Fra Marcello Sacchetti, Hospitaller ambassador to the Papal states : his official correspondence

Abstract

Once his caravane was over and hopefully, with great expectation acquired a longed-for commandery, a knight could possibly find himself designated to fulfil his duties as an ambassador. The Knights were endowed with gargantuan wealth in Catholic Europe. Discords and conflicts invariably arose with monarchs and the Papacy who intermittently sought to gain possession of the Order's valuable Italian commanderies to confer them at their whim to their favourites or retain them for themselves. The pontificate of Innocent XI, who was well disposed towards the Order in view of his ambition to unite Christian princes against the traditional enemy, proved to be a welcome respite. nut the crusading ideal was an anachronism and the Order could easily become a relic from an idealistic past. One can conclude that thanks to the able skill of the ambassadors, among other factors, the Order's sovereignty was still widely acknowledged towards the end of the seventeenth century. The ambassadors' 'sensitivity to all the subtleties of diplomacy' earned them great recognition