The Cross of Malta

...By nature, theirs is an organization of prominent and wealthy persons able to support the difficult and costly work of hospital maintenance, as well as, in a more general sense, the varied relief of the poor...

...Their prestige, wealth, and military importance grew constantly...

...In fact, the delegate was speaking for a mission of charity almost as old as any of the states of modern Europe, even though it was strangely unfamiliar to modem minds...

...the Pope con- ferred temporal and spiritual favors with magnificent prodigality...

...When Constantinople fell before the onslaughts of the Janisaries, the days of Rhodes were numbered...

...For the Maltese cross is no longer un- known here...

...It was a glorious victory and part of a long, illustrious tradition...

...In every town, the armorers toiled into the night over their anvils...

...Just as the men who defended the ramparts of Christendom until the death wound came, scorned the zest of living, so also those who gather round the white cross for the redemption of poverty and disease, of war-time suffering and chaos, are expected to realize that their wealth is a trust and they themselves stewards...

...Once again, however, the power of the East prevailed...

...They are prominent as financiers and indus- trialists...

...But Raymond, whose genius for construction and administration was astonishing, lived in those breath...

...Jean Parisat de la Vallette, then Grand Master, was a veteran soldier...

...Meanwhile, the order re-vealed once more its genius for construction...

...Who are the Knights of Malta ? The question was asked by many a Red Cross worker, just as (we may suppose) it has been asked more recently by many an American...

...No other decoration is so eminently a recognition of distinction as the Maltese cross, and its bearer is directly affiliated with an old and salutary spiritual tradition...

...The chapters were occupied with building and improving hospitals...

...Raymond had succeeded a certain Gerard as superior of a community which lived under the rule of Saint Augustine and had adopted the name of "Hospitaliers of Saint-John...

...Their units went to the front with fighting troops of several nations ; they became a great instrument in the hands of the Papacy, which could never forget the magnificent mission of mercy with which it had been charged...

...A delegate of the Order of the Knights of Malta presented a brief and simple outline of what had been done by members of his brotherhood to aid the victims of battle in several countries...

...Three classes of brethren were recognized--the knights, who were legitimate scions of noble families...

...Seven years later, by grace of the Emperor Charles V, the order took up its abode upon the famed island of Malta...

...The share taken by the Hospitaliers in the long struggle for Palestine is a matter to which history has paid due respect...

...less years when the idea of the Crusades first roused all Europe to action...

...In more senses than one, they constitute as remarkable a "board of directors" as was ever gathered together...

...Had the Church singled them out because it wished to honor their worldly success---to "decor-ate," after a fashion, their business skill...

...they had a brilliant share in the recapture of Ascalon ( I 153) ; and during the lifetime of the Latin kingdom, they erected and defended some of the most remark- able fortified places known to the mediaeval world...

...Elmo and elsewhere until relief came and the Moslem captains retired...

...When the mighty fleet of Suleiman the Magnificent drew up under the defenses of Malta, it must have awed every resident on the island--but there was no thought of surrender, and the knights died at their posts at St...

...And so the Knights of Malta are witnessing a renais- sance...

...Recruits came to them in vast numbers...

...It is worth noting that the men selected to comprise the first American chapter are all well known for the assistance they have hitherto given to charitable enter- prise...

...The men enrolled in the new chapter are all very wealthy...

...They and the rest of us live in an era when the tasks of pacification and relief are rekindling again the hopes and purposes of primitive Christianity...

...Malta was merely the seat of the Grand Master, of those knights who lived in his service, and of a large number of retainers...

...But the years of valor and power, of dissension and danger, came to their inevitable end...

...and even today the ruins left by time and earthquakes are picturesque and suggestive...

...Even remote, primitive places heard the din of universal armament...

...There is infinitely much to be done by all of those who can do something...

...Even more fortu- nate, however, is the fact that affiliation with an order now once more virile in all parts of the old world, will lead them to take an active part in that labor of economic and social reconstruction upon which the uni...

...It was natural that the Hospitaliers, identified with the sacred places for which combat was to be delivered, should respond as one man to the summons...

...Neverthe-less, during all these years, in the words of an Eng- lish historian, "it continued to be a rule of the order that in its establishments it was for the sick to give commands...

...for the brethren to obey...

...It is to reappear again, like a benign symbol of the earliest Christian mission in a thousand places where misery rules the desolate poor...

...It is, of course, an honor to be enrolled among the knights...

...But over and above the "bubble reputa- tion," there is a grave pledge of service in the finest sense...

...Under the leadership of their present Grand Master, Prince Galleas of Thun-Hohenstein, the knights organized, in all places where they possessed any strength, hospitals and other agen- cies of relief...

...Talk of armed campaigning against the forces of Mohammed kindled an en-thusiasm fully as furious as "Berscker rage" itself...

...The flag of Raymond du Puy has disappeared from Jerusalem, from Rhodes, from Malta...

...Meanwhile, a custom of associating with the order people who did not observe its rule but sup- ported it with money and other means, had come to be general...

...the chaplains, some of whom also fought...

...Later on, though the Treaty of Amiens had guaranteed the restoration of their property to the knights, Great Britain appropriated the island and has retained it ever since...

...but spiritually they were de- pendent upon the Papacy alone...

...All were ruled very much as a mediaeval army might be directed...

...Where was their place in the restless contemporary world ? Once again the years passed on...

...A period of reorganization and reform followed...

...It had opened with the Crusades...

...In I3IO, the Hospitaliers gained a foothold on the isle of Rhodes, where they erected important fortifica- tions and combated the sea power of the Moslem...

...it dosed in an era of new imperialism...

...It had lost more than temporal possessions-- it had suffered from the laxities and habits of military life, as well as from commercial infections...

...Surely this is the most glorious of all crusades...

...At the close of the eleventh century, a bull of Pope Celestine II confided to Raymond de Puy and his brethren the custody of "a sacred hospice in the city of Jerusalem, which has been dedicated for a long time to the poor of Christ...

...But the Reformation and the Revolution disrupted Christian Europe, so that when Napoleon seized Malta for his own military purposes, practically no resistance was offered...

...260 THE COMMONWEAL January I2, x927 THE CROSS OF MALTA By GEORGE N. SHUSTER W HEN, after the epochal Armistice of I918 had been signed, the Red Cross throughout the world gathered to view the sum-total of its works of mercy, there was brought to light the story of an achievement which kindled imagination in a singularly vivid manner...

...These were, first of all, "commanderies" arranged under the supervision of "priories," of which that of Saint-Gilles in France was the most important...

...The second effect was that the organization of the order gradually assumed the character of a crusading army...

...The great flag of the order--crimson, with an eight-pointed white cross for an emblem--was hauled down, and under safe conduct guaranteed by Soliman II, the survivors of the desper- ate siege retired from the Orient as the rear-guard of vanquished Christendom...

...It came home to some who listened that his report was exactly the same kind of statement as has been made on numberless occasions during the wars of the Crusades and other struggles for the life of Christendom...

...The first mission of the Hospitaliers of Jerusalem was recalled...

...Its local establishments throughout Europe had, of course, remained for the most part intact...

...That their union will lead to new and greater endeavor, first in the United States and then through- out the world, cannot be doubted...

...The great martial history of the Knights of Saint- John had come to an end...

...Men bound by rigid monastic vows served the sick who came with every pilgrimage, and who were sometimes the victims of Arab spoliation...

...It was largely this group who made possible the achievements of Maltammost important of which was the resistance offered to the Turk during the famous siege of I565...

...They had no other business than this task of kindness...

...Some of the buildings erected at Rhodes during the fifteenth century were marvels of stony grace and strength...

...The modern world was suddenly plunged into a conflict more devastating than any recorded by mankind...

...and sergeants, who entered the service of the knights...

...and great seigneurs staked all their wealth of goods and men upon the venture...

...They now added to their duties as nurses a solemn obligation to bear arms against the "infidel," thus definitely becoming one of those prominent military orders which were to have so large, and often so tragic, a share in the making of history...

...and Raymond's tour of Europe was a triumph...

...The first effect of this change was an almost unbounded popular interest in the Hospitaliers...

...They were with Godfrey of Bouillon when he climbed the towers of Jerusalem...

...Then the Church which girdles the earth was aroused by a new sacred enthusiasm--a fervent resolve not to shatter the regiments of the infidel but to break the dense array of cruelty that had become almost synonomous with man...

...Some effort was made to reconstitute scattered groups and properties, but for a long while the "Knights of Malta" remained a name borne only by a phantom that had survived forgotten yesterdays...

...These were classified as "donats"--that is, "those who give"--and were authorized to wear knightly insignia...

...And when the remnants of the shattered "host of the West," to-gether with a tatterdemalion population of refugees and adventurers, gathered under the bastions of Acre for a last defense, the order begun so brilliantly by Gerard and Raymond was only a shadow of its former self...

...versal Church has set its heart...

...The history of their knightly deeds, of exploits against enemy corsairs, and of shrewd agreements designed January IZ, I9Z 7 THE COMMONWEAL z6x to substitute commerce for warfare in the eastern seas, is as colorful and often as grim as any part of the world's naval tradition...

...Chivalry itself was practically an extinct institution...

...The establishment of the first chapter of the order in the United States has aroused a con- siderable amount of discussion, even as it has indicated anew certain goals now identified with the Church...

...One has only to visualize their opportunity in order to comprehend the importance of the knights...

...Assuredly not, as one can see dearly from a brief consideration of what the Knights of Malta have been...