Armoury of the knights

A Study of the Palace Armoury, its Collection, and the various Military Storehouses of the Hospitaller Knigts of the Order of St John.

by  STEPHEN C. SPITERI

When was described as the first serious study of the Armoury in the Palace of the Grand Masters since Sir Guy Francis Laking first drew international attention to it in 1903 with his ‘Catalogue of Arms and Armour.’ It has been applauded as an erudite exposition of a historical armoury portrayed in a manner that unfolds its real nature as one of the military departments within the Hospitaller martial complex, a scholarly work that set out to rediscover the true significance of this important collection of arms and armour.

 Armoury of the  Knights is a new and expanded edition of  The Palace Armoury: A Study of a Military Storehouse of the Knights of the Order of St John first published in 1999 and sponsored by the Farsons Foundation.  Copiously illustrated, it has been considerably enlarged to over 400 pages in order to include new, and hitherto unpublished researched material from the archives of the Order of St John

Among the new material included in this upgraded second edition, one finds;

·  an annotated, selective catalogue of the collection,  fully documented with references and notes, supported by extracts from researched Hospitaller archival material;

· lists and inventories of arms and armour extracted from the ‘spoglii’ of individual knights;

·  a chapter analyzing the development and layout of the Sala d’Armi and its facilities inside the Palace; and

·    a  chapter on the various military storehouses falling under the responsibility of the Commander of Artillery, particularly the ‘polveriste’ (gunpowder magazines &  factories) and artillery stores in Malta and Gozo.

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( ALSO ON CD-ROM)