The Order of the Hospital
Venice and Hospitaller Malta
- Malta and the Maltese
- Corsairs Parading Crosses
- The Hospitallers in Crisis
- A Worsening of Relations
- The European Crisis of the 1590s: The Case of Malta
- From Wignacourt's Venetophobia to Capello's Disillusionment with Hospitaller Malta
- A Second Major Confrontation
- From Traditional Foes to Trading Partners
- On the Same Road to Cold Oblivion
- About the Author
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About the Author
VENICE AND HOSPITALLER MALTA
1530-1798
ASPECTS OF A RELATIONSHIP
By
Victor Mallia-Milanes
(First published 1992 by Publishers Enterprizes Group Ltd, Malta.
ISBN 99909-0-000-0)
By the time the Order of St John of Jerusalem had settled permanently in Malta
in 1530, its decline had become a historical reality. Motivated by a traumatic
awareness that the Order's original aspirations were no longer capable of fulfilment,
the Hospitallers' organized violent excursions in the Levant constituted a sad
reflection of the Order's endeavour to reconcile its past with the harsh reality
of the unhistoric capitalism of early modern 'present'. By then the time-bound
images of the warrior-monk and the crusade were no longer either convincing or
relevant. The corso was purely an economically rewarding activity. Within this
context, Venice's stand. seriously questioning the Hospitallers' right to wage
a 'just war' against the infidel, demonstrated, in unmistakable terms, that the
Order's solemn profession of faith in the rectitude of its medieval principles
had been all along a perfect example of 'high theory in the service of low
cunning'.
Hospitaller and Maltese privateering in the Levant is therefore the first aspect
discussed in the present work. And since it often determined the nature of the
relationship between the two States, it unavoidably takes the lion's share of
the book. In broad terms, it is a study in the progress by which the Republic of
Venice, through its cynical commitment to the Ottoman Porte, was able to 'enforce
its will' upon the Hospitaller principality of Malta, from the second quarter of
the sixteenth to half way through the eighteenth century.
Trade is the second aspect. By the early years of the 1750s, clear signs of
rapprochement emerged between Venice and Hospitaller Malta. What appears to
have been a structural change in the relationship, partly the result of
extreneous constraints, led, in fairly quick succession, first to the
establishment of a resident Venetian minister on the island and, secondly, to
a fruitful bilateral commercial agreement. When, in the 1780s, the Adriatic
Republic was at war with Tunis, it found in Malta 'another Venice in the
Mediterranean'.
Email: vmilanes@rocketmail.com
