The decline and fall of the Sacra Infermeria

Abstract

Visitors to Malta who recorded their experiences of the island during the rule by the Order (1530 – 1798) may not have agreed about everything. But on one view they appear unanimous: the outstanding excellence of the main hospital of the knights of St John. Very likely, the most important and advanced hospital in Europe. What distinguished the Order of Malta from other chivalric institutions existing in Europe was its hospitaller character and mission. By the fourteenth century the other knightly Orders had mostly turned into vanity institutions that responded to a purely military vocation: to provide aristocratic militias to defend the Christian faith from the might of the Infidels. The Templars, the Teutonic Order, that of Calatrava, and, later, the Orders of the Golden Fleece, of St Stephen, of the Holy Spirit and several others fell in these categories. The knights of St John, on the other hand, added a unique, rming dimension to their mission: the care of the sick and the infirm.