SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA

SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA / SOVRANO MILITARE ORDINE DI MALTA.

Nine centuries of life of the Order.
Antique map of Malta Islands by Pierre Michelot and Laurens Bremond (1718).
Second stamp in a set of 3, issued on 01.03.1999.
Face value: 6 SMOM scudi.
Printed by I.P.Z.S. (Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato), Roma.
Stamp: 30,000 copies.
Size: 48 x 40 mm.

Catalogues
- StampWorld No. 697.
- Unificato No. 576.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (in Italian, Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme di Rodi e di Malta; in Latin, Supremus Militaris Ordo Hospitalarius Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani Rhodiensis et Melitensis), commonly known as the Order of Malta or Knights of Malta, is a Catholic lay religious order, traditionally of military, chivalric and noble nature. Though it possesses no territory, the order is a sovereign entity of international law and maintains diplomatic relations with many countries. SMOM claims continuity with the Knights Hospitaller, a chivalric order that was founded in 1099 by the Blessed Gerard in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. From 1530 until 1798 the Order was established in Malta, from where it was expelled when the island was occupied by France. Its headquarters moved to Trieste, and then to Saint Petersburg (1799-1801), to Ferrara in 1826 and to Rome in 1834: the interior of the Palazzo Malta, sovereign territory of the Order, being considered extraterritorial.

The map reproduced in the stamp, from 1718, is the work of the French cartographers Pierre Michelot and Laurens Bremond, supposedly engraved by the Dutch Pieter van der Starckman (1659-1733).

-
Thanks to Vairo Gregori for his contribution (https://ternifil.org/).