His Most Eminent Highness Fra’ Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie
(pronounced “Barty”), who has died aged 78, was Prince and Grand
Master of the Order of Malta, that is, the Knights of Saint John.
It was pointed out by Paul Johnson that he was, in technical fact,
“The Grandest Living Englishman.” He was the 78th and first
British, Grand Master of the Order, and breathed new life into
it.
Tracing who is who, in the various Orders of St. John, can be
mind-bogglingly difficult. There is always a risk that the bearer
of some sonorous and ancient-sounding title in fact heads an Order
created on the Internet last week. Some Orders are more respectable
than others, and the various degrees of legitimacy would fill a
book.
But the Order which was headed by Fra’ Bertie (grandson of an
Earl on his father’s side and a Marquess on his mother’s, a distant
cousin of the Queen and a former Scots Guards officer) is The Real
Thing, its title (let’s be careful and really try to get it right!)
being given among other things as: “The Sovereign Military
Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta,
Most Humble Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ,” or the
“Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta,
Knights of Malta, Knights of Rhodes, and Chevaliers of Malta,” or,
as I have heard some of lesser orders put it with a mixture of awe
and envy, simply “the real knights.”
Anyway, these were the same Knights of Saint John who had
protected pilgrims in the Holy Land from the earlier days of the
Crusades, emerging just before 1100, and who, in the Great Siege of
Malta in 1565, held off an attacking force of Turks and Saracen
pirates for four months, the captains standing the Gate who
preserved the Mediterranean for Christendom. There were about 500
knights, and about 5,600 other Christian defenders, including some
galley-slaves. One chronicler recorded with wonder that, inspired
by their heroism, some Jews joined them in manning a doomed
outpost, though at that time Jews had little reason to love the
knights. The numbers of the attackers are uncertain but figures
have been given of up to 48,000 Ottoman troops and Moorish
Corsairs.
The knight’s leader then was the aged but mighty Jean Parisot de
Valette. His secretary, Sir Oliver Starkey, like Fra Bertie, was
that great rarity in the higher reaches of the Order, an
Englishman. La Valette regarded him as indispensable. There was a
Crypt in Malta’s Co-Cathedral reserved for the very greatest of the
Grand Masters, and Sir Oliver is the only non-Grand Master to be
buried there. He was also given the honor of composing Valette’s
epitaph. There were also a couple of English Catholic gentleman
volunteers at the Great Siege, but since Henry VIII had dissolved
the Catholic Orders of Chivalry, Sir Oliver Starkey was the only
English Knight of the Order. He had to be good. Even the Protestant
Queen Elizabeth was watching the outcome fearful for the fate of
Christendom if the Turks prevailed. The garrison endured what was
probably the most fearful and sustained artillery bombardment in
history to that date. There were few left alive on either side when
relief finally arrived and the surviving Turks fled.
The Knights, were, however, a medical and hospitaller even
before they were a military order. Their hospital in Malta survives
as well as their palace and Co-Cathedral, and all are, to say the
least, well worth a visit, which is an understated way of saying
they are astonishing. The hospital was probably the best and most
advanced in the world in its day.
THE ORDER WAS evicted from Malta by Napoleon in 1798, but since
1834 has occupied a Palazzo between Italy and the Vatican, possibly
the world’s smallest Sovereign State (unlike some other micro-mini
states it issues internationally valid passports). It also has some
sovereign territory in various embassies, including, thanks to Fra’
Bertie, an embassy again in one of the ancient fortifications of
Malta. The relationship between the knights and the ordinary
Maltese had not always been good, but any breach is healed now, as
was symbolized by Fra’ Bertie’s award of an honorary doctorate in
Jurisprudence by the University of Malta in 1993. Fra’ Bertie
doubled the Order’s diplomatic missions around the world to about
100.
Although it has given up its military role, the Order, whose
higher officers are Catholics with proof of nobility and who have
taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, continues to do
charitable work in many parts of the world. Its galleys no longer
sweep the Mediterranean of Moorish corsairs, but it runs ambulance
boats on African lakes. Fra’ Bertie said: “Our aims today are
exactly the same as they were in 1099, the sanctification of our
members through service to the sick.” The Order, with about 12,500
members and about 80,000 volunteer support staff plus about 13,000
doctors and other medical personnel, does recognizably that it did
in the beginning.
It specializes in helping refugees and victims of war and
disaster. Fra’ Bertie, though a self-effacing man, is judged to
have been one of the most successful Grand Masters of the modern
era. He greatly increased its membership and the scope of its
activities, and expanded its work into new remote areas.
