Hospitaller Civilisation

he history of the Order of St. John was not only a succession of battles. For more than two centurics following the battle of Lepanto, its ships continued to plough the seas. Then, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, the decadence of Muslim power made its military engagement less pressing. Malta, in the meantime, became more and more a State which dealt at par with the greatest European powers and assumed, as time passed, a prestigious and strong position which was the reason for disagreements and more or less serious conflicts with the Holy See itself.

The Order also had many occasions to enlarge its territories. In 1652, in order to take possession of some property in the Antilles which had been administered by a Knight on behalf of the King of France, the Knights bought the islands of St. Christopher, St. Martin, St. Bartholomew and Santa Cruz. Fra' Charles de Galles was sent there to govern them but soon the Order decided to give up these properties because of the moral and political embarrassment they may have caused to the ancient Order of Chivalry.

The endless series of military ventures and the continuous danger of being attached on their own island had not turned the Knights away from their other institutional duty. Even in the most difficult times they never forgot their hospitaller activities and continued to establish and administer hospitals as they had in, Jerusalem, in Tolemaides, Cyprus, Rhodes and in the other homes they had been compelled to move to, following the loss of the Holy Land.

In Rhodes, it is still possible to admire the ruins of the Great Infirmary and in Malta, the modernity of the building where their "lords the sick" were hosted, to this day arouses admiration and amazement, both for its size and avant-garde characteristics. Not only did they build hospitals in the countries in which they settled, but also ensured that every Commandery should include a hospice where pilgrims and passers-by could find refuge and assistance. Each hospice had its own economic fund and was administered by a group of Knights under the guidance of a Preceptor or a Knight Commander. A certain number of Commanderies were grouped together to constitute a Bailiwick which came under the jurisdiction of a Bailiff, while the various Commanderies and Bailiwicks made up a Priory or Grand Priory.

The Holy Religion consisted of as many as twenty two Priories in Europe and this permitted them to run a network of hospices from England to Sicily and from France to Austria. A vast and complex organisation that absorbed a good part of the economic resources of the Order and was monitored by the Hospitaller, one of the most important positions that for a long time had been entrusted to the Pilier of the Langue of France.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, in the Hospital in Malta were three supervisory doctors, three surgeons and various doctors and nurses. The assistance of the sick was, for the most part, the responsibility of the Knights themselves who, above all during their novitiate, were entrusted in shifts with this duty. In an age when sanitary conditions were somewhat neglected, particularly at sea, the ships of the Order were a good example of hygiene and cleanliness. It was inevitable that the Order would end up not only in the field of healthcare but in scientific research too.

In 1664 Grand Master Fra' Nicolas Cotoner founded a medical school in the "Sacra Infermeria" and called upon Giuseppe Zammit, a great intellectual leader of his time, to direct it, while Fra' Antonio Zondadari, Grand Master from 1720 to 1722 allowed corpses to be used for the first time during lessons. In 1769 Grand Master Fra' Manuel Pinto de Fonseca founded the University and many illustrious European medical doctors were called to teach there. It was a Grand Master, in the middle of the eighteenth century, who would confer the first degree in medicine on a woman and permit her to perform surgery.

Good sailors that they were, the Knights paid particular attention to eye treatment. It was a doctor and scientist from Malta, Joseph Bart, who founded in Vienna in 1765 the first Chair of Ophthalmology in the world. Besides studies in medicine, the Knights gave a great impulse to pharmacology and the galleys of St. John were the first to have both a doctor and chemist on board.

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