Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, also supported the Order of St. Lazarus, which he had seen doing good service during the Crusades. The Lazarists, both men and women, who had taken up their abode at Jerusalem, Acre, Jericho, and Bethany, were looked upon with admiration even by Saladin, who permitted them to remain in the first-named city a year after its capture. They were also favourably treated by the Emperor Frederick II., who, in his fierce disputes with Rome, had occasion to notice their pacific and conciliatory spirit. His contemporary and friend, Andrew II., King of Hungary, and father of St. Elizabeth, combined with his daughter and with his son-in-law, Louis VI., Landgrave of Thuringia, to increase the lazarettos throughout Germany. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene at Gotha, which was founded by St. Elizabeth, and richly endowed by her family, was administered by the Lazarists, who “received travellers and needy wayfarers.” Detachments of the same order gave succour in Saxony, Poland, the banks of the Elbe, the Danube, and the Maine. Wherever the brethren were established they recognised the authority of the grand-master, who resided at Boigny, in France, and the sovereignty of the King of France. They all followed the rules of St. Augustine, and lived in conformity with the statutes which commanded them to visit the sick with pious zeal, to tend, feed, and clothe persons afflicted with incurable diseases, and to receive charitably the pilgrims, the poor, the desolate, and those who were unable to earn their livelihood. The order, though at times a warlike one in the Holy Land, was never any but a hospitallers’ order in Europe.
During the latter half of the thirteenth century, various papal bulls, decisions of councils, and official sentences testify very clearly to the eminently hospitable character of the Lazarists; and these good brethren, far from confining themselves to the care of the lepers whose numbers diminished daily, relieved every variety of infirmity and sickness, and succoured all kinds of misery and suffering.
The downfall of the Knights Templars, who had been rivals of the Knights of St. Lazarus, in respect both of fortune and influence, proved advantageous to the latter. The greater the severity shown towards the Templars, the greater was the protection accorded to the Lazarists, the Knights of St. John, and all the orders designated in the papal bulls as hospitalarii milites, that is, warriors or knights of hospitality and charity.
In the time of St. Louis, a Languedoc knight called Nolasque, touched with pity for the fate of the unhappy captives, men, women, and children, who were daily falling into the hands of the Barbary corsairs, and sold like cattle in the Eastern slave-markets, conceived the philanthropic idea of instituting an order of “Mercy,” or Ransom. He died in 1236, after having had the satisfaction of seeing this charitable undertaking make great progress. The Brethren of Mercy preached and collected arms for the ransoming of the captives; they then crossed the seas with the produce of their appeals to buy them back, and, if the sum was insufficient, they gave themselves to slavery in exchange for the unhappy prisoners. The Christian religion was alone capable of inspiring such feelings of self-devotion.
Fig. 273.—The Seven Christian Virtues, with their Symbols.—From a Miniature in the “Ethics of Aristotle” (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Rouen Library.
On the left are the Theological Virtues: Faith, dressed as a nun, is holding a church, a New Testament, and a wax taper; Hope, in the garb of a peasant girl, has a ship upon her head, a cage beneath her feet, a beehive and a spade in her hands; Charity is a young woman standing on a hot oven, with a pelican upon her head, and her hair falling loose upon her shoulders; she has in her hands a bleeding heart and the monogram of Christ surrounded with flames of fire. Then come the Cardinal Virtues: Temperance, balancing upon the sails of a windmill, a bridle in her mouth, a clock upon her forehead, and a telescope in her hand; Justice, standing on the seat of justice, with scales at her girdle, and balancing swords; Prudence is in the garb of a nun, and is weighed down under her symbols, viz. a coffin, a mirror, a sieve, and the shield of faith; lastly, Strength, mounted on a screw-press, and with an anvil on her head, is holding a donjon in one hand, while she strangles a dragon with the other.]
Leprosy, however, still prevailed, and was, moreover, complicated with strange and unknown epidemics which spread terror everywhere and depopulated the cities of the West. It was then that Providence raised up a few saintly women and holy confessors who, amidst sickness and death, pursued their charitable mission—such as St. Catherine of Sienna (1347–1380); St. Bernardin of Sienna, who was born in the same year that Catherine died (1380–1446); St. Frances, a Roman matron; St. Juliana of Florence, and many others, who taught men that God only sent them trials in order to render them more worthy of Him. St. Catherine, from her youth, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; she distributed amongst the poor the patrimony which her father had left her, and devoted herself to teaching and preaching to the salvation of souls. When she took upon herself the further task of tending the sick, she selected the most painful cases, those in which the sores were so contagious and so fearful to behold that no one had the courage to come near them. During the great plague at Florence (1374), her heroism was something sublime; divine inspiration made up for a want of medical skill, and she cured a great number of the plague-stricken; she saved, perhaps, even more of those who were hardened in sin—a double miracle of nature and of grace.
Fig. 274.—Orphan of the Venice Hospitals in the Sixteenth Century.—From the work of Cesare Vecellio: octavo, 1590.