Sovereign Military Order of Malta

• 1. Introduction

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  The Sovereign Military Order of Malta has no country of its own, yet it strikes its own coins, prints its own postage stamps and issues its own passports. Its full name is a mouthful: the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. Most people say the Knights of Malta. It is a Catholic lay religious order, and international law treats it as a sovereign entity. Its motto is Tuitio fidei et obsequium pauperum, which means defence of the faith and assistance to the poor. How did a hospital for pilgrims turn into a fleet of warships, and then into a diplomatic presence with embassies? Why does an order named for an island no longer own that island? And who gets to decide whether a body with no land counts as a sovereign at all?

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• 2. Hospital Origins

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  Around 1048, merchants from the maritime republic of Amalfi persuaded the Caliph of Egypt to let them build in Jerusalem. They raised a church, a convent and a hospital for pilgrims of any faith or race. The monastic community that ran the hospital later became independent under its founder, a religious brother named Gerard. Tradition remembers him as the Blessed Gerard, and the Knights Hospitaller are said to have been founded as a chivalric order about 1099 in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  On the 15th of February 1113, Pope Paschal II issued the bull Pie postulatio voluntatis. It approved the foundation of the Hospital and placed it under the protection of the Holy See. The brothers won the right to elect their own superiors without interference from any secular or religious authority. That also freed the hospital from the control of the local church. Every knight was a religious, bound by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

  The constitution of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades changed the order's work. It had to defend the sick, the pilgrims and the captured territories by force of arms. Care for the sick now shared the stage with a second duty, the defence of the faith.

  The order eventually adopted a white cross with eight points, which remains its symbol. The eight points stand for the eight beatitudes that Jesus pronounced in the Sermon on the Mount.

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• 3. Island Years

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  In 1291 the Siege of Acre ended with the loss of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land. The knights withdrew first to Cyprus. In 1310, under Grand Master Fra' Foulques de Villaret, they regrouped on the island of Rhodes. There they built a powerful fleet and sailed the eastern Mediterranean, joining Crusades in Syria and Egypt.

  Knights arrived on Rhodes from every corner of Europe, and the order sorted them by the language they spoke. The first seven groups, called Langues or Tongues, were Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon with Navarre, England with Scotland and Ireland, and Germany. In 1492 Castile and Portugal separated from Aragon, and the count rose to eight. Each Langue held Priories or Grand Priories, Bailiwicks and Commanderies, and senior posts were shared among them.

  The Grand Master of this period was styled the Prince of Rhodes. Independence from other nations under a pontifical charter, plus a recognised right to field armed forces, supported the order's claim to sovereignty. It minted coins and kept diplomatic relations with other states.

  In 1523, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent besieged Rhodes with a fleet and an army. After six months of fierce fighting, explosives dug beneath the walls brought them down. The knights negotiated a surrender and left Rhodes carrying their arms.

  For seven years the order had no territory. In 1530 Grand Master Fra' Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle Adam took possession of the island of Malta. Emperor Charles V and his mother Queen Joanna of Castile granted it as monarchs of Sicily, with the approval of Pope Clement VII. In return the order had to honour the conditions of the Tribute of the Maltese Falcon.

  In 1565 the knights under Grand Master Fra' Jean de Valette held the island for more than three months during the Great Siege by the Ottomans. The capital, Valletta, carries his name. In 1571 the order's fleet helped destroy Ottoman naval power at the Battle of Lepanto, a campaign led by John of Austria, half brother of King Philip II of Spain.

  The Reformation split Western Europe into Protestant and Catholic states, and it split the knights too. The order dissolved in several countries, including England, Scotland and Sweden. In the Netherlands and Germany, whole bailiwicks or commanderies turned Protestant. Their descendants, the Johanniter orders, survive in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, and in places such as the United States and South Africa. The order resolved to stay neutral in any war between Christian nations.

  On the 21st of May 1651, the order acquired four Caribbean islands: Saint Barthélemy, Saint Christopher, Saint Croix and Saint Martin. It bought them from the French Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique, which had just been dissolved. The order ruled them until 1665, when it sold all four to the French West India Company.

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• 4. Napoleon and Exile

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  In 1798 Napoleon asked Grand Master Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim for permission to bring his ships into Malta's port for water and supplies. The Grand Master answered that only two foreign ships could enter at a time. Bonaparte saw that such a rule would take far too long and expose his forces to British Admiral Horatio Nelson. He ordered a cannon barrage at once.

  French soldiers landed at seven points on the morning of the 11th of June. After several hours of hard fighting, the Maltese defenders in the west were forced to surrender. Napoleon then opened talks with the fortress capital of Valletta. Facing far superior forces, the Grand Master negotiated a surrender. Hompesch left for Trieste on the 18th of June and resigned as Grand Master on the 6th of July 1799.

  The Russian Emperor Paul I sheltered the largest group of refugee knights in Saint Petersburg. They elected the Tsar as their Grand Master, which made him a rival to Hompesch until Hompesch abdicated. Paul created a Russian Grand Priory of no fewer than 118 Commanderies, open to all Christians and dwarfing the rest of the order. Catholic canon law never ratified his election, so he was Grand Master in practice but not in law.

  The cost of exile showed in the accounts. Until 1810, the Russian Grand Priory generated 90 percent of the order's income, while traditional European sources supplied only 10 percent. From 1805 to 1879 the order was governed by Lieutenants rather than Grand Masters.

  The Treaty of Amiens in 1802 would have returned Malta to a recreated Order of St. John, with sovereignty guaranteed by the major European powers. It was never carried out. Objections grew quickly in the United Kingdom, and Britain declared war on France on the 18th of May. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 confirmed that Malta was lost for good.

  The order lived for a time in Messina, Catania and Ferrara before settling in Rome in 1834. Its right to send and receive envoys survived the loss of the island, and that kept its international status unbroken. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII restored the office of Grand Master after a vacancy of 75 years. He confirmed Giovanni Battista Ceschi a Santa Croce as the first Grand Master of the restored order.

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• 5. Sovereignty Without Territory

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  On the 24th of January 1953, a Tribunal of Cardinals appointed by Pope Pius XII examined the order's status. It found that the order's sovereignty is functional, meaning it exists to let the order achieve its purposes. The tribunal added that the order enjoys certain prerogatives of sovereignty but not the full powers of sovereign bodies in the strict sense.

  On the 24th of June 1961, Pope John XXIII approved a Constitutional Charter. Article 1 declares the order a legal entity approved by the Holy See, with the quality of a subject of international law. Article 3 holds that being both a religious order and a sovereign order does not limit its autonomy toward states.

  Legal scholars have never fully agreed. Ian Brownlie wrote that "Even in the sphere of recognition and bilateral relations, the legal capacities of institutions like the Sovereign Order of Jerusalem and Malta must be limited simply because they lack the territorial and demographic characteristics of states." Wilhelm Wengler denied that recognition by some states makes the order a subject of international law. Helmut Steinberger argued that, apart from the Holy See, only states are accorded sovereignty.

  Other experts take the opposite side. Georg Dahm calls the order a "subject of international law without territory". Gerhard von Glahn classes it as a nonstate subject of international law of a somewhat peculiar nature. Rebecca Wallace argues that a sovereign entity does not have to be a country. Doubts about the closeness of the order to the Holy See prompted constitutional changes in 1997. Since then the order has been widely recognised as a sovereign subject in its own right.

  The San Marino republic recognised the order as a sovereign state in 1935. Under Fra' Andrew Bertie, Prince and Grand Master from 1988 to 2008, the number of nations with diplomatic ties more than doubled, from 49 to 100. Today the order has formal diplomatic relations with 114 states, including the Holy See, and official relations with five more and with the European Union.

  Since 1994 the order has held observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. The United Nations does not class it as a non-member state or an intergovernmental organisation. It is one of the other entities holding a standing invitation to observe. The order gave USD $36,000 to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund between 2006 and 2022.

  Some symbols of statehood have never come. The International Telecommunication Union has granted no radio prefix to the order, so amateur radio stations there use an unofficial callsign starting with 1A. The order has neither sought nor received an internet top-level domain or a telephone dialling code.

  The stamps tell a more successful story. About 58 countries accept them for postage, including Canada and Mongolia, which lack full diplomatic relations with the order. Since 2005 the order has issued euro-denominated stamps, although its official currency remains the scudo. In that same year Poste italiane agreed to carry most classes of its international mail.

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• 6. Neighbours and Soldiers

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  A Court decree of the Supreme Court of Cassation on the 6th of June 1974 held that the order is a sovereign international subject, equal in all terms to a foreign state with which Italy has normal diplomatic relations. Italy has signed treaties with the order dated 1884, 1915-1938 and 1956. The Palazzo Malta at Via dei Condotti 68 and the Villa del Priorato di Malta on the Aventine Hill are recognised as extraterritorial, as are the order's embassies. The Grand Master lives in the palazzo, and the Grand Priory of Rome sits in the villa.

  A decree of King Victor Emmanuel III dated the 28th of November 1929 gave the Grand Master the honours due to cardinals, ranking just after them. It also placed the order's representation immediately after the foreign diplomatic corps. Diplomatic vehicles in Italy carry plates with the code XA, and the order is one of the country's largest landowners.

  A treaty with the Republic of Malta, signed on the 5th of December 1998 and ratified on the 1st of November 2001, grants the order the upper portion of Fort St. Angelo in Birgu. The grant carries limited extraterritoriality and runs for 99 years, but Malta may end it at any time after 50 years. The flag of Malta must fly alongside the order's flag, and the order may grant no asylum. Maltese law and courts generally apply there. An earlier treaty, dated the 21st of June 1991, is no longer in force.

  On the 26th of March 1876, the Association of the Italian Knights of the order reformed its military arm into a modern unit. On the 9th of April 1909 it became a special auxiliary volunteer corps of the Italian Army, wearing Italian uniforms. Its medical and paramedical personnel serve alongside the Italian Army in war and peace, and it also provides ceremonial guards around the coffins of high officers of the order. Whenever its staff join a mission abroad, the order's flag flies below the Italian flag, a rare case of one country's army unit supervised by another sovereign body.

  In 1947, the post-World War II peace treaty barred Italy from owning bomber aircraft and limited its transport fleet. The Italian Air Force therefore transferred some Savoia-Marchetti SM.82 aircraft to the order, which had a long-range transport design adaptable for bombing. Italian Air Force personnel flew them with the order's roundels on the fuselage and Italian ones on the wings. Besides training and transport duties, they carried sick pilgrims to the Lourdes sanctuary. They returned to full Italian control in the early 1950s, and one with the order's roundels is preserved in the Italian Air Force Museum.

  The corps is best known in mainland Europe for hospital trains, which ran intensively in both World Wars. It still runs a modern train of 28 cars with 192 hospital beds. The order supplies a medical staff of 38 medics and paramedics, while the Italian Army's Ferrovieri Engineer Regiment provides the technical staff.

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• 7. Governance and Membership

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  The Prince and Grand Master carries the title Most Eminent Highness and governs as both sovereign and religious superior. He serves a ten-year term, may be elected to a second, and cannot serve beyond the end of his 85th year. Fra' John T. Dunlap was elected on the 3rd of May 2023. If the Grand Master dies, resigns or is permanently impeded, the Grand Commander acts as Lieutenant ad interim, limited to ordinary administration.

  Four high officers run the order much as ministers would. The Grand Commander handles religious and spiritual affairs. The Grand Chancellor serves as minister for foreign and internal affairs, and the Grand Hospitaller oversees charitable and humanitarian work. The Receiver of the Common Treasure acts as minister of finance. The Sovereign Council handles regular business, while the Chapter General, meeting every six years, is the legislature and elects the Council's members. A separate Council Complete of State elects the Grand Master.

  The order counts about 13,500 Knights, Dames and Chaplains in three classes. The first class makes religious vows. As of 2023 it numbers 33 Knights of Justice and six Professed Conventual Chaplains. The second class makes a promise of obedience and includes 541 Knights and 137 Dames. The third class makes no vows or promises but lives by the principles of the Church and the order. In 2023 it had 12,395 members.

  Until the 1990s the highest classes, including officers, required proof of noble lineage. A newer path allows Knights and Dames of the lowest class, who need no proof of aristocratic descent, to be specially elevated into the highest class and become eligible for office.

  The Grand Priory of England was re-established in 1993. The order is divided into six Grand Priories, six Sub-Priories and dozens of national associations. Among them is the Grand Priory of Bohemia, founded in 1182.

  There are also three enclosed monasteries of nuns of the order, two in Spain dating from the 11th or 12th centuries and one in Malta. The Constitutional Charter and the Code of the order do not mention them.

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• 8. Crisis and Mission

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  In December 2016, Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager protested his removal as Grand Chancellor by Grand Master Fra' Matthew Festing. The removal followed a joint project with the order's Malteser International, in which aid groups distributed condoms to help sex slaves in Myanmar protect themselves from AIDS. In January 2017 Pope Francis ordered von Boeselager reinstated and required Festing's resignation.

  The pope named Archbishop Giovanni Becciu as his personal representative, which sidelined the order's Cardinal Patron Raymond Burke. Some saw the pope's control of the order as a break with tradition and with its independence. In June 2017 the leaders wore suits instead of full dress uniforms to their annual papal audience. Mauro Bertero Gutiérrez, a Bolivian member of the Government Council, was named in May 2017 to lead constitutional reform. When the Chapter General met in May 2019, three of its 62 participants were women for the first time.

  After Becciu gave up the rights and privileges of a cardinal amid a financial corruption scandal, Pope Francis named Archbishop Silvano Tomasi special delegate on the 1st of November 2020. On the 3rd of September 2022, the pope promulgated a new constitution and made provisional appointments to the Sovereign Council. An Extraordinary General Chapter followed on the 25th of January 2023. The next day it elected to six-year terms the same four members he had appointed, plus six of the nine Councillors he had named. On the 19th of June 2023 he named Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda to succeed Burke as patron.

  The work that defines the order today is humanitarian. It employs about 52,000 doctors, nurses, auxiliaries and paramedics, helped by around 100,000 volunteers in more than 120 countries. They assist children, homeless, disabled, elderly and terminally ill people, refugees, and people with leprosy, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Its worldwide relief corps, Malteser International, aids victims of natural disasters, epidemics and war.

  Malteser International runs more than 140 projects in 35 countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas, with headquarters in Cologne, Germany. It is active in places such as Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti, Ukraine, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Kenya, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar. Its partners include health, education and water ministries in South Sudan, Nigeria and Uganda. In 2023, more than half of its income came from the Government of Germany.

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