Knights of Malta
When the Knights Hospitaller lost Rhodes to Sultan Suleiman in 1522, it was Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de L'Isle Adam who commanded the defence. After six months of siege, outnumbered by an Ottoman force of roughly 100,000, Philippe negotiated an honourable withdrawal. On January 1, 1523, the surviving knights sailed from Rhodes carrying their archives, their personal arms, and Christendom's most sacred relics: the right hand of Saint John the Baptist, a fragment of the True Cross, and the icon of Our Lady of Philermos.
For seven years the homeless order wandered the Mediterranean, from Crete to Messina to Viterbo, carrying their relics at every stage. In 1530, Emperor Charles V granted the knights the islands of Malta and Gozo. Philippe de Villiers de L'Isle Adam established his headquarters in the ancient fortified city of Mdina, choosing the medieval Palazzo Falson as his residence. From this moment the Hospitallers became the Knights of Malta, and the order entered a new phase as a sovereign naval power in the central Mediterranean.
A Sovereign Naval Power
On Malta the order built a formidable fleet and fought the Barbary corsairs and Ottoman navy across the Mediterranean. The island became a fortress state: the knights constructed hospitals, churches, and some of the most advanced military fortifications in Europe. In 1565, under Grand Master Jean de la Valette, the order withstood the Great Siege of Malta against an Ottoman force of over 30,000. The victory established the Knights of Malta as a major military power and led to the construction of the fortified capital city of Valletta.
The order maintained its sovereign status, with ambassadors accredited to the courts of Europe and the right to coin its own currency. At its peak, the Knights of Malta held over five thousand feudal holdings across Europe, the remnants of both their original Hospitaller estates and the vast Templar properties transferred to them in 1312. They operated commanderies in France, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, and across the Mediterranean world.
Knights of Malta in the New World
The Knights of Malta were not merely a Mediterranean power. In the early 17th century, members of the order played a central role in the colonization of New France, and for a brief period they came close to placing the entire territory under the sovereignty of the Grand Master.
The first connection came through Aymar de Chastes, a professed Knight of Malta and Commander in the order, who served as Governor of Dieppe. It was de Chastes who engaged Samuel de Champlain to sail westward. As the last surviving partner in the Company of Chauvin, de Chastes held effective control of the trading rights to New France and became one of the founders of the Tadoussac settlement, the first permanent French trading post in Canada. He died in 1603, but the link between the order and the colony had been established.
The connection deepened through Cardinal Richelieu's Company of the Hundred Associates, formed in 1627 to govern New France. Richelieu's nephew, Isaac de Razilly, was a professed Knight of Malta and Commander of Isles Bouchard. According to the historian Thomas Guerin, it was Razilly who recruited other knights into the company, including Charles Huault de Montmagny (who became Governor of New France) and Noel Brulart de Sillery (a wealthy Commander and former Ambassador to Rome). By 1636, three Knights of Malta simultaneously governed all of France's territories in the Americas: Montmagny ruled from Quebec, Razilly governed Acadia from La Heve on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, and Henri de Poincy served as Governor of the French Antilles.
These men were all related to each other by family ties, bound by the same vows, and loyal to the same Grand Master. The Jesuit Relations of 1636 record that "the Knights of Malta had just announced that they were to colonize Canada." The order's plan was ambitious: to purchase the struggling colony from the bankrupt Hundred Associates and place it entirely under the sovereignty of Malta, creating a new empire stretching from Acadia to the Caribbean. Poincy actually succeeded in purchasing the island of Saint-Christophe from the French Crown on behalf of the Grand Master. In Quebec, Montmagny built a chamber for the order within the Chateau Saint-Louis; a stone bearing the Maltese cross and the date 1647 was found in the ruins of the chateau after the British conquest.
Twenty Miles from Oak Island
Of all the Knights of Malta in the New World, Isaac de Razilly is the most significant for the Oak Island story. In 1632 he established the capital of Acadia at La Heve on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, approximately twenty miles from Oak Island. Razilly was not merely passing through. He held roughly a third of all the land that is now Nova Scotia as his personal seigneurie, including the ports of La Heve and Port Royal. In February 1636 he wrote directly to Grand Master Antonio de Paulo, proposing the establishment of a Priory of the Order of Malta on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, either at La Heve or at Chibouctou (modern-day Halifax).
Razilly was a professed Knight of Malta, a direct descendant of the Villiers bloodline that had carried secrets and treasure across centuries, from the fall of the Templars in 1307 through six generations to Philippe de Villiers de L'Isle Adam on Malta. His mother was Catherine de Villiers. The same family that fled Paris with the Templar treasury sent a Knight of Malta to the shores nearest Oak Island 325 years later.
Razilly died in November 1636, before the Grand Master could act on his proposal. The order was spending 200,000 ecus on the fortifications of Malta and declined to invest in a distant colony. His brother Claude inherited the seigneurie of La Heve and Port Royal, and the dream of a Maltese priory in Nova Scotia died with Isaac. But the question remains: did Razilly know something about Oak Island that drew him specifically to this stretch of coastline?
The Oak Island Team at the Palazzo Falson
In Season 12, Episode 23, the Oak Island team travelled to Malta to investigate the connection between the Knights of Malta and Oak Island. At the Palazzo Falson in Mdina, the same residence where Philippe de Villiers de L'Isle Adam lived after arriving on Malta in 1530, researcher Corjan Mol presented his findings on the Villiers bloodline, tracing the documented genealogical chain from Gérard de Villiers in 1307 through to Isaac de Razilly in 1632. The presentation connected the Templar escape, the Hospitaller inheritance, the founding of Malta, and the arrival of a Knight of Malta on the shores nearest Oak Island into a single documented narrative.
