Order of St. John of Jerusalem : a brief notice of its foundation and constitution, and of its objects in England.

  • Grand Priory in the British Realm of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Order of St. John of Jerusalem : a brief notice of its foundation and constitution, and of its objects in England. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    f 8 on the recommendation of the Emperor Alexander, and of the King of Naples, and, be it added, without due authority dele- gated by the existing Langues or divisions of the Order, appointed the Count Giovanni di Tommasi, Grand-Mastei-, a title which he retained until his decease in 1805, and which has not been again conferred. On his death-bed Tommasi nominated as Lieutenant'Grand Master the BaihfF Gudvara Suardo, who was succeeded in the Lieutenancy by Giovanni y Centelles in 1814. Count Antoine Busca (1821), Prince de Candida (1834), Count Colloredo (1845), Count Alexander Borgia (18(Jo), and the Venerable Bailli Fra Ceschi di Santa Croce (1872.) These Lieutenants have presided over an Association of Knights in Rome styled the Sacred Council, which claims to be vested with a governing authority. iiation of 12. In Clarke's History of Knighthood it is stated that the imission total of the Order was 1,000, and that of this total the French 314- Langues, in 1788, numbered 808. When Malta fell in 1798 there were 332 Knights in the Island, of whom 200 were French- men. In 1814 the French Knights took heart at the humilia- tion of Napoleon, and assembling at Paris, elected a permanent Capitualary Commission, in which the Government of the Order was declared to be concentrated. In the scattered and disorganised condition to which the Order had been reduced this exercise of the constitutional right of autonomy by the great majority of its existing members would have been suffi- ciently valid, exercised as it was by the nation which had founded the Order in Palestine and had given it perhaps 40 of its 71 Grand-Masters; but it may be added that the formation of this Commission was confirmed by a Pontifical Bull issued by Pope Pius VII on the 10th August, 1814, and was recognised by the Lieutenant-Master, and the before-named Sacred Council, by an instrument dated 9th October, 1815, addressed to the Prior of Aquitaine (de Eohan), the representatives of the Langues of France, Provence, Auvergne, and others of the Commission, it was moreover countenanced by the Kings of France and Spain, and its proceedings secured the cordial concurrence of those Knights of Portugal and of Spain Avho had resisted the conversion of their Langue into a Royal Order. This association, which represented five-sevenths of the existing