Sangre de nobles, mártires y pecadores. Los caballeros de San Juan entre la reforma religiosa y la vida militar

After the fall of Rhodes in 1522, the Order of St. John needed to recover new headquarters (which were finally established in Malta in 1530) and its reputation as militia Christi. This Religion in arms had now to redraft its chivalrous ideals within the new context of the Reformation and the Catholic Renewal. However, Hospitallers met this challenge partially and late, although they represented themselves as belonging to this glorious Religion. Such a dialectic between practice and theory is proved, for example, by an apologetic book published in 1619 in Italy and Spain, as well as by unpublished instructions in the late seventeenth century directed at the chaplains providing religious support within the Order galleys. These works offer a precise view of the contrast between the rhetoric pair made of noble blood and military value (up to the extreme of martyrdom in defence of the faith), on the one hand, and the real behaviour of men whose inadequate religious education and practice was often not compatible with their mission, on the other.