Bethlehemites
BETHLEHEMITES
A sect called also Star-bearers, because they were distinguished by a red star having five rays, which they wore on their breast, in memory of the star which appeared to the wise men. Several authors have mentioned this order, but none of them have told us their origin, nor where their convents were situated; if we except Matthew Paris, who says that, in 1257, they obtained a settlement in England, which was at Cambridge, in Trumpington-street.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
Bethlehemites
(1) Military order dedicated to Our Lady of Bethlehem, wearing a habit like the Dominicans and a red star. They came from Palestine to Bohemia, 1217 , and now devote themselves to care of the sick and education.
(2) Order of knights dedicated to Our Lady of Bethlehem, founded by Pope Pius II, 1453 , for the defense of the island of Lemnos, but soon suppressed owing to the recapture of the island by the Turks.
(3) Hospitallers, founded by Venerable Pedro de Betancourt, c.1650 , at Guatemala, to care for the sick and prisoners, and teach poor children; confirmed by Rome, 1673 ; extended to Peru, 1672 . They had 33 houses of monks and one of nuns, in Central and South America at the time of their suppression by the government, 1820 .
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Bethlehemites
I. MILITARY ORDERS
There were two military orders dedicated to Our Lady of Bethlehem and known under the name of Bethlehemites. Mathew Paris calls attention to the former in his “Grande Chronique” (tr. Huillard-Bréholles, Paris, 1840, 8vo, III, 300) where he mentions that Henry III of England authorized them to open a house in a suburb of Cambridge (1257); but he leaves us in complete ignorance as to their founder, where they originated, and their history. We only know that their habit was similar to that of the Dominicans and that a red star, whose five rays emanated from an azure centre, decorated the breast of their cape. This was in commemoration of the star that appeared to the Magi and led them to Bethlehem. Nothing further is known of this military order. There was an order of knights whose members wore a red star on their costume and who might have been called Bethlehemites because of having a house in Bethlehem at the time of the Crusades; this was the Military Order of Crusaders of the Red Star (Ordo militaris crucigerorum cum rubeâ stellâ). They came from Palestine to Bohemia in 1217, and Blessed Agnes of Bohemia confided two hospitals to their charge. They have since remained in that country where they devote themselves to the care of the sick, to education, and to the various works of the ecclesiastical ministry.
After the taking of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), Pius II founded under the patronage of Our Lady of Bethlehem an order of knights for the defence of the Island of Lemnos which Cardinal Louis, Patriarch of Aquileia, had recaptured from Mohammed II. The island was to be their headquarters whence they were to oppose the attacks of the Moslems by way of the Ægean Sea and the Hellespont. The order was composed of brother-knights and priests governed by an elective grand-master. The white costume worn by the members was decorated with a red cross and the rule prescribed for them was very similar to that of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The pope installed this community 18 January, 1459, and, that their needs might be supplied, turned over to them the property and revenues of the orders of St. Lazarus, of Sainte-Marie du Ch teau des Bretons, of Bologna, of the Holy Sepulchre, of Santo Spirito in Sassia, of St. Mary of the Crossed Friars, and of St. James of Lucca, all of which were suppressed for this purpose. Pius II alluded in a Bull to this foundation and the bravery of its knights, but the second capture of Lemnos by the Turks rendered the institution useless. Thus the order of Our Lady of Bethlehem was suppressed almost as soon as founded and those orders whose goods the pope had transmitted to it were re-established.
HOSPITALERS The hospitaler Bethlehemites, or Belemites, were founded by the Ven. Pedro de Betancourt. A descendant of the celebrated Juan de Betancourt, who, early in the fifteenth century, achieved the conquest of the Canary Islands for Henry III of Spain, Pedro was born at Villaflora on the Island of Teneriffe in 1619. From childhood he led a pious, austere life and in 1650 left family and country, thus carrying out his desire of going to the West Indies. During the following year he reached Guatemala, the capital of New Spain, where he intended to prepare for the priesthood that later he might go forth and evangelize Japan. However, three years of unsuccessful study at a Jesuit college led him to abandon this idea and, after holding the position of sacristan for a while in a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, he rented a house in a suburb of the city called Calvary, and there taught reading and catechism to poor children. But this charitable work did not furnish sufficient outlet for his zeal. The condition of the sick poor excited his compassion and he sheltered them in his home which he converted into a hospital. His zeal elicited benefactions from those around him and the bishop and governor supplied him with all the conveniences he required. Several individuals provided for the purchase of the houses surrounding the one he then occupied and on their site was erected a hospital in which this servant of God could labour to better advantage. He himself worked with the masons. The hospital was thoroughly equipped and stocked and even offered an opportunity for the religious installment of those who tended the sick. The institution was placed under the patronage of Our Lady of Bethlehem.
Helpers soon joined Pedro de Betancourt and at length was formed a congregation of brothers generally known as Bethlehemites and so called on account of their house. But the care of the sick did not totally absorb their attention; they likewise lent their assistance in the two other hospitals of the city and Pedro continued to befriend poor children. The prisoners also excited his compassion. Every Thursday he begged for them through the city and visited them in their cells. The neglected souls in purgatory were also the objects of his solicitude and at the principal gates of the city he founded two hermitages, or chapels, wherein religious of his community begged, so that masses might be celebrated for the souls of the deceased. He himself would travel the streets at night ringing a bell and recommending these souls to be prayed for. His devotion to the Blessed Virgin was inspiring and during a novena of preparation for the feast of the Purification his religious, with arms extended in the form of a cross, recited the rosary in their chapel at midnight in the midst of a great throng. In 1654 he made a vow to defend the Immaculate Conception even at the peril of his life. He died, exhausted by labour and penance, 25 April, 1667, at the age of forty-eight. His funeral was impressive and at the request of the Capuchin Fathers he was buried in their church where, for a long time, his remains were held in veneration.
Before establishing his Guatemala hospital Pedro de Betancourt had become affiliated with the Third Order of St. Francis, adopting its religious garb which he still retained after founding his congregation. He personally trained his first disciples and had no wish to organize a community, but simply to establish his hospital. He sent Brother Anthony of the Cross to Spain to solicit the king’s approbation of the work. The favour was granted, but Pedro died before the messenger’s return. From that time the community prospered, beginning with the extension of the hospital and the erection of a beautiful church. Brother Anthony, who assumed the government, drew up constitutions which he submitted to the bishop of the diocese for approval and it was at this juncture that the Capuchins requested him to make some alterations in the habit worn by his religious. A free school for poor children was already connected with the Bethlehem hospital, a feature of all new foundations. One of these was soon undertaken by Brother Anthony of the Cross who sent two of his community to Peru where they were very favourably received by the viceroy to whom he had recommended them. Doctor Antoine d’Arvila gave them the Hospital of Notre Dame du Carmel which he was then establishing at Lima and afterwards solicited admission among them. In 1672 Brother Roderick of the Cross obtained the confirmation of this establishment by the King of Spain and it was also through his efforts that Pope Clement X confirmed the congregation and its constitutions (1673). After his return to America this religious founded the Hospital of St. Francis Xavier in Mexico and those of Chachapoyas, Cajamarca, and Trujillo, going back to Spain in 1681 to secure the confirmation of these new institutions. The Council of the Indies assigned the hospital of Lima an income of 3,000 crowns. The Bethlehemites, because of making only simple vows, remained under diocesan jurisdiction from which they wished, however, to be freed so that their congregation might be converted into a regular religious order bound by solemn vows. The Spanish court did not approve this plan and at first the Holy See was not favourable to it, but due chiefly to the influence of Cardinal Mellini, former nuncio at Madrid, Roderick of the Cross at length overcame all difficulties and in the Bull of 26 March, 1687, Innocent XI authorized these religious to make the three solemn vows according to the rule of St. Augustine and to have a superior-general, and granted them all the privileges of the Augustinian friars and convents. Later, Clement XI renewed this authorization and these favours, adding thereunto the privileges of the mendicant orders, of the Regular Clerks, of the Ministers of the Sick, and of the Hospitallers of Charity of St. Hippolytus (1707).
Meanwhile the order was multiplying its foundations in Latin America and was established in Arequipa, Cuzco, Santiago de Cuba, Puebla, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Dajaka, Vera Cruz, Havana, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Ayres, and Guatemala la Nueva. A school for poor children was connected with every hospital and the pious, devoted lives of these religious won them esteem and gratitude. They were especially admired during the plague of 1736, a fact unanimously acknowledged by the writers who describe the condition of Latin America in the eighteenth century. But this did not prevent their suppression, as well as that of all other religious, in 1820. At that time their superior-general resided in Mexico and the Bethlehemites were scattered throughout two provinces, that of Peru including twenty-two houses and that of New-Spain, eleven. To the ordinary religious vows they added that of caring for the sick even at the risk of their own lives. In 1688 Brother Anthony of the Cross, with the help of a pious woman, Marie Anne del Gualdo, founded at Guatemala a community of Bethlehemite nuns and a hospital exclusively for women. These nuns were cloistered and observed the same rule as the men and they, too, were suppressed in 1820.
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H LYOT, Histoire des ordres monastiques, III, 355-356; VIII, 371-372; BARONIUS, Annales ecclesiastici (Lucca, 1753), XXIX, 179-180; HEIMBUCHER, Die Orden und Kongregationen, I, 497-498; DE MONTALVO, Vida del venerable Pedro de San Jos Betancourt (Rome, 1718); EYZAGUIRRE, Los intereses cat licos en Am rica (Paris, 1859), II, 304-306, 408-410.
J.M. BESSE Transcribed by Vivek Gilbert John Fernandez Dedicated to Catholic Religious Orders everywhere
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Bethlehemites
1. An order of knights, established by Pope Pius II on Jan. 18,1459. The chief mission of this order was to fight against the Turks, and to oppose their farther advance in Europe. Their chief seat was to be at Lemnos. They were to have an elective grand master, and to embrace knights and priests. Their costume was to be white, with a red cross, and for their support the pope assigned to them the property of several military orders which he suppressed. As the Turks soon after retook Lemnos, the order of the knights of Bethlehem was suppressed See Dictionnaire des Ordres Religieux, 1, 472.
2. An order of English monks. Our information of this order is very meagre. According to Matthew Paris (Hist. Anglic. p. 639), they obtained in 1257 a residence at Cambridge, England, and had a costume similar to that of the Dominicans, with the oily exception that they wore on the breast a red star with five rays and a small disc of blue color, in memory of that star which, according to the Scriptures, guided the Eastern magi to Bethlehem at the birth of the Savior. The time of the foundation of the order, its subsequent development, and its specific object are not known. All the authors which speak of it confine themselves to a description of the costume, and even with regard to this there is a discrepancy in their statements, as Schoonebeck (Histoire des Ordres Religieux) reports that it was black. One author (Hadrian Dammand) speaks of star-wearing knights, and it has therefore been doubted whether the star-wearing knights and the Bethlehemites were the same order (with different costumes), or two different orders. Wetzer und Welte, 1:687.
3. An order of monks and nuns in Central America, founded at Guatemala about 1660. The founder of the order was Pierre de Betencourt, born in 1619 at Teneriffe, one of the Canary Islands. He showed from boyhood a great predilection for an ascetic life. In 1650 he made a voyage to Guatemala, and while there resolved to enter the priesthood, and to become a missionary in Japan. To that end he studied for three years in the college of the Jesuits; but, making no satisfactory progress in his studies, he became a tailor, and subsequently a sexton. In 1655 he distributed his savings, twenty piastres, among the poor, entered the third order of the Franciscans, and established a free-school for poor children. Soon after he established a hospital and several more schools, and began to receive associates, whom he organized into a Congregation of Bethlehem. He died April 25, 1667. Some time before his death he had sent Brother Anthony of the Cross to Spain for the purpose of obtaining the royal sanction. of his hospital. The patent did not arrive at Guatemala until eight days after his death. It commanded the Spanish authorities not only to protect the new congregation, but to seek to enlarge it. The bishop of the diocese received similar orders, and he accordingly granted to them the right of publicly celebrating in their church the mass. After the death of Betencourt, Brother Anthony became his successor as chief of the congregation, and gave to it, in accordance with the wish of the founder, a regular monastic constitution, which, after some opposition on the part of the Franciscans, was approved by the bishop. The main object of this order is to look after and attend to the sick in hospitals. Pope Innocent XI approved of the order in 1687, and commanded the Hospitallers, or brethren of the order, to follow the rule of Augustine. They wear round the neck a medal representing the birth of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem; and as to their dress, they follow the Capuchins, but wear shoes, and have a leathern girdle round the waist. A female branch of the order was founded at the same time by Mary Ann del Galdo. The parent-house is at Guatemala, and there are about forty houses in Central and South America Helyot, Ord. Religieux, 1, 477; Wetzer und Welte, 1, 688.