CROSS-BEARERS OF THE RED STAR. - A religious order of Canons Regular originating from the confraternity tasked with caring for the poor in the hospital attached to the monastery of St Clare in Prague, founded in 1233 by the Blessed AGNES OF BOHEMIA, daughter of King OTTOKAR. The hospital was endowed with substantial bequests by Queen Constance and confirmed by Gregory IX through two bulls dated 18 May 1235, one addressed to Abbess Agnes and the nuns, the other to the “rector and brothers of the hospital.” It remained under Agnes’s jurisdiction until Gregory IX himself, at the abbess’s request, transformed the confraternity into a religious order under the jurisdiction of the Holy See by the bull Omnipotens Deus of 14 April 1237, donating the hospital with all its possessions to the new order.
The new order adopted the Rule of St Augustine, took as its emblem a red six-pointed cross, and dedicated itself to the care of the poor and pilgrims. Initially the members were laymen, but later some received holy orders and assumed pastoral care. The order soon flourished, and popes and kings enriched it with many privileges. During the Hussite disturbances the order was nearly destroyed, surviving only with the hospital and the church of St Francis; but once the storm had passed, it returned to its former glory. During the Swedish invasion the Cross-Bearers took the lead among the people and shared their bread with the soldiers. When the archiepiscopal curia of Prague was stripped of its goods (1561–1694), the order supplied the archbishop with all necessities, especially since the archbishop often served as the order’s grand master. Today the religious number just over seventy, most of them professed.