Absent Presence: Religious Materiality, the Order of St John, and the Counter-Reformation

Abstract

Within the Catholic liturgy and devotion, there exists a seemingly paradoxical notion of spirituality through materiality, religious practices that are equally tangible and intangible, concurrently present and absent. This paper explores the concept of ‘absent-presence’ in early modern Catholic devotional practices, with a focus on the Order of St John during the Counter-Reformation. Drawing on case studies from Malta and across the Hospitaller world, it investigates how religious materiality (sacred objects, spaces, and rituals) expresses divine agency. Anchored in the kinetic approach to religious history, the study examines how the movement of relics, the staging of processions, and the construction of sacred spaces fostered emotional and spiritual transformation among devotees. While belief may be elusive for historians, the devotional actions of the Hospitallers demonstrate a faith deeply intertwined with motion, matter, and memory as external forces that sought to move the soul through tangible forms.

1. Introduction

On 16 December 2020, nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic that had brought widespread loss and hardship, the faithful of Naples gathered in the Cathedral of St Januarius under strict social-distancing rules. The liturgical ceremonies starkly contrasted those from previous years, which, in the spirit of Naples, are typically very baroque in every sense of the word (Hills 2018). Yet all memory of this subdued celebration would have vanished if the long-awaited ‘prodigio’ had occurred. The annual spectacle, where the saint’s coagulated blood appears to liquefy before the congregation, is one of Naples’s most beloved devotional traditions. Even today, pilgrims worldwide attend the relic exposition, believing the miracle augurs a fortunate year, unless it fails, as it famously did on 16 December 2020 and again in March 2021, when the blood stayed solid.1 When the blood does not move, it casts a sense of dread that the coming year will bring misfortune. Although the Church repeatedly warned against superstitious interpretations, expecting Neapolitans not to link this failure to the pandemic was perhaps unrealistic. On the other hand, such occasions highlight the hermeneutical element in the veneration of relics. They are not merely displays of faith, but signs to be read and interpreted.

One striking feature of Catholic devotional practices is their paradoxical blend of spirit and matter, rituals that are at once tangible and intangible, present, and absent. Moreover, Catholics often expect static sacred objects, such as St Januarius’s blood, to exhibit a kind of kinetic agency, moving or acting as if alive, even if they remain physically unchanged. These objects are believed to have agency: to transform inner dispositions and to exert their greatest power when carried in procession. This is essentially what is meant by ‘absent-presence’, an ‘immaterial invisible factor that organizes words, sounds, images and any other mediation vehicle into something meaningful.’ (Arad 2012) Catholic material culture and sacred spaces often carry hidden meanings that extend beyond their physical appearance. Relics, in particular, which are a central feature of this chapter, were understood as vessels of presence, even if their efficacy rested on the paradox of absence (of the saint) and human decay. Walker Bynum explores further this paradox by pointing out how the ritual fragmentation of the saint’s blood and bones was productive, not destructive, since it contributed to the dissemination of the devotion (Walker Bynum 2011).

In her study on the Miraculous Flying House of Loreto (Vélez 2019), Karin Vélez poses problems that historians have so far encountered when writing about miraculous occurrences, namely, the difficulty in talking about movement and in discerning the lasting appeal that these seemingly implausible stories retained for generations. ‘Instead of addressing real movement, most scholars…have brought to bear the analytical apparatuses from their respective disciplines that are usually mustered for the special situation of confronting the impossible (Ibid).’ One solution lies in asking ‘what is moving’, ‘how is it being done’, ‘where is it going’, and ‘why is it moving’? This paper addresses those same questions through case studies in early modern Malta following the Council of Trent.

Movement should not really surprise us. Walter Capps argued that religious studies needed to focus on movement, to represent the dynamics of time, change, and motion; ‘…religious traditions are non-static or monolithic phenomena, but find their constantly changing and shifting identity in contact and relationship with each other (Stier and Landres 2006; Capps 1995).’ He termed this the ‘kinetic’ approach. There are various ways to interpret and unravel what this kineticism consists of, from an anthropological, emotional, recollective, and philosophical angle. The following pages focus on motion: spaces that stir the soul, images that animate miraculously, relics on the move, mystical power flowing through objects, and pilgrims who journey to encounter them. In this setting, space and objects become intertwined and interdependent, both contributing to a more vivid experience. Here, they will also be intertwined, with sometimes the space taking the center stage, other times the object, but they are generally reliant on each other. This study’s protagonists are the Hospitallers (the Order of St John of Jerusalem), a military–religious order founded in the Holy Land in the eleventh century. By the early modern era, they had become a sui generis, even paradoxical, Catholic institution.

The structure of this chapter reflects the thematic layering inherent in the concept of absent presence. It turns to the specific devotional practices of the Order of St John, examining how relics, liturgical performances, and sacred architecture functioned within a broader Counter-Reformation strategy to mobilize affect and shape interior transformation. While recent works have illuminated the affective and material dimensions of post-Tridentine piety, particularly in relation to relics, images, and sacred space, the Hospitallers have often remained on the periphery of these discussions, treated primarily as a military or administrative body. The final sections expand this analysis to include the cultic geography of Marian devotion and the ritualized movement of relics (translatio), revealing how the interplay of motion, memory, and matter animated Hospitaller spirituality across Mediterranean and European contexts.

Together, these strands aim to contribute to the discussion on how early modern Catholicism navigated the paradox of divine presence through absence. The objective is not to show how the knights of St John were different, at least in this respect, but that they were part of a wider, kinetic, Catholic devotional world, at times as protagonists, other times as imitators or receptors. To take the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius again as an example, whilst being the most renowned one, it was not the only relic capable of such movement. Also, in Naples, the monastery of San Gregorio Armenio had a vial of blood believed to be that of St John the Baptist, which each year turned to liquid during a ceremony held on 1 August. In 1586, the Grand Master of the Order of St John ordered that every year, all Hospitallers residing in Naples had to attend the solemn Mass in San Gregorio Armeno in honor of their patron saint (Dal Pozzo 1703). In some ways, the physical proximity of the vials of blood of two totally distinct saints, Januarius and John the Baptist, led them to behave in a similar fashion. Such examples help to situate the Order of St John primarily as a religious order rather than merely a chivalric one and demonstrate that far from being an outlier, the Hospitallers embodied some of the most potent devotional logics of the Counter-Reformation era.

A central notion that shall be expanded upon is the meditative technique of using the ‘eye of the soul’ to perceive objects in ways that transcend what the physical eye sees, thus inviting the faithful to accept narratives of agency in objects and spaces, and in so doing, moving the soul. Simon Ditchfield argued that ‘ultimately, perception of time and space was not entirely dependent on physical movement. Rather, it was affected profoundly by interior disposition (Ditchfield 2005).’ One way of moving the soul could be by means of an ‘absent presence’, meaning a holiness in a space or object that was produced by another, distant or past, sacred entity. To take an example of a sacred entity in motion, in 1582, the Barnabite Padre Paolo Maletta was sent to Malta to lead a retreat house for the knights of the Order of St John. We know about Maletta’s activities in Malta from his correspondence with Cardinal (later Saint) Charles Borromeo, who sent him there.2 In one of these letters, he mentioned how the Grand Master showed him ‘the Treasure’, meaning the relics ‘brought from Jerusalem when it [the Order] was forced to leave’.3 Even though most of the Order’s relics were acquired later, the reference to Jerusalem served to both give legitimacy to the relics as well as use them to evoke a memory of the Order’s own absent presence. Maletta told Borromeo, ‘I thought of you during that spiritual consolation…and having been given a few rings to touch to those sacred relics, especially to a good part of the wood from the Holy Cross of Our Lord, and the three fingers of St John the Baptist…which rings…serve as remedy from malcaduco4 and against insect bites… I thought I wanted to send one to you…’5 In essence, the power emanating from Christ and the saints passes through the relics to the rings and eventually their bearer, but none of this power is ever seen, except with the ‘inner eye’ of the soul.

2. Absent Presence: Space and Metanoia

Mircea Eliade first coined ‘sacred space’ in The Sacred and the Profane (1959), defining the sacred as a fusion of space and time (Eliade 1959). In Catholicism, the Eucharist illustrates this: bread and wine are believed to become Christ’s body and blood. Catholic churches are oriented around the main altar where the Eucharistic ritual takes place. The conviction of Christ’s real presence in the host largely defines a church’s sanctity. Though the ritual commemorates Christ’s Last Supper, a historical event, it also transcends time by being reenacted at every Mass. The chaplain of the Order, Fra Fabrizio Cagliola, noted a third temporal layer: Christ’s institution of the Eucharist at the Jewish Passover was itself an annual remembrance of the Exodus.6 This ritual ties together the Passover lamb’s blood on Israelite doors and Christ’s sacrifice after the Last Supper, and both are celebrated anew at every altar worldwide.

Catholic belief further maintains that all those who celebrate Mass are in communion with each other as if they were partaking in the same meal together, even though they might be physically worlds apart. Space, appropriately embellished, could further enhance this aspect of communion. As an example, we can take a description of a seventeenth-century celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in the slave bagnos7 of Algiers as a demonstration of this.8

‘They have crosses, banners and flags… the holy sacrament is brought out in a pallium of very fine white damask…on this day [Corpus Christi] the walls of the patio of the sagena,9 where the procession begins, are decorated with green stalks. In the centre of the sagena they erect triumphal arches, decorated with herbs and flowers… All the captives participate in the procession, carrying candles… A cleric leads… holding an incense box. All walk chanting the hymns appropriate to that day (Friedman 1983, p. 85; Silvestre 1690).’

If not for the reference to captives, one might easily think the above was a description of a procession taking place in any Catholic city in Europe. The captives went to great lengths to observe the universal Catholic ritual on this and other important feast days, and creating the right space with the appropriate religious materiality contributed to the creation of what Michel Foucault termed ‘heterotopia’ (Foucault 1984). ‘The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible’, such as the juxtaposition of a prison and a church (Foucault 1984, p. 6).

Space, and the accompanying ritual, freed the soul to be in communion with the rest of the Church, whilst the body was in chains. Through an exercise of faith, space is reconceptualized. A prison courtyard in a Muslim city was transformed into a simulacrum of home, whether that home was Malta, Malaga, Messina, or whichever part of the Catholic world they hailed from. The aspect of communion with the Church at large is best illustrated by religious practices on the galleys, in particular the Order’s galleys, which were effectively floating parishes (Allen 1994). As a parish at sea, the galley represented the allegory of the Church as the ‘Barque of Peter’, a boat challenging the waves of adversity on route to eternal salvation, a connection with the diocese on land as a reference point from where the chaplain obtained his authority, as well as a communion with those praying for divine intercession, in convents and churches in multiple places, offering Masses and adorations in the hope of the galley’s safe return.

On the other hand, the galley distinguishes itself for being, much like a prison,10 physically set apart, with a clear separation between those onboard and the rest of the world. ‘Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality’ (Foucault 1984). Edward Soja built on this with what he termed the ‘Thirdspace’, the alternative envisioning of spatiality that deconstructs conventional modes of spatial thinking (Soja 1996; Maier 2013). The Firstspace is the physically built environment, measurable and tangible. The Secondspace is the conceptual space, conceived as a product of social norms, marketing strategies, education, or faith. The Thirdspace could be a real or imagined space that is lived and experienced. It combines the physicality of the real Firstspace with the expectations generated by the Secondspace. This is in line with what Coster and Spicer identify in several early modern European case studies (Coster and Spicer 2005), that the importance of human experience is at the heart of what defines a sacred space, be it a physical location or a set of cognitive associations (Nelson 2010).

Despite the growing efforts to regulate sacred art during the Counter-Reformation period, the longing for materiality that could elicit metanoia remained prevalent. In the Disavventure Marinaresche di Gabriello,11 a semi-fictional work written by the Hospitaller chaplain Fra Fabrizio Cagliola,12 we are given the very same idea of art as a means for self-awareness expressed in the aspiration of a young protagonist, Gabriello, who seeks guidance on how to become a conventual chaplain. The conversation between the aspiring Hospitaller and the Master of Novices takes place in the Oratory of St John’s, beneath the canvas painting that shows knights and chaplains of the Order being butchered to death during the siege of 1565. The implication was that the true vocation for a member of the Order was to sacrifice one’s life in the service of the faith, and the Oratory was organized in such a manner that brought about this metanoia in the hearts of the novices and was a tool for the masters who wanted to impart it. The inner dimension of the self is often where the larger spiritual battles take place, and this influenced the gradual definition of the notion of ‘self’.13

Fra Zummo described a similar internal battle in one of the letters he wrote to a group of nuns in Palermo. This very same paradox is taken directly from the gospels: ‘For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’ (Matthew 16:25).

‘so that you could proceed to victory against that enemy called self-love, or better, self-poison; upon whom you will certainly triumph, if after the first battles you will call to your aid the General of the army of God, called self-contempt. He will come on behalf of his Lord, but first he will send you his three brave captains called, nothing having, nothing knowing and nothing wanting. These will train you in the use of arms, unravel the pitfalls, prepare the countermines, and rest assured that as long as you follow their orders, you will always be victorious. [The battle] will be cruel because you have enemies within that will spy on you and betray you, and these are your very senses.’14

On the other hand, turning to the external, historians have often singled out urban spaces in general or specialized structures within these cities that served to elicit metanoia; some examples include (Michelson 2022; Alberts 2013; Diefendorf 2019; Boillet and Rideau 2021). Although the provision of contemplative spaces is not an exclusive phenomenon of the early modern period, the Counter-Reformation brought a reinforced vigor and focused expertise of dedicated institutions to sacralize cities through general conversion strategies. Carlo Borromeo also promoted remote places in the wilderness, such as the Sacro Monti, for the same purpose (Zanzi 2005). Be it urban or remote, De Silva defined sacred any space where, ‘within the bounds of appropriate activities, Christians could transcend the distractions of mortal life and enter into an environment that privileged their own spiritual growth and interaction with the saints and even God himself (De Silva 2015; Terpstra 2000).’ De Silva elaborated on this point by saying that the individual expects to experience a ‘heightened state’ when stepping beyond the threshold of the sacred (De Silva 2015, p. 8). A church, shrine, or sanctuary is not merely one central space but often involves smaller, more intimate areas where a particular ambience is created to trigger an emotional response in the individual.

The Oratory of the Beheading of St John within the Conventual Church complex is one such ‘space within a space’, meant to provoke a heightened state. The senses, such as smell and hearing, are invoked in varying manners to contribute to this heightened state.15 Liturgical music, for instance, could be as effective in a certain setting as complete silence in another. Grand Master Wignacourt (1601–1622) often claimed that music and singing conjured in him an idea of paradise (Dal Pozzo 1703, p. 694). The smell of incense and burning candles elicit certain emotions as well, since in Catholic liturgical practices, they are associated with a sacred presence (Swann et al. 2018). Crying, be it out of joy or contrition, is one indicator of the heightened state prompted by the sacred space. Works of sacred erudition that describe spaces and rituals in the early modern period, not least works that involve Hospitaller devotions, such as Marc Antonio Haxiac’s description of a procession with relics from Valletta to Rabat,16 frequently mention this heightened state among the faithful. In yet another demonstration of the interdependence of holy objects with ritual and space, the procession passed through several major villages along the fifteen-kilometer-long route. The villagers showed their joy and devotion by erecting triumphal arches and mock architectural features, generally full of religious symbolism, which represented a formal entry point to a city or village.17 Halfway through, it stopped in the village of Attard, where an altar had been erected for public veneration, ornate with many lights and rich drapery. The ceremonies attracted a crowd as large as 20,000 according to Haxiac, and he made it a point to mention how emotionally charged the procession was: people walking barefoot, carrying statues of St Paul and St Luke on their bare shoulders, while the prayers and singing moved some to tears. The ritual was attempting to emulate a return of St Paul to the island that attributed to him their conversion to Christianity, by blessing the same landscape with his relics.

3. Sacred Ubiquity

The Virgin Mary pervades virtually every form of Catholic spirituality and the material culture it inspires. For example, in Idea Atlantis Mariani (1655) (Gumppenberg 1655), Jesuit Wilhelm Gumppenberg explains his aim ‘to show how much the world owes to Mary and what it may expect from her.’18 Gumppenberg intertwines object and place; the image represents the Virgin, while its location embodies the community’s hopes.

Copies of miraculous images can be equally efficacious simply by resembling the original. This is why we find that copies of famous Marian paintings, such as the Salus Populi Romani, were capable of similar prodigies. Cardinal Bellarmine taught that Christ and Mary wield sacred ubiquity, their presence extends into every representation (Dekoninck 2018). ‘In the same image there is embedded something sacred; without a doubt the resemblance with the sacred thing, the same dedication, or its consecration to the divine cult; therefore, these [objects] are worthy of honour in themselves, and not only because they are replacing the originals (Bellarmino 2018).’ Gumppenberg likens this to magnetic force traveling along an iron chain. ‘The miraculous power in Mary’s image comes from her, and believers know that it extends to any image that has touched the original (Dekoninck 2018, p. 244).’ He likely drew on Athanasius Kircher’s virtus magnetica, the idea that like bodies attract.19 Insulting an image thus amounted to assailing the Virgin herself. In the third part of his Dell’Istoria della Sacra Religione (Bosio 1602), Giacomo Bosio recounted an episode involving a Greek conventual chaplain, Fra Stamati Condo, who stole a precious jewel that adorned the riza of the devotional icon of Our Lady of Philermos, carried by the knights from Rhodes to Malta. To show that this was an affront to Mary herself, Bosio describes how the thief’s arm withered until he returned the jewel. The Order opted to banish the priest instead of executing him for the sacrilege, so that his maimed arm could bear witness to the Virgin’s miracle, also thinking that it was more efficient to rely on the Virgin’s punishment than issue their own.20

The knights believed that this same icon of the Virgin of Philermos was able to intercede for them in battle. Successful forays against the enemy were generally followed by thanksgiving ceremonies in St John’s. After the successful raids of the castles of Lepanto and Patras during the Wignacourt Magistracy, the keys of both forts were placed as ex votos in the chapel of Philermos, with accompanying inscriptions on silver plaques (De Giorgio 2011). Other icons on the island were attributed with a similar martial prowess. In 1614, the Virgin of Mellieħa was said to have summoned an entire army to thwart a raid on her shrine. Fra Bartolomeo dal Pozzo claimed St Luke himself painted the image while shipwrecked in Malta with St Paul (Dal Pozzo 1703, p. 593), one of several icons in Europe ascribed to the Evangelist (Buhagiar 2024). Summoning armies or punishing thieves was extraordinary, but for devout believers, even subtler signs sufficed to confirm Mary’s ‘magnetic’ presence in her images. In 1534, at the Hospitaller commandery of San Giovanni Battista al Tempio in Pistoia, the fourteenth-century Madonna del Rastrello fresco merely shifted its gaze to astound pilgrims (Annabasi and Martini 2018). The medieval tradition of miraculous Madonnas seems to have been unperturbed by the Counter-Reformation control of religious materiality, if not strengthened by the diffusion of printed narratives and replicas, as the next examples shall illustrate. One method of universalizing a cult thus relied on fostering devotion by overlapping particular and universal, not only in terms of rites but also by likening locations: the Loreto of Spain (Nuestra Señora de la Salceda, Guadalajara) or the Montserrat of Rome (Chiesa degli Spagnoli).

Another Hospitaller-linked case is Our Lady of the Pilone in Vico, Piedmont. A medieval fresco of Our Lady of Graces, long neglected but once famed for healing, was ‘rediscovered’ towards the end of the sixteenth century. Its fame grew so much that an account of the miracles published in 1627 lists pilgrims visiting the shrine from all over the Italian peninsula and neighboring French and Swiss territories (Malabaila 1627). Devotees claimed the blind were healed, the lame walked, and the mute spoke. They also believed Mary softened enemies’ hearts and restored peace. Within months of the first miracles in 1592, the resident knight of the nearby Murello commandery, Fra Girolamo Pensa, a native of Mondovi, composed and published a book of spiritual poems (1696) to publicise the cult of the Virgin of Vico (Pensa 1596). He dedicated the poems as votive offerings for the graces received, though it is unclear if the vow was his alone or a communal act.

Such narratives were hardly unique to the Order; indeed, many nearly identical or competing miracle stories coexist. Historians note that local shrines often replaced risky long pilgrimages to Rome or Compostela.21 This resulted in a greater clericalization of shrines, as the clergy sought to shift the focus to parochial religious life whilst keeping a closer control over devotional practices. Similar processes occurred in Hospitaller commanderies, such as in the Santuario di Nostra Signora della Corona di Monte Baldo, in the Hospitaller commandery of San Vitale di Verona. A seventeenth-century historia sacra of Our Lady of the Crown shows an Order representative courting a local baron’s patronage to solidify and expand the cult in the competitive Italian scene. Fra Andrea Vigna’s Notizia Storica della Madonna della Corona in Monte Baldo nella Chiesa della Commenda di S. Vitale di Verona spettante al S. Ordine Gerosolimitano (1668) (Vigna 1668) was successful enough to be reprinted again in Malta by the Order a century later (1771). The Sanctuary itself was included in the first version of Wilhelm Gumppenberg’s Atlas Marianus (1657) (Gumppenberg 1657), which originally listed one hundred Marian shrines in Europe that hosted miraculous images.

The narrative begins in Rhodes, where for ninety years, knights and citizens venerated a miraculous statue of Mary. According to Vigna, when the Ottomans besieged and captured Rhodes in 1522, despite the Sultan’s promise to spare the knights, their houses and churches were sacked. Some locals sheltered in the church, but Ottoman troops stormed it, intent on destruction. Suddenly, the statue of the Virgin vanished, and those people never saw it again. Meanwhile, the knights were ousted from Rhodes. That very night on Monte Baldo near Lago di Garda, an otherworldly light, brighter than the sun, ‘illuminating with bright splendour the darkness of the night, and through the thick vegetation, into which the sun with its rays perhaps had never even penetrated’ (Vigna 1668, p. 11). Vigna’s phrase opacità delle selve (‘opacity of the woods’) alludes to Dante’s metaphor of sin, banished by grace’s light. From this light appeared a statue of Mary holding the dead Christ.

The following morning, the field was swarming with villagers from the neighboring areas. Fearing exposure, they agreed to build a wooden chapel to shelter the statue. The fame of the Virgin of the Crown was so great that many pilgrims from Italy and Germany went to pray there, including some knights of St John. Vigna reported that the Hospitaller knights identified the statue as their lost Rhodes icon and sought to become its custodians again. They requested and received permission to oversee the sanctuary. The sanctuary was subjected to the administration of the commandery of San Vitale of Verona.22 Further sources that are cited by Vigna include the Marian Atlas by Gumppenberg, who wrote about two images that miraculously disappeared from Rhodes in 1522. One was the icon of Our Lady of Damascus, which was found in Malta, and the other was the statue of the Virgin of the Crown. Vigna explained how the Order transported the statue from the old chapel to the new one: ‘…she came to live with rural men…in a place so unforgiving and remote… (Vigna 1668, p. 19)’. In this description, the statute was given cognitive abilities, as if it was not the object that was moving but the Virgin Mary herself. Some peasants had decided to move the image from the field beneath the cliffs to an altar they had built in the plain above. The following morning, they were amazed to discover that the statue, which had taken considerable fatigue to carry up to the plain, had incredibly returned to the field where it originally appeared in 1522. They moved the statue a second time, and it again returned to the original location. ‘Mary wanted to live in the place she had chosen, and not in that chosen for her’ (Vigna 1668, p. 19). Margaret Meserve coined the term ‘refugee relics’ to describe a type of mobile miraculous materiality (Meserve 2021). This expression was more recently cited by Erin Giffin and Antongiulio Sorgini in their study of the ‘Mobile Shrine’ of Loreto (Giffin and Sorgini 2024). Notably, there are striking parallels between the Virgin of the Crown and the ‘Flying House,’ as both evoke the Virgin’s distress through her image or dwelling. In each case, she is portrayed as fleeing Muslim persecution—one from Rhodes, the other from the Holy Land—and both are endowed with the faculty of choice. The House of Loreto even migrated several times before settling in the Marche, suggesting a tension between the will of the faithful and the agency of the relic itself.

Access to the site at Monte Baldo remained a problem for a long time, and many tried to find alternative routes to create a road for pilgrims, so as not to have to lower them down by rope. The Capuchin Giacomo da Bussolengo told Vigna that one miracle included a tree with large, strong branches, which grew overnight over a crevice in the cliffs so that it could be used by locals as a support for a bridge over the precipice. This miraculous tree also had healing powers, as crushed pieces of its bark could be added to water or wine and heal even those on whom the doctors had given up. This practice had to be accompanied by the usual Marian prayers and litany, and a genuine sense of contrition and faith. So great was the people’s belief in this miracle, that, in time, they took all the leaves, branches, and eventually even the main bark of the tree and reduced it to small shavings, which they kept, as relics, in their homes. By 1650, nothing was left of the tree, so a column was built in its stead to support the bridge (Vigna 1668, p. 18).

Several Marian cults had a strong relationship with nature. Apparitions that involve trees, caves, water sources, or mountains were a widespread phenomenon, frequently involving a backdrop of religious warfare as well, with the Virgin revealing herself to the righteous in a place and manner of her choosing. In Spain alone, there are many Marian cults with similar miraculous narratives,23 some even present in Hospitaller commanderies. In Guadalajara, not too far from the Salceda, the Order owned a hermitage dedicated to the Virgen del Saz, which also conserved a statue of Mary discovered in a tree trunk. In Villarubra de los Ojos (Ciudad Real), the sanctuary of the Virgen de la Sierra was built around a representation of the Virgin from the seventh century, also discovered in a tree. The Virgen de la Sierra was so popular among knights from that area that it was the patron saint of all Hospitaller territories in La Mancha (Alvarado Plana and de Salazar Acha 2015).

At times, the Virgin’s will was expressed in a much more direct manner, simply with a written note. On 8 September 1627, Fra Giaime Zummo from Palermo, his brother Fra Nicola, and Fra Vincenzo Landolina from Noto24 convened a meeting of the Confraternity of Charity of Palermo. As it was the feast day of the birth of the Virgin, after Mass and communion in the confraternity’s oratory, the chaplain Don Giovanni Guadagnino brought a small statue of the child Virgin Mary wrapped in swaddling clothes as a device for prayer and meditation. The brothers Fra Giaime and Fra Nicola Zummo were planning to open a female monastery in Palermo and hoped to obtain the assistance and financial patronage of their confreres in the Confraternity of Charity. While they were praying around the statue, they noticed a folded paper tucked in between the swaddles that wrapped the Virgin, and they curiously opened it to read a message that encouraged them to go ahead with their holy intent. Without hesitation, they interpreted that note as a command given to them by the Virgin Mary herself, and they immediately set about establishing the monastery (Mongitore 1710).

So far, most examples concern cults from the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, but one must not leave out France and what was possibly the most popular French Marian invocation present in Hospitaller Malta, the Notre Dame de Liesse (Our Lady of Joy). The cult of Liesse is also centered around a miraculous statue of the Virgin, thought to be a faithful copy of the French equivalent destroyed in the Revolution of 1789. The chronicle recounted how three Hospitaller brothers from Laon, Picardie, were stationed in Syria and captured in 1134. The three brothers were offered to the Sultan of Egypt as slaves, who tried everything in his power to break their will and force them to renounce their faith. When promises of riches and threats of horrible deaths failed, he sent his beautiful daughter Ismeria to seduce them, in a bid to compel them to break their vows. The young knights did not give in; instead, they engaged in a theological discussion with Ismeria, which instilled in her a love for the Virgin Mary. Day after day, she visited them, yearning to know more about the Blessed Virgin, to the point that she desired so much to have an image of her. Ismeria offered to help the knights escape if they agreed to engrave an image of the Virgin in wood for her. The knights accepted, despite not having any artistic skill. That night, they prayed to the heavens for assistance and fell asleep. The next morning, there was a statue of Mary, which the knights called Our Lady of Joy, Liesse in French, whilst the block of wood the princess had brought them was still untouched. In other words, the statue of Our Lady of Joy was believed to be an Acheiropoieta, much like Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico), a work of art untouched by human hands.

Ismeria was so captivated by this miracle, but more specifically by the beauty of the statue, that she expressed her desire to become a Christian. That same night, she and the three knights escaped the prison in a story reminiscent of the escape of St Peter. After a series of visions and miracles, the four youths were transported by angels to the knights’ homeland in France, where they built a church to host the sacred image of the Lady of Joy. As with the Veronese counterpart, the statue chose the location where the church was to be built, in this case, by becoming incredibly heavy in the hands of the knights when they were on the chosen spot.25 Liesse became so popular that Bosio compared its fame in France with that of Loreto in Italy (Bosio 1602, p. 138). Furthermore, Bosio used this example to explain the relationship between object, place, and grace.

‘The great merciful Lord, who from major sins and the gravest excesses of man, often extracts a greater good… wanted to enrich France with one of the most noble, dear and precious gifts and heavenly keepsakes that it has, that is, the wonderful and miraculous Image of Our Holy Madonna of Liesse… (Bosio 1602, p. 130)’.

It logically follows that, like the textual descriptions, early visual representations of the Virgin of Liesse place the statue at center stage, surrounded by representations of salient points from the story of Ismeria and the three knights.26 In Malta, the cult seems to have been introduced by Grand Master Wignacourt. Wignacourt’s gift or goia upon his election to the Magistracy was in the form of a set of liturgical vestments for St John’s Church, showcasing scenes from the story of Our Lady of Joy.27 His greatest contribution, however, seems to be that of inspiring those close to him, particularly knights from the Langue of France, to likewise become patrons and contribute to the cult of Liesse in Malta. The original church of Liesse was built in 1620 by Fra Jacques Chenù du Bellay, nephew of Wignacourt, Seneschal and Bailiff of Armenia. Above all, the church of Liesse was the last touch to Wignacourt’s Porta Marina project, which went on to become a Hospitaller ‘Porto Salvo’, obtaining great importance in all religious ceremonies that involved the navy. By the mid-seventeenth century, the feast of Our Lady of Liesse, particularly the one in July,28 was fairly established in Malta, being a day of great jubilation among the populace (Bonello 2020).

Though the introduction of the cult of Liesse in Malta could be attributed to Alof de Wignacourt’s devotion, the greatest boost was given by Grand Master Lascaris, who followed Wignacourt in giving yet another set of seven liturgical capes to St John’s as his gioia. Lascaris had such a deep personal devotion towards the invocation of Liesse that he also commissioned five vignettes with scenes from the story of Ismeria and the three knights for the entrance to the Grand Masters’ bedroom in the Magistral Palace (Bonello 2020, p. 113). The theme was particularly appropriate, particularly the central vignette in trompe l’oeil that shows the three knights and the Egyptian princess in their divine slumber over a large cloud as they are being miraculously transported by angels from the shores of the Nile to Picardie. It was the last thing that the Grand Masters saw every day as they went to sleep.

4. Translatio

We have explored movement born of meditation or seen as emanating from sacred objects or spaces. Yet another, more common form of motion was the translatio, the relocation of holy relics. Translatio, from Latin ‘changing location’, refers to the ritual transfer of relics for feast days, special celebrations, or permanent enshrinement after discovery (inventio). Moving a relic, miraculous or not, always sparked or renewed its veneration. One example is the transfer of St Ursula’s relics to Gozo. In 1610, Governor Fra Eugenio Ramírez Maldonado brought St Ursula’s relic and its reliquary bust from Salamanca to Gozo (Bezzina 2013). When he left office in 1613, he took the relic with him to Malta. Devotees in Gozo, who had formed a strong devotion towards St Ursula, petitioned their former governor for its return, and he complied. Back on Gozo, the relic became the center of a cult that led the 1620 Diocesan Synod to name St Ursula the island’s patron (Bezzina 2013, p. 9).

It was, nonetheless, essential to document the physical act of translatio, whether natural or supernatural, pious or profane. Records noted the relic’s origin and destination, the officiant, and the route (Dekoninck 2018, p. 245). Translatio lay at the heart of the Città Rituale, fusing contemplative spirit with liturgical exactitude. One might be tempted to argue that the Order of St John, being sui generis, was somehow different or unique in the way it ‘moved’. Yet, these documents show that the Order adopted increasingly standardized, centralized translatio rituals as the Magistracy deepened its devotional oversight.29

Unlike images, relics embody the saint’s actual presence—first-class relics (ex ossibus) are bodily remains, while others (ex indumentis) are items closely associated with the saint. This implies two things. First, since relics are fragments of a larger whole dispersed across sites, each holder was in spiritual communion with those who held the other parts. Second, multiple saints could be invoked together, each interceding through miracles reminiscent of their earthly deeds. The relics of Brother Gerard, founder of the Order, kept in Manosque’s castle chapel, were deemed miraculous. Though secure from attack, they were rarely seen, so their rare processions during local crises became major devotional events.

Yet, in dire straits, entire reliquaries were paraded. At Milan’s plague procession, Carlo Borromeo used a Holy Nail relic. In Malta’s 1592–93 plague processions, knights processed dozens of relics.

‘to placate the heavily anger… they [the knights] had also done several public and devout processions, carrying through the streets three pieces of the True Cross upon which Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, the hand of the precursor St John the Baptist, with which our patron pointed towards the Lamb of God, a leg of St Lazarus Bishop and martyr disciple of the Lord, the body of St Euphemia Virgin and Martyr, the Thorn that pierced the head of Christ, the finger of Mary Magdalene, the arm of St George, the arm of St Stephen, the arm of St John the Almoneer, two heads from the two-thousand Virgins, a hand of St Claire, a hand of St Anne, the relic of St Placido, the relics of St Cosmas and Damian, the relic of St Vittorino, the relic of St Pantaleon, a piece of the nose of St John the Baptist placed in a fine golden plate decorated with many stones and precious jewels, three cases of relics of many saints and many other relics with which this Religion was always favoured by the Pontiffs.’30

This nod to papal gifts underscores how relic transfers cemented bonds. In 1609 and again in 1611, Pope Paul V sent Malta’s Grotto of St Paul pectoral crosses with Passion relics and True Cross splinters.31 Similarly, in 1578, Grand Master Verdalle gifted Spain’s Sijena monastery bone shards of St Stephen (head), St Euphemia (arm), and St Helen (neck) to honor their loyalty to him (Dal Pozzo 1703, p. 158).

Relic donations also spread cults: a new saint in town meant fresh devotions. In 1586, Grand Master Verdalle wanted to promote the cult of Hospitaller saints, particularly St Ubaldesca, to whom he was personally devout. He asked the Prior of Pisa, Fra Giulio Zanchini, to facilitate the episcopal permissions to have some bones from the body of that saint, conserved in the female Hospitaller monastery of Pisa, transferred to Malta. The Order’s chronicler details the land journey to Livorno and the sea voyage to Malta, overseen by mariner Fra Ottavio de Castellane (Dal Pozzo 1703, p. 275). Verdalle then distributed these relics across Maltese churches, catalyzing St Ubaldesca’s cult growth both locally and in other commanderies.32 Initially, this involved a plenary indulgence on the day of the translatio. In the years after, a church built in Casal Paola by Grand Master De Paule (r.1623–26) was dedicated to Saint Ubaldesca, the only one the Order ever dedicated to one of its saints. By 1672, the Order was seeking to extend the liturgical celebration by having a proper Office of the saint in the conventual chaplains’ rubric, rather than a generic one for virgin saints.33 Eventually, in 1683, her feast in St John’s was elevated to a Pontifical one as bequeathed in the pious foundation of Fra Carlo Gattola.34

Being able to carry a relic, to move it not only inside the church but also around the city, was a very important aspect of the life of relics. In 1560, when Grand Master de Vallette ascended the Magistracy, he wanted to inspect the relics in the Tolo, one by one. In doing so, he discovered that the body of St Euphemia, a very important relic for the Langue of Italy with a homonymous bailiwick dedicated to it in Calabria, was lacking a proper theca (case/box) and, therefore, the sacred contents could be at risk if taken out on procession. He commissioned a new reliquary case for the saint’s bones in gilded silver.35

The most direct way to come about having relics was by inventio, meaning discovery. The discovery of relics had a legitimizing function. The appointment of Verdalle to the cardinalate in 1588 seems to have spurred in him a great desire to strengthen the Order’s devotions, both in terms of ritual and materiality. On his way back to Malta from his elevation to Cardinal in Rome, Verdalle passed through Messina, where he had the occasion to visit the Order’s commandery church in that city. It was in this instance that he instructed the Prior, Fra Rinaldo di Naro, to do some work in the church.36 The discovery of the bodies of saints Placido, Eutico, Vittorino, and Flavia could not have come at a better time for Verdalle. Placido was a Benedictine abbot, a close associate of St Benedict himself, who was martyred along with three members of his congregation and several other monks. Their burial site had been forgotten for centuries, and the timing of their fortuitous discovery could easily be perceived as a sign of divine providence. For Verdalle, these numerous holy bones not only greatly enlarged the treasure of relics that the Order possessed in Messina but were also a trophy for his own Magistracy. As one might expect, he quickly wrote to the Holy See to request a few of those bones for the Conventual Church in Malta.37

Meanwhile, in Messina, a sumptuous ephemeral celebration was being prepared, and St John’s square was at the heart of the ritual. Filippo Gotho, a Messinese nobleman, described the passage of the corteo with the relics that departed from the Order’s commandery and passed from the main roads, from under several arches, and along the shoreline (Gotho 1591). Based on this description, Simona Gatto reconstructed the route they took on a period map, thereby demonstrating how the ritual encapsulated the entire city, blessing its gateways, the main streets, and the fortifications in particular (Gatto 2014, p. 120). What is most striking about the descriptions provided is how much materiality was involved in the translatio.

‘…the main streets were decorated with damasks and crimson ermines, and many other colours, with paintings and friezes, with frames and fresh leaves; they also erected many triumphal arches with paintings and large paintings with symbols and mottoes that reflected the people’s devotion and happiness. In the middle of the Square of St John they erected half a theatre, octagonal in shape for sturdiness, which had a semicircle in the shape of an old orchestra, and in that they adored the relics of the Martyr saints, reposed in four urns richly covered in the finest cloth of gold; and with an artificial sky from which descended three choirs of angels singing sweetly and harmoniously. In the following days the Triumph [monument] was ordered, preceded by a beautiful carriage pulled by four horses, upon which sat a crowned putto with an unsheathed scimitar in his right hand, representing martyrdom, which was then followed by a number of other crowned putti with scarves and wings to resemble angels, that held aloft paintings on plates that showed the miracles that were seen since the discovery of these saints. Following them in order were the confraternities of the villages with their crosses and standards, with many lit torches, followed then by those of the city pompously with many lights, and singing hymns with voices and instruments about the cruel death of the martyrs (Bonfiglio Costanzo 1604).’

Apart from these extraordinary circumstances, the movement and veneration of relics of the Order were governed by a very exacting ritual that was observed annually or weekly, generally in the same manner. As with other religious orders, the liturgical practices reflected a meeting point between universal and regional practices as they were dictated by internal statutes or regulations, individual patronage, special privileges by the Papacy, and the general Catholic liturgical calendar. A case in point was the Order’s Passion-related rituals. The four main ones were the votive Masses for the Holy Cross, the feast of the discovery of the True Cross, the feast of the Crown of Thorns, and the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Mass in St John’s was followed by a general procession with the relic of the True Cross and the singing of the litany of saints, with the participation of the Grand Master and Grand Crosses, who kissed the relic. It seems that this devotion was the result of an earthquake on Rhodes: Statute 10 on processions (Scarabelli 2009) mentions that the Friday procession was votive for peace and against earthquakes. The other three feasts had a fixed date. The Discovery of the Cross was celebrated on the 3rd of May, and all members of the Order had to participate in the Mass, which, from 1670 onwards, was celebrated with greater pomp as a pontifical Mass by the foundation of Grand Master Nicolas Cottoner.38 On this occasion, the small tabernacle in the Chapel of St Michael was opened to expose the relic of the True Cross for veneration, one of three that the Order possessed (Scarabelli 2009, p. 12). This particular relic was one that the Order had brought with it from Rhodes. Part of the ceremonies included a procession at the hour of vespers to the subterranean crypt known as Bertolotti, in suffrage for the souls of departed confreres. Similarly, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was celebrated in pontifical by the foundation of the same Cottoner in 1673, and the same relic was used for an internal procession after the third hour in the liturgy. This feast was so important for the Order that it took precedence over any other feast that coincided with it on 14 September (Scarabelli 2009, p. 13).

Apart from its use in the Good Friday ceremonies, the Crown of Thorns had its own feast on 11 August.39 This relic had been in the Order’s possession at least since Rhodian times, with its veneration growing exponentially following the miracle in front of Grand Master Milly, when a flower emerged from the thorn (Zoitu 2021). Its veneration did not wane during the Counter-Reformation, as demonstrated by the donation of a new reliquary in 1597 by Fra Stefano Claramunt (Scarabelli 2009, p. 13). Contemporary descriptions say that this reliquary was in the shape of a belfry, held by two putti with thuribles. The other reliquaries brought from Rhodes held more than one passion-related object. For instance, one was in the shape of the golden cross and had pieces of the True cross in the middle, another thorn from the Crown of Thorns, and two pieces of cloth believed to be parts of Christ’s red robe from the passion (Scarabelli 2009, p. 27). The presence of relics in other churches of the Order resulted in parallel rituals taking place there too. Among the relics of St Paul’s Grotto was a piece of the True Cross, to which a Plenary Indulgence was attached for those who visited the pilgrimage site on the feast of the discovery of the cross.

There were other similar relics in the Church of Our Lady of Victory in Valletta and the Camerata chapel, with similar ceremonies taking place there on Good Friday. The Camerata also had a piece of the tree from the house of the High Priest Annas, to which Christ was tied whilst awaiting to appear before the Sanhedrin (Scarabelli 2009, p. 27). In the Grand Master’s private chapel in Valletta, there was also some earth from the Golgotha, kept in a hagiotheca40 with the relics of other saints. Some other items were originally intended for personal private veneration, but through the spoglio that took place at the death of all members of the Order, they often became objects of public veneration, too. Outside Malta, the Order had more of these relics, particularly those of the True Cross. The relics possessed by the Order served as an attraction to pilgrims in that particular region and, therefore, contributed to the concept of a lived religion (Kuuliala et al. 2019) outside the physical confines of their Convento in Malta. A relic of the cross was donated to the Order during the Portuguese Reconquista and taken to the commandery of Marmelar. This relic was considered so important in Portugal that in early modern documents, one often finds the village of Marmelar listed as Vera Cruz.41

Documenting movement was generally performed by means of a notarial deed. For instance, a deed 1654, produced by the then Vice-chancellor Fra Gian Francesco Abela ‘a futura memoria’, detailed the translatio of the relics of S. Carlo Borromeo. He had as his witnesses Fra Fabrizio Cagliola (the galley chaplain) and the Order’s master of ceremonies. The relics, which included part of his heart, his liver, and a piece of his famous red cardinal’s cassock, were donated to Grand Master Lascaris by the new Inquisitor, Federico Borromeo, and his brother, Count Renato Borromeo, descendants of the saint. On the occasion of the translation of the relics of S. Carlo from the Church of Liesse, through the Porta Marina, with a solemn procession involving all the religious orders, the Inquisitor, and the Grand Master, one could truly observe the making of Valletta as a Città Rituale. The importance of this ritual, as a historical precedent or blueprint, is delineated in a similar donation in 1669 of the relics of St Clement. On that occasion, the Order’s Council decreed that they should be received in port using the same ritual that was adopted upon the arrival of the relics of St Carlo Borromeo.42 The following year, Fra Jacques Cordon d’Evieux (II) brought from Annecy the relics of St Francis de Salle, his uncle’s spiritual director and bishop of Geneva-Annecy.43

Contrary to the donation of relics, thefts also entailed movement, yet one that ruptured, not built connectivity. The theft of a relic was not only considered a sin against the saint directly, possibly unleashing the wrath of that saint, as we have seen with the case involving Our Lady of Philermos, but also the severing of a channel that showered the community with divine graces. At times, this fragmentation was not just spiritual but quite literal, as well. In 1580, the minor relic of a piece of the nose of St John the Baptist, along with its golden plate reliquary, was stolen by a cleric named Fra Vincenzo Pesaro. He subsequently proceeded to break the reliquary into smaller pieces to hide them more easily (Dal Pozzo 1703, p. 174). He was first dismissed from the Order and then condemned to death, though thanks to some connections he had in Rome, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Beyond mobility, relics were also objects of collection, kept stationary rather than moved. In the practice of collecting, the differences from pre- to post-Reformation appear minimal. Apart from the Grand Master, who had a private collection of relics he kept in the magisterial chapel, some individual knights were also avid collectors of sacred vestiges. The Florentine Fra Giovanni Battista Rondinelli, a war hero and papal ambassador under Verdalle, was among these collectors.44 In 1597, Rondinelli donated the Sovigliana commandery, with several lands in Vinci and Empoli, to the Order. Its church of St John the Baptist survives, now part of an Ursuline convent and kindergarten. This modest church, adorned with Rondinelli’s crests and Hospitaller crosses, houses his extensive relic chapel. The sheer number of relics and ornate reliquaries far exceeds expectations for a rural church near Empoli. Nevertheless, the collection reflects Rondinelli’s status, networks, and passion for relics. Though inherited by the Order after his death, the relics remained in place as Rondinelli intended. Fra Giovanni Battista Rondinelli requested to be buried inside the same chapel of relics, next to his treasured collection.

5. Conclusions

What is moving? How is it being done? Where is it going? And why is it moving? These four questions have served as guiding threads throughout this chapter, structuring the analysis and anchoring the primary sources within the broader framework of the Catholic devotional paradox.

What is moving and where is it going ranges widely: from relics physically carried through cities and landscapes, to images believed to animate themselves, and to the emotional stirrings of devotees and the internal spiritual transformations they experienced. These movements are not spontaneous but carefully structured. In his work on beati moderni, Simon Ditchfield has noted how early modern Catholic devotion operated in a framework of ‘reciprocity within a forcefield of inequality’ (Ditchfield 2009, pp. 421–22), in which sacred figures, images, and relics offered spiritual favors in exchange for veneration, material offerings, or acts of devotion, yet always within an asymmetrical structure of authority and access. This insight sharpens our understanding of the Hospitaller world, where sacred presence was mediated not only through matter and motion but also through institutional control, elite patronage, and ritual choreography. The Order of St John, through its processions, relic cults, and sacred spaces, enacted a devotional logic that appeared mutual, moving souls through affective and kinetic means, yet it remained firmly anchored in hierarchies of power and spiritual legitimacy. Within this framework, absent presence functioned not merely as a theological paradox but as a devotional strategy. It allowed sacred power to be both elusive and available, distant yet intimate, always acting upon the believer but never fully possessed.

How they move depends on a complex interplay of ritual, architecture, narrative, and sensory stimuli such as light, incense, music, and sacred spaces. In this sense, sacred movement is neither arbitrary nor merely symbolic; it is the mechanism through which belief is enacted, and presence is rendered perceptible. The Order of St John was not only custodian of sacred things but also a skilled choreographer of their movement, directing the faithful through a landscape of faith that was as much felt as it was seen. Meanwhile, why things are moving reveals a deeply pastoral and strategic logic: to draw grace down into the community, to affirm communal identity, to sacralize space, and to bind disparate geographies into a shared devotional network. Whether curative, commemorative, or pedagogical, this movement was always layered with theological and institutional meaning.

Inspired by Grumppenberg, who borrowed from the theory of magnetism to explain how the Virgin’s power could permeate all its artistic representations, we can figuratively take inspiration from Newton’s first law of motion to explain what this chapter has attempted to demonstrate. A stationary soul cannot be moved unless an external force acts upon it. It is hard to distinguish between conviction and mere pageantry, between devotion and ritual. Though it is nearly impossible to speak for each individual member, this chapter has attempted to demonstrate that there was ample external force to move the Hospitaller’s soul.

Four centuries later, historians can only rely on material evidence—objects, texts, spaces—as proxies for inner belief. Methodologically, this chapter integrated all tangible evidence, alongside texts, to enrich our historical understanding of the intangible. During a podcast titled ‘the big questions of religious history’,45 the panel led by Diarmaid MacCulloch grappled with the conundrum of whether religion was primarily about belief. The panel concluded that while belief matters, religion also demands ‘doing’, a fitting affirmation of this study’s kinetic theme. Though we cannot gauge each Hospitaller’s faith, we can affirm that motion, external and internal, was integral to their religion. From grand ceremonies to pocket vade mecums, across pilgrimages and exhortation letters, all sought to move body and soul, revealing a devotion deeper than appearances. Even amid early modern violence and piety’s limits, the Hospitallers proved capable of soul-stirring religiosity.