The Order of my life

I think the first time I really woke up to the fact that there is such a place in this world as Malta was way back in junior high, when one of my close friends took a summer language course which was held in Malta. After he came home, he couldn’t stop enthusing about the place. I envied him and wanted to see the island he was so in love with.

Second time Malta and my life crossed paths was when my brother went there for a training camp for competition swimmers. He was quite young then and didn’t get to see anything except the hotel and the pool, but I still envied him. At least he understood that it’d be wise to bring some souvenirs to his stuck-in-Finland big sister. He brought me a nice little Maltese cross necklace and I still wear it occasionally.

Years went by and during my second year of studying history at the University of Turku I happened to bump into the most interesting history course I could imagine. A course on the history of chivalric orders. I drank up the history of the different orders of merit, orders of chivalry and most of all, such religious military orders as the Templars and the Hospitallers like a thirsty plant. During the course I also learned that the lecturer, the Italian professor Luigi de Anna, was a Knight of the Order of Malta himself. How cool was that?

He was the one who suggested to me that I should consider writing my thesis on the topic of Knights of Malta. Sure enough I did end up formulating a topic that involves the 900-year old order. So, at the moment, I’m working on my thesis, which will concentrate on the Order of St. John’s existence in late 15th and early 16th century England, in other words around the time the main body and hq of the Order had settled in Malta.

It’s not an easy topic to study, especially when one cannot afford a trip to three separate archives, one in London, one in Rome and one in Malta (or any one archive, for that matter). But the reason I want to stick to my challenging topic is the fact that the Order is a complex, fascinating organisation and has been that for centuries. There are plenty of points of interest for a historian to delve into. The role of the Order in England is a less researched topic and considering that the Knights were usually quite influential people and Henry VIII actually had separate plans for the future of the Order during the early stages of his reformation, I think I have a fairly solid ground for my research.

I’ve lost count, however, of the times I’ve been asked why I’m not studying the Templar order instead of the Order of St. John (or Malta). People tend to know (or think they know) more about the Templars than about the Hospitallers, but that’s exactly why I wanted to delve into the history of the less well known Order. Members of both orders have had the dual role of “warrior monks”, but only the Order of St. John has survived to see the 21st century. The Order’s continuous history is therefore one reason for my interest. I find it amazing that the Johanniter Ambulance that drives quite often by my place is in a way connected to the serving brothers who worked in the Hospital of the Order in Jerusalem during the crusades. The ambulance driver or his patients probably aren’t constantly aware of it, but the historian (and romantic!) in me never fails to ponder about it.