The Order of Saint John of Jerusalem and Freemasonry
The symbolism of the Templar Order is clearly present in Freemasonry, particularly in the Strict Templar Observance, the Rectified Scottish Rite, the Swedish Rite and, of course, in the higher degrees of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite. Can the same be said of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, the great historical rival of the Templars ? Does Freemasonry refer to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in its legends and rituals ? Very little, if at all, in the case of continental European Freemasonry, particularly French-speaking Freemasonry. On the other hand, the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem appears in Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. So let's set out to discover the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem within Freemasonry.
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Origins of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and activities during the Crusades
The Order of St John of Jerusalem, also known as the Order of the Hospital and later the Order of Malta, was founded during the Crusades. It began as a hospital for pilgrims founded in Jerusalem around 1070 by merchants from the Italian town of Amalfi. Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders in 1099, and in 1113 this hospital became the headquarters of a purely hospitaller order, which only became a military order comparable to the Templars in 1182.
Knights of the Order of St John
Like the Templars, Teutonic Knights and other smaller military orders, the Hospitallers provided much of the permanent military presence in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, building impressive fortresses. They were also very active in the complex diplomacy that took place in this small kingdom surrounded by enemies, and were often at odds with the Templars, whose main rivals they had become. Unity between the different military orders was not achieved until the final defence of St John of Acre, the last Christian stronghold, which fell in 1291, marking the definitive end of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.
The Order after the Crusades
While the Templars withdrew to France, the Hospitallers settled first in Cyprus, then in Rhodes in 1310, and finally in Malta in 1530. Their military activities thus became essentially naval, and their powerful fleet distinguished itself in many sea battles, including the famous Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where it contributed to the defeat of the Ottomans and put an end to their expansionism.
While the Knights Templar, creditors of the King of France, became hostages and then victims of him, the Hospitallers, based in Rhodes, kept their distance and were in no way concerned. On the contrary, they were the great beneficiaries of the abolition of the Order of the Temple, since they received all the assets of the Templars and owed the King of France only 200,000 livres tournois (about 3.8 million euros), payable over three years, as compensation for his legal costs.
First fragmentation of the order
Strengthened by the wealth of the Templars, the Hospitallers became the most powerful order in Christendom, with a veritable territorial state in Rhodes and then Malta. But the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was to deal the Order its first serious blow.
In England, as a result of the Anglican Reformation, the Order of St John was dissolved, along with all the other religious orders whose assets were confiscated by the Crown. At the same time, the Grand Bailiwick of Brandenburg in Germany embraced the Protestant Reformation and separated from the Order, placing itself under the protection of the Hohenzollern family. The same happened to the commanderies in Sweden and the Netherlands. In 1988, the British Crown re-established the English branch as the Protestant Order of the Crown. This Order is established in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Hong Kong.
In 1961, the four Protestant branches came together to form the Alliance of the Hospitaller Orders. These orders are faithful to the hospitaller dimension that prevailed at the origins of the Hospitallers, maintaining ambulances and supporting hospitals. The author of these lines is not in the habit of including personal anecdotes in his articles, but he can't help mentioning that at the end of the 1980s he used to visit the Grand Bailiwick of Brandenburg, without being a member, and had the good fortune to meet its then Grand Master, Prince Wilhelm Karl of Prussia (1922-2007), grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Annual meeting of the Grand Bailiwick of Brandenburg
The Order, which remained loyal to Rome, continued to prosper and briefly considered becoming a colonial power by acquiring islands in the West Indies (St Croix, St Barthélémy, St Christophe and St Martin) in 1651. However, the King of France remained the sovereign of these islands, and the Order faced increasing economic difficulties and sold them to the French West India Company in 1655. Tensions had also arisen between the Kingdom of France, which wanted to extend its hegemony over the Mediterranean, and the Order of Saint John, which had a real hegemony there and did not take kindly to this interference. When Richelieu reformed the French Royal Navy in 1624, he looked to the Order's fleet for inspiration. But an open attack on a religious order would inevitably have provoked the wrath of the Pope, and the Kingdom of France remained the official protector of the Knights of St John, now known as the Knights of Malta.
The loss of Malta and the second fragmentation of the Order
Revolutionary France did not have the same scruples and dealt the Order a second blow. In 1792, the Convention nationalised all the property of the clergy and religious orders, and the Grand Priory of France of the Order of Saint John was dissolved. What's more, as Grand Master Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc (1725-1797) refused to recognise the Republic, the Convention tried unsuccessfully to seize Malta and provoke an uprising.
In 1798, Bonaparte, who was on his way to Egypt, convinced the Directory that it was necessary to seize Malta and annex it to the Republic. He obtained authorisation and in a few days he took possession of the island, expelled the Knights and installed a garrison of 3,000 men before setting sail for Egypt. 249 Knights went into exile in Russia to place themselves under the protection of Tsar Paul I, and the following year the new Grand Master, Ferdinand de Hompesch, abdicated in favour of the Tsar, who thus became the new Grand Master and made the title of Knight of Malta hereditary.
Other knights fled to Sicily and some even joined Bonaparte's army. The Order of Malta had lost its sovereign state and was divided between a Sicilian branch without a Grand Master or legitimacy, and a Russian branch under an Orthodox Grand Master who was therefore illegitimate in the eyes of the Church of Rome. After losing its northern branches, which became Protestant in the sixteenth century, the Order broke up again at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Renewal of the Order
After the death of Tsar Paul I in 1801, his son and successor Alexander I, aware of the incongruity of having an Orthodox Grand Master at the head of a Roman Catholic Order, refused the office and tried to have a new Grand Master elected by the Order itself. However, the geographical fragmentation of the Order made this election impossible, and in 1803 Pope Pius VII finally appointed the candidate put forward by the Russian branch, Bailiff Giovanni Battista Tommasi (1731-1805), as the new Grand Master. The Order's headquarters were provisionally established in Catania, Sicily.
Tommasi died in 1805 after only two years as Grand Master and no Grand Master was elected in his place. Seven lieutenants succeeded him until 1879, when the reconstruction of the Order, approved by Pope Leo XIII, was undertaken and a new Grand Master was elected in the person of Giovanni Battista Ceschi a Santa Croce (1827-1905).
Palazzo Magistrale in Rome
The Order was reorganised, its duties became exclusively charitable and hospitable, and the majority of Knights were now laymen, all nobles except the Knights of Grace and Devotion, who were admitted by special favour. There are currently only around fifty Knights who have taken simple or solemn vows, out of a total membership of around 13,500. The statutes were revised in 1961, 1997 and 2012, and the Order, which now bears the title of Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, admits women under the name of Ladies. The seat of the Order, which enjoys the privilege of extraterritoriality, has been the Palazzo Magistrale in Via dei Condotti in Rome since 1834. Since 1994, the Order has also had observer status at the United Nations, along with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Order denies the right of any order or organisation to use the title of St John of Jerusalem, with the exception of the four Protestant orders whose historical legitimacy it has come to recognise. However, such orders do exist, often founded by descendants of those who received the title hereditarily in Russia.
The Order of Saint John in European Freemasonry
We know that the legend of the Knights Templar penetrated Freemasonry fairly quickly after its spread across the European continent, probably as early as the 1740s. The Templars were surrounded by an aura of mystery, martyrdom, fabulous secrets and treasures, and it is not surprising that the world of the Higher degrees of Freemasonry seized upon their supposed heritage. But above all, they no longer existed, and anyone could claim to be their descendant.
The same could not be said of the Order of Saint John, which did exist and which everyone knew to be a sovereign order. No one would have dared to claim descent from this order, which would have been immediately denied by the Grand Master. What's more, many Freemasons had sided with the Templars, and from this point of view the Knights of St John were the 'villains' of the story, those who had profited from the tragic end of the Order of the Temple to enrich themselves. They are mentioned in less than friendly terms in some eighteenth-century Kadosh rituals, which often specify that a Knight of Malta cannot receive this degree.
Although the Ramsay Discourses (1736 and 1737) mentioned the Knights of St John and not the Templars as the origin of Freemasonry, French and European Freemasonry soon forgot this reference and concentrated exclusively on the Templars, never seeking to include the Order of St John in its higher degrees. It was in Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry that the Order curiously appeared, perhaps at the end of the eighteenth century and certainly in the nineteenth.
The Order of Saint John in Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry
In Anglo-Saxon countries, Templar Freemasonry took a different form from its European counterparts, which can be summarised in three main currents : the Strict Templar Observance, which became the Rectified Scottish Rite in 1786, the Kadosh, currently the 30th degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, and the Swedish Rite.
An apparently different form appeared in Ireland in 1779 with the formation of a Lodge of Knights Templar under a patent issued by the Mother Lodge of Kilwinning in Scotland. This system spread to Irish lodges and led to the creation of the first Grand Encampment of the Knights Templar around 1790, which became the Supreme Grand Encampment in 1836. From Ireland the system spread to Scotland.
In England, the Knights Templar first appeared in the 1780s in the lodges of the Grand Lodge of the Ancients, whose close links with Irish Freemasonry are well known. And in 1791, the first Grand Conclave of the Knights Templar was founded by Thomas Dunckerley (1724-1795) to bring together the Knights scattered throughout England.
Knight of Malta in the York Rite
In America, the Templar system was incorporated into the York Rite, of which it is the highest class.
The Anglo-Saxon masonic system of the Knights Templar consists of several degrees, which may vary slightly according to the constitution. In all cases, however, the degree of Knight of Malta is included. In the York Rite, it is conferred before the final dégrée of Knight Templar, whereas in England and Scotland it is only conferred on Knights Templar, but is generally no longer the subject of a separate ceremony.
Why did the Anglo-Saxon Templar system dare to introduce a Knight of Malta? Probably because the Order of St John had been abolished by Henry VIII in 1536, allowing it to enter the world of romance that underlies all Masonic Higher degrees.
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