The Ecclesiastical Orders of Knighthood

by James Herman Van der Veldt

The third type of religious order in Palestine was of a mixed character, combining works of charity with military service. The most illustrious examples of this group were the Order of Saint John in Jerusalem and the Teutonic Order.

Due to their predominant military character, only the last two groups are orders of knighthood in the strict sense of the word. Their members combined the seemingly contrasting qualities of soldiers and monks, of “militia” and “religio.” Being a “religio” such orders needed ecclesiastical approbation, but as a “religio militaris” they needed special authorization from the Holy See which alone could give religious persons permission “hostem ferire sine culpa,” “blamelessly to strike the enemy.”[2]

The orders founded in the Holy Land during the Crusades were the original military orders. The pattern of the military orders founded in the Holy Land during the Crusades was subsequently copied in various countries of Europe. We may distinguish several groups which show an ever increasing secular element and a decrease of ecclesiastical ties. Of each group only a few examples can be cited, omitting those of lesser significance.

The most faithful imitators of the original orders are the military orders set up in the Iberian Peninsula. Although founded by the kings of Spain and Portugal and used by them for their own purposes, these orders were directly dependent on the Holy See at first. Only later, when the sovereigns took over the grandmastership and made it hereditary in their family, did they lose their independence, without, however, abandoning their religious character.

The principal military orders in Italy came into existence at a rather late date in history, on or after 1500, a date traditionally accepted as marking the end of the age of chivalry. With the grand mastership vested in the crown, these Italian orders harbored the same cause for deterioration as eventually appeared in the Spanish orders, because they were dynastic orders from the start. Nonetheless, the Italian military orders greatly resembled the original ones, both in objective and organization. They aspired to the protection of the Italian coastline against the Moslem pirates from the Barbary States in North Africa who at the time were infesting the Mediterranean; they harassed the merchant marine and sporadically attacked harbors and towns along the coast. The objective of these orders, then, was much the same as that of the Order of Malta at that time, namely sea-warfare against Islam. Such an organization was the Order of Saint Stephen, established in 1562 by Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, with the approval of the Holy Father. The knights of this order which had headquarters at Pisa cleared the Mediterranean of corsairs and took an active part in the battle of Lepanto. Eventually, however, it disintegrated, became completely secularized and survived as an order of merit.

The Order of Saint Maurice and Lazarus, founded in 1572 by Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoia, has an intriguing history. Comparatively late in origin, it was a merger of two pre-existing institutions which date back to much earlier times.

One was the hospital congregation of Saint Lazarus, previously mentioned. After the fall of Acre the fraternity was transferred to Europe and for some time flourished in France. The Italian branch soon declined and was finally suppressed by Pope Innocent VIII in 1490. There remained, however, the possessions of the order and these were handed over to certain gentlemen who, far from having an interest in lepers, did little else but appropriate the revenues for their own use.

The second institution was the so-called Order of Saint Maurice which, if it was an order at all, hardly merited the name of a military order by any stretch of the imagination. Yet whatever it lacked of the military spirit has since been largely supplied by romance, insofar as it was involved in the story of a layman who became antipope. When Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoia, renounced the throne, he retired to Ripaglia where he had built a church in honor of the holy martyr Maurice to whom the house of Savoia had a special devotion. There, in 1434, the duke with five other knights established the Sacred Militia of Saint Maurice—a rather pompous title for a group of elderly widowers who had retired into a hermitage.

Four years later, the remnants of the Council of Basle revolted against the legitimate Pope Eugene IV and elected the above-mentioned Amadeus. He accepted under the title of Felix V and abandoned his solitude in Ripaglia in the company of the other knightly widowers. Thenceforth history has little to tell about the Sacred Militia of Saint Maurice. In 1572, Emmanuel Philibert, after lengthy negotiations, obtained from Pope Gregory XIII permission to allot the possessions of the Order of Saint Lazarus in his territory to the languishing Order of Saint Maurice. Out of this merger developed the military religious Order of Saint Maurice and Lazarus—the last of the military orders to come into existence. Its objective was to curtail piracy on the high seas and combat the enemies of the faith. However, the institution from its very inception was an affair of the Savoian dynasty, the duke and his successors assuming the office of grand master. The knights vowed obedience to the duke and were subject to him not only as vassals but also by virtue of a religious vow. They pledged themselves to serve in the convents of the order for five years; one of these convents was in Turin for the ground forces and the other in Nice for the naval forces. The character of the Order of St. Maurice and Lazarus was completely changed when Victor Emmanuel II, in 1860, made it a simple order of merit.

Other dynastic orders of knighthood having some ties with the Church were quite different. The motives for establishing them were various. Some owed their origin simply to a chance occasion or a romantic event not infrequently of a frivolous nature; some were commemorative of a signal victory in battle or the accession of a prince to the throne. Often enough, politics played a role, when a sovereign would wish to bind his nobles closer to the crown.