L’Ordine di Malta nella Seconda guerra di Morea attraverso i diari di viaggio del cavaliere fra’ Afranio Petrucci, maggiore dei vascelli (1715-1717)

Abstract

Throughout the Modern Age, there was a small but fierce navy created specifically to fight the ‘Infidels’, organized around the chivalric Order of St. John. Although the galley had been the capital ship of the Mediterranean for centuries, starting from the Seventeenth Century numerous States set up substantial formations of heavily armed sailing ships which gradually replaced the ancient rowing units in the role of main battleships of the fleets. The Order of St. John was no less, and at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century it formed a squadron of vessels that operated successfully both in the Western Mediterranean and in the Levant. Afranio Petrucci, an Italian knight-officer of the Order, has left to posterity a direct narration of the events that saw Maltese knights and vessels as protagonists since the first missions of the new Sailing Ships Squadron. At the same time he has made, perhaps unintentionally, a wonderful portrait of Mediterranean society of Ancien Régime.