A Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for during the 1790s

David F. Allen 1

The British Library contains numerous manuscripts relevant to the Sovereign, Military and Hospitaller Order of St John, including Additional Manuscripts 64099-64104, which were purchased for the Library at Sotheby’s on 27 January 1987 as lot 834. Of unknown provenance and written mostly in French, partly in Italian and English, these manuscripts comprise an illustrated description in epistolary form of , , Germany, the , Italy, , and England by Louis Jérôme de Goujon de Thuisy, a French Hospitaller Knight of St John who travelled between 1778 and 1806, though some of his annotations extend at least to 1819. Goujon de Thuisy’s text includes accounts of leading artists, sculptors, engravers and literary figures as well as of the sights and antiquities he encountered. His text is illustrated with engravings, watercolours, drawings and maps, as well as the music and words of songs. Strictly speaking, a travelling Knight of St John, even one of Goujon de Thuisy’s refinement, could not be said to be on the Grand Tour. Nonetheless much in his manuscripts may be comprehended within the most discriminating definition of a Grand Tourist’s concerns in the eighteenth century.2 This Knight Hospitaller believed that travelling was to no purpose unless one travelled light and with a head already full of relevant reading about one’s intended destination. In striking relief to Goujon de Thuisy’s journeys after ’s demise is the Italian focus of this Knight of St John’s nostalgia during the 1790s, even as the peninsula was being transformed under his eyes by the descent of the revolutionary armies from France. At Malta (where his Order’s conventual residence had been established since 1530), Goujon de Thuisy wrote the main text of his ‘Description of ’ in the winter of 1797, dismayed by General Bonaparte’s re-arrangement of the Italian states in the Treaty of Campoformio. Goujon de Thuisy wanted to recall the various Italies he had known before their metamorphosis by the French invasion of 1796. This itself had been hanging like the sword of Damocles since 13 January 1793, when a Roman mob had assassinated the French diplomat, Nicolas-Jean-Hugon de Basseville.3 Goujon de Thuisy’s response to these Italian events of the 1790s remained aesthetic rather than military, contrasting with the counter-revolutionary career of his kinsman, Jean- Baptiste Charles de Goujon de Thuisy, with whom he had shared military training at Malta in 1771. Where Jean-Baptiste Charles exemplified the martial valour expected of a Knight of St John and officer in the royalist armies (eventually returning to France with the Bourbons as a maréchal de camp), Louis Jérôme had always had delicate health, sometimes

1 I remain grateful to Professor D. M. Wood of Birmingham University for sharing with me his knowledge and appreciation of French culture in the eighteenth century. 2 For some incisive comments on the Grand Tour, see Robert Oresko, ‘The British Abroad’, Durham University Journal , lxxix (1987), pp. 349-63. 3 The image of the assassinated envoy was highlighted by the Jacobins in and amongst the Jacobin students of the French Academy in , founded by Louis XIV for the education of young painters, sculptors and architects. Basseville (1753-93) had been sent to Rome by the French envoy to and had encouraged the students of the French Academy besides insulting Pius VI’s cardinal secretary of state, Francesco Saverio de Zelada, and Cardinal de Bernis, the Protector of the French Church.

1 eBLJ 2006, Article 1 A Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for Italy during the 1790s lacking energy even for the travels which he planned as his release from the boredom of life in Malta.4 He was a misfit for this knightly, Hospitaller vocation chosen for him at birth in Champagne by his parents, who had observed the custom of their house by sending a younger son to Malta. Goujon de Thuisy’s distaste for militarism was shared unwittingly with his contemporary Vittorio Alfieri, whose strictures on the French Republic Goujon de Thuisy quoted with approval in his own and understandably less celebrated travel journal.5 In 1797 Goujon de Thuisy’s heart ached because of his separation from the arts and antiquities of Rome and because he was anxious about Pius VI, Supreme Protector of the Order of St John, whom he apostrophized as one maligned by a corrupt century but whose virtues would be vindicated by posterity. Shyly addressing himself to the Braschi pontiff, Goujon de Thuisy began writing for himself and his nephews (in case they should ever retrace his journeys in happier times) a description of the Italian peninsula and Sicily as he had known them before Pius VI’s struggle with the French Republic and his humiliation at Tolentino in 1797 (fig. 1). The beauties of Renaissance Italy had been enriched by the emotions of Baroque connoisseurs and it was this continuity which Goujon de Thuisy intended to set down for himself and his relatives. He quoted Tasso at the outset of his ‘Description of Europe’:

Quanto mi gioverà narrar ad altrui Le novite vedute, e dir; ‘io fui’.

Of course Goujon de Thuisy’s descriptions never match, in that age of travel literature and cosmopolitan sentiment, those found in the pages of de Brosses, Goethe, Alfieri or .6 Yet Goujon de Thuisy’s recurring reflections on Rome at least echoed an insight expressed by Goethe in 1786, ‘Rome is a world, and one needs years just to find one’s place in it. How fortunate those travellers are who merely look and leave!’7 ‘What people believe to be true about their past is usually more important in determining their behavior and responses than truth itself ’.8 This aphorism aids understanding of how the Hospitallers’ medieval foundation had survived as a seemingly obscurantist corporation of Catholic noblemen into the Europe of Enlightenment and Revolution and prompts our interpretation of the Italian focus of Goujon de Thuisy’s nostalgia during the 1790s. From his billet at Malta in 1797, he looked back to his first visit to Italy and Sicily in 1771, when he had been guided by an older and learned tutor, M. Héricart de Thury.9 Again like Goethe,

4 There are some papers illustrative of Jean-Baptiste Charles de Goujon de Thuisy in series T of the National Archives in Paris, as described by the archivist Philippe Bechu, Papiers d’origine privée tombés dans le domaine public (2001) http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/chan/chan/fonds/edi/sa/t.htm. See also J. Godechot, The Counter-Revolution, Doctrine and Action 1789-1804 (, 1972), pp. 296-314. 5 Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) had loathed his time at the Military Academy of and had dubbed Frederick II of Prussia the head of a military camp. Initially sympathetic to all things French, Alfieri was driven by Bonaparte’s First Italian Campaign into isolation and study of classical Greek at . 6 Charles de Brosses (1709-77), ‘le Président de Brosses’, magistrate of the Burgundy parlement, travelled in Italy 1739-40, during which time he wrote the celebrated letters which were not published until long after his death, in 1799. Goethe had travelled in Italy during 1786-88. Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) published in 1817 both Histoire de la peinture en Italie and Rome, Naples, et Florence en 1817. 7 J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey, translated by Robert R. Heitner, Goethe’s Collected Works, vol. vi (Princeton, 1994), p. 121. 8 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York, 1993), as quoted by Jennifer R. Goodman, Chivalry and Exploration 1298-1630 (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 1. 9 Add. MS. 64100, f. 3b. Add MS. 64099, which describes Goujon de Thuisy’s travels through the Bernese Oberland in August 1778, is dedicated to M. Héricart de Thury.

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Fig.1. Scenes of Rome. Add. MS. 64100, f. 95r.

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Goujon de Thuisy believed that travelling was a vanity unless the traveller’s head was full of reading about his destination.10 When his brother Hospitaller, Joseph de la Porte, had implored Goujon de Thuisy to take from Paris in 1792 one of his kinsmen as a travelling companion through Italy, and thereby assist this youth to escape the Revolution, Goujon de Thuisy was reluctant, since Hippolyte de la Porte was unprepared for the artistic marvels awaiting him in Italy. But as a result of travelling together, Hippolyte de la Porte became one of Goujon de Thuisy’s friends, and was privileged eventually to be addressed in some of the letters which comprise this Knight of St John’s travel journal.11 Before visiting Rome in 1792 with young de la Porte in tow, Goujon de Thuisy had spent 1778 visiting the Bernese Oberland as well as contrasting places such as Plombières, Remiremont, Ballon and the Vosges.12 In 1790 Goujon de Thuisy had travelled through the Netherlands.13 When in Rome during 1792, Goujon de Thuisy met his old friend the duchesse de Brissac, another refugee who had been welcomed by Pius VI and by Cardinal de Bernis, Protector of the French Church. Bernis had been resident in Rome since 1769, first as Louis XV’s ambassador and then as Louis XVI’s representative. The cardinal had found quarters in Rome also for Louis XVI’s sisters, Princess Adelaide and Princess Victoire, les mesdames de France, who were of course included in Goujon de Thuisy’s social calls.14 Otherwise this Knight Hospitaller and his young protégé, Hippolyte de la Porte, spent their time in Rome like countless Grand Tourists before them, by observing and admiring the city’s arts and architecture. It merits emphasis that Goujon de Thuisy had no business of his Order to transact in Rome, since he had never been ambassador material, and his Hospitaller commandery or estate from which he had drawn little income since 1787 was miles away from Rome in Champagne.15 If business travel was not Goujon de Thuisy’s focus in the Eternal City, neither was another form of travel much talked about during his sojourn in Rome, namely, the wanderings of the pilgrim-beggar, Benedict Joseph Labre, who had died nine years previously in a butcher’s shop near the church of S. Maria dei Monti. Labre was now being considered by Pius VI as a candidate for sanctity. Born in 1748 in the Artois region of France about the same time as Goujon de Thuisy, Labre’s education and religious calling had guided him away from formal institutions to choose the solitary, wandering life of ‘the holy man’ exemplified by the legend of St Alexis of Rome. Since the Catholic practice of pilgrimage remained vibrant in Enlightenment Europe, and since it brought together both literate and illiterate believers, Labre’s devout presence at the of Paray-le-Monial or Loreto and the pilgrim churches of Rome caused comment beyond his pilgrim routes.16 The contrasting dirt and beauty of his

10 Add. MS. 64100, f. 3. Goethe had written: ‘In earlier years I sometimes had the odd notion that nothing could please me more than to be taken to Italy by some knowledgeable man, say, an Englishman well versed in art and history; and now in the meantime all that has turned out much better than I could ever have imagined. Tischbein has lived such a long time here as my affectionate friend, has lived here wishing to show me Rome; our relationship is old through letters, new with respect to physical presence; where could I have found a more valuable guide?’ (Italian Journey, p. 109). 11 Add. MS. 64100, f. 4. 12 These journeys are described in Add. MSS. 64099 and 64104, ff. 2-31. 13 Add. MS. 64104, ff. 32-61. 14 Add. MS. 64100, f. 176b. 15 The Order of St John’s ambassadors were noticeable at many courts of early modern Europe, whether representing their Order or Catholic monarchs and princes: see David F. Allen, ‘The Order of St John as a “School for Ambassadors” in Counter-Reformation Europe’, in Helen Nicholson (ed.), The Military Orders, vol. ii: Welfare and Warfare (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 363-79. 16 On Catholic pilgrimages, see Patrick J. Geary, ‘L’humiliation des ’, Annales, no. xxxiv (1979), pp. 27- 42.

4 eBLJ 2006, Article 1 A Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for Italy during the 1790s appearance attracted at least two painters, André Bley and Antonio Cavalucci, to use Labre as their model for their respective representations of Christ’s agony on the Cross. Labre had never been a prince doing penance, as contemporary gossip asserted, and not being of noble birth, he could not have known Goujon de Thuisy or been invited like this French Knight of St John to the Cardinal de Bernis’s parties in Rome.17 Numerous beggars, including Labre, were fed by the cardinal at his gate whilst his hospitality inside was for les grands. Labre’s voluntary adoption of evangelical poverty contrasted with Goujon de Thuisy’s Hospitaller vow of poverty and illustrated how variously interpreted was this privilegium paupertatis. The Franciscan model was Labre’s own, as he tramped in verminous rags, carrying only the New Testament, the Imitation of Christ and his breviary, with a rough crucifix on his chest and a rosary in hand. To appear as ‘God’s vagabond’ or ‘Christ’s gypsy’ – some of Labre’s nicknames – had never been the Hospitallers’ interpretation of poverty because they owned property and estates throughout Catholic Europe, of which professed knights-commanders such as Goujon de Thuisy were stewards. An eloquent gloss on the Hospitallers’ vow of poverty had been published by Grand Master Zondadari in the 1720s. Against their critics alleging a paradoxical combination of the riches of Abraham with the indigence of Lazarus, Grand Master Zondadari defended his brethren’s moderate use of means appropriate to their noble status in society. He urged them to avoid the extremes of avarice or prodigality. Zondadari drew illustrations from the life of Christ, who had feasted at weddings and banquets, and who had made a glorious entry into Jerusalem. The lives of the saints further provided exemplars of that poverty of spirit described by Zondadari, since some saints had been ambassadors, and as such had lived according to their rank. Whether serving his Order or his natural sovereign, the Knight of St John must always carry himself nobly. Luxury was to be eschewed, although there had to be a diet sufficient to feed the Knight of St John’s physique for battle.18 This military pole of the Hospitaller’s vocation was unattractive to Goujon de Thuisy, as we have indicated above. The prospect of war in the Italian peninsula and the Revolution’s march towards ‘cette malheureuse capitale des Arts’ besides a recurrence of illness wrenched Goujon de Thuisy from his Roman sojourn in 1792 and he made for Naples intending to take ship to Malta but was diverted via Pisa, Lucca, and Florence. In September 1792 he embarked at Livorno for Malta and stayed in the convent there during the winter of 1792/3. By the spring of 1793, he was ready to travel to , which he had never seen and which was near Vicenza, where his friend the duchesse de Brissac was now living.19

17 ‘Labre’s name today is a useful reminder to the historian that the “rationalist” eighteenth century produced its mystics as well as its rationalists, Paul of the Cross and Alphonsus Liguori as well as ’ (Marcus Cheke, The Cardinal de Bernis (London, 1958), p. 270). Labre was beatified by Pius XI in 1869 and canonized by Leo XIII in 1881. 18 Marc-Antonio Zondadari, Breve e particolare istruzione del Sacro Ordine Militare degli Ospitalari (Padua, 1724), pp. 7-13, 78-9. 19 BL, Add. MS. 64100, f. 4.

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As in Rome, so too in Venice Goujon de Thuisy was a private visitor, transacting no official business for his Order of St John (fig. 2). Despite some superficial similarities between Venice and Malta, such as their topography (Grand Canal and Grand Harbour), their aristocratic republicanism and suspicion of princely power, and the coincidence that both were to be closed down by Bonaparte in 1797-8, the Venetian Republic and the Order of St John had little in common save their mutual suspicion. The Venetian Republic regarded the Knights of St John and Maltese corsairs as troublemakers in the Levant who upset its own pragmatic diplomacy with the Ottoman Sultan. Furthermore the Knights enslaved Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic subjects of the Venetian empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Venice habitually sequestered the commanderies of the Hospitallers’ Grand Priory of Venice, in order to show both the Order of St John and its protector the Holy See that enough was enough in its failed diplomacy with the Convent at Malta.20 Travelling on to Rome and from there to Naples and Sicily, Goujon de Thuisy concluded his travels in 1793 by returning to Malta in September.21 His travels had been framed by the news of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in January and October 1793. Residence in Malta prevented Goujon de Thuisy from attending the solemn requiem in November 1793 for Louis XVI at the Roman church of San Luigi di Francia, where the Cardinal de Bernis made his last public appearance before his death in November 1794.

Fig. 2. Venetian gondola. Add. MS. 64102, f. 51v.

20 The pattern of this Venetian sequestro of Hospitaller commanderies and other aspects of the tense relationship between Venice and Malta have been thoroughly treated by Victor Mallia-Milanes, Venice and Hospitaller Malta 1539-1798 (Malta, 1992). 21 National Library of Malta: Archives of the Order of Malta (AOM) 2233, f. 75.

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Another Roman event from 1793 remained in Goujon de Thuisy’s mind when he revisited Rome in 1794,22 namely, the assassination by a Roman mob of the French diplomat, Nicolas- Jean-Hugon de Basseville. Goujon de Thuisy congratulated himself that he could speak Italian and so might pass for an Italian in the streets of Rome, where Frenchmen were hated.23 Even so Rome remained Goujon de Thuisy’s lodestar and he returned there in 1794, 1795 and 1796. Since he had to travel from Malta to Rome via Sicily and Naples, he commented on that kingdom where King Ferdinand still claimed the sovereignty of the Maltese islands. Some of these observations illustrate that triangular relationship which would be forged between Sicily, Malta, and Britain in their shared detestation of the French presence in the Mediterranean through the 1790s. Goujon de Thuisy’s prejudices were expressed in his correspondence with Acton and with King Ferdinand’s chamberlain, the chevalier de Brissac, a brother Knight of St John. As in Rome or elsewhere in the peninsula, Goujon de Thuisy had no official business to transact at Palermo or Naples on behalf of his Order of St John. Because they were protected by Pius VI, King Ferdinand and his ministers detested the Hospitallers at Malta and also their Grand Priories of Messina, Barletta and Capua within the kingdom, just as previously there had been enmity between Malta and Naples during the pontificates of Clement XIV and Benedict XIV.24 Etna near Catania and Vesuvius near Naples held Goujon de Thuisy’s attention as they had fascinated more celebrated travellers such as Goethe (figs 3, 4, 5). Goethe had been shown the celebrated collection of Etna’s volcanic rocks and minerals maintained by Goujon de Thuisy’s brother Hospitaller, Giuseppe Goieni d’Angìo, professor at the University of Catania and Fellow of the Academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Padua, Turin, and .25 Goieni’s contribution to those quintessential sciences of the Enlightenment, geology and volcanology, was matched by another Hospitaller contemporary, Déodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, who gave his name to dolomitic limestone.26 A similarly transnational reputation for contributions to botany had been earned by another of Goujon de Thuisy’s brethren, the chevalier de Turgot.27 These Hospitaller connoisseurs and cognoscenti in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution were at the end of that tradition exemplified in the Renaissance by Frà Sabba da Castiglione whereby any Knight of St John might use the income from his commandery for the pursuit of artistic, literary, historical, linguistic, theological, or scientific knowledge. Similarly Camillo Borgia, another of Goujon de Thuisy’s Hospitaller contemporaries, supervised the collection of Egyptian and other antiquities at put together by his brother Cardinal which had impressed Goethe.28

22 Cheke, The Cardinal de Bernis, p. 272. 23 BL, Add. MS 64100, f. 255. Cf. J. Godechot, The Counter-Revolution, Doctrine and Action, pp. 301-2. 24 See David F. Allen, ‘Upholding Tradition: Benedict XIV and the Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem at Malta, 1740-1758’, Catholic Historical Review, lxxx:1 (January 1994), pp. 18-35. 25 J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey, pp. 234-5. 26 For Dolomieu’s scientific interests, see A. Lacroix, Déodat de Dolomieu, membre de l’Institut National (Paris, 1921). 27 See Turgot’s study, Mémoire instructif sur la manière de rassembler, de préparer, de conserver et d’envoyer les diverses curiosités d’histoire naturelle (Lyon, 1758). The British Library holds Turgot’s correspondence with Emmanuel Mendez de Costa, FRS; see BL, Add. MS. 28543, ff. 247, 253. 28 Italian Journey, p. 149.

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The Hospitaller ideal of the cavaliere di belle lettere e di santa vita had been formulated by Frà Sabba da Castiglione (c. 1480-1554) in his book of Ricordi, a work which enjoyed twenty-six editions between 1546 and 1613, mostly at Venice but also at , Milan and Mantua.29 Frà Sabba’s whole life had exemplified that integration of armi and lettere which figures so airily in the conversations of his more celebrated cousin Baldassare Castiglione’s characters at Urbino.30 Given the preponderance of French Hospitallers, influential also in adapting Frà Sabba’s ideal to the changing worlds of the Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, were the respective contributions from outside the Order of St John made by Montaigne, Pascal, St Francis de Sales, St Vincent de Paul, Abbot Rancé of La Trappe and Archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai – all of whom insisted that a Catholic aristocracy should behave in distinctive ways.31 And from within the Order of St John there was the updating of Frà Sabba’s Hospitaller ideal by Grand Master Marc-Antonio Zondadari’s Breve e particolare istruzione del Sacro Ordine Militare degli Ospitalari, published in editions of 1719, 1721 and 1724.32 Rather like Socrates with a recalcitrant pupil, Zondadari employed patience, courtesy and modulated tones in demonstrating how a Knight of St John was still relevant in the eighteenth-century world. Zondadari had at his fingertips telling quotations from the Old and New Testaments and from the Fathers of the Church. Like Rancé and Fénelon before him, Zondadari raised those moral dilemmas which might challenge a believing and worshipping Hospitaller in the contemporary world of cynicism and doubt. Embedded in his elegant treatise was Zondadari’s assertion that he and his brethren were living in the arid desert of their own times. Correspondingly, St John the Baptist was invoked as one who had spent all his life helping his neighbour, whether at court or in the wilderness. Aiding the poor and the sick as well as fighting the enemies of Christ were defined by Zondadari as the Order of St John’s unique purpose, both from the beginning, and until the end, of time. This double charism could never be separated, any more than could the spiritual and bodily natures of mankind itself. Zondadari underlined how the Order’s Sacred Infirmary at Malta was open to all sick patients, and also how discreetly and compassionately the Order’s

29 A. Luzio, ‘Lettere inedite di Fra Sabba da Castiglione’, Archivio storico lombardo, series 2, iii (1886), pp. 91- 112. For bibliographical analysis of Frà Sabba da Castiglione’s Ricordi, see I. Massaroli, ‘Fra Sabba da Castiglione e i suoi “Ricordi”’, Archivio storico lombardo, series 2, vi (1889), pp. 375-92; Claudio Scarpati, Studi sul cinquecento italiano (Milan, 1982), pp. 83-125. Since the first two editions at Bologna are rarely available and cannot be dated respectively to 1546 and 1549 with absolute certainty, the commonly found third edition of 1554 at Venice is the version (annotated by an unknown hand) we have consulted in the National Library of Malta: Ricordi overo ammaestramenti di monsignor Saba da Castiglione cavalier gierosolomitano ne’ quali con prudenti e christiani discorsi si ragiona di tutte le materie honorate che si ricercano a un vero gentilhuomo / Con la tavola per alphabeto di tutte le cose notabili / Con privilegio / In Vinegia per Paulo Gherardo / MDLIIII. There were 133 ricordi in this edition, having been increased from 72 ricordi in the earlier Bologna edition of 1546, 72 having equated with the ‘72 disciples of Jesus Christ’. 30 For Baldassare Castiglione’s unsuccessful experience of, and dislike for, actual warfare, see J. R. Hale, ‘Castiglione’s Military Career’, Italian Studies, xxxvi (1981), pp. 41-57. 31 Within the space of this essay, it is not possible to trace these influences in detail. I remain indebted to François-Xavier Cluche, Une pensée sociale catholique. Fleury, La Bruyère, Fénelon (Paris, 1991). 32 The edition at Rome in 1719 predated Zondadari’s election as Grand Master of the Hospitallers in January 1720. An edition at Paris followed in 1721 and at Padua in 1724. Grand Master Zondadari died on 16 June 1722. See Ettore Rossi, ‘Marcantonio Zondadari da , Gran Maestro dell’Ordine di Malta’, Bolletino senese di storia patria, xxxiii-xxxiv (1926-27), fascicolo iii, pp.1-10

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Congregazione dei Poveri behaved towards its indigent Maltese subjects, in the Christian spirit of anonymous charity.33 Provided with such manuals of advice how to be of the world rather than adopt its secularizing lifestyle, Goujon de Thuisy and his brethren could have remained faithful to their religious vocation and kept their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Goujon de Thuisy appears from his journals to have been an orthodox believing Knight of St John. If he witnessed the ‘masonic’ ceremonies at Villa Malta in Rome which had scandalized so tolerant a man as the Cardinal de Bernis, Goujon de Thuisy did not record such.34 It was possible for an educated person to be well read and cultivated, without necessarily believing the diverse ideas of the European-wide philosophes. Since France’s contribution to the Enlightenment was considerable, the Order of St John’s enclos du Temple in Paris had been a conduit of these new ideas to Malta. Tasting exotic or forbidden fruits brings variety to eating but does not necessarily entail giving up one’s regular diet. Because it could equally as well describe certain French Knights of St John dabbling in these new ideas of the Enlightenment, Dr Gross’s perceptive comment about Cardinal Domenico Passionei (that thorn in the side of Benedict XIV) bears repetition:

Throughout his life he would carry on correspondence with some of the luminaries of the Enlightenment in Europe, among them Voltaire, for whom he publicly showed his admiration. Not being a profound mind, he may never have fully comprehended the ramifications of the new thought, but saw it as a natural continuation of the literary currents in which he himself was formed.35

Similarly Goujon de Thuisy was ‘no profound mind’ when compared with certain of his contemporary Hospitallers such as Goieni d’Angìo, Déodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, or Michele Enrico Sagramoso. Sagramoso was hailed by Diderot as the father of travellers and this Hospitaller from remained the guest who never overstayed his welcome at the courts of Europe.36 Sagramoso never wrote up his travels and the appeal of his intellect, wit and charity remained in the memories of courts and academies throughout eighteenth- century Europe. Lacking Sagramoso’s subtle mind, Goujon de Thuisy did manage to write up his travels in Italy, provoked by Bonaparte’s invasion of the peninsula. The focus of Goujon de Thuisy’s Italy was as deliberately selected as were those of Alfieri’s or Goethe’s respective Italies. Although sympathetic to Pius VI, Goujon de Thuisy goes into no detail about the Braschi pontiff ’s multilateral conflicts with Joseph II, with Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, with King Ferdinand of Naples and with the French Republic. Similarly unmentioned were the green shoots of Catholic revival in the peninsula, in the persons of

33 Breve e particolare istruzione del Sacro Ordine Militare degli Ospitalari, pp. 6-7, 99, 19-21, 70-1. 34 Marcus Cheke, The Cardinal de Bernis, p. 279n. See also Thomas Freller, Cagliostro and Malta (Malta, 1997), passim; John Montalto, The Nobles of Malta, 1530-1800 (Malta, 1979), pp. 339-48. 35 Hans Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), p. 279. Cf. Bernis’s comment from the 1750s: ‘The philosophical spirit that is now spreading over the world makes it difficult at first sight to distinguish silly people from wise ones, or honest men from rogues. Everyone seems equally clever because everyone uses quantities of words that are really only false or borrowed coin’, cited by Cheke, The Cardinal de Bernis, pp. 63-4. Of course Benedict XIV (1740-58) is celebrated for his appreciation both ofVoltaire and Montesquieu and Pope Pius VII (1800-23) had been one of the twenty-seven subscribers in to the 1770 Italian edition of the Encyclopédie when, as the Benedictine Gregorio Chiaramonti, he taught philosophy at the abbey of St John the Evangelist: see H. Bédarida, Parme et la France de 1748 à 1789 (Paris, 1928), p. 340. 36 In Sagramoso (1721-91) Saverio Bettinelli (1718-1808), the Jesuit Italian , found the humanity of Fénelon. Tiepolo and Goldoni were grateful for his friendship. Grand Duke Leopold wanted Sagramoso for himself at Florence. Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia were pleased to receive him at their respective courts. See Aurelio Bertola, Vita del marchese Michele Enrico Sagramoso, balì del S. M. Ordine di Malta (Pavia, 1793).

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St Veronica Giuliani, St Paul of the Cross and St Alphonsus Liguori. The sights and antiquities of Rome are recorded by Goujon de Thuisy with no awareness of how these rubbed shoulders with contemporary squalor. So conventional a Grand Tourist as Goujon de Thuisy could not be expected to notice or comment on contemporary affairs when nostalgia for a disappearing Italy was his motive for writing up his travels. A distinctive survivor from the world of the 1790s, Goujon de Thuisy remained an aristocrat of taste and his journals merit investigation.

37 The Sicilian author Leonardo Sciascia (1921-89) noted with irony in his Il Consiglio d’Egitto (Turin, 1961) Goethe’s blindspot of Monreale, and commented on the German traveller’s ambition to know everything about his environment whilst missing the obvious. 38 Cf. Franco Venturi, ‘Church and Reform in Enlightenment Italy: The Sixties of the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Modern History, xlviii (1976), pp. 215-32. M. Rosa, ‘The Italian Churches’ in W. J. Callahan and D. Higgs (ed.), Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 66-76. 39 Cf. Gladys Huntington, Madame Solario (Harmondsworth, 1978), p.196: ‘Rome, eternal but always dying, full of splendour and corruption! And these silly descendants of horrible people, still bearing their names and housed in their tremendous palaces – won’t it be fascinating to see their little spots of fashion and high life in all that antique squalor and gloom? Won’t it be fascinating?’

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Fig. 3. Mount Vesuvius. Add. MS. 64101, f. 175r.

Fig. 4. Vesuvius by night. Add. MS. 64101, f. 171r.

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Fig. 5. Lady Hamilton. Add. MS. 64101, f. 68r.

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