Page:The Book of Orders of Knighthood and Decorations of Honour of All Nations.djvu/486

Rh deserted cloister of the Franciscan monks. Though stripped of all its monuments, the Church of St. Mary was still in existence in 1722, but the adjoining cloister had long previously become a heap of ruins.

The Church of St. Gumbertus, at Anspach, yet remains. Several of the monuments of St. George's Chapel have been transferred to the chancel.

The Order of the Swan was in connection with many religious societies, and more especially with the Convent of the ' Madonna Congregation,' at Chatelleraut. As late as the beginning of the past century, the nuns of that community used officially to report to the members of the Order of St. Mary, the death of any of their sisterhood, for whose souls they requested mass to be said. Well might they have been under the impression of the continued existence of the Order, since it had never been formally dissolved.

In recent times, the Order was revived by the King of Prussia, on the 24th December, 1843, exactly four hundred years after it was first founded by the Elector Frederick II. The following is a literal translation of the decree concerning its revival.

"We, Frederick William, by the Grace of God, King of Prussia, &c., &c., &c.

"Of the many gratifying things produced by our time, under the blessings of a long peace, may Heaven preserve it to us. nothing deserves greater acknowledgment and consideration, than the far spread efforts of societies to alleviate, by education and civilization, the physical and moral sufferings of mankind. These efforts are one of the proofs which evidence Christianity, not in theological controversies, or outward manifestations, but in truth and in spirit, by life and by action. Impressed with the conviction, that many of those respectable