Foreign influence on the decline of the Order of St John : 1530-1798

Abstract

This thesis has not been written to suggest that it was simply Europe that caused the decay of the Order of St John. There are several other reasons to qualify such a decline. However, European relations rooted the Order of St John - what must be considered is the image Europe held of the Hospitallers, as knights on constant guard in light of the dangerous Ottoman power threatening to overwhelm the Holy Lands and, in tum, Europe. The Crusades, however, were all but over by the time the Knights arrived in Malta, and a memory as the years progressed. How could the Knights continue to defend the Holy Lands when they had been pushed right out of them, far into the Central Mediterranean? As old crusading ideals became nothing more than a relic, did the Knights take on this image too in the eyes of Europe: had the Order of St John become a relic? And how far did this become even more of a factor in light of the decline of the Ottoman Empire? Was it the French in 1798 who caused the downfall of the Order of St John or was it a culmination of all the above that contributed to the loss of Malta? This is what I propose to try and understand in writing this thesis: to check the decline of the Order against the general European climate as well as the history of the decline of the Ottoman Empire - in the context of changing times and ideals -; and to discover whether the Order of St John had become nothing more than an anachronism in the midst of such change.