The Commemorative Order of St. Thomas of Acon

The medieval Order at Acre

The Third Crusade set out in 1189 to recover Jerusalem after its capture by Saladin. Its armies converged on the port of Acre (Akko in modern Israel, called “Acon” by the English), and King Richard I arrived before the walls on 8 June 1191. The city surrendered to Richard and Philip II of France about five weeks later.

Among the English was William, chaplain to Ralph de Diceto, the Dean of St Paul’s in London. Moved by the sight of Christian dead lying unburied around the walls, he gathered a few helpers, buried as many as he could and cared for the wounded. From this work grew a small religious community, bound by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, that took on three duties: burying fallen crusaders, nursing the sick and wounded, and raising money to ransom prisoners held by Saladin’s forces. Its church and hospital at Acre were dedicated to St Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his cathedral in 1170 and canonised in 1173. The modern Order honours Dean Ralph, William and Baldwin of Exeter, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1185 to 1190, as its founding figures.

Tradition within the Order holds that Richard rewarded the brothers by raising them to the standing of an order of chivalry. Historians date the change somewhat later: the community was given a military role by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, during the crusade of 1227–1229, and in 1236 Pope Gregory IX confirmed it as a military order following the rule of the Teutonic Knights. From then on it was known as the Order of St Thomas of Acon and fought alongside the Templars, the Hospitallers and the other great orders. By about 1279 its Master had overtaken the Prior as its real head, and it had built up houses in the British Isles, with headquarters in Cheapside, London, on land once owned by the Becket family, and a house at Kilkenny in Ireland.

The Order was never rich. Money troubles led to a proposal to merge it with the Knights Templar, which its brethren in both the Holy Land and England resisted. When Acre fell in May 1291 the Master and nine of his knights died in its defence. The survivors withdrew to Cyprus and built the church of St Nicholas in Nicosia, whose restored ruins still stand. Within a few decades the military side of the Order had faded away.

From London hospital to Mercers’ Chapel

Back in London the brothers adopted the Augustinian rule, ran a hospital and a grammar school, and built a close friendship with the Mercers, the city’s leading livery company. Becket’s father, Gilbert, had been a mercer, and from the fourteenth century the Company held its meetings at the Hospital of St Thomas of Acon in Cheapside. The Order’s own records note a last admission in February 1367 and the installation of a Master as late as 1510, and the house survived until Henry VIII dissolved the religious houses in 1538.

When the King put the hospital and its chapel up for sale, the Mercers bought them. The buildings burned in the Great Fire of 1666; the hall that replaced them was in turn destroyed in the Blitz in 1941, and the present Mercers’ Hall and Chapel, opened in 1958, stand on the same site. A carved figure of the dead Christ, hidden beneath the old chapel floor at the Reformation and rediscovered during post-war repairs, is a rare survivor from the medieval church.

The modern revival

The modern Order owes its existence to John E. N. Walker, for many years Secretary General of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. Over more than twenty years he searched the records of the Guildhall Library in London, where documents of the old Order, written in medieval French and Latin, had escaped the Great Fire. He set out to write a history, but his discovery of an account of the installation of a Master in 1510, which he found so distinctive and so thoroughly English, persuaded him to revive the Order as a Masonic body instead. Under the knightly title Sir John of Dorking he became its first Grand Master.

The Order’s websites state that it was constituted in 1973 under charter from the Grand Master’s Council, and it began working in 1974, when its first Chapel met at Blackheath in London. Growth since then has been steady. By July 2015 there were 112 Chapels in England, Wales, Spain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, with a province in Brazil following soon after. In Britain the Order is divided into some fifteen home Provinces, from Northumberland and Durham to the West Country, with overseas Provinces for southern Australia and New Zealand, northern Australia, Canada, France and South America. The United States has its own Grand Master’s Council, which meets each year alongside the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees.

The Order reached Australia in 2004. According to an account published in Australian Masonic magazines, the Chapel of St Paul was consecrated in Melbourne on 21 August 2004 with twenty-three founders, and further Chapels followed in each mainland state and in New Zealand.

Purpose and charity

The Order is explicitly Christian. It teaches its members to help those in need and to practise humility, taking as its lesson the parable in the Gospel of Luke (14:7–11) in which guests are told to choose the lowest place at a feast rather than the highest, since “he that humbleth himself shall be exalted”.

Its one charitable aim is the support and maintenance of Canterbury Cathedral. Each September members and their guests make a pilgrimage to the cathedral for an annual service, a living link with the saint whose name both the medieval and the modern Orders bear.

Membership

Membership is by invitation only and limited to Christian Freemasons who are subscribing members of three bodies: a Craft lodge in amity with the United Grand Lodge of England, a Royal Arch chapter in amity with the Supreme Grand Chapter of England, and a Knights Templar preceptory in amity with the Great Priory of England and Wales, or their equivalents elsewhere. A Knight who later leaves his Templar preceptory remains a member of the Order.

Organisation and ceremony

A Grand Master, advised by the Grand Master’s Council, heads the Order. Chapels are grouped into Provinces, each led by a Grand Preceptor with his own council. A typical Chapel meets about twice a year.

There is only one ceremony, the admission of a candidate as a Knight of the Order, and its theme is the life and death of Thomas Becket. Two further honours, Knight Caritas and Knight Humilitas, may be awarded for service. On admission each new Knight takes a title in the medieval style, joining his Christian name to a place connected with his life, such as where he was born or has lived: hence titles like Sir John of Dorking.

Regalia

The regalia deliberately echoes that of the Masonic Knights Templar. Knights wear a stone-white tunic bearing a full-length crimson Latin cross, overlaid with a narrower white cross and a scallop shell where the arms meet; over it goes a white hooded mantle with a cross on the left breast. A crimson velvet cap and a Templar-pattern sword on a belt complete the dress, although the Prior and the Almoner do not carry swords. The scallop shell, the ancient badge of the pilgrim, appears on tunic, mantle and cap, and its colour shows rank: bronze for Knights, silver for Provincial officers and gold for Grand officers.

For more information or if you would like to join, please visit the following URLs:
– http://www.stthomasacon.org/
– http://www.thomas-of-acon.org/
– https://st-thomas-of-acon-south-wales.org/