A public lecture by Victor Mallia-Milanes, entitled, ‘The Order of the Hospital in 1630,’ is taking place as part of the 13th edition of Festival Mediterranea.

The year 1630 marked the first centenary of the Hospitaller Order of St John on Malta. What helped the Hospitaller institution to survive and recover? What signs were there in 1630 to foretell the times ahead? How politically relevant to Christian Europe was the Order at that stage? What impact did the first hundred years of the Order in the central Mediterranean have on Malta and the Maltese?

In an endeavour to answer these and other related questions, the talk will focus on the state of the Order in its various dimensions – as a religious, charitable, and military institution, as ruler of a quasi-sovereign island-principality, and as a massive landowner.

Victor Mallia-Milanes is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Malta. Formerly Head of the History Department and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He was also the founder and first Director of the University’s Institute for Maltese Studies.

He has published extensively on the history of Venice, the Order of the Hospital, and Malta in the early modern period. His book In the Service of the Venetian Republic: Massimiliano Buzzaccarini Gonzaga’s Letters from Malta to Venice’s Magistracy of Trade 1754-1776 was published in 2008. An Italian edition is being published later this year by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Entrance to the lecture is free of charge and it will take place at Il-Hagar | Heart of Gozo Museum, in St George’s Square, Victoria, on Saturday, the 1st of November, starting at 9.00am.

The lecture will be delivered in English.

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