The Crusaders with the Red Star are the only male order in the world founded by a woman. They are also the only order that originated in Bohemia, having grown out of a lay hospital brotherhood. At its birth, alongside the Rule of St. Augustine, stood the ideas of St. Francis of Assisi and the exceptional personality of St. Agnes of Bohemia.
In 1233, St. Agnes of Bohemia founded a hospital brotherhood at her convent in the Na Františku district of Prague, dedicated to the care of the elderly, the sick and others in need. In 1237, Pope Gregory IX raised this brotherhood to an independent order of pontifical right. Thus arose the only purely Czech male order and the only male order in the world founded by a woman. In 1252, the Order moved to the foot of the Prague bridge (Judith Bridge, later Charles Bridge). There it devoted itself not only to hospital care but also became the administrator of the bridge. It gradually extended its work to other places in the Czech lands, including České Budějovice, Cheb, Litoměřice, Stříbro and Znojmo-Hradiště. Thanks to the initiative of Agnes's sister, Princess Anna, it also began to work in Wrocław in Silesia.
During the Hussite Wars in the 15th century, the work of many of the Order's hospitals was interrupted, and some of them disappeared altogether. At critical moments, the seat of the Grand Master was temporarily moved to Cheb. The Prague hospital, however, continued to operate and survived this turbulent period. After the wars, the Order's role changed. Because of the shortage of priests, its members moved into parish ministry. Yet the Order never gave up its hospitaller mission, and this charism has endured in various forms to the present day.
Thanks to several capable Grand Masters, the Order entered the early modern period in quite good condition. In 1562, Grand Master Antonín Brus of Mohelnice even became Archbishop of Prague. His appointment ended a vacancy of the archiepiscopal see that had lasted for many decades. The union of the offices of Grand Master and Archbishop of Prague continued under his successors. This gave the Order a prestigious position, but it also obliged it to support the impoverished Archdiocese of Prague financially and to fund its development.
Of this long period, the last two archbishops who served as Grand Masters deserve particular mention: Arnošt Vojtěch of Harrach and Jan Bedřich of Waldstein. Arnošt Vojtěch of Harrach became head of the Order in 1623 and was made a cardinal by Pope Urban VIII in 1626. He died in 1667, which made him the longest-serving Grand Master of the Order. He was succeeded by Jan Bedřich of Waldstein, who built on much of his predecessor's work. He continued the reconstruction of the monastery by Charles Bridge, completing it with a new church designed by the architect J. B. Mathey. In 1692, with the considerable help of the Prior of the Order and his later successor, Jiří Ignác Pospíchal, Jan Bedřich of Waldstein completed the building of St. Agnes Hospital at the Písaná lázeň baths. It stood on the site of today's Café Slavia, on the corner of Smetanovo nábřeží and Národní třída.
The Order flourished again in the first half of the 18th century. Grand Master Jan František Franchimont of Frankenfeld obtained from Pope Clement XI the right for himself and his successors to use pontifical insignia, including the mitre, crosier and ring. This right was later also granted to the Order's provost at Hradiště sv. Hypolita near Znojmo. (After the reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council, only the Grand Master of the Order holds this right.) During the 18th century, the Order extended its work beyond the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. In 1723, it began to serve at the Hospital of St. Martin and St. Leopold in Bratislava, and in 1733 at the hospital of the Church of St. Charles Borromeo in Vienna. In 1770, Maria Theresa entrusted it with the pastoral care of the castle parish at Buda Castle. During this period, the Order employed some of the leading artists of the day. Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer built the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Karlovy Vary, and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach built the Church of St. Charles Borromeo on Karlsplatz in Vienna. The painters Václav Vavřinec Reiner, Petr Brandl, Karel Škréta and Michael Willmann also worked for the Order.
The last third of the 18th century had already brought great changes to the Order. As part of the Josephine reforms, the hospitals in Prague at Písaná lázeň (1785) and in Bratislava at St. Martin and St. Leopold (1786) were dissolved. The decline of the Order's hospital work continued throughout the 19th century. A kind of substitute for this work, or perhaps a new form of it, was the initiative of Grand Master Josef Antonín Köhler, who founded the first infant nursery in Bohemia in Prague-Karlín. Overall, however, hospital work declined and the focus of the Order shifted to pastoral care in the parishes entrusted to it.
During this period, the Order was forced for political reasons to give up most of its foreign locations (Bratislava 1786, Wrocław 1810, Budapest 1882). Especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these losses were offset by expansion at existing locations and by entirely new ones in the Czech lands (Karlovy Vary-Rybáře, Věteřov near Kyjov).
From the first half of the 19th century, we may also mention the fate of a member of the Order, Fr. Karl Anton Postl. In 1823, during a period of medical leave in Karlovy Vary, he secretly left the Order and disappeared. Only after his death, during the inheritance proceedings, did the rest of his life story come to light: after leaving the Order, he had become a successful writer under the pseudonym Charles Sealsfield.
Perhaps the most important moment in the Order's history in the 19th century came on December 3, 1874, when Pope Pius IX beatified the founder of the Order, St. Agnes of Bohemia. This was an important milestone on the way to her later canonization.
In the 19th century, and especially at the beginning of the 20th, the Order continued its extensive building and artistic activity. In addition to ongoing repairs and renovations of its churches, parish houses and estates, there were also larger building projects. In the middle of the 19th century, the Generalate wing of the Prague monastery, facing Křižovnické náměstí, was rebuilt and raised by one floor. At the beginning of the 20th century, new churches and parish houses were built in Karlovy Vary-Rybáře, Milhostov near Františkovy Lázně, Řevnice and Věteřov near Kyjov. All this culminated in the extensive reconstruction of the monastery by Charles Bridge, designed by the architect Josef Sakař and completed in 1912. Of the original complex, only the church, the Generalate wing and the historically valuable late Gothic parts of the so-called Old Priory were preserved. The other buildings, mostly early Baroque, were replaced by modern Art Nouveau and Neo-Baroque structures. The Order's patronage was not limited to architecture. Other leading artists worked for it during this period, particularly members of the National Theatre Generation such as Josef Václav Myslbek, František Ženíšek and Václav Brožík.
The economic side of the Order's work cannot be overlooked either. It still requires more thorough historical research, but we already know that the Order's brewery by Charles Bridge was the first in the Czech lands to bottle beer, beginning in 1841.
The first decade of the service of František Xaver Marat, Grand Master and General, was marked by extensive building, culminating in the reconstruction of the monastery by Charles Bridge (1908–1912). The tasks awaiting his successor Josef Vlasák, the second-longest-serving Grand Master and General, were of a completely different nature. He took office during the difficult years of World War I, continued through the not always easy period of the First Republic and the Nazi occupation that followed, and ended his life during the rise of the Communist regime.
During World War I, he had to deal with a severe shortage of food for the monastery and its hospital. After 1918, in the turbulent atmosphere of the new Czechoslovak Republic, there was talk of abolishing all monasteries. This would have had fatal consequences for the Crusaders with the Red Star, a Czech order active mainly in the Czech lands. Together with others, the Grand Master therefore prepared for the possible relocation of the entire Order to the United States. Fortunately, the situation gradually stabilized, and the Order was able to continue working in its traditional locations. Despite the economic hardship caused by the land reform and the Great Depression, it continued its hospital and social work, financed the restoration of the Convent of St. Agnes in the Na Františku district of Prague and, through the organization “The Work of Blessed Agnes of Bohemia”, funded the building of new churches on the outskirts of Prague.
In 1938, after the Munich Agreement ceded part of Czechoslovakia to the German Reich, a significant number of the Order's locations, mainly in western Bohemia, found themselves outside Czechoslovakia.
Given this sudden situation and the spiritual needs of the faithful in the parishes entrusted to it, the Order reached an agreement with the Cistercian Abbey of Vyšší Brod on mutual assistance in pastoral care. The Crusaders with the Red Star took over the pastoral care of the abbey's parishes in areas with Czech-speaking faithful. In return, Cistercians from Vyšší Brod took over some of the Order's posts in the territories ceded to the German Reich.
In 1941, shortly before the death of the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Karel Kašpar, the Nazi authorities forced the Grand Master to move to Brno overnight. He found refuge in the Augustinian Abbey in Old Brno. In 1942, by decision of the German authorities, the Order had to leave its monastery by Charles Bridge. Towards the end of the war, it even had to give up the pastoral care of its main church, St. Francis by Charles Bridge. During the war, some members of the Order were repeatedly persecuted by the Nazi regime. Fr. Karel Weis and Fr. Ladislav Sirový were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. The liberation and the end of the war in May 1945 made it possible to resume the Order's life in the monastery by Charles Bridge. With the expulsion of the German-speaking population, the Order's German-speaking members left too, along with their parishioners, mainly for Germany.
As part of Action K, the monastery was occupied by the State Security on April 27, 1950. Because of his advanced age, the Grand Master was moved to spend the rest of his life in the Order's parish house at the Church of St. Peter in Poříčí. Other members were taken to the centralization monasteries in Broumov, Králíky and Želiv. Some members living in the Order's parish houses were repeatedly persecuted and imprisoned. Fr. A. Dragoun was convicted twice, first in 1951 and again in 1959. The longest sentence was given to Fr. Josef Šebesta, administrator of the Order's parish in Františkovy Lázně. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison and spent part of his sentence doing forced labor in the Jáchymov uranium mines. The second-longest sentence, 13 years, was given to Fr. Bohumír Rákosník, administrator in Kynšperk nad Ohří.
Other members received somewhat lighter sentences. There were also members who, for various reasons, compromised themselves with the totalitarian regime (Fr. Jan Mára, Fr. František Xaver Dítě). The vacated monastery buildings were first handed over to the Ministry of Health and later became one of the Prague headquarters of the State Security. The Order's priests were nevertheless able to continue serving at its main church, St. Francis by Charles Bridge. Throughout the communist period, at least one priest of the Order was always assigned there. Members whose state licence to minister had not been revoked served in parishes of the Order and of the diocese. Fr. František Verner became the first librarian of the so-called Post-Conciliar Library, founded by the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal František Tomášek, to help put the decisions of the Second Vatican Council into practice. After the death of Grand Master Josef Vlasák in December 1958, the office remained vacant until 1988. That year, as the state's anti-Church policy eased, Ladislav Sirový was elected the 46th Grand Master and General of the Order. Cardinal František Tomášek installed him in office at a private ceremony in the chapel of the Archbishop's Palace. November 12, 1989, became an important milestone in the history of the Order, when Pope St. John Paul II canonized its founder, St. Agnes of Bohemia, in Rome.
The Crusaders with the Red Star are the only male order that originated on Czech territory and has always had its headquarters in Prague. In the Middle Ages, the Order excelled in charitable and hospital work. After the Hussite Wars, pastoral care came to dominate its activities. During the period of postulation, it provided material support to the restored Archdiocese of Prague, which could not otherwise have existed at that time. The Order also opened the first seminary, albeit a provisional one, for the formation of future priests. By providing material support and shelter in the early stages, the Crusaders with the Red Star also helped to bring other orders (Jesuits, Capuchins and Trinitarians) to the Czech lands. In the 19th century, many members worked as teachers at secondary schools and universities, and Grand Masters were entrusted with supervising teaching at gymnasia throughout the kingdom. The Order included not only Czechs, Moravians and Silesians, but also Lusatians, Poles, South Slavs, Walloons and Germans. It was therefore not purely Czech in membership or in reach, as is sometimes wrongly claimed, but distinctly Central European in character. Although the Order gave the Church no saints or blessed, it plowed a deep and indelible furrow in culture and education, as well as in spiritual and charitable life, not only in the Czech lands but everywhere its influence reached.
Lev, Master of the Order (1352–1363), who between 1352 and 1362 wrote and illuminated on parchment a Latin breviary with a calendar. Its depiction of the 12 months later served as a model for Josef Mánes in his decoration of the Prague Astronomical Clock.
Jiří Ignác Pospíchal (1634–1699), General Prior (1662–1694) and then General and Grand Master of the Order (1694–1699). He wrote a diary (Diarium), dating from the years 1611–1680, in Latin and Czech, in which he recorded all the most important events of private life, of the Order and of the nation.
Jan František Beckovský (1658–1725), administrator of the Order's Hospital of St. Agnes in the New Town of Prague. He wrote a total of 54 Czech works on history and hagiography. His most famous work is the Messenger of Old Czech Tales (Poselkyně starých příběhů českých), the first part of which was published in 1700. The second part was published from his estate by Dr. A. Rezek through the Dědictví sv. Prokopa publishing house in Prague, in three volumes between 1878 and 1880, bringing the chronicle up to 1718.
Jan František Josef Ryvola (Rivola) (1649–1734), provost at Chlum Svaté Maří (1699–1701) and at Hradiště sv. Hypolita (1708–1734). A lover of his native language, he published in 1705 the pioneering Slowář Czěský: To jest: Slowa Některá Czěská, jak od Latinářůw tak od Němcůw wypůjčená, zase napravená a w wlastní Czěskou Rzěč obrácená k užívání Milowníkůw Czěské Rzěči.
Bishops of the Czech Lands from the Order's Clergy
Archbishops of Prague Postulated as Grand Masters of the Order
Notable in Their Own Way