X-Nico

unusual facts about Knights Hospitallers



Joseph Demarco

From February 1773, he organised a group of fellow priests who, eventually, took up arms against Francisco Ximenes de Texada, the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, in protest for retracting some of their rights and privileges.

On the contrary, he was a close collaborator and a personal friend of the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, Manuel Pinto da Fonseca, who immediately, on Demarco’s return to Malta, chose him as Principle Medical Officer for the Maltese Islands.

More so since the then Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, António Manoel de Vilhena, had given free entry to the harbours to all nations.

In 1788, when Demarco was 70 years of age (and already in poor health himself), the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, requested that he went to Tripoli, then an Ottoman province, to see to the health of the pasha there, who was gravely ill.

Joseph Xerri

However, Xerri was unfortunate enough to be in office when in that same year the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, Francisco Ximenes de Texada, brought the activities of the university to a complete stop due to presumed over spending and restrictions in budgetary resources.


see also

Lord Prior

The title of the leader of the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitallers in England, otherwise known as the Grand Prior