Zakon Maltański

Abstract

Any consideration of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, called of Rhodes, called of Malta – to give its full title – must necessarily begin with at least a broad review of its nearly-millenary history. For it is this history, together with the adaptations which enabled the Order to survive the vicissitudes of that history, which explains the institutional profile which the Order has maintained to the present day, the object of the present study. The Order was organized during the Crusades and, for much of its history, it was involved in the epic struggle of the Crusade against the infidel. The history of the Order begins with a hospital or infirmary for pilgrims in Jerusalem run by a monastic community under the direction of the figure known to history as the Blessed Gerard. After the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the community led by Gerard received the approval of the Roman Pontiffs (bull Pie postulatio voluntatis z 15.02.1113). In order to prosecute the war, however, the Order required an independence which was difficult to achieve while it was a guest of the Kings of Cyprus. Consequently, under the Grand Master Fra Foulques de Villaret, the Order acquired the island of Rhodes. The Knights sailed for Candia and thence by way of Messina to Civitavecchia in the Papal States. The Habsburg Emperor Charles V had earlier offered the order the fief of Malta, an ancient dependency of the Aragonese crown of Sicily. Malta became the base for the second phase of the Order’s naval history, which moved into the western Mediterranean theater. By the end of the 18th century, The Order faced a new enemy as terrible as the infidel of old, revolutionary France. In the midst of this revolutionary turmoil, the Order received support from an unexpected quarter: Orthodox Russia. In the Meantime, however, while en route to Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte attacked the island of Malta in violation of its internationally-recognized neutrality among the Christian powers and forced the capitulation of the Knights on 12 June 1798. Bonaparte despoiled the Order of its treasury and forced it to abandon the island. At the death of the Grand Master Fra Angelo de Mojana di Cologna, the present Grand Master, Fra Andrew Bertie, was elected Prince and 78th Grand Master of the Sovereign Order on 8 April 1988. His reign has seen the unprecedented international expansion of the Order (some 11.000 members, organized in 52 Associations), its hospitaller work (19 hospitals and over 200 ambulatories and other centers), and its diplomatic activity (bilateral diplimatic relations with 86 countries and representation at various international organizations, oncluding a Permanent Observer at the United Nations). Having celebrated in 1999 its ninth centenary, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, called of Rhodes, called of Malta, progresses forward into the third Christian millennium because, as the Blessed Gerard affirmed: „Our Institution will continue as long as it pleases God to bring forth men willing to render lighter the burdens of suffering and more bearable those of misery” (John Paul II).