The Order of St. John, 1793-1797 : impending collapse of a glorious heritage : the despatches of Antonio Miari, Venetian Minister in Malta

Abstract

By the time Fra Antonio Miari had assumed the office of Huomo della Repubblica in Malta, the Order's fate lay less in: the hands of Grandmaster De Rohan and his State Council than in those of the directors of national policy in France. Within the narrow span of four days (19-22 September 1792), the publication of the venomous 'loi spoliateur', which nationalised all the Knights' possessions in France, the abolition of the French Monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic, provoked within the Order an acute sense of isolation and impending disaster. On 22 October of the same year the National Convention abolished the Institution in France. This essay does not set out to provide a general survey of the original events which led to the final collapse of the Order of St. John. These are now widely known. Its concern is with an intelligent, perceptive and intriguing firsthand account of the final four years of De Rohan's magistracy by Antonio Miari, a 38-year-old contemporary observer from Belluno and the Grandmaster's Secretary for Italian Affairs, gripped as he was by the 'terreur de l'avenir' which the upheaval ,of the French Revolution generated within his Order.