XVI.—On an Early French Deed, A.D. 1397, relating to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem

Extract

In calling the attention of the Society to the interesting deed exhibited this evening by our Fellow, Mr. Peacock, it would be superfluous to do more than allude in a most cursory manner to the early history and general organization of the famous order of the Knights Hospitallers to which it relates. I need but refer to the General Chapter held at Montpellier in 1329—the date of the deed before us is 1397—when Elyan de Villanova was Grand Master, and at which the Order was for the first time divided into the seven ‘Languages,’ as they were called, of France, Provence, Auvergne, Italy, Germany, England, and Aragon; a number which was afterwards raised to eight by the addition of Castille and Portugal as a single ‘Language.’ The ‘Language’ of France, I may add, was divided into three Grand Priories: the Priory of France, which contained forty-five Commanderies–the name given to the estate of the Order placed under the control of one of the brothers, called a Commander—the Priory of Aquitaine, which contained sixty-five, and the Priory of Champagne, which contained twenty-four. On the system on which, in the fourteenth century, the property of the fraternity was managed, and its income derived and expended in England, the fullest light has been thrown by the very valuable report of the English Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master already mentioned, Elyan de Villanova, for the year 1338, edited for the Camden Society, in 1857, by the Rev. Lambert B. Larking, with an Historical Introduction by Mr. John Mitchell Kemble. No such information however, so far as I am aware, exists in print relating to the fraternity in France, and this circumstance gives to the deed before us an importance which at a first glance it might not be held to possess. For, although in its general features the system which regulated the Priories in different countries at the same periods was probably in substance the same, still we should be justified in inferring a priori that differences of detail must necessarily have arisen from the varieties of custom, of character, and of social condition, which marked the people with whom they were brought into contact. And in point of fact any one who is familiar with the publication of the Camden Society will find as he reads this deed that this à priori conjecture is borne out by the result, the general drift of which is to show the greater servitude to which the peasantry and lower orders generally were subjected in France, as contrasted with the comparative freedom enjoyed in this country.