Christian Virtue and So Forth

Following the Christian victory over the Ottoman fleet in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Knights continued to attack pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a centre for slave trading, selling captured Africans and Turks and conversely freeing Christian slaves. Malta remained a slave market until well into the eighteenth century. It required a thousand slaves to equip merely the galleys of the Order.
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Malta