History Part I
A Concise History of The Knights of the Orthodox Order of Saint John Russian Grand Priory – OOSJ
This part of the History documents the events leading up to end of the ancient Order and the creation of the Orthodox Order in 1798.
The Knights of the Orthodox Order of Saint John Russian Grand Priory is not associated with or affiliated with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) or any of their many aliases.
The following essay is a series of factual statements, with a minimum of historical interpretation. It is meant to give clarity to a complex series of events. The essay will be in four parts. Each will cover in historical succession a narrative for an organization which began as a religious and hospital group, the Order of Saint John, eventually becoming a world power, only to return to its charitable roots in the 19th century. The once united Order re-emerged by the 20th century as a fragmented institution. It has become a sovereign entity through the Roman Catholic Church, a knightly institution through the royal houses of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and the Netherlands and a fraternal order in many different national bodies and various fragments.
Part I: The Order from Its Origins till 1799
The original ancient Order that was used as the basis for the Orthodox Order was founded according to tradition as a hospice or refuge for traveling pilgrims. The founders were secular merchants from the republic of Amalfi, then an important maritime power. The eight pointed cross, commonly associated with the Order, was a symbol used by the merchants of Amalfi and continues as the symbol of the city. The first hospice was founded under the approval and protection of the Caliph and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Nicephorus I [whose reign began in 1022] at a time prior to the separation of the Church into Roman Catholic and Orthodox.
The first firm document concerning the ancient Order was the Bull of Pope Paschal II in 1113 that recognized the Hospital of Jerusalem as an ecclesiastical foundation. It rapidly gained fame for its spiritual and temporal care of pilgrims traveling to, from and in the Holy Land. In short time, the Order also protected them militarily. Through the Order’s participation in the Holy Land Crusades, they became more militaristic in their protection of pilgrims; and one of the main defenders of the Christian, Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. It rapidly gained world fame for its military arm and transformed itself into a great military-religious brotherhood, which was soon in command of a series imposing fortresses. For example, there was the nearly impregnable fortress, the Crac des Chevaliers, which still stands, and as T. E. Lawrence stated the Crac was “probably the most wholly admirable castle in the world.”
Many of the finest families of the age sent their sons to serve the ancient Order, which prospered and became organized into eight tongues or national groups. The Crusaders were driven from the Kingdom of Jerusalem by the armies of the Caliph Saladin, and by 1291 Acre their last great stronghold in the Holy Land fell to Saladin. The Order began its own pilgrimage, first to the island of Cyprus and then to island of Rhodes. It was on Rhodes that the Order was reestablished as a great military and naval force. The Order’s navy was expanded and the principal port city of Rhodes received an impressive set of monumental fortifications and buildings.
The Grand Master was treated as a sovereign prince with a separate palace. The knights, then celibate, were housed in conventual buildings, Auberges, which were segregated by seven “Tongues”, namely, Provence, Auvergne, France Spain, Italy, England and Germany. Added to these structures there were the ancient Order’s church, hospital, arsenal and outlying fortifications. Militarily, the city of Rhodes was impregnable. As the Byzantine Empire internally and externally collapsed, a new menace appeared in the Ottoman Turks. It accelerated its threat to both eastern and western Christianity by the accession of Mahomet II, who successfully ended a thousand years of the Eastern Christian Empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, followed by the occupation of Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans.
The Grand Master was treated as a sovereign prince with a separate palace. The knights, then celibate, were housed in conventual buildings, Auberges, which were segregated by seven “Tongues”, namely, Provence, Auvergne, France Spain, Italy, England and Germany. Added to these structures there were the ancient Order’s church, hospital, arsenal and outlying fortifications. Militarily, the city of Rhodes was impregnable. As the Byzantine Empire internally and externally collapsed, a new menace appeared in the Ottoman Turks. It accelerated its threat to both eastern and western Christianity by the accession of Mahomet II, who successfully ended a thousand years of the Eastern Christian Empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, followed by the occupation of Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans.
The only great Christian bulwarks were the Order of Saint John on Rhodes and the Venetians on Crete and Cyprus. By 1480 the stronghold of Rhodes was under siege. Despite an enormous expenditure of men and equipment, the armies of the Sultan could not take Rhodes. For forty years, the ancient Order and Rhodes remained as a thorn in the side of the ever increasingly Ottoman presence in the Mediterranean. It was the young Sultan Suleiman, perhaps the greatest of all Ottoman rulers, who finally was determined to take the island. In 1522 he brought a larger army than used by Mahomet II with new techniques and weapons. Rhodes surrendered to the Ottomans with honor, for Suleiman allowed them to depart with their lives and weapons. The Order had remained on Rhodes for two centuries, from 1310-1522.
After a brief period of exile, first in Viterbo, Italy, a part of the papal states, and then in Nice, Emperor Charles V offered them as a self governing fiefdom the island of Malta and the port of Tripoli, all for the famed yearly token of fealty, a falcon. The islands of Malta, Gozo and Camino were sparse and had very poor defenses. The Order fortified the seaports of Il Borgo and Senglea and constructed the Fortress of St. Elmo. They slowly gained possession of their new domains. By 1564 Suleiman was determined this time to eradicate them from the Mediterranean. He sent a large army to lay siege yet again to his old enemy. The distance of Malta from the heart of the Ottoman Empire and its bareness proved a valuable weapon for the Order. After four desperate months, the large Ottoman army was already exhausted by their Pyrrhic victory at the Fortress of St. Elmo where over 6000 of their soldiers laid dead. The Ottoman offensive collapsed with the landing of the relief troops under Garcia de Toledo. The ancient Order, Malta, and Christendom had been saved.
The ancient Order’s victory, called the Great Siege, prompted renewed interest in the Order as a bulwark against the Ottomans. The Pope sent Christendom’s foremost military engineer, Francesco Laparelli, to design a fortified city. The city which rose on the ruins of the Fortress of St. Elmo was one of the finest urban fortified areas in the world and a model of planning and design. The new city was to take its name from the Grand Master who planned it, Jean de la Valette, eventually spelled as Valletta. A period of monumental military, religious, and secular building commenced. The new baroque style was used throughout, with the Church of Saint John and the Grand Master’s Palace as outstanding examples. The navy was expanded and became the major naval force of the Mediterranean. Outside of Malta, the Order prospered in most of the countries of Western Europe and the Order continued to hold back the Ottomans and pirates.
By the beginning of the 18th century, the Ottoman threat began to fade slowly due to the expansion of Imperial Austria and then the emergence of Imperial Russia under Peter the Great. The cultural and political climate of Europe was in flux. In the third quarter of the 18th century, the age of revolution began. First with the successful military uprising of the North American colonies against Great Britain and finally the total civil upheaval caused by the French Revolution. France always the strongest supporter of the ancient Order now became its greatest enemy. The Order’s properties and holdings in Republican France were confiscated and the flow of about three-fifths of its revenues ceased. Many of the French knights fled as the revolution turned more anti-clerical and anti-noble after the execution of King Louis XVI. Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power almost destroyed the remaining Order. Napoleon Bonaparte saw the island of Malta as a strategic prize in the Mediterranean. The Order’s immense wealth would aid his ambitions for international conquest.
The aging Grand Master Emmanuel de Rohan, partially paralyzed by a stroke, after receiving the news of King Louis’ fate, looked to the only sovereign as yet independent and untouched by Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor Paul I of Russia. Bailiff Litta, who as a young Knight of Saint John had helped save the fleet of Catherine the Great at the Battle of Svenskund in 1790, was sent as a representative of the Order to Emperor Paul I. The Emperor was an avid admirer of the Order. Through his beneficence the Grand Priory of Poland was further endowed and revised. The Russian Emperor adopted the Order with ardor. Upon the death of Emmanuel de Rohan, Baron Ferdinand von Hompesch was elected as Grand Master. Emperor Paul I, a most Orthodox sovereign, was made Imperial Protector of the Order in 1797. The ancient Order ended.