A Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for Italy during the 1790sA Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for...

1 eBLJ 2006, Article 1

A Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for Italy during the 1790sDavid F. Allen 1

The British Library contains numerous manuscripts relevant to the Sovereign, Military andHospitaller Order of St John, including Additional Manuscripts 64099-64104, which werepurchased for the Library at Sotheby’s on 27 January 1987 as lot 834. Of unknownprovenance and written mostly in French, partly in Italian and English, these manuscriptscomprise an illustrated description in epistolary form of France, Switzerland, Germany, theNetherlands, Italy, Portugal, and England by Louis Jérôme de Goujon de Thuisy, a FrenchHospitaller Knight of St John who travelled between 1778 and 1806, though some of hisannotations extend at least to 1819. Goujon de Thuisy’s text includes accounts of leadingartists, sculptors, engravers and literary figures as well as of the sights and antiquities heencountered. His text is illustrated with engravings, watercolours, drawings and maps, aswell as the music and words of songs. Strictly speaking, a travelling Knight of St John, evenone of Goujon de Thuisy’s refinement, could not be said to be on the Grand Tour.Nonetheless much in his manuscripts may be comprehended within the most discriminatingdefinition of a Grand Tourist’s concerns in the eighteenth century.2 This Knight Hospitallerbelieved that travelling was to no purpose unless one travelled light and with a head alreadyfull of relevant reading about one’s intended destination.

In striking relief to Goujon de Thuisy’s journeys after Napoleon’s demise is the Italianfocus of this Knight of St John’s nostalgia during the 1790s, even as the peninsula was beingtransformed under his eyes by the descent of the revolutionary armies from France. AtMalta (where his Order’s conventual residence had been established since 1530), Goujon deThuisy wrote the main text of his ‘Description of Europe’ in the winter of 1797, dismayedby General Bonaparte’s re-arrangement of the Italian states in the Treaty of Campoformio.Goujon de Thuisy wanted to recall the various Italies he had known before theirmetamorphosis by the French invasion of 1796. This itself had been hanging like the swordof Damocles since 13 January 1793, when a Roman mob had assassinated the Frenchdiplomat, Nicolas-Jean-Hugon de Basseville.3

Goujon de Thuisy’s response to these Italian events of the 1790s remained aestheticrather than military, contrasting with the counter-revolutionary career of his kinsman, Jean-Baptiste Charles de Goujon de Thuisy, with whom he had shared military training at Maltain 1771. Where Jean-Baptiste Charles exemplified the martial valour expected of a Knightof St John and officer in the royalist armies (eventually returning to France with theBourbons as a maréchal de camp), Louis Jérôme had always had delicate health, sometimes

1 I remain grateful to Professor D. M. Wood of Birmingham University for sharing with me his knowledge andappreciation of French culture in the eighteenth century.

2 For some incisive comments on the Grand Tour, see Robert Oresko, ‘The British Abroad’, DurhamUniversity Journal , lxxix (1987), pp. 349-63.

3 The image of the assassinated envoy was highlighted by the Jacobins in Paris and amongst the Jacobinstudents of the French Academy in Rome, founded by Louis XIV for the education of young painters,sculptors and architects. Basseville (1753-93) had been sent to Rome by the French envoy to Naples and hadencouraged the students of the French Academy besides insulting Pius VI’s cardinal secretary of state,Francesco Saverio de Zelada, and Cardinal de Bernis, the Protector of the French Church.

A Knight Hospitaller’s Nostalgia for Italy during the 1790s


lacking energy even for the travels which he planned as his release from the boredom of lifein Malta.4 He was a misfit for this knightly, Hospitaller vocation chosen for him at birth inChampagne by his parents, who had observed the custom of their house by sending ayounger son to Malta. Goujon de Thuisy’s distaste for militarism was shared unwittinglywith his contemporary Vittorio Alfieri, whose strictures on the French Republic Goujon deThuisy quoted with approval in his own and understandably less celebrated travel journal.5

In 1797 Goujon de Thuisy’s heart ached because of his separation from the arts andantiquities of Rome and because he was anxious about Pius VI, Supreme Protector of theOrder of St John, whom he apostrophized as one maligned by a corrupt century but whosevirtues would be vindicated by posterity. Shyly addressing himself to the Braschi pontiff,Goujon de Thuisy began writing for himself and his nephews (in case they should everretrace his journeys in happier times) a description of the Italian peninsula and Sicily as hehad known them before Pius VI’s struggle with the French Republic and his humiliation atTolentino in 1797 (fig. 1).

The beauties of Renaissance Italy had been enriched by the emotions of Baroqueconnoisseurs and it was this continuity which Goujon de Thuisy intended to set down forhimself and his relatives. He quoted Tasso at the outset of his ‘Description of Europe’:

Quanto mi gioverà narrar ad altruiLe novite vedute, e dir; ‘io fui’.

Of course Goujon de Thuisy’s descriptions never match, in that age of travel literature andcosmopolitan sentiment, those found in the pages of de Brosses, Goethe, Alfieri orStendhal.6 Yet Goujon de Thuisy’s recurring reflections on Rome at least echoed an insightexpressed by Goethe in 1786, ‘Rome is a world, and one needs years just to find one’s placein it. How fortunate those travellers are who merely look and leave!’7

‘What people believe to be true about their past is usually more important in determiningtheir behavior and responses than truth itself ’.8 This aphorism aids understanding of howthe Hospitallers’ medieval foundation had survived as a seemingly obscurantist corporationof Catholic noblemen into the Europe of Enlightenment and Revolution and prompts ourinterpretation of the Italian focus of Goujon de Thuisy’s nostalgia during the 1790s. Fromhis billet at Malta in 1797, he looked back to his first visit to Italy and Sicily in 1771, whenhe had been guided by an older and learned tutor, M. Héricart de Thury.9 Again like Goethe,

4 There are some papers illustrative of Jean-Baptiste Charles de Goujon de Thuisy in series T of the NationalArchives in Paris, as described by the archivist Philippe Bechu, Papiers d’origine privée tombés dans le domainepublic (2001) http://www.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/chan/chan/fonds/edi/sa/t.htm. See also J.Godechot, The Counter-Revolution, Doctrine and Action 1789-1804 (London, 1972), pp. 296-314.

5 Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) had loathed his time at the Military Academy of Turin and had dubbed FrederickII of Prussia the head of a military camp. Initially sympathetic to all things French, Alfieri was driven byBonaparte’s First Italian Campaign into isolation and study of classical Greek at Florence.

6 Charles de Brosses (1709-77), ‘le Président de Brosses’, magistrate of the Burgundy parlement, travelled inItaly 1739-40, during which time he wrote the celebrated letters which were not published until long after hisdeath, in 1799. Goethe had travelled in Italy during 1786-88. Stendhal (Henri Beyle, 1783-1842) publishedin 1817 both Histoire de la peinture en Italie and Rome, Naples, et Florence en 1817.

7 J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey, translated by Robert R. Heitner, Goethe’s Collected Works, vol. vi (Princeton,1994), p. 121.

8 Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York,1993), as quoted by Jennifer R. Goodman, Chivalry and Exploration 1298-1630 (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 1.

9 Add. MS. 64100, f. 3b. Add MS. 64099, which describes Goujon de Thuisy’s travels through the BerneseOberland in August 1778, is dedicated to M. Héricart de Thury.



Fig.1. Scenes of Rome. Add. MS. 64100, f. 95r.



Goujon de Thuisy believed that travelling was a vanity unless the traveller’s head was full ofreading about his destination.10 When his brother Hospitaller, Joseph de la Porte, hadimplored Goujon de Thuisy to take from Paris in 1792 one of his kinsmen as a travellingcompanion through Italy, and thereby assist this youth to escape the Revolution, Goujon deThuisy was reluctant, since Hippolyte de la Porte was unprepared for the artistic marvelsawaiting him in Italy. But as a result of travelling together, Hippolyte de la Porte became oneof Goujon de Thuisy’s friends, and was privileged eventually to be addressed in some of theletters which comprise this Knight of St John’s travel journal.11

Before visiting Rome in 1792 with young de la Porte in tow, Goujon de Thuisy had spent1778 visiting the Bernese Oberland as well as contrasting places such as Plombières,Remiremont, Ballon and the Vosges.12 In 1790 Goujon de Thuisy had travelled through theNetherlands.13 When in Rome during 1792, Goujon de Thuisy met his old friend theduchesse de Brissac, another refugee who had been welcomed by Pius VI and by Cardinalde Bernis, Protector of the French Church. Bernis had been resident in Rome since 1769,first as Louis XV’s ambassador and then as Louis XVI’s representative. The cardinal hadfound quarters in Rome also for Louis XVI’s sisters, Princess Adelaide and PrincessVictoire, les mesdames de France, who were of course included in Goujon de Thuisy’s socialcalls.14 Otherwise this Knight Hospitaller and his young protégé, Hippolyte de la Porte,spent their time in Rome like countless Grand Tourists before them, by observing andadmiring the city’s arts and architecture.

It merits emphasis that Goujon de Thuisy had no business of his Order to transact inRome, since he had never been ambassador material, and his Hospitaller commandery orestate from which he had drawn little income since 1787 was miles away from Rome inChampagne.15 If business travel was not Goujon de Thuisy’s focus in the Eternal City,neither was another form of travel much talked about during his sojourn in Rome, namely,the wanderings of the pilgrim-beggar, Benedict Joseph Labre, who had died nine yearspreviously in a butcher’s shop near the church of S. Maria dei Monti. Labre was now beingconsidered by Pius VI as a candidate for sanctity.

Born in 1748 in the Artois region of France about the same time as Goujon de Thuisy,Labre’s education and religious calling had guided him away from formal institutions tochoose the solitary, wandering life of ‘the holy man’ exemplified by the legend of St Alexisof Rome. Since the Catholic practice of pilgrimage remained vibrant in EnlightenmentEurope, and since it brought together both literate and illiterate believers, Labre’s devoutpresence at the shrines of Paray-le-Monial or Loreto and the pilgrim churches of Romecaused comment beyond his pilgrim routes.16 The contrasting dirt and beauty of his

10 Add. MS. 64100, f. 3. Goethe had written: ‘In earlier years I sometimes had the odd notion that nothing couldplease me more than to be taken to Italy by some knowledgeable man, say, an Englishman well versed in artand history; and now in the meantime all that has turned out much better than I could ever have imagined.Tischbein has lived such a long time here as my affectionate friend, has lived here wishing to show me Rome;our relationship is old through letters, new with respect to physical presence; where could I have found amore valuable guide?’ (Italian Journey, p. 109).

11 Add. MS. 64100, f. 4.12 These journeys are described in Add. MSS. 64099 and 64104, ff. 2-31. 13 Add. MS. 64104, ff. 32-61.14 Add. MS. 64100, f. 176b.15 The Order of St John’s ambassadors were noticeable at many courts of early modern Europe, whether

representing their Order or Catholic monarchs and princes: see David F. Allen, ‘The Order of St John as a“School for Ambassadors” in Counter-Reformation Europe’, in Helen Nicholson (ed.), The Military Orders,vol. ii: Welfare and Warfare (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 363-79.

16 On Catholic pilgrimages, see Patrick J. Geary, ‘L’humiliation des saints’, Annales, no. xxxiv (1979), pp. 27-42.



appearance attracted at least two painters, André Bley and Antonio Cavalucci, to use Labreas their model for their respective representations of Christ’s agony on the Cross. Labre hadnever been a prince doing penance, as contemporary gossip asserted, and not being of noblebirth, he could not have known Goujon de Thuisy or been invited like this French Knightof St John to the Cardinal de Bernis’s parties in Rome.17

Numerous beggars, including Labre, were fed by the cardinal at his gate whilst hishospitality inside was for les grands. Labre’s voluntary adoption of evangelical povertycontrasted with Goujon de Thuisy’s Hospitaller vow of poverty and illustrated howvariously interpreted was this privilegium paupertatis. The Franciscan model was Labre’sown, as he tramped in verminous rags, carrying only the New Testament, the Imitation ofChrist and his breviary, with a rough crucifix on his chest and a rosary in hand. To appear as‘God’s vagabond’ or ‘Christ’s gypsy’ – some of Labre’s nicknames – had never been theHospitallers’ interpretation of poverty because they owned property and estates throughoutCatholic Europe, of which professed knights-commanders such as Goujon de Thuisy werestewards.

An eloquent gloss on the Hospitallers’ vow of poverty had been published by GrandMaster Zondadari in the 1720s. Against their critics alleging a paradoxical combination ofthe riches of Abraham with the indigence of Lazarus, Grand Master Zondadari defendedhis brethren’s moderate use of means appropriate to their noble status in society. He urgedthem to avoid the extremes of avarice or prodigality. Zondadari drew illustrations from thelife of Christ, who had feasted at weddings and banquets, and who had made a glorious entryinto Jerusalem. The lives of the saints further provided exemplars of that poverty of spiritdescribed by Zondadari, since some saints had been ambassadors, and as such had livedaccording to their rank. Whether serving his Order or his natural sovereign, the Knight ofSt John must always carry himself nobly. Luxury was to be eschewed, although there had tobe a diet sufficient to feed the Knight of St John’s physique for battle.18

This military pole of the Hospitaller’s vocation was unattractive to Goujon de Thuisy, aswe have indicated above. The prospect of war in the Italian peninsula and the Revolution’smarch towards ‘cette malheureuse capitale des Arts’ besides a recurrence of illness wrenchedGoujon de Thuisy from his Roman sojourn in 1792 and he made for Naples intending to takeship to Malta but was diverted via Pisa, Lucca, and Florence. In September 1792 heembarked at Livorno for Malta and stayed in the convent there during the winter of 1792/3.By the spring of 1793, he was ready to travel to Venice, which he had never seen and whichwas near Vicenza, where his friend the duchesse de Brissac was now living.19

17 ‘Labre’s name today is a useful reminder to the historian that the “rationalist” eighteenth century producedits mystics as well as its rationalists, Paul of the Cross and Alphonsus Liguori as well as Voltaire’ (MarcusCheke, The Cardinal de Bernis (London, 1958), p. 270). Labre was beatified by Pius XI in 1869 and canonizedby Leo XIII in 1881.

18 Marc-Antonio Zondadari, Breve e particolare istruzione del Sacro Ordine Militare degli Ospitalari (Padua,1724), pp. 7-13, 78-9.

19 BL, Add. MS. 64100, f. 4.



20 The pattern of this Venetian sequestro of Hospitaller commanderies and other aspects of the tense relationshipbetween Venice and Malta have been thoroughly treated by Victor Mallia-Milanes, Venice and HospitallerMalta 1539-1798 (Malta, 1992).

21 National Library of Malta: Archives of the Order of Malta (AOM) 2233, f. 75.

Fig. 2. Venetian gondola. Add. MS. 64102, f. 51v.

As in Rome, so too in Venice Goujon de Thuisy was a private visitor, transacting noofficial business for his Order of St John (fig. 2). Despite some superficial similaritiesbetween Venice and Malta, such as their topography (Grand Canal and Grand Harbour),their aristocratic republicanism and suspicion of princely power, and the coincidence thatboth were to be closed down by Bonaparte in 1797-8, the Venetian Republic and the Orderof St John had little in common save their mutual suspicion. The Venetian Republicregarded the Knights of St John and Maltese corsairs as troublemakers in the Levant whoupset its own pragmatic diplomacy with the Ottoman Sultan. Furthermore the Knightsenslaved Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic subjects of the Venetian empire in the easternMediterranean. Venice habitually sequestered the commanderies of the Hospitallers’ GrandPriory of Venice, in order to show both the Order of St John and its protector the Holy Seethat enough was enough in its failed diplomacy with the Convent at Malta.20

Travelling on to Rome and from there to Naples and Sicily, Goujon de Thuisy concludedhis travels in 1793 by returning to Malta in September.21 His travels had been framed by thenews of the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in January and October 1793.Residence in Malta prevented Goujon de Thuisy from attending the solemn requiem inNovember 1793 for Louis XVI at the Roman church of San Luigi di Francia, where theCardinal de Bernis made his last public appearance before his death in November 1794.

Another Roman event from 1793 remained in Goujon de Thuisy’s mind when he revisitedRome in 1794,22 namely, the assassination by a Roman mob of the French diplomat, Nicolas-Jean-Hugon de Basseville. Goujon de Thuisy congratulated himself that he could speakItalian and so might pass for an Italian in the streets of Rome, where Frenchmen werehated.23

Even so Rome remained Goujon de Thuisy’s lodestar and he returned there in 1794, 1795and 1796. Since he had to travel from Malta to Rome via Sicily and Naples, he commentedon that kingdom where King Ferdinand still claimed the sovereignty of the Maltese islands.Some of these observations illustrate that triangular relationship which would be forgedbetween Sicily, Malta, and Britain in their shared detestation of the French presence in theMediterranean through the 1790s. Goujon de Thuisy’s prejudices were expressed in hiscorrespondence with Acton and with King Ferdinand’s chamberlain, the chevalier deBrissac, a brother Knight of St John. As in Rome or elsewhere in the peninsula, Goujon deThuisy had no official business to transact at Palermo or Naples on behalf of his Order ofSt John. Because they were protected by Pius VI, King Ferdinand and his ministers detestedthe Hospitallers at Malta and also their Grand Priories of Messina, Barletta and Capuawithin the kingdom, just as previously there had been enmity between Malta and Naplesduring the pontificates of Clement XIV and Benedict XIV.24 Etna near Catania and Vesuviusnear Naples held Goujon de Thuisy’s attention as they had fascinated more celebratedtravellers such as Goethe (figs 3, 4, 5).

Goethe had been shown the celebrated collection of Etna’s volcanic rocks and mineralsmaintained by Goujon de Thuisy’s brother Hospitaller, Giuseppe Goieni d’Angìo, professorat the University of Catania and Fellow of the Academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Padua,Turin, Mantua and Milan.25 Goieni’s contribution to those quintessential sciences of theEnlightenment, geology and volcanology, was matched by another Hospitallercontemporary, Déodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, who gave his name to dolomitic limestone.26

A similarly transnational reputation for contributions to botany had been earned by anotherof Goujon de Thuisy’s brethren, the chevalier de Turgot.27 These Hospitaller connoisseursand cognoscenti in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution were at the end of that traditionexemplified in the Renaissance by Frà Sabba da Castiglione whereby any Knight of St Johnmight use the income from his commandery for the pursuit of artistic, literary, historical,linguistic, theological, or scientific knowledge. Similarly Camillo Borgia, another of Goujonde Thuisy’s Hospitaller contemporaries, supervised the collection of Egyptian and otherantiquities at Velletri put together by his brother Cardinal Stefano Borgia which hadimpressed Goethe.28



22 Cheke, The Cardinal de Bernis, p. 272.23 BL, Add. MS 64100, f. 255. Cf. J. Godechot, The Counter-Revolution, Doctrine and Action, pp. 301-2. 24 See David F. Allen, ‘Upholding Tradition: Benedict XIV and the Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem

at Malta, 1740-1758’, Catholic Historical Review, lxxx:1 (January 1994), pp. 18-35.25 J. W. Goethe, Italian Journey, pp. 234-5.26 For Dolomieu’s scientific interests, see A. Lacroix, Déodat de Dolomieu, membre de l’Institut National (Paris,

1921).27 See Turgot’s study, Mémoire instructif sur la manière de rassembler, de préparer, de conserver et d’envoyer les

diverses curiosités d’histoire naturelle (Lyon, 1758). The British Library holds Turgot’s correspondence withEmmanuel Mendez de Costa, FRS; see BL, Add. MS. 28543, ff. 247, 253.

28 Italian Journey, p. 149.



The Hospitaller ideal of the cavaliere di belle lettere e di santa vita had been formulated byFrà Sabba da Castiglione (c. 1480-1554) in his book of Ricordi, a work which enjoyedtwenty-six editions between 1546 and 1613, mostly at Venice but also at Bologna, Milan andMantua.29 Frà Sabba’s whole life had exemplified that integration of armi and lettere whichfigures so airily in the conversations of his more celebrated cousin Baldassare Castiglione’scharacters at Urbino.30 Given the preponderance of French Hospitallers, influential also inadapting Frà Sabba’s ideal to the changing worlds of the Reformation, Scientific Revolutionand Enlightenment, were the respective contributions from outside the Order of St Johnmade by Montaigne, Pascal, St Francis de Sales, St Vincent de Paul, Abbot Rancé of LaTrappe and Archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai – all of whom insisted that a Catholicaristocracy should behave in distinctive ways.31 And from within the Order of St John therewas the updating of Frà Sabba’s Hospitaller ideal by Grand Master Marc-AntonioZondadari’s Breve e particolare istruzione del Sacro Ordine Militare degli Ospitalari, publishedin editions of 1719, 1721 and 1724.32

Rather like Socrates with a recalcitrant pupil, Zondadari employed patience, courtesy andmodulated tones in demonstrating how a Knight of St John was still relevant in theeighteenth-century world. Zondadari had at his fingertips telling quotations from the Oldand New Testaments and from the Fathers of the Church. Like Rancé and Fénelon beforehim, Zondadari raised those moral dilemmas which might challenge a believing andworshipping Hospitaller in the contemporary world of cynicism and doubt. Embedded inhis elegant treatise was Zondadari’s assertion that he and his brethren were living in the ariddesert of their own times. Correspondingly, St John the Baptist was invoked as one who hadspent all his life helping his neighbour, whether at court or in the wilderness. Aiding thepoor and the sick as well as fighting the enemies of Christ were defined by Zondadari as theOrder of St John’s unique purpose, both from the beginning, and until the end, of time.This double charism could never be separated, any more than could the spiritual and bodilynatures of mankind itself. Zondadari underlined how the Order’s Sacred Infirmary at Maltawas open to all sick patients, and also how discreetly and compassionately the Order’s

29 A. Luzio, ‘Lettere inedite di Fra Sabba da Castiglione’, Archivio storico lombardo, series 2, iii (1886), pp. 91-112. For bibliographical analysis of Frà Sabba da Castiglione’s Ricordi, see I. Massaroli, ‘Fra Sabba daCastiglione e i suoi “Ricordi”’, Archivio storico lombardo, series 2, vi (1889), pp. 375-92; Claudio Scarpati,Studi sul cinquecento italiano (Milan, 1982), pp. 83-125.Since the first two editions at Bologna are rarely available and cannot be dated respectively to 1546 and 1549with absolute certainty, the commonly found third edition of 1554 at Venice is the version (annotated by anunknown hand) we have consulted in the National Library of Malta: Ricordi overo ammaestramenti dimonsignor Saba da Castiglione cavalier gierosolomitano ne’ quali con prudenti e christiani discorsi si ragiona di tuttele materie honorate che si ricercano a un vero gentilhuomo / Con la tavola per alphabeto di tutte le cose notabili /Con privilegio / In Vinegia per Paulo Gherardo / MDLIIII. There were 133 ricordi in this edition, havingbeen increased from 72 ricordi in the earlier Bologna edition of 1546, 72 having equated with the ‘72 disciplesof Jesus Christ’.

30 For Baldassare Castiglione’s unsuccessful experience of, and dislike for, actual warfare, see J. R. Hale,‘Castiglione’s Military Career’, Italian Studies, xxxvi (1981), pp. 41-57.

31 Within the space of this essay, it is not possible to trace these influences in detail. I remain indebted toFrançois-Xavier Cluche, Une pensée sociale catholique. Fleury, La Bruyère, Fénelon (Paris, 1991).

32 The edition at Rome in 1719 predated Zondadari’s election as Grand Master of the Hospitallers in January1720. An edition at Paris followed in 1721 and at Padua in 1724. Grand Master Zondadari died on 16 June1722. See Ettore Rossi, ‘Marcantonio Zondadari da Siena, Gran Maestro dell’Ordine di Malta’, Bolletinosenese di storia patria, xxxiii-xxxiv (1926-27), fascicolo iii, pp.1-10



Congregazione dei Poveri behaved towards its indigent Maltese subjects, in the Christianspirit of anonymous charity.33

Provided with such manuals of advice how to be of the world rather than adopt itssecularizing lifestyle, Goujon de Thuisy and his brethren could have remained faithful totheir religious vocation and kept their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Goujon deThuisy appears from his journals to have been an orthodox believing Knight of St John. Ifhe witnessed the ‘masonic’ ceremonies at Villa Malta in Rome which had scandalized sotolerant a man as the Cardinal de Bernis, Goujon de Thuisy did not record such.34 It waspossible for an educated person to be well read and cultivated, without necessarily believingthe diverse ideas of the European-wide philosophes. Since France’s contribution to theEnlightenment was considerable, the Order of St John’s enclos du Temple in Paris had beena conduit of these new ideas to Malta. Tasting exotic or forbidden fruits brings variety toeating but does not necessarily entail giving up one’s regular diet. Because it could equallyas well describe certain French Knights of St John dabbling in these new ideas of theEnlightenment, Dr Gross’s perceptive comment about Cardinal Domenico Passionei (thatthorn in the side of Benedict XIV) bears repetition:

Throughout his life he would carry on correspondence with some of theluminaries of the Enlightenment in Europe, among them Voltaire, for whom hepublicly showed his admiration. Not being a profound mind, he may neverhave fully comprehended the ramifications of the new thought, but saw it as anatural continuation of the literary currents in which he himself was formed.35

Similarly Goujon de Thuisy was ‘no profound mind’ when compared with certain of hiscontemporary Hospitallers such as Goieni d’Angìo, Déodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, orMichele Enrico Sagramoso. Sagramoso was hailed by Diderot as the father of travellers andthis Hospitaller from Verona remained the guest who never overstayed his welcome at thecourts of Europe.36 Sagramoso never wrote up his travels and the appeal of his intellect, witand charity remained in the memories of courts and academies throughout eighteenth-century Europe. Lacking Sagramoso’s subtle mind, Goujon de Thuisy did manage to writeup his travels in Italy, provoked by Bonaparte’s invasion of the peninsula. The focus ofGoujon de Thuisy’s Italy was as deliberately selected as were those of Alfieri’s or Goethe’srespective Italies. Although sympathetic to Pius VI, Goujon de Thuisy goes into no detailabout the Braschi pontiff ’s multilateral conflicts with Joseph II, with Grand Duke Leopoldof Tuscany, with King Ferdinand of Naples and with the French Republic. Similarlyunmentioned were the green shoots of Catholic revival in the peninsula, in the persons of

33 Breve e particolare istruzione del Sacro Ordine Militare degli Ospitalari, pp. 6-7, 99, 19-21, 70-1. 34 Marcus Cheke, The Cardinal de Bernis, p. 279n. See also Thomas Freller, Cagliostro and Malta (Malta, 1997),

passim; John Montalto, The Nobles of Malta, 1530-1800 (Malta, 1979), pp. 339-48.35 Hans Gross, Rome in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), p. 279. Cf. Bernis’s comment from the

1750s: ‘The philosophical spirit that is now spreading over the world makes it difficult at first sight todistinguish silly people from wise ones, or honest men from rogues. Everyone seems equally clever becauseeveryone uses quantities of words that are really only false or borrowed coin’, cited by Cheke, The Cardinal deBernis, pp. 63-4. Of course Pope Benedict XIV (1740-58) is celebrated for his appreciation both ofVoltaire andMontesquieu and Pope Pius VII (1800-23) had been one of the twenty-seven subscribers in Parma to the 1770Italian edition of the Encyclopédie when, as the Benedictine Gregorio Chiaramonti, he taught philosophy at theabbey of St John the Evangelist: see H. Bédarida, Parme et la France de 1748 à 1789 (Paris, 1928), p. 340.

36 In Sagramoso (1721-91) Saverio Bettinelli (1718-1808), the Jesuit Italian poet, found the humanity ofFénelon. Tiepolo and Goldoni were grateful for his friendship. Grand Duke Leopold wanted Sagramoso forhimself at Florence. Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia were pleased to receive him at theirrespective courts. See Aurelio Bertola, Vita del marchese Michele Enrico Sagramoso, balì del S. M. Ordine diMalta (Pavia, 1793).



St Veronica Giuliani, St Paul of the Cross and St Alphonsus Liguori. The sights andantiquities of Rome are recorded by Goujon de Thuisy with no awareness of how theserubbed shoulders with contemporary squalor. So conventional a Grand Tourist as Goujonde Thuisy could not be expected to notice or comment on contemporary affairs whennostalgia for a disappearing Italy was his motive for writing up his travels. A distinctivesurvivor from the world of the 1790s, Goujon de Thuisy remained an aristocrat of taste andhis journals merit investigation.

37 The Sicilian author Leonardo Sciascia (1921-89) noted with irony in his Il Consiglio d’Egitto (Turin, 1961)Goethe’s blindspot of Monreale, and commented on the German traveller’s ambition to know everythingabout his environment whilst missing the obvious.

38 Cf. Franco Venturi, ‘Church and Reform in Enlightenment Italy: The Sixties of the Eighteenth Century’,Journal of Modern History, xlviii (1976), pp. 215-32. M. Rosa, ‘The Italian Churches’ in W. J. Callahan and D. Higgs (ed.), Church and Society in Catholic Europe of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 66-76.

39 Cf. Gladys Huntington, Madame Solario (Harmondsworth, 1978), p.196: ‘Rome, eternal but always dying, fullof splendour and corruption! And these silly descendants of horrible people, still bearing their names andhoused in their tremendous palaces – won’t it be fascinating to see their little spots of fashion and high life inall that antique squalor and gloom? Won’t it be fascinating?’



Fig. 3. Mount Vesuvius. Add. MS. 64101, f. 175r.

Fig. 4. Vesuvius by night. Add. MS. 64101, f. 171r.



Fig. 5. Lady Hamilton. Add. MS. 64101, f. 68r.

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