The Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem was one of the three great military orders of knighthood in the Middle Ages.

Legendary History

According to legendary sources, the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus pre-dates the Crusades. Tradition says that Saint Basil the Great, Archbishop of Cæsarea, founded a leper hospital near Cæsarea in 369 CE. In the following century, the hospitaller monks there established another hospital at Ptolemaïs, gradually extending their mission to include caring for pilgrims to the Holy Land. In 530 CE, they moved their headquarters to Jerusalem, where they established themselves outside the walls of the city at the Gate of Saint Ladre, on the site of an earlier leper hospital that had been founded in the time of the Jewish High Priest, John Hyrcanus, who reigned 135 to 105 BCE.

The Crusades

The Order began to acquire a military character during the crusades, when it began to admit members of the military Orders of Saint John, of the Temple, and of the Holy Sepulcher who had become leprous. Because many knights of the Order were lepers who considered themselves the “living dead,” the Order acquired a reputation for bravery — death in the defense of their faith held no terrors for them.

The hospital is claimed to have been officially established as a military and hospitaller order in 1098, when the Christians captured Jerusalem. The Order was entrusted with the defense of the castles of Kharbet el-Zeitha and Madjel el-Djemeriah. It began to acquire properties throughout Palestine and Europe by gift from wealthy patrons. Baldwin IV, the Leper King of Jerusalem, was especially generous. However, claims of an early date as a military order might be exaggerated. When Louis VII of France granted the hospital the Barony of Boigny in 1154, there was no mention of its military role.

When the Muslims re-captured Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin took the Saint Lazarus hospital under his personal protection. He permitted the poor of the city who could not pay ransom to leave Jerusalem by Saint Ladre’s Gate and take refuge in the hospital of the Order.

In 1191, the Order moved its headquarters to the coastal city of Saint Jean d’Acre, formerly Ptolemaïs, where it built a fortress-hospice and the Church of Saint Lazarus des Chevaliers. The Order acquired sovereign rights over a portion of the city outside the walls and was recognized as a sovereign power by the Pope and other temporal rulers. It was also granted Saint Lazarus’ Tower and the Church of Saint Lazarus near Caesarea.

Defeat

The Order shared the gradual defeat of Europe’s crusading project over the next hundred years. Most of the leper knights of the Order were slain in the Battle of Gaza in 1244. Those who were not present at Gaza accompanied St. Louis IX of France on his Egyptian Crusade and took part in his expeditions against Syria during the years 1250 to 1254. The first evidence of the hospital as a chivalric order was the 1254 Bull “Cum a nobis petitur,” which confirmed the brothers of Saint Lazarus as a military and hospitaller order under the rule of Saint Augustine. When Saint Jean d’Acre fell to the Moslems in 1291, the European orders retreated to Europe and lost their crusading function.

Amalgamation in Italy

The Vatican attempted to amalgamate the Order of Saint Lazarus with the Order of Saint John in 1489. The effort was unsuccessful. Both the Priory of Capua in Italy and the Priory of Boigny in France resisted amalgamation. In 1517, the Pope recognized the Prior of Capua as Grand Master of the order. In 1572, the Italian order was amalgamated with the Order of St. Maurice, under the protection of the House of Savoy. The amalgamated order is now one of the royal orders of Italy.

Resistance in France

The French Priory of Boigny resisted both amalgamation with the Order of Saint John in 1489 and the appointment in 1517 of the Italian Prior of Capua as Grand Master. In 1557, the French king assumed control of the Boigny Priory and continued the order in France as a separate, royal French order. All royal French orders were abolished by the revolutionary assembly in 1791. Some of the French orders were later restored, but the Order of Saint Lazarus was not.

Indpendent Survival?

Although the details are controversial, a modern Order of St. Lazarus claims continuity from the original order through a survival of the royal French order. Operating under the patronage of the Duke of Seville, the order has become quite popular among middle-class Americans.

Critics of the independent order assert that the last knight of the royal French order was admitted about 1788 and that the last surviving member died in 1857. They contend that the independent order was established in 1910 as a revival of the extinct order.

Personal Connection

Conrad Hauri (”Chunradus dictus Hornus miles”), a knight of the Order of Saint Lazarus, was living at the order’s Commandery of Gfenn, near Dübendorf, Zürich. He was named in a charter dated 13 April 1272, when the order sold the church at Meiringen to Kloster Interlaken. This is the first mention of anyone with the surname Hauri and led to my particular interest in the order.

More Information

• For information on the Order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus, see Ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro.
• For information on the Order of St. Lazarus as an independent survival, see The Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem.
• For a critique of the claims of the independent Order of St. Lazarus, see Guy Stair Sainty’s The Order of Saint Lazarus.

Medieval Romance

During the Middle Ages, at the height of knighthood, the Search for the Holy Grail became the literary symbol of the knightly quest. This literature, known collectively as the Grail Romances, were stories about individual knights who devoted their lives to finding the Holy Grail. Foremost among these knights were Parzifal and his son Lohengrin.The first of these romances was Le Roman de Percival or Le Conte del Graal, composed in the late 12th century by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes. Another was Robert de Boron’s Roman de l’Estoire dou Saint Graal. The third was an anonymous romance, Perlesvaus. Finally, there was Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival.

Boron’s was the first romance to say explicitly that the Grail was the cup used at the Last Supper, while Perlesvaus implies that the Grail was actually several different things. Wolfram von Eschenbach goes further, asserting that Parzifal and Lohengrin belonged to a Grail Family, hereditary guardians of the Holy Grail, descended from Joseph of Arimathea.

According to Wolfram, the Grail family was descended from a man named Laziliez and his parents Mazadan and Terdelaschoye. Exotic names of this type were common in medieval literature. Some scholars have suggested that Laziliez was a corruption of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany, while Mazadan might have been a corruption of Masada, the last stronghold of the Jews who rebelled against Rome in 68 CE. Terdelaschoye came from the French Terre de la Choix (”Chosen Land”). It is possible, then, that these particular names are allegorical.

Modern Nonsense

There is currently an active market in Europe and America for taking the medieval myths further. In Holy Blood, Holy Grail(1982), Hugh Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln developed their theory that the Holy Grail was not the cup used at the Last Supper, but the Holy Bloodline of a family descended from Jesus himself. Dan Brown has developed the same idea in fictional form in The DaVinci Code (2003).

These writers speculate that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus, and that the two of them had a son. In some medieval stories Mary Magdalene was identified with Mary of Bethany, and in others she was said to have accompanied Joseph of Arimathea to Marseilles after Jesus’ crucifixion. In Baigent’s extension of the medieval story, Mary Magdalene brought her son to Marseilles as well. Supposedly, that son became the ancestor of certain European royal families, notably the Merovingians, who were the earliest royal family of the Franks, forerunners of the French. In support of this theory, Baigent et al. offer an alternative etymology for San Graal (the Holy Grail); they call it the Sang Real (the Blood Royal). They also ornament their theory with many authentic medieval legends. For example, Godfroi de Bouillon, the 11th century Crusader ruler of Jerusalem, was said by his contemporaries to have been the son or grandson of Lohengrin, even though he lived some 600 years later, even assuming that there was an historical Lohengrin.

Nevertheless, the meat of Holy Blood, Holy Grail rests on the forged Lobineau genealogies, and the monomania of Pierre Plantard, a Frenchman who in the early 1960s sought to prove that he is a descendant of the Merovingians though Dagobert II, an obscure 7th century dynast who is not known to have left descendants. Moreover, there is no evidence of a secret Priory of Sion that has worked through the centuries to promote the rule of these soi disant descendants of Jesus, nor is there evidence that the Roman Catholic church has sought though the centuries to exterminate them.

Despite the dubious material used by Baigent et al., the royal families of modern Europe, and a great many noble families, are in fact descended from the Merovingians, as are many ordinary people in northern and western Europe and the Americas.

Competing Claims

There are many vessels claimed to be the the actual cup used at the Last Supper:

• The Cup of Antioch is a glass crater of middle-eastern glass, brought back from the Crusades. Sometime in the Middle Ages it was fitted with a leather case.
• The city of Genoa in Italy had an emerald vessel, claimed in a 16th chronicle to be the “Saint Grail.” Napoléon took the cup to France, where it was discovered to be green glass.
• There is a blue-glass bowl discovered Glastonbury in the 19th century and claimed by its finder to be the Holy Grail. Glastonbury is said to have been the home of King Arthur. The bowl is now at the Chalice Gardens in Glastonbury.
• The Vernon family Hawkstone Manor has a Roman alabaster cup, claimed to be the Grail.
• Valencia Cathedral in Spain has a stone chalice.
• There is also a “grail” in Russia.

Some possible Grails have been discredited:

• The Antioch Chalice (not to be confused with the Cup of Antioch), now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was suggested as a possible candidate in the 1930s, but has now been dated several centuries too late.
• Nanteos Cup owned by the Powell family of Nanteos, Wales was reputed in the 19th century to have healing powers. It has been identified as a 14th-century mazer.

More Information

• Colavito, Jason. “The Templars, the Holy Grail, & Henry Sinclair.” Jason Colavito <jasoncolavito.lcom>. 2015. Retrieved Dec. 1, 2019.
• O’Neill, Tim. “Introduction.” History versus the Da Vinci Code, <www.historyversusthedavincicode.com>. Retrieved Dec. 1, 2019.

Revised to repair formatting and add links.

The original Knight of the Swan was Lohengrin.

LOHENGRIN (lō’en-grin), the hero of an old High German poem, written in the end of the 13th century. He was the son of Parzival, and a knight of the Grail. At King Arthur’s command he was taken by a swan through the air to Mainz, where he fought for Elsa, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, overthrew her persecutor, and married the lady. Then he accompanied the emperor to fight against the Hungarians, and subsequently warred against the Saracens. On his return home to Cologne, Elsa, contrary to his prohibition, persisted in asking him about his origin. After being asked a third time he told her, but was at the same time carried away by the swan back to the Grail. Rückert’s edition (1857) of the poem is the best. The poem is a continuation of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. Wagner made it the subject of his great opera, “Lohengrin” (1848).

Collier’s New Encyclopedia, 1921.

There are many medieval versions of the Swan Knight story. Here’s one I particularly like:

“In the year 711 lived Beatrice only daughter of Dietrich, Duke of Cleves, at her castle of Nymwegen. One bright day she sat at her window looking down the Rhine, when she saw a swan drawing a boat by a gold chain. In this vessel was Helias. He came ashore, won her heart, became Duke of Cleves, and lived happily with her for many years. One thing alone interfered with her happiness: she knew not whence her husband came, and he had strictly forbidden her to ask. But once she broke his command, and asked him whence he had come to her. Then he gave his children his sword, his horn, and his ring, bidding them never separate or lose these legacies, and entering the boat which returned for him, he vanished for ever.”

For more, see “Knight of the Swan” in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould.

Early History

The Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem was founded sometime before 1099 — perhaps as early as 1020 — as a hospice in Jerusalem to aid pilgrims to the Holy Land. The beginning of the First Crusade in 1099 began to change the character of the hospice. In 1113 Pope Pascal II issued a bull establishing a hospitaller order under the patronage of St. John the Baptist, with Bl. Gerard as its head. By 1126 the Order had begun to take a military role in defense of pilgrims. In 1142 the Order acquired Krak-des-Chevaliers, its famous headquarters in Palestine. Thereafter, the Order took a leading role, with the Templars and the Order of Saint Lazarus, in the defense of the Crusader kingdoms in Palestine.

When the Crusader kingdoms collapsed after the Fall of Jerusalem on 2 October 1187, the Order retreated to Cyprus. Tripoli fell to Islam on 26 April 1289. On 18 May 1291 St. Jean d’Acre fell. It was the last remaining Christian stronghold in the Holy Land. The Christian states of Europe did not succeed again in achieving hegemony there until the Fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.

In 1310 the Order retreated to Rhodes, and in 1530 to Malta. With the loss of Palestine, the crusading orders lost their focus, becoming increasingly aristocratic. The Bl. Gerard had been Rector of the Order (1100-1118). His successor Bl. Raymond du Puy was Master (1125-1158). Roger de Moulins, in the last days at Jerusalem became the first Grand Master (1183-1187). Philippe de Villiers de L’Isle Adam, who presided over the retreat to Malta, was the first to regularly use the style Excellency. In 1572 the Grand Master began to use a coronet in his coat of arms. In 1601 Alof de Vignacourt assumed the title Prince Grand Master and the style Serene Highness. In 1630 Prince Grand Master Antoine de Paule was granted the style Eminence, normally reserved to Cardinals. In 1741 his successor Manoel Pinto de Fonceca adopted the style Eminent Highness and began to use a closed (sovereign) crown in his coat of arms. Malta itself became a city of palaces.

Suppression of Protestants

During and after the Reformation the Order lost Protestant members through both expulsion and disaffection. The Order’s property was confiscated in England (1540) and Scotland (1564). The German Bailiwick of Brandenburg became Protestant in 1577 but continued as part of the Order until 1812.

Surrender

In 1798 the Order surrendered the island of Malta to Napoléon. The following years were confusing. A part of the Order — now recognized as having been the legitimate body of the Order — went to Sicily, in 1826 to Ferrara, then in 1834 to Rome, where it found a permanent home.

The original Order of Malta, recognized as such by the Holy See, has retained its sovereignty in international law with extraterritorial sovereignty over its headquarters at Palazzo di Malta in Rome. The Order has diplomatic representatives in 81 countries and has Permanent Observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. The current Prince and Grand Master is Frà Matthew Festing (2008- ). He has diplomatic precedence as a head of state, nobiliary precedence as a prince, and ecclesiastical precedence equal to a cardinal.

Confusion

After the fall of Malta, during the period of Napoléonic ascendancy, many splinter groups arose, typically along national lines. Although some of these survive, they are not sovereign, and many are not considered to be legitimate survivals.

Russia

After the fall of Malta to Napoléon in 1798 Czar Paul I assumed protection of the Order’s knights in Russia and was elected Grand Master. His action was not sanctioned by the Holy See. In 1810 Czar Alexander I seized the Order’s property in Russia and discontinued appointing new knights. The surviving knights — perhaps — took steps to preserve their part of the Order, giving rise to several splinter groups.

• For information about the possible continuation of the Russian Grand Priory, see A Brief History of the Order of St. John.

Prussia

In 1812 the King of Prussia founded the Royal Prussian Order of Saint John, which incorporated the Protestant members of the Sovereign Order. In 1853, it was reconstituted as the Bailiwick of Brandenburg (”Die Balley Brandenburg des ritterlichen Ordens St Johannis vom Spital zu Jerusalem”). It became the mother group for Protestant orders of St. John throughout Europe organized along national lines. Thus, it is now commonly called the German Johanniter Order and its daughter orders are also Johanniter orders. In the German order, noble proofs are not required to become a knight, but membership is limited to members of the Lutheran and Reformed faiths.

France

After the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France in 1815, the French knights organized a Capitular Commission to order their affairs. The Commission admitted new members, which were then confirmed by the Sovereign Order. However, the Commission admitted Protestant members in contravention of the statutes of the Order. A conflict developed between the Commission and the Order by 1817. In 1824 the French government dissolved the Commission. Nevertheless, the Commission continued to operate until 1830. Thereafter, the members recognized by the Sovereign Order presumably submitted to it, while those not so recognized attempted to continue as a splinter group.

United Kingdom

English knights admitted by the French Capitular Commission organized themselves into an English splinter group. It received a royal charter from Queen Victoria in 1888 as the Most Venerable Order of St. John. The current Grand Master is HRH Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Scotland

In 1797 a group of Scottish Knights of Malta allied themselves to the Orange order under the name of the Royal Black Association of the Religious and Military Order, Knights of Malta. In 1807 HRH Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland was elected Grand Master in separate elections by both organizations, but then resigned in 1820 following a parliamentary inquiry. He became King of Hanover in 1837.

The patronage of a royal prince gave an aura of legitimacy, but the origin of the Scottish body is not clear. It seems likely they were originally a quasi-Masonic organization who accepted Chevalier Ramsay’s assertion the Scottish Hospitallers survived the dissolution of the Order in 1564 by entering Freemasonry.

The Scottish order established branches in Canada (1829), England (1842), Australia (1868), and the United States (1874). These branches gave rise to dozens of splinter groups of varying character, some as nobiliary associations, some as confraternities, and some as simple fraternal orders.

United States and Canada

A branch of the Scottish group in Canada and the United States, called the Knights of St. John and Malta, has similarly given rise to many splinter groups, including the Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller. My grandfather George W. Carroll Place was Commander 1914-1958 of Rock Island Commandery in the Knights of St. John and Malta.

More Information

• For information about the many dubious Orders of St. John, see Self Styled Orders of St. John. and dependent Charitable Organisations.