90

HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF

[THE PRELATE.

the Prelate therein. Accordingly, Doctor Yescovio Macario, ProvisionaryHead of the Greek Church, was appointed; and having taken the Oath ofOffice, he was Invested by the Grand Master with the Ribband and Badge ofPrelate. s

A greater difficulty, however, presented itself in the case of the Prelate of theOrder, at Malta. The Statutes directed that the Office should be held by theArchbishop and Bishop of the Island for the time being; but as that personagewas a Roman Catholic Prelate, he had great scruples in accepting the Prelacyof an Order belonging to a Protestant Sovereign, without the express consent ofthe Pope. He therefore declined the Dignity, on the plea of ill health; andthe Statute being dispensed with, the Office was conferred upon the Ecclesiasticnext in rank to the Archbishop, namely, Doctor Guiseppe Bartolomeo Xerri,Archdeacon and First Dignitary of the Church of Malta, who took the pre-scribed Oath, and was Invested by the Grand Master with the Ribband andBadge of Prelate, on the 15th of December 1818. 6

In January 1821, the Grand Master issued a Warrant abrogating, until theSovereign’s pleasure was known, that part of the Tenth Article of the Statutes,which provided that the Prelate of the Order in Malta, should be the Arch-bishop and Bishop of that Island; and declaring that so much of that Article asrelated to “ any Prelate of the Catholic Faith should be clearly abrogated andannulled.” 7 This ordinance seems to have been made in contemplation of thevacancy that occurred in November of the same year, by the death of DoctorXerri, the Prelate of the Order, in Malta; but no one was appointed to thatOffice. In the Statutes of April 1826, the provisions respecting the Prelateswere repeated in the same words as in the original Code, notwithstanding theinconvenience they had produced, and the Warrant of 1821, above noticed.Doctor Macario, the Prelate of the Order in the Ionian States, died inSeptember 1827; but no Successor was appointed, and the Order remainedwithout a Prelate upwards of twelve years.

The Statutes of 1832, effected a great change in the Prelacy of the Order.There was in future to be only one Prelate, who is to be “ the Archbishop, orExarch of the United States of the Ionian Islands ; or the Archbishop orBishop of Malta; or such other Dignitary of the Greek Church of the United

5 Vide pp. 22, 23, antea.

6 Vide pp. 25, 26, antea.

7 Vide p. 31, antea.