The book is a dedicated account of the history of medicine practiced in Early Modern Malta when the Islands were managed by the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The changing patterns of disease throughout the 16th to 18th centuries and the response to managing these conditions are reviewed. The nook further looks at the legislative efforts introduced to control disease, the educational endeavors undertaken to improve the standards of care, and the social welfare systems adopted to better the lives of the population.

The papers reprinted in this volume focus on the extraordinary and multifaceted relationship between two Christian States: the Republic of Venice and the Island Order State on Hospitaller Malta between 1530 and the late 1790s. It was marked by three distinct phenomena – military cooperation along with other Western allies against the Ottoman Empire; direct mutual confrontation, at times even leading to war; and commercial cooperation. A fourth phenomenon, this time involving the wider Mediterranean context within which the two interacted, concerns the idea of decline. Some of the papers that follow question the validity of the traditional view that the Mediterranean and Venice were in decline by the sixteenth century and that the Hospitaller Order, claimed to be in decline by the eighteenth, had given up Malta to the French as a result. This book will appeal to all those interested in Crusading Orders and the history of the Crusades, as well as the history of Venice, Malta, and the Mediterranean in the early modern period.

Demonstrates that Malta was much more than a military strongpoint in the Christian-Muslim divide but rather a major centre of international exchange.

This is an important study of elite European noblemen who joined the Order of Malta. The Order - functioning in parallel with the convents that absorbed the surplus daughters of the nobility - provided a highly respectable outlet for sons not earmarked for marriage. The process of becoming a Hospitaller was a semi-structured one, involving clear-cut (if flexible) social and financial requirements on the part of the candidate, and a mixture of formal and informal socialization into the ways of the Order. Once enrolled, a Hospitaller became part of a very hierarchical and ethnically mixed organisation, within which he could seek offices and status. This process was delineated by a complex interaction of internal factors - hierarchy, patriarchy and age - set within external mechanisms such as papal patronage and interference. This book is innovative in its methodology, drawing on a wide range of sources and applying historiographical approaches not previously brought to bear on the Order.