The Malta Study Center Collection is part of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library Rare Books and Special Collections. The collection dates back to the foundation of the Malta Study Center in 1973 when a series of gifts and acquisitions were made to support the Center’s mission to microfilm the hand-written heritage of Malta and the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The Malta Study Center Collection includes manuscripts, early printed books, incunabula, art, cartography, and some rare modern printed works and stamps. New acquisitions are made annually through gifts, grants, and acquisitions made possible through funds from the Malta Study Center’s endowment.

Malta Study Center Collection

Manuscripts

The collection contains manuscripts that date from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. These include correspondence, notarial records, naval log books, reports, cabrei, and manuals for members of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. This includes the important 1687 report by Mery Blondel de Croisettes for the reconstructions of Fort Saint Elmo in Valletta. The collection possesses two important sixteenth-century foundation parchments related to the Order of Santo Stefano Papa e Martire, an Italian military order founded by the Medici in the sixteenth century modelled on the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

HMML Reading Room (first record) - https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/502186

Early Printed Works

The collection has acquired an important set of early printed materials related to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem and Malta. These early printed works include two incunabula related to the Siege of Rhodes in 1489 and several works related to the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. Several early printed editions of the statutes of the Order of Malta have been added over the years, including three editions from the sixteenth century in Latin and Italian. Of singular importance are several early printed pamphlets from Portugal narrating the naval actions of the Order of Saint John in the Mediterranean. The collection also includes early printed works from the Order of Santo Stefano Papa e Martire.

HMML Reading Room (first record) - https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/510459

Cartography

In addition to the early modern engraved and woodcut maps found in the collection’s early printed books, the Malta Study Center Collection also possesses several early printed maps of Malta and the Maltese archipelago dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Of importance are the maps of Malta printed by Anonino Bova in 1761 for Grand Master Pinto and the 1578 woodcut map of Malta printed by Sebastian Münster and Heinrich Petri.

HMML Reading Room (first record) - https://w3id.org/vhmml/museum/view/2311

Art

The Malta Study Center Collection contains a small and varied collection of art related to Malta and the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. This includes the modern photography of the city of Valletta by Stephen Busuttil and several nineteenth-century engravings and lithographs of the Grand Masters of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The collection’s centerpieces are a seventeenth-century drawing by Mattia Preti and a rare collection of eighteenth-century water colors of the naval actions of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

HMML Reading Room (first record) - https://w3id.org/vhmml/museum/view/1755

Daniel K. Gullo Malta and Mediterranean Rare Book and Manuscript Collection

The Daniel K. Gullo Malta and Medierranean collection originated in 2014 with a series of rare books, pamphlets, and fragments donated to the Malta Study Center focusing on Malta, Portugal, France, and Spain. Since 2018 the collection has grown to include manuscripts and additional pamphlets documenting the history of Malta and the Mediterranean in the eighteenth century with a particular focus on the relationships between France, Malta, and the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem to support the five-year digital preservation project, France and Malta in the Age of Revolution, 1775-1815.

HMML Reading Room (first record) - https://w3id.org/vhmml/readingRoom/view/512089