804 



HOSPICE 



HOSPITALLERS 



all kinds of underclothing, amounts to thousands. 

 The result of recent improvements in the machinery 

 for the manufacture of hosiery is shown by the fact 

 that in 1854 it cost fully six shillings to knit a 

 dozen pairs of stockings by the hand knitting-frame 

 then in use ; whereas the cost at the present time 

 by power knitting-machines does not exceed one 

 shilling and tenpence per dozen pairs. 



Hospice, the name given to the pious estab- 

 lishments for sheltering travellers, maintained by 

 monastic persons, usually in connection with mon- 

 asteries. One of the best known in inhospitable 

 regions is that on the Alpine pass of Great St 

 Bernard (see ST BERNARD), of which mention is 

 made as early as 1125. Travellers are lodged and 

 boarded gratuitously, but those who can, deposit a 

 suitable present in the alms-box. Similar estab- 

 lishments are found on the Simplon, the Little St 

 Bernard, and the Bernina. 



Hospitallers, in the Roman Catholic Church, 

 are charitable brotherhoods, founded for the care of 

 the poor and of the sick in hospitals. They follow 

 for the most part the rule of St Augustine, and 

 add to the ordinary vows of poverty, chastity, and 

 obedience, that of self-dedication to the particular 

 work of their order. The Knights of St John 

 of Jerusalem ( see below ) and the Teutonic Knights 

 (q.v. ) were both originally hospitallers. The 

 Knights Hospitallers of the Holy Spirit were 

 founded at Montpellier in 1198 by Guy of Mont- 

 pellier, and the hospitallers of Our Lady of Christian 

 Charity at Paris in the end of the 13th century by 

 Guy de Joinville. And numerous similar orders 

 have been established since then. 



THE ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS OF ST JOHN 

 OF JERUSALEM, otherwise called the Knights of 

 Rhodes, and afterwards of Malta, a celebrated mili- 

 tary and religious order of the middle ages, origin- 

 ated about 1048 in a hospital, dedicated to St John 

 the Baptist, which some merchants of Amalfi built 

 at Jerusalem for the care and cure of pilgrims to 

 the Holy Sepulchre. After the conquest of Jeru- 

 salem by the crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon 

 in 1099, the hospital servants were joined by many 

 from the Christian army, who resolved to' devote 

 themselves to the service of the poor and sick 

 pilgrims. Gerard, the first rector of the hospital, 

 formed them into a regularly-constituted religious 

 body, bound by the vows of poverty, chastity, and 

 obedience, and subject to the jurisdiction of the 

 Patriarch of Jerusalem. Pope Pascal II. gave his 

 sanction to their institution as an order in 1113. 

 Raymond du Puy, the successor of Gerard, extended 

 the activity of the order by pledging its members 

 to protect pilgrims on the roads from the sea to the 

 Holy City. Soon afterwards the order became 

 predominantly military : the Hospitallers were 

 sworn to defend the Holy Sepulchre to the last 

 drop of their blood, and to make war upon the 

 infidels wherever they should meet them. Having 

 become military as well as religious, the order was 

 recruited by persons of high rank and influence, 

 and wealth flowed in from all quarters. Various 

 hospices, called commanderies, were established 

 in the maritime towns of Europe as resting- 

 places for pilgrims, who were there provided with 

 the means of setting out for Palestine. These 

 branch establishments also collected the revenues 

 of the order, and received candidates for admission 

 to its ranks. After the conquest of Jerusalem by 

 Saladin the Hospitallers established themselves at 

 Acre in 1191. Soon afterwards a bitter rivalry 

 sprang up between them and the Knights Tem- 

 plars, which finally set them in battle array one 

 against the other in 1259, when victory inclined 

 to the former. The Hospitallers clung* with des- 

 peration to Acre, the last Christian stronghold 



in Palestine ; but after a terrible siege by the 

 ruler of Egypt, they were compelled to sail away 

 to Cyprus (1291), where the king of the island 

 gave them an asylum for some years. 



In 1185 Frederick Barbarossa took the order under 

 the protection of the empire. In the following cen- 

 tury the title of ' master ' was changed by Pope 

 Clement IV. into 'grand-master.' The brethren 

 consisted of three classes, knights, chaplains, and 

 serving brothers, these last being fighting squires, 

 who followed the knights in their expeditions. The 

 order was in the 12th century divided into eight 

 ' languages ' Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, 

 Aragon, England, Germany, and Castile. Each 

 ' language ' embraced several grand -priories, and 

 under these again were a number of commanderies. 

 In 1310 the knights, under the grand-master 

 Fulk de Villaret, in conjunction with a party of 

 crusaders from Italy, captured Rhodes and seven 

 adjacent islands from the Greek and Moslem pirates, 

 and carried on from thence for more than two hun- 

 dred years a successful war against the Turks. 

 During this period the Hospitallers were the owners 

 of nearly 19,000 manors in Europe, and to these 

 9000 more were added on the suppression of the 

 Knights Templars in 1312. In 1523 they were com- 

 pelled to surrender Rhodes to Sultan Solyman, and 

 retired to Candia (Crete). In 1530 Charles V. 

 assigned them the island of Malta, with Tripoli 

 and Gozo. Tripoli was surrendered in 1551 to the 

 corsair Dragut, who in 1565 laid siege to Malta, 

 which the Hospitallers had strongly fortified. 

 Dragut was beaten off at the end of four months 

 with the loss of 25,000 men. The knights con- 

 tinued for some time to be a powerful bulwark 

 against the Turks ; but after the Reformation a 

 moral degeneracy overspread the order, and it 

 rapidly declined in political importance. In 1798, 

 through the treachery of some French knights and 

 the weakness of the last grand -master, Hompesch, 

 Malta was surrended to the French. The lands 

 still remaining to the order were about this time 

 confiscated in almost all the European states ; but, 

 though extinct as a sovereign body, certain branches 

 of the order, with more or less just claims to legiti- 

 mate succession, have continued during the 19th 

 century to drag on a lingering existence in Italy, 

 France, Spain, England, and Germany. After 

 1801 the office of grand-master was not filled up, 

 till in 1879 the pope appointed a grand-master 

 for the Italian and Bohemian 'languages.' In 

 their military capacity the Hospitallers wore red 

 surcoats over their armour. The badge worn by 

 all the knights was a Maltese cross, enamelled 

 white and edged with gold. The motto of the 

 order was ' Pro fide,' with the later addition of 

 ' Pro utilitate hominum.' 



There are two modern associations which ascribe 

 their origin to the original order the Brandenburg 

 ' Johanniterorden ' and the English order of the 

 Knights of St John. The former, a direct descend- 

 ant of the German ' language ' of the old legitimate 

 order, was reorganised in 1853, and did good service 

 in the campaigns of 1866 and 1870. In England 

 the property of the old order was confiscated in the 

 first year of Elizabeth's reign, and the order itself 

 was dissolved and declared to be illegal by Henry 

 VIII. in 1541. Nevertheless the ' language ' of 

 England was resuscitated in 1827 ; the revived 

 society has its headquarters at St John's Gate, 

 Clerkenwell, London. Its efforts are purely philan- 

 thropic : it distributes charity to convalescents who 

 have just left hospital, maintains cottage hospitals 

 and convalescent homes in the country, and an 

 ophthalmic hospital at Jerusalem. It has founded 

 the street ambulance system, and was chiefly con- 

 cerned in the origination of the Red Cross Society. 



See Histories of the order by Bosio, Del Pozzo, Vertot 



