Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/76

60 6o A Short History of Nursing fealties, homages, and military service, tinctured with religious exaltations and ceremonials, lent itself to the most dramatic possibilities, familiar to all through novels and poems. Chivalry, arising in France, had its most perfect flower there, and in its highest form had many engaging features. Among these was the spirit of Noblesse oblige and the protection and defence of the weak. A practi- cal result of this fine idealism appeared in the military-religious nursing orders into which knights and highborn dames entered that they might meet the needs arising from the crusades. Three great military and chivalric nursing orders had their rise in those stirring and romantic times. Military ^-^d assumed as their duty a combina- nursing i[q^ Qf war-making, charitable ' relief, orders of the Middle and hospital nursing, under devoutly Ages religious forms. Nothing like them has ever been seen, before or since. They were, in the order of their greatest renown, the Khights Hos- pitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, commonly called the Knights of St. John; the Teutonic Knights (Deutsche Orden); and the Knights of St. Lazarus. Each one had provision for a corresponding order of women. The order of St. John was originally organized for the care of two hospitals, one for men and the