ABSTRACT
During its initial years on Malta the Order of Saint John faced the problems of establishing itself in the Grand Harbour on the narrow peninsula at Birgu (Fig. 1). 1 Following their expulsion from Rhodes by the Ottomans in January 1523, the Hospitallers were demoralized by the final siege and the loss of their island, wearied by years of wandering through Italy, confronted with disestablishment in Protestant England and Germany, and burdened with the defence of Tripoli in North Africa. For some time they regarded their stay on Malta as a temporary one which they hoped would be followed by their return to Rhodes or some other part of Greece, and at first they made only limited efforts to fortify and embellish their Maltese base. None the less, these initial arrangements followed many standard practices which formed part of an extraordinary continuity of institutions and traditions which enabled the Hospital successfully to transfer its unique form of government, its "island order state", from Rhodes to Malta. 2 The maintenance of this organizational machinery was facilitated by the care the Hospitallers took to preserve their archives, significant fragments of which they saved when Rhodes surrendered. Three main series of pre-1523 registers, those containing magistral bulls, council records and proceedings of chapters-general, survived and were maintained throughout the decades after 1523. A good part of the business they recorded, especially that relating to promotions to commanderies and disputes between brethren, showed remarkably little change in their procedures and concerns. Much else was lost, including records produced on Malta in and after 1530, some of them possibly destroyed by fire. 3
