would evolve into a painful process of dissolution, one which would have caused the glorious institution `to disappear unnoticed' through the lethargy, indolence and indifference of warring Catholic Europe. It was a crisis that shook the very bone-structure of conventual life and discipline, one which threatened immediate institutional collapse, a mass exodus of its professed members on a catastrophic scale and a marked diminution in the number of new recruits. It was above all a crisis _ like that of 1291 at the loss of Acre _ of finding oneself homeless and, as in 1522, forced, cap in hand, into exile at the very heart of Europe's theatre of war, amid smiling, charming, Catholic faces subtly disguising a chilling apathy. It was a crisis where all the glories of the past were conveniently forgotten and all credibility put in doubt, where trust, confidence, and protection

could only possibly be regained through a successful endeavour to reassert one's relevance. For the Order of St John, this could only be achieved by again resorting to the performance of its dual historic mission: immediate resumption of the holy war against Islam and the holy exercise of hospitality. L'Isle Adam's frantic quest for a home _ whether the old one on a reconquered Rhodes or a not-too-distant alternative on an island in the Morea, or still, if we are to accept the Venetian Marin Sanuto's entry into his much celebrated Diarii⁴ (and there is no reason, of course, why we should not), a new one, either at the southern Adriatic port of Brindisi or on the central Mediterranean island of Malta _ this frantic search for a home _ new or old _ was a necessary initial step, a spiritually and politically urgent one towards a possibly resuscitated stability.⁵ The experience

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^[4] Marin Sanuto, I diarii di Marin Sanuto, ed. R. Fulin et al. 58 vols. Venice 1879-1903.
^[5] In his early eighteenth-century description of Malta, the Venetian Giacomo Capello claims that the offer of Sardinia to the Order of St John had been contemplated by Charles V before that of Malta, but he was dissuaded by the Duke of Alva as the larger island would have given the Hospitallers an easier chance to recover their military strength and assume all the attributes of secular sovereignty. Museo Civico Correr, Venice, Donà dalle Rose, 381/31(6), f.12v. For a critical edition of Capello's account, V. Mallia-Milanes, Descrittione di Malta, Anno 1716: A Venetian Account. Malta 1988.