CHIVALROUS AND HOSPITALLER ORDERS. — In its original sense, *ordo militaris*, corresponding to *ordo ecclesiasticus* (i.e., the clergy), generically denotes a lay institution. When the term "religious orders" began to be used in the modern sense—referring to a religious family organized and spread across various regions—the term "military orders" also began to appear. These orders trace their origins to chivalry (v.), forming an organized chivalry under ecclesiastical rules with the duty of bearing arms and taking up war to defend the faith, the poor, and the oppressed.
Following the model of the Cluniac and Cistercian organizations, they were subject to the Holy See, which alone could permit religious persons to "strike the enemy without guilt" (*hostem ferire sine culpa*) without incurring canonical irregularity. The Holy See assigned them to observe one of the recognized Rules and approved their particular statutes. Each order was composed of *fratres milites* (i.e., *equites* = knights) and *fratres servientes* (i.e., sergeants, squires, servants): as *fratres*, they were true religious; as *milites*, true warriors. The clerics whom they were permitted to admit into their houses were neither *milites* nor *servientes*, but chaplains charged with religious services within the order.
While the Crusaders, by taking the Cross, vowed themselves to a temporary service, the military religious were perpetual Crusaders because they vowed their entire lives to the armed struggle against the infidel Muslim. At the head of each order was a Grand Master, elected by the knights whom he governed. Under him were the commanders and preceptors in charge of individual houses, who enjoyed the revenues of certain properties of the order, erected as commendatory benefices in the manner of ecclesiastical livings. Indeed, vast possessions throughout Christendom came to enrich these orders so that they might fulfill the tasks for which they had been instituted. The Grand Master was assisted by dignitaries in charge of individual offices, who bore particular titles in addition to their common title of knights of the grand cross.
The premier military order, upon which the others were modeled, was that of the Temple, from which the Templars (v.) took their name.
1) The Order of Calatrava, following the Cistercian Rule, founded in 1158 and approved by Alexander III in 1164;
2) The Order of Saint James of the Sword or of Compostella, which arose around 1170 with the task of protecting pilgrims traveling to Compostella, received in 1175 by a bull of Alexander III the mandate to fight the infidels;
3) The Order of Alcántara, following the Cistercian Rule, whose beginnings date to 1176. In 1540, Paul III granted the knights of Calatrava and Alcántara permission to contract marriage, similar to the knights of Saint James;
4) The Order of Montesa was instituted by the King of Aragon in 1317, after the suppression of the Templars, for the defense of the coasts from the Saracens; it was placed under the protection of the Order of Calatrava and endowed with the goods of the Templars. The administration of these four orders and the common grand-magistery passed in 1523 to the King of Spain by disposition of Adrian VI, without thereby losing their religious character.
In Portugal, the suppression of the Templars gave rise to the Military Order of Christ, constituted on the model of that of Calatrava for the defense of the kingdom’s borders, and approved by John XXII in 1319. In this order, too, the grand-magistery passed to the King of Portugal; it incorporated what remained of the Order of Avis, which had existed since 1147 and had been approved by the Holy See in 1162.
A somewhat different category, in terms of origin and purpose, is that of the orders which, having arisen as hospitallers, later assumed military tasks. The Holy See, which initially recognized them as hospitallers by assigning them the Rule of Saint Augustine, later intervened when they assumed a military character. These are: the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, now known as the Order of Malta (v. SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER, etc), and the Teutonic Order (v. TEUTONIC ORDER).
Finally, in the past there existed chivalrous orders which, having arisen as hospitallers, retained this character until they were transformed in the 16th–18th centuries or became extinct altogether.
In the 12th century, the Order of Saint Lazarus existed as a hospitaller for the care of lepers; Alexander IV canonically recognized it on 11 April 1255 under the Rule of Saint Augustine. It was initially composed of knights from other orders, particularly the Templars, who had been obliged to leave their own order; thus it could also take on a military character, though it never attained true importance in this role. Under its governance, in addition to the leper hospital in Jerusalem, it administered other such institutions in Europe, which lost their purpose as leprosy was eradicated in the West. After long negotiations, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, obtained in 1572 from Gregory XIII, under certain conditions, that the goods of the order situated in his territory be transferred to the Order of Saint Maurice. The members wore black habits with a green cross.
Toward 1180, Guido of Montpellier founded a hospital and gathered companions to assist him. Innocent III entrusted to him, by a bull of 19 June 1204, the care of the hospital he had founded in Rome. Upon Guido’s death in the spring of 1208, the Pope decreed that the magisterium of the order—which, like the hospital, was called Saint Spirit in Sassia—should belong to the head or preceptor of this hospital, so that he might preside over all the brethren of the order. In effect, the order had hospitals under its jurisdiction in various places in Italy, endowed with suitable patrimonies (cf. M. Vanti, Bernardino Cirillo, Rome 1926, p. 76).
They bore as their insignia a double white cross on a black mantle and, in their coat of arms, a dove with outstretched wings. They also enjoyed the right of questing, a right which in time they farmed out, giving rise to deplorable abuses. With the specific purpose of caring for the sick, the Hospitaller Order of Saint Anthony the Abbot arose in the 11th century in Vienne, Provence; after founding an initial hospital in that city, it established others in Italy and even in Rome itself on the Esquiline. All were endowed with revenues and enjoyed the right of questing. The hospitallers wore a white T on a black mantle.
In Tuscany, at Altopascio, a hospital was founded with particular statutes that were adopted by other hospitals that joined II. As a hospitaller, in the first decades of the 13th century there arose in Barcelona, through the work of Saint Peter Nolasco and under the Rule of Saint Augustine and the protection of the King of Aragon, a confraternity that soon became an order: that of Saint Mary of Mercy, with the purpose of redeeming captives. The King granted it the right to bear his insignia with a cross superimposed on a white habit (v. MERCEDARIANS). Benedict XIII definitively recognized this order in 1725 as a true mendicant order, equating it fully with them (cf. A. Serafini, *De honorificis titulis conlatis ab Ordine S. Maria de Mercede*, etc., Rome 1936). An order with a similar purpose had arisen in France: the Trinitarian Order.
On the model of the Hospitaller Orders, there was established in Bologna in 1261 that of the Most Glorious Virgin Mary, commonly called the Order of the Friars Gaudenti, confirmed by Urban IV, with the purpose of settling civil and family discord and protecting the weak judicially from the oppression of the powerful. It spread from Bologna to other cities of central and northern Italy but did not last long. The friars wore a white habit with a grey cloak and a vermilion cross with two stars (D. V. FEDERICI, GIACOMO, Istoria dei Frati Gaudenti, Venezia 1787. Cf. Dante, Inferno, XXIII, 103 ff.). They were bound to conjugal chastity.
Later, it was princes who began to establish knightly Orders for the nobles of their kingdoms, preserving for them a religious character and assigning a purpose akin to that of the military Orders, with particular constitutions, corresponding revenues, insignia, and proper vestments. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, in 1431 instituted the Order of the Golden Fleece, distinguished by a gold lambskin pendant from a chain and a red robe. After Burgundy passed under the rule of the House of Habsburg, the Golden Fleece became the highest honour in Spain and Austria. Eugenius IV in 1433 and Leo X in 1516 approved the Order. Louis XI of France in 1469 constituted the Order of St Michael, and Henry III in 1578 that of the Holy Spirit. Amadeus VIII of Savoy instituted in 1409 with fifteen knights the Order of the Collar, later called that of the Annunciation, and later, in 1434, that of St Maurice, when he retired to live an eremitical life at Ripaglia together with five other knights, widowers like himself. Venice too had its knights whom the Doge created from among the most meritorious nobles. Special mention is owed to the Order of St Stephen, which Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, with papal approval, instituted in 1562 taking as a model the organization of the Order of Malta. The purpose of the new Order was to free the Mediterranean from the Muslim corsairs who infested it and to make navigation safe; its seat was established in Pisa; and immediately the knights with their armed galleys valiantly held the sea, also participating in the victory of Lepanto (1571).
The example of Catholic princes was imitated also by Protestant princes, who made themselves founders of knightly Orders to decorate princes and subjects; but in this way the original character was distorted and mere more or less pompous honours were created.
The Revolution suppressed in France every knightly Order under the pretext of equality, just as it had suppressed every noble rank. But Napoleon, by law of 19 May 1802, to create “military rewards and to reward also civil services and virtues,” constituted a “Legion of Honour,” of purely lay character, without any further mention of religious ties; he preserved in it a hierarchy with names taken from the ancient knightly militia with Grand Officers, Commanders, Officers, and Knights. The Legion was preserved and modified under the First and Second Empire and served as a model for the new equestrian Orders instituted anew or transformed in a wholly lay sense. But in them there has now disappeared, even in their names, every trace of the ancient medieval chivalry.