ordination of the knights of St John

Factual Questions
1

G’day

The Order of St John (Knights Hospitallers) was given a charter by the Pope in 1113 that established it as an order of canons regular under its own (basically Augustinian) rule. At that stage the order had not yet any military character, and no knights brethren.

As canons regular, the members of the Order of St John were technically not monks but secular clergy living a communal life (like the canons of a cathedral chapter). This meant that when the Second Lateran Council forbade regular clergy from administering sacraments to the laity except in emergency (or with special powers, or with a dispensation etc. etc.) the Order of St John was not affected. This position was confirmed by findings in favour of the Order in at least three cases brought to the Papal Curia by various bishops over the centuies.

The process by which the member knights took over the Order from the hospitaller canons is obscure, but eventually the Order consisted principally of member-knights, and the important offices in the Order were restricted to them.

Now, canons regular are priests: ordained to perform the Mass. And although some very senior officers of the Order are recorded as having performed the Mass (one Grand Master even became a cardinal, and would certainly have been ordained a bishop at that point if he had not been before), we know that the general run of members were not. They sang Mass in choir, but the Order needed chaplains to hear confession, perform the Mass, etc.

So here are the questions.

  • Before the Counter-Reformation, to what status in Holy Orders were knights brethren of the Order of St John ordained, if any? Were they on shaky ground as members of an order of canons regular as a result of not being priests?

  • Did the knights brethren serve as nurses in the hospitals? (We know surgeons and physicians were separate.) Or did the serving brethren do that?

  • There were canonesses of the Order of St John. Did they always live in separate establishments, or were there some with male and female dormitories? Did the canonesses serve as nurses in the hospitals?

  • Did all or most commanderies operate hospitals for pilgrims? Did many operate hospitals for the general sick?

Regards,
Agback

2

I’m afraid I can’t answer most of your questions authoritatively, but I’ll take a half-assed stab at a couple.

It seems there were eventually three distinct classes:

  1. Military brothers - the knights brethren.

  2. Brothers infirmarians - These administered to the hospitals and earlier may have functioned as back-up soldiery

  3. Brothers chaplains - These dealt with divine services.

Which makes sense - It would be waste to use a trained knight ( of which there were relatively few - rarely more than 300 in the Holy Land in the 13th century ) as a nurse in a hospital.

I dug up one quote for Toulouse that seemed to indicate they lived in separate houses and did not participate in charitable services, being instead contemplatives. But I have no idea how universal that was. That snippet cited the following paper, which might have some more extensive information:

A.J. Forey, ‘Women and Military Orders in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, *Studia Monastica *29 (1987), 67-77.

My WAG however, is that they would have been housed separately given the social mores of the day. Certainly the hospital complex at Jerusalem kept a separate palacium for women ( complete with an obsetetric ward, apparently ).

I assume you mean commanderies in the Holy Land and are excluding those elsewhere. Originally I would imagine they did as it was through protection of pilgrims ( which included hospice services ) that they seem to have gradually been drawn into the military sphere. But this is supposition on my part.

However as regards to the administration of hospitals, while there seem to have been some specialist hospices ( such as a smaller one specifically for German pilgrims in Jerusalem, subject to the main hospital ), in general the Order seems to have taken very seriously their role to nurse the sick, poor or abandoned, pilgrim or no. See this article ( from which I gleaned the cite on Toulouse above ) :

http://www.ecu.edu/history/whichard/MBarberCharitable.htm

  • Tamerlane