Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The flag and coat of arms of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, or the Jerusalem flag, [2] display a white cross on a red field (blazon gules a cross argent), ultimately derived from the design worn by the Knights Hospitaller during the Crusades. The flag represents the Sovereign Military Order of Malta as a sovereign institution.
The only flag used in Malta in the time of the Knights consisted of a white symmetrical cross on a red field with the cross having a width of 1/5 the height of the flag – similar to the flag of England, colors reversed with a proportion of 5:3. The flag is still used by the Knights' modern successor, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, [a] and commonly known as the Order of Malta or the Knights of Malta, is a Catholic lay religious order, traditionally of a military, chivalric, and noble nature. [4]
Flag of the Order of Saint John used in Malta: Red rectangular flag quartered by a white cross. 1798–1800: Flag of France used in Malta: A vertical tricolour of blue, white, and red. 1800 onwards: Flag of Great Britain and Ireland used in Malta: A superimposition of the flags of England and Scotland with the Saint Patrick's saltire ...
The flag of the Knights of Malta, a white cross on a red field, [10] was a more likely source of the Maltese colours, inspiring the red and white shield used during the British colonial period. [7] The flag used by the knights was also known to be the oldest still-in-use national flag.
The Knights of Malta had a strong presence within the Imperial Russian Navy and the pre-revolutionary French Navy. When Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy was appointed governor of the French colony on Saint Kitts in 1639, he was a prominent Knight of St. John and dressed his retinue with the emblems of the Order.
Hospitaller Malta, known in Maltese history as the Knights' Period (Maltese: Żmien il-Kavallieri, [3] [4] lit. ' Time of the Knights ' ), was a de facto state which existed between 1530 and 1798 when the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were ruled by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem .
Although chiefly associated with the Knights Hospitaller (Order of St. John, now the Sovereign Military Order of Malta), and by extension with the island of Malta, it has come to be used by a wide array of entities since the early modern period, notably the Order of Saint Stephen, the city of Amalfi, the Polish Order of the White Eagle (1709 ...