Orthodox| Preceptory

An authentic Byzantine tradition

The Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem has an authentic Byzantine tradition. The Byzantine tradition begins with the Apostle Paul, in his missionary endeavours among the Greeks, who lived in the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire.

The New Testament view was for the eventual conversion of the Roman Empire, which came about from 312 AD with the conversion and work of the Emperor Constantine. He went on to build the city of Constantinople. Eventually, the Roman Empire was split in two, and the West was conquered by various Germanic tribes, while the East lingered on until being taken by the Turks (Constantinople fell in 1453).

The rise of the Papacy and certain other ideas in the West were considered problematic, so in 1054 the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, split from it, which is the main contention why Eastern Orthodoxy continues to differ from Roman Catholicism.

The foundations of the Hospital in Jerusalem date to before 1054, with dates such as 1023 and more importantly 1048 given as foundational to the Order.

For some period in the early medieval times, the western edge of the Byzantine Empire had reached part of the Italian peninsula. The district of Amalfi was itself under direct influence of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the merchants who operated throughout the Mediterranean were interested in activities at Jerusalem. With their sphere of influence coming under Islamic rule, it became all the more important to guard the holy sites in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was under the Eastern division of the Roman Empire, so it would follow that there was Byzantine interest and activity there.

The Hospitaller Order, as it is known, therefore has its foundations in the Eastern Orthodox world (as was then beset by Islam), by merchants who had been under the direct and indirect influence of Byzantine, and all before the split between Western Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

When the Crusades were launched to recapture the Holy Land and turn back the tide of Islamic influence, it was partially motivated by the Western Pope’s desire for political dominance over Eastern Orthodoxy.

The entire foundations of the Hospitaller Order were therefore not solely on the basis of the Popes or Western Catholicism, and in fact the claim to sovereignty by the Order was agreed to by the Pope. Over all, while it is fair to say that the Order was recognised by and was as such a Catholic organisation, it was not exclusively Catholic in its long history.

When the Hospitallers, that is, the Order of St John of Jerusalem, sought a new home after fleeing Palestine to Cyprus, they adventured to take the island of Rhodes. This island was part of the domain of the Eastern Roman Emperor, and he actively supported their taking of Rhodes and their claim of sovereignty, as the Order would destroy pirates and also guard the seas against invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Even though Rhodes fell, the Order enjoyed many years of success in Malta. It was here a new relationship with the Orthodox world opened up, this time between the Order and Russia.

In 1698, Peter the Great sent a delegation to Malta to learn naval training and to make diplomatic overtures in relation to fighting the Turks. The Russian ambassador, Boris Sheremetev, was invested as a knight of the Order.

This relation grew, so that from 1766, Catherine the Great sent naval officers for training with the Knights of Malta, and Malta likewise sent an ambassador to Russia. The relationship continued between the two nations, with Catherine seeking greater naval cooperation with Malta.

In 1797, Tsar Paul I signed a treaty with Malta. This treaty established a Roman Catholic Grand Priory in Russia, superseding the Polish Grand Priory, which was located in Polish territory which had been annexed by Russia. The Russian Roman Catholic Priory was to have 10 commanderies and provide income to Malta.

In 1782 the Anglo-Bavarian Langue was created by the permission of the Pope and, importantly, King George III. Tsar Paul I joined this in with the Priory of Poland.

Paul I was recognised by the Malta in 1797 as the Protector of the Order, and by the time the French took Malta in 1798, members dispersed, but many of the members of the Order migrated to and sheltered in Russia, where Paul I was made Grand Master.

The grateful knights elected Paul I as Grand Master, replacing the disgraced von Hompesch. Hompesch abdicated in 1799 leaving Paul I as the undisputed Grand Master.

This led to the extraordinary situation of having a married Eastern Orthodox emperor as also the head of the Order which was at that time largely Catholic. Paul opened the gateway for non-Catholics to populate the Order. Grand Master Paul I created, in addition to the Roman Catholic Grand Priory, an Orthodox “Russian Grand Priory” of no fewer than 118 Commanderies, dwarfing the rest of the Order and open to all Christians.

Numerous Russian nobles also joined the Russian Orthodox Priory, and leading Russians were proclaimed hereditary commanders, including the Tsar himself.

Thus, the continuation of a branch of the Order under the Tsars would be as valid as any other group of the Order, which were, during the Napoleonic Wars, in an increasingly fragmentary state.

By the early 19th century, the order had been severely weakened by the loss of its priories throughout Europe. Only 10% of the order’s income came from traditional sources in Europe, with the remaining 90% being generated by the Russian Grand Priory until 1810.

On 19 September 1806, the Swedish government offered the sovereignty of the island of Gotland to the Order. The offer was rejected since it would have meant the Order renouncing their claim to Malta.

The Order had, with the French invasion, relocated to St Petersburg in Russia. There Tsar Paul I became the Grand Master, and the Order brought in Eastern Orthodox knights, while the Grand Master also headed the Polish Priory for Catholics.

In 1802, the Corps des Pages, a Russian military academy for training young people based on the ideals of the Order of St John was founded. The school was moved to the palace of the Order at St Petersburg in 1810, and continued to operate until 1917.

BELOW: Grand Master Paul I.

Controversy over the Russian line

The history of the Order in Russia has been little known, and is discussed by sources as diverse as Smith and Storace, the Chancellery of Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia, Foster, Vandenbroeck, Hoegen Dijkhof, Algrant and several others. This has developed into an obscure battlefield for whether a branch, or an Order of St John or what exactly survived or did not survive in Russia from the time of the Napoleonic Wars to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Broadly, two views exist, that either there was a St John tradition which continued in Russia throughout the 19th century, or there was not. Those who argue not do so with an allegiance to the Papal-linked Alliance of Orders of St John and secondarily the International Commission for Orders of Chivalry which likewise takes that side. Those who show the facts of continuing tradition may do so in order to retrospectively justify their particular group’s existence, nevertheless where truth should be the highest standard it is telling that some on both sides of the argument are motivated by self-interest rather than the facts themselves. Algrant’s analysis is particularly even handed.

Further, it seems fitting and in line with facts that different branches of the St John tradition, be they called “Order” in their own right, connected in different ways to the “source” Order as it existed in Malta in 1798. Comparatively speaking, some branches of the Order have stronger claims than others, but it is wrong to begin from the assumption that the Papal Order of today is the truest or standard by which other Orders are measured. The Papal Order was a branch as much as a number of other branches, whether they by called legitimate or not by the Papal party. For, it must remembered, the origins of the Order began before there was ever a split between the Papacy and Orthodoxy in 1054, and therefore the Papacy should not be allowed to assert that they “own” the history, intellectual property or existence of the Order. Events themselves are bearing witness that Christianity in its Orthodox form and even more in its Protestant form ultimately has its vindication. As an aside, this does not nullify the good that the Catholics in the Order have done, nor yet bar those things from entering into the hands of a benevolent continuation of the Order into the future.

As the Order can be shown to have changed much throughout its history, in that at one time it was primarily concerned with hospital work, another time with naval warfare and another time with charitable goals, so in its various branches it has become different things, including at times becoming national (as in Prussia or Russia) or imperial (as in Britain) branches or Orders.

Another major reason for the controversy over the Russian branch or Order is political, which also ties in the Papacy. It has been asserted by Avro Manhattan and others that fascism and Naziism were connected to the Vatican. (Incidentally Baron Manhattan joined an Italian imitation Order of Malta of known as the Villeneuve Order.)

In the nineteenth century antisemitism was rife in Russia, and due to the circumstances of the Bolshevik uprising within Russia, there is significant evidence linking leading Russians with the rise of the far right since 1917. As inconvenient as the truth might be, some in the Russian branch of the Order may well have had some distant part to play in the holocaust. It seems that some denial of the existence of the Russian branch, tradition or Order is specifically designed to distance both the Vatican and some Orthodox from the reality of their political history.

BELOW: Tsar Paul I.

Under the Tsars

Paul I was assassinated in 1801, and his successor, Alexander I, communicated with the Pope about a future Grand Master. Alexander I was protector of the Order, and appointed Bailiff Nicholas Soltykov as Lieutenant Grand Master. The Russians and their allies backed Giovanni Battista Tommasi for the role, who became Grand Master in Messina and then Catania, who died in 1805. After which there was no Grand Master for a significant period.

This gives rise to the idea that each branch or Order essentially became nationalised, including the Papal branch or Order. In Russia, the Tsars would provide protectorship to the Order there, which may be considered to have become a Russian Order.

Under Tsar Alexander the Order in Russia was turned to be almost fully symbolic. In 1810 Alexander I made an imperial decree (known as a Ukase) separating the Russian tradition of St John from the main Roman Catholic Order. This decree stipulated that the Russian Order continue in Russia, but removed its property.

Following Imperial Decrees of Alexander I of Russia in 1810 and 1811, a fiscal and legal separation of the Russian tradition of St John from the Roman Catholic Order was created. (This was motivated undoubtedly so that the tsar could gain the property and money of the Russian branch for the war against Napoleon). The Russian Order could be considered a separate branch, somewhat like the German Johanniter Orden, having a common origin but legally separate. In 1811, while the Orthodox Russian Grand Priory was dispossessed, this did not cancel the existence of hereditary knights, nor the continuation of a recognised Russian Grand Priory.

In the 1813 Almanac from the Court of Russia, the total membership of the Russian Grand Priory was 853, and the Catholic Grand Priory numbered 152. A further 21 members of the Order resided in Russia, providing in excess of a 1000 members.

By 1817, the Roman Catholic Grand Priory was recognised to be closed down in Russia, as military officers were banned from wearing the decorations of the Catholic Order, as those decorations were not of the Orthodox Russian Order. In fact, Russians were still joining the Order to at least 1819.

The Russian system established hereditary commanders, meaning that membership of the Order came through a family tradition from father to son. Portraits of Russian nobles wearing maltese crosses, lists of names and references to the Order can be found from throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These facts have been strenuously denied by those in favour of the Papal Order.

Historians have pointed out that the Tsars very occasionally authorised certain Russian nobles to accept titles of “Hereditary Commander”, and that the almanac of the Russian Imperial Court, Almanac de Gotha, Russian military lists and a range of secondary source books from the period listed Russian nobles as in the Order of St John.

Burke, who was an expert on peerage and knighthood, reported in 1858, “The two Priories keep the appearance and the form of the old constitution under the protection and patronage of the Emperor who is the Head of the Chapter. His relations with Rome are extremely loose.”

Even De Taube, who was in favour of the Papal view wrote that the Tsars have exceptionally authorised the eldest sons of the descendants of hereditary commanders to wear the decorations. Such an authorisation can be cited in the military service records of 19 October 1867. Foster argued also for the reference to the Demidoff hereditary commander. In 1912, permission was given to Count Alexander Vladimirovitch Armfeldt to wear the insignia of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, with the transfer of that right, after his death, to his son.

Thus, not only had an identity of the Order survived in Russia to the time of the 1917 Revolution, but indeed the collection or identity of these was afterward asserted by Russian representatives who created an association of descendants of the Russian Grand Priory.

Further, Tsars Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II all wore the maltese cross, which not only could be done so on the basis of the Russian internal tradition, but, according to the Chancellery of Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia, was because Alexander II had been awarded the Prussian Order, while other Tsars were recipients of the Papal Order. The Tsars obtaining non-Russian Orders do not invalidate that they were protectors or patrons for the Russian Order. Nor does this negate the fact of the continuing existence of the hereditary commanders, or the fact of the reference to the Order in Russian through the period from the Napoleonic Wars to the Russian Revolution or the fact of the testimony as given from Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich and other White Russians after 1917.

From the fall of Malta to after the Russian Revolution of 1917 a continuing existence of the Order in Russia can be shown from many documents and other evidences. After the Revolution, Russian émigrés, known as White Russians, who went into exile following the Bolshevik Red October Revolution in 1917 attempted to keep the Order alive.

The largest controversy entails the exact wording and meaning of the documents of 1810, 1811 and 1817 and stems around different translations. This issue was best addressed and treated by Algrant who, it must be pointed out, does not support the survivalist view, yet explains the reading and meaning of the documents.

BELOW: Badge of the Russian Order.

The Paris group

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the events that came out of it, surviving White Russians fled into Western Europe. It was decided to reconstitute the Russian Grand Priory, and to do so, Baron Michel de Taube helped track down, as best as they could, the Hereditary Commanders as surviving representatives of the Russian line.

On 24 June 1928 they met in Paris and made the following statement:

“We, the undersigned representatives of titled families and Hereditary Commanders of the Russian Grand Priory of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, instituted in virtue of the decree by Emperor Paul I for the Russian Nobility and in conformity with the regulations ratified by the Imperial Throne on 21st July, 1799, unanimously confirm the following:

“The commanderies of our ancient ancestors were founded on their family fiefs, having the inviolable perennial privilege constituted on the same bases as the entailed estates of the Empire.

“Later events have limited the activity of the Grand Priory of Russia; a revolution had provoked a deficiency in the legitimate power throughout the Empire; yet nothing could weaken our hereditary right as a regular affiliation and as a sovereign order of chivalry. We were born with this privilege and we retain it without further question in law.

“Circumstances dictated that we should now sustain without futile and vain ostentation, the prerogatives acquired by our ancestors. The tragic test which overwhelmed our Fatherland calls us to an activity full of abnegation and sacrifice worth of the best traditions of the illustrious Order of St John of Jerusalem. It is, therefore, our duty that all of us shall initiate the following:

“1. Re-establish the activity of the Russian Grand Priory of the Order of Malta created and regularised by a treaty signed on the 4/13th of January, 1799, between the Throne of Russia and the Sovereign Order of Malta.

“2. Appeal to direct descendants of other Russian Hereditary Knights of Malta in order to urge them to rally with us with in the fold of the Grand Priory of Russia which we are reconstituting abroad.

“3. Solicit H.R.H. the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch, great grandson of the Emperor Paul I, Russian Grand Master of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, to take over during his lifetime the functions of Grand Prior of Russia, the first holder of which was the Grand Duke Heir to the Throne, who eventually became Czar Alexander I of Russia.

“4. Solicit His Imperial Highness to submit tot H.M. the King of Spain, who at the beginning of the Great War was so kind to accede to the request of the late Emperor Nicholas II to grant his High Protection to Russians abroad, the following request: To temporarily assume instead of the Emperor, the dignity as well the prerogatives of an August Protector for the Russian Grand Priory of the Order of St John of Jerusalem.

“5. To invest our elected superior, His Imperial Highness with unlimited powers for life in all decisions relative to the regular re-establishment of the Grand Priory of Russia as well as its statutory regulations in conformity with the fundamental charter of old with eventual amendments necessitated by the exceptional conditions of Russian migrants abroad.”

It was signed by those representatives who where thought to be the surviving Hereditary Commanders of the Russian Grand Priory known at that date. They were:

Count Dmitri Chérémeteff,

Prince Serge Belosselsky-Belozersky,

Count Hilarion Worontzoff-Dachkoff,

Paul Demidoff,

Prince Vladimir Galitzine,

Count Vladimir Borch,

Dmitri Boutourline,

Prince Serge Dolgorouki,

Denis Davydoff,

Leon Narichkine,

Count Alexander Mordvinoff,

Prince Nikita Troubetzkoy,

Count Andre Lanskoi,

Dmitri Jerebzoff, and

Count Dmitri Olsoufieff.

Another Hereditary Commander, who was unable to attend, was Prince Vladimir Vladimirovitch Bariatinsky, who was invited to join the Council of the Russian Grand Priory in about 1929. Baron de Taube also reached out to the Papal Order to seek their recognition, which the Vatican rejected in 1932.

The British Association research website reported that Count Vladimir Borch was a Hereditary Commander of the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, and that Prince Vladimir Galitzine, Count Alexander Mordvinoff and Count Andre Lanskoi were aspirants for knighthood who joined the organisation at the same time, and so also signed the document.

The British Association further reported that because genealogies that were sometimes imprecise, the wrong person in two cases was identified. Further, since that time, some families thought to be extinct have come to light.

Likely due to certain political factions among the White Russians, the Paris group did not approach Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia, nor Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, but Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich to become their Prior. Alexander however decided instead to be only the Protector or Patron.

After Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich died in 1933, Grand Duke Andrei Wladimirovich became the Patron or Protector, and later again, they then received the support of the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. the Grand Duke Wladimir Kirillovich in 1956, and in 1958 they registered as an association under French law called the “Union des Descendants des Commandeurs Hereditaires et Chevaliers du Grand Prieure Russe de l’Ordre de St Jean de Jerusalem”.

In 1939, the Paris group agreed to the creation of the Priory of Dacia, which was based in Denmark. Baron de Taube authorised the Dacia Priory as a legal successor under the Grand Priory of Russia.

In 2005, a Knights Hosptialler group called the British Association headed by Alexandre Tissot Demidoff (a descendant of a family which holds one of the Hereditary Commanderies) and Michael Foster linked their group with the Dacia Priory.

By 2021 it was apparent that Michael Foster had stepped away from the British Association and in November 2021 Alexandre Demidoff began the process of winding up their group. Preceptory had a relationship with the British Association before it closed down, communicating on occasions with Michael Foster and Alexandre Demidoff. Preceptory therefore asserts to continue with the spiritual mantle the work, existence and tradition of the Order of St John, the honour of the Russian hereditary commanders and others linked to them, the perpetuation of chivalry, the developing of the research on the Hospitallers, the cause of truth in the face of all opposition, etc. The example of the charitable work done by the British Association should also be remembered and followed.

BELOW: Documents for the creating of the Paris group.

Prince Bermondt-Avaloff

Russian colonel (later major general) Pavel M. Bermondt-Avaloff’s (or Avalov’s) adopted father was a Georgian Prince. Bermondt-Avaloff himself was a Cossack and officer in the First World War. In 1918 he was with the pro-monarchist White troops in Ukraine, and was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks but rescued by the Germans.

Consequently, Bermondt-Avaloff then raised a Russian military unit in Ukraine to fight in the Baltic States under German General von der Goltz. This army consisted of German Freikorps and aimed at both fighting Bolsheviks and expanding in the Baltic states. Some of the German officers involved with the West Russian Volunteer Army were connected with the German Order of St John or Johanniter Orden.

Germany created a client state called the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and then one called the United Baltic Duchy which failed. In 1919 Bermondt-Avaloff was given leadership of the West Russian Army, and although the Germans cut off financial support, for a short period of time Avaloff controlled his own state in Courland, Semigallia and Samogitia called the Western General Government (a new United Baltic Duchy). In this sense he literally acted as a prince. (Charles Pichel years later wrote a book about Samogitia, without reference to but probably because a short-lived German and White Russian Order of St John state existed there, but this probably provided opportunities for Pichel to take and sell titles as having belonged to this short-lived and only German-recognised state.)

All through this period, Bermondt-Avaloff used the maltese cross symbol, both on his uniform as a symbol for his unit in their fight against the Bolsheviks. He took the symbol as it was to memorialise General Graf Keller who had been killed while he was in Ukraine.

In his book, Bermondt-Avaloff makes an allusion to his military actions as being crusaders, thus the use of the now blackened maltese cross symbol was appropriate. It also happens that the Teutonic Order’s symbol was a black cross (which had been active in the Baltic region for centuries), though Bermondt-Avaloff himself called the cross “maltese”, meaning he had the Order of St John in mind, which is because the symbol used in the training of Russian officers through the Corps des Pages, which was in the St John tradition.

In fact, Bermondt-Avaloff had been part of the ultra-Tsarist Black Hundred movement so it is not surprising that he used the colour black for his previously white maltese cross. Further, Bermondt-Avaloff was the short lived Fuhrer of his own eastern German state, using a symbol of the maltese cross (which, tangentially, esoteric proto-national socialists claimed was two interlocking swastikas meaning perhaps both the force of the sun and of the super-celestial dark sun. That symbol appeared on the money he produced there.

The Baltic forces defeated the German-backed West Russian Volunteer Army so Bermondt-Avaloff fled to Denmark where he apparently recruited several people into his Order of St John, and then moved back to Germany. It appears that Bermondt-Avaloff had specifically invoked the name of the "Russian Sovereign Imperial Order of St John of Jerusalem" as a means for raising funds for himself. He sold medals black maltese cross medals with skulls to veterans from his campaign in the Baltic, recruiting them into the Order of St John.

Meanwhile Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril) Vladimirovich of Russia also fled the Russian revolution to Germany. A White Russian movement called Aufbau Vereinigung operated in Germany, which connected politically with right-wing nationalist politics and most notably was connected to the early National Socialist movement. Grand Duke Kirill claimed the Romanoff throne, and moved to France. There was considerable desire by Nazis to have the Grand Duke and his wife move back to Germany.

Prince Bermondt-Avaloff and Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich were on very friendly terms, and it appears that the Grand Duke was the protector for Bermondt-Avaloff’s Order.

Bermondt-Avaloff had joined the US-based Imperial Military Order of the Yellow Rose (a Bulloch Order) by 1923 claiming to be descending from a royal family in Finland. His name is listed along side fellow member Grand Duke Cyril (Kirill) Vladimirovich.

Bermondt-Avaloff became head of the Russian National Socialist movement called ROND in Germany. This means that he was in effect the leading Russian Nazi. In this period he lived in Berlin, but was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1939 and consequently he moved to Belgrade. Bermondt-Avaloff apparently had a group of the Order of St John set up in Denmark in 1920, which apparently had King Alexander of Yugoslavia as its Protector. King Alexander had been trained in the Order of St John-based Corps des Pages in Russia.

In 1941 Bermondt-Avaloff moved to New York, where he remained until he died. The US government did not appear to either publicly condemn or condone such a leading personality in their midst, which suggests it is likely that Bermondt-Avaloff was cooperating with Allied intelligence.

Charles Pichel, who was involved with the Bulloch orders, which itself included an Order of St John by 1929, was connected to an Order of St John in the 1930s with Russian, German and right wing links. In the 1940s to the 1960s, Germans connected to Prince Bermondt-Avaloff and to the German Johanniter Orden were involved in Charles Pichel’s group. This included Baron von Engelhardt-Schnellenstein, Count F. H. Von Zeppelin and Count Felix von Luckner.

It can be taken from circumstantial evidence that there must have been some connection between Bermondt-Avaloff and Pichel, as was suggested by Serge S. Troubetzkoy later, and if so, Bermondt-Avaloff either left or was pushed out by Pichel by 1954. In 1956 Pichel was registering the organisation in the United States with it fully under his control.

This speaks to the existence of a German-backed Russian-connected far right Order of St John from 1919. This line continued within the United States. While obviously later followers did not condone antisemitism or national socialism (except one group of Pichel’s followers in the USA), the principles of monarchism and a strong conservative political tradition has continued in various descendant Order of St John groups.

BELOW: Bermondt-Avaloff and medals, money and flag used by the West Russian Volunteer Army.

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Boris Brasol

Boris Brasol (or Brazol) was of Cossack origin, a graduate of university in St Petersburg and lawyer. He participated in a famous case in Russia that blamed a Jewish conspiracy for killing a Christian boy as part of a ritual. Brasol was involved with the Black Hundred movement, which supported tsarist autocracy and the Orthodox religion. The movement was also rabidly antisemitic.

Brasol became a diplomat in the First World War, and after a posting in Britain, was in America. His major project was to translate the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into English. By all views, Brasol was a propagandist and spy, so after Russia collapsed in 1917, he sought employment from American intelligence agencies.

In 1920 he began to work for Henry Ford, producing propaganda for the Dearborn Independent, and became a link between White Russians and Germans in America and the White Russians in Germany. As White Russians began to emigrate into the US, Brasol set up numerous organisations and created an anti-Bolshevist network. He also linked up with Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich.

In 1922, Brasol visited Europe and was made Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich’s representative in the USA. In the meantime, White Russians were working with the fledgling Nazi Party with hopes that on their taking power Germany would attack the Soviet Union. Brasol also travelled to Germany just before the Nazi’s failed putsch.

When Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich’s wife visited New York in 1924, Brasol was on hand, and vast sums of money were collected. Consequently, through his contacts, Brasol was connected to right wing figures like Mrs Loomis and Dr William Sohier Bryant. Dr Bryant was closely connected with Charles Pichel.

Brasol went onto work for various banks, write various books on criminal investigation and quietly kept in contact with the growing right wing and German groups in America flourishing in the depression.

In the 1930s, Brasol had another role under Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, which directly related to organisations being run by Charles Pichel and others, as President of the Committee of Imperial Orders and Delegate for the Emperor in the United States.

In 1935 Soviet agents in the USA publicly wrote tracts accusing Brasol of being an organiser of the White Guard, a Russian National Socialist organisation in the United States, and outlined a network of his links across the country.

Brasol visited Germany and came to Heinrich Himmler’s attention in 1938 and he became an agent for the SS, continuing his activities as a clandestine Nazi representative in America.

It was revealed by Catholic priest Peter Duffee (or Duffy) to the FBI that Brasol was a power within an Order being run by Charles Pichel in the 1930s called the Blue Lamoo. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Brasol continued his work quietly while various of his friends were being convicted for collaborating with the Nazis.

Brasol was careful to present himself as fully cooperating with US authorities, and continued to attempt to assist the FBI and support anti-communistic efforts after the war.

BELOW: Boris Brasol and a document typical of the period.

The first and second Cherep-Spiridovich

Major-General Count Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich was born in Montenegro and became a Major-General in the Russian navy. Religious and strongly antisemitic, he was made a noble by Pope Pius X. Cherep-Spiridovich was a diplomat and spy and he moved to the USA after the First World War. Here he came in contact with Brasol and Henry Ford and began to write books against Jewish conspiracy.

Cherep-Spiridovich also connected to Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich and became a consultant for Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenburg. Cherep-Spiridovich promoted pan-Slavism.

Importantly, Cherep-Spiridovich was said to be connected to the Order of St John.

In 1926 Cherep-Spiridovich was found at home dead from a gas leak, which suggests suspicious circumstances.

A German Nazi propagandist in the USA, Howard Victor Broenstrupp, claimed to be Cherep-Spiridovich’s adopted son he began to portray himself with that surname and title.

There is also information that that von Broenstrupp was a member of Pichel’s Blue Lamoo Order.

In 1939, the US House of Representatives was investigating un-American activities, and a witness was asked, “What are your relations with Victor Cherep-Spiridovich ... who is connected with organisations known as ... ‘Order of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem’?”

While Victor Cherep-Spiridovich and others were being exposed, Dr William Sohier Bryant took a back seat, while Pichel eventually moved to Shickshinny, Pennsylvania and quietly ran the Order until the 1950s.

BELOW: Count Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich and von Broenstrupp with Mrs Lois de Lafayette Washburn.

Aryan Orders

The French Count Gobineau theorised about the inequality of the races in the 1850s, an idea which the Russian founder of Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky furthered into a great mythology about the past.

The idea that there were noble races was one thing, but also it meant justifying the aristocratic over the commoner. This was the idea of Frédéric Forsyth who called himself Viscount de Fronsac, who thought himself to be part of the aristocracy and was a keen neo-Jacobite. Likewise, James G. B. Bulloch, a doctor from Georgia held similar ideas, though related to the lost cause of the South.

Forsyth first, and then more particularly, Bulloch ran an order called the Aryan Order of St George of the Holy Roman Empire in the Colonies of America (1892). If there was a higher race (the Aryan), and the aristocratic man special, then orders of knighthood and noble titles would be pursued, even if it meant falsifying history to make oneself of the noble blood. Men like this needed not only to justify their position but wished to recruit other supporters.

Hence the rise of various Orders, as was recorded in Forsyth’s Americana magazine (between about 1907 and 1914). These Orders, primarily driven by Bulloch, included the Aryan Order of St George, which was designed for aristocrats, old colonial families, military officers and required members to be of the Aryan “race”. Further, Forsyth headed a registration for the Aryan Noblesse which eventually became a College of Arms for Canada.

Bulloch also founded the Order of the White Crane for South American Indian chiefs, to bring them “into a band of Christian Knights”. Moving to the city of Washington, he ran the Knights of Golden Horseshoe, the Imperial Order of the Yellow Rose for those of royal descent (1908), the Order of Washington and the Order of Lafayette.

Meanwhile Forsyth was in contact with the neo-Jacobite Order of the White Rose and he founded his Aryan Jacobite group called the Order of the Cavaliers of the Mountain Eagle (re-created in honour of the failed founding of this Order in Scotland in 1745) and the Order of the Royal Oak (re-created in imitation of King Charles II’s attempt to begin this Order in about 1660). He also founded the Forsyth’s College of Arms included all these orders, as well as a register for the Baronets of Nova Scotia, and an Order for the Lords of Manors of New York, Maryland and the Carolinas. Forsyth moved between the USA and Canada and dreamed of America becoming more monarchist. He went so far as to argue for a pro-French view against Anglo-Saxonism as a key feature for superiority and Aryan racial nobility.

In the meantime in Germany, Theosophy was being developed there into Aryan Orders, with Lanz von Liebenfels creating the Order of the New Templars (1907), and followers of another German, von List, creating the Germanenorden, a vehicle of Ariosophy. These orders, and the related Thule Society, used swastikas and became the inspiration for many Nazi ideas in the early 1920s.

In Europe, Count Cherep-Spiridovich promoted the Anglo-Latino-Slav League, and moved to the US in 1920, where he advocated for unification of “white peoples of the globe against the domination of the colored peoples”. He also organized the Universal Gentiles’ League among White Russians in the US, which was due particularly to his contact with Boris Brasol.

By 1923 Prince Bermondt-Avaloff and Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich had joined the Imperial Military Order of the Yellow Rose under Bulloch.

In 1926, the College of Arms of Canada issued a diploma of Aryan Noblesse to Paul Salvator Riedelski, a Polish immigrant who paraded as a prince. Riedelski and Joseph Paul Chodkiewicz started the Polish Nobility Association in 1927 continuing Cherep-Spiridovich’s work. Riedelski claimed descent from the Piast dynasty, so he founded an organisation called Royal Order of the Piast which used the idea of the Order of St John as an example or part of an elite white nationalist movement, much like how a Templar movement had been operating in Germany as a foundation of Ariosophy. Chodkiewicz, a Roman Catholic priest, converted Charles Pichel to traditional Catholicism in 1932.

Riedelski listed various orders pending registration in the College of Arms in 1929: the Royal Order of Piast, the Imperial Order of St Vladimir, the Royal Order of May 3, 1791, the Imperial and Royal Order of St. Stanislaus, the Order of the Holy Union, the Royal Order of St Michael the Archangel (a Russian anti-Bolshevist order belonging to Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich), the Order of Ss Cyril and Methodius, the Order of St John the Baptist (described as the Puerto Rico section of the Royal Order of Piast), and The American Noblesse. The Order of St John the Baptist was instituted in 1929 by a Puerto Rican Francisco Ramirez de Arellano.

Riedelski wrote, “When we take up the historical aspect of the mighty school, we find it has other names, such as Order of the Holy Grail; Order of the Golden Fleece, or Argonauts; Knights of St John of Jerusalem; Knights of Malta, of Rhodes; and later Knights Templar. Through all we catch glimpses of a White Brotherhood, a militant Order seeking a goal, an active positive Christian Church engaged in a quest.”

BELOW: Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich and his wife, Victoria Melita, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, with Hitler in 1923.

Charles Pichel

In the 1920s, American conman and later self-deluded “Baron de Thourot and Lord of Estagel” Charles Pichel began to sell fake coats of arms. He and Dr William Sohier Bryant incorporated the American Heraldry Society, but connected to various right wing groups, Aryans, neo-Jacobites, European nobles, anti-Bolsheviks and National Socialist supporters in the USA.

In 1932 Pichel and Bryant registered the College of Arms of Canada, though the nobles there did not suffer them very long. Pichel claimed various organisastions which had been part of the Bulloch family, which now included the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, the Seigneurial Courts and Superior Councils of New France, the American Heraldry Society, the Order of St John the Baptist of Puerto Rico, the Seigneurial Order of Canada, the Baronets of Nova Scotia, the Bannerets of Quebec, the United Empire Loyalists, the Order of Saint George of the Empire, the Order of the Golden Horseshoe of Tramontane, the Order of the Royal Oak, the Order of the Mountain Eagle, the Royal Associates of America, the Order of the Imperial Yellow Rose, the Canadian Order of the United Empire, the Sovereign Council of the Noblesse, the Colonial Lords of Manors in America, the Baronial Order of Runnemede (Magna Carta Barons) and the Order of the Black Bear of California.

In reality, Pichel and Bryant were focusing their real efforts on liaising in the US with far right groups, White Russians and Germans. Pichel was also involved with the Catholic Irish terrorist IRA organisation, as the Vatican was working with fascist groups at that time.

In that same period William Dudley Pelley was promoting occultism, Aryanism and antisemitism. Pelley, an admire of the Nazis, founded his silver shirt movement.

Pichel himself reached out to the Nazis in Germany and offered to be their representative. This led him to align further with Boris Brasol, who apparently issued Pichel with a recognition from Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich.

Pichel was secretly running another Aryan mystical order called the Order of the Blue Lamoo. This organisation appeared to be quite similar to William Dudley Pelley’s blue lectures on educational topics, which drew upon pyramidology, templarism, hermeticism, rosicrucianism, runes, etc. The symbolism of the Blue Lamoo included a pyramid and the word “Lamoo” seemed to refer to the ancient Egyptian paradise. The organisation was both a Knighthood and sun and self-worshiping cult.

In fact, the Ancient and Noble Order of the Blue Lamoo was a White Russian fascist organisation which was a front for collecting money for White Russians in Germany (collecting wealthy Mrs Loomis’ moola), as well as being a cover for spreading propeganda in the United States. This Order was backed by Howard Victor H. V. Broenstrupp, the adopted son of Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich, and Boris Brasol.

At the same time, Prince Bermondt-Avaloff was running ROND in Nazi Germany, which was the recipient of the Blue Lamoo fundraising.

Thus, the real network, it can be ascertained, and as was revealed by Prince Serge S. Troubetzkoy, was centred on Prince Bermondt-Avaloff’s Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, with the knowledge of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, with Brasol, along with the Slavic Piast Order of St John of Riedelski, Chodkiewicz and Pichel, meaning that Pichel’s Order was in existence in about 1934.

Pichel reports that on 13 January 1934, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (probably via Brasol) confirmed the legitimacy of the Order of St John. Two years later, in a proclamation dated 24 November 1936, Pichel was awarded the Russian Order of St Andrew the Apostle, First Class in Gold for his zeal in defending and helping to perpetuate the noble history of Imperial Russia and the Imperial families of Russia.

Around the start of the Second World War, increasing pressure was brought to bear, driving Pichel and his network underground. Several of their associates were questioned by the FBI, and some were jailed for sedition.

Pichel continued to run the Order of St John through the 1940s, and it is probable that Pichel with his few followers merged various orders into what became known as the Shickshinny Order, named after the town in Pennsylvania where Pichel and friends moved.

A number of German knights were involved, and during the 1950s, American right wing military and intelligence officers joined. By the late 1950s, the Order was making great strides in recruiting. This was partially due to Pichel suppressing his former Nazi connections as well as claiming a whole invented history of Russian operations in America from before the First World War.

Some have claimed that Pichel made up the Order in 1953, however there is tangible evidence of its historical existence in the 1930s. The claim that Pichel’s Order stemmed from meetings in New York before the First World War is widely disputed though it has had some supporters including Tony Rich and Rick Joyner. It has been fairly conclusively shown that Pichel typed his minutes as late as the 1950s purporting to present written minutes from 1908, 1912, etc. The originals were conveniently lost in a fire.

In the 1950s, Robert Gair, Lord Gayre of Gayre and Nigg, a Scottish white supremacist was in communication with Pichel. Gair’s magazine, Mankind Quarterly, included contributors such as Baron von Verschuer who was Dr Mengele’s mentor. In 1956 Gair wrote a book about the historical heraldry of the Order and in 1962 he denounced Pichel’s group as spurious.

Pichel had managed to attract a number of important members. In the 1950s Franklin West, leader of a chivalrous St John group originating ultimately from a Royal Black loyalist organisation joined with Pichel. A similar group in California, led by Robert Formhals, which had recently been doing anti-Communist work, joined with them in 1963.

Most importantly, in the early 1960s, King Peter II of Yugoslavia was involved. As Pichel’s previous Nazi connections became known, as well as questions about Pichel’s criminal history, the majority of members were inclined to side against him.

Pichel’s organisation ultimately was recepient of:

1. The Russian Order, via Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich.

2. A derived Russian Order, and the German Johanniter Orden, via Prince Bermondt-Avaloff.

3. Spanish-based members, potentially through the Piast group, and more importantly through the West-Formhals group.

4. German Johanniter Orden knights.

5. Jacobites, who historically had operated as the English Order of St John on and off between the 1650s and the 1760s, through the Forsyth-Bulloch Orders.

6. The Royal Black through the West-Formhals group.

The good should be taken, despite character defects, antisemetism and other beliefs which must be repudiated. Removing those ills does not remove the Order, but could be likened to healing the Order.

BELOW: King Peter II.

King Peter II of Yugoslavia

King Peter II of Yugoslavia was a descendant of both Tsar Paul I of Russia and Queen Victoria of Britain, both important figures in the history of the Order of St John. King Peter’s father, King Alexander of Yugoslavia, was connected to the Order in that he had been trained at the Corps des Pages at St Petersburg, and is likely to have been connected to the group run by Bermondt-Avaloff.

Because of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the relics of the Order which had been at St Petersburg were eventually brought to Yugoslavia.

In 1943, after fleeing Serbia, King Peter II was inducted into the British Order of St John by the Duke of Gloucester.

Meanwhile, at that time, there were two independent commanderies of the Order of St John, or Knights of Malta, operating in the USA, which could be traced directly back to the loyalist movement. One was the Priory in California run by Robert Formhals and the other was in Pennsylvania led by Franklin A. West.

In 1958, West joined with Pichel’s group in Pennsylvania which claimed to have been made up of hereditary knights of St John from Russia. The Pichel-West group then set up various other Priories, and in 1959 set up in France. Colonel Paul de Granier de Cassagnac became Prior of France. He had a falling out with Pichel and attempted to take over the Pennsylvania-based organisation. King Peter joined de Cassagnac’s group, which had broken away from Pichel.

Then de Cassagnac invited King Peter II to become Protector of his breakaway group, which he did by a Royal Charter in 1963. However, King Peter almost immediately left that group with many followers, and was joined by others,

forming a new group under his Constitution of 1964, giving it a fons honorum.

The Constitution issued in 1964 essentially made King Peter the head of the Order, and thereby ultimately took away from de Cassagnac. This was further supported by Robert Formhals joining with King Peter, who actively encouraged King Peter to issue his Constitution for the “Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitallers”.

Under King Peter’s 1964 Constitution a Priory was set up in Malta by Professor Gaston Tonna-Barthet. Many in de Cassagnac’s group joined with King Peter, so that now West, Formhals, Tonna-Barthet were together under the King’s Constitution. King Peter then moved to New York.

In 1967, King Peter dismissed West. West’s successor Dr Urosh L. Seffer then forced a new Constitution of 1968. The new Constitution dropped the title “Sovereign” so as to reduce friction between King Peter’s Order and the Vatican-backed SMOM.

Most importantly, several Russian hereditary commanders from the Paris group (1928) joined with King Peter. In 1968, Prince Serge Belosselsky-Belozersky, the eldest son of Prince Serge Constantinovitch Belosselsky-Belozersky (one of the original signatories to the re-establishment the Russian Grand Priory at Paris in 1928), became the Lieutenant Grand Master. King Peter then became Protector of the Order.

In 1969, Prince Serge S. Troubetzkoy, a Russian Hereditary Commander, became Lieutenant Grand Master under King Peter’s authority.

King Peter died in 1970, and the Order began to break apart. In 1971 Formhals and Troubetzkoy split, forming two groups.

Prince Andrei Karageorgevich, King Peter’s brother, joined with Formhals in 1972. (King Peter II’s son, Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, had been brought into the Vatican-run order, and therefore repudiated his father’s Order, rejecting both Formhals’ and Troubetzkoy’s branches.)

Tonna-Barthet’s Grand Priory of Malta became the “Russian Grand Priory of Malta” in 1971 (and had a claim to the 1964 King Peter Constitution). This declared itself to be the headquarters of the OSJ in 1973, and was under Troubetzkoy, with long-time friend of King Peter and creator of the 1964 Constitution, Count Dr Christian Orssich.

In 1977 Prince Andrei and some of the Formhals group in America joined with Tonna-Barthet’s group in Malta, and so by 1979, Troubetzkoy and Prince Andrei were together. As the Priory in Malta was made under the 1964 Constitution, the group under Troubetzkoy returned to it, rather than keeping to a later Constitution forced on King Peter by the Roman Catholics in 1968.

In 1979 Prince Andrei was officially Grand Master. In 1983 a rift began to form between Prince Andrei and the Grand Priory of Malta under Tonna-Barthet. Prince Andrei refused to sanction promotions and the Order descended into a battle of lawyers arguing about the Constitution and minutes of meetings.

By early 1987 Prince Andrei declared Tonna-Barthet to be expelled from the Order. In 1987 Tonna-Barthet’s group, now led by Anthony Zammit, sought to break away from Prince Andrei, who promptly ejected Zammit. Zammit then proclaimed true continuation of the Constitution of King Peter II.

From 1987 the Order was run by three regents, Anthony Zammit, Maurice de Wolf and Gaston Tonna-Barthet. In 1989 Zammit was elected Lieutenant Grand Master.

In 1991, Zammit gained the patronage of Prince Karl Vladimir Karageorgevich (King Peter’s nephew), who reasserted the title of the Order as being “Sovereign”. In 1993, the word “Sovereign” was dropped, in favour of the Vatican-backed Order having that title.

In 1998 Anthony Zammit became Grand Master until his death in 2001. Then Prince Vladimir, son of Prince Andrei, became Grand Master in 2001. The Order was then administered from London by Alastair Redpath-Stevens.

From 2010 there were significant divisions in the Karageorgevich Order in Australia.

Several members from the Karageorgevich Order were part of the formation of Preceptory. Preceptory formed in 2016 being able to trace a chivalric succession from Malta via the Russian Paris, Russian Pichel, British Venerable and Royal Black lines to King Peter II.

BELOW: King Peter II.

Orthodox Order

The Paris group had partially died off, with some remnants involved with King Peter II’s group in the 1960s. In 1973 a meeting took place where Hereditary Family Commander Count Nicholas Bobrinskoy was asked to revive the Russian Order.

In 1977 Sergei Troubetzkoy and Prince Serge S. Belosselsky-Belozersky formed the Sovereign Order of the Orthodox Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem often shorted to the Orthodox Order of St John. This was led by Count Nicholas Bobrinskoy, and claimed family links back to the Paris meeting of 1928. Prince Andrew of Russia (eldest son of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch) became Protector.

In 1981 Prince Vassili became Imperial Protector. In 1990 Prince Michael Andreevich (eldest son of Prince Andrew) became Imperial Protector. In 1992 the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, bestowed blessings in person to Count Bobrinskoy.

Because Prince Michael lived in Australia the Orthodox Order began to grow. The Order in Australia was led by monarchist Rex Morgan, who lived at Bathurst.

Edward Anthony (Tony) Rich, who lived in Sydney, was personally dubbed by Prince Michael. Others involved in the Order included Bryan Stertern-Gill, Don Gerling and the Russian Orthodox spiritual leader in Australia Michael Protopopov.

In 2006 the Sovereign Grand Prior, Count Nicholas Bobrinskoy passed away and Prince Michael became Prior. In 2008 Prince Michael died.

A group of knights in Geelong split away from Melbourne. The OOSJ has seemed to fade away in the USA, as from the Russian Orthodox perspective that Order is considered to be without a viable Imperial Protector or Patriarchal blessing. Those Geelong knights from the Orthodox Order consider that the organisation within Australia has folded.

In 2014, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia disavowed the Russian Hospitaller tradition as she had instead chosen to defer to the Papal SMOM. Consequently, members from the Orthodox Order were brought into the Russian Imperial Order of St Michael the Archangel.

Several members of Preceptory have been connected to Prince Michael, and since the Russian tradition of the Order has been repudiated, Preceptory has taken the opportunity to lay hold of the Orthodox Russian tradition as an authentic continuation of genuine representatives tracing back to Romanoff family members. Seeing that non-Orthodox Christians (i.e. Catholics and Protestants) have been admitted into the Orthodox Order, the nature of the perpetuation is not required to be specifically Orthodox.

BELOW: Gayre’s book on heraldry of members of the Order, this book was formerly owned by Roger de Bryon-Faes.