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Emerging in the first years of its existence, the hospitaller mission and identity
of the Order is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ and the theology and
practice of the early Church. Before the Christian era, the Greeks, among others,
had hospital-type facilities attached to temples, most notably at Epidaurus ,
which the Romans expanded, building there in AD 170 a hospital for expectant
mothers and the terminally ill. The Greeks and the Romans, however, considered
sickness a curse, an act of hostility from the gods.
Our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, however, healing the
leper, giving sight to the blind, bidding
the lame man walk, linked the act of healing
to spiritual renewal. “Whenever you
enter a town and they receive you,” he
told the Apostles, “eat what is set
before you; heal the sick in it and say
to them, ‘The kingdom of God has
come near to you’” (Lk 10,
9). The Acts of the Apostles enumerates
numerous healings linked to faith.
By the fourth
century, the healing work of the Church
had received institutional expression.
At Cappadocia , for example, a full-fledged
hospital, with wards, housing for physicians,
nurses, and outpatient clinics, founded
by Saint Basil, was praised by Saint Gregory
of Nazianzus for its efficiency and spiritual
mission. Saint John Chrysostom founded
a similar institution at Constantinople
. In the West, the matron Fabiola (about
whom Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman wrote a
novel) founded an important hospital in
Rome in 400, which was praised by Saint
Jerome for its mixture of medicine and
ministry.
During the
late patristic and early medieval period,
bishops began increasingly to create hospitals
on a diocesan basis. In 817 and 836, for
example, councils meeting at Aachen called
for hospitals to be attached to each collegiate
church, with the canon clergy responsible
for their administration. This led to the
formation of hospital-based communities
of professed brothers and/or sisters following
the Rule of Saint Augustine.
For the early
Church, hospitality for travelers and pilgrims
was not merely a matter of etiquette. It
was, rather, a practice rooted in the deepest
imperatives of Christian charity. In his
famous Rule, Saint Benedict directed his
brothers to receive all guests as they
would receive Christ Himself, remembering
Christ’s words that “I was
a stranger and you took me in.” The
monasteries of Europe were famous for their
hospitality; indeed, for pilgrims, monasteries
frequently provided the only safe haven
as they passed through dangerous terrain.
So, too, did
a related institution, the hospice (from
the Latin hospitium, guest-house) rise
up in the early Church under diocesan sponsorship.
Like the hospital, hospices can be traced
back to the era of Constantine . Under
the supervision of bishops, they were administered
by priests and were intended for the sick
and the poor, orphans and the elderly,
as well as travelers. In 436, the Fourth
Council of Carthage regulated their operation
in North Africa . Perhaps the most famous
hospice from early medieval times was the
one founded atop an 8,000 foot summit in
Switzerland in 962 by Saint Bernard of
Menthon, staffed by Canons Regular of Saint
Augustine, who developed a special breed
of dog to rescue travelers stranded in
Alpine snows.
Hospices could
be found in the Holy Lands as early as
the time of Charlemagne in the ninth century.
A Hungarian hospice in the Holy Land most
likely dates from the year 1000. Furthermore,
Benedictine monasteries, as part of their
Rule, always welcomed strangers and it
is believed that the early Benedictine
Abbey of Saint Mary of the Latins established
a hospice there around 1050 with money
from merchants of Amalfi resident in or
visiting the Holy Land.
Named for Saint
John of Alexandria, this hospice was basically
a branch establishment of Saint Mary of
the Latins. At some point later in the
eleventh century, most probably an Amalfi
merchant connected to this establishment – history
knows him as Blessed Gerard – founded
another hospice named in honor of Saint
John the Baptist and organized it according
to the Rule of Saint Augustine. It was
from this hospice, we believe, that our
Order originated as a separate entity.
This hospice,
however, as important as it was, while
offering medical treatment, was not yet
a full hospital. It was Gerard’s
successor, Raymond of Provence, who fused
the two institutions, hospice and hospital,
creating a spacious infirmary complex near
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, most
likely in the 1120s. Raymond of Provence
also wrote out a Rule for the infirmarian brothers
attached to the hospital. As of yet, there
were no Knights, although Raymond was already
in the process of organizing military escorts
for pilgrims, which soon led to an expanding
role for the Order as these escorts engaged
in military action to ensure the safety
of their charges. By 1200, the Order had
expanded to include professed military
brothers, infirmarian brothers, clerical
chaplains, and, slightly thereafter, professed
women religious.
Thus two venerable
institutions, the hospice and the hospital,
and a later institution, chivalry, were
fused by the Rule of Saint Augustine, in
an alembic of Christian charity and military
necessity, to create one of the most enduring
orders of the Church. As powerful as the
Order became in military terms, however,
it never abandoned its hospitaller identity.
The hospital built by the Order on Rhodes
between 1440 and 1489 was the greatest
institution of its kind in Europe , far
in advance of its time in its facilities
and program of treatment. Visitors to the
hospital marveled at its architecture,
the cleanliness and comfort of its facilities,
the manner in which professed Knights of
noble lineage, including the Grand Master
himself, personally attended to the sick.
When the Order transferred its sovereignty
to Malta , it constructed an equally distinguished
facility, modeled on the Hospital of Santo
Spirito in Rome , to which was added a
home for foundlings, an outpatient clinic,
and a lazaretto for ships undergoing quarantine.
For well over
900 years, then, the Order has been dedicated
to a healing ministry on behalf of our
lords the sick and the poor whose model
remains Jesus Christ Himself, who on the
verge of his departure from the disciples
commissioned them to go out into the world
and to preach the gospel to all nations,
to baptize the unbeliever, to cast out
demons and to speak in new tongues, and,
of special significance to our Order, to
lay their hands on the sick and the suffering
so that they might find healing for body
and spirit.
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