Editing Order of Saint Lazarus (section)

==History==
[[File:Lazarus_cross.svg|thumb|The green-enameled [[Maltese Cross]] of the Order of Saint Lazarus.]]
===Crusades===
The [[Military order (religious society)|military order]] of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem originated in a leper hospital founded in the twelfth century by crusaders of the Latin Kingdom. There had been earlier leper hospitals in the East, of which the Knights of St. Lazarus claimed to be the continuation, in order to have the appearance of remote antiquity and to pass as the oldest of all orders. According to Charles Moeller, "this pretension is apocryphal";<ref name=Moeller>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09096b.htm Moeller, Charles. "Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem." The Catholic Encyclopedia] Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 22 Jun. 2015</ref> but documentary evidence does confirm that the edifice was a functioning concern in 1073.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Charles |last=Savona-Ventura |title=A Hospitalis infirmorium Sancti Lazari de Jerusalem before the First Crusade |journal=Acta Historiae Sancti Lazari Ordinis |date=October 2018 |volume=2 |pages=13–26 }}</ref> 

The Order of St. Lazarus was purely an order of hospitallers in the beginning, and adopted the hospital Rule of St. Augustine in use in the West. It has been claimed that the Order assumed a military role in the 12th century, but this date may not be supported by verifiable evidence.<ref name=Wise/> The monastic order was most likely founded in the 1130s, though the earliest military action that involved Lazarist knights did not occur until the 1230s.{{sfn|Barber|1994|p=38}} The Lazarists wore a green cross upon their [[Mantle (monastic vesture)|mantle]].<ref name=Porter>{{cite book |last=Porter |first=Whitworth |title=Malta and Its Knights |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oW1BAAAAYAAJ |date=1871 |publisher=Pardon and Son |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_oW1BAAAAYAAJ/page/n22 14] |language=en}}</ref><ref name=Blackwood>{{cite book |title=Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume CXV |date=1874 |publisher=The Leonard Scott Publishing Company |page=494 |language=en |quote=There were four of each : the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutonic Knights, and the Lazarists in Palestine; and the brotherhoods of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, and Avis in the Peninsula. All these fraternities were established in order to help the weak and fight the Saracen; yet, nothwithstanding this general similarity of object, each of them had a special character of its own which distinguished it from the others.}}</ref>

Hospitals dependent on the Jerusalem leprosarium were eventually established in other towns in the Holy Land, notably in [[Acre, Israel|Acre]], and in various countries in Europe particularly in Southern Italy ([[Capua]]), Hungary, Switzerland, France (Boigny), and England ([[Burton Lazars]]).{{sfn|Marcombe|2003|page= }} [[Louis VII of France]], on his return from the [[Second Crusade]], gave it the Château of Boigny, near Orléans in 1154. This example was followed by [[Henry II of England]], and by [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|Emperor Frederick II]].<ref name=Moeller/>

In 1154, King [[Louis VII of France]] granted the Order of Saint Lazarus a property at [[Boigny-sur-Bionne|Boigny]] near Orléans which was to become the headquarters of the order outside of the Holy Land. Later, after the [[Siege of Acre (1291)|fall of Acre in 1291]] the Knights of St. Lazarus left the Holy Land and moved first to Cyprus, then Sicily and finally back to Boigny, which had been raised to a barony in 1288.

The Order remained primarily a hospitaller order. They did take part in a number of battles, but there is no evidence for this prior to the fall of Jerusalem (1244). After the fall of Jerusalem in July 1244 and the subsequent [[Battle of La Forbie]] the following October, the Order of St. Lazarus, although still called "of Jerusalem", transferred to Acre, where it had been ceded territory by the Templars in 1240. The ''Ordinis Fratrum & Militum Hospitalis Leprosorum S. Lazari Hierosolymitani'' under Augustinian Rule was confirmed by [[Papal Bull]] ''[[Cum a Nobis Petitur]]'' of [[Pope Alexander IV]] in April 1255. In 1262 [[Pope Urban IV]] assured it the same immunities as were granted to the monastic orders.

===Late medieval period===
The order quickly abandoned its military activities after the [[Siege of Acre (1291)|fall of Acre in 1291]].{{sfn|Marcombe|2003|page= }} As a result of that catastrophe, the leper hospital of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem disappeared, but its [[Commandery|commanderies]] in Europe, together with their revenues, continued. In 1308, King [[Philip IV of France]] gave the order his temporal protection.{{citation needed|date=November 2018}}

In 1490, [[Pope Innocent VIII]] attempted to amalgamate the order with the [[Knights Hospitaller|Knights of St. John]], including the handing-over to the Knights of the possessions of the Order. Although that was confirmed in 1505 by [[Pope Julius II]], the Order of Saint Lazarus resisted the move, and the order of St. John never came into possession of the property, except in Germany. In France, the [[papal bull|bull of suppression]] was ignored and French Grand Masters appointed.{{citation needed|date=November 2018}} The order of Saint John pursued its claim to the French holdings but that was legally rejected by the [[Parlement of Paris]] in 1547.

In 1565, [[Pope Pius IV]] annulled the bulls of his predecessors and restored all possessions to the order so that he might give the grand magistry to a favorite, Giovanni de Castiglione. However, de Castiglione did not succeed in securing the devolution of the commanderies in France. By the end of the 16th century, the Order retained a significant presence only in France and Italy.

===Continuations after 1572===
====Royal House of Savoy====
[[File:Emmanuel_Philibert_of_Savoy_(1580).jpg|thumb|[[Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy]] (1528–1580), founder and first [[Grand Master (order)|Grand Master]] of the amalgamated [[Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus]], recognised in 1572 by Pope [[Gregory XIII]].]]
{{Main|Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus}}

With the death of the papal favorite, Castiglione, in 1572, the grand magistry of the order was rendered vacant and [[Pope Gregory XIII]] united the Italian branch with the [[Order of Saint Maurice]] to set up the [[Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus]]. This order was then linked in perpetuity with the Crown of Savoy and thenceforth the title of its Grand Master was hereditary in that house. 
 
By the time of [[Pope Clement VIII]] the order had two houses, one at Turin, was to contribute to combats on land, while the other, at Nice, had to provide galleys to fight the Turks at sea. But when thus reduced to the states of the Duke of Savoy, the order merely vegetated until the French Revolution, which suppressed it. In 1816 the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel I, re-established the titles of Knight and Commander of Sts. Maurice and Lazarus, as simple decorations, accessible without conditions of birth to both civilians and military men.<ref name=Moeller/>

This became a national order of chivalry on the [[Italian unification|unification of Italy]] in 1861, but has been suppressed by law since the [[birth of the Italian Republic|foundation of the Republic]] in 1946. Since 1951 the order has not been recognized officially by the Italian state. However, the House of Savoy in exile continued to bestow the order. Today, it is granted to persons eminent in the public service, science, art, letters, trade, and charitable works.

====Royal House of France====
[[File:Le roi Louis XVIII dans son cabinet de travail des Tuileries (bgw17 0046).jpg|thumb|[[Louis XVIII]] (1755–1824) with the Order of Saint Lazarus grand cross]]
{{main|Royal Military and Hospitaller Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem united}}

In 1604, [[Henry IV of France]] re-declared the French branch of the order a protectorate of the French Crown. King Henry IV founded in 1608, with the approbation of [[Pope Paul V]], the Order of Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel. He then, in turn, united to this new order the possessions of St. Lazarus in France, and such is the origin of the title ''Ordres Royaux, Militaires & Hospitaliers de Saint Lazare de Jérusalem & de Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel réunis'' ("Royal, Military, and Hospitaller Orders of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Lazarus of Jerusalem united"). This amalgamation eventually received formal canonical acceptance on 5 June 1668 by a bull issued by Cardinal Legate de Vendôme under Papal authority of Clement IX.

Unlike the situation with the Savoyian Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus where a complete merger took place creating one order, the French branch was not completely merged with the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the orders were managed as two separate entities, with individuals being admitted to one order but not necessarily to both.<ref>Grouvel, Robert. L'Ordre de Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel et l'École Royale Militaire (1779-1787). Carney de La Sabretache, 1967, p.352-356.</ref>

During the [[French Revolution]], a decree of 30 July 1791 suppressed all royal and knightly orders in France. Another decree the following year confiscated all the Order's properties. The Holy See, which had originally created the Order, on the other hand did not suppress the order;{{citation needed|date=June 2015}} while Louis, Count of Provence, then Grand Master of the order, who later became [[Louis XVIII]], continued to function in exile and continued admitting various dignitaries to the order.<ref>Sainty, Guy Stair, ed. (2006) ''World Orders of Knighthood and Merit'', p. 1862</ref>

Scholars differ in their views regarding the extent to which the Order remained active during and after the French Revolution. There is however no doubt of its continuing existence during this time. In different museums, there are preserved a number of paintings of Russian and Baltic nobles, admitted to the order after 1791. In this list are general John Lamb, [[Alexander Suvorov|Prince Suvorov]], [[Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen|count Pahlen]], count Sievers etc. Some of the new knights are listed in [[Royal Almanac|Almanach Royal]] from 1814 to 1830. King Louis XVIII, the order's protector, and the duc de Châtre, the order's lieutenant-general, both died in 1824. In 1830, a royal decree caused the order to lose its royal protection in France.