Knights of Malta
The Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John, Knights of Malta Ecumenical Order.
The Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John, Knights of Malta Ecumenical Order.
If the geopolitics of the eastern Mediterranean seems complicated now, the region during the era of the Crusades makes the present day appear an idyll of apple-pie order. With the Byzantine Empire in decline, there were no countries, in the modern sense, to speak of. Rather, the map was a crazy quilt of duchies, bishoprics and bailiwicks that were ceaselessly forming and dissolving alliances with or against each other.
Power was not necessarily linked to geography. One of the most powerful political organisms in the late Middle Ages was the Order of St. John, the Knights Hospitallers whose ranks comprised the scions of the richest aristocratic families of Europe. Formed in Jerusalem in the 11th Century to provide hospital care to Christian pilgrims, the Knights soon became one of the foremost military powers in the region. Their base of operations was a string of castles. After the Saracens dislodged them from the mainland, the Knights relocated briefly to Cyprus, and then to the island of Rhodes.
In 1523, the Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent successfully besieged the Knights in their Aegean stronghold, and once more they were set adrift. The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V came to the rescue and offered them the island of Malta with favorable terms. In exchange for a perpetual lease, the Knights sent the Emperor a falcon once every year as a token of their fealty. They remained, making the island the most impregnable fortress in the Mediterranean.
The story of the Knights of Malta is on one hand a stirring epic of chivalry, and on the other hand, an obscure and confusing strand of history, for the Order's identity was a constantly shifting matrix of military, religious, and political goals that has no modern parallel.
A force of 549 Knights and 400 Spanish troops, augmented by the Maltese gentry, held out against a besieging Turkish army of 40,000 for nearly four months. The battle raged all day, and at the end of it, 200 of the 260 defenders lay dead, but astoundingly, St. Elmo was still unconquered. That night the survivors took Communion in the fort's chapel. Not one of them remained unwounded. Bodies were blasted into strange contortions by the injuries, and eyes stared out wildly from faces blackened by gunpowder. Two of the Knights who were too crippled to walk had themselves carried to the walls in chairs to face the enemy. In the morning, when the last Turkish attack was launched, St. Elmo still took an hour to die.
The Turkish general was so vexed by the Knights' stubbornness that he had the dead bodies of St. Elmo's defenders nailed to crosses and set afloat in the harbor. In retaliation, the Grand Master of the Order, Jean de la Valette, beheaded his Turkish prisoners and fired their heads from cannons into the enemy lines.
Emperor Paul I The Knights held on until reinforcements arrived in the nick of time, and turned back the Turks. In the aftermath of the siege, the Knights used their enormous wealth to rebuild Malta as the masterpiece of military architecture,
In 1798, Napoleon invaded Malta. The Order of St. John, headed by Grand Master Von Hompesch, surrendered without resistance. Von Hompesch went into exile, and the Knights scattered all over Europe returning to France, Spain, Prussia, Bavaria, Italy, and England where they joined their brother Knights and arranged separate protection in one form or another, establishing their various groups as independently functioning chapters according to their geopolitical location and religious persuasion. That was the beginning of other Branches that exist today.
Loyal and courageous Knights opposed the decision by Von Hompesch. They went back to Russia where they were received by Emperor Paul I who was the Protector. Later, the Knights assembled in Russia, formed a Chapter in St. Petersburg, and elected Paul I as the 70th Grand Master. Pope Pius VI from the Monastery of Cassini, near Florence, bestowed his paternal and apostolic benediction upon Paul I shortly after he accepted the office of Grand Master.
Today, although the Order, like the Christian Church, is split up into many Chapters, members are all bearers of the centuries old tradition, and observe the Code, which was written centuries ago. The Motto of the Order everywhere is:
.