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This book examines the English-speaking branch, or langue, of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, a military order devoted to the care of the sick and defence of the Latin East and based successively, in this period, in Rhodes and Malta. The order's houses in Britain and Ireland, governed from priories at Clerkenwell and Kilmainham, supported these activities with men and money, and also provided spiritual and other services to the local population. This work examines the recruitment of British and Irish members of the order and their family ties and career structure as well as their relationship with society at large, mediated through their provision of spiritual services outside the parish network as well as through their offer of vicarious participation in the defence of the faith through the offer of confraternity. The administration of the order's estates by its members and their servants and families is analysed, and its despatch of resources to the east investigated. The support of the governing authorities of Britain and Ireland was crucial to the latter, and the Hospital was a significant component of the later medieval political order, so there is extended discussion of the order's relationship with the English and Scots' crowns and the Irish nobility. Finally, the activities of the langue in the Mediterranean are examined, attention being given to the careers of its members in the east, its role in the defence of Rhodes and Malta, and the position and functions of its chief officer, the turcopolier.

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.

L'Ordre de Malte a fait l'objet de multiples travaux historiques, mais l'auteur traite ici d'un aspect moins connu. C'est celui des activités maritimes corsaires, non seulement de membres de l'Ordre, mais aussi des Maltais, ou même des étrangers, les exerçant sous son autorisation.Leurs actions régulières et en course, sous le pavillon rouge à croix blanche, furent si multiples et si couronnées de succès que les musulmans surnommèrent ces marins Les Scorpions de la mer.En effet, en dehors des campagnes officielles, qu'elles soient systématiques comme lors des « caravanes », ou en expédition militaire ponctuelle comme l'attaque d'Alger, toute une flottille de bâtiments très divers, de la galère à la barcasse, se livrait, sous armement privé, à la course. Ces expéditions, connues sous le nom de « corsaires », étaient destinées à engranger des profits, officiellement destinés à soutenir le premier type d'opération.Mais ces chasses relevaient de processus plus compliqués qu'à première vue, et leurs buts étaient-ils si clairs ?  

In the spring of 1565, a massive fleet of Ottoman ships descended on Malta, a small island centrally located between North Africa and Sicily, home and headquarters of the crusading Knights of St. John and their charismatic Grand Master, Jean de Valette. The Knights had been expelled from Rhodes by the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, and now stood as the last bastion against a Muslim invasion of Sicily, southern Italy, and beyond. The siege force of Turks, Arabs, and Barbary corsairs from across the Muslim world outnumbered the defenders of Malta many times over, and its arrival began a long hot summer of bloody combat, often hand to hand, embroiling knights and mercenaries, civilians and slaves, in a desperate struggle for this pivotal point in the Mediterranean. Bruce Ware Allen's The Great Siege of Malta describes the siege's geopolitical context, explains its strategies and tactics, and reveals how the all-too-human personalities of both Muslim and Christian leaders shaped the course of events. The siege of Malta was the Ottoman empire's high-water mark in the war between the Christian West and the Muslim East for control of the Mediterranean. Drawing on copious research and new source material, Allen stirringly recreates the two factions' heroism and chivalry, while simultaneously tracing the barbarism, severity, and indifference to suffering of sixteenth-century warfare. The Great Siege of Malta is a fresh, vivid retelling of one of the most famous battles of the early modern world-a battle whose echoes are still felt today.

La Soberana Orden Militar de Malta no representa hoy únicamente la supervivencia de una orden caballeresca de tiempos medievales que desarrolla unas funciones humanitarias al modo de una ONG. Ciertamente, la Orden de San Juan de Malta, que ha cumplido hace poco sus novecientos años de historia, constituye una tal auténtica singularidad que sorprende que esté todavía presente a la altura de estos tiempos con millares de miembros y cooperantes, una amplísima actividad internacional, y con rango de Estado Soberano reconocido por una gran parte de la Comunidad Internacional. De hecho, es una institución consolidada en numerosos países que mantiene relaciones diplomáticas con ciento cuatro Estados, estando en trámite de establecerlas con varios más. Por todo ello no puede extrañar la atención dispensada al estudio de su historia y de su realidad actual en los últimos tiempos. En la prosecución del objetivo de estudio y difusión de la Historia de la Orden de Malta, en el presente libro 17 historiadores exponen algunas de las características más sobresalientes de esta realidad institucional ofreciendo nuevos itinerarios de investigación que contribuyen a conocer la Orden, tanto de su apasionante pasado como de su realidad actual.[Texto de la editorial]

Three 1605 manuscript maps of Ottoman fortresses, held in the Newberry Library in Chicago, are beautiful and technically proficient. They were drawn during the Habsburg-Ottoman Long War (1593-1606) by one Christofaro Tarnowskij, who is otherwise unknown as a cartographer, apparently in the context of plans for an anti-Ottoman uprising by Christian subjects in the western Balkans. While the maps help to illuminate decades of plotting against the Ottomans in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries and the continuing relevance of the ideal of crusade in early modern Europe, they do much more; for they demonstrate the artificiality for the period of two of our own intellectual constructs of East as opposed to West and medieval as opposed to modern. They also reinforce the centrality of the history of cartography in understanding Europe's past.