Pseudo-orders

Introduction
Pseudo-orders or self-styled orders are private associations which profess to be Orders of Chivalry. Some are either recreations of specific medieval orders, or imitations of medieval or monarchical orders without specific reference to This is problem mainly in Europe and in the Americas, where these entities keep on appearing and recruiting members. Sometimes developing a highly meritory hospitaller or benefactor activity, these organizations generally adopt the name, style, classes, insignia and dignities of historical military orders or of orders of Knighthood claiming often to be their inheritors. Playing with the modern renewed attraction to the historical Orders of Knighthood and its long lost traditions, these bogus orders seem to fill a gap in people's ever growing quest for honours and distinctions, otherwise difficult to obtain in our democratic, egalitarian and levelled western societies. Amongst these self-styled orders, the pretended imitations of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, or of the extinct Knights Templar are quite common.

The self-styled orders present nonetheless some common characteristics:
1. The fact of having been long ago supressed by the Holy See, Protector of all the military religious orders founded in the Medieval Ages, in the Holy Land or in the Iberian Peninsula;
2. None of the Western sovereign states recognises them as Orders of Knighthood;
3. They generally claim to be under the high protection or headed by Patriarchs, who although of Christian creed, are not Catholic Roman, or they claim to be headed by 'forgotten' Prince.
4. Close links to false titles of nobility.

Although bona fide orders have been created out of private initiative for charitable, military or religious purposes ever since the original order of Saint John (now known as Malta), since the 19th century there has been a large number of orders created either to satisfy personal vanity, or to enrich a group of people (or both). Not all recently created orders of chivalry need be condemned by such a blanket statement, but caveat emptor remains the rule.

History

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries several similar organizations emerged, encouraged by the interest in chivalry inspired by writers such as Sir Walter Scott. These included the "Order of Saint Joachim" (which asserted the support of Admiral Lord Nelson), the "Order of Saint Hubert of Bar", a false "Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem", the "Order of the Temple of Jerusalem" (one of several "rediscoveries" of the supposed secret Order) and the Order of Saint George of Burgundy" which all had brief lives, generally thanks to the sponsorship of one individual, often using an invented title.

Bibliography

*Gillingham, H. E. Ephemeral Decorations. New York, 1935. American Numismatical Society: Numismatic Notes and Mongraphs 66.
*Chaffanjon, Arnaud and Bertrand Galimard-Flavigny. Ordres & contre-ordres de chevalerie. Paris : Mercure de France, 1982.
* World Orders of Knighthood and Merit, Guy Stair Sainty, Rafal Heydel-Mankoo, London 2006

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