The Order in bloom

Emanuel Buttigieg: Nobility, Faith and Masculinity. The Hospitaller Knights of Malta, c.1580– c.1700, Continuum, London and New York, 2011, 315 pp.

Emanuel Buttigieg’s Nobility, Faith and Masculinity marks the emergence of a young and promising historian who is bound to leave his mark on the local history scene.

In moving away from a traditionalist history, Buttigieg puts the Order in a wider perspective- Louis Scerri

A doctoral graduate of Cambridge University, Buttigieg so far has only published a couple of well-received papers in books published in Cambridge and Aldershot, but the present solely authored publication by an important foreign publisher is a significant achievement.

Buttigieg chooses quite an usual timeframe for his study but, as he explains in his introduction, these 120 years cover the period from when the Order of the Knights was firmly settled in its island home, after the successful defence of 1565 and the decision to build Valletta, until the beginning of the 18th century when the first wafts of the Enlightenment started to hit Europe and hence Malta and which was to question the Order’s raison d’etre.

Indeed, Buttigieg sees this period as one of consolidation and regeneration, and from which Malta was greatly to benefit from the great investment programmes of the Order. One can say most of the glorious heritage of the Order of which we are so rightly proud today, was either started or given its definitive flourishes in this period of time.

The period, as the author points out, is marked by two revolts. The Romegas affair of 1581 almost marked the death of the Order, which was shaken to its roots, but from which it emerged in a stronger form, not least concerning the prestige of the office of the grand master.

In 1639, the banning of women from wearing masks during the carnival festivities lead to another violent rising among the brethren that called into question the grand master’s very authority. Both revolts had several things in common, such as the exuberance of youth and the role played by women (of possible easy virtue) as the casus belli.

Buttigieg questions the generally accepted interpretation that this period was marked by an Order in decline; instead he sees it as still having ‘important political, social, economic, and cultural functions’ in early modern Europe.

In moving away from a traditionalist history, he adopts the conceptual framework of cultural history, thus putting the Order in a wider perspective. Special attention to the masculine gender-systems and ‘how their diversities, ambiguities, and contradictions contribute to a fuller understanding of social relations’, thus making it possible for the author to discuss issues of male fraternity, conflict, and control in the Order in the period chosen.

The years following the Great Siege were marked by a demographic revival and the subsequent urbanisation of the harbour area and the growth of villages that re-flected a perceived greater security).

The Order’s allure as a staunch pro-active defender of the Faith in a hostile world also served to inspire the setting-up of other chivalric orders with similar objectives in spite of the rise of nationalistic sentiments that would eventually destroy the brotherhood. Indeed, Buttigieg argues for a renaissance of the chivalric ideal and military orders in Europe, possibly inspired by the events on the island.

The author also places the island within the wider European context; in the mid-17th century the continent was ravaged by the war between France and Spain that were the traditional backers of the Order. Moreover he argues strongly about the need to appreciate how the Order was affected by the developments that characterised the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation and even played a part in them.

As the title of the book indicates, Buttigieg focuses on the three essential aspects of nobility, faith, and masculinity in the Order, thus rendering a very complex re-assessment that differs from the traditional black and white simplistic interpretations, much in line with modern historiography.

These three aspects formed the vital charisma of the Order both in the eyes of its members as well as in those of outsiders. Events and developments in the period selected to enhance the allure of the warrior monks.

It is this local context that features strongly in Buttigieg’s account, especially in its interaction with the continental realities, and which thus contributed to the development of a knight of St John formed and developed during the period that he chose to focus on. As the introduction explains, the knights ‘managed their role and identity as Hospitallers through the interplay of nobility, faith, and masculinity’ both on a corporate and personal level. It is this new reading that makes this an important contribution to the historiography of the Order.

The author has drawn on a very wide spectrum of archival and written sources. While the endnotes cover almost 50 pages, the very exhaustive bibliography runs to 58 pages. It is this sound preparation and its constant analytic approach that makes Nobility, Faith and Masculinity such an important volume.