The Treasury, Debts, and Deaths The Treasury, Debts and Deaths A study of the Common Treasury of the Order of St John and its relationship with the individual Hospitaller in matters of debts and deaths based on Giovanni Caravita’s Trattato del Comun Tesoro The Treasury, Debts and Deaths A study of the Common Treasury of the Order of St John and its relationship with the individual Hospitaller in matters of debts and deaths based on Giovanni Caravita’s Trattato del Comun Tesoro Stefan Cachia A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Malta, in part fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History May 2004 To Christine, her family and my family Declaration of authenticity I, the undersigned, Stefan Cachia, declare that this dissertation is my original work, gathered and utilized especially to fulfil the purposes and objectives of this study, and has not been previously submitted to any university for a higher degree. I also declare that publications cited in this work have been personally consulted. ______________________________ Signiture ______________________________ ______________________________ Date Name in Block iv Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to all those who have supported me throughout the past five years I have been working the present dissertation. At times, I felt overwhelmed by the task, particularly when the exigencies of my full-time job drained my leisure time and energies. Various friends and colleagues, often unwittingly, spurned me to continue in my endeavour, notwithstanding the certain difficulties that I encountered on the way. My deepest gratitude goes to my tutor, Prof. Victor Mallia-Milanes, who has painstakingly reviewed my work, drawing my attention to various inconsistencies, stylistic deficiencies, and linguistic inaccuracies in the text. His insights have helped me greatly in formulating my ideas, while his stylistic and linguistic elegance permeates the language through which the following text has been weaved. A word of thanks must definitely go to Fra John Chretien, a modern-day Hospitaller whose help has been indispensable for my research in Rome, in the Archives of the Order of St John in Palazzo Malta, Via Condotti, the present- day headquarters of the Order. The staff at the National Library of Malta gave unfailing assistance. They were ready to go out of their way to help me conduct my research and make the necessary photocopies. Without their help, my research in the Order’s Archives v at the National Library, hindered by the difficult opening hours, would have been much more difficult. I must also thank my employers, past and present. Particularly thanks go to Fr Nicholas Cachia, former Chairman at Mediacentre, Mr Nikol Baldacchino, editor of the weekly paper IL-GENS illum , and my colleagues with that paper. They made it possible for me to take a whole month vacation leave to proceed to Rome for research purposes at the Order’s archives, taking up the burden to fill in the gaps caused in the workflow by my extended stay away from work. A word of thanks should also go to my present workmates at the Defence Matters Directorate, in the Office of the Prime Minister, who have been very understanding and willing to go out of their way so that I could take enough vacation leave when I needed it most, to complete this dissertation. I owe the largest word of thanks to my girlfriend Christine, her family and my family. Their support cannot be quantified, nor expressed in words; without it, the present dissertation would not have been completed. vi Preface The present dissertation will look at the relationship between the Treasury of the Order of St John and the individual Hospitaller between the Order’s foundation in the late eleventh century and the end of the seventeenth century. The Treasury was arguably the most important institution within the Order as it was responsible for collecting all revenues due to the Order, making disbursements, overseeing the management of the Order’s assets and ensuring that Hospitaller regulations in these regards were adhered to. However, few historians have ventured to study it; and generally without going into great debts into its structures and functioning. Likewise, no historian has yet investigated the relationship between the Treasury and the individual Hospitaller. Individual members of the Order administered its assets, in accordance with the Order’s regulations. Included were the assets that each individual brought into the Order, over which he retained full usufruct until his death. The Treasury oversaw this administration, and expected various payments from each Hospitaller, at different stages of his lifetime. The relationship between the individual Hospitaller and the Treasury was an ongoing one, and ended only after the Hospitaller’s death, when his belongings were merged with those of the Order. The present study will attempt to: i) understand how this relationship was constituted, particularly in terms of a) the relationship’s manifestation in the vii THE TREASURY , DEBTS , AND DEATHS PREFACE direct payments flowing to and fro, b) in the Hospitaller’s administration of the Order’s assets, and c) the freedoms which a Hospitaller was allowed in managing the Order’s possessions, including those which he personally brought into the Order; ii) how different was it from the parallel relationship in other monastic and religious institutions, and why; iii) why and how it evolved in time; iv) how did this relationship change during the different phases of a Hospitaller’s lifetime. In the attempt to understand the relationship between the individual Hospitaller and the Treasury, the present dissertation will not only analyse the direct relationship between the two. It will also look at the relationship between the Hospitaller and the different entities within the Hospitaller structure that administered their own assets autonomously from the Treasury, such as the langues and the foundations. By entering into a relationship with these entities, a Hospitaller was indirectly entering into a relationship with the Treasury, given that the Treasury supervised their administration, and debts contracted with these entities were, with certain provisos, held to be contracted with the Treasury. The relationship between the individual Hospitaller and the Treasury, both direct and indirect, both pecuniary and administrative, existed in the context of Order’s organisational structures, the changing circumstances of the Order, and the social milieu from which the Order recruited its members. While focusing on the relationship between the Treasury and the individual Hospitaller, the present discussion will also shed light on these aspects. Particular emphasis, practically a whole chapter, will be laid on the Order’s administrative structures, the relationship between the different parts that made up these viii THE TREASURY , DEBTS , AND DEATHS PREFACE structures and their management function. On the other hand, the changing circumstances of the Order, and the social milieu of the Hospitallers will be discussed in terms of the influence that they had on the Order’s structures, and the relationship between the individual and the Treasury. Chapter 2 will be set the background. It will analyse the Treasury and the Order’s administrative structures, and, their management function as well as the basic tenets of the Treasury-Hospitaller relationship. Chapters 3 and 4 will look at that relationship in terms of the patterns discernible when the relationship between the Treasury and the individual Hospitaller broke up, either when a Hospitaller fell in debt with the Treasury, or when a Hospitaller passed away. This discussion is inspired by the Trattato del Comun Tesoro penned by Fra Giovanni Caravita towards the end of the seventeenth century. The Trattato provides the basic tenets on the Treasury’s functioning, which facts are complemented by material retrieved from the Archives of the Order of St John housed in the National Library of Malta. Most heavily used were the Libri Conciliorum – which contain the minutes of the Order’s administrative councils, the ordinary and complete council – and the various volumes containing the deliberations of the Camera dei Conti , the Treasury’s tribunal, particularly but not exclusively, the Registri della Camera d’Udienza . The deliberations concerning the spogli (the totality of belongings that a Hospitaller left on his death), and the dispropri (writs made by moribund Hospitallers in which they listed all their belongings, and any credits and debts which they had) of different Hospitallers were also consulted; particularly in relation to Chapter 4, which deals with the relationship between the Treasury and the ix THE TREASURY , DEBTS , AND DEATHS PREFACE spogli of Hospitallers. Caravita’s other treatises on the functioning of the Order were also looked up, particularly the Trattato della Regola , and supplemented the information provided by the Trattato del Comun Tesoro . This dissertation is largely based on facts extracted from these primary sources. With the exception of Simon Mercieca’s study of the office of the receiver and that on the commandery, the works of most historians who have discussed the Treasury of the Order of St John, or the Order’s finances were not directly relevant to the subject being discussed in the present study. Mercieca’s discussion of office of the ‘receiver’, and his analysis of the ‘Hospitaller commandery’ are tangential to the relationship between the Treasury and the individual Hospitaller. The choice of ‘debts’ and ‘deaths’, together with that of the period under consideration was a subjective one. The time factor, and the History Department’s 50 to 60,000-word limit for a Masters’ thesis, forced the present author to restrict the area of research. Although work on this thesis has been carried out over a period of five years, research time was severely limited by the awkward opening hours of the National Library of Malta, which effectively restrict the research of non-teachers to five hours on Saturday mornings and days on vacation leave.