Self-styled orders
Pseudo-chivalric orders or self-styled orders are organizations which falsely claim to be chivalric orders. Most self-styled orders arose in or after the mid-eighteenth century and many have been created in the present day, though most are short-lived and endure no more than a few decades.
A chivalric order must have a fount of honour (or fons honorum) as either its founder or its principal patron in order to be considered a chivalric order; a fount of honour is a person who held sovereignty either at or before the moment when the order was established. (Holding sovereignty before the founding of an order is considered effective in creation of a genuine chivalric order only if the former sovereign had not abdicated his sovereignty before the foundation of the order but, instead, had been deposed or had otherwise lost power.)[1] Some organisations create a false fons honorum in order to satisfy this requirement and give themselves apparent legitimacy; often, the founder or patron of a self-styled order has assumed a false title of nobility as well as supposed current or former sovereignty.
Contrary to a popular myth, a person who is a knight or of noble birth does not have the right to confer titles of nobility or Orders of Chivalry on others. According to tradition and international law, no person or organization, other than the Head of State, or the Head of a Royal House or Dynasty—whether regnant or non-regnant—can be a fount of honour. This is because any other person lacks the required sovereignty to do so, even if he or she is of royal blood.
In the United Kingdom, where the fount of honour is the Monarch, some societies have permissions from the Monarch to award medals, but these are to be worn on the right side of the chest. In France, however, with very few exceptions, no non-governmental orders and medals are permitted to be worn. In Sweden, decisions about medals and orders worn to military uniform has been delegated to the General Staff.
Self-styled orders may share certain other characteristics:
- They long ago were suppressed by the Holy See, protector of mediaeval Western military religious orders in the Holy Land or on the Iberian Peninsula;[2]
- No sovereign Western state recognises them as legitimate orders of knighthood;[3][4]
- They claim to be under the high protection of or to be headed by Episcopi vagantes or to be headed by obscure princes;[5]
- They are linked closely to bearers of false titles of nobility.
Although not officially recognised by any international treaty, the International Commission for Orders of Chivalry has developed widely accepted principles employed in determining which organizations are genuine chivalric orders (many of which are listed on the website of the Commission) rather than self-styled ones. The Commission was created as a temporary committee of the International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in August 1960, though it has been transformed into a permanent and independent international body.[6][7] Though these principles may form a set of reasonable guidelines.
Certain other organisations (such as the Augustan Society, which states publicly that it is not a chivalric order) that may appear to have a chivalric character, nevertheless carefully distinguish themselves from legitimate orders of chivalry, thus differentiating themselves from self-styled orders.
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[edit] See also
- International Order of Saint Stanislaus
- Knights Hospitaller Mimic Orders
- Niadh Nask
- Noble Order of Saint George of Rougemont
- Order of Saint Blaise
- Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem
- Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Oecumenial Knights of Malta
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Ordres et contre-ordres de chevalerie by Arnaud Chaffanjon, Mercure de France Paris 1982.
- Faux Chevaliers vrais gogos by Patrice Chairoff, Jean Cyrile Godefroy Paris 1985.
- The knightly twilight by Robert Gayre of Gayre, Lochore Enterprises Valletta 1973.
- Orders of knighthood, Awards and the Holy See by Peter Bander van Duren and Archbishop H.E. Cardinale (Apostolic Delegate in the United Kingdom), Buckinghamshire 1985.
- World Orders of Knighthood and Merit by Guy Stair Sainty and Rafal Heydel-Mankoo (ed), Burke's Peerage 2006.
- Ephemeral Decorations, Gillingham, H. E. New York, 1935. American Numismatical Society: Numismatic Notes and Mongraphs 66.
- Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, Knights of Fantasy: an overview, history, and critique of the self-styled 'Orders' called 'of Saint John' or 'of Malta', in Denmark and other Nordic countries, Turku 2002, ISBN 951-29-2265-7
