Its Time in Malta
On 26 October 1530 the Grand Master Fra' Philipe de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam took possession of Malta, with the approbation of Pope Clement VII. It was stipulated that the Order was to remain neutral in wars between Christian nations.
Grand Master Fra' Phillippe de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam adoring the Child Jesus from the Chapel of the Holy Name in the Temple Church iParis (1529).
Grand Master La Vallette and Andrea Doria.
Yet the war of in defense of Christendom went on. The Turks attacked Malta, but in the Great Siege, from 18 May to 8 September 1565, were finally routed by the Knights led by the heroic Grand Master Fra' Jean de La Vallette (after whom the island's capital Valletta is named). The decline of Ottoman sea power dates from the defeat of 1565. The navy of the Order of St. John (or of Malta as it now came to be called) became one of the most powerful in the Mediterranean and took part in the final destruction of the Ottoman naval might in the great battle of Lepanto in 1571.
In 1607 and again in 1620, the dignity of Grand Master was conjoined with the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and in 1630 with the rank equal to the dignity of a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church with the style of Eminence.
Conventual Church of St. John in Malta, where hundreds of knights have their tombstones.
In 1798, Bonaparte, engaged in a campaign against Egypt, occupied the island of Malta and drove out the Order. The Knights again found themselves without a home.
Napoleon landing in Valletta, Malta in June 12th,1798. Czar Paul I as Grand Master of the Order.
This was followed by what has been called the Russian coup d'etat (1798-1803). The Emperor Paul I of Russia, who had shown himself a friend of the Order, now had himself proclaimed Grand Master by a handful of Knights then in Russia, in place of the Grand Master Fra' Ferdinand von Hompesch whom had been obliged to abandon Malta to the French.
This proclamation of a married non-Catholic as head of a Catholic religious order was wholly illegal and void, and never recognized by the Holy See (a necessary condition for legitimacy). Accordingly, Paul I, who was nevertheless accepted by many Knights and a number of governments, can only be regarded as a Grand Master de facto, never one de jure.
His successor Alexander I, on the other hand, helped the Order to return to legitimate rule; and in 1803 Fra' Giovanni Battista Tommasi was elected Grand Master.
The British had meantime occupied Malta in 1801 and though the Treaty of Arniens (1802) recognized the Order's sovereign rights over the island, it has never been able to avail itself of them.
Grand Master Fra' Tomassi