The Museum of the Order of St John holds an extensive library collection of historical and modern resources which provide scholars, students and enthusiasts with invaluable materials to explore and research the captivating history of the Order. These resources are divided between the Mellows Library, dedicated to the historical collections and rare items, and the Reference Library, which houses modern resources for the study of the history of the Order and related themes. Thanks to the generous donation of one of our Museum supporters, both libraries are currently the object of an ongoing cataloguing process, which is greatly improving the description and accessibility of the collections by creating or enhancing catalogue records on the Museum’s online library catalogue.
As well as being described within the cataloguing process, our historical collections are currently being digitised as part of a new, exciting digitisation project. This was made possible through a collaboration with the Malta Study Center at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), a widely renowned non-profit organisation based in Minnesota, USA, which leads digitisation projects all over the world. Started in October 2023 and set to last another two years, this project will make our collections available online and freely accessible to anyone on the HMML Reading Room.
The cataloguing process of our collections, as well as our digitisation project, has produced some wonderful discoveries about our historical collections in the Mellows Library. In our pamphlets and ephemera collection, which we gathered and partially catalogued during the first phase of the digitisation project, we (re-)discovered fascinating and extremely rare items. One of them is an edition of the Italian text Il lacrimoso lamento che fece il Gran Maestro di Rodi, the tearful lament of the Grand Master over the capture of Rhodes – by the Ottoman Turks in 1522 –, published by Giovanni Antonio Remondini in Padua and Bassano.
It is a text that reports the Grand Master’s public display of grief and sorrow after the loss of city: from tears to loud wailing, these expressions of emotions were a common practice in the Renaissance and had a corresponding literary output, as is the case here. Our item is the only surviving copy of this edition and one of the three surviving copies of this text in general. As holders of such a rare item, like in many other cases in our collections, we have a particular responsibility not only to preserve, but also to appropriately catalogue and make these items known to world audiences. Our cataloguing process is crucial in absolving this duty and besides rediscovering these very rare items it has also enriched our knowledge about them.
For instance, this item lacks a publication date. The document had been previously dated to the 1520s because these pamphlets used to circulate just after the events they refer to. They were meant to publicise them as well as possibly exert political influence: in this case, for example, reminding Western states of the role of the Order in the East against the Ottoman Turks and calling upon them for support in those difficult times. The appearance of the woodcut on the title page as well as the typeface used for the text seemed to confirm this dating to the 1520s. But during the cataloguing of this pamphlet, we discarded this hypothesis and indeed recognised that this document, and this edition in general, are instead to be dated to one century later.
Recent research into the Remondini printing house has revealed that it was established in Bassano only in the 1650s. Moreover, the Remondini firm owned a great number of old master’s printing plates, which perfectly explains the archaic style of the woodcut on our edition. This result of the cataloguing process is of great importance. The fact that more than a century after the loss of Rhodes this text was still published tells us that this event was still resonating in the European conscience, and provides us with useful information on the seventeenth-century cultural history of the Order and circulation of early printed works.
After the pamphlet collection, we are now digitising our manuscript collection. Our institutional responsibility for manuscripts is even greater, given their uniqueness, and our cataloguing process is rediscovering documents of extreme significance. One of them is the proofs of nobility of Italian nobleman Cesare Borgia, most likely an eighteenth-century relative of the earlier Cesare Borgia, famous mercenary leader of the Renaissance.
These proofs were documents that applicants had to present to be admitted as Knights of the Order, containing evidence of the noble status of their family for at least the previous 200 years. Dated 1734 on the elegantly gilded title page, this ‘Proofs’ also contains beautifully illuminated family trees visualising the candidate’s nobility claim back to the fifteenth century.
These works represent not only fundamental historical sources for family history, but also a powerful insight into the practices of the Order. The candidate had to embark on a proper documenting journey, consulting local archives and parish registers, copying into their proofs everything they could find on their family (baptism records, property deeds, legal disputes, wills etc). Even public monuments and tomb stones were considered historical evidence and drawn into these works, as we can see in Borgia’s copy.
But it did not end here. These proofs were then presented to a commission, usually composed of three Knights, who had the task of verifying the evidence presented, going back to the same places visited by the applicant, and then compiling a report. We are very lucky to also have this report in our document: the three commissioners, using their respective stamps, give here their positive recommendations for the application, which are followed by the approval from the local Chancery of the Order.
This manuscript hence represents an invaluable source for the history of the Order, its practices, and the lives of its members, and its description during the cataloguing process of the library has made it available for scholars to study and for anyone to consult.
Another item which has also revealed some fascinating information during the cataloguing process is an early printed edition of the Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam (Pilgrimages to the Holy Land) by Bernhard von Breydenbach, printed in Germany in 1502.
The book, in Latin, is an account of a journey made by the author from Venice to Jerusalem, via Greece and the Island of Rhodes – then headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller – between 1483 and 1484. Besides the diary of the author’s journey, the work includes historical and topographical descriptions of the places visited, as well as tips for travellers and remedies against seasickness. The descriptions are accompanied by numerous woodcut illustrations, including fold-out panoramas of the cities seen by the author, which in our copy have been hand-coloured to further enrich their appearance.
The book, recently repaired thanks to funding from the St John Historical Society, has been catalogued and described and this has brought attention to some manuscript additions at the end of the book, in a German contemporary hand.
These additions contain the epistolary of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (Epistole Magni Turci): this was a particularly popular collection of letters curated by Laudivius Zacchia and published in different editions across Europe (Naples, Rome, Padua, Paris, Antwerp, Würzburg, Strassburg, Lyon, etc). During the cataloguing process, we were able to identify these manuscript additions to have been specifically copied from a 1488 edition of the letters published in Leipzig. This confirms to us that after its publication the book must have been in use in Germany. But one might also wonder what the connection between this book and the epistolary of Mehmed II is: the answer to this questions tells us even more about our book. The curator of the epistolary, Laudivius, was a Knight Hospitaller himself: this is not only a curiosity, but suggests to us that the people copying this work into our book were most likely connected to the Order. In other words, we can be relatively certain that this book did not only present a topic connected to the Knights Hospitaller, but that it was also owned by people close to the Order.
There is another manuscript addition following this one, that of a text of German Humanist poet and playwright Jacobus Locher addressed to printer Johannes Grüninger.
Like in the previous case, the text seems to have been copied from a printed volume published in Germany in the period, a collection of Commedies of Roman playwright Terentius. But why is it here, in our book? Unfortunately, we couldn’t find an answer to this question! But this is a perfect example of the task of cataloguing: sometimes, you only (and yet crucially) provide a starting point or a question for someone else to come and answer.
These objects are only a few examples of the library collections. If you are curious to know more about our collections, visit our Library webpage or check out our new podcast series Off the Shelves at St John’s Gate. If you have any questions or would like to consult our library collections, please feel free to email the Museum at museum@sja.org.uk.