The treasury, debts and deaths : a study of the Common Treasury of the Order of St. John and its relationship with the individual Hospitaller in matters of debts and deaths based on Giovanni Caravita's Trattato del Comun Tesoro

Abstract

The present dissertation will look at the relationship between the Treasury of the Order of St John and the individual Hospitaller between the Order's foundation in the late eleventh century and the end of the seventeenth century. The Treasury was arguably the most important institution within the Order as it was responsible for collecting all revenues due to the Order, making disbursements, overseeing the management of the Order's assets and ensuring that Hospitaller regulations in these regards were adhered to. However, few historians have ventured to study it; and generally without going into great debts into its structures and functioning. Likewise, no historian has yet investigated the relationship between the Treasury and the individual Hospitaller. Individual members of the Order administered its assets, in accordance with the Order's regulations. Included were the assets that each individual brought into the Order, over which he retained full usufruct until his death. The Treasury oversaw this administration, and expected various payments from each Hospitaller, at different stages of his lifetime. The relationship between the individual Hospitaller and the Treasury was an ongoing one, and ended only after the Hospitaller' s death, when his belongings were merged with those of the Order. The present study will attempt to: i) understand how this relationship was constituted, particularly in terms of a) the relationship's manifestation in the irect payments flowing to and fro, b) in the Hospitaller's administration of the Order's assets, and c) the freedoms which a Hospitaller was allowed in managing the Order's possessions, including those which he personally brought into the Order; ii) how different was it from the parallel relationship in other monastic and religious institutions, and why; iii) why and how it evolved in time; iv) how did this relationship change during the different phases of a Hospitaller' s lifetime.