siege the fortifications
of Rhodes were enormously strengthened to resist the ever-heavier
Ottoman cannon. Since the Order could hire mercenary troops,
the defence of the city required only a limited number of Hospitaller
brethren. These were attracted to Rhodes largely by means of
a system of service and reward by which men, predominantly knight-brethren,
who went to serve in the Convent acquired there an ancienitas
or seniority which gave them rights to vacant commanderies or
priories in the West. A few opted instead for careers in the
Convent, hoping for office in the East or possibly even the
Mastership (22).
After 1347, the first year of successive great
plagues, the major economic and demographic crisis of the fourteenth
century meant that the Hospital's incomes were seriously reduced,
that recruitment was down and that the average age of brethren
rose dramatically. Hospitallers began to need several commanderies
in order to secure a satisfactory income, competition for benefices
increased and the eventual consequence was that access to the
Order came to be much more carefully regulated. There was a
general trend in European society towards the emergence of a
more clearly-defined noble class, and the Hospitallers had practical
reasons for regulating entry to the Order. By the early fifteenth
century some brethren were seeking to exclude rich merchant
candidates; the Order evolved a system of proofs of nobility,
or at first simply of knightly origin, in order to create a
class or caste of families with access to the Order as milites.
Statutes of 1428 and 1433 reasserted the requirement that recruits
must submit to an inquiry to prove their origins as "gentlemen"
(23). In 1442 Giovanni Martinelli
of Florence was received as a miles of the Italian langue on
Rhodes, but only on condition that within one year he provide
authentic proofs from the Prior of Pisa and others that he belonged
to the knightly class - appartene ali stabilimenti di esser
fra chavalier (24).
In 1530 the Hospitallers moved to a new island but, with comparatively
insignificant variations, they simply reproduced on Malta their
successful Rhodian "island order state" (25).
In a sense the history of Hospitaller Malta from 1530 to 1798
had been organized on Rhodes between
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1309 and 1522. The career of a
man like Fr. Pietrino del Ponte, an important figure at Rhodes
and the first Master elected in Malta, demonstrated such continuities
(26). A later Master, Fr. Philippe
de la Vallette, had fought in the final siege of Rhodes in 1522
and his experience proved invaluable during the siege of Malta
in 1565. Enjoying less independence than Rhodes, Malta was held
as a fief of the Sicilian kingdom on which it depended for its
grain supplies; its population was Catholic rather than Greek;
and the pope could interfere more effectively on Malta. However
Birgu, and later Valletta, were fortified; the Turks were beaten
back; the corso was maintained; a great hospital was built;
society and commerce were prosperously organized; and the Order
continued to be useful as it resisted or deterred Turkish assaults
and Barbary pirates. Until the collapse of the anciene régime
in France in and after 1792 the essential incomes from the Western
priories largely continued to reach Malta. Thereafter Napoleon
expelled the Order from the island in 1798 and it ceased to
be military, except in the rather special sense that it remained
noble.
For some decades after 1798 all seemed lost, but the tradition
survived. The social appeal of nobility could be exploited;
a convenient doctrine of sovereignty was evolved; and, above
all, renewed emphasis was placed on medical and charitable activities.
In the age of the Red Cross, of the United Nations, of NATO
and other such bodies, multinational institutions have become
attractive. In many countries, Britain for example, the welfare
state is increasingly unable to meet constantly expanding demands
for medical and other care, and in consequence the various branches
of the Order of Saint John have acquired an ever more important
role as efficient alternatives. This can be seen, for example,
with the Malteser Hilfdienst and the Johanniter in Germany or
with the Saint John's Ambulance Service in Britain. That means
that the image of the ancient Hospitaller tradition must be
propagated in order to mobilize public support not just by means
of museums and other heritage activities, but also through the
systematic, scientific history of the Hospital's past and through
its effective presentation (28).
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[22] Idem (1999), item
VII.
[23 Idem (1999), item XIX, 217-218; idem, Latin Greece, the
Hospitallers and the Crusades: 1291-1440 (London, 1982), item 1,
264 n. 87. J. Mol, "The 'Hospice of the German Nobility': Changes
in the Admission Policy of the Teutonic Knights in the Fifteenth
Century", in Mendicants, Military Orders and Regionalism in
Medieval Europe, ed. J. Sarnowsky (Aldershot, 1999), 122-125.
[24] Luttrell (1999), item XIX, 228-229.
[25] Idem, "Malta and Rhodes: Hospitallers
and Islanders", in Hospitaller Malta 1530-1798: Studies on
Early Modern Malta and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, ed. V.
Mallia-Milanes (Malta, 1993); this is the best single volume covering
the whole Malta period.
[26] L. Schiavone, Pietrino del Ponte nella Storia dell'Ordine
Gerosolimitano (Asti, 1995).
[27] The best treatment of the post-1798 period is in Sire,
243-279.
[28] The Order's historiography lacks systematic coordination:
A. Luttrell, "Gli Ospedalieri Italiani: Storia e Storiografia",
Studi Melitensi, vi (1998); the opportunities for the newly-established
Accademia Internazionale Melitense are evidently extensive.
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