(Rivista Internazionale - December 1997: Aristocratic Monasticism and the Order of St. John, called of Malta - 3/5)

The four high offices are the Grand Commander, called to substitute for the Grand Master in case of absence, impediment or death. The second high office is the Grand Chancellor, with functions similar in some ways to that of the Italian prime minister The third high officer is the Hospitaller, who presides precisely over the Order's hospitaller activities. The fourth high office, the Receiver of the Common Treasure, is similar to the three ministries of Finance, Treasury and the Budget in the present Italian state structure. The four councillors are like "ministers without portfolio" in our practice, the two deputies and this is rather singular - attend the sessions of the Sovereign Council without the right to vote.

A model of one of the ships of the Order's naval fleet during its time on Malta.

But with regards to the Hierosolymite militia, what does the corpus of the Order of Malta consist of? Who are the knights? The Order is traditionally nobilary, but what is the situation today? How many of the eleven thousand knights, chaplains, dames and donats come from noble families? There are almost 60 percent who are not nobles. The other 40 percent are of noble lineage; they had, that is, to present their so-called genealogical-nobiliary process the provanze, to demonstrate their hereditary nobility. Noble lineage varies according to the nationality, or to the Langues. For the Veneranda Lingua d'Italia, two hundred years of nobility on the paternal and maternal sides, with the same for the paternal and maternal grandparents. For some middle European Langues, today replaced by national associations, where the danger of Muslim or Israeli "infiltrations" was high, the so-called horizontal proof was required: less years of noble lineage were needed, albeit for sixteen quarterings.
The four or sixteen quarterings give the right of access to the class of Honour and Devotion.
There are too few religious, that is those who have taken the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and not all are young. Therefore there is an urgent need for vocations, and lowering the number of years for the proofs of nobility could help them to increase because it could open up access to the class of Justice, which always assumes a religious vocation, or that of Honour and Devotion or Grace and Devotion.

An old picture of the Order's Holy Infirmary.

Thus the burden of proof is reduced and the doors open much wider, and may the Lord help us! On the other hand, an excessive cult of youthfulness, of wanting too much innovation, is extremely dangerous for a living monument such as the Order of Malta, which is still today a functioning reality. The Father General of the Jesuits, Ricci, when he was being strongly pressed to amend the structure of the Company of Jesus, used to reply with the famous phrase: "Sint ut sunt aut non sint". So if it is the divine plan that the Order survives, the Order will survive, despite people. We all come and we all go - the Knights of Justice, the Grand Masters, the Pontiffs all pass but the Order remains, the Holy See remains. The Order has a centralised structure, it is an elective monarchy; here I like to recall, si parve licet componere maximis, that another elective monarchy is the Pontificate: also in this the Order follows the Holy See. At this point, a noun of great scope is used: power. Power exercised in a sort of convergent dualism, between the Grand Master, master for life, and the Sovereign Council, which changes. The Grand Master however has powers of independent decisions issuing motu propri. He can decide on his own initiative and the Chapters General will establish this power of the Grand Master in reasonable terms. Convergent dualism is an adequate, albeit partial, definition.
But what should the Grand Master have done about the shrinking religious vocations, also affecting the Christian world in general and the monastic orders in particular? When Malta fell, there were 230-240 Professed Knights. What should the Order have done about it? The Order chose a solution which has withstood the test of time: it has committed knights of exemplary morality, considerable instruction and particular aptitude to a pledge of obedience, thus creating a special class of knights, the Knights of Obedience, who integrate, substitute and support the endangered Professed Knights.

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