Aragon (16th of September 1140).[1] It was probably also during
his sojourn in the West for the above purpose that Raymond
secured from Pope Celestine II. the bull dated December 7th,
1143, subordinating to his jurisdiction the Teutonic hospice,
founded in 1128 by a German pilgrim and his wife in honour of
the Blessed Virgin, which was the nucleus of the Teutonic Order
(q.v.). This order was to remain subordinate to the Hospitallers
actually for some fifty years, and nominally for some thirty
years longer.[2] Raymond took part in the Second Crusade and
was present at the council of the leaders held at Acre, in 1148,
which resulted in the ill-fated expedition against Damascus.
The failure before Damascus was repaired five years later by the
capture of Ascalon (19th of August 1153), in which Raymond
du Puy and his knights had a conspicuous share.
Meanwhile, in addition to its ever-growing wealth, the order had received from successive popes privileges which rendered it, like the companion order of the Temple, increasingly independent of and obnoxious to the secular clergy. In 1135 Innocent II. had confirmed to Raymond the privileges accorded by Paschal II., Calixtus II. and Honorious II., and in addition forbade the diocesan bishops to interdict the churches of the Hospitallers, whom he also authorized, in case of a general interdict, to celebrate mass for themselves alone.[3] In 1137 he gave them the privilege of Christian burial during such interdicts and the right to open interdicted churches once a year in order to say mass and collect money.[4] These bulls were confirmed by Eugenius III. in 1153[5] and Anastasius IV. in 1154, the latter adding the permission for the order to have its own priest, independent of the diocesan bishops.[6] In vain the patriarch of Jerusalem, attended by other bishops, journeyed to Rome in 1155 to complain to Adrian IV. of the Hospitallers' abuse of their privileges and to beg him to withdraw his renewal of his predecessor's bull.[7]
Far different was the effect produced by Raymond du Puy's triumphant progress through southern Europe from the spring of 1157 onward. From the popes, the emperor Frederick I., kings and nobles, he received fresh gifts, or the confirmation of old ones. After the 25th of October 1158, when his presence is attested at Verona, this master builder of the order disappears from history; he died some time between this date and 1160, when the name of another grand master appears.
During the thirty years of his rule the Hospital, which Gerard had instituted to meet a local need, had become universal. In the East its growth was beyond calculation: kings, prelates and laity had overwhelmed it with wealth. In the West, all Europe combined to enrich it; from Ireland to Bohemia and Hungary, from Italy and Provence to Scandinavia, men vied with each other to attract it and establish it in their midst. It was clear that for this vast institution an elaborate organization was needed, and this need was probably the occasion of Raymond's presence in Europe. The priory of St Gilles already existed as the nucleus of the later system; the development of this system took place after Raymond's death.
Constitution and Organization.—The rule of the Hospital, as formulated by Raymond du Puy, was based on that of the Augustinian Canons (q.v.). Its further developments, of which only the salient characteristics can be mentioned here, were closely analogous to those of the Templars (q.v.), whose statutes regulating the life of the brethren, the terms of admission to the order, the maintenance of discipline, and the scale of punishments, culminating in expulsion (pert de la maison), are, mutatis mutandis, closely paralleled by those of the Hospitallers. These, too, were early (probably in Raymond's time) divided into three classes: knights (fratres milites), chaplains (fratres capellani), and sergeants (fratres servientes armigeri), with affiliated brethren (confratres) and “donats” (donati, i.e. regular subscribers, as it were, to the order in return for its privileges and the ultimate right to enter the ranks of its knights). Similar, too, was the aristocratic rule which confined admission to the first class to sons born in lawful wedlock of knights[8] or members of knightly families, a rule which applied also to the donats.[9] For the serjeant men-at-arms it sufficed that they should not be serfs. Below these a host of servientes did the menial work. of the houses of the order, or worked as artisans or as labourers on the farms.
All the higher offices in the order were filled by the knights, except the ecclesiastical—which fell to the chaplains—and those of master of the squires and turcopolier (commander of the auxiliary light cavalry), which were reserved for the sergeants-at-arms. Each knight was allowed three horses, each serjeant two. The fratres capellani ranked with the knights as eligible for certain temporal posts; at their head was the “conventual prior” (clericorum magister et ecclesie custos, prior clericorum Hospitalis).
In two important respects the Knights of St John differed from the Templars. The latter were a purely military organization; the Hospitallers, on the other hand, were at the outset preponderating a nursing brotherhood, and, though this character was subordinated during their later period of military importance, it never disappeared. It continued to be a rule of the order that in its establishments it was for the sick to give orders, for the brethren to obey. The chapters were largely occupied with the building, furnishing, and improvement of hospitals, to which were attached learned physicians and surgeons, who had the privilege of messing with the knights. The revenues of particular properties were charged with providing luxuries (e.g. white bread) for the patients, and the various provinces of the order with the duty of forwarding blankets, clothes, wine and food for their use. The Hospitallers, moreover, encouraged the affiliation of women to their order, which the monastic and purely military rule of the Templars sternly forbade. So early as the First Crusade a Roman lady named Alix or Agnes had founded, at Jerusalem a hospice for women in connexion with the order of St John. Until 1187, when they fled to Europe, the sisters had devoted themselves to prayer and sick-nursing. In Europe, however, they developed into a purely contemplative order.[10]
The habit of the order, both in peace and war, was originally a black cappa clausa (i.e. the long monastic bell-like cloak with a slit on each side for the arms) with a white, eight-pointed “Maltese” cross on the breast. As this was highly inconvenient for fighting, Innocent IV. in 1248 authorized the brethren to wear in locis suspectis a large super-tunic with a cross on the breast (Cartul. ii. No. 2479), and in 1259 Alexander IV. fixed the habit as, in peace time, a black mantle, and in war a red surcoat with a white cross (Cartul. ii. No. 2928).
The unit of the organization of the order was the commandery (preceptory), a small group of knights and sergeants living in community under the rule of a commander, or preceptor,[11] charged with the supervision of several contiguous properties. The commanderies were grouped into priories, each under the rule of a prior (styled unofficially “grand prior,” magnus prior), and these again into provinces corresponding to certain countries, under the authority of grand commanders. These largest groups crystallized in the 14th century as national divisions under the name of “langues” (languages).[12] At the head of the whole organization was the grand master. The grand master was elected, from the ranks of the knights of justice, by the same process as the grand master of the Templars (q.v.). Alone of the bailiffs (bailivi), as the officials of the order were generically termed. he held office for life. His authority
- ↑ Cartul. i. No. 136. The arrangement was confirmed by the pope in 1158 (Le Roulx, Hospitaliers, p. 59).
- ↑ The foundation of the Teutonic Order as a separate organization was solemnly proclaimed in the palace of the Templars at Tyre on the 5th of March 1198. Its rule was confirmed by Pope Innocent III. on Feb. 15th, 1198 (Cartul. i. No. 1072).
- ↑ Cartul. i. No. 113.
- ↑ Ib. i. No. 122
- ↑ Ib. i. No. 217.
- ↑ Ib. i. No. 226.
- ↑ This renewal was dated 19th of December 1154 (Ib. i. No. 229).
- ↑ The knights were ultimately distinguished as “Knights of Justice” (chevaliers de justice) and “Knights of Grace” (chevaliers de grâce). The former were those who satisfied the conditions as to birth, and were therefore knights “justly”; the latter were those who were admitted “of grace” for superlative merits.
- ↑ An exception was made in favour of the natural sons of counts and greater personages (Statute 7 of 1270; Cartul. ii. 3396).
- ↑ Their premier house in Europe was at Sigena in Aragon, which they still occupy. It was granted to them by Sancia of Navarre, queen of Aragon, in 1184, the order being definitively established there in 1188. Their rule, which is that of Augustinian Canonesses, and dates from October 1188, is printed by Le Roulx, Cartulaire, i. No. 859. There is no word about nursing in it. In England the most important house was Buckland. The chief Danish house survives in the Lutheran convent of St John the Baptist at Schleswig, a Stift for noble ladies, whose superior has the title of prioress. On solemn occasions a realistic wax head of St John the Baptist on a charger is still produced.
- ↑ Commander (comandeor, commandeur), with its Latin translation preceptor, came into use as the title of these officials somewhat late. In earlier documents they are styled ospitalarius, bajulus (bailiff), magister (master).
- ↑ Omitting the Anglo-Bavarian langue, created in 1782, the langues (in the 15th century) were eight in number. They were (1) Provence (grand priories of St Gilles and Toulouse), (2) Auvergne (grand priory of Auvergne), (3) France (grand priories of France, Aquitaine, Champagne), (4) Italy (grand priories of Lombardy, Rome, Venice, Pisa, Capua, Barletta, Messina), (5) Aragon (castellany of Amposta, grand priories of Catalonia and Navarre), (6) England (grand priories of England—including Scotland—and Ireland), (7) Germany (grand priories of Germany or Heitersheim, Bohemia, Hungary, Dacia—i.e. Scandinavia-and the Bailiwnick (Ballei) of
