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The story
Founding
The birth of the Knights Hospitaller dates back to around 1048. Merchants from the ancient Marine Republic of Amalfi obtained from the Caliph of Egypt the authorisation to build a church, convent, and hospital in Jerusalem, to care for pilgrims of any religious faith or race. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem – the monastic community that ran the hospital for the pilgrims in the Holy Land – became independent under the guidance of its founder, the religious brother Gerard.
With the Papal bull Pie postulatio voluntatis dated 15 February 1113, Pope Paschal II approved the foundation of the Hospital and placed it under the aegis of the Holy See, granting it the right to freely elect its superiors without interference from other secular or religious authorities. By virtue of the Papal bull, the hospital became an order exempt from the control of the local church. All the Knights were religious, bound by the three monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
The constitution of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades obliged the order to take on the military defence of the sick, the pilgrims, and the captured territories. The order thus added the task of defending the faith to that of its hospitaller mission.
As time went on, the order adopted the white, eight-pointed Cross that is still its symbol today. The eight points represent the eight beatitudes that Jesus pronounced in his Sermon on the Mount.
Cyprus
When the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land fell after the Siege of Acre in 1291, the order settled first in Cyprus.
Rhodes
In 1310, led by Grand Master Fra' Foulques de Villaret, the knights regrouped on the island of Rhodes. From there, the defense of the Christian world required the organization of a naval force, so the order built a powerful fleet and sailed the eastern Mediterranean, fighting battles for the sake of Christendom, including Crusades in Syria and Egypt.
In the early 14th century, the institutions of the order and the knights who came to Rhodes from every corner of Europe were grouped according to the languages they spoke. The first seven such groups, or Langues (Tongues) – from Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon (Navarre), England (with Scotland and Ireland), and Germany – became eight in 1492, when Castile and Portugal were separated from the Langue of Aragon. Each Langue included Priories or Grand Priories, Bailiwicks, and Commanderies.
The order was governed by its Grand Master, the Prince of Rhodes, and its Council. From its beginning, independence from other nations granted by pontifical charter and the universally recognized right to maintain and deploy armed forces constituted grounds for the international sovereignty of the order, which minted its own coins and maintained diplomatic relations with other states. The senior positions of the order were given to representatives of different Langues.
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In 1523, after six months of siege and fierce combat against the fleet and army of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the walls collapsed from undermining explosives, and by a negotiated surrender the Knights left Rhodes carrying their arms.
Malta
The order remained without a territory of its own until 1530, when Grand Master Fra' Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle Adam took possession of the island of Malta, granted to the order by Emperor Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and his mother Queen Joanna of Castile as monarchs of Sicily, with the approval of Pope Clement VII, for which the order had to honour the conditions of the Tribute of the Maltese Falcon.
In 1565, the Knights, led by Grand Master Fra' Jean de Valette (after whom the capital of Malta, Valletta, was named), defended the island for more than three months during the Great Siege by the Ottomans.
The fleet of the order contributed to the ultimate destruction of the Ottoman naval power in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, led by John of Austria, half brother of King Philip II of Spain.
The Reformation, which split Western Europe into Protestant and Catholic states, affected the knights as well. In several countries, including England, Scotland, and Sweden, the order dissolved. In others, including the Netherlands and Germany, entire bailiwicks or commanderies (administrative divisions of the order) experienced Protestant conversions; these "Johanniter orders" survive in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden and many other countries, including the United States and South Africa. It was established that the order should remain neutral in any war between Christian nations.
From 1651 to 1665, the order ruled four islands in the Caribbean. On 21 May 1651 it acquired the islands of Saint Barthélemy, Saint Christopher, Saint Croix and Saint Martin. These were purchased from the French Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique which had just been dissolved. In 1665, the four islands were sold to the French West India Company.
In 1798, Napoleon led the French occupation of Malta. Napoleon demanded from Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim that his ships be allowed to enter the port and to take on water and supplies. The Grand Master replied that only two foreign ships could be allowed to enter the port at a time. Bonaparte, aware that such a procedure would take a long time and leave his forces vulnerable to British Admiral Horatio Nelson, immediately ordered a cannon fusillade against Malta. The French soldiers disembarked in Malta at seven points on the morning of 11 June and attacked. After several hours of fierce fighting, the Maltese in the west were forced to surrender.
Napoleon opened negotiations with the fortress capital of Valletta. Faced with vastly superior French forces and the loss of western Malta, the Grand Master negotiated a surrender to the invasion. Hompesch left Malta for Trieste on 18 June. He resigned as Grand Master on 6 July 1799.
The knights were dispersed, though the order continued to exist in a diminished form and negotiated with European governments for a return to power as part of the agreement between France and Holy Roman Empire during the German mediatisation. The Russian Emperor, Paul I, gave the largest number of knights shelter in Saint Petersburg, an action that gave rise to the Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller and the order's recognition among the Russian Imperial Orders. The refugee knights in Saint Petersburg proceeded to elect Tsar Paul as their Grand Master – a rival to Grand Master von Hompesch until the latter's abdication left Paul as the sole Grand Master. Grand Master Paul I created, in addition to the Catholic Grand Priory, a "Russian Grand Priory" of no fewer than 118 Commanderies, dwarfing the rest of the order and open to all Christians. Paul's election as Grand Master was, however, never ratified under Catholic canon law, and he was the de facto rather than de jure Grand Master of the Order.
By the early 19th century, the order was severely weakened by the loss of its priories throughout Europe. Only 10% of the order's income came from traditional sources in Europe, with the remaining 90% being generated by the Russian Grand Priory until 1810. This was partly reflected in the government of the order being under Lieutenants, rather than Grand Masters, in the period 1805 to 1879, when Pope Leo XIII restored a Grand Master to the order. This signaled the renewal of the order's fortunes as a humanitarian and religious organization.
Exile
The French forces occupying Malta expelled the Knights Hospitaller from the country.
During the seventeen years that separated the seizure of Malta and the General Peace, "the formality of electing a brother Chief to discharge the office of Grand Master, and thus to preserve the vitality of the Sovereign Institute, was duty attended to". The office of Lieutenant of the Magistery and ad interim of Grand Master was held by the Grand Baillies Count Nikolay Saltykov, Giovanni Battista Tommasi, Innico Maria Guevara-Suardo, Andrea Di Giovanni y Centellés, Carlo Candida and Count Filippo di Colloredo-Mels. Their mandates complexively covered the period until the death of the Emperor Paul in 1801.
The Treaty of Amiens (1802) obliged the United Kingdom to evacuate Malta, which was to be restored to a recreated Order of St. John, whose sovereignty was to be guaranteed by all of the major European powers, to be determined at the final peace. However, this did not happen because of objections to the treaty that quickly grew in the United Kingdom.
Bonaparte's rejection of a British offer involving a ten-year lease of Malta prompted the reactivation of the British blockade of the French coast; Britain declared war on France on 18 May.
The 1802 treaty was never implemented. The United Kingdom resumed hostilities citing France's imperialist policies in the West Indies, Italy, and Switzerland.
Sovereign Military Order of Malta
The Congress of Vienna of 1815 confirmed the loss of Malta. After having temporarily resided in Messina, Catania and Ferrara, the seat of the order was moved to Ferrara in 1826 and to Rome in 1834. The Magistral Palace in Via Condotti 68 and the Magistral Villa on the Aventine Hill are recognised by the Government of Italy as having extraterritorial status. The grand priories of Lombardy-Venetia and of Sicily were restored from 1839 to 1841. The office of Grand Master was restored by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, after a vacancy of 75 years, confirming Giovanni Battista Ceschi a Santa Croce as the first Grand Master of the restored Order of Malta. However, the loss of possession of Malta during this period did not affect the right of active and passive legation for the order, which is legally important for the absolute continuity of international status, regardless of the former territorial possession.
The original hospitaller mission became the main activity of the order, growing ever stronger during the 20th century, most especially because of the contribution of the activities carried out by the Grand Priories and National Associations in many countries around the world. Large-scale hospitaller and charitable activities were carried out during World Wars I and II under Grand Master Fra' Ludovico Chigi Albani della Rovere (1931–1951). Under the Grand Masters Fra' Angelo de Mojana di Cologna (1962–1988) and Fra' Andrew Bertie (1988–2008), the projects expanded.
In February 2013, the order celebrated the 900th anniversary of its papal recognition with a general audience with Pope Benedict XVI and a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone in Saint Peter's Basilica.
The order has 95,000 volunteers.
Constitutional reform
The order experienced a leadership crisis beginning in December 2016, when Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager protested his removal as Grand Chancellor by Grand Master Fra' Matthew Festing. Festing had removed Von Boeselager after other aid groups were found to have distributed condoms as part of a joint charitable project with the order's Malteser International to help sex slaves in Myanmar protect themselves from AIDS. In January 2017, Pope Francis ordered von Boeselager reinstated and required Festing's resignation. Francis also named Archbishop (later Cardinal) Giovanni Becciu as his personal representative to the order – sidelining the order's Cardinal Patron Raymond Burke – until the election of a new Grand Master. The pope effectively taking control over the order was seen by some as a break with tradition and the order's independence.
In May 2017, the order named Mauro Bertero Gutiérrez, a Bolivian member of the Government Council, to lead its constitutional reform process. In June 2017, in a departure from tradition, the leadership of the order wore a suit rather than full dress uniforms to their annual papal audience. In May 2018 when a new Grand Master was elected, Francis extended Becciu's mandate indefinitely. When the order's Chapter General met in May 2019 three of the 62 participants were women for the first time.
On 1 November 2020, Pope Francis named Archbishop (later Cardinal) Silvano Tomasi to replace Becciu as his Special Delegate to the order, reiterating the responsibilities of that office as his sole representative.
On 3 September 2022, Pope Francis promulgated the new constitution of the order and made provisional appointments to the Sovereign Council; he scheduled a convocation of the Extraordinary General Chapter for 25 January 2023, when regular appointments can be made in place of his provisional ones. On 26 January, the General Chapter elected to six-year terms on the Sovereign Council the same four members Francis had appointed the previous September and six of the nine Councillors he had named.
On 19 June 2023, Pope Francis named Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda to succeed Burke as patron.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sovereign Military Order of Malta, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5