The suppression of the Order of St Anthony of Vienne in 1775 : the consequent interactions between the Order of the Hospital and the Order of St Lazarus

Abstract

The latter half of the eleventh century was tumultuous years for the Catholic Church. The beginning was ominous, when Cardinal Humbert, the papal legate sent from Rome to Constantinople, delivered papal excommunication to the Patriarch of the Eastern Church, Michael Caerularius in 1054. This was the terminal event of a long series of ecclesiastical disputes and differences between the Orthodox Church in the East and the Latin Church in the West, including issues of the procession of the Holy Spirit, Papal universal jurisdiction and the ranking of Constantinople in the Pentarchy. It was a development that continued to erode the power and authority of Rome. However, it was just over a decade later, in 1067, when Hildebrand of Sovana was elected to lead the Church in Rome as Pope Gregory VII, one of the great reformists of the Catholic Church, who was instrumental in fomenting a resurgence of the Roman Church, bestowing on it a semblance of its former glory. The 27 assertions that argued for papal supremacy in the Dictatus Papae, arguably tabulated by the Pope himself, indicated the blinkered single-mindedness of this leader of the Church in his attempt to resurrect the greatness of Rome to its position of primus inter pares.