BETHLEMITES. - Chivalric orders and religious congregations.
I. - This name is borne by several chivalric orders, among which are remembered the order of the B. at Cambridge in 1257, the order of the B. which flourished in Bohemia from 1217 onwards with hospital activity, and that founded by Pius II, on the model of the Knights of Rhodes, to protect Christians in the Greek islands, with its seat on the island of Lenno (19 January 1459), which soon disappeared.
II. - Two congregations are also known by the same name: one male and one female in Latin America. The first, originally a simple confraternity of Franciscan Tertiaries devoted to the hospital and school of Our Lady of Bethlehem, founded by the Servant of God Peter of Béthencourt (1653) in the city of Guatemala, was raised to the status of a congregation by Innocent XI on 26 May 1687 (cf. Bullarium, XIX, Turin 1870, pp. 735-51), with the vows of serving the poor and persevering in the congregation, in addition to the three usual vows, and placed under the rule of St Augustine. Clement XI (3 April 1710 and 24 July 1711) declared it a congregation with solemn vows, with the privileges of the Mendicants and the Ministers of the Sick (cf. op. cit., XXI, 1871, pp. 385-87, 431-33 and passim). Benedict XIII (24 July 1729) permitted some priests to enter among the B. (cf. op. cit., XXII, 1871, pp. 855-56). The B. spread widely in Latin America, but the suppression decreed by the Cortes in 1820 found them in a state of great decline.
The female congregation, with the same hospital and educational aims as the male, was founded in 1668 by the Bethlemite brother Antonio della Croce in collaboration with Anna Maria del Gualdo. It was suppressed in 1820; however, the house in Guatemala remained, though far from its original fervour, where in 1830 Vincenza Rosal entered, taking the name Sister Maria Incarnation (1815-86). This mother, elected superior in 1849, promoted the reform of the congregation, which, after various migrations and suppressions due to the anti-religious struggles in Central America (1870 and 1899), revived in Pasto in Colombia (1885). The congregation received the decree of praise from the Holy See on 28 February 1891 under the title of “Bethlemites of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”, to which the mother reform was devoted. The constitutions were definitively approved on 25 January 1936. The mother house is in Bogotá; it comprises 35 houses and over 400 sisters.