Charles v's Donation of Malta to the Order of St.

John
From Peregrinationes II, a publication of the Accademia Internazionale Melitense

Victor Mallia Milanes University of Malta Venice rejoiced at the news of the fall of Hospitaller Rhodes on 21 December 1522. On 4 March 1523, the Venetian Senate elected Pietro Zen the Republic's special envoy to the Ottoman Porte. He would convey their felicitations to Suleyman the Magnificent on his recent conquest of Rhodes and the adjoining Dodecanese islands, together with their happy hopes for the suppression of piracy. The Sultan's possession of Rhodes would herald a boon to seaborne trade, as the Senate was convinced that he `would sweep the sea clean of the corsairs who were as great a nuisance to the Porte as to the Republic.' On 1 January 1523, the Knights, led by Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle Adam, sailed out of the harbour `swift, silent, and at night',1 accompanied by some three hundred Rhodiots - Latin and Greek - who freely followed them on their travels around Europe. The courtly l'Isle Adam, formerly Grand Prior of France, had been elected Grandmaster on 22 January 1521, barely eighteen months before the siege. With them too departed the island's importance and prosperity. For more than two centuries, his predecessors `had ruled like doges in the southeastern Aegean'. From Rhodes, they sailed to Crete, and thence to Sicily, entering Rome in September 1523. It is the purpose of the present paper to provide a brief, introductory overview of aspects of the eight-year odyssey within the constraining context of contemporary developments in Europe and the Mediterranean, and focusing in particular on Charles V's donation of Malta to the Hospitallers. It is precisely only a thorough knowledge of the prevailing conditions in Europe during the early decades of the sixteenth century that can perhaps explain with any modicum of plausibility why the Knights of St John had had to wait for nearly eight whole years to find a decent, agreeable space for themselves in Europe. This delay may be attributed in part to forces independent of the Order's crisis and which helped to worse confound an already tense and astoundingly complicated situation. There were three major problems confronting Christendom at this particular point in time - the first was the internecine warfare provoked by the enmity which Charles V and Francis I entertained for each other (the latter desparately trying to break his encirclement by imperial possessions), with the Pope and most of the

minor princes getting unavoidably embroiled in the conflict. It turned Italy into the battlefield of Europe. The second was the Lutheran revolt. In 1517 Martin Luther had nailed his famous 95 theses to the church door of the Wittenburg Cathedral. From the Diet of Worms (January 1521) to the Second Diet of Speyer (1529), his dramatic opposition to Rome drew Europe into the `vortex of religious strife'. He threatened the dominance of the Holy See, while `German evangelicalism threatened Latin Catholicism'. From a theological and spiritual protest, Lutheranism had been allowed to grow into `organized Churches'. The Order's years of vagrancy coincided by and large with the moderate progress of the Reformation, whose devastating effects on Hospitaller estates would be experienced in their fullest magnitude after 1530. The third factor was the challenge offered by the formidable power of an expanding Ottoman Empire. On 28-29 August 1521, Belgrade, the `outer wall of Christendom', was treacherously forced into surrender by the young sultan's large and well equipped army on his first campaign. The dbcle extinguished at one stroke the false perceptions hitherto entertained of Suleyman by the Western Powers (including Venice) as an unwarlike and peace-loving ruler.2 Having reconfirmed peace with Venice by treaty of 11 December 1521, Suleyman's next target was the strategically-placed island of Rhodes. It simply lay in the logic of the empire's expansion. Although Mehmed II had failed in a vast attempt upon the fortress forty years earlier, its conquest had now become `both easier and more necessary' in view of the Ottoman establishment in Syria and Egypt since their prestigious conquest of 1516-17. The western powers were too fully occupied with their own affairs to assist the Hospitallers. In the winter of 1522, therefore, Europe watched the Rhodian fortifications quake and shake slowly towards destruction by the Ottomans, as it would by `the young king (Louis II) and the unruly nobility of Hungary' in 1526. On 26 August that year, the battle of the Mohacs stretched the Ottoman front to the very domains of the Habsburgs. In 1529 Vienna was under siege. In a sense, these three factors mutually re-inforced one another. While the Lutheran revolt and the ensuing struggle which it provoked within traditional Christian unity invited Charles's `unrelenting hostility'3, Suleyman's attacks upon central Europe and the attitude of certain German princes helped foster Lutheranism. Added to these, the Venetians' fear of conflict with the Grand Signore, who most uncomfortably shared with them some two thousand miles of borderland, was an insuperable obstacle to the crusade as envisaged by Hadrian VI or by his wavering successor Clement VII. This spirit of dissension, so widespread and pervasive throughout Europe, could not

spare leaving its evil effects on the internal affairs of the Order of St John too.

A crisis of the highest calibre The experience of 1522 constituted for the Order not only a profound crisis, but one of the highest calibre. It was a crisis of identity in the first place, one which questioned the institution's relevance to contemporary Christendom; indeed, its material and physical capacity to continue to realize its traditional raison d'tre. The Pope's fear of the extension of imperial power in Northern Italy forced him to take sides in the struggle and in December 1524 he concluded a treaty with Francis I against Charles V, seriously damaging the papacy's traditional neutrality. It shook one of the most delicate principles which the Order had so religiously endeavoured over the years to observe. It was this threat to its neutrality which gradually began to promote dissension among the `national' constituent elements within the Order, later also evident in the narrow streets of Birgu. It was a crisis which witnessed the debilitating trend of having Hospitaller estates in various parts of Europe confiscated, their sources of revenue exploited for the warlike ends of kings, popes, and princes - as happened, for example, with some of the Order's property in Portugal, Naples, Savoy, and elsewhere. It was a crisis which paralysed the generally smooth functioning channels of administration, breaking up the necessary ties of communication between the central conventual authority and the peripheral prioral organization. Once such vital organs stopped functioning, the crisis would evolve into a painful process of dissolution, one which would have caused the glorious institution `to disappear unnoticed' through the lethargy, indolence and indifference of warring Catholic Europe. It was a crisis that shook the very bone-structure of conventual life and discipline, one which threatened immediate institutional collapse, a mass exodus of its professed members on a catastrophic scale and a marked diminution in the number of new recruits. It was above all a crisis - like that of 1291 at the loss of Acre - of finding oneself homeless and, as in 1522, forced, cap in hand, into exile at the very heart of Europe's theatre of war, amid smiling, charming, Catholic faces subtly disguising a chilling apathy. It was a crisis where all the glories of the past were conveniently forgotten and all credibility put in doubt, where trust, confidence, and protection could only possibly be regained through a successful endeavour to reassert one's relevance. For the Order of St John, this could only be achieved by again resorting to the performance of its dual historic mission: immediate resumption of the holy war against Islam and the holy exercise of hospitality. L'Isle Adam's frantic quest for a home - whether the old one on a reconquered Rhodes or a not-too-distant alternative on an island in the Morea, or still, if we are to accept the Venetian Marin Sanuto's entry into his much celebrated Diarii4 (and there is no reason, of course, why we should not), a new one, either

at the southern Adriatic port of Brindisi or on the central Mediterranean island of Malta - this frantic search for a home - new or old - was a necessary initial step, a spiritually and politically urgent one towards a possibly resuscitated stability.5 The experience of 1522 was a profound upheaval on a massive scale - but the Order survived the loss of Rhodes, as it did the loss of Acre in 1291, and indeed as it would (in a sense) the loss of Malta in 1798. There was only one explanation for that - the institution's `astonishing resilience', its innate ability `to maintain its cohesion'. What the Order lost permanently in 1798 - apart from the Maltese islands - was `its miltary raison d'etre'; and this not as the outcome of Napoleon's military might, but `through the evaporation of any genuine holy war in the Mediterranean'.6 The idea of Malta Historians, closely familiar with Giacomo Bosio's Istoria,7 written in 1594, build whole arguments in support of the view that the idea of Malta first belonged to Ettore Pignatelli, Charles V's Viceroy in Sicily, admitting, at the same time, that the origin of this question cannot be traced back to any documentary evidence.8 On this matter, Bosio makes no passing reference to any form of documentation. Their arguments generally rest on the difficulties which Sicilian viceroys had consistently encountered in late medieval years in their endeavour to keep the Maltese islands from falling into enemy hands. The cost of the islands' defence was so exorbitant, or so they claimed, the responsibility for it far too onerous, that they were only too zealous to part with them, to pass the unenviable task to somebody else. And if this `somebody else' happened to be the Order of St John, it would be a rare stroke of good fortune, an unexpected windfall, which it would be too naive to allow to pass unexploited. The Hospitallers were traditionally renowned both for their audacity and bold defiance whenever and wherever they came face to face with the Muslim enemy, as well as for their brave expertise in naval and military affairs. The Knights' defence of the Maltese islands would conceivably, and indeed conveniently, extend to cover the entire central Mediterranean region that would include the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and Southern Italy, ever so exposed (as the smaller islands were) to piratical incursions. All this is attributed, without the slightest trait of evidence, to l'Isle Adam's brief sojourn at Messina, other, of course, than Giacomo Bosio, who was not a contemporary observer; nor was he a member of l'Isle Adam's inner travelling circle. It is, admittedly, an argument which sounds fairly valid and plausible, but which is unfortunately unacceptable to empirical historians. The whole question of the Maltese islands, I think, should be approached within the wider central Mediterranean and North African policy adopted by Spain shortly after the expulsion of the Moors from Granada in 1492. By the

end of the fifteen century and the beginning of the next, the coasts of Algeria and Tunisia were rapidly developing into rallying grounds of Muslim corsairs, seeking vengeance for their Christian persecution by attacking Christian ships and coasts. The shores of the Papal States, like the whole western Mediterranean, were daily haunts of Moors and Turks, and indeed French pirates too. It was in response to these pirate raids, that Spain, under the forceful impulse of Cardinal Francisco Jimnez de Cisneros, the militant Archbishop of Toledo, ventured on extending her reconquista in Africa, on occupying a number of strategic port towns along the Moroccan and Algerian coasts, east of the Pen de Vlez which the Spaniards seized in 1508. In 1497 Spain had captured Melilla; in 1505 Mers-el-Kebir; in 1509 Oran; then Bougie; a year later they took Algiers and Tripoli. `The form of presidio,' we are told, `that the Spaniards set up was a garrison isolated from the hostile hinterland in which it was set, and demanding a firm link with Spain by sea.'9 It was this series of Spanish conquests, with which violence and brutality were so intimately associated, that ushered in the process `by which Ottoman power was [gradually] extended to the area'. It was the time of the famous two Barbarossa brothers, a strife marked by their equally devastating activities. It was a time when, as a result, possessions along the Barbary Coast were lost and won `with sometimes bewildering rapidity.' It was in fact the year before the Order settled on Malta that the presidio in the harbour of Algiers was forced to surrender. Collectively, these presidios were in practice synonymous to a broken chain of military garrisons, planted haphazardly on the North African shore. They could have hardly been expected to offer any effective resistance to the westward advance of the Ottomans. `It is often forgotten,' Edward Armstrong observed in 1902,10 `that the African coast round Tunis lies north of Southern Sicily, and the distance between the two is so slight that the Western Mediterranean at least might have been closed, while aid could have been given to the outposts of Christianity further east,' like the Knights of St John at Rhodes, for example, or the Venetian settlements in the Morea and the Archipelago, in Crete and Cyprus.' Ferdinand the Catholic (of Aragon) had failed to appreciate the need for these isolated fortified garrisons to be formed into one `connected Spanish province, paying its own way, and drawing its own supplies from the interior.' There was no intercommunication between them, no co-ordination, no territory in the hinterland. `Unsupported advanced posts' as these were, they were rendered incapable of assuming any offensive policy. After the death of Isabella in 1504, this was a reflection of Ferdinand's attitude towards North Africa, determined (so to speak) by metal more attractive. Dynastic problems, the discovery of the New World, the contest that was developing in Italy among the European States, and not least his spirit of tolerance, left him hardly any room for

adventure let alone for conquest. His was a policy of `containment' rather than conquest, `a policy of limited occupation',11 one that would eventually be again adopted by Philip II, but for which Spain in later years would have `to pay a heavy price'. The renunciation of Jimnez's crusading philosophy in Spain's North African policy made possible the rise of the Barbary Regencies. Indeed, it created them. In the long interval between the reigns of these two Spanish monarchs, Charles V endeavoured to venture on `a forward policy' towards North Africa, a feeble continuation, perhaps, of that of Jimnez.12 Malta, `the missing link half-way between Sicily and the Maghrib',13 fitted in neatly within this policy. It formed an important military zone whose strategic value, explains Fernand Braudel, `derived from its position on the central axis of the sea. It was Italy's maritime front against the Turk.'14 There is no doubt that the Maltese `haven' which Charles was offering the Order was meant to `serve as a deterrent to the enterprise of the Barbary pirates and as an outpost to help defend the Spanish realm of the Two Sicilies'. The island's geographical proximity to `enemy' territory, rendering possible the continuation of the holy war; its spacious harbours; and its conveniently safe distance from the Catholic mainland, safeguarding the Order's autonomy and neutrality without involving it in too many international complications - all must have favourably counterbalanced in l'Isle Adam's mind the island's military, political, and economic liabilities: the poor quality of the soil, the meagre yields of its Crown lands, its dependence for continuous food supplies and raw materials on Habsburg Sicily, the despicable state of the fortifications, and its repulsive exposure to Muslim corsair attacks. L'Isle Adam had had bitter first-hand experience of current Ottoman military power, of its naval strengths and strategies. Syria and Egypt were fairly recent examples. Belgrade was another. Rhodes was still too painfully fresh. If a similar force or an armada of some 50 to 100 galleys were to be employed against the Maltese islands - militarily threadbare as they then were - it would be a far greater humiliation to the Order than that of a few months earlier. The Grandmaster appears to have been fairly familiar with the situation on the islands. It was still October 1523, when the Prior of Castile and Leon (Fra' Diego de Toledo) and the Bailiff of Santo Stefano (Fra' Gabriel Todino de Martinengo) were about to be despatched to the court of Charles V, nearly a whole year (that is) before the eight-men Commission submitted its report to the Venerable Council. The two extraordinary ambassadors were instructed to seek permission for the Order to settle temporarily for three or four years at Syracuse (Saragoza de Sicilia) or anywhere else within the Empire until the Maltese islands were adequately fortified to withstand any enemy assault. A second request concerned the grant of the necessary tratte,

franchi, liberi et exempti d'ogni dacio et gabella, for the regular export of wheat, ship biscuits, wine, and all sort of other victuals from Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples, necessary for the upkeep and proper maintenance of the fortress, the Convent, and the rest of the island. Both requests show the realistic image which l'Isle Adam entertained of Malta: they also provide valuable insight into his initial hopes regarding the new island. These issues constituted two major flaws not only in the mind of the military strategist but also in the eyes of the shrewd politician. Their combined negative potential would be even more disconcerting when the two basic weaknesses - in defence and essential food supplies marked the government of an island State. There were very sharp contrasts between Rhodes and Malta which help one understand how distressful these issues must have been to l'Isle Adam. They would depressingly haunt every single Grandmaster on Malta. To these two requests, which featured prominently in the two ambassadors' instructions, a third was added, one which was equally disturbing at this point in time as it as throughout the Maltese phase of the Order's history. It concerned the universal recognition of its status as an exempt Order of the Church. The Hospitaller institution felt it needed the Emperor's protection against other kings' and princes' gradual usurpation of its rights and privileges; the suppression of its sources of income; the confiscation of its lands. It was on these factors, as well as on the political protection extended to it by the Great Powers, that the Order depended, not only for its survival but also for the performance of its sacred duties, for the realization of its mission. In brief, this was the form, defined by the three qualifying requests, which in l'Isle Adam's mind Charles's offer of Malta could be accepted in October 1523. The inclusion of Tripoli At the court of Charles V things ran differently from the way l'Isole Adam thought they would. The conditions attached to the donation were harsher than expected. To Malta and Gozo, Charles V now added the North African city and fortress of Tripoli which had been in Spanish hands since 1510. This has been generally interpreted as reflecting the Emperor's innately hostile attitude towards a French-dominated Order (of the eight Langues, three were French) which in turn was answerable only to the papacy whose current incumbent - the Medici Clement VII was unwittingly betraying signs of anti-Spanish tendencies. However, the inclusion of Tripoli in the proposed deal need not necessarily have been thus motivated, although the possibility cannot be ruled out altogether. Tripoli was one other North African `post' which the Emperor wished to see revitalized, and this was a golden opportunity inadvertently presenting itself in support of Charles's policy. Roberto

Valentini attributes the idea of including Tripoli in the deal with the Order to the Sicilian Viceroy, refering to it explicitly on two separate occasions (`dietro consiglio del Vicer di Sicilia' and `dietro le insistenze del Pignatelli'), but without citing supporting evidence on either. It was at this stage - towards the end of June 1524 - that a Commission, representative of the eight Langues, was entrusted to visit each of the three `posts' collectively on offer and to report back to the Venerable Council. The Order needed time to assess Charles V's magnanimity in the form it had now assumed, to evaluate it, to reflect and to resolve. The instructions these Hospitallers received and the report they subsequently drew up are widely known to those familiar with the history of the Order at this stage in its evolution and need not be repeated here.15 Quintessentially the Order was advised to accept Malta and Gozo but to decline the offer of Tripoli, as this was too isolated and too dangerously exposed to the assaults of the Barbaresques. Its walls were weak and could not withstand any artillery attacks. To rebuild them and the fortress was costly and would take long. History is full of ironies, and the Commission's strong recommendation to reject Tripoli was definitely one such. For when the Order eventually found itself on Malta, it was to this same fortress city of Tripoli that in 1548 the future Grandmaster Jean de la Valette, then Governor of Tripoli, had succeeded in convincing the Chapter General to have the Convent transferred the North African `post'. The project failed to materialize simply because the Ottoman armada had captured the city in August 1551.16 Delaying tactics ? Following the submission of the Commission's report and their recommendations, negotiations over the cession ground rapidly to an almost complete halt. Was there any viable alternative to Charles V's offer ? It would appear that it was in reaction to the stalemate that l'Isle Adam begins to contemplate the reconquest of Rhodes. Is there solid evidence of any serious talk about it earlier than 1525. Hadrian VI is at times mentioned within the context of a proposed counter-expedition. If this is correct, what real progress had been registered by 14 September 1523 when the pope died ? l'Isle Adam proceeded personally to Charles V's court in Spain for his support and in search for the necessary funds to subsidize the campaign. Almost simultaneously, on 20 May 1525, the Emperor despatched Don Pietro Fernandez d'Eredia to the Hospitaller Convent at Viterbo, where, since December 1523 (when Clement VII established them there), the Order had had its magistral palace, a conventual church, a hospital, and the auberges for the Langues. Charles's envoy indicated in a sense the Emperor's eagerness to reactivate an offensive policy for his otherwise idle and passive Mediterranean posts. The Spanish appear to be pressed for time. On the other hand, was the Grandmaster's idea of reconquering Rhodes -

plausible though this might very well have been, and indeed to all appearances politically legitimate and correct - part of his delaying tactics in the hope of not reaching a definite resolution before the outcome of the war in Italy might very well mitigate Charles's conditions? But then time was not in the Order's favour, either. If from April 1525 through 1526, the Order was deeply involved in a Europewide fund-raising campaign for the Rhodian enterprise, it was as frantically endeavouring to observe and maintain absolute neutrality and to be seen doing strictly so by the warring kings and princes and their respective allies. In February 1525, Francis I had fallen captive to the imperial forces at Pavia, while `the better part of the French chivalry,' says G.R.Elton,17 `lay dead.' After a year's imprisonment, he was forced to sign the treaty of Madrid (14 January 1526), promising (among a host of other details) to renounce all his claims to Milan and Naples and surrender Burgandy. These excessive demands created the Holy [antiimperialist] League of Cognac (22 May 1526), comprising Clement VII, Francis I, Venice, Francesco Sforza of Milan, and the Republic of Florence. It immediately led to war again in Italy. In August that year, and in view of these developments, it was resolved in the Order's Venerable Council to disarm the Hospitaller galleys. This in turn rendered the institution for all intents and purposes militarily inactive. To all appearances, it distanced the Order from its raison d'tre and from the service it was widely expected to offer Christendom. L'Isle Adam returned to the Convent at Viterbo from his travels to Spain and France on 21 January 1527. The next year he was at the English court of Henry VIII. Meanwhile, a Chapter-General would be summoned to decide on the cession issue. To overcome the friction generated by the growing political factions within the Order, Clement VII nominated Cardinal Egidio Cavisio to preside over the Chapter, meant to be celebrated in Rome on 23 March 1527, but then postponed to 28 April. This date was again inevitably cancelled as a result of the Sack of Rome. An imperial army, largely composed of Protestant soldiers, wreaked havoc and destruction in what was until then the grandiose capital of Renaissance genius. On that sad occasion, Gian Antonio Milesio, one of the Grandmaster's secretaries, was taken captive and some of the priceless Rhodian tapestries and other rare valuable objects looted. The city, `a Babylon of confusion', was no longer the ideal place for the Chapter to meet in. It was therefore held in Viterbo on 19 May 1527, when it was resolved, subject to papal approval, to accept Charles's offer. It was necessary that no further conditions were attached that would make it difficult for the Order's princely protectors (especially those who were politically averse to Spanish hegemony) to recognize the cession. The Order could not be allowed to be seen assuming the semblance of an imperial vassal.

Early in June 1527, with the wild spread of plague and an accompanying manifestation of famine (`urgente epidemie morbo et omnium rerum penuria': l'Isle Adam's words to Clement VII), the Order had to leave Viterbo on board its galleys and sail to Corneto. From here they were again driven out for the same reason, the plague was following on their footsteps. On 7 October they anchored at the neutral port of Nice, which belonged to Charles III of Savoy. The Order's brief sojourn here (1527-29) was uneasy, vis--vis its somewhat tense relations with the Duke, who had confiscated the two Hospitaller commanderies there (those of San Lorenzo and de Chier) and employed their resources for his own political and personal convenience. It was the Grandmaster's idea to set sail on the Rhodian expedition in the spring of 1529. To mislead the enemy, rumours were purposely spread that Malta was the destination of the Hospitaller fleet. And to make things appear more convincingly plausible, the Order was indeed prepared to sail towards Gozo where they would wait for the return of Antonio Bosio and another person unidentified in the documents. These would be sent ahead towards Rhodes for reconnoitering purposes. In fact, on 18 July 1529, the Order's fleet set sail from Villafranca, heading towards the Maltese islands and reaching them on 29 August, but without landing. The news carried by Antonio Bosio `squashed,' we are told, `all hopes of retaking Rhodes.' But what exactly was the news that Antonio Bosio conveyed to l'Isle Adam in the Maltese waters? In 1524 as soon as Ahmed Pasha, the victor of Rhodes and the Sultan's representative in Egypt, had suppressed the mutiny which had broken out, he succumbed to the temptation of re-establishing the independence of the Mamluk State and conspired against Suleyman. Seeking aid from the Pope and the Hospitallers, he promised he would help the Knights retake Rhodes. For the rest of the episode, I quote briefly from a recent account18: `The Ag of Rhodes, Ibrahim, was loyal to Ahmed Pasha and encouraged the movement. Intelligence that it would be easy to recapture the island also reached the Grand Master's ears from Rhodian merchants who had met Ibrahim. Antonio Bosio made a secret visit to Rhodes on behalf of the Knights, where he met the Metropolitan Euthymios, leading Greeks and the Turkish Ag and made arrangements with them.' Charles V had offered 25,000 scudi for the campaign; the King of Portugal, 15,000 ducats. However, with Ahmed Pasha's assassination in Egypt, the Rhodians and the Ag `began to fear for their lives'. Antonio Bosio travelled several times to and from Rhodes `until the Turks, suspecting a conspiracy, replaced the garrison, arrested Euthymios, the Ag and other Greek and Muslim nobles and executed them all in 1529.' The Hospitaller squadron immediately left the vicinity

of Malta and sailed to Augusta to bring to an end the negotiations that had been temporarily interrupted. On 22 February 1530, celebrating his thirtieth birthday, Charles V was crowned Emperor at Bologna. Within a month, on 23 March, he signed the donation deed at Castelfranco. The Order had accepted Charles's grant as a perpetual fief in return for the annual gift of a falcon on All Saints' Day. In the long-term perspective of historical development, the heart-felt desires and aspirations which Venice had so gleefully entertained at the fall of Rhodes, and which were so eloquently expressed by the humanist patrician Pietro Zen at the magnificent court of Suleyman, failed to materialize. The eviction of the Hospitallers from the Aegean, however demoralizing the uprooting was, had failed not only to bring an end to the Order, since `the Hospital's existence did not depend upon the occupation of any particular territory',19 but also to bring any permanent solution to the perennially poisonous problem of piracy and privateering. Suleyman, and each of his successors at the Ottoman Porte, failed to sweep the sea clean of the malignant corsairing activity. And so did the Venetian Republic, which for the last three centuries of its existence had shown increasing signs of weakness which the Knights did not scruple to exploit from distant Malta. Indeed, if there was any one factor which kept constantly souring relations between Venice and the Ottoman Empire and between the Adriatic Republic and the Hospitaller Order of St John, it was precisely the question of piracy and privateering in the Levant.

Note
1

E. Schermerhorn, Malta of the Knights. Surrey 1929. See K. M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571). 4 vols. Philadelphia 1984. 3 G.R. Elton, Reformation Europe, 1517-1559: Fontana History of Europe (London 1963), 37. 4 Marin Sanuto, I diarii di Marin Sanuto, ed. R. Fulin et al. 58 vols. Venice 1879-1903. 5 In his early eighteenth-century description of Malta, the Venetian Giacomo Capello claims that the offer of Sardinia to the Order of St John had been contemplated by Charles V before that of Malta, but he was dissuaded by the Duke of Alva as the larger island would have given the Hospitallers an easier chance to recover their military strength and assume all the attributes of secular sovereignty. Museo Civico Correr, Venice, Don dalle Rose, 381/31(6), f.12v. For a critical edition of Capello's account, V. Mallia-Milanes, Descrittione di Malta, Anno 1716: A Venetian Account. Malta 1988. 6 A.T. Luttrell, `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), 258-9. 7 Giacomo Bosio, Dell'Istoria della Sacra Religione et Ill. Militia di S. Gio. Gierosolimitano. 3 vols: i (3rd ed. Venice 1695); ii (2nd ed. Rome 1629); iii (2nd ed.. Naples 1684). 8 For example, Roberto Valentini, `I Cavalieri di S. Giovanni da Rodi a Malta: Trattative diplomatiche', Archivum Melitense, ix, 4 (1935), 137-237. 9 Ann Williams, `Mediterranean Conflict', in Suleyman the Magnificent and His Age. The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World, ed. Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead (London1995), 39-54. 10 Edward Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V: 2 vols.: i (London 1902), 269. 11 See J.H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (Pelican Bks 1970). 12 Ibid., 270. 13 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Trans. S. Reynolds. 2 vols. London 1972-73. 14 Ibid., 849, 850. 15 For the instructions, Bosio, iii, passim; for an English version of the eight commissioners' report, L. de Boisgelin, Ancient and Modern Malta, ii (London 1804), 15-18. 16 See V. Mallia-Milanes, `Fra' Jean de la Valette 1495-1568 - A Reappraisal', in The Maltese Cross, ed.T. Cortis (Malta [1995]), 117-29. 17 Elton, Reformation Europe. 18 Elias Kollias, The Knights of Rhodes: The Palace and the City (Athens 1991).
2

19

Luttrell, `Malta and Rhodes'.