The book is a dedicated account of the history of medicine practiced in Early Modern Malta when the Islands were managed by the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The changing patterns of disease throughout the 16th to 18th centuries and the response to managing these conditions are reviewed. The nook further looks at the legislative efforts introduced to control disease, the educational endeavors undertaken to improve the standards of care, and the social welfare systems adopted to better the lives of the population.

This is an important study of elite European noblemen who joined the Order of Malta. The Order - functioning in parallel with the convents that absorbed the surplus daughters of the nobility - provided a highly respectable outlet for sons not earmarked for marriage. The process of becoming a Hospitaller was a semi-structured one, involving clear-cut (if flexible) social and financial requirements on the part of the candidate, and a mixture of formal and informal socialization into the ways of the Order. Once enrolled, a Hospitaller became part of a very hierarchical and ethnically mixed organisation, within which he could seek offices and status. This process was delineated by a complex interaction of internal factors - hierarchy, patriarchy and age - set within external mechanisms such as papal patronage and interference. This book is innovative in its methodology, drawing on a wide range of sources and applying historiographical approaches not previously brought to bear on the Order.

Demonstrates that Malta was much more than a military strongpoint in the Christian-Muslim divide but rather a major centre of international exchange.

Modern study of the Hospitallers, of other military-religious orders, and of their activities both in the Mediterranean and in Europe has been deeply influenced by the work of Anthony Luttrell. To mark his 75th birthday in October 2007 twenty-three colleagues from ten different countries have contributed to this volume. The first section focuses on the crusading period in the Holy Land, considering the Hospital in Jerusalem, relations with the Assassins, finances, indulgences, transportation and the careers of the brothers and knights. The second and third sections move to the later Middle Ages, when the Hospitallers had their centre on Rhodes, and military and charitable activities in the East had to be supported with men and money from the West. The papers in the second section consider the Hospitallers on Rhodes, relations between Rhodes and the West and plans for crusades, while the third section includes papers on the Hospitallers in the Iberian Peninsula and in Hungary, the territorial administration of the Order of Montesa in Valencia, a plan to transfer the headquarters of the Teutonic Order from Prussia to Frisia, and a Hospitaller reconsideration of warfare and learning on the eve of the council of Trent. The final paper proposes new definitions and guidelines for future work on the military-religious orders. The authors include both well-known experts and younger scholars who promise to follow in the footsteps of Anthony Luttrell and to continue research into the Hospitallers and their fellow orders, these peculiar European communities avant la lettre.

This book lists all the coins minted by the Kights of Malta during their stay in Malta between 1530 - 1798. It lists all known varieties and lists the quantity known in museums and in private collections.

This fourth collection of Dr Luttrell’s studies on the military order of the Hospital concerns its activities on the island of Rhodes, acquired between 1306 and 1310, where it struggled to contain the naval aggression of the Anatolian Turks and to settle the island and organise its society and economy. At the same time it had to exploit its Cypriot possessions and its European provinces in order to secure the manpower and resources needed to sustain its Eastern activities. The author has spent over 40 years working in the Hospital’s archives on Malta and elsewhere throughout the West, studying the Hospitallers’ military and naval affairs, their spiritual and medical activities, and the organisation of their Western priories and commanderies. These studies illustrate the workings of an extensive multi-national corporation dedicated to the defence of Christendom.

Houses and Domestic Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hospitaller Malta is a study concerned with a wide spectrum of early modern dwellings in Malta, ranging from palazzi and affluent residences to peasant dwellings, troglodyte houses, and hovels. The multifaceted approach adopted in this book allows houses and domestic networks to be studied not only in terms of architecture and construction materials, but also as places of human habitation where house dwellers act, react and interact in different contexts and circumstances. Dwellings are places that permit different social and economic activities, whilst providing shelter and security to the household members. Through the available sources, the houses of Hospitaller Malta are analysed in terms of their spatial properties and how they generate privacy, interaction and communication, identity, accessibility, security, visibility, movement and encounters, and, equally important, how domestic space relates to gender roles, status, and class. This work, therefore, seeks to reach a deep and nuanced understanding of domestic space and how it relates to the islands’ history and the development of their society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This short study of the history of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, also known as the Knights Hospitaller, is intended as an introduction to the Order for academics working in other fields, as well as the interested general reader. Beginning with a consideration of the origins of the Order as a hospice for pilgrims in Jerusalem in the eleventh century, it traces the Hospitaller's development into a military order during the first part of the 12th century, and its military activities on the frontiers of Christendom in the eastern Mediterranean, Spain and eastern Europe during the middle ages and into early modern period: its role in crusades and in wars against non-Christians on land and at sea, as well as its role in building and maintaining fortresses.

The Knights of St John of Jerusalem, also known as the Hospitallers, were a military religious order, subject to monastic vows and discipline but devoted to the active defence of the Holy Land. After evacuating the Holy Land at the beginning of the fourteenth century, they occupied Rhodes, which they held into the sixteenth century, when their headquarters moved to Malta. Branches of the order existed throughout Europe, and it is the English branch in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies that is examined here.Among the major subjects researched by O'Malley are the recruitment of members of the Hospital and their family ties; the operation of the order's career structure; the administration of its estates; its provision of spiritual and charitable services; and the publicity and logistical support it provided for the holy war carried on by its headquarters against the Ottoman Turks. It is argued that the English Hospitallers in particular took their military and financial duties to the order veryseriously, making a major contribution to the Hospital's operations in the Mediterranean as a result. They were able to do so because they were wealthy, had close family and other ties with gentle and mercantile society, and above all because their activities had royal support. Where this was lacking orineffective, as in Ireland, the Hospital might become the plaything of local interests eager to exploit its estates, and its wider functions might be neglected. Consequently the heart of the book lies in an extended discussion of the relationship between senior Hospitaller officers and the governing authorities of Britain and Ireland. It is concluded that rulers were generally supportive of the order's activities, but within strict limits, particularly in matters concerning appointments, thesize of payments to the east, and the movement and foreign allegiances of senior brethren. When these limits were breached, or at times of political or religious sensitivity such as the 1460s and 1530s, the Hospital's personnel and estates would suffer.In addition, more general areas of historical debate are illuminated such as those concerning the relationship between late medieval societies and the religious orders; 'British' attitudes to Christendom and holy war, and the rights of rulers over their subjects. This is the first such book to be based on archival records in both Britain and Malta, and will make a major contribution to understanding the order's European network, its place in the ordering of Latin Christendom, and in particularits role in late medieval British and Irish society.