The Making of Christian Malta

From the Early Middle Ages to 1530

Anthony Luttrell

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138704824
• eBook ISBN: 9781351785426
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This title was first published in 2002: Dr Luttrell's work has helped change our understanding of the history of the small islands of Malta and Gozo, providing a more coherent story of the ways in which, during the Middle Ages, a small isolated Muslim community was converted into a more prosperous outpost of Roman Christianity with a unique cultural mixture of Arabic speech and European institutions. This selection of studies places the process within the context of developments in the medieval Mediterranean world and combines archaeological and architectural investigations with work in Maltese, Sicilian and other archives, with a particular focus on ecclesiastical matters; a new introduction brings the subject up to date. This work is of relevance to scholars of Islam and Christianity, while providing insights into the nature of an unusual island community whose significance far exceeds its size.

II
Approaches to Medieval Malta¹

MEDIEVAL Malta had no chronicler of its own, and it is unlikely that any contemporary attempt was made to write its history; certainly no such work has survived. There are references to Malta and Gozo in a number of Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew writings, but most of these are extremely brief and general, or they deal with particular incidents. The most important account is contained in the letter sent by the Emperor Frederick II in reply to Gilibertus, his agent at Malta, in about 1241.² The earliest real descriptions of Malta and Gozo result from their connection with the Knights of St. John; the report made by the Knights’ commissioners in 1524 before the Order accepted the islands in 1530 is now lost, but details from it are preserved.³ The earliest description available, running to some 4,000 words, is that of the Hospitaller Jean Quintin, written in Malta in 1533 and first published at Lyons three years later.⁴ In the classicizing style then in vogue, Quintin concentrated on the island’s ancient history and remains, so that his utility to the medieval historian is limited. Interest in the struggle with the Turks, which culminated in the dramatic siege of Malta in 1565, ran high during the sixteenth century and led to much writing and publication, though this literature has yet to be systematically exploited as a source of information about Malta’s medieval past.⁵

The first and in some ways still the most coherent attempt to cover the whole history of medieval Malta appeared in the Descrittione di Malta, published in 1647 by a notable scholar, antiquarian and collector, the Maltese Gian Francesco Abela, Vice-Chancellor of the Order of St. John. Abela, who was interested in language, place-names, archaeology, folk-lore and natural history, has justifiably been called the ‘Father of Maltese Historiography’ and the ‘Founder of the Malta Museum’. His history, one of the very first books printed in Malta, was reprinted in Latin in 1725 in the fifteenth volume of Johannes Graevius’ Thesaurus Antiquitatum et Historiarum Sicilian, and it was re-edited at Malta, in two volumes entitled Malta Illustrata, by Giovannantonio Giantar. Ciantar went blind before the publication of the first volume in 1771 and died before that of the second in 1780, so that the revised edition probably contained more errors than the first.⁶ Born in 1582, Abela was very much a man of his times, educated in the university at Bologna and much interested in classical remains and pseudo-philological speculation. His work was written in Italian and conceived in the encyclopaedic manner, being subdivided into libri and notitie. For the earlier medieval period Abela used published chronicles and histories such as those of the historians of Sicily Rocco Pirri and Tommaso Fazello, often copying their errors uncritically and without always naming his source. For the post-1350 period he employed documents found on the island and transcripts from Palermo already available in Malta, publishing lists of place-names, churches, convents, bishops, officials and notable families.

Abela utilized unreliable materials and he introduced into his work an extensive mythology, a good deal of which survives both as popular folk-lore and, unfortunately, in learned works whose authors still tend to regard him as quasi-infallible.⁷ The most recent treatment reflects the unavoidable ambivalence of the scholar torn between admiration for Abela’s very considerable achievements, for the accuracy and elegance of some of his observation, for his lively intelligence and his deep knowledge of Malta, and frustration at Abela’s readiness to repeat all manner of legends and to misinterpret documents in order to sustain those beliefs, natural to a patrician Maltese cleric, according to which Malta was essentially European and Christian rather than African and Muslim. Abela is, to some extent, to blame if‘a litter of discarded theories trails over the whole island like a mad paper-chase,’⁸ but it is a tribute to his powers and talents that so many of the errors he perpetuated still survive. Probably he has suffered just because he was the first major historian of Malta to appear in print, and only a detailed investigation of the unpublished writings of the predecessors and contemporaries on whom Abela must have relied can establish to what extent they misled him, and how far what he called ‘ancestral traditions’ were of his own invention. Some of these traditions appeared in the Descrizione dell’Isola di Malta, written in about 1610 by a doctor from the Knights’ galleys, which awaits study.⁹ In fact, there is room for a comprehensive analysis of all the varied sources used in the medieval sections of Abela’s work.

For two centuries or more Abela’s history continued to hold the field, and a third edition, never published, was initiated in 1842.¹⁰ A considerable volume of work did appear, but most of it repeated extant errors without adding much of value to medieval Maltese history. The Gozitan scholar Agius de Soldanis wrote a history of Gozo in 1746.¹¹ G. Vassallo’s Storia di Malta, published in 1854, was probably the most successful new work. Meanwhile the eighteenth-century Maltese priest Giuseppe Vella had produced his notorious Arabic forgeries which, though soon exploded, continued to influence the historiography of Muslim Malta even after the publication of Michele Amari’s great work on Muslim Sicily and of his Italian translation of the Arabic texts upon which it was based.¹² A. A. Caruana who wrote widely on Maltese antiquities and history, especially in his 496-page ‘Fragment’, accepted that Vella was a forger but unfortunately maintained that some of his materials were, none the less, reliable.¹³ Ecclesiastical and legal histories by A. Ferris and P. De Bono, though full of errors, constituted useful collections of references.¹⁴ A Society of Archaeology, History and Natural Sciences was founded in 1866 and planned a collective history of Malta, only to collapse a few years later.¹⁵ A more critical spirit was making itself felt. The German scholar Albert Mayr wrote well on the Roman and Byzantine period,¹⁶ and a new Historical and Scientific Society was founded which in 1910 began to publish the Archivum Melitense. This review contained an important series of knowledgeable, though amazingly jumbled, medieval contributions derived from the Maltese archives by Alfredo Mifsud.¹⁷

The emergence of a more scientific approach coincided with an era of political passion in which the ‘imperialists’ argued for a Punic origin of Maltese and imposed English in the schools, while the ‘nationalists’ sought to demonstrate the Italian origin of Maltese institutions. The Italian Fascist government initiated a cultural campaign which claimed that Malta was a terra irridenta belonging by ancient right to Italy; its chief historical weapon was the Regia Deputazione di Storia di Malta.¹⁸ The Archivio Storico di Malta, launched in 1929, was managed in Rome by competent professional historians torn by the demands of the regime and their own better scientific feelings, which sometimes triumphed.¹⁹ It collected scattered references, listed sources and published documents, particularly from Naples and from Malta itself.²⁰ A history of Malta by A. Savelli, though Fascist in inspiration, undocumented and sometimes inaccurate, was based on the Archivio and did provide a not unreasonable outline of events.²¹ The Italians were scarcely interested in the non-Italian pre-Norman period.²² Their outstanding contributor was Roberto Valentini, whose many articles still constitute the standard point of departure for Maltese history from about 1200 onwards.²³ Valentini returned to the documents, a number of which he published; he placed Maltese history in its Sicilian context; and he made many valuable points. But he never escaped the Italian bias, the full ideological implications of which were clearly presented in a most unfortunate propaganda piece issued in collaboration with Pietro Fedele. This spoke of Mussolini and the mare nostrum.. It exaggerated the use of the Sicilian dialect in medieval Malta. It attacked the Knights of St. John for suppressing the Italian-style comme and allegedly preventing Abela from giving a proper account of the ancient and natural links with Sicily, and it castigated the Spaniards both for ruining the Maltese islands and for repeatedly granting them out in an un-Italianate manner which, supposedly, was strongly resisted by the Maltese in the best traditions of italianità,²⁴

Subsequently, activity was encouraged by several new journals, notably Melita Historica published by the new Malta Historical Society set up in 1950,²⁵ and there has been progress in the margins of the subject, in folk-lore, in art and architecture, and in archaeology, with the Italians returning as archaeologists whose medieval interests have stimulated a variety of studies.²⁶ Yet the difficulties of forming a class of linguistically and paleographically prepared Maltese medievalists remain, while distinguished Maltese medieval scholars, such as Daniel Callus and Mauro Inguanez, have tended to be clerical in training and interests, and to abandon the island and its historical problems. In 1962 Professor Lionel Butler gave a series of lectures which excited great interest in Malta but were not published. The geographer Brian Blouet produced an original The Story of Malta in 1967 though, in the absence of materials, it inevitably had little new to say on the medieval period. The Maltese History: What Future? symposium of 1971 and the Arab-Berber congress held in Malta in 1972, and the prompt publication of their acts, represent ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• I Medieval Malta: Approaches and Reproaches
• II Approaches to Medieval Malta
• III Malta before 870: Some Libyan Connections
• IV The Christianization of Malta
• V Slaves and Captives on Malta: 1053/4 and 1091
• VI Mdina Hoard of Muslim Coins: 1698
• VII L’effritement de l’islam: 1091–1282
• VIII Frederick II and Paolino de Malta: 1235
• IX Giliberto Abbate’s Report on Malta: Circa 1241
• X Malta e Gozo: 1222–1268
• XI Christian Slaves at Malta: 1271
• XII The Earliest Documents Transcribed in the Cathedral Archives, Mdina: 1316–1372
• XIII The Sale of Gumerin on Malta: 1318
• XIV The Administration of Gozo: 1335
• XV The Benedictines and Malta: 1363–1371
• XVI The Augustinians at Malta: 1413
• XVII The Cappella of Birkirkara: 1402
• XVIII Le origini della parrocchia a Malta
• XIX The Roots of Medieval Gozo
• XX An Introduction to Hal Millieri
• XXI Hal Millieri: Historical and Architectural Postscript
• Index of Persons and Places