Rome, Naples and the Order of St John 1797-1798 : two Hospitaller receivers' correspondence

Abstract

The last years of the eighteenth century witnessed the decline and fall of the Order of St John. They were momentous years as they saw the realization of the revolutionary ideas that had emerged during the Enlightenment and spread all over ‘ancien régime’ Europe. These same ideas brought about the downfall of several regimes across the continent. But whereas several of them were eventually reinstated during the Restoration years, albeit with a slightly more liberal character; the Order of St John, although it survived, never achieved again the grandeur it had once enjoyed. The present dissertation deals with the two crucial and critical years 1797 and 1798 when the Order was compelled to surrender Malta to the French forces under Napoleon. Owing to the length imposed by the regulations governing the BA Hons History dissertation of the University of Malta, this is not a holistic study of these two years. Rather it is a study of some aspects which contributed to the Order's downfall. The sources on which I have based my research consisted of two sets of original letters found in the Archives of the Order of St John kept at the National Library of Malta in Valletta. They carry the title of ‘Fasci di Lettere riguardanti le finanze dell'Ordine spedite ai procuratori de! Tesoro’, sent from Rome and Naples. The letters from Rome were written by Abbé Didier de Saint-Laurent, the Order of St John's resident Receiver in that city. They consist of 118 folios. Those dispatched from Naples were written by Bailiff Giuseppe Antonio Francone, also the Hospitaller resident Receiver there. They consist of 171 folios. The purpose of this dissertation is to study both sets of letters written to the Order's Common Treasury in Valletta and see what original insights they shed into the history of the Hospitaller institution in the last two years of its existence on the central Mediterranean island of Malta. The Order of St John was a privileged order of the Catholic Church, a military-religious institution which owed its origins to the years preceding the First Crusade, and a massive landowner, possessing vast estates all over Catholic Europe. It constituted an integral part of the feudal ‘ancien régime’. The outbreak of the revolution in France in 1789, the declaration of war in 1792, and the abolition of the French monarchy and proclamation of the Republic in 1793 had an immediate and irreversible impact on the Order. The collective impact of these radical developments would gradually deprive the Order of its privileged position and of its immovable property, the life-blood of its existence. It is precisely this slow death that forms the subject of the present work, the way this painful process emerges from the letters of both Hospitaller receivers in Rome and Naples. None of these letters have been studied before. As such it is hoped the dissertation will make a contribution, however small and limited, to Hospitaller scholarship. The value of both archival sources lies in the fact that they help to study the Order in a European and Mediterranean context rather than in isolation. The institution was, after all, like all other phenomena, influenced by the events that were happening in Europe. Moreover, Rome and Naples had a special connection with the Order. The former was the seat of the papacy, the supreme head of the Order; the King of Naples was technically the Order's feudal overlord. This reality, too, as will be shown, affected the Order's position in revolutionary Europe.

I have also consulted a number of important secondary works, especially those dealing with the histories of the Order, Rome, Naples, and the French Revolution. The Receivers' letters, however, remained the central focus of the dissertation. The dissertation is divided into five chapters, each dealing with a different aspect - the economic system of the Order; daily life on the Hospitaller commandery, with a focus on its feudal nature; the Order's relations with Rome and Naples and how these were affected by the French Revolution; and an evaluation of Ferdinand von Hompesch's magistracy and its role in the final capitulation of the Order in June 1798. The history of the Order of St. John intertwined with the history of the Maltese islands for more than two centuries. Therefore, the downfall of the Order in 1798 also heralded a new beginning in the history of the Maltese people.