Anthony Luttrell - The Making of Christian Malta: From the Early Middle Ages to 1530

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The Making of Christian Malta

First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright 2002 by Anthony Luttrell.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-860-78849-2 (hbk)

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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS722

With the coming of national independence to the Maltese islands in 1964 it became particularly desirable to revise the interpretations of their history which had long been current. That was true of historical attitudes to the period of British occupation, to the three centuries of rule by the Knights of Saint John and to the preceding millennium. The Department of History in the University of Malta had only recently been founded, and general perceptions of the medieval period still followed the clerical tradition derived essentially from Gian Francesco Abelas influential work of 1647, Della Descrittione di Malta , which presented a picture of a supposed continuity of Christianity on Malta somehow surviving from Roman and Byzantine times through several centuries of Muslim domination. A response to this situation was the presentation in 1975 of a collection of articles by nine scholars which were published or republished in a single volume entitled Medieval Malta: Studies on Malta before the Knights , edited by the author of the present volume. The lengthy introductory essay, republished below, served as an historiographical guide to the state of the question and its bibliography in 1975, as a summary of the volumes contents, and as a set of suggestions for future research. The opening item below briefly assesses progress during the subsequent quarter century. It considers various omissions and failures of Medieval Malta while pointing to a theme which inspired many of the present authors subsequent researches, that is an emphasis on the emergence of a Christian community on Malta.

Medieval Malta contained an article on Byzantine Malta which included some discussion of the Muslim period; the volume provided no overall treatment of that topic but some supplementary considerations on the Muslim centuries are represented below (items IV-X). For the Christianization of Malta in the thirteenth century, Giliberto Abbates report of about 1241, now republished and reinterpreted (IX), is fundamental. For the following period, the poverty of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century documentation surviving on Malta itself (XII) made it essential to exploit archives in Palermo, Barcelona, Siracusa, Catania and the Vatican, all utilized in various articles republished below. One group of studies (XV-XVIII) concentrates on the development of Christian life, on the emergence of a parish system and on the arrival of various religious orders. The history of Gozo, given scant attention in the 1975 volume, is covered in two items (XIV, XIX). From about 1400 to 1530 a mass of written material is available, but for earlier periods it seemed necessary to turn to non-written sources such as coins (VI). One particular multi-disciplinary initiative was the intensive study of a small country settlement through the archives, through a limited topographical survey, through the restoration of its unique fresco cycle and through the excavation of the twin churches at al Millieri (XX-XXI). Certain of the authors writings on Malta, including a number which were concerned with Maltas place in the late-medieval Aragonese-Catalan empire and which were summarized in the 1975 introduction, are not included. A few pieces contain references to plates and figures which could not be reproduced below. This volume could not contain any comprehensive survey or listing of the numerous publications which have appeared since 1975. The process of reprinting unavoidably leads to an element of repetition, but it is hoped that this volume may draw the attention of non-Maltese readers to an island whose history provides an interest out of all proportion to its size, and that it may assist them by presenting some materials which can be extremely difficult to consult outside the Maltese islands.