A Habsburg thalassocracy : Habsburgs and Hospitallers in the early modern Mediterranean, c.1690-1750

Abstract

Relations between Habsburgs and Hospitallers (also referred to as Knights of Malta, the Order of St John and the Johanniterorden in German)1 assumed various forms in various locations and over many centuries. Indeed, it could not be otherwise since branches of the Habsburg dynasty controlled Spain and its related territories which included Sicily and Malta between 1516 and 1700, as well as Austria, the family hereditary lands, and the title of Holy Roman Emperors from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Furthermore, Naples was under direct Austrian Habsburg rule between 1713 and 1733, and Sicily—Malta’s mainland—from 1718 to 1733.2

Hospitallers were present at Emperor Charles V’s (1500–58) triumph in Tunis in 1535; they were also present at Emperor Charles VI’s (1685–1740) failed Danube campaign of 1739.3

For centuries, elite families from Habsburg territories, Iberia, the German lands and central Europe, enrolled their sons into the ranks of the Order. The Habsburg landscape was dotted with Hospitaller properties (commanderies), ranging from the estate of Cizur Menor in Navarre to the Malteserkirche in Vienna. Innumerable Habsburg subjects went through Hospitaller Malta’s harbours.