Santificatevi e siate Santi: The Order of St John’s Spiritual Refashioning 1580-1798

Matthias Ebejer was born in December 1991 graduated in History from the University of Malta in 2012. He has recently completed a Masters degree in Hospitaller Studies within the same institution and is awaiting final grading. Matthias conducted research in Malta and abroad on ‘Hospitaller Paths to Sanctity’, a study on religious practices within the Order of St John, submitted as part of his studies for the Master of Arts degree. Other research interests include some aspects of military and medical history of the Order from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In the recent past, he served as a historical consultant for the EU-funded restoration project of Fort St Elmo in Valletta and the setup of a National Museum of Military History which was relocated within the same fort. Matthias is also a keen reenactor and an advocate of living history as a pedagogical tool and an extension of academic work.
He currently occupies the role of President within the re-enactment group ‘San Michele’.

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In 1622, the historian of the Order Giacomo Bosio published a supplement to his Istoria della Sacra Religione entitled Le Imagini de’ Beati e Santi della Sacra Religione. This work is mainly a collection of short hagiographies of those members of the Order of St John who were traditionally held as saints and blessed. Considering that none of the Order’s saints were canonised using new standards set by the papacy following the Council of Trent, the work that Bosio presents may be seen as an attempt to demonstrate that these medieval saints of the Order were nonetheless representative of the values and morals that Tridentism was advocating. In many ways, Bosio’s hagiographies form part of this wider refashioning process that was taking place within Catholicism, following the canonizations of great hero saints of the Counter-Reformation. It is also representative of the manner through which the Order was refashioning itself to demonstrate how the dual role of charity and religious combat was still a relevant and unique charisma that distinguished it from all the other religious orders. This lecture will discuss the values that were indicative of sanctity, creating a parallel between the ‘official’ saints of the Church and the ‘unofficial’ saintly people promoted within the Order during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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