BETLEMITI. – Chivalric Orders and Religious Congregations.
I. – This name is borne by certain chivalric orders, including the order of the B. at Cambridge in 1257; the order of the B. that flourished in Bohemia from 1217 onward, engaged in hospital work; and that founded by Pius II, on the model of the Knights of Rhodes, to protect the Christians of the Greek islands, with its headquarters on the island of Lemnos (19 January 1459), which soon disappeared.
II. – Two Congregations are known by the same name: one male and one female, both in Latin America. The former, initially a simple confraternity of Franciscan Tertiary brothers attached to the Hospital and school of Our Lady of Bethlehem, founded by the servant of God Pietro di Béthencourt (1653) in the city of Guatemala, was erected as 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 of persevering in the Congregation, in addition to the three customary vows, and was placed under the rule of St Augustine. Clement XI (3 April 1710 and 24 July 1711) declared it a Congregation with solemn vows and the privileges of the Mendicants and the Ministers of the Sick (cf. op. cit., XXI, there 1871, pp. 385–87, 431–33 and passim). Benedict XIII (24 July 1729) permitted some priests also to enter the B. (cf. op. cit., XXII, there 1871, pp. 855–56). The B. spread widely throughout Latin America; nevertheless, the suppression decreed by the Cortes in 1820 found them in a greatly declined state.
The female Congregation, with the same hospital and educational aims as the male one, was founded in 1668 by the Betlemite brother Antonio della Croce in collaboration with Anna Maria del Gualdo. It was suppressed in 1820; nevertheless, the house in Guatemala remained in existence, although far removed from its original fervor. In 1830 Vincenza Rosal entered it and took the name of Sister Maria Incarinazione (1815–86). This mother, elected superior in 1849, promoted the reform of the Congregation which, after various migrations and suppressions caused by the anti-religious struggles in Central America (1870 and following years), recovered at Pasto in Colombia (1885). The Congregation received the decree of praise from the Holy See on 28 February 1891, under the title of «Betlemite Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus», to which the reforming foundress was deeply devoted. The constitutions were definitively approved on 25 January 1936. The mother house is in Bogotá; it comprises 35 houses and more than 400 sisters.