The Shield and The Sword

by Ernle Bradford

  Throughout the night there was firing all over the island and a scene of indescribable confusion in Valetta where, as Doublet wrote, ‘From every balcony one could hear the women lamenting in their houses, and cursing the French and the Grand Master all in one breath.’ Inevitably the many saints revered in the island were being implored on all sides to protect the faithful, while the statue of the Apostle Paul (who is said to have converted the Maltese to Christianity in A.D. 60) was paraded throughout the streets of Valetta. Finally a deputation of leading Maltese citizens went to the palace and insisted on seeing von Hompesch, demanding that he should sue for peace. Everywhere there were scenes of mutiny and undisciplined panic, while many members of the Maltese mob took it upon themselves to have their revenge upon individual members of the Order. These aristocrats, who were now apparently surrendering with cowardice, inspired only contempt. Throughout the thirty-six hours which was all that it took for the French to capture the once proud island-fortress, Napoleon remained impassively aboard L’Orient. He was quite confident that his men outside the walls, and his supporters within, would give him this rich prize, so important to the success of his main venture.

  On June 11th, 1798, the armistice was signed. The main terms agreed upon were as follows: Malta and its sovereignty were surrendered to the French army by the Knights. The French Republic for its part would endeavour to procure for the Grand Master a principality equivalent to the one he was surrendering and would pay him an annual pension of 300,000 French livres. At the congress of the various powers assembled at Rastadt the French would use their influence to ensure that the Knights of each nation should be allowed to exercise their rights over such property of the Order as existed within their respective countries. French Knights would be allowed to return to France, but those who preferred to stay in Malta would receive an annual pension of 700 livres, those over sixty years old, 1,000 livres.

  It was the end of the Order in Malta. Bonaparte in person entered Valetta on the twelfth and was astonished at the size of the fortifications which had fallen to him so easily. But he commented later in his memoirs that, ‘Malta was not able to withstand a 24-hour bombardment. Certainly it possessed vast physical powers of resistance, but no moral strength whatsoever.’

  Throughout all these scenes of chaos and confusion there moved the shadowy and irresolute figure of the Grand Master, that unhappy descendant of men like L’Isle Adam and La Valette. The Standard of the Order which had waved so proudly over innumerable battlefields in the Holy Land and the East, and which had been the terror of the Moslem in a thousand sea-battles, was ignominiously lowered and in its place was raised the French Tricolour.

  Six days later, on June 18th, von Hompesch and all the Knights who had not volunteered to serve with the French were dismissed the island. The plate, the jewels, and all the rich trappings of the Order became the property of the victors. (One sad irony was that nearly all the loot from Malta was sent aboard L’Orient, and went to the bottom with her at Aboukir Bay.) The Grand Master was only allowed to take with him the three most venerable relics of the Order—the splinter of the True Cross, the hand of John the Baptist despoiled of its bejewelled reliquary, and the icon from Rhodes of Our Lady of Phileremos. Even this had been removed from its silver frame. The Order of St John was once more homeless. But this time it was not with honour and with pride that the small band of Knights who accompanied the Grand Master into exile could look back upon their former island and their city.

  Chapter 28

  A PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES

  After the expulsion of the Order from Malta it might have been expected that an organisation so incongruous in the Europe of Napoleon was doomed to extinction. That it managed to survive at all was something of a miracle—and certainly not attributable to its broken-spirited Grand Master. Von Hompesch took refuge at Trieste, where he and those with him were taken under the protection of Austria. The Polish Knights in the Grand Priory of Russia, together with a number of French émigrés, looked to the ‘Protector of the Order’ for their salvation. The Tsar welcomed them with open arms. He now wished to have something more than his formal title, to become in fact the Order’s Grand Master. Without waiting for any note of resignation from von Hompesch the Knights who were at St Petersburg, acting with the Grand Priory of Russia, proclaimed von Hompesch deposed. In the September of the very year in which Malta was lost, Tsar Paul I became its head. The fact that he was not a Catholic, not professed, nor recognised by the Church, does not seem to have troubled him.

  There can be no doubt that the Tsar’s nomination was quite illegal, for the post was neither vacant nor were the necessary members present for a genuine election. Implied, of course, in the Tsar’s new office was the sovereignty of Malta—something about which the French, and later the British, were to have plenty to say. Autocratic Russia was inevitably the enemy of revolutionary France, and though allied with Britain by a mutual desire to see that the French did not become sole masters of Europe, the two countries had little else in common. The British, indeed, were as determined as their French enemies not to have the vast land power of Russia turning into a maritime one in the Mediterranean.

  Paul was formally invested with the insignia of his office in December 1798, announcing shortly afterwards that he was establishing a second non-Catholic Priory of Russia, so that his nobles of the Orthodox Faith could also become Knights of St John. Von Hompesch was finally prevailed upon to resign. He ended his life poor and disgraced, dying at Montpellier in France in 1805—a man no weaker perhaps than some of his predecessors, but one who had been placed in a completely intolerable position. The authors of a recent commentary, A Modern Crusade, remark:

  De facto, thus, though not de jure, Paul I of Russia was the 72nd Head of the Order, and St Petersburg, its momentary headquarters. Very likely the Emperor of Russia helped the Order to survive both the hostility of the revolutionaries and the rapacity of the monarchs.

  But Russia did not get Malta. By September 1800, the British had set up their control over the island and showed no inclination to turn it over to the Emperor Paul who now claimed it. Russo-British relations then speedily deteriorated. On the eve of a war with England, however, on the night of the 11th March 1801, Paul was murdered.

  Despite the fact that Paul’s successor, Alexander, nominated one of his generals as head of the Order, Russian interest in both it and the island of Malta rapidly declined. The Maltese people who had risen in courageous revolt against their French masters (finding that the revolutionary and atheistic attitudes of the French were anathema to their conservative feelings) called in the British to help redress the balance. The result was that, with the renewal of the war between France and Britain in 1803, the latter became to all intents and purposes the successors to the Order of St John as rulers of Malta. This was formally confirmed in 1814 by the Treaty of Paris when the island became part and parcel of the British Empire. In the Palace Square in Valetta the following inscription proclaims that the new ownership of the island was given (as it had not been to the Knights in 1530) with the full consent of its people: ‘To Great and Unconquered Britain the Love of the Maltese and the Voice of Europe Confirms these islands A.D. 1814.’

  In 1803 Pope Pius VII chose John Tommasi, the chief candidate of the Russian Priories, as Grand Master. After Tommasi’s death two years later at Catania, there followed an interval during which the Order was ruled by Lieutenants who were elected by its Knights but ratified by the Holy See. The Convent remained in Catania for twenty-two years until in 1826 it moved to Ferrara, and a few years later to Rome, where it has remained ever since. During this period, when the surviving Knights were scattered throughout Europe, attempts were constantly made to obtain from the European powers some new base from which the Order might operate in something of its old capacity as a shield of Christendom and protector of the poor and sick. Islands were considered in the Baltic and in the Aegean, to which it might return and once again set up a sovereign state. But
no one was particularly eager to cede even some relatively unimportant island or promontory to the once famous but now threadbare Order of St John. The Order in fact had largely become what it had so often been accused of being—an exclusive club of old Catholic noblemen living in a dead past.

  Whilst various splinter branches had established themselves in the countries from which the eight Langues had formerly been drawn, the real revival of the Order began in Rome. Here one of its members had bequeathed it a palace, the Palazzo di Malta, which is still its home. Crusading warfare was clearly a thing of the past, and its members turned to their original vocation which Brother Gerard had established, that of Hospitallers. The Grand Mastership was restored by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 and the seventy-fourth Grand Master since Raymond du Puy was installed, an Italian, John Baptist Ceschi a Santa Croce.

  The Order’s revenues, however, were slight and they had only this one small piece of territory over which flew the flag of the Order of St John, ‘the white cross of Peace on the blood-red field of War’. The question of the sovereignty of the Order was also a matter of interminable discussion and it has troubled many historians ever since. In 1862 the Italian Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs declared that, ‘It is to a certain extent a World Order ... Deprived of the sovereignty which it exercised first in the island of Rhodes, and then in that of Malta, it continued to preserve, and still does, a character which no European power has ever ceased to recognise and respect.’

  Some historians, among them Kelf-Cohen, have argued that the Order lost its sovereignty after leaving Rhodes. There can be no doubt whatever that, after 1530, the Order was no longer independent and sovereign, and that L’Isle Adam, despite all his efforts, had become a feudatory, though the service demanded was very slight. [The annual payment of one Maltese falcon.] The Act of Donation of Malta put them definitely into the position of feudal vassals of Charles V, as King of the two Sicilies.’ If one examines the Charter itself it is clear that the Order through its payment of a pepper-corn rent had in fact become tenants of Malta. Rhodes they had won for themselves by force of arms, and had been accepted by the Pope as its sovereigns. However, the feudal tie was so very weak that after 1565 the Grand Masters were to all intents and purposes internationally recognised as the sovereigns of the Maltese islands. Vassalage in no way militated against sovereignty. The Kings of Naples and Sicily, for instance, were vassals of the Pope. The issue was finally resolved a few years ago, when on January 28th, 1961, a judgment was given by the Civil Courts of Rome that the Order was ‘un ente sovrano internazionale…’ (‘an international sovereign society’).

  One of the most interesting features of the Order’s revival during the nineteenth century was the reconstitution of the Langue of England. A number of French Knights of the Tongues of Auvergne, France, and Provence, proceeded on their own authority, without the consent of the Grand Magistry of the Order, to resuscitate the English branch in 1831. The Order, while always co-operating and remaining on friendly terms with the English branch, never agreed to recognise this organisation as a branch of the original Catholic Order founded by Blessed Gerard. This English Priory was converted by a Royal Charter of Queen Victoria into a British Order of Chivalry in 1888. The Queen became its Sovereign Head and appointed her son, later Edward VII, as its Grand Prior. The latter, with his love of wine, women, gambling and song, may seem a somewhat incongruous Grand Prior, but not all that much so, perhaps, when compared to some of his eighteenth-century predecessors. Ever since then, the reigning monarch has been Sovereign Head of the Order in England, while the Grand Prior has always been a member of the Royal House. Priories and commanderies have been established throughout the British Commonwealth overseas, and membership of the English branch of the Order now totals over 16,000.

  As its historian Sir Hannibal Scicluna writes: ‘It is the only Order of St John which admits Christians of all denominations.’ Its objects and purposes are: ‘The encouragement and promotion of all works of humanity and charity for the relief of persons in sickness, distress, suffering, and danger, without distinction of race, class or creed…’

  These ideals, which accurately reflect the original intentions of Brother Gerard, are identical with those of the Catholic Order in Rome and the other branches of the Order in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The Order is also strongly represented in the United States of America both by its Catholic members and by representatives of the English Order which was established there in 1960. In Jerusalem itself the English Order maintains an ophthalmic hospital which carries out research on trachoma, the eye disease which has been the scourge of the Middle East for centuries. The teaching body of the English Order is the St John Ambulance Association, which has over 4,000 doctors on its staff. An extension of this is the St John Ambulance Brigade which operates not only in the United Kingdom but throughout the British Commonwealth. Including men, women, and cadets, the grand total involved in its voluntary work amounts to nearly a quarter of a minion people.

  One of the most active branches of the Order of St John is the Johanniterorden in Germany, which was re-established in 1852 by King Frederic William IV. The Johanniterorden separated from the Order founded by Brother Gerard through adherence to Protestantism in the fifteenth century. Like their British associates they are prominent in running first aid stations and ambulance brigades, and in training people in first aid work. The Malteser Hilfsdienst is an organisation of the German Knights belonging to the Order of St John founded by Brother Gerard.

  A press release from the Palazzo di Malta, dated December 1969, shows how these modern Knights of St John of the German branch are still in the forefront of the battlefields of the world.

  Three young voluntary members of the Order of Malta hospitaller team, the German Hilfsdienst, serving in the hospital at An Hoa, have died in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Two others still remain prisoners ... A report of the imprisonment and subsequent deaths was officially reported to the U.S. Government by returning soldiers who had been imprisoned in the same military camp in North Vietnam. They confirmed that the deaths had been due to malnutrition and starvation and the plight of the remaining two young members of the medical team was desperate. The names of the young people who have died are: Georg Bartsch, aged 25—nursing assistant; Hindrika Kortman, aged 29—nursing assistant; Marie-Louise Kerber, age 20—dental assistant.

  For nearly four years, from September 1966 until March 1970, the German branch of the Order maintained a team of about forty-five doctors, nurses and relief workers in Vietnam. Their average age was twenty-five. They had a network of thirty-four bases under their supervision, and gave hospital care to both sides without any discrimination. In three years they had given medical aid and rehabilitation treatment to over 200,000 Vietnamese.

  The Order of St John was always international, but it is now international in a way that neither its founder, nor any of the successive Grand Masters throughout the centuries, could ever have envisaged. Its work is no longer concerned only with the battlefields of Europe—and it is certainly no longer concerned with warfare. Much of its work, indeed, is carried out in the Near and Middle East, and is designed to assist the poor and the sick of those very countries against which the Knights once waged incessant warfare. But the Order now looks to spheres that were once totally unknown to the inhabitants of Europe. In November 1970, for instance, when Pakistan was devastated by a great cyclone the Order sent immediate financial aid to the Pakistan Government. Just as they had done in the great earthquake that devastated Messina and Reggio in 1783, so in 1970 they despatched innumerable crates of medicines and antibiotics (more efficacious than the once-famed Maltese fungus) to Bengal. Similarly, in the Peruvian earthquake disaster of 1970, a team of seventeen members of the Order worked in the worst-hit area for six weeks. When they left they had trained up a Peruvian staff to take over from them, to whom they donated their field hospital and all their equipment and medical stores. The Order is also increasingly
active in Africa, especially in the battle against leprosy.

  In common with most religious orders of the Church, that of St John has had a second Order—its Hospitaller Sisters. These almost certainly originated at about the same time as the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem, and worked there in the Hospital of St Mary Magdalene. A group of nuns of the Order of St John was established in England as early as 1180, and there were a number of other convents of Hospitaller Sisters in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Bohemia, Denmark, the Netherlands and Malta. Although they are not Hospitaller Sisters, the nuns who work in the Hospital of St John and Elizabeth in London still wear upon their habit the eight-pointed Cross of Malta of Rhodes and of St John.

  From its headquarters in Rome today the Grand Master, His Most Eminent Highness Frà Angelo de Mojana, the seventy-seventh Grand Master in over 900 years, presides at the head of a world-wide service for the relief and prevention of disease. He himself is a fully professed Knight, of whom there are some fifty others. He and they have taken the full vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He is not a layman but a ‘religious’. He also ranks for ceremonial occasions at the Vatican as a cardinal. There are 8,000 Knights in the Order, most of the members being married, while a number of their wives are Dames of the Order. There are in fact more Knights in the Order of St John now than there were in the days of its material prosperity and grandeur in the eighteenth century; when Grand Master Pinto could so imperiously point towards a closed crown, indicating that he was as much a monarch as any other on earth.