The Knights of Malta: A Modern Resurrection

Third Millennium Publishing

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About the Author

H. J. A. Sire is a graduate in Modern History of Exeter

College, Oxford. He is known for his major work

The Knights of Malta (Yale University Press, 1994),

and has published articles on various aspects of the

Order, besides other works of Catholic history and

biography. He is a Knight of Malta and has been

resident in Rome since 2013 as historian of the

Order.

About the Publisher

Third Millennium has an international reputation

for producing illustrated books of the highest quality

for leading heritage, educational, legal and military

institutions. These include titles for and about: The

Sovereign Order of Malta; Durham Cathedral, York

Minster and Lincoln Cathedral; the universities of

Cambridge, Durham, Manchester, Newcastle and

Oxford; Harrow School, Rugby School, Lady Eleanor

Holles School and Withington Girls’ School; Sandhurst,

the Guards, the Royal Artillery and the Brigade of

Gurkhas. In 2015, Third Millennium is proud to be

producing 800th anniversary portraits of both Magna

Carta and the Lord Mayor’s Show.The remarkable story of how the most famous of the

venerable Christian military orders recovered from

near extinction to resurgence and immortality

After centuries of distinguished service in defence of the

Christian faith in Europe and the Holy Land, the Order of St

John faced extinction when in 1798 the Maltese islands were

surrendered to Napoleonic France and the Knights expelled from

their territory. As the Order departed into exile, the heroic days

of the Crusades seemed lost for ever.

THE KNIGHTS OF MALTAA

Modern

Resurrection

H.J.A

. Sire

www.tmiltd.com

Third Millennium Publishing

THEKNIGHTSOF MALTAA Modern Resurrection

H.J.A. Sire THEKNIGHTSOF MALTAA Modern Resurrection

The history of the Order of Malta from

the French Revolutionary period to the

present day

H. J. A. Sire gives an unflinching account of the

Order’s hardships and loss – in which its very

existence was threatened as much by internal

dissensions and personal ambitions as by the

vicissitudes of fortune – and the long, patient

process of recovery which saw the Order open

its membership more widely and return to its

founding vocation of care for Christian pilgrims.

Now over nine hundred years old, the Order

boasts a vibrant, growing membership and a

proud record of charitable works across the world.

Cover images:

(Front) Celebration of the 900th anniversary of the

Order of Malta at St Peter’s in 2013

(Back, upper) The Sovereign Council in 2012, painted by

Andrew Festing, former President of the Royal Society

of Portrait Painters, and brother of the Grand Master Fra

Matthew Festing

(Back, lower) Castle of Magione

UK £35 / US $49.95

Knights_Of_Malta_Jacket-concept_REV3.indd 1 23/12/2015 12:23

Chapter 1

1

The Order of St John before 1798

Origins and developmentTo read a potted history of the first seven centuries of the Order of St John would probably tire

the attention of those who have a nodding acquaintance with the subject; but the purpose of

this chapter is to bring out various aspects with a particular bearing on the Order’s plight after

the fall of Malta in 1798, or on its development since then. The Order originated in a hospice

for pilgrims in Jerusalem, established, probably before 1071, by merchants of the Italian trading

state of Amalfi. The hospice stood on a site associated from antiquity with the life of St John

the Baptist, and was dedicated to that saint. Its founder was an energetic and saintly man called

Gerard, who was described in his memorial verses as “the humblest man among the dwellers

in the East”. When he began his task, Jerusalem was still under Moslem rule, but in 1099 its

position vis-à-vis Western Christendom was transformed by the arrival of the First Crusade,

which conquered the Holy City and set up the Latin states along the Levantine coast. With the

vastly increased flow of pilgrims from the West, Gerard rose to the occasion, and within a few

years the Hospital of St John was, next to the Holy Sepulchre itself, the most important of the

Christian institutions in Jerusalem. Pope Paschal II recognised its status in 1113 by issuing the

Bull Pie Postulatio Voluntatis, which set up Gerard’s foundation as an independent institution

exempt from episcopal authority. The buildings in Jerusalem grew prodigiously until they

covered a square of 150 yards, dominating the Christian quarter of the city. The new Hospital

built in the middle of the century was a vast hall measuring 80 yards by 40, divided into aisles

by 124 marble columns. In 1172 the monk Theoderic described it as follows:

No-one can credibly tell another how beautiful its buildings are, how abundantly

it is supplied with rooms and beds and other materials for the use of poor and sick

people, how rich it is in the means of refreshing the poor, and how devotedly it

labours to maintain the needy, unless he has the opportunity of seeing it with his

own eyes. Indeed, we passed through this palace, and were unable by any means to

discover the number of sick people lying there, but we saw that the beds numbered

more than one thousand. It is not every one even of the most powerful kings and

despots who could maintain as many people as that house does every day1.

The first purpose of the Hospital was to house poor pilgrims who came to the Holy City, and

the original vocation that Gerard taught his followers was service of “Our Lords the Poor”. But

The Knights of Malta

3

and the knights were driven back to the castle of Margat, in the County of Tripoli. For nearly

three years after the death of Roger des Moulins the Order was unable to elect a new Master. Its

Grand Commander, Borrell, took over the government, and he was joined in October 1187 by

Ermengard d’Asp, who in the following year took up sole rule as “Provisor” of the Order until

the election in 1189 or 1190 of Garnier de Naplous, who came out from France with the armies

of the Third Crusade. The recovery of Jerusalem proved beyond the crusaders, but in 1192

they were able to reconquer Acre, and here the Order resumed service of its hospital, second in

greatness only to the one it had lost in Jerusalem. Margat, with its extensive lands near Tripoli,

remained for the moment the Order’s military headquarters, until some years later the Masters

saw fit to settle its central Convent in Acre, the new capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

In 1206 the Statutes of Margat formalised for the first time the Hospital’s character as

a military order, with a tripartite division of chaplains, knights and sergeants-at-arms. The

knights were required to be of noble birth, the sergeants of respectable family, and they

constituted the officer corps and the non-commissioned officers of the army that the Order

maintained in the East. In the 1230s the knights were given precedence over the priests, and

soon all the chief offices of the Order, except that of Prior of the Church, were reserved to

them. By this time the phenomenon of the military orders, all displaying a similar structure,

was well established in Europe. The Templars and Hospitallers were supplemented by national

foundations: those of Spain and Portugal, which played a special role in the reconquest of the

Crac des Chevaliers, the most powerful of the castles that the Knights Hospitaller manned in the Holy Land during the age of the Crusader states


11

Langue Date Knights Date Knights

Provence 1631 272 1787 401

Auvergne 1631 143 1787 222

France 1631 361 1787 475

Aragon 1631 110 1796 161

Italy 1631 584 1789 652

Castile 1631 239 1791/4 135

Germany 1631 46 1785 82

Total 1631 1,755 1785/96 2,128

The three French Langues showed an increase of eighty-one knights just in the previous nine

years. Of the 2,128 knights listed, some 900 were under twenty-five; of these, more than half

were boys under eighteen – not, therefore, effective members of the Order, but a healthy sign

of its recruitment for the future. It is worth noting that only 494 of the adult knights were

professed3.

In response to the rise in recruitment, the Order increased the number of its commanderies,

partly by division of existing ones and also by the acquisition in 1776 of the Order of Canons

of St Anthony of Vienne. This created some forty commanderies, mainly in France, with a total

revenue of about 200,000 livres. The Order was also able to take possession, after many years

of misappropriation, of a large property in Poland, and thus to found in the same year a new

Grand Priory of Poland, with eight commanderies of juspatronat* and six ordinary ones. A more

valuable foundation, since not burdened with family rights, was that of the Grand Priory of

Bavaria, with twenty-eight commanderies, made in 1780 by the Elector Charles Theodore from

the property of the suppressed Jesuit Order. These two foundations, which brought the total of

the Order’s Priories to twenty-two, were combined in the new Anglo-Bavarian Langue, a revival

of the Langue of England that was decreed in 1782 with the old office of Turcopolier returned

to it. In the same line we may note the decision by Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1763 to

restore the Protestantised Grand Bailiwick of Brandenburg (a mediaeval division of the German

Priory) to unity with the Order. As its commanders were Protestant, they did not become full

brethren, but they resumed payment of responsions to the Convent in Malta.

* These were endowments created with the perpetual right reserved to the family of the founder to appoint the commander (who must nevertheless be a qualified Knight of Justice). Such foundations became particularly common in the nineteenth century, and remain in existence today.

* The Priory of Castile listed sixty-five knights, most of them under twenty-five, who had not made their proofs of nobility. It is questionable whether such persons were regarded as members by the other Priories and included in their lists; if so, the numbers for the Langue of Castile ought to be raised to 199. In either case, this Langue is exceptional in having shrunk considerably since 1631, for the importance to Spain of the struggle against the Moslems raised it to an unusual size during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

† An unusually low number owing to the Thirty Years’ War.

*†


7

out against a Turkish army of 40,000, until on 8 September the siege was raised by a Spanish

relieving force. By this feat of arms, the Order redeemed the sad memory of the loss of Rhodes

and founded such a legend that two centuries later Voltaire would write: “Nothing is better

known than the Siege of Malta.” As they developed their island in increasing strength and

splendour, the knights could rely on a prestige that made their Order the epitome of chivalry

and nobiliary virtue for the aristocracies of Europe.

The structure of the OrderSince the middle of the fifteenth century the Order of St John was divided into eight national

groups called Langues, which formed the basis of the knights’ residence in the Convent, first

at Rhodes and then in Malta. The lodging of each Langue was called its Auberge, over which

presided the head of the Langue, called the Pilier. The high offices of the Order, with their

respective responsibilities, were reserved to the Piliers, according to the following precedence:

1 Grand Commander (Langue of Provence): the treasury.

2 Marshal (Langue of Auvergne): the armed forces, and the army in particular.

3 Hospitaller (Langue of France): the hospital.

4 Conservator (Langue of Aragon): clothing and material supply.

5 Admiral (Langue of Italy): the navy.

6 Turcopolier (Langue of England until 1582; revived as the Anglo-Bavarian Langue in

1783): the coastal watchtowers.

7 Chancellor (Langue of Castile): chancery and foreign affairs.

8 Grand Bailiff (Langue of Germany): fortifications.

As far as the European organisation of the Order went, the Langues were groupings of several

local Priories, usually known by the eighteenth century as Grand Priories; their number stood

at twenty after the losses of the Reformation, which included the whole of the Langue of

England. Each Priory comprised a number of commanderies, distributed fairly evenly about

Europe. They were conferred on knights who had qualified by service and seniority, while

a minority of commanderies, of lesser value, were reserved for chaplains and sergeants-at-

arms. In addition, most Priories included one or two Bailiwicks, endowments of special value

reserved for Grand Crosses.

Every applicant wishing to be admitted as a knight had to submit his proofs of nobility –

in the Continental sense, equivalent to English gentry – to the Grand Priory in whose territory

he lived. Since 1550 the minimum requirement was nobility of all four of the candidate’s

grandparents, while in the French Langues it was eight “quarters” and in Germany sixteen.

After payment of his “passage money” and other dues, a knight could repair to Malta at the

age of fifteen and begin his year’s novitiate. This included weekly service in the Hospital, which

in Malta as in Rhodes formed the prominent symbol of the Order’s vocation. The knight was

then obliged to perform four years’ caravans, which were campaigns of at least six months

18

THE FALL OF MALTA AND THE RUSSIAN USURPATIONChapter 2

his family. The choices of patron were in fact

narrowed down to Naples and the German

Empire, and for reasons that we have seen,

the protection of Naples was more to be

feared than welcomed. That is why by 1797

it was considered certain that Rohan would

be succeeded by a German Grand Master.

This implied a very limited choice

indeed. Owing partly to the small size of the

Langue, no German had ever been elected

Grand Master of the Order. From 1791, when

Rohan suffered his stroke, an observer in

Malta would have seen a choice of just two

German Grand Crosses resident in the island:

Franz von Schönau, who was the Pilier of the

Langue, and Ferdinand von Hompesch, the

imperial ambassador. Then, seven months

before Rohan’s death, Schönau left for his

own country and Hompesch succeeded

him as Pilier, becoming the only candidate

available. This was a fatal predicament.

Hompesch was simply a minor diplomat,

weak in character, and a man whose career

had shown a consistent subservience to his

sovereign in detriment to the interests of the Order. When Rohan died in July 1797, the Order

thus found its choice restricted to the worst superior it could possibly have elected.

The conquests of the French revolutionaries made their annexationist aims very obvious.

Just before the election of Hompesch, France had conquered the Republic of Venice and its

possessions of the Ionian Islands, thus placing itself within striking distance of Malta. Yet in

the eleven months of his reign Hompesch devoted himself to cultivating his popularity at

home without making any attempt to prepare his island against attack. Schönau, who was

representative of the Order at the Congress of Rastadt in 1798, warned him unequivocally that

the French intended to seize Malta and urged him to take precautions, but the Grand Master

preferred to pay no heed. This inactivity, coming after the six years of enfeebled government

during Rohan’s illness, was fatal to the morale of the island. General Bonaparte had been

commissioned by the Directory to lead an expedition to Egypt, and to seize Malta on the way

so as to give France a naval base in the central Mediterranean. Nelson was cruising off Toulon

to stop any such departure, but Bonaparte gave him the slip, and on 6 June 1798 he appeared

off Malta with a fleet of between 500 and 600 vessels carrying an army of 29,000 men. When

Ferdinand von Hompesch, the last Grand Master of the Order in Malta

28

100 Miles500

Showing the location ofthe Order’s Conventsince 1798 (in bold).

The frontiers shownare those between 1815and 1860.

Map of Italy

A U S T R I A N E M P I R E

KI

NG

DO

M

OF

S

AR

DI

NI

A

Milan

ELBA LISSA

PARMA

MO

DEN

A

T U S C A N Y

PA PA LS TAT E S

K I N G D O M

O F T H E

T W O

S I C I L I E S

A F R I C A

CORSICA(to France)

Ferrara1826–31

Trieste1798–99

Maltauntil 1798

Catania1809–26

Civitavecchia

Romefrom 1834Romefrom 1834

Messina1803–04

Ferrara1826–31

Trieste1798–99

Maltauntil 1798

Catania1809–26

Messina1803–04

LESINA

40

Chapter 4 FAILURES WITHIN

Andrea di Giovanni, Lieutenant of the Order 1814–21 Amabile Vella, Vice-Chancellor of the Order 1814–31

Antonio Miari, the Order’s envoy in Vienna 1814–23 Josef-Maria von Colloredo-Wallsee, Grand Prior of Bohemia 1791–1818


49

a conceptual blunder that was all too common at the time – it treated the restoration of the

Order as something that depended on the decision of the Congress, and asked the Congress

to beg the Pope to appoint a Grand Master. By this false step Miari reduced the Order from an

equal party treating with the other sovereigns to one of the many lobbyists and petitioners that

were pestering the Congress for their interests. Hannonville’s memoir, which was circulated

after Miari’s, was a more forward-looking document, emphasising the future value of the Order

to the European states as a defence against Barbary piracy and as a nursery of sailors.

Another difference between the two documents was their treatment of territorial

compensation. The original instructions to the Order’s delegates, written in February 1814, had

told them to reclaim the island of Malta, under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens; but that had

been superseded in May by the Treaty of Paris, which accorded Malta definitively to Britain.

We should remember that at this time Murat was still King of Naples and Napoleon was being

provided with the nominally independent island of Elba; in those conditions Britain could

not relinquish its naval base in the central Mediterranean*. The same circumstance should

remind us that the purpose of the Congress of Vienna at this initial stage was not a general

restoration of legitimacy but the settlement of Europe on the basis of uti possidetis. Miari,

when he took over as the Lieutenancy’s chief delegate, decided not to attempt the recovery of

Malta, so as not to set Britain irrevocably against the Order, and the same judgment was made

by the French petitioners of the Congress. It was a question therefore of what territory might

be claimed as a compensation. A number of possibilities were mentioned, but by far the most

likely were the old Venetian possessions of the Ionian Islands. These had been set up in 1800

as an independent republic under Russian protection, had been ceded to France by the Treaty

of Tilsit, and reconquered by Britain between 1809 and 1814. The British did not really know

what to do with them (they eventually handed over the islands to Greece in 1859 after forty-

five years of protectorate), and were considering various candidates to whom to cede them,

including Russia and Austria. There was widespread public opinion that this was the obvious

place to put the Knights of St John.

If the Order had received the Ionian Islands, it would certainly have been a handsome

compensation for the loss of Malta. The archipelago had a territory of nearly 1,000 square

miles and a well-fortified capital at Corfu, which had been the seat of the Venetian governor.

Though not so well situated as Malta, it was a possible place from which to resume the war

against Barbary piracy, which was still far from obsolete. The British had made little attempt

to take up the knights’ protective role in Malta except in the interest of their own trade, and

the corsair war had revived, especially against the shipping of the lesser European states. One

of the most colourful figures at the Congress of Vienna was the English admiral Sir Sidney

* The corollary was that, once Napoleon was out of Elba and Naples restored to Bourbon rule in 1815, Britain would have cheerfully given up Malta in exchange for Minorca. This, however, had only been annexed in the eighteenth century as a prize of war with Spain, and could not be claimed now that Spain was an ally.

90

Chapter 5 THE GREEK ADVENTURE

A faulty LieutenantSainte-Croix also acted as an amanuensis for Dienne, his casually elegant handwriting replacing

the Commander’s scrawl. On 3 January 1823 Dienne wrote a long letter to Vella, whom he still

regarded as a trusted friend, expressing his conclusions about the fiasco at Verona. The bulk

of the letter is in Sainte-Croix’s hand, and it makes the following denunciation: Dienne had

already written on the subject to the Lieutenant, and had received no reply.

This announces an indifference towards the Langues of France which must impel

us to look no longer but to ourselves for the means of salvation that remain to

us. Weigh that at headquarters, my dear Commander*, for I have had on various

occasions to exercise to no small extent my patience and my rhetoric to restrain

within just limits the discontent of the majority of our leading knights ...

Six or eight months before the Congress, I wrote to headquarters about the need

to figure suitably there. The reply was that the approval of the high Powers was

awaited to form the legation … Being unable to remain in uncertainty in that

regard, I wrote myself to the principal Courts of Europe, from whom I received

the assurance that no representatives of the Order, avowed or secret, had made

any proposals on the matter, for they would certainly not have been left without

result … I am obliged to think that nothing important in diplomacy was ever

seriously attempted, and that it is very natural therefore that we should remain

forgotten, since we are incapable of helping ourselves. On the other hand, if the

headquarters had undertaken negotiations, what reasons would there have been

not to inform us of them? The French Langues and those of Aragon and Castile

who have delegated their powers to us, were they not a sufficiently weighty part

of the Order to have a part in general affairs?

... If we had remained inactive, we should know nothing today of what concerns

us, and without our decision to send our own envoys to the source of power

in Verona we should have had to believe, when we learnt that our Venerable

Lieutenant and our worthy Bailli Miari had not appeared at the Congress, what

had become of the Order, and that the foreign Powers had no thought of us at

all. But it is quite otherwise, and our Envoy, who enjoyed the full intimacy of

Prince Metternich and the high protection of the Sovereigns, received the most

favourable overtures, and a decision would have been taken on the proposals

that were made to them if the heads of the Order had been so placed as to

respond to them personally. The road that the Order has followed until this time

* Vella had by this time been invested with the commandery of Mugnano in central Italy.


123

At any rate, if the Convent could not

move to Civitavecchia or to Rome, neither

could it remain in Ferrara, and Ciccolini

formally ordered its closure by a letter of 15

October 1831*. In the Balì Trotti’s opinion,

this measure would not have been necessary

if Busca had heeded his advice and avoided

the recent extravagances. For the next three

years the Order had no Convent of knights,

a misfortune which had only occurred twice

before in its history, after the fall of Jerusalem

in 1187 and after the dispersal of the Convent

of Trieste in 1799. A consequence was that

no statutory Council could be formed and

no decrees could be issued, including those

admitting Knights of Justice or of Devotion.

For Italy, this hardly mattered, since Busca

anyway refused all receptions, but it would

not do for Bohemia, whose Grand Priory, it

was feared, might take the occasion to secede.

A brief was therefore requested from the Pope, and granted on 20 December, empowering the

Lieutenant to govern the Order alone and issue all necessary decrees on his own authority, and

this became the legal basis of the Order’s government for the next fourteen years40.

In his eagerness to help the knights, Gregory XVI also proposed at this time to restore

the Grand Mastership, the favour which had been so constantly denied by Pius VII and which

Busca ever since had failed to request; but the Lieutenant refused the offer with derision. Such

a head, he wrote, could be no more than a playing-card king41. That, indeed, was the phantom

state to which the Order had been reduced by Busca’s own incapacity.

After the death of Vella, Busca’s defeatism deepened even further than before, and his

last three years are empty of events, other than the refusal of opportunities. Gregory XVI

waited for the Lieutenant’s death, which could not be far off. In December 1833 Busca fell ill in

Milan, and the Pope was asked for a brief authorising the Vice-Chancellor to govern the Order

with interim powers. Busca recovered, and between January and April 1834 he resumed his

correspondence, but after a final illness he died on 19 May.

So ended the worst twenty years in the history of the Order of Malta, a time in which its

misfortunes came not from external blows but from the faults of its own government, which

* In practice, the only knights who had come back into residence after the summer recess were the two Borgia brothers, and one may regard the Convent of Ferrara as closed from Vella’s death on 27 May.

Pope Gregory XVI (reigned 1831–46)

The Magistral election of 1988, in the Chapter Hall of the Aventine Villa

The icon of Our Lady of Filermo, rediscovered in 1997 The Order’s castle of Magione, in central Italy

The seize quartiers of the present Grand Master. The genealogical tree shows, under Continental rules, the sixteen armigerous great-great-grandparents of Fra Matthew Festing (in practice fourteen, since his paternal grandparents were first cousins). In the arms of Fra Matthew’s mother, Mary Riddell, the artist has also shown all the quarterings to which the Riddells are entitled under English heraldic rules. The ordinary form of the Riddell arms is shown in the top line

The Spanish ambassador presents his credentials to Grand Master Fra Matthew Festing in the State Drawing Room of the Magistral Palace

Documents

The Knights of Malta: A Modern Resurrection