts historical and cultural activities related to the Order of
Malta. The Venerable Order of Saint John has had a presence on
Malta since the late 19th century.
Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Flag of the Order of Malta
In 1834,
the Order established a new headquarters in Rome
. The
Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of
Rhodes and of Malta, better known as the
Sovereign Military Order of
Malta (SMOM), is a
Roman
Catholic religious order. Its
sovereign status is recognized by membership in numerous
international bodies and observer status at the
United Nations and others. The Order
maintains diplomatic relations with approximately 100 countries,
with numerous ambassadors. It issues its own passports, currency,
stamps and even vehicle registration plates. The Grand Master of
the Order serves as a Papal Viceroy, providing Vatican diplomats
with procedural support for making motions, proposing amendments
and requiring votes in the sphere of international diplomacy. Its
claim to sovereign status is disputed by some.
Revival in Britain as the Venerable Order of St. John of
Jerusalem
The
property of the Order in England was confiscated by Henry VIII because of a dispute with
the Pope over the dissolution of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which eventually
led to the dissolution of the monasteries. Although not formally
suppressed, this caused the activities of the English Langue to
come to an end.
A few Scottish
Knights remained in communion with the French Langue of
the Order.
In 1831, a British order was founded by Frenchmen claiming
(possibly without authority) to act on behalf of the Order in
Italy.
This British order in time became known as
the Most Venerable Order
of St John of Jerusalem in Great Britain, received a royal
charter from Queen
Victoria in 1888, and spread across the United
Kingdom
and the British
Commonwealth, and to the United States of America
. However, the British order was recognized
by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta only in 1963. Its
best-known activities center upon the
St. John Ambulance corps and the St. John
Eye Hospital in Jerusalem.
Protestant continuation in continental Europe
Following
the Protestant Reformation,
most German chapters of
the Order declared their continued adherence to the Order while
accepting Protestant theology. As the
Balley Brandenburg des Ritterlichen Ordens Sankt Johannis vom
Spital zu Jerusalem (
Brandenburg
Bailiwick of the Chivalric Order of Saint John of the Hospital at
Jerusalem), the Order continues in Germany today, virtually
independent of the Roman Catholic
order.
From
Germany, this Protestant branch spread into other countries in
Europe (Hungary
, the Netherlands
, Sweden
, Finland
, and Switzerland
among them), the Americas (including the United States, Canada
, Mexico
, Colombia
, and Venezuela
), and Africa (most notably in Namibia
and South
Africa). The Dutch and Swedish commanderies after World
War II became independent orders under the protection of their
respective monarchs. All three branches (German, Dutch, Swedish)
are in formalized cooperation with the British order in the
Alliance of Orders of St John of Jerusalem, just as there is
extensive collaboration between these four alliance orders and the
Order of Malta.
Mimic orders
Following
the end of World War II, and taking
advantage of the lack of State Orders in the Italian Republic, an Italian called himself a Polish
Prince and
did a brisk trade in Maltese Crosses
as the Grand Prior of the fictitious "Grand Priory of Podolia" until successfully prosecuted for
fraud. Another fraud claimed to be the Grand Prior of the
Holy Trinity of Villeneuve, but gave up after a police visit,
although the organisation resurfaced in Malta in 1975, and then by
1978 in the USA, where it still continues.
The large passage fees collected by the American Association of
"SMOM" in the early 1950s may well have tempted a man named
Charles Pichel to create his own
"Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller" in
1956. Pichel avoided the problems of being an imitation of "SMOM"
by giving his organization a mythical history, claiming that the
American organization he led had been founded within the
Russian tradition
of the Knights Hospitaller in 1908; a spurious claim, but which
nevertheless misled many including some academics. In truth, the
foundation of his organisation had no connection to the Russian
tradition of the Knights Hospitaller. Once created, the attraction
of Russian Nobles into membership of Pichel’s 'Order' lent some
plausibility to his claims.
These organizations have led to scores of other mimic, or
self-styled, Orders. Two offshoots of the Pichel Order were
successful in allegedly gaining the patronage of the late
King Peter II of
Yugoslavia, and King
Michael of
Romania. The former Order, based in California, gained a
substantial following under leadership of the late Robert Formhals,
who for some years, and with the support of historical
organisations such as
The Augustan Society, claimed to be a Polish
prince of the
Sanguszko
family.
See also
References
Further reading
- Peyrefitte, Roger. Knights of Malta. Translated from
the French by Edward Hyams. Secker & Warburg, London, 1960,
page 96.
- "Some Notes About the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in the
U.S.A." Nobilta (Rivista di Araldica, Genealogia, Ordini
Cavallereschi). Istituto Araldico Genealogico Italiano. Vol VII,
No. 32 (September/October 1999). Reference by Carl Edwin Lindgren
relating only to the Order in the United States.
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