Stabilimenta Rhodiorum militum - Synopsis

The revised statutes of the Order of the Hospital of St John of 1489/1493

Though Delaville has edited many of the rules, statutes and customs of the Order of the Hospital of St John up to 1310, there is still no modern edition of the stabilimenta of the Order. The medieval manuscripts up to 1489 are quite confusing, adding the statutes by chapters general, and early modern (printed) collections of the statutes are not easily available.

In 1489, the chapter general succeeded to arrive at a modified – systematic – version of the statutes which was revised by the vice-chancellor, Guillaume Caoursin, and others. This version was then confirmed by the pope, Innocent VIII, and by the chapter general of 1493. Though there are printed versions of the text (in Latin and French), there is also a good and early (Latin) manuscript in the National Library of Malta in Valletta (NLM Libr. 244).

These pages were originally compiled for the project "Kritische Edition der revidierten Statuten des Johanniterordens von 1489/93" (University of Hamburg, Faculty of Humanities, Department of History) which was financed by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [2004-2007]. The focus of the project was on the Synopsis version of the new redaction of the statutes of the Hospitallers, known under the name Stabilimenta Rhodiorum militum, The first result of the project was the critical edition of the original Synopsis text edited by Jyri Hasecker and Juergen Sarnowsky which appeared in Print in 2007, with a scientific introduction and a comparison between the revised legislation and the older statute tradition.

The digital edition focused on the contemporary French translation also made under the direction of Caoursin. But also a comparison with the Latin version was intended. This edition was originally presented in a synoptic form since 2007 provided by the open source content management system MyCoRe, but since no update was possible, the texts are now transferred into simple HTML and presented in the context of the Hospitaller Sources.

The aim is to provide a first cut through the history of the statute production of the Hospitallers from the beginnings of the Order in the Holy Land until the loss of Rhodes (1522/1523). Therefore, the Synopsis lists and presents different prototypes and older traditions which formed the basis for the Stabilimenta of 1489/93. The main manuscripts are:
-- Firenze, Biblioteca nazionale centrale [BNCF], Ms. Magl. cl.XXXII, 37 [Latin and Italian statutes, 1464-1467];
-- Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France [BNF], Ms. franc. 17255 [French and Latin statutes, 1459-1495];
-- Valletta, National Library of Malta [NLM], Arch. 69 [Latin statutes, 1357];
-- ibid., Arch. 280-285 [Chapters general 1330-1514];
-- ibid., Arch. 1698 [Roman Statutes, 1446];
-- ibid., Libr. 501 [Italian statutes, c. 1467];
-- Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek [ÖNB], Cod. 3323 [Italian statutes, c. 1472].

Primordium / Rule 1 / Rule 2 / Rule 3 / Rule 4 / Rule 5 / Rule 6

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