Knights Hospitaller

The Knights Hospitaller enter the novel through Casper Gutman’s elaborate history of the Maltese Falcon. Gutman identifies the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, later known as the Knights of Rhodes and by other names, as the institution whose tribute to Charles V supposedly began the bird’s extraordinary history. In his account, the Order’s wealth, its obligations concerning Malta, and the loss of its ceremonial gift establish the Falcon’s legendary provenance and help explain why Gutman has pursued it so obsessively.

Names and Historical Setting

Gutman introduces the Order by asking Sam Spade what he knows about the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Spade recalls little beyond its association with the Crusades, leaving Gutman to supply the history. He says that Suleiman the Magnificent drove the Knights from Rhodes in 1523; they settled in Crete and remained there for seven years. In 1530, Gutman says, they persuaded Emperor Charles V to give them Malta, Gozo, and Tripoli.

Gutman emphasizes that the grant came with conditions. The Knights were to pay Charles an annual tribute of one falcon, acknowledging that Malta remained under Spanish authority; if they left the island, it would revert to Spain. They were not free to give or sell the islands to another party. In Gutman’s presentation, the arrangement joins the Order’s possession of Malta to the bird: the Falcon begins as a token required by an imperial agreement, not simply as an ornament or a free-standing treasure.

Wealth and the Jeweled Tribute

Gutman argues that the Knights’ wealth made a lavish tribute plausible. He describes an institution enriched by spoils acquired in campaigns against the Saracens, including gems, precious metals, silks, and ivories. His account presents the Crusades not only as religious or military history but also as a source of material riches. That emphasis supplies the economic explanation for the Falcon’s imagined magnificence.

According to Gutman, the Knights chose to send Charles not an ordinary live bird but a golden falcon covered with jewels from their stores. The choice transforms the annual obligation into a display of wealth and gratitude. Gutman describes the object as foot-high and says it was made by Turkish slaves in the castle of St. Angelo under Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle d’Adam. He claims that the bird was dispatched to Charles in Spain aboard a galley commanded by a French knight, Cormier or Corvere, but never reached its destination.

Gutman supports this story by appealing to historical records rather than presenting it as mere legend. He says that archives of the Order from the twelfth century onward remained in Malta, though incomplete, and that three references in the surviving material point to the jeweled Falcon. He names J. Delaville Le Roulx’s Les Archives de l’Ordre de Saint-Jean and an unpublished, unfinished supplement to Paoli’s Dell’ origine ed instituto del sacro militar ordine. Gutman calls the evidence historical fact, while acknowledging that one reference is oblique. His appeal to documents gives his narrative the appearance of research, even as Spade responds with reserve rather than open conviction.

Loss and the Object’s Claimed Journey

In Gutman’s account, the galley carrying the Falcon was captured by Barbarossa, also called Redbeard or Khair-ed-Din, an admiral of buccaneers sailing from Algiers. The bird was taken to Algiers. Gutman cites a letter from the French historian Pierre Dan, who wrote that the Falcon had been there for more than a century before Sir Francis Verney carried it away. He concedes that the account may be uncertain: Lady Francis Verney’s memoirs do not mention the bird, and Sir Francis was reportedly impoverished when he died in a Messina hospital in 1615. Gutman nevertheless insists that the Falcon reached Sicily.

The narrative then extends the bird’s supposed passage beyond the Order’s own history. Gutman says it came into the possession of Victor Amadeus II sometime after he became king in 1713, and was later given to his wife after he abdicated and married in Chambéry. By tracing the object through rulers, private owners, and contested records, the story makes the Falcon a material link between the Knights Hospitaller and the later treasure hunt. The evidence supplied here records Gutman’s claims; it does not independently establish that each transfer occurred as he describes it.

Narrative Function and Limits

The Knights Hospitaller are not shown acting in the present-day investigation. They belong to the past Gutman recounts, and their importance is chiefly explanatory: the Order’s treaty with Charles V furnishes the reason for a falcon tribute, while its alleged wealth accounts for the jeweled bird’s exceptional value. Their historical identity gives the object a specific institutional origin and turns its pursuit into a search for an artifact with a long, dramatic chain of custody.

The account also characterizes Gutman as a negotiator who uses history to frame the prize. He delivers dates, conditions, named books, and successive owners as a persuasive narrative, inviting Spade to accept both the Falcon’s origin and its significance. Yet Spade’s restrained replies leave a gap between Gutman’s confidence and the listener’s assent. The Order’s place in the novel thus depends on a story about the past whose force is clear even where its historical claims remain, within the supplied evidence, Gutman’s testimony.