The extraordinary sequence of events which followed the fall of Malta to
Napoleon was an unlooked for consequence of one of the most extended legal
battles of early modern history. In 1609, Prince Janus of Ostrog
made a will leaving his great estates in Poland first to his male heirs, then
to the heirs of his brother-in-law and then, if both lines failed, to the order
of Malta. In 1672 the order did indeed inherit the lands, but the knight
appointed to manage them had obtained a dispensation to marry and on his death
his widow enjoyed them herself until 1701, after which a man claiming to be the
sole survivor of the family of Janus’s brother-in-law took them over with the
king of Poland’s tacit support. The Ostrog case dragged on until 1776 when the order
prevailed, and a Polish Priory of six commanderies was established. The case
had been resolved only because the order had appealed directly to Poland’s
neighbors, Prussia, and Russia, to intervene on its behalf. The appeal to
Prussia had entailed the recognition of the Protestant Bailiwick of
Brandenburg, the Herrenmeister at the time being King
Frederick Ill’s brother. The appeal to Russia was to lead eventually to the
bizarre mastership of Tsar Paul I.
The Priory of Poland was, in fact, a failure. It caused endless worry
and provided little regarding financial support, being disrupted by the Third
Partition of Poland in 1793; the Ostrog estates were
in one of the regions taken over by the Russians. When Paul I, a romantic who
was attracted by the order’s history ascended the Russian throne in 1795 he
revived and re-endowed the Polish Priory under the tide of the grand priory of
Russia. Then, in the disillusion and anarchy that followed Napoleon’s seizure
of Malta, the Knights of that priory unilaterally deposed Grand Master Hompesch and turned to the tsar. Hompesch,
in exile in Trieste, had little support; although the pope wrote to Monsignor
Lorenzo Litta in Russia that he did not want Paul I a
schismatic as head of the order. Nevertheless, Paul ran the order using a
sacred council composed mostly of non-Catholic laymen and he founded, alongside
the grand Catholic priory, a second, Orthodox, grand priory of Russia.
Paul was assassinated on the night of 23 March 1801. His successor,
Alexander I, laid no claim to the mastership and urged the legitimate election
of a new grand master. After the names of Catholic and professed candidates had
been submitted by all the priories, the pope chose Bailiff Tommasi,
whose election was ratified by a general assembly of brothers. In 1810, the
council of the Grand Priory of Russia in St Petersburg voted its dissolution
and surrendered most of the regalia and archives. Tommasi
and his successor, the Lieutenant Grand Master Guevara-Suardo,
were recognized by the Russians, but Tsar Alexander began to press for the
abolition of the Russian Priory and in 1810-11 this was brought about by the
confiscation of its properties. The abortive grand priory of Russia has,
however, continued to haunt the world of Orders of St John.
1) Where the previous
part described the phenomenon of self-styled Knightly orders of St John or of
Malta, most of these orders claim to be continuations of various alleged
offshoots of what now appears to be a non-existing Russian Orthodox
priory. Case Study: Malta and the Russian Usurpation.
2) In the following
historical investigation it has become clear that the original SMOM Order
indeed continued unabated and that the Order's continuing sovereign status was
not forfeited through the loss of Malta. Case Study: The appointment of a new Grand Master.
3) Contested as some
of the following developments initially where they also contain some intrigue. Case Study: The foundations of the National Associations of the
Order in England and Germany.
4) Following an
earlier remark about Festing at the end of
the discussion here, there is in fact a historical precedent in the form of an
even more severe dispute that more significantly gave rise to a vacancy in the
Grand Mastership from 1951 to 1962 (which Roger Peyrefitte's famous
novel wrongfully attributed to a grain deal). Case Study: Vatican's opposition to the Order of Malta.
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