Nearly nine centuries after their first appearance, caring for pilgrims in hospices and protecting them from attack on the road, Military Orders continue to play a variety of social and charitable roles today. This collection of thirty-three papers from the second international conference on the Military Orders, contributed by scholars from Europe, the Middle East and the United States, reflects a variety of concerns, but the focus is very much on the beginnings of the Military Orders and their heyday at the time of the Crusades.The subject matter reflects the Military Ordersa (TM) wide-ranging activities, dealing with topics such as medieval hospital care, crusading in the Middle East, warfare in Lithuania, piracy in the Mediterranean, castles in Bohemia, the Reformation in Switzerland and 17th-century European diplomacy. This volume complements the Proceedings of the very successful first conference, The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, edited by Malcolm Barber (1994) and now out of print.
Nearly nine centuries after their first appearance, caring for pilgrims in hospices and protecting them from attack on the road, Military Orders continue to play a variety of social and charitable roles today. This collection of thirty-three papers from the second international conference on the Military Orders, contributed by scholars from Europe, the Middle East and the United States, reflects a variety of concerns, but the focus is very much on the beginnings of the Military Orders and their heyday at the time of the Crusades.The subject matter reflects the Military Ordersa (TM) wide-ranging activities, dealing with topics such as medieval hospital care, crusading in the Middle East, warfare in Lithuania, piracy in the Mediterranean, castles in Bohemia, the Reformation in Switzerland and 17th-century European diplomacy. This volume complements the Proceedings of the very successful first conference, The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, edited by Malcolm Barber (1994) and now out of print.
Written by a brilliant scholar, this book is the first volume of a major work, which makes full use of the very rich documentary material still surviving and relates it to the evidence of the chronicles. Oriental sources are not disregarded: use is made of Arabic material and the latest archaeological discoveries in the Near East. The author has concentrated upon the Order as an institution in the crusader states and as a powerful international religious corporation. He considers its growth to power, its participation in the polititcs of the Latin settlement in the East, its organisation, its position as an exempt Order of the Church, its properties and its methods of administration as a landlord in feudal states. For the first time, the Order of St John is treated in a way that is neither hostile nor romantically partisan: and the author's conclusions differ from those of other historians. In his description of the Hospitallers' policies, the place they occupied in the government of Latin Syria, their privileges and the way they lived, he shows how it was thay they - individuals as well as the corporate body - played such a significant part in the history of the Christian East in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This book is important to all those interested in the Knights of St John, the international Orders of mediaeval Christendom or the extra-ordinary states established by western Europeans on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Malta compiles the unusually rich and long history of the islands comprising the country of Malta. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-reference dictionary entries describing all of the major places, persons, institutions, and events that have shaped the history of the archipelago.
This title was first published in 2002: Dr Luttrell's work has helped change our understanding of the history of the small islands of Malta and Gozo, providing a more coherent story of the ways in which, during the Middle Ages, a small isolated Muslim community was converted into a more prosperous outpost of Roman Christianity with a unique cultural mixture of Arabic speech and European institutions. This selection of studies places the process within the context of developments in the medieval Mediterranean world and combines archaeological and architectural investigations with work in Maltese, Sicilian and other archives, with a particular focus on ecclesiastical matters; a new introduction brings the subject up to date. This work is of relevance to scholars of Islam and Christianity, while providing insights into the nature of an unusual island community whose significance far exceeds its size.
This book details the origin of the Grand Hospitaller Priory of Messina. It discusses a breadth of themes, such as the historiography, the Hospitaller’s European commandery and Sicilian patrimony, its management and organization in the seventeenth century, its religious practices, and the prioral mansion in Messina. The final chapter includes a detailed account of the 1674 Messina insurrection against the Spanish overlords. This event plunged the priory into political chaos, fracturing it and pitting members against each other. It also shattered neutrality issues embedded in the statutes of the religion and ignoring the precepts emanating from the Convent on Malta. The Hospitaller Grand Priory of Messina in the Seventeenth Century will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the Crusading Orders, the history of the Knights Hospitaller, and the history of Malta.
The Knights of St John of Jerusalem, also known as the Hospitallers, were a military religious order, subject to monastic vows and discipline but devoted to the active defence of the Holy Land. After evacuating the Holy Land at the beginning of the fourteenth century, they occupied Rhodes, which they held into the sixteenth century, when their headquarters moved to Malta. Branches of the order existed throughout Europe, and it is the English branch in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies that is examined here.Among the major subjects researched by O'Malley are the recruitment of members of the Hospital and their family ties; the operation of the order's career structure; the administration of its estates; its provision of spiritual and charitable services; and the publicity and logistical support it provided for the holy war carried on by its headquarters against the Ottoman Turks. It is argued that the English Hospitallers in particular took their military and financial duties to the order veryseriously, making a major contribution to the Hospital's operations in the Mediterranean as a result. They were able to do so because they were wealthy, had close family and other ties with gentle and mercantile society, and above all because their activities had royal support. Where this was lacking orineffective, as in Ireland, the Hospital might become the plaything of local interests eager to exploit its estates, and its wider functions might be neglected. Consequently the heart of the book lies in an extended discussion of the relationship between senior Hospitaller officers and the governing authorities of Britain and Ireland. It is concluded that rulers were generally supportive of the order's activities, but within strict limits, particularly in matters concerning appointments, thesize of payments to the east, and the movement and foreign allegiances of senior brethren. When these limits were breached, or at times of political or religious sensitivity such as the 1460s and 1530s, the Hospital's personnel and estates would suffer.In addition, more general areas of historical debate are illuminated such as those concerning the relationship between late medieval societies and the religious orders; 'British' attitudes to Christendom and holy war, and the rights of rulers over their subjects. This is the first such book to be based on archival records in both Britain and Malta, and will make a major contribution to understanding the order's European network, its place in the ordering of Latin Christendom, and in particularits role in late medieval British and Irish society.
This volume is concerned with the sources for the study of the Crusades, conceived in terms of the records of their history and of their enemies, the motives that inspired them, and the monuments which they left behind. Some of the studies analyse particular historical sources, both written and visual, for the events of the Crusades and the history of the Crusader states. Others look more broadly at the impact of the Crusading movement in the West, its origins and its propaganda, from the First Crusade to the time of Erasmus.
