SOVEREIGN ORDER OF SAINT JOHN OF JERUSALEM

History and Lineage Charts Since 1797

I. INTRODUCTION

II. THE SOSJ PRESERVES ITSELF BY DEFENDING MONARCHY

III. THE INTERNATIONAL WHITE CROSS OF THE SOSJ

IV. IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST INTERNATIONAL ANARCHISTS THE SOSJ ADDS AN AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY

V. THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY VENTURES INTO FOREIGN SERVICE

VI. REVOLUTIONARIES WITHIN THE SOSJ CONTRIBUTE TO ANARCHY

VII. THE KORNILOV AFFAIR

VIII. THE SOSJ RESPONDS TO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

IX. COUNT KELLER, PRINCE AWALOFF AND GRAND DUKE CYRIL LEAD THE ORDER OF ST. JOHN AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKS

X. THE LINEAGE OF THE SOVEREIGN ORDER OF SAINT OF JERUSALEM

XI. THE BALTIC CAMPAIGN OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA

XII. THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY JOINS THE FIGHT
AGAINST THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALE

XIII. GERMAN NATIONALISTS NURTURE THE WHITE RUSSIAN
GOVERNMENT-IN-EXILE

XIV. THE SOSJ GOVERNMENT IS MOVED TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

XV. THE EXILED ROMANOV FAMILY DEFEATS ITSELF

XVI. THE SOSJ SUPPORTS FASCISM TO DEFEAT BOLSHEVISM

XVII. LIBERALS USE THE AMERICAN COURTS TO SILENCE AMERICAN
ANTI-COMMUNISTS

XVIII. THE ORDER ENTRENCHES ITSELF FOR THE COLD WAR

XIX. THE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY AND KNIGHTS OF THE SOSJ DEFEND AGAINST COMMUNISM

XX. THE POST-WAR GERMAN ORDER OF ST. JOHN ABANDONS THE SOSJ
TO IMPROVE ITS IMAGE

XXI. THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA STAND AGAINST HUMANISTS WITHIN THE CHURCH

XXII. THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE SOSJ

INTRODUCTION

Founded near Our Lord’s Holy Sepulcher c. 1050, the Brothers of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem is one of the oldest orders of the Catholic Church. Named after St. John the Baptist, a brotherhood was begun to provide a hospice for pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem and it was elevated to a monastic order in 1098. By that time it had developed into a military brotherhood known widely as the Knights Hospitaller. The Brethren managed their Hospital and enlarged their service to ensure the safety of the pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land. The King of Jerusalem confirmed the Hospitallers as an international corporation in 1104. The Apostolic See became its perpetual Protector in 1113 by a Papal Bull of Paschal II. Renowned for skilled hospital care and prowess in battle, the Hospitaller Knights became indispensable defenders of Christendom and the Order was first recognized as a sovereign state by King Richard the Lion Heart of England in 1191. The Order was forced by the Moslems from the Holy Land in 1291 and from Rhodes in 1523.

The Convent of the Order was on the island of Malta, and its 70th Grand Master was Prince Ferdinand von Hompesch, when the humanist revolution was creating widespread change on the political map of Europe. The Knights of the Order used strategic foresight in gaining the Czar of Russia as a secondary Protector because in 1798 Malta was seized by General Napoleon Bonaparte. This was the Order’s first confrontation with Freemasonry and with its spawn of democratic revolutions. A large contingent of French Knights of Malta, who had accepted the precepts of the revolutionaries, joined Napoleon’s army. Most of the remainder rallied to St. Petersburg, Russia, which was the home of their new powerful Protector.

There have been many questions concerning the legal and historical validity of the SOSJ after its transfer from Malta to Russia, and later to the United States of America. This essay addresses various aspects of the continuity of the Order’s government starting from the late 18th century in St. Petersburg, following it to the United States of America in the beginning of the 20th century and finally devolving upon the Knights of Justice who now are headquartered in Florida and Tennessee. The Knights compromised their strict Roman Catholic principles as they focused on the survival and independence of their brotherhood, but they succeeded in preserving their lineage intact. Other provincial groups of Knights of Malta eventually became sufficiently organized to warrant their respective national monarchs to recognize them as distinct orders later in the 19th century. This is the cause of the several widely recognized orders of St. John and of Malta that we know today. The Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem is, in contrast, the factual continuation of the Order from Malta, and was supported as such by the Russian monarchy continuously until the death of Czar Kirill I in 1938. Since then it has continued without a host monarch designated as its formal Protector. Rather, since the Order became extra-territorial, it reverted to the tradition of election of its own sovereign prince from amongst its Knights of Justice, an historic right which has been retained since 1191.

The Coronation of Czar Nicholas II

II. THE SOSJ PRESERVES ITSELF BY DEFENDING MONARCHY

Shortly after their arrival in Russia, the exiled Knights of Malta joined with the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia and elected their Orthodox and married Protector, Czar Paul I, as the 71st Grand Master. Grand Master Czar Paul I helped to settle the SOSJ in the Russian capital city. He decreed that their Convent would remain at the Imperial residence of St. Petersburg, and that his successors would continue as its protectors. He created a second Grand Priory principally for his Orthodox nobility. He then invited non-Catholic Europeans, mainly Lutherans, to join this new priory for the purpose of preserving the SOSJ and the Christian monarchies of Europe by perpetual opposition to the Humanist Revolution. His plan to return the Russian Orthodox Church, of which he was the sovereign head, to full communion with the Catholic Church had created enemies among his closest advisors and relatives. Czar Paul I, an unrecognized champion of the Order, was martyred, allegedly by Freemasons, in 1801.

An image of the OSJ Priory Palace within the Imperial Residence at Gatchina, Russia. The Relics of the Order were saved from this building by the White Russians in 1919, after the Bolshevik Revolution.

The Holy See had often desired in the past to control the election of the Grand Master and the Order’s history shows that the knights always successfully resisted this interference. The election of Czar Paul I had broken the lineage of unmarried Catholic grand masters, but continued the jealously guarded tradition of independent election of their leader by the knights. The Knights of Malta believed that the unusual circumstances in world affairs which resulted in the relocation of the convent to Russia called for nontraditional action to salvage the Order and to counter the Revolution. Election disputes developed after the death of Grand Master Czar Paul I and this helped to create a permanent split between the Sovereign Order in Russia and the surviving Italian priories of knights.

The Sovereign Council in Russia and Czar Alexander I asked the Pope to name the next Grand Master “for one time only” from a list of candidates presented from the various priories of knights. The Pope selected the Russian Catholic Grand Priory’s candidate, who became the 72nd Grand Master, John Baptist di Tommasi. Tommasi died in 1805, and then the Pope tried to name Tommasi’s successor. This intervention was not acceptable to the Sovereign Council and to the majority of the Knights of St. John who were determined to elect their own leader as was the tradition and historic right of the Order. It was also generally known that Napoleon was directing the Pope’s choice for Grand Master. The SOSJ chose the Russian Czar as the head and Protector of the Order which was being managed by the Sovereign Council. They refused to recognize the papal appointments which followed thereafter, for they were not legitimately initiated by the Order. Early in the 19th century, the Italian priories adopted the name Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The members of the fledgling SMOM declared themselves the legitimate continuation of the Order and refused to recognize the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The knights of the SOSJ reciprocated by not recognizing the splinter group in Italy. The disagreement continues today. Indeed, it has only been in the past few years that the SMOM has grudgingly accepted Czar Paul I, but as the 72nd Grand Master of the Order. They continue to describe him as Grand Master “in fact” but not “in justice” because the Czar was a married Orthodox Christian.

Nevertheless, the Order became an influential institution in Imperial Russia deeply involved with the preservation of the European monarchies in general, and with the Romanoff dynasty in particular. The two grand priories in Russia, one Catholic and the other principally Orthodox, educated young men at their school, the Corps des Pages, in St. Petersburg. The Corps des Pages was the academy for the creation of new Knights of Malta. The graduates of this school became leaders of the exclusive Guard Divisions and thereby protectors of the Imperial Family of Russia. Their tradition of health care was continued through the hospital and relief agency known as the Russian White Cross. The Sovereign Council, consisting of senior Knights of Justice, governed the Order and ensured its legal continuation. Initially the Order was led by Lieutenant Grand Master General Soltikoff after the death of Czar Paul I. Eventually the leadership of the SOSJ consisted of a President of the Sovereign Council who was assisted by a Grand Chancellor. These men reported directly to each reigning Russian czar who was described as the “Head of the Chapter.” Each Czarina was likewise traditionally the honorary head of the White Cross. The czars took personal custody of the Order’s famous icon of Our Lady of Philermos and the two relics which are the hand of St. John the Baptist and a piece of the True Cross. These were kept either at the Winter Palace or at the SOSJ Priory Chapel of the Gatchina Palace, depending upon the liturgical calendar. This arrangement continued until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917.

III. THE INTERNATIONAL WHITE CROSS OF THE SOSJ

In 1893 the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Prince Cantacuzene, Russian Admiral Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich and Russian Transportation Commissioner Colonel A. Cherep Spiridovich, introduced the Russian SOSJ White Cross at the Chicago World’s Fair to American civic leaders. Pope Leo XIII promised prominent civic leader Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago his support for her chairmanship of “Women of the World” presentations at the Fair and assigned Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota to work with her. Thereby began the SOSJ affiliation with an American White Cross movement supported by the Catholic Church. The American Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland continued their affiliation with the White Cross and the Knights of St. John for at least twenty years thereafter. Archbishop Ireland was the head chaplain for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic and therefore had a responsibility for the welfare of American servicemen. Their initial efforts resulted in a White Cross headquarters in Portland, Oregon which coordinated American nurses sent to Cuba and the Philippine Islands during the Spanish-American War.

The next public result of this Russian-American-Catholic coordination was an attempt in 1899 to get a Title 36 Charter from the U.S. Congress for the National White Cross of America. General Nelson Miles, commanding General of the U.S. Army, and George Westinghouse, founder of Westinghouse Electric of Pittsburgh, were among those involved directly in the White Cross charter effort. The proposed charter would have allowed the organization to continue hospital and relief work exclusively for the American military community. The charter bill was passed to the foreign affairs desk and stalled indefinitely by those concerned about Russian and Catholic influence in the organization. While it had been passed through both the House and Senate without dissension, it was ultimately not signed into law by the President of the United States. After all, the White Cross was a Russian institution of the SOSJ, and Roman Catholic Archbishop John Ireland would be one of the founding members of the proposed American affiliate. Though the American White Cross proposed exclusive support for the American military community, the obvious competition with the American Red Cross which did similar work also concerned some politicians. Archbishop Ireland, Chief Chaplain for the Grand Army of the Republic, General Miles, George Westinghouse of Pittsburgh, Chicago industrialist Richard Teller Crane, Chicago real estate mogul Potter Palmer, and many others continued life long affiliations with Russia or with the Russian-American White Cross movement.

Several things occurred in 1901 which would have long term effects on the SOSJ. Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich, son of the Russian OSJ Grand Prior, assisted Richard Teller Crane of Chicago with plans to organize the American White Cross in New York City. It is believed that they created the American International Academy and named explorer and geologist Francis C. Nicholas as its first president. This pan-American organization was designed for intelligence gathering operations. In 1901, the SMOM (Sovereign Military Order of Malta headquartered in Rome) and Cardinal Gibbons announced that an American Grand Priory would be started solely for the American Catholic members of a fraternal organization called the “Knights of St. John” which had been started about 1880 in imitation of the old order. Colonel Cherep Spiridovich, mentioned previously, became President of the Slavonic Society of Moscow. For five years, he had been Serbian Consul to Moscow, and was a member of the Serbian and later of the Russian Secret Services. The Slavonic Society was an intelligence operation which funneled arms and resources to nationalist elements in the Balkans. The patron of the Society was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. His wife, Grand Duchess Ella, was the elder sister of the Russian Czarina.

In 1903 the American Red Cross administrators restructured their organization and curtailed the authority of their founder, Clara Barton. Barton had been influenced in her famous work by the Russian White Cross and by the Johanniter Orden relief services in Europe. Her friend, Princess Louise of Baden, was the daughter of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, Herrenmeister of the Johanniter Orden. The American Red Cross Field Service Superintendent was Edward Howe from the English St. John’s Ambulance Association. Barton resigned from the American Red Cross and established the National First Aid Association of America in the District of Columbia in 1904. She was assisted in this by men who had tried to start the American White Cross, namely General Nelson A. Miles and Field Superintendent Edward Howe.

In 1904, R. T. Crane, U.S. Consul for Persia, built an emergency hospital clinic in Chicago in memory of a niece killed in a disastrous inner city fire. Mrs. Palmer sent funds from Chicago to the Russian Czarina, Patroness of the Russian White Cross, to be used for relief of victims of the Russo-Japanese War. St. Andrew’s Ambulance Society of Scotland received its new name and independence from the St. John’s Ambulance Association of England.

In December, 1904 the American White Cross First Aid Society was started in Chicago by civic leader Mrs. Potter Palmer, Roman Catholic Cardinal Gibbons, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, representatives of the U.S. Army and Edward Howe, formerly the American Red Cross Field Superintendent. Edward Howe was thus the field superintendant for both the National First Aid Association and for the American White Cross First Aid Society. A similar arrangement existed in England between the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem and the British Red Cross. The Catholic Church, American civic leaders, the U.S. Army and the English St. John’s Ambulance Association were thus working together with the Russian White Cross. This was the “ecumenical beginning” of the Order in America, which Grand Chancellor Pichel described in his history of the SOSJ in 1958. The American White Cross First Aid Society had Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. H. McCormick, Andrew Carnegie, R. T. Crane, General J. D. Irwin and Cardinal Gibbons as Vice Presidents. By association, this brought the Crane Family, the Cantacuzene Family, the McCormick Family, Nicholas Murray Butler, the American military medical community, and the Catholic Church into the White Cross ambulance work which soon followed.

Besides Edward Howe, the moving force in the White Cross was the famous Chicago surgeon and Illinois militia officer Dr. Nicholas Senn. Dr. Senn had been President of the American Medical Association and a founder of the Association of U. S. Military Surgeons. He had also been involved with the early organizing activities of the White Cross. He was associated with the Knights in Russia and had visited them in St. Petersburg in 1902. He was instrumental in the organization of the program in New York. Unfortunately he died prematurely in 1908.

After the death of Dr. Senn, the American Red Cross was assured of the lead in national relief work, and in 1910, reinstated their “First Aid to the Injured” program. The American White Cross therefore eventually focused on large-scale relief overseas during war and famine. As we will later see, a 1921 relief association of American Catholics from the White Cross evolved into a new American Association of the SMOM in 1927.

The Chicago Crane family affiliation with the White Cross eventually led, in 1941, to their daughter Frances’ marriage to OSJ Hereditary Knight Commander Belosselsky-Belozersky, in New York City. The White Cross work of the Chicago Palmers was continued by their relatives, the Cantacuzenes. Prince Michel Cantacuzene and Julia Grant Cantacuzene were members of the Romanian Prince Cantacuzene and President General Ulysses S. Grant families. An early and prominent member of the American White Cross was Wall Street lawyer William Nelson Cromwell, who was responsible for the success of, among many other projects, McCormick Harvester, Carnegie’s U.S. Steel Corporation and the Panama Canal. He became Grand Prior of the American SOSJ in 1912. Charles R. Crane, son of R. T. Crane, became a philanthropist, diplomat, and, unfortunately, a financial supporter of the first Russian revolution of February, 1917.

IV. IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST INTERNATIONAL ANARCHISTS THE SOSJ ADDS AN AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY

The late 19th and early 20th century was an era of anarchist activism. The SOSJ in Russia searched for potential allies in its ongoing defense of Christendom. An epidemic of political assassinations and the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905 prompted the expansion of the Order into the United States. In 1905 Count Alexis Ignatiev, Commander of the SOSJ Chevalier Guards, was assassinated in Russia. Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was also assassinated. The Grand Duke was the patron of the Slavonic Society of Moscow, of which Cherep Spiridovich was president. As mentioned previously, this agency was an intelligence organization funneling arms into the Balkans in support of nationalists struggling against the Turks, and is believed to have been an arm of the SOSJ. These events hastened the development of a permanent presence of the Knights of St. John in America, in addition to their White Cross First Aid Society, to ensure the Order’s survival and to tap the resources of the American Republic.

At the time of his death, Grand Duke Sergei was the Military Governor General of Moscow and had worked to uncover the cells of anarchists who were assasinating government officials which included his own father Czar Alexander II. His wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth, sister of Czarina Alexandra, was involved in the research to unmask the anarchists and this interest brought them both into contact with an Orthodox spiritual writer named Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus. Nilus was one of the earliest men to produce a copy of the “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” and Grand Duchess Ella introduced him and the Protocols to her sister and to Czar Nicholas II. Major General Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich, President of the Slavonic Society, was thereby one of the earliest members of any Intelligence Service to see the Protocols. He was given the mandate by the Russian Imperial family to investigate the matter fully and to spread the alarm about “the hidden hand” of international Zionism and its plan to gain global control through the elimination of the Christian Church. He was made a Count of the Catholic Church by Pope Pius X about 1907. He was President of the Catholic Grand Priory and was one of the principal organizers of the American branch of the SOSJ. His patronesses, Czarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Ella, were convinced of the authenticity of the international conspiracy and in 1918 both of these influential women were murdered by the Bolsheviks.

After the death of Dr. Nicholas Senn in 1908, the American White Cross movement with headquarters in Chicago was expanded further by union with the Knights of St. John and Malta Hospital and Relief Association of Brooklyn, New York. The organization was named White Cross Hospital and Relief Association. The main offices of the relief association remained at the GAR Hall, at 990 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. The headquarters of this new association was apparently being prepared at what is now called the Audubon Terrace on North Broadway in New York City. Senior knights were building a facility to be complete in every aspect for the conduction of the affairs of the Order. Charles Hayward and George H. Bruce, formerly of the Knights of St John and Malta Hospital and Relief Association, had joined with senior SOSJ knights, many of whom were agents of the Imperial Russian Secret Service. Most of them were Catholic Knights of Malta of the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, and represented many of the nations of Europe. They considered this American association not only as a new organization for the Americas, but as the continuation of the old Polish Grand Priory that had been in the minority in Russia since 1815. They printed a journal for the association called The White Cross Knight.

Major General Arthur Cherep Spiridovich, President of the remnant Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, was among the coordinators of this expansion. As mentioned, the General was also an emissary of Czarina Alexandra of Russia, Patroness of the Russian SOSJ White Cross and of her sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth, promoter of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and now an Orthodox nun and superior of an Order in Moscow. As an intelligence operative, he was handled by the Russian Ambassador to the U. S., Baron Rosen. He was also an agent of the Serbian royal family. There began a long relationship between the OSJ in America and the Yugoslavian and Roumanian royal families.

The four orders of St. John jockeyed for positions of influence in American society. These included the SOSJ, the SMOM, The German Order of St. John and the British Venerable Order of St. John. The constant interaction with the aristocracy, nobility and royalty of the Old World motivated some American members to become involved in genealogical and racial studies. To qualify for knighthood in accordance with the rules of the SOSJ was nearly impossible for Americans. The result of the strict admittance qualifications was the founding by private individuals of the National Genealogical Society, the interaction with an unrecognized College of Arms of Canada, the founding of the American Heraldry Society, and, to some degree, the support of the early racial eugenics movement. Various patriotic and genealogical societies were established during this period to qualify Americans and Canadians for OSJ knighthood. The Lords of Manors of Baltimore, Scions of Colonial Cavaliers, Order of Colonial Dames, Imperial Order of the Yellow Rose, and the Order of the White Crane are some of the societies the American knights started. We will also see that others, motivated by their affiliation with Freemasonic lodges, attempted to advance the agenda of their fraternities by affiliation with the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem in Russia.

In 1909, Grand Duke Vladimir was assassinated in Russia, and his son, Grand Duke Cyril, thereby became Grand Prior of the OSJ Russian Grand Priory. Grand Duke Vladimir had cultivated relations between the SOSJ in Russia, the German Order of St. John and the Spanish Order of St. John the Baptist. The German and Spanish orders were branches of the original Order. He had also encouraged the American members of the White Cross to further develop those relationships. German influence on the new OSJ American Association through the Johanniter Orden Protector Emperor Wilhelm II and his brother Prince Henry of Prussia was evident before World War I with exchange visits by the industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt and President of Columbia University Nicholas Murray Butler, Director of OSJ Education from 1912 to 1928. German influence also came from the Czarina and her sister Ella who were both members of German royalty. That relationship, which developed with both the Protestant Johanniter Orden and with the Catholic Malteser Orden, continued from joint efforts in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War through the redevelopment of the German Intelligence Service after WWII.

Colonel Dr. Wm. Sohier Bryant, MD, of New York City, and lawyer Wm. B. Stites of New Jersey wrote a constitution in 1911 to form an American Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem from members of the American White Cross. The American Grand Priory constitution was accepted by the membership in 1912. The new Grand Priory included the Grand Priory of Russia, i.e., the former Catholic OSJ Grand Priory of Poland. The headquarters of the knights was initially the meeting hall of the Knights of St. John and Malta at Wurzler’s Building, 315 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Most early meetings were held at Joseph Burrows office at 56-58 Pine Street, near Wall Street. Wall Street lawyer William Nelson Cromwell became American Grand Prior in 1912, and meetings thereafter were usually held at his offices in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. According to Pichel, this continued until 1929, after which the meetings were held at Dr. Bryant’s office in the Murray Hill section of New York City. That address was the address of the American Heraldry Society at 1730 Broadway, and later, by the mid 1930’s, was 30 East 40th Street, the address of Dr Bryant’s medical office.

In 1912 the Order consisted of the Russian Grand Priory in Russia and the new American Grand Priory and its subsidiary, the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, which included remnants of the Spanish Caballeros Hospitalarios de San Juan Bautista. The Russian Grand Priory was composed mainly of Slavic Knights of the Orthodox Faith. The American Grand Priory leaders were mostly socially prominent Protestant Episcopalians from New York City and Chicago. There was also a small group of American descendants of Catholic Celtic Jacobites, who were still followers of the old Stuart Pretender to the throne of England and Scotland. The Pretender at the time was Queen Mary IV of Bavaria, and an army physician named Edgar Erskine Hume, OSJ was among those who later considered Mary’s successor, Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht, as his “rightful sovereign.” The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, and Dr. Francis C. Nicholas had had contact with Spanish Knights of St. John during years of preparation work for the American Panama Canal project. Interaction with the Spanish knights was also the result of Americans meeting Spanish knights during the Spanish-American War from 1898 to 1900, and later during the Mexican civil wars. The remnant Castellany of Guadalajara, Mexico, of the Spanish Order of St. John the Baptist joined the American Grand Priory with their monarchist Pretender, Don Agustin Yturbide. King Alphonso XIII of Spain was the protector of the remnants of the Spanish Order which was given a papal blessing as late as 1879. He expanded his association to the SOSJ in America.

As noted previously, American Catholics, however, had been joining a fraternal organization similar to the present day Knights of Columbus, called the Knights of St. John, since it was founded in the 1880’s. By the turn of the century, a union of all military style fraternal associations of the Catholic Church in America, to be called the Roman Catholic Union of the Knights of St. John, was supported by Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland. Therefore, Catholic knights of the SOSJ had difficulty determining their loyalties, not only because of the broad spectrum of their own origins and nationalities, but also because of the presence of this non-chivalric fraternal organization supported by the Catholic Church. The SMOM reneged on its promise to Cardinal Gibbons to create a priory for the American fraternal orders of Catholic knights which prompted the American Catholic church authorities to organize the Catholic Knights of America and the Catholic Benevolent Legion in its stead. Prominent Catholics from the American Irish White Cross movement, associated with the SOSJ, who were disenchanted with their order’s political leanings, eventually founded in 1927 the American Association of the SMOM. Edgar Erskine Hume, MD, was among the group of former members of the SOSJ who sought admission into the Italian order.

V. THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY VENTURES INTO FOREIGN SERVICE

The English started a private intelligence gathering operation supported by their government in 1904 called the Legion of Frontiersmen. This organization, composed of wealthy patriotic English volunteers, prefigured MI6. Members of this group, traveling worldwide as was their customary lifestyle, became an important source for the British Empire’s constant need for information. The American White Cross was being used in similar fashion, and the new American Grand Priory expanded on that practice. The most prominent families in the United States joined the American Grand Priory of the SOSJ, and thereby developed the first American civilian foreign intelligence network.
American Grand Priory leaders, Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, Archer Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, William Nelson Cromwell, Wall Street lawyer and Francis C. Nicholas, founder of the American International Academy, are among those who crafted the American Grand Priory into an intelligence organization. Nicholas, a mining engineer and explorer, had done Cromwell’s Panama Canal construction feasibility studies. He had also done geological research in Central and South America for Archer Huntington and Colonel William Lamb, who were supplying fuel coal to the Russian Navy. These men wielded significant influence in the United States during the late 19th through the mid 20th centuries.

Some results of their careers include the founding of the Republic of Panama and the successful purchase and construction of the Panama Canal. They were also responsible for the founding of the Pan-American “Organization of American States” and directly influenced the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency. Others prominent in the OSJ at this time included John Jacob Astor until his death on the Titanic, J. P. Morgan, J P Morgan, Jr. and the extended Cornelius Vanderbilt and Chicago Crane families. The Mexican White Cross association was promoted by Don Agustin Yturbide, OSJ, Pretender to the royal throne of Mexico. Cromwell used the College of Arms of Canada, of which Yturbide was President, to create dissension during congressional hearings into the Panama Canal controversy. Legalistic maneuvering about ancient French noble rights in Canada brought pressure on Great Britain to drop complaints about the U. S. control of the canal. This preceeded by many decades the modern secession movement of French speaking Canada. Grand Chancellor Bulloch was involved in this movement which tended to divide the OSJ into Anglophile and Francophile factions. Grand Prior Cromwell had become a seasoned veteran at creating trusts, monopolies and even countries by using revolution if necessary. The principle White Cross societies besides America and Russia were located in Spain and Mexico. Dr. Francis C. Nicholas was involved during the Mexican Civil War from 1912 to 1914 as a White Cross “observer.” The English St. John’s Ambulance Brigade was started in Canada, and may have helped with the founding of the White Cross in Brooklyn as well.

The American Grand Priory also had a history of cooperation with members of the monarchist and anti-Semitic Russian Black Hundred’s Movement due to their association with Cherep Spiridovich. Admiral Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich, OSJ, was the head of Russian Naval Intelligence. He spent time in the United States developing relationships with the wealthiest people in American society. His regular traveling companion became Major Barclay Harding Warburton of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence community. Warburton was a member of the “East Coast Establishment,” and was closely related to the Wannamaker and Vanderbilt families. The American Grand Priory cooperated with Russian Naval Intelligence and the Russian Secret Service directed by Baron Rosen. Grand Duke Alexander was elected the 73rd Grand Master of the SOSJ in September, 1913 during meetings in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

The First World War found the American Grand Priory allying itself with the Entente against Germany. Major General Cherep-Spiridovich had been spreading the alarm about a global supra-national plan to gain ultimate world power through financial and political control of the military forces of Germany and England. He tried to warn the Americans and to strengthen the bonds between the United States and Russia in an effort to keep Christians from slaughtering each other. In 1915 Colonel Robert R. McCormick, of Chicago Tribune fame, reported from the Russian front lines while interviewing Knights of Malta who were graduates of the SOSJ Corps des Pages. The White Cross Hospital and Relief Association of the American Knights of Malta named its overseas work “The American Ambulance”. Members of the American Grand Priory quickly became the leaders of massive relief efforts during WWI.

Grand Prior W.N. Cromwell helped to start the Lafayette Escadrille Flying Corps with Cornelius Vanderbilt and Dr. Ed Gros of the American Ambulance. This Corps was later supported by the Order of Lafayette. Rep. Hamilton Fish III of New York was both a member of this order and the reinstituted Order of Lafayette following WWII. Unfortunately, the SOSJ is implicated in the support and possibly in the direction of the “bloodless revolution” in Russia in the opening months of 1917.

Above is an excerpt from a book by Colonel Robert McCormick. His family was among the founders of the White Cross in Chicago. He remained an active member of the Knights of Malta until his death in 1955.

VI. REVOLUTIONARIES WITHIN THE SOSJ CONTRIBUTE TO ANARCHY

Until the First World War, relations between the German Order of St. John, the English Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and the SOSJ were mostly cooperative. The leaders of these organizations, many of them members of royal houses, were often close family relatives and/or financially interdependent. The European royal families were well aware of the survival of the SOSJ in Russia. Queen Victoria’s son, the Duke of Connaught, led the English Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem for many decades. He was closely associated with, and related to, Grand Duke Alexander and others of the Romanoff family. He had been present in 1894 at the marriage of SOSJ Protector Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra of Germany in the tiny Winter Palace Chapel, in which the chief relics and icon of the SOSJ were prominently venerated. Before Alexander I became its king, the Duke of Connaught had been seriously considered for the throne of Yugoslavia. He was Grand Duchess Victoria Melita’s uncle, and at one time was the potential father-in-law of SOSJ Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander’s daughter.

The Duke of Connaught, led for many decades both the English Venerable Order and, as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, the Masonic Knights Templar. As the English Governor-General of Canada from 1910 to 1916, he had a relationship with the American Masonic Knights of Malta. He also had some influence over the American Masonic Knights Templar. Unfortunately, the new American members of the White Cross and SOSJ American Grand Priory did not heed the prohibitions on Freemasonic affiliation that had been enforced in Russia. When they joined with the SOSJ from Russia, some persisted in their Masonic affiliation as Templars. The amalgamation of the SOSJ with the Knights of St. John and the Malta Hospital and Relief Association brought Freemasons into the ranks of the American Grand Priory. The new Grand Priory of 1912 was thereby influenced by Freemasonry and Anti-Catholicism. The Freemasons who came into the Grand Priory had believed in a descent of their fraternity from an ill-defined Templar-Malta Order from France, or from the old “reformed” Torpichen Preceptory in Scotland. Some of the new members were the aforementioned Catholic Jacobites but there was also a small but significant number of Rosicrucians. A significant philosophy of the Rosicrucians included an anti-Semitic and racial superiority agenda.

Some prominent members appear to have persisted in the Freemasonic quest for humanistic “freedoms” which had caused the downfall of so many Christian kingdoms and as noted previously was one of the principle reasons for the loss of their predecessor’s citadel home on Malta in 1798. Their personal philosophies also supported the exportation of “democratic” ideals of the United States of America, which did not translate peacefully into the needs for social change in Imperial Russia. In Russia it was widely known that Freemasonry had been prohibited because it is a fraternity designed for Revolution against Christianity and against Christian monarchs. The Knights failed to recognize the danger which they brought upon the Order and upon Christendom by amalgamating Freemasons into the ranks of the Knights Hospitaller.

The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, was a well known adept at high level regime change. The lifestyles enjoyed by Americans, combined with the Wilsonian theme of spreading Democracy worldwide, appear to have seduced both Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander and Russian Grand Prior Grand Duke Cyril into revolutionary scheming against Czar Nicholas II. Many others in the Imperial Romanoff family were sympathetic to liberal Socialist plans to end the absolute monarchy in Russia, and the American Grand Priory of the SOSJ is implicated in their revolutionary activities. Unfortunately the Czar and his wife were also influenced by occultism which was in vogue in their society, and of which Rasputin was an infamous practitioner. This behavior during wartime on the part of the Czar and his family caused extreme anxiety in Russia and helped to prompt militant action among the diverse forces determined to transform the monarchy. The story of Rasputin’s influence on the Imperial family and on the politics of Russia is widely known. It is not generally known, however, that Grand Duke Alexander directed the assassination of the spiritualist monk Gregori Rasputin in late 1916. The men directly involved in the murder of Rasputin were the Grand Duke’s sons, son-in-law, cousin and a member of British MI6. The Russians were all students or graduates of the SOSJ Corps des Pages. Grand Duke Alexander afterward successfully interceded with the czar on behalf of the assassins, all Knights of St. John.

Grand Duchess Ella was the head of the White Cross Supreme Council in Russia which oversaw all Hospitaller activity during WWI. In 1916, the OSJ “American Ambulance in Russia,” which was organized by Hamilton Fish III, Dr. Philip Newton, Capt. Philip Lydig, Nicholas Murray Butler, Colonel Robert McCormick and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt of New York City and Chicago, started service on the Russian Front. Their patroness was a daughter of the Czar, Grand Duchess Tatiana Romanoff.

The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, distanced himself from the adventure as his name was too well connected with American engineered foreign revolutions of the recent past. Instead, Charles Richard Crane of the Chicago White Cross assisted with financing revolutionary change in Russia. It appears that once again, just as some Knights betrayed their brethren on Malta by joining with the revolutionaries of Napoleon, members of the Order were guilty of fratricide and denial of their Christian faith. The American Ambulance in Russia, at least financially and philosophically, supported the Kerensky Regime.

The Knights may have also tactically supported the first Russian revolution in the early months of 1917 which placed Kerensky at the head of a new Democratic government. Prime Minister Kerensky was on the payroll of the American Ambulance. Grand Duke Cyril was in charge of the troops available to defend the Czar in St. Petersburg. He used his naval guard corps to passively support the forced abdication of Czar Nicholas II. Many blamed both the February and later the October Revolutions completely on Jewish revolutionaries supported by Germany which was controlled by kindred forces. However both Grand Prior Grand Duke Cyril and Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander had naively allied themselves with the Freemasons and other social humanists and were thus ostracized by many Russian monarchists. The reality that the Bolsheviks used the opportunity presented to them by the assistance to Kerensky of the continental, English and American Freemasons was apparently a shock to the leadership of the OSJ. They never confessed their involvement and as a consequence the Order continued to be plagued by the Freemasons. Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander was able to retain his elevated status within the Russian exiled community only due to the position of his wife, the Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the late Czar. Grand Duke Cyril, Protector of the SOSJ, had to outlive more popular candidates in order for him to gain his birthright, the leadership of the Romanov dynasty.

VII. THE KORNILOV AFFAIR

A Counter Revolution was soon planned by Russian Guard officers under Generals Kornilov, Markov and Keller in August/September of 1917. General Count Keller, OSJ, an intimate of the Russian Imperial family and friend of German monarchists, was the only general who immediately refused to accept the abdication of the Czar to the Kerensky regime. As an influential member of the SOSJ he singlehandedly started the resistance of the Knights of Malta whose historical charge was the defense of Imperial Russia and the Romanoff family.

The Monarchists managed to place many of their sympathizers in command of the armed forces in St. Petersburg. Colonel Pavel Bermondt, who served in an Ussuri Cossack unit of Keller’s 3rd Cavalry Corps, was one of these officers and was given command of an Ulan cavalry regiment in St. Petersburg. Captain Sidney Reilly of British MI6 was also in charge of a cavalry contingent during this conspiracy. Their plan was to coordinate the armed members of a large number of Russian patriotic societies which would join with an approaching Guard army under General Kornilov in order to impose a military junta which would ‘restructure” the Provisional Government and quell the Bolsheviks. Kerensky was forewarned and he armed the Bolsheviks to defend his government and the city against the Monarchists. The Kornilov uprising attempt failed and most of the conspirators, including Bermondt, were jailed. Many were able to escape with the assistance of sympathizers. Kerensky had armed the Bolsheviks and the failed Kornilov Affair had thus prepared the way for a third, but violent revolt, in October of 1917. The October Revolution of the atheistic Bolsheviks was successful and ultimately merciless.

General Count Keller, OSJ, head of the Imperial Guard, left; Czar Nicholas II, right.

VIII. THE SOSJ RESPONDS TO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

As noted, the first response against the socialist revolutionaries of the Kerensky Provisional Government came from Count Keller, OSJ. The Count immediately started working with German General Rudiger Von der Goltz to build a German-Russian army of monarchist volunteers in the Baltic. This cooperation between the German and Russian orders of St. John was the attempt to return both Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II and a Romanoff Czar to their respective thrones.

On September 15, 1917, J. G. B. Bulloch, MD, first cousin of President Teddy Roosevelt, incorporated the Order of Lafayette in New York City with an international membership as a recruiting front for the SOSJ. An American counter revolutionary effort became immediately prominent since it became apparent from both government and military intelligence reports that Jewish anarchists were in the majority in the new Bolshevik government in St. Petersburg. The revolutionaries had developed their operational base in the Lower East Side district of New York City and both the American and Russian Imperial secret services frantically worked to prevent an expected Bolshevik revolution in the United States. The American Grand Priory became isolated due to its support of the first “Bloodless Revolution” in Russia and thereafter remained in the hands of operatives of the anti-Bolshevik intelligence communities. The American Grand Priory of the SOSJ concentrated its activities in NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It worked to defeat the international anarchist movements and to expose their aligned secret societies.

The Poles responded both to stop the Bolshevik advance into their territory and to take advantage of their new found independence from both Russia and Germany. The Polish White Cross was founded in New York a few days after the Bolshevik Revolution. Its president was Count Nicholas Potocki, OSJ. His close relative Jerzey Potocki became Polish Ambassador to the United States. Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist, helped to start the Polish White Cross in New York in October 1917 and used the resources of the American Ambulance in Russia. His wife, Madame Paderewski, daughter of Baron Rosen, OSJ, was Patroness of the Polish White Cross. The Polish effort was both an intelligence operation and relief service of the old Polish Grand Priory which was now part of the American Grand Priory. Captain Sidney Reilly, OSJ of MI6 and Colonel William J. Donovan, SMOM, US State Department Intelligence, were also associates of Ignace Paderewski, who became the first President of Free Poland.

IX. COUNT KELLER, PRINCE AWALOFF AND GRAND DUKE CYRIL LEAD THE ORDER OF ST. JOHN AGAINST THE BOLSHEVIKS

After the failed Kornilov Affair and imprisonment, followed by the October Revolution, many Guard officers were able to escape and flee to the Don Cossacks in the Ukraine. There they helped to create the Volunteer Army with the assistance of Ukrainian separatists. Generals Alekseev, Denikin, Kornilov, Kolchak and Keller were the early leaders and they started the Russian Civil War to defeat the Bolsheviks.

Grand Duke Cyril was now the legal heir to the Russian throne as he was third in line behind the heir of Czar Nicholas II, his son Alexei and the Czar’s brother Grand Duke Michael. Grand Duke Cyril gave his support to the remnant of the SOSJ headed by Count Keller and his fellow Knights. The Russian Order of St. John rallied to form a secretive organization of officers and civilian nobility called alternately the Brothers of the White Cross and the White Cross Society under Generals Markov and Count Keller and the monarchist politician Markov II. The Russian Grand Duke Cyril and the German Grand Duke of Hesse were members of the organization as German monarchists assisted the White Cross effort to rescue their kin, the Czarina Alexandra and her family. American Lt. Col. Joseph Boyle and his machine gun detachment may have been part of this effort by the Order to rescue members of the Imperial family. Among the conspirators was the son-in-law of Rasputin and the Czarina's best friend Anna Vyrubova. Czarina Alexandra delayed the rescue plans of the Brothers of the White Cross several times in her effort to regain the throne. Her delays ultimately prevented the Brotherhood from following through with their plans to free the Imperial family due to the progressive consolidation of Bolshevik control. The Imperial family was murdered by the Bolsheviks in July, 1918. The Czarina had reportedly used the symbol of the swastika repeatedly during her captivity, had often referred to the Brothers of the White Cross and had only two books in her possession during her final captivity. One of them was the Nilus book containing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. These findings fueled the hatred of the Bolsheviks and of their conspiracy for global domination. The historical record shows that Count Keller and most of the well known General officers from the SOSJ fought for Imperial Russia until killed in action against the Bolsheviks during the following year.

General Markov had been the Director of the Nicholas Cavalry School in St. Petersburg. This school was a post graduate school for the elite cavalry Guard officers most of whom came from the SOSJ Corps des Pages. Markov organized his Guard officers on February 12, 1918 and instituted a black Maltese cross badge for those in his unit. Count Keller, OSJ, was a graduate of the Nicholas Cavalry School and his uncle had been one of the last Commandants of the OSJ Corps des Pages. General Keller used a large plain white Maltese cross breast badge for all officers under his command. The belief in an international socialist conspiracy led by Zionists was central to their understanding of the revolution. Count Keller also worked with monarchist German General Rudiger Von der Goltz to start a German backed government in the Baltic and recruited Russian POW’s in Germany for this army. As noted earlier their combined plan was to join their forces in an attempt to replace the rightful monarchs both in Germany and in Russia. Colonel Bermondt was the chief of counter intelligence for the Southern Army under Hereditary Knight Commander George Duke Leuktenburg, OSJ. Major Walter Nicolai, head of all German military intelligence during World War I, was assigned to work with Bermondt by the famous German General Ludendorff. They promoted the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion and the international conspiracy theory widely among the White Russian and later among the German troops in the Baltic.

General Keller, OSJ, had been offered the command of the Southern Army but insisted on leading only a Russian monarchist army in the expected campaign against the Bolsheviks. He believed that Russian patriots would rally to the just cause and was concerned with conspiratorial elements within both the German armies and the German state. He eventually accepted the command of an all-Russian monarchist Northern Army. Metropolitan Tikhon, who was the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, had previously reserved his personal involvement in the counter revolution. He significantly gave his personal blessing to Count Keller as the leader of the crusade against the Bolsheviks. This blessing by the Patriarch of the Eastern Catholic Church and later the support of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which recognized Grand Duke Cyril as the heir to the Russian throne, helped to sustain the Order of St. John during the difficult years which followed. Keller adopted a white Maltese Cross breast plate for his officers and planned to lead a Russian monarchist army led by Knights of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in the crusade against the Bolsheviks. General Keller was soon fighting Ukrainian Socialist formations and was captured in Kiev with the remnant of the anti-Bolshevik army in December 1918. Colonel Bermondt had joined Keller's forces in the Ukraine. Bermondt and many of his fellow Monarchists were once again jailed. This time they were scheduled for execution. Count Keller was shot by the Bolsheviks while in captivity. Fortunately a German army freed many of the Russian officers, including Bermondt, and took them back to Germany where they were interned near Berlin in Camp Salzvedel. German Monarchists had taken up the cause of the Russian White Guard because they faced the same threat of international Bolshevism from their own Socialist Weimar Government.

CROSS OF COUNT KELLER: IMPORTANTE ORDINE DI MALTA

Russia, inizi XX Sec.
insegna dell‘ordine "con gioie" in oro, argento, smalto bianco e diamanti, realizzata con finissimo lavoro a giorno; al retro del trofeo d‘armi, appiccagnolo biforcato con marca (in caratteri cirillici) "M. BERSH e Co." e punzoni per l‘oro; nastro mancante, in antico astuccio rivestito in marocchino verde scuro, foderato in seta blu. Magnifico e rarissimo esemplare, per tradizione famigliare, appartenuto al Tenente Generale conte F.A. Keller, celebre personaggio della storia russa a cavallo tra l‘inizio del XX Secolo e la Guerra Civile, ottime condizioni

A jewelled insignia of the Order in gold, silver, white enamel and diamonds; the reverse of the trophy with doubled ribbon-ring, this struck with the cyrillic maker‘s mark "M. BERSH & Co." and gold assay mark; ribbon, missing; in old, fitted case, covered with dark green morocco, lined with blue silk. A magnificent and most rare piece, traditionally belonged to Lt. General Count Keller, a famous personality of Russian history from the beginning of XX Century, to the Civil War.
Dim. 7,8 x 3,1 cm.

40.000,00 / 48.000,00 €
SOLD € 41.000,00

X. THE LINEAGE OF THE SOVEREIGN ORDER OF SAINT OF JERUSALEM

The SOSJ ties with the Germans before the war encouraged by the Russian Grand Prior Grand Duke Vladimir were bearing fruit for the exiled knights who had survived the Revolution. Beside his association with Grand Prior William Nelson Cromwell, Colonel Bermondt now became connected with other members of the American Grand Priory and to Boris Brasol and Major General Count Cherep Spiridovich due to their mutual work against the globalist’s agenda. It must also be remembered that the whereabouts of Grand Duke Alexander, then regarded as the leader of the OSJ, was unknown. His fate was uncertain as he was last known to be under house arrest by the Bolsheviks in the Crimea. It was in Camp Salzvedel, near Berlin, during January to April 1919 that Colonel Bermondt re-organized Russian Guard officers to continue the crusade of the Sovereign Russian Imperial Order of Saint John of Jerusalem against the Bolsheviks. It had been started by General Count Keller with the blessing of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. This time the Knights had the legitimate heir to the Russian Throne, the son of the late grand Duke Vladimir, the Grand Duke Cyril, as both the Protector of the Order and financier of the Order's field operations.

It is important to state here that the historic Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem was legitimately continued outside of Russia by Grand Duke Cyril, the legal heir to the deceased Czar Nicholas II. The Czarovich, Alexei, had been killed with his father. Grand Duke Michael had abdicated the throne within 24 hours of accepting it and his whereabouts were now unknown. With the recognition of the new Protector of the Order, with the blessing of Patriarch Tikhon, the supreme head of the Russian Orthodox Church and, as we shall see, with the consent of the Knights in the United States, the continuation of the OSJ under Prince Awaloff was successfully accomplished.

A rough translation from Prince Awaloff's Memoirs.

The Order recognized Grand Duke Cyril as the legal heir and the leaders of the OSJ field forces were in turn recognized by the Grand Duke Cyril. The principals of this recognition have handed down the Order in unbroken fashion to the Knights of Justice who have continued their work into the 21st century. There is no other organization that either has claimed in the past, or claims now, its descent from the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in Russia that recognized, and was recognized by, the legitimate heir Grand Duke Cyril immediately after the murder of Czar Nicholas and his son. Neither can any organization claim the black mantle of the Order of the Knights of Malta which has not continuously and publicly stood in opposition to the satanic conspiracy that relentlessly works toward the destruction of Christendom.

The West Volunteer Army was led by officers who were Knights of Malta. The Russian formations were led by Knights of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The German formations were often led by men who were both Knights of the German Order of St. John, the Johanniter Orden and of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

On March 4, 1919 by Order number 24 Colonel Bermondt made the Maltese cross breast badge the emblem of his SOSJ army and enameled it black in memory of General Graf Keller. High level German nationalists backed this re-establishment of the Russian Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Among them was General Ludendorff who had been Chief of Staff of the German Army during WWI. His chief intelligence officer Major Walter Nicholai was also involved. The Protector of the Order was the legitimate heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich. Grand Duke Cyril continued to finance the SOSJ venture with the help of the American Grand Priory. Prince Awaloff and Grand Duke Cyril planned to join with German forces to drive the Bolsheviks out of the Baltic. This idea to cooperate with Germany was unique to these Knights of St. John who believed that Russian-German cooperation was the only way to rid the world of the Bolsheviks.

In 1919 Colonel Prince Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt, supported by the Johanniter Orden, the Romanoff Pretender Grand Duke Cyril, and American financier J. P. Morgan, Jr., OSJ, became Commander in chief of the Russian Imperial Army. He led the SOSJ and apparently Johanniter-Orden plan, financed through attorney W. N. Cromwell, OSJ, American Grand Prior, to clear the Bolsheviks from the Baltic and to set up a pro-German government. Most of the officials of what became known in the Fall of 1919 as the West Russian Government were members of the OSJ. Prince Awaloff recorded much of this information in his memoirs which he wrote in 1925 in Hamburg, Germany.

XI. THE BALTIC CAMPAIGN OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA

Bermondt was first addressed by the royal title of Prince Awaloff in September, 1919. Prince Awaloff states that he was adopted at this time by Prince Michael Awaloff from whom he gained the royal title. Records are unavailable and since there was uncertainty in 1919 about where the title came from it is possible that Bermondt was elected Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem which would have given him the royal title of Prince. We must wait for further information to confirm this suspicion and we therefore retain the claims of Grand Duke Alexander as Grand Master during this period. During the Baltic campaign, Rudolf Baron von Engelhardt and Baron Engelhardt-Schnellenstein, both close relatives of Lt. Grand Master Alphons Heribert Scipio Baron von Engelhardt-Schnellenstein (1954-1956) and Admiral Felix Count von Luckner, who also became the Lt. Grand Master of the OSJ (1962-1966) worked with Prince Awaloff in the Baltic venture. The Bavarian Freikorps, some of whom were associated with the Stewart Pretender, Crown Prince Rupprecht, wore the Maltese Cross. (The connection between the Royal Stuart Jacobite Pretender in Bavaria and the Order is not fully understood. We do know that General Hume did have a relationship with the Crown Prince.)

The relics and icon were rescued from the SOSJ Priory at the Gatchina Palace outside of St. Petersburg in October, 1919, by men of the army of the White Russian General Yudenitch.[1] They were brought to Reval, Estonia, and delivered to the former Russian Master of Court Ceremonies Count Alexei Ignatiev. Ignatiev was head of the Russian White Cross in Estonia, a leader of the Russian SOSJ and a son of the murdered Count Ignatiev, Commander of the SOSJ Chevalier Guards. The relics and icon were then delivered to the SOSJ headquarters in Mitau and there were solemnly received by Prince Awaloff and General Von der Goltz. Later the relics and icon were placed in the hands of the Romanov Queen Mother, Dagmar Feodorovna. She kept the relics at Villa Hvidore, her residence in exile near Copenhagen, until her death in 1928. Awaloff proclaimed himself Governor-General of Western Russia for a brief time in late 1919. The short-lived government in the Duchy of Courland, Latvia, with headquarters in Mitau, was the closest that the Order had come to gaining a permanent sovereign territory since the loss of Malta in 1798.

There were other plans by Russian exiles to retake their country. One of them was planned and undertaken by Baron Taube as potential Secretary of State who enlisted Russian Jewish bankers to fund General Yudenitch in an attempt to retake St. Petersburg with a Northwestern Army. They also would have supported Grand Duke Cyril as the new Czar. Their White Russian army in northwestern Russia ultimately failed in its attempt to take St. Petersburg. Awaloff refused to place his command under General Yudenitch and Baron Taube, whom he considered to be controlled by “conspiratorial forces,” that is, the Jewish bankers. Baron Taube eventually became an antagonist of the SOSJ.

The Western Russian Volunteer Army of Prince Awaloff initially gained advantage and took Riga from the Bolsheviks. However, the British Naval Squadron that had been supporting the left flank of General Yudenitch’s drive into St. Petersburg for political reasons abandoned Yudenitch and directed its guns upon Awaloffs’ forces. This intervention caused the defeat of both the SOSJ anti-Bolshevik force of Prince Awaloff and of the drive into St. Petersburg by General Yudenitch. The Knights of St. John ultimately retreated into Germany due to lack of support from the socialist Weimar Government and the treason of the Entente British and French governments. These entities propped up the Bolshevik regime which was about to crumble. The result of this intervention was 75 years of Communist dictatorship for a large portion of the world. The Knights of this army of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem became known as the “Baltic Brotherhood.”

When the SOSJ was exiled from the Russian Imperial City its historic mission as defender of the Catholic Church and secondary mission to defend Orthodox Russia brought it into opposition to those Orders of St. John that were connected to Freemasonry. The Order had been forced from Malta by the revolutionaries. It was widely known that Grand Master Czar Paul I had been killed by Freemasons, and that Czar Alexander II was killed by anarchists with cabalistic backgrounds. It was acknowledged that these same revolutionary philosophies were now responsible for the loss of yet another Christian monarchy, and for the deaths of Czar Nicholas II and his family. This included, among the many members of the OSJ who were murdered by the Bolsheviks: the Patroness of the American Grand Priory relief operation, Grand Duchess Tatiana, the Patroness of the White Cross, Czarina Alexandra and the Protector and leader of the SOSJ, Czar Nicholas II.

Grand Duke Alexander and his immediate family survived the Bolshevik purge of the Romanovs during a long captivity in the Crimea. Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander’s friend, Major Warburton, was the U.S. Military Charge d’Affaires in Paris at the end of the war. When rescued by the British navy Alexander went straight to Paris. He attempted to get into the international peace talks which followed WW I to plea for help for those trapped inside Russia. He was refused admission to the peace conference and all of his personal efforts failed to save any of the Russian Imperial Family, who had, unknown to him, already been murdered by the Bolsheviks. Thereafter, it appears that Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander could not cope with his involvement in the first revolution which installed the Provisional Government. All of his brothers were killed by the Bolsheviks soon after they seized power from the Kerensky regime. The Grand Duke spent the rest of his life involved in spiritualism, apparently attempting to gain forgiveness from his murdered brother-in-law, Czar Nicholas II.

XII. THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY JOINS THE FIGHT
AGAINST THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALE

The American Grand Priory was peopled with the scions of Wall Street and the “Eastern Establishment”. These men and women, many of them active or reserve officers in the military, worked with the fledgling western military intelligence communities and made the Grand Priory the first civilian foreign intelligence organization in the United States. Their intimate associates included the brothers John Foster and Allen Welsh Dulles who were nephews of U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Both were Wall Street lawyers who worked directly for William Nelson Cromwell, OSJ. John Foster Dulles eventually became President Eisenhauer’s Secretary of State, and Allen Welsh Dulles was instrumental in founding the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. One of the Chicago Crane sons became Asst. Secretary of State under Lansing. Another close associate was Wall Street lawyer “Wild Bill” William J. Donovan, who founded the Office of Strategic Services, and eventually became a knight of the SMOM. As a result of the “success” of SOSJ international ventures President Woodrow Wilson and his friend Colonel Edward M. House had created “The Inquiry” at the American Grand Priory headquarters on upper Broadway in New York City in 1917. This early “think tank” became the internationalist advisory Council on Foreign Relations in 1921, which, ironically, is widely thought to be one of the controlling institutions of the “One World Conspiracy.” The American Knights of Malta continued to be active in humanitarian affairs to provide relief for the refugees, the poor and the disabled which the war had created. The American Irish White Cross relief effort was operated by future founders of the American SMOM, James Phelan and Judge Morgan J. O’Brien.

Grand Duke Cyril became the head of a secret army scattered around the world in which the SOSJ played a significant role. In New York City alone there were reportedly three thousand former White Russian military officers organizing for counter-revolution. The SOSJ was an important participant in counter-revolutionary engagement in Eastern Europe throughout the 20th century. It engaged in small unit warfare in the regions controlled by the Communists.

Cherep Spiridovich was personally presented to J. Edgar Hoover by the US Ambassador to Romania, T. Tileston Wells, and was supported by Grand Duke Cyril’s U.S. representative, Boris Brasol, OSJ, by U.S. Treasury Secretary, Robert McAdoo and of course by the Chicago Crane family. Many of the White Russian armed forces were encamped in the Balkan countries after the Russian Civil War. These forces, often led by Knights of Malta, represented the “fifty American oriented strongholds” which were promised in Eastern Europe by Cherep Spiridovich to Hoover and Lansing during his presentations.

Presented as a private alternative to the League of Nations, the A-L-S (Anglo-Latino-Slavic) League, which was the remnant of the SOSJ in Eastern Europe, had been a bulwark against the spread of Islam. It now was promoted as a force against the new menace of Bolshevism. This A-L-S League was soon being called the Anti-Bolshevist League. Cromwell, the Dulles brothers, and the Masonic Knights Templar T. Tileston Wells founded, in 1920, the Society of Friends of Romania as a successor to the American Romanian Relief Council with the help of the Romanian Royal Family. Queen Marie was a prominent member of the OSJ. There is evidence that Count A. Cherep-Spiridovich’s presentation of the Anglo-Latino-Slavic League to J. Edgar Hoover of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, and to Secretary of State Robert Lansing was the impetus for founding the Society of Friends of Albania, and later the Society of Friends of Yugoslavia. In 1941, the American Friends of Yugoslavia was begun by Wm. J. Donovan, founder of the OSS and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, long serving First Secretary of the CFR. At this time, the “Little Entente” was created by the Balkan countries as a mutual protection pact, and the American “societies of friends” allowed for civilian “access” in the fledgling efforts to contain the Bolsheviks.

The Order gathered intelligence on the international revolutionary movements. The SOSJ, under Czar Kirill I, engaged in psychological warfare operations including the distribution of anti-Bolshevist information such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This document allegedly details a plot by elite Jews to control the world through finance, and it has been the cause of political and social unrest during the past one hundred years. Because it was an incontrovertible fact that the Communist movement in Russia was dominated by Jews from New York, the American military intelligence community continued to join the ranks of the SOSJ as sworn enemies of the “International Conspiracy.” Among those included were the following: Colonel Harris Ayres Houghton, MD, Colonel John Jacob Astor, Major General Ralph Van Deman, Colonel William Sohier Bryant, MD, Major General Frederick Dent Grant, Colonel Nicholas Biddle, Major Barclay Harding Warburton, Major Walter Miller, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Major John B. Trevor and Captain Sidney Reilly. All of these prominent members of the armed forces have close association with their successors in the Military Affairs Committee of the SOSJ that are found in the Order records well into the 1980’s.

Civilian experts in the early 20th century on the so-called “Jewish Problem” became involved with the SOSJ. Among them were Paquita de Shishmareff, Fr. Denis Fahey, Lady Edith Starr Miller Queenborough, John B. Trevor, Jr. and Princess Julia Grant Cantacuzene. Much of their knowledge had been gained from the work of Monseigneur Jouin of France, who, with the blessing of the pope, researched and wrote about secret societies involved with the occult and humanist movements. Father Ernest Jouin appears to have been associated with A. Cherep Spriridovich, OSJ in this research during the early decades of the last century. All the work of the knights of the SOSJ to include research and education efforts did help the Vatican and the monarchies of Sweden, Spain and Denmark to survive. Unfortunately, the knights failed to prevent the collapse of the Balkan monarchies that resulted from the Allied “victory” after WWII.

XIII. GERMAN NATIONALISTS NURTURE THE WHITE RUSSIAN
GOVERNMENT-IN-EXILE

The Russian Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem had been first re-organized by the monarchists in the Ukraine as an anti-Bolshevik army. German General Ludendorf assigned Walter Nicholai, the leader of German Military Intelligence during WWI, to develop the Order’s intelligence service for Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich. After the defeat of the army in the Baltic campaign the OSJ essentially became a paramilitary intelligence agency. In 1916 Russian Secret Service Lieutenant Boris Brasol had been stationed permanently in New York City. He developed a career as an anti-Bolshevik expert and informer with American Military Intelligence and the fledgling intelligence department of the United States Department of State after the Bolshevik Revolution. Boris Brasol and Cherep Spiridovich were the principal SOSJ intelligence operatives in the United States. Brasol helped Major General Cherep Spiridovich redirect SOSJ activities in the West against international anarchism and the globalist agenda. They both championed the validity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. An associate of Prince Awaloff, General Constantin Sakharov, was head of the military division of the Russian Grand Priory. That division came to be known under the front name of Russian National Society. The Russian National Society worked from offices at 5 Columbia Circle in Manhattan from 1921.

Grand Duke Cyril, the Heir Apparent, declared himself Protector of the Russian Throne in July, 1922. He positioned his government in Lubeck, Germany where he was titled from 1918 to 1938 as Sovereign Prince Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church. His wife’s ancestral home was a castle in Coberg, Bavaria, and this became his initial residence. He created his Court and permanent residence on the seacoast of France in St. Briac, Brittany. Supported by nationalist elements of the German government since the Russian Civil War, he had been the nominal head of the pro-German Western Russian Government in northwest Europe in 1919. Walter Nicholai, the leader of German Military Intelligence during WWI, expanded the SOSJ intelligence service for Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich in order to closely cooperate with Aufbau. Aufbau was the White Russian monarchical organization which was founded to coordinate the future economic recovery of Russia.

Colonel Nicholai founded Organization Consul (C), a “full-service” intelligence operation which matched the Bolsheviks in ability to assassinate leaders of the opposition. The strategy used for the anti-Bolshevik campaign was taken from the Kornilov Affair. A coalition of patriotic societies had been made to ensure the allegiances of the participants in the planned St. Petersburg coup. A similar strategy was repeated in the United States by John B. Trevor’s Coalition of Patriotic, Fraternal and Civic Societies. During the Munich “Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923 the National Socialists used the United Patriotic Associations of Bavaria. Numerous small organizations, all dedicated to patriotic causes, but invariably anti-Bolshevik, were being organized for future use by militant nationalists.

The OSJ propaganda effort continued both in the United States and in Europe with centers in Belgrade, Paris, Erfurt, Hamburg, Chicago and New York City. Nicholas Markov II edited in 1920 the White Cross anti-Bolshevik journal in Hamburg and later moved to Paris. Still later, in the 1930’s he joined Ulrich Fleischauer’s Welt Dienst in Erfurt. Henry Ford from the United States published his own literature and financed a detective agency with headquarters in Chicago and New York City to assist in uncovering the global plans of “The International Jew”. He helped to finance the similar pursuits which came under the direction of Grand Duke Cyril’s intelligence service. This expanded and culminated in a vast propaganda arm which worked against the international conspiracy from government run offices in the German Third Reich throughout WWII. Beside Markov II, the Baltic Germans Ullrich Fleischauer, Shabellski-Bork, Alfred Rosenberg, Fedor Vinberg and Eugen von Engelhardt, of the Fichte-Bund, were among those active in the information campaign until the closing days of WWII. All over Europe and the United States, small print shops produced information which was distributed at cost in an effort to stay the spread of militant Socialism. The headquarters for the centralized educational campaign during the lifetime of Czar Kirill I was in Erfurt, Germany. Until his death in 1938, Grand Duke Cyril had been the chosen candidate of Hitler for Czar of Russia when the Soviet Union was defeated. After his death the center for the propaganda campaign was moved to Hamburg, Germany under the direction of Alfred Rosenberg.

XIV. THE SOSJ GOVERNMENT IS MOVED TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Because many exiled Russians were seeking permanent residence in the United States and Canada, from where much of the financial support for the exiled Russian Imperial Court originated, the shift of SOSJ leadership to the American Grand Priory was a natural process. Baron Rosen, former Russian Ambassador to the United States, and now head of Grand Duke Cyril’s Intelligence operation in the United States, was run down and killed by an automobile in New York City on December 31, 1921. Prince Awaloff was accused as a terrorist in connection with Organization Consul and expelled from Germany in 1922 by the Socialist Weimar Government. He and Ataman Semenoff traveled to New York City and were involved with meetings at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel offices of American Grand Prior William Nelson Cromwell. This resulted in the formal re-establishment of the Sovereign Council of the Order on September 5, 1922. Cromwell became the President of the Sovereign Council of the SOSJ. Prince Awaloff returned to Europe later that year to continue the work of the Counter-Revolution, and the American Grand Priory assumed operational control of the SOSJ. Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander, as mentioned previously, continued to have little to do with the SOSJ after the Civil War. He spent much of his time traveling and writing his memoirs and books on spirituality.

The Order was re-organized after the establishment of the Sovereign Council in New York City. The plan centered on strategies to counter the Bolshevist threat to Christendom and was patterned on Major General Arthur Cherep Spiridovich’s Anglo- Latino-Slavic League and on the patriotic organization coalitions. Patriotic organizations in the United States were associated with John B. Trevor’s American Coalition of Patriotic, Civic and Fraternal Societies. During most of the interwar years they were under the direction of the President of the Sovereign Council, Cromwell, who had his offices at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Dr. James Gaston Baillie Bulloch, MD was the archivist of the Order from 1922 to 1928 and the Grand Chancellor from 1928 until his death in 1934. Bulloch was one of the principals who chartered the American Heraldry Society in 1924 in the District of Columbia from which were recruited candidates for the Order of St. John. Charles Pichel and William Sohier Bryant, MD operated the American Heraldry Society in New York City out of an office in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with which they attempted to provide the necessary noble titles to prospective American Knights from 1925 to 1931. Cromwell apparently resigned from the Council at about the same time, circa 1931, that Pichel and Bryant moved their office to 1730 Broadway in New York City. The principle organization for recruiting Knights from the Hispanic countries of the Americas was the Order of St. John the Baptist of America. It was led from 1923 by Francis C. Nicholas. Upon his death in 1937 it was led by Colonel Dr. Dimas-Aruti, DDM and following him by Major Alan Weaver Hazelton after 1945. There was an aligned Order of St. John the Baptist of Puerto Rico and an Orden de San Juan Bautista de Cadiz, Spain which has survived until the present day. Pichel converted to Catholicism in 1932 and soon became a principal of the SOSJ through his mentor Grand Prior Fr. Joseph Paul Chodkiewicz, a leader of the Polish White Cross in upstate New York. Pichel became Grand Chancellor of the SOSJ in the heyday of the National Socialist Movement after the death of J. G. B. Bulloch, MD in 1934. The President of the Sovereign Council from 1932 to 1944 was Colonel Dr. William Sohier Bryant, MD, OSJ. After Cromwell stepped down from the Sovereign Council in 1932 and Czar Kirill I died in 1938, Dr. Bryant and Grand Chancellor Pichel gained complete control of the Order.

On June 24, 1925 Eleazar Wilson of Philadelphia became Grand Prior of America. In 1925 Captain Sidney G. Reilly, founder of the Anti-Bolshevist League, was lured from the United States into Russia and killed by the Bolsheviks. The exploits of Reilly later prompted the “James Bond” series. In 1926 Cherep Spiridovich incorporated the Anti-Bolshevist Publishing Association of the Anti-Bolshevist League in Albany, N.Y. with H. V. Broenstrupp and G. M. Sykes. This was an SOSJ project of the Kirill intelligence service planned by Captain Reilly and by Cherep Spiridovich. It was intended to provide propaganda about the danger of the internationalist’s agenda and was the continuation of the publishing operation of Cherep Spiridovich in Paris from 1904 to 1920, known as the Agence Latine. It had been continued in 1921 for a few years by Henry Ford and his newspaper the Dearborn Independent. Major General Cherep Spiridovich, OSJ was assassinated at his residence on Staten Island, N. Y., a few months after re-starting the publishing operation. Boris Brasol provided the funds to bury this leader of the SOSJ. Cherep Spiridovich was one of the principal founders of the American Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem. H. V. Broenstrupp, OSJ published “The Hidden Hand” by Cherep Spiridovich shortly after the assassination of his adoptive father.

The SOSJ continued to raise funds for the relief of Russian exiles. The “Monday Supper Opera Club” was one of the society programs. Leaders of the relief fund drives included the following: Captain George Djamgaroff, Mrs. Henry P. Loomis, Princess Julia Grant Cantacuzene, Representative Hamilton Fish, III, Count Paul Ignatieff, President of Columbia University Nicholas Murray Butler and many of the displaced former royals of Russia and Eastern Europe. Djamgaroff and Loomis were close friends of Czar Krill and Czarina Victoria Melita.

In 1927, after the assassination of Count Cherep-Spiridovich, the SMOM started their American Association. This founding of the American Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta was the unintended result of SOSJ success at fund raising. The new Catholic association overshadowed the SOSJ and placed its future in jeopardy. In response to SMOM propaganda, many members, such as Colonel Edgar Erskine Hume, MD, left the SOSJ. The remaining members were predominantly nationalistic, anti-Communist, senior military and intelligence officers. Some Protestant former SOSJ knights joined a new English Venerable Order American Chapter. It is probable that the Episcopalian Archbishop of New York, William T. Manning, a good friend of N. M. Butler and the Serbian Orthodox Church, was among this group.

Fr. J. P. Chodkiewicz and exiled Polish leaders started the Polish Nobility Association in 1927. He continued Cherep Spiridovich’s Slavonic Society work, which focused on pan-Slavism and he named it the Pan-Slavic Commonwealth of Nations. Cherep-Spiridovich’s work had resulted in the Intermarium Movement. Cherep Spiridovich had suggested to President of the Sovereign Council W. N. Cromwell a project similar to the Panama Canal which would create a navigable waterway link from the Baltic to the Black Sea. SOSJ knights leading the Counter Revolutionary Anti-Bolshevist League continued to promote the theme of a continuous Eastern European buffer zone of free, independent and usually monarchical states. The OSJ was also involved with the Columbian Lighthouse Project in the Dominican Republic as part of their pan-American project. N. M. Butler was the American head of the lighthouse project and is credited with bringing it to final completion.

XV. THE EXILED ROMANOV FAMILY DEFEATS ITSELF

Grand Duke Cyril declared himself Czar Kirill I on August 31, 1924. The White Russians in exile had a power struggle for the throne which started during the Russian Civil War. The failure to make a successful coalition of exiled forces which resulted made all their efforts to retake Russia from the Bolsheviks ineffective. Though Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich received more support until his death in 1929, as time passed Cyril was recognized as the rightful heir to the throne. The senior Knights of Malta on the Sovereign Council in the United States always supported Grand Duke Cyril, and, as noted, they became very influential because of financial support to his cause from men as prominent as Henry Ford.

Upon the death of the Dowager Empress in 1928, her daughter, Grand Duchess Xenia, became a Patroness of the SOSJ. She sent the OSJ relics to the new ROCA Cathedral in Berlin where Prince Awaloff resided. Records show that the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony took receipt of the relics in Berlin. Grand Prior Grand Duke Alexander ensured that his wife Xenia, sister of Czar Nicholas II, did not separate the relics and icon. Colonel Vasilieff, the last Czarist Chief of Police, died in 1928.

The illness and death of the Queen Mother in 1928 also prompted a group of SOSJ Russian Hereditary Commanders, who were not tainted by revolutionary support for the Kerensky regime, to attempt to reorganize the Russian Grand Priory in Paris. Most of them had supported the Russian pretender Grand Duke Nicholas and the pro-Entente Monarchist Supreme Council in Paris, but they still asked Grand Duke Alexander to be their Grand Prior. They then pled as the “Russian Grand Priory” for admission to the SMOM in Rome, but were denied due to their Orthodox religion. Their “expert” legal counsel was Baron Michael von Taube, who at the time was under the erroneous impression that the SOSJ had been dissolved in Russia in 1817. This was the same Taube, who as a minion of the so-called Conspiracy, had been an adversary of Prince Awaloff during the campaign against the Bolsheviks in Western Russia in 1919. Because of his reputation as an expert on Russian history, von Taube created widespread doubt about the historical continuation of the SOSJ in Russia. His theory became the legend of the suppression of the Order in Russia, which is still widely believed even in the 21st century. The Order still retains letters from Prince Serge Troubetzkoy, OSJ which discuss von Taube, who was a Roman Catholic, and his extravagant lifestyle in Rome at the expense of impoverished Russian exiles. It was not until 1950 that von Taube found the documentary evidence that caused him to change his mind, and after which, he recanted his belief in the 1817 demise of the SOSJ in Russia. When the facts about the Russian survival of the SOSJ became known in 1950, von Taube disclaimed the Prince Awaloff, Vladimirovichi and King Alexander I succession of the SOSJ in an attempt to save his reputation. He was little more than an agent of the SMOM at this time. However, the damage had been done, and because of the deaths of so many of the SOSJ royals, his disclaimer went unchallenged and has had longstanding effect on the Order.

Shipping receipts show that the SOSJ relics and icon were moved again in 1932, and sent to King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Grand Duchess Xenia and her close associate Prince Dolguruky, one of the 1928 Paris Hereditary Commanders, were signatories on the transfer. An Officer Candidate School similar to the Corps des Pages had been started in Belgrade. Many of the cadets from the Russian military academies had been sent there after the defeat of the White Russians. (The cadets from this school fought as a corps for the Nazi’s in 1945 during the fall of Berlin). The Yugoslavian capital was becoming the White Russian center for military activity. Charles Pichel, OSJ directed a study on the Maltese Nobility done by Lord Dorchester of England which assisted Grand Duke Cyril and Grand Duchess Victoria Melita. For this research, he was named Grand Chancellor of the SOSJ in 1934 upon the death of J.G.B. Bulloch.

Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander died in France in 1933, followed closely by many leading SOSJ members from either natural causes or assassination. SOSJ Protector King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated in 1934 on a trip to France. Queen Marie of Romania and Czarina Victoria Melita Romanov, grand daughters of Queen Victoria, both died in 1936. Mdme Paderewski, Patroness of the Polish White Cross, died in Switzerland in 1936. The death of Czar Kirill I in 1938 left the SOSJ without a Protector for the first time since the 12th century.

XVI. THE SOSJ SUPPORTS FASCISM TO DEFEAT BOLSHEVISM

The death of Grand Master G. D. Alexander coincided with the victory of the NAZI party in Germany. Prince Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt was elected the 74th Grand Master of the SOSJ in 1933. Colonel Dr. William Sohier Bryant, MD became President of the Sovereign Council. The SOSJ made alliances with various National Socialist movements believing this to be the best solution to defeat “Jewish Bolshevism.” Grand Master Prince Awaloff focused on developing the military activities and intelligence work of the Order probably as a consequence of his long military and paramilitary career. The Order started a Grand Priory in Denmark in 1934 named the Sovereign Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Denmark. It was founded by Prince Awaloff and was led by Danish National Socialist, Episcopalian Archbishop Preben Wencke. Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark was once Grand Chancellor of the Grand Priory.

Grand Master Prince Awaloff became head of the Russian Fascist Party in Germany, called the Russian National Liberation Movement (ROND). Awaloff was named to this position by the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. Awaloff was apparently a double agent, as he is known to have been associated with “Wild Bill” William J. Donovan, founder of the Office of Strategic Services, and American spy-masters W N Cromwell, OSJ and Allen Welsh Dulles before, during and after WWII. Awaloff’s friend, Constantin Sakharov, was again named the military leader of this organization (ROND), which was the successor to Kirill’s secret army organization in Germany. Prince Anastase Vonsiatsky and Howard Broenstrupp led the fledgling Russian Nationalist field force in the United States, which was headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut. Paul Winter, OSJ, long time associate of Grand Chancellor Pichel and former KKK leader from New York and Philadelphia, was involved with the American Nationalists. In 1933, Pichel contacted Germany through Hitlers’s friend Putzi Hanfstaengel in an effort to become the German Chancellor’s personal representative in the United States. These Russian and American Nationalists were now coordinating their anti-Bolshevik publishing activity with Ulrich Fleischauer’s Welt Dienst with offices in Erfurt, Germany.

German Lt. Ulrich Fleischauer was in charge of this Welt Dienst publishing concern which inherited the campaign of the American Anti-Bolshevist Publishing Association of Cherep Spiridovich and Sidney Reilly. Translated as World Service, and known before this time in France as Service Mondial, the SOSJ publishing effort had actually been started in 1904 by Cherep Spiridovich in Paris. At that time it was called Agence Latine. When the Paris operation of Cherep Spiridovich was exposed by the Bolshevists in 1919, he was able to convince Henry Ford to succeed him by using the Dearborn Independent. The German agency Welt Dienst had originated in Hamburg where it published a journal called the White Cross in 1920. Baltic Germans of the SOSJ to include Fleischauer and Markov II had originated the anti-Bolshevist journal sharing information with Cherep Spiridovich. Eventually the Welt Dienst operation came under the administration of Alfred Rosenberg after the death of Czar Kirill I but operations continued in Erfurt. The American Grand Priory also restarted this propaganda in the United States in 1936, and it was called Edmondson Economic Service. Pichel operated a similar “information service” for the SOSJ called “Crux New Service” from Leonia, New Jersey from 1939 to 1945. Due to pressure from the government and from the press both Edmondson and Pichel moved the Order operations into the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania after 1945. The efforts to expose a Jewish controlled world conspiracy, considered by many as anti-Semitic, were continued by the SOSJ into the 1950’s. Thereafter it became politically and economically impossible due to the use of the court system by the liberal establishment.

In 1936 Count Jerzy Potocki, OSJ, was the Polish Ambassador to Washington, D. C. When the Second World War started in 1939, he was instrumental in restarting White Cross relief and intelligence gathering programs of the Polish American and Canadian-Polish Ambulance Corps. The Commission for Polish Relief, Inc. was run by Count Jerzy Potocki, OSJ and Chauncey McCormick, OSJ of Chicago. In 1940, Mrs. Richard Teller Crane and Chauncey McCormick represented the American White Cross and the Committee for Polish Relief, which raised funds for the National Polish Army of General Haller, OSJ. Nicholas M. Butler also had a fund raiser for General Haller at Columbia University. Colonel William J. Donovan was President of the Paderewski Fund for Polish Relief, Inc. He led the intelligence service and coordinated with Paderewski, Count Jerzy Potocki and U. S. Ambassador to Poland J. Drexel Biddle.

Due to the impending advance of the Nazis into Yugoslavia in 1941, the Order moved the relics and icon from Belgrade to the Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Cetinje, Montenegro. Prince Awaloff, Queen Marie of Yugoslavia, her aunt, Queen Elena of Italy, King Carol of Romania and Grand Duchess Militza were all involved in this decision. They feared the Nazis would take the relics and icon because of their keen interest in historic objects with legendary power. The Order lost possession of these items because of the Communist takeover of the Balkans at the end of the war. However, the famous icon and relics remain to the present time in Cetinje, Montenegro. The icon is on display in the National Museum, and the relics are in the Serbian Orthodox Monastery.

XVII. LIBERALS USE THE AMERICAN COURTS TO SILENCE AMERICAN
ANTI-COMMUNISTS

The alliance with fascist organizations cast doubts on the honorable purposes of the Order. As a result of this, exposure by the Dies Committee in 1939 and later the Great Sedition Trials of the 1940’s, a second exodus from the Order occurred. While the politically connected members of the Order including W. N. Cromwell, the Dulles Brothers, Representative Hamilton Fish, III, Senator Jack B. Tenney, Clarence “Buzzy” Hewes and Robert R. McCormick were insulated due to their celebrity, other Knights were easy targets for the liberal establishment.

In 1939 the Order of St. John of Jerusalem was mentioned in Congressional hearings investigating pro-fascist American movements. The Order leadership then made the decision to conceal information and though Pichel edited the SOSJ publication, Crux New Service, from Leonia, New Jersey between 1940 and 1945, there is little evidence of the Order’s activities during the Second World War. This continued until the headquarters was moved in 1945 to Pennsylvania. Continuing Grand Master Prince Awaloff’s lead, many knights started “right-wing” organizations as a means of providing a militant response to the rapid growth of international Communism.

In the 1940’s, twenty-seven Americans were charged by the U. S. Attorney General with conspiring to destroy the morale of the American armed forces. A massive show trial, known as the Great Sedition Trial, was conducted for the purpose of connecting these individuals to a conspiracy thought to involve the German Propaganda Ministry and anti-Communists in the United States. The facts immediately were brought out in well publicized show trials that many of these Americans were involved in efforts, being orchestrated by the German World Service, to expose the international conspiracy of the Bolsheviks, Zionists and Socialists. The unintended backlash of the trial was that these defendants were shown to be mostly Christian American patriots who were determined to expose the Communists, Internationalists and atheists who were radically changing society in the United States and in Allied countries. Charges were dropped by the government, but not before the defendants were ruined financially. This led to the “McCarthy Era” and further “show trials” that were, this time, aimed at the Left. California State Senator Jack B. Tenney, OSJ, Attorney General of the Order from 1938 to 1944, headed a state commission to ferret subversives, such as Communists, Zionists and Fascists, in California, especially from the media industry. Of course most of his efforts were directed against the Communists and Zionists.

Bryant became implicated in the Great Sedition Trial when his name appeared on anti-government correspondence involving William Dudley Pelley and Howard Victor Broenstrupp. Trevor’s American Coalition of Patriotic, Civil and Fraternal Societies was also named during the proceedings. Bryant, formerly the personal physician of President Grover Cleveland and a Masonic Knight Templar, found the negative publicity of the trial too controversial, and he dropped out of the Order thereby leaving Grand Chancellor Pichel to name Edmondson as President of the Sovereign Council. As noted earlier, because of liberal governmental and media pressure, Pichel, Edmondson and even Paul M. Winter moved to the Pocono Mountain region of Pennsylvania after 1945. Robert E. Edmondson, a noted anti-internationalist author, became President of the Sovereign Council in 1944.

By 1944, the SOSJ was working closely with German General Reinhard Gehlen’s “Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost Gehlens” (Foreign Forces East). Robert Edmondson of Scranton, Pennsylvania was President of the Sovereign Council from 1944 to 1948, but the control of the Order was firmly in the hands of Grand Chancellor Pichel. The Convent was moved to Shickshinny, Pennsylvania in 1945. This was an area in which Eastern Europeans had been relocating for years. In 1946, the Polish White Cross of Baltimore bought an ambulance for Warsaw and donated it though the offices of Nicholas Murray Butler.

XVIII. THE ORDER ENTRENCHES ITSELF FOR THE COLD WAR

The SOSJ had lost the majority of its Russian and European membership during the last phases of WWI when the Russian Guard Divisions were thrown into battle in tragic fashion. British and French General Staffs directed all battlefield strategy, and therefore, many suspected that the slaughter of the elite of their allied Russian forces was part of the globalist’s agenda. This carnage was followed in 1919 by further military betrayal which permanently defeated the SOSJ Knights and the forces of Prince Awaloff in the Baltic. The English and French navies bombarded his anti-Communist army resulting in decisive defeat outside of Riga, Latvia. Much later, the intervention of British and Americans on the side of the Soviet Union during WWII culminated in the great victory for international Communism that was the Second World War. The Allies rounded up and incarcerated free White Russians for deportation to Stalin’s death camps in Operation Keelhaul, a result of an agreement made between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference. Forced repatriation by the Allies resulted in the deaths of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, of White Russians by firing squads or deportation to the Gulag archipelago labor camps. This consistent action during the 20th century in favor of the Communists with the obvious goal of creating high mortality among anti-communists was conclusive proof to the SOSJ that the western governments were controlled by Internationalists and Communists. Because of this, the SOSJ continued to attract patriotic and nationalistic western military men to its membership, and to operate as an anti-Communist intelligence agency. Admiral Barry Domville, former head of British Naval Intelligence, was a long serving member of the SOSJ. It appeared that General Douglas MacArthur’s entire senior staff was in the Order. The Order became involved in Operation Paperclip and the famous “Rat Lines” which spirited Nazi anti-Communists out of Europe.

XIX. THE MILITARY INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY AND KNIGHTS OF THE SOSJ DEFEND AGAINST COMMUNISM

The Order was engaged worldwide in anti-Communist activities. Former SS Major General Boris Holmston-Smyslovsky, alias Colonel von Reganau, and U.S. Marine Lieutenant General Pedro Del Valle spurred renewed SOSJ activity in opposition to the Communists in Europe after 1948. Holmston-Smyslovsky was an old associate of Prince Awaloff. These men were involved with the Gladio program which prompted the founding of the U.S. Army Special Forces. The secret army of Czar Kirill I formed a nucleus for Gladio “stay behind” operations which were designed to wage perpetual war on the Communists. As successor to SOSJ Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations operations, Allen W. Dulles, Colonel William J. Donovan, Gen. Reinhard Gehlen and Lt. General Pedro Del Valle initiated NATO’s Operation Gladio during the era of the founding of the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency and German BND. The U. S. Counter-Intelligence Corps, the Gehlen Organization and the Knights of Malta started the Volunteer Freedom Corps otherwise known as Operation Gladio. Ten thousand men were descendants of the secret army of Czar Kirill I and the fifty garrisons of East European Freikorps mentioned by Cherep Spiridovich in the 1920’s and by Phillip Corso, OSJ in the 1950’s. Even in the United States, some knights started anti-Communist domestic militias and supported conservative publications to increase public awareness of the agenda of International Socialism.

XX. THE POST-WAR GERMAN ORDER OF ST. JOHN ABANDONS THE SOSJ
TO IMPROVE ITS IMAGE

A succession of German Lieutenant Grand Masters during the 1950’s is evidence of the continued close ties Grand Master Prince Awaloff had to the German Order of St. John. Scipio Baron von Engelhardt-Schnellenstein from the Palatinate contacted Grand Chancellor Pichel during the period 1949 to 1951 with the offer to help reinvigorate the SOSJ. He was an old associate of Prince Awaloff from the Baltic Brotherhood and a veteran of the Welt Dienst and Fichte Bund propaganda services. He served as Lt. Grand Master from 1954 to 1955. Grand Master Prince Awaloff was brought to the United States from Austria by Operation Paperclip in 1952. His stepson, a former German SS officer with the Russian Volunteer Army of Major General Holmston-Smyslovsky, had been captured by the Communists while working behind the lines for the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps in 1949. Grand Master Prince Awaloff died September 30, 1954 in the United States and is reportedly buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Many of the remaining members of Awaloff’s Grand Priory of Columbia were taken onto the roles of the American Grand Priory in 1955. The Grand Priory of Columbia consisted of most of those Knights of European descent on the roles of the Russian National Society at 5 Columbia Circle in New York City under the leadership of Brasol and Sakharov. Their contribution to the defense of the West and to war relief led members of the SOSJ to believe that they would be recognized as equal partners among the national orders of Malta. Therefore, the election of a new Grand Master to replace Prince Awaloff was postponed.

Frederick H. Count von Zeppelin served from 1956 to 1960 as Lt. Grand Master. Franklin Allen West of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania became President of the Sovereign Council in 1956. Pichel wrote an inaccurate history of the SOSJ in 1958 designed to conceal the fascist ties of the SOSJ but complementary to the SMOM, and the English and German orders of St. John. The hope of acceptance of the SOSJ by these orders would again prove to be futile. The Prussian Prince Wilhelm Karl, the head of the German Order of St. John, visited Grand Chancellor Pichel in Pennsylvania in 1961 after the death of Grand Duke Cyril’s eldest daughter. She was the wife of the Hohenzollern Pretender to the throne of Germany, the Prussian Prince Louis Ferdinand. Prince Louis Ferdinand had been a life-long intimate, and employee, of Henry Ford and the Ford family. Wilhelm Karl ended Johanniter Orden association with the SOSJ when he learned that there were no charitable activities undertaken by the SOSJ and that most members appeared to be connected to military and government Intelligence. Scipio Baron von Engelhardt-Schnellenstein and F. H. Count von Zeppelin were forced to resign from the SOSJ at the risk of their membership in the German Order.

Princess Ileana of Romania, Queen Maries’ daughter, had obtained land in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania which was near Franklin West in Pittsburgh. There, similar to her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth, she started the first community for Orthodox religious sisters in the United States and became the Mother Superior.

A Frenchman, Paul Granier de Cassagnac, was recruited for the Lieutenancy in 1960. Embarrassed when the National Socialist ties to the Order became known by the newer members in 1962, and believing that the presence of King Peter II of Yugoslavia as a new member would improve the Order’s social standing, Cassagnac called for the members to elect him Grand Master. Crolian Edelen was present at the vote count and verified that Cassagnac failed in his attempt to gain the Order’s highest office. Nonetheless, ignoring the failed election, Cassagnac created a splinter order.

King Peter II was the son of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and had joined the SOSJ in 1961. He followed Cassagnac into schism but soon disagreed with him and started his own Order of St. John under his Yugoslavian royal title. Prince Serge Troubetzkoy had also left the original Order and became King Peter’s Lieutenant Grand Master. When the King claimed that their new order was not the original trunk of the old order, Troubetzkoy took his Russian dominated organization and operated independently. The Order retains letters from Prince Troubetzkoy in which he discusses the nature of these different orders. In the meantime, Pichel and his Supreme Council asked Admiral Felix Count von Luckner, a famed German naval officer and associate of Prince Awaloff, to assume the position of Lieutenant Grand Master that had been vacated by Cassagnac. LGM Admiral Count von Luckner became terminally ill and resigned in 1966. He died in 1967. Pichel nominated Crolian Edelen who was elected the 75th Grand Master in 1966.

Edelen was a German-American and former Pacific WWII Army intelligence officer and was an avid amateur genealogist. He attempted to unravel the 20th century history of the SOSJ, but succeeded only in creating more controversy about its origins which he was unable to trace before 1933. Unfortunately, though necessary at the time, the attempt to conceal former alliances to fascist governments prior to and during WWII created chronic problems for the American Grand Priory. The Order was protecting its members and their families. The reluctance to offer proof of lineage through Czar Kirill I fueled the critics of the SOSJ.

An example of the Order's geo-political activities in 1964.

The SOSJ membership roles during this time included Generals Lemuel Shepherd, Pedro Del Valle, George Stratemeyer, Charles Willoughby, Ralph Smith, Terry Morrison, Bonner Fellers, Admirals Charles Cooke, RL Porter, Herbert Howard, Richard Black, Francis Spellman and Prince Michel Sturdza of Romania, Congressman Larry MacDonald and Senator John Ashcroft. Well known leaders of the American intelligence community accepted various positions in the SOSJ.

XXI. THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA STAND AGAINST HUMANISTS WITHIN THE CHURCH

After the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1969, the Order became one of the few institutions to preserve the ancient Latin Rite liturgy. Catholic traditionalists were attracted to the Order by its ecclesiastical independence guaranteed in perpetuity by numerous popes. The humanist revolution had entered the Catholic Church and the Order struggled to resume its former role as a staunch defender of the Catholic Faith.

Unfortunately Grand Chancellor Pichel became increasingly eccentric in his later years. He alienated the members but retained legal control of the SOSJ by his use of proxy votes. Grand Master Edelen resigned in 1976. The 76th Grand Master elected was Prince Roberto Paterno from Sicily, Hereditary Grand Prior of the ancient Langue of Aragon. Elected in 1976, he served until 1983. Grand Chancellor Pichel, who was 87 years old, was coerced into resigning in 1977 and his duties were divided between Grand Prior Capell of America and Grand Prior Wicklund of Europe. Pichel soon was able to become active again and to work with Grand Prior Capell but both of them were dead by 1982.

American Grand Prior Capell unexpectedly died in October, 1980 and when Pichel died in May, 1982 several knights took control of a weakened SOSJ corporation that he had founded in 1956. The loss from old age of many influential members of the SOSJ gave impetus for a few knights to attempt to seize control of the Order to make legal claim on the legendary lost Romanoff treasure that reportedly lay on the floor of the Sea of Japan. The leader of this movement had been expelled from the Order in 1981, prior to the death of Pichel. Regardless, they filed a claim against the Sovereign Council for patent infringement. SOSJ Security General Nicholas Nazarenko was a former Cossack German Waffen SS Intelligence Officer who had been recruited after the war to work in Romania for the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps. Nazarenko denied the attempt to take control of the Order to the knights who were shown to be ineligible on several counts and his timely intervention helped the Sovereign Council to form the Association of Family Commanders and Hereditary Knights in 1983. A federal court case filed by the splinter group in an effort to seize control of the Order finally succeeded only in the legal grant to them of a trademarked name from Pichel’s 1956 corporation. Dr. John Grady, MD defended the SOSJ against the coup attempt and was elected in a Chapter General in 1991 as the 77th Grand Master of the SOSJ. Dr. Grady, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, medical doctor, politician and an early founder of the Right To Life movement, helped to write a new constitution which was accepted by the Order at the first Chapter General since the Fall of Malta. Grand Master Dr. Grady then proceeded to rebuild the Order. The 78th Prince Grand Master of the SOSJ, Barry Garland, was elected in 2006 and assumed office in 2008 upon the retirement of Dr. Grady. Grand Master Garland, a professional bodyguard and critical care nurse, assumed leadership of the Order at a time when the Catholic Church has been weakened by unrelenting campaigns of the social humanists and of those who oppose Jesus Christ.

XXII. THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE SOSJ

Since its inception ca. 1050, the SOSJ embraced the nursing and military aspects of its Mission with such excellence and zeal that even its principle adversary, the adherents of militant Islam, were known to respect the selflessness, professionalism and skill of the warrior monks. But the diabolic obsessions of the social humanists that were ushered in with the so-called Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century have created an adversary more powerful than Islam. The adversary is elusive and polymorphic and has often been able to wreak its havoc from within the walls of the Church and of the ancient and noble Order of the Knights of Malta.

Napoleon Bonaparte captured the Pope and his sovereign territory, which composed much of present-day northern Italy, during the era of upheaval started by the French Revolution. The SOSJ thereby suffered the loss of the support of the Holy See at a time when that august body was controlled by revolutionists and Freemasons. The Church itself became compromised by revolutionary philosophies which affect it even to the present day. In 1798 the SOSJ therefore found itself forced to compromise its strict Roman Catholic ideals and traditions. Rather than betray the Religion, it sought protection from, and gave its renewed efforts to, the Orthodox Russian czar who was the strongest proponent of the Counter Revolution. The Orthodox Church, by the grace of God, willingly gave its support to the ancient Catholic Order.

It is true that men with decidedly non-Catholic beliefs have been accepted in the past as knights because it was thought that their prominence in society would benefit the Order. The leadership repeatedly erred when it failed to remember that good works alone are not all that is necessary for salvation. In similar fashion to the splintering that has been endured by the Catholic Church these errors have led to the creation of multiple splinter organizations claiming the SOSJ lineage. Beside the genealogical lineage that has here been detailed and documented one can identify the Order of St. John of Jerusalem by its indelible marks that are jealously guarded and preserved by the Knights of Justice. Just as one can look to the identifying marks of the Catholic Church which point unerringly to the True Church of Jesus Christ, we can also look for the marks of the Order of St. John that have identified it throughout its thousand year history. The Church is identified by being one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The marks of the Order of St. John, which are unique and distinguishing characteristics, are its identifiers as recognized before the loss of Malta in 1798. The ancient Catholic Order is a sovereign republic governed by noble Hospitaller Knights.

As described in this abbreviated history of our militant Catholic brotherhood since the loss of Malta, the SOSJ has continuously striven under difficult circumstances to fulfill its historic mission as defender of Christendom and as servant to the poor and infirm. Two hundred years of counter revolutionary service for Christendom have challenged the Knights of Malta of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem with engagement in both physical and spiritual combat. During the last five decades, the Order has been among those few institutions which have decried the deterioration caused by social humanist intrusion into the highest circles of the Catholic Church. The leadership of the SOSJ, recognizing the dangers of the Trojan Horse amongst the walls of the Order and of the Church, has instituted the appropriate counter measures.

The Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem is an independent Catholic order in communion with the Catholic Church. It stands on ancient rights and privileges of sovereignty and independence granted in perpetuity by popes and governments of the Middle Ages. The Knights of Justice are the protectors of the Order’s sovereignty and traditions as handed down from antiquity in unbroken fashion through Czar Kirill I and the Sovereign Council. The Russian Langue of the Order is in communion with the Catholic Church through the personal jurisdiction of the Grand Prior of the Malankara Catholic Langue, a Bishop whose church has a special vocation to unite Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. Though the Knights of St. John may not be able to be at the sepulcher of Our Lord in Jerusalem, by the grace of God we will continue to assist in the preservation of His eternal gifts to us. The ancient Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem continues as a hospitaller service organization structured as an army of the Catholic Church. The Headquarters of the Order is in Jupiter, Florida, U.S.A. The Convent of the Order is located in Benton, Tennessee, U.S.A.

SOSJ TIMELINE FROM 1797

1798: The SOSJ moves its convent from Malta to the home of its protector, Czar Paul I, in St. Petersburg, Russia, and elects him the 72nd Grand Master. The Russian czars become the perpetual protectors of the SOSJ.

1803: John Baptist di Tommasi is named the 72nd Prince Grand Master of the SOSJ. He was chosen by the Pope from a list of candidates presented from the dispersed priories of the Order. He was the candidate of the SOSJ in St. Petersburg.

1805: Upon the death of Grand Master di Tommasi, the SOSJ in Russia, in order to remain independent of the intrigues of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, continues under the President of the Sovereign Council and the Czar Alexander I, Protector of the Order.

1893: Russian Knights of Malta introduce American civic leaders to the White Cross at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

1904: The American White Cross First Aid Society is founded in Chicago, Illinois by civic leaders in association with the U.S. Military, the Catholic Church and a member of the English St. John’s Ambulance Association.

1899: The U.S. Army, civic leaders and the Catholic Church attempt to gain a U.S. Title 36 Charter for the American White Cross from the Congress of the United States of America.

1908: The White Cross Hospital and Relief Association is founded in New York City, New York. It was the combined effort of Roman Catholic and Orthodox Knights of Malta joining with a Protestant relief organization.

1912: The American Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, including the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia is given a Constitution and a Grand Prior. Its founding is dated to 1908.

1913: Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich is elected the 73rd Grand Master of the SOSJ.

1917: The SOSJ is forced from Russia by the Bolshevik Revolution. The Polish White Cross is founded by the Grand Priory of Russia in the United States a few days later.

1919: The Russian Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem is re-established in Saltzvedel, Germany by Knights of the Corps des Pages, Colonel Pavel Awaloff and Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich.

1922: The OSJ Sovereign Council is reconstituted in New York City by the authority of Grand Duke Cyril, Guardian of the Imperial Throne of Russia. William Nelson Cromwell assumes operational control of the SOSJ as President of the Sovereign Council.

1928: Dowager Empress Dagmar Feodorovna dies in Denmark, and her daughter Xenia, wife of Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich and Patroness of the Corps des Pages, sends the SOSJ relics to the ROCA Cathedral in Berlin.

1932: Grand Duchess Xenia authorizes the transfer of the SOSJ relics from Berlin to Belgrade to the custody of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, Protector of the SOSJ.

1933: Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich dies in France. General Prince Awaloff is made President of the Russian National Liberation Movement in Germany.

1934: King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, Protector of the SOSJ, is assassinated in France. Czar Kirill I becomes Protector of the SOSJ. Prince Awaloff is elected the 74th Grand Master of the SOSJ. The Sovereign Council and Prince Awaloff found the Sovereign Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Denmark. Colonel Charles L.T. Pichel becomes Grand Chancellor of the SOSJ upon the death of J.G.B. Bulloch. Dr. Bryant becomes President of the Sovereign Council.

1944: Robert Edmondson of Scranton, Pennsylvania becomes President of the Sovereign Council upon the retirement of Dr. Bryant.

1945: Grand Chancellor Colonel Charles L.T. Pichel moves the SOSJ Convent from New York City to Shickshinny, Pennsylvania.

1946: The SOSJ Grand Priory in Denmark is reconstituted after the war by the Sovereign Council.

1951: Lt. Grand Master Baron Scipio von Engelhardt-Schnellenstein, from Germany, assumes the leadership of the American Grand Priory.

1954: Prince Grand Master General Awaloff dies and Grand Chancellor Pichel and Lt. Grand Master Scipio Baron von Engelhardt- Schnellenstein assume the leadership of the SOSJ.

1955: Lt. Grand Master Frederic Graf von Zeppelin from Germany assumes the leadership of the SOSJ.

1956: Franklin A. West of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania becomes President of the Sovereign Council.

1960: Lt. Grand Master Colonel Paul de Cassagnac of France assumes the leadership of the SOSJ.

1962: Lt. Grand Master Felix Count von Luckner of Germany assumes the leadership of the SOSJ.

1966: Crolian Edelen of New Jersey is elected the 75th Grand Master of the SOSJ.

1976: Don Roberto Paterno of Naples, Italy is elected the 76th Grand Master of the SOSJ. He resigns in 1983.

1983: General Benjamin von Stahl assumes the leadership of the SOSJ as President of the Sovereign Council and moves the Convent of the SOSJ to Benton, Tennessee.

1991: Dr. John L. Grady, MD of Benton, Tennessee is elected the 77th Grand Master of the SOSJ.

2006: Barry Garland of Florida is elected the 78th Grand Master of the SOSJ.

2008: Grand Master Barry Garland, RN assumes office upon the retirement of Dr. John Grady.

2009: The Malankara Catholic Langue is created and the Russian Langue is re-established. The Russian Langue is in communion with the Catholic Church through the personal jurisdiction of Bishop Joseph Mar Thomas whose church has a special vocation to unite Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity.

SOSJ LEADERSHIP SINCE 1797

Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Protector
Sovereign Council

1797 Prince GM Ferdinand von Hompesch Pope Pius VI

1798 GM Czar Paul I LGM J Count de Litta Prince de Conde GM Czar Paul I

1799 GM Czar Paul I LGM Field Marshall Prince de Conde GM Czar Paul I Count Soltykoff
1801 LGM Field Marshall Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I Count Soltykoff
1803 GM John Baptist di Tommasi Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I

1805 Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I

1825 Undetermined Senior G D Czar Nicholas I

1855 Undetermined Senior G D Czar Alexander II

1881 Undetermined Senior G D Czar Alexander III

1894 Undetermined G D Vladimir Czar Nicholas II
1908 Undetermined G D Vladimir Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. G H Bruce

1912 Undetermined Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory G D Cyril
American Grand Priory W S Bryant W N Cromwell
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. G H Bruce

1913 G M Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich Undetermined Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory G D Cyril
American Grand Priory W S Bryant W N Cromwell
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. W W Butcher

1919 Russian Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem Grand Duke Cyril Cmdr in Chief Prince Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt

1922 G M Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich W N Cromwell G D Alexander King Alexander I
American Grand Priory LGM John J Sheridan J P West
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich
a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. W W Butcher
b. Polish White Cross Count J Potocki

Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Protector
Sovereign Council

1934 Prince GM Gen Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt Dr W S Bryant Fr Chodkiewicz Czar Kirill I
American Grand Priory E Wilson
Grand Priory of Denmark

1938 Prince GM Gen Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt Dr W S Bryant Fr Chodkiewicz
American Grand Priory Paul de Torres
Grand Priory of Denmark

1944 Prince GM Gen Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt Robert Edmondson
American Grand Priory C L T Pichel, G Chancellor
Grand Priory of Denmark

1948 Prince GM Gen Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt C L T Pichel, G Chancellor
American Grand Priory
Grand Priory of Denmark C Christensen

1951 Prince GM Gen Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt C L T Pichel, G Chancellor American Grand Priory LGM Baron von
Engelhardt-Scnhellenstein Grand Priory of Denmark C Christensen

1954 C L T Pichel, G Chancellor Engelhardt-Scnhellenstein

1955 LGM Baron von C L T Pichel, G Chancellor Engelhardt Scnellenstein

1956 LGM Graf von F A West
Zeppelin

1960 LGM P Cassagnac F A West

1962 LGM Count von Luckner Bishop B Kurz

1966 Prince GM Sir Crolian Edelen Bishop B Kurz
Rev Shelley
1976 Prince GM Sir Roberto Paterno
American Grand Priory F Capell
European Grand Priory T Wicklund 1983 Gen B von Stahl

1991 Prince GM Dr Sir John Grady LGM Prince
Troubetzkoy

2003 Prince GM Dr Sir John Grady LGM B Garland A Chadwick

2008 Prince GM Sir Barry Garland GM Emeritus Dr Sir J Grady, MD K Weger

SOVEREIGN ORDER OF SAINT JOHN OF JERUSALEM

1798: 71st Grand Master Czar Paul I

1801: LGM Field Marshall Count Soltikoff

1803: 72nd Prince Grand Master John Baptist di Tommasi

1805: Czar Alexander I, Protector of the SOSJ

1825: Czar Nicholas I, Protector of the SOSJ

1855: Czar Alexander II, Protector of the SOSJ

1881: Czar Alexander III, Protector of the SOSJ

1894: Czar Nicholas II, Protector of the SOSJ

1913: 73rd Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander Michaelovich

1922: William Nelson Cromwell, President of the Sovereign Council

1934: 74th Prince Grand Master General Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt

1954: LGM Scipio Baron von Engelhardt-Schnellenstein

1956: LGM F. Graf von Zeppelin

1960: LGM Colonel Paul Cassagnac

1962: LGM Admiral Felix Count von Luckner

1966: 75th Prince Grand Master Crolian Edelen

1976: 76th Prince Grand Master Don Roberto Paterno

1983: General Benjamin von Stahl, President of the Sovereign Council

1991: 77th Prince Grand Master Dr. John Grady, MD

2008: 78th Prince Grand Master Barry Garland, RN

FOOT NOTES

[1] From: Melita Historica: A Scientific Review of Maltese History (1968): Correspondence relative to the Painting of the "Madonna of Philermos"