The state and development of the Hospitaller Grand Priory of Messina in the Seicento

Abstract

It was effectively a chain of events, one building on the other, that brought about the usurpation of all the Hospitaller assets in Sicily in 1801. The agonizing closure came when King Ferdinand I conferred the priory of Messina to his son Prince Leopold, done with the blessing of Paul I of Russia, de facto Grand Master of the Order at that point. This act ended what was almost seven hundred years of continuous Hospitaller presence in Sicily, a saga enriched by successive historical, social, and political events which the Order negotiated with equanimity and capability, maintaining its relevance throughout the centuries. The original goal of this dissertation was to focus on one of these, a century near the end of its lifetime, and one when the fabric of the Priory, including its immobile assets, social interactions, and political clout, was at its zenith. It is, however, the wider context which ultimately determines the nature, form, and character of any phenomenon in history. The Grand Priory of Messina is one such phenomenon which had reached the state it assumed in the seventeenth century through a slow, long-term process of development. In a parallel fashion, the city of Messina also evolved through the centuries, acquiring status and privileges which had also peaked in a similar fashion. The Hospitaller Sicilian province did not exist in isolation or sprout suddenly into existence in the seventeenth century. It is precisely the purpose of the present dissertation to try to reconstruct this gradual process of change in order to understand better this integral part of the Hospitaller institution. Like any other phenomenon, the state the Grand Priory of Messina had reached in the seventeenth century was the product of its past centuries. For this reason, it was felt indispensable to trace its gradual, at times tortuous, stages of the whole process of its evolution, to underpin the scope of this monograph. It is by knowing the past, that one can better understand the present.