Matthew Paris has left us a copy of the vow which the lepers of the hospital of St. Julian, at St. Albans, were obliged to take before admission. I append a translation of it as a document highly illustrative of this part of our subject:—
“I, brother B, promise and, taking my bodily oath by touching the most sacred Gospel, affirm, before God and all his saints in this church, which is constructed in honour of St. Julian the confessor, in the presence of Dominus R. the Archdeacon, that all the days of my life I will be subservient and obedient to the commands of the Lord Abbot of St. Albans for the time being, and to his archdeacon; resisting them in nothing, unless such things should be commanded as would militate against the Divine pleasure. I will never commit theft, nor bring a false accusation against any one of the brethren, nor infringe the vow of chastity, nor fail in my duty by appropriating anything or leaving anything by will to others, unless by a dispensation granted by the brothers. I will make it my study wholly to avoid all kind of usury, as a monstrous thing, and hateful to God.[67] I will not be aiding and abetting, in word or thought, directly or indirectly, in any plan by which any one shall be appointed custos or master of the Lepers of St. Julian, except the person appointed by the Lord Abbot of St. Albans. I will be content, without strife or complaint, with the food and drink, and other things given and allowed me by the master, according to the usage and custom of the house. I will not transgress the bounds prescribed to me, without the special license of my superiors, and with their consent and will; and if I prove an offender against any article named above, it is my wish that the Lord Abbot or his substitute may punish me according to the nature and amount of the offence, as shall seem best to him, and even to cast me forth an apostate from the congregation of the brethren, without hope of remission, except through the special grace of the Lord Abbot.”[68]
I have only very briefly to advert to one other subject, before closing these remarks on the government of the English leper hospitals. I have already alluded to a special order of knighthood having been established at an early period for the care and superintendence of lepers. Belloy[69] carries back the origin of this order in Palestine to a very early period in the history of the Christian church. We know as a matter of greater historical certainty that the knights of St. Lazarus separated from the general order of Knights Hospitallers about the end of the eleventh or commencement of the twelfth century.[70]
From the locality of their original establishment, and from their central preceptory being near Jerusalem, they were at first generally designated Knights of St. Lazarus, or of St. Lazarus and St. Mary of Jerusalem. Latterly they were conjoined by different European Princes with the Military Orders of Notre-Dame, Mount Carmel, and St. Maurice.[71]
Saint Louis brought twelve of the Knights of St. Lazarus into France, and entrusted them with the superintendence of the Ladreries or leper hospitals of his kingdom.[72] The first notice of their having acquired a footing in Great Britain is in the time of King Stephen. During the reign of that sovereign their head establishment in England at Burton Lazars, Leicestershire, was built by (as Nicols[73] states) a general collection throughout the kingdom, but chiefly by the assistance of Robert de Mowbray. Here they gradually acquired considerable wealth and possessions.[74] I find that the Hospitals of Tilton, of the Holy Innocents at Lincoln, of St. Giles, London, the Preceptory of Choseley in Norfolk, and perhaps various others, were betimes annexed to Burton Lazars as cells containing “fratres leprosos de Sancto Lazaro de Jerusalem.” Nicols has printed not less than thirty-five charters relating to the House of Burton Lazars. Its privileges and possessions were confirmed by Henry II., King John, and Henry VI. It was at last dissolved by Henry VIII.[75] The only settlement of the Knights of St. Lazarus in Scotland that I have been able to find, was in the town of Linlithgow, and the notice of it is very imperfect and unsatisfactory. It is contained in a document of the reign of Alexander II., and preserved in the Chartulary of Newbottle, in which reference is expressly made to land held “de Fratribus de Sancto Lazaro” at Linlithgow.[76] That the Lazarites had an establishment or establishments in Scotland as well as in the sister kingdom, appears borne out by a fact recorded by Helyot,[77] that in 1342, John Halliday, a Scotsman, was appointed Governor of the Knights of St. Lazarus both in England and Scotland, by the Grand Master of Boigny in France, who was at that period the reputed head of the order. Indeed Pennecuik, on the authority of Maimbourg (Histoire des Croisades), asserts that the “Knights of St. Lazarus were numerous everywhere, but especially in Scotland and France.”[78]
The first and original object of the Knights of St. Lazarus seems to have been the care probably of the sick generally, but in a special manner of those affected with leprosy.[79] They received lepers into their order, superintended the inmates of the lazar-houses, and, till the standing rule to the contrary was allowed to be changed by Pope Innocent IV., they were obliged to elect a leper to be their Grand Master;[80] “eatenus consuetudine observatâ ut Miles leprosus domûs Sancti Lazari Hierosolymitani in ejus Magistrum assumeretur.”[81]
Toussaint de S. Luc, in his History, Ceremonials, etc., of the Order of St. Lazarus, after it was united in 1608 by Henry IV. of France to those of Notre-Dame and Mount Carmel, states that the candidates for this united knighthood were obliged, upon the Holy Evangelists, to swear inter alia, “to exercise charity and works of mercy towards the poor, and particularly lepers” (et particulièrement les lepreux.)[82]
What extent and what kind of sway, if any, the Lazarite Knights of England and Scotland were ever allowed to exert over the lepers of the kingdom generally, or over the inmates of these leper cells and hospitals that more especially belonged to them, I have not been able to ascertain from any of the British historical records of the middle ages that I have had an opportunity of consulting. It is, however, only too probable that the Lazarites, like most of the other early orders of knights, were induced by pride and avarice to turn from their original objects of love and charity to others,—to views of power and aggrandisement for themselves.
Extent of Endowment of the Hospitals, Diet, etc.