Nobility, Faith and Masculinity: The Hospitaller Knights of Malta c.1580-c.1700, by Emanuel Buttigieg

Abstract

As the author points out, the very abundance of archival sources has contributed to ‘a strong antiquarian influence’ upon the historiography of the Hospitallers’ residence on the island of Malta. Emanuel Buttigieg proposes to get beyond this by adopting a cultural history approach, in which he frames his investigation in relation to the three themes of nobility, faith and masculinity. Right from the outset the author emphasises how, as a landowner with property located across Europe and with an international membership (with a clear French majority), the Hospitallers have to be viewed firmly in an international context. At the same time, he insists that attention needs to be paid to the local Maltese setting, which, during the period being examined, saw the rapid urbanisation and the rebuilding of Valletta after the Ottoman siege of 1565. Building on his M.Phil. work on the history of adolescence in early modern Malta, the author emphasises how the process of becoming a Hospitaller was ‘complex, tortuous and expensive’, and how officials had to balance the stricter requirements of the post-Tridentine Church with the pragmatic need to satisfy the strategies of noble families, for whom primogeniture could make the settling of non-first-born sons as pressing a requirement for the successful realisation of a profitable family marriage strategy as the placing of daughters in nunneries (though the interesting comparison here could have been developed further). Something of the inherent fragility of the Hospitallers’ identity as a community of military males sworn to chastity can be seen from the ‘revolt of 1581’, which was provoked by the Grand Master’s expulsion of prostitutes from Valletta and which led to his violent deposition.