ABSTRACT
On 19 April 1715, Fra Marcello Sacchetti, ambassador of the Order of Malta to the Holy See, prepared to organise his material possessions. The Treasury of the Order, individual Hospitallers, and their relatives could be pugnacious and punctilious in compiling and contesting the inventories of treasured possessions. This chapter looks at the Order through a study of the treasured possessions held by a select sample of Italian Hospitallers who lived in central/southern Italy between c.1680 and c.1720. The procedures relating to how a Hospitaller’s possession were to be dealt with after his death were elaborate and well established. Peter Burke identified several kinds of meanings attached to early modern articles, which connotations many Hospitallers would have shared. The dispropriamento contained the inventory of a Hospitaller’s belongings and often his will as well. In an increasingly complex material world, Hospitallers had to reconcile personal property with the vow of poverty they had embraced.
