Malta

MALTA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - The Archipelago of M., which rises on an underwater platform joined to Sicily, from which it is 90 km. distant, is made up of the island of the same name (246 sq. km.) and those of Gozo (67 sq. km.), Comino, Cominotto and Filfola, as well as a certain number of rocks; in all 316 sq. km.

It has a limestone framework and, although of very modest height (maximum elevation 258 m. in M.), the terrain there is rather rugged, with deep-cut ravines and depressions that give the eastern coast of M. a course all of inlets and promontories. Despite the aridity of the soil and the climate (almost absolute drought from May to Sept.), the islands are fertile in grain, vines and citrus fruits, but production is not enough for internal consumption, since the population, almost tripled in the last century (307 thousand inhabitants in 1948), reaches an exceptionally high density (971 per sq. km.). Thus for centuries the archipelago has given rise to an emigration directed in particular to the Mediterranean coasts (where over 150 thousand Maltese are now counted). The English are little more than 5 thousand and foreigners about a thousand (among them Italians). Official languages are English and Maltese (the latter, which is a mixed Italo-Arabic dialect, introduced in 1934, replacing Italian). The only notable urban center is the capital Valletta (64 thousand inhabitants with the suburbs).

The Archipelago is halfway between Gibraltar and Suez and has a vast and safe natural harbor: hence its military importance and the long (since 1798) British occupation. M. is a colony governed by a governor, assisted by a council and an elective assembly of 40 members.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. CIVIL HISTORY

Having been definitively taken from the Carthaginians by the Romans in 218 B.C., M. was annexed to the province of Sicily. In the 4th century it passed to the Eastern Empire, was for brief periods a possession of the Vandals and the Goths, and returned to the Empire in 533. In the 9th century it was conquered by the Arabs, who held it until 1091, when the Norman Roger occupied it. The Arab domination left notable traces in the language, in toponymy and in art, and strong Muslim nuclei remained on the island until they were expelled from it by Frederick II. In 1266 M., together with Sicily, became an Angevin domain, but after the defeat that Roger of Lauria inflicted on the fleet of the King of Naples in the waters of M., it passed to the Aragonese. In the 13th century the strong influx of Italian elements profoundly modified the dialect of M. During the Norman and Swabian government M. was often granted as a fief to Sicilian families; the Aragonese, by contrast, united it to the royal domain, and in 1428 granted to its community the same privileges that Palermo, Messina and Catania enjoyed. The municipal order favored a flourishing development of all civil institutions. In 1530 Charles V ceded M. to the Order of St. John, which since 1522 had lost the island of Rhodes. The cession was made in full sovereignty, save for the annual symbolic tribute of a falcon. The Knights embellished the island and fortified it, transforming it into a powerful naval base, which put them in a position to withstand the incessant onslaught of the Turkish and Barbary navies.

In 1565 M. was besieged by the Turks: the strenuous resistance of the Knights and of the whole people allowed a fleet sent from Sicily, Naples and Tuscany to arrive in time to their rescue, and the Turks had to raise the siege. The Order's relations with Sicily were, despite sporadic clashes, always cordial. But in the 17th century, and even more in the following one, the Order gradually suppressed the municipal institutions, concentrating all powers in itself, and the loss of the traditional franchises aroused in the population a growing discontent, which gave rise to conspiracies and revolts, suppressed with harsh rigor. Toward the end of the 18th century, when the Mediterranean too had become a field of struggle among the States aspiring to continental hegemony, the powers fixed their eyes on M., which by its geographical position and its military importance could constitute for its possessor a precious point of support. In 1798 the island was conquered by Bonaparte. The motive or pretext for justifying the attack was given him by the fact that in Dec. 1797 Paul I of Russia had proclaimed his protectorate over the Order (in Nov. 1798 he was elected its grand master). The French, favored at first by a part of the population that chafed under the authoritarian regime of the Knights, soon alienated all sympathies with their policy, which aimed to subvert the traditions and customs of the islanders and offended their religious sentiment. Thus, when news arrived of the French defeats of 1799, the discontent exploded into open revolt. The Maltese turned for help to Naples, to Portugal and to England. English troops landed on the island and, with the help of the people, who fought valiantly at their side, forced the French to capitulate on 4 Sept. 1800. Although in the capitulation no mention was made either of the rights of the Maltese or of the sovereignty of the King of Naples, Admiral Nelson had confirmed that the island belonged to the King of Naples, and in the name of the King the commander of the English militia Alexander Ball assumed its government. But the latter immediately began, with every sort of promise and flattery, a skillful and tenacious work of penetration. The Treaty of Amiens, which had sanctioned the return of M. to the Order and its neutrality, was not applied; the English remained on the island, and in May 1814, by the Treaty of Paris, obtained full sovereignty over it. From this moment, to the British thesis of possessing M. by right of conquest the Maltese would oppose the affirmation of having placed themselves spontaneously under the protection of England. For over a century M. would struggle to preserve its constitutional liberties and the teaching and official use of the Italian language. As for the constitution, after the Council appointed by the governor in 1835, there came the Constitution of 1849 and the broader one of 1887, which composed the majority of the Government Council of elected members. As for the language, from 1880 the English government began to uphold the principle of the parity of the two languages, with the exclusion of any privilege for Italian. Against the restrictive laws inspired by Gerald Strickland the Maltese nationalist party led by Fortunato Mizzi fought strenuously. The removal of Strickland from the island did not change the direction of the British government. At first the Constitution of 1887 was repealed, restoring the more restricted one of 1849. The great electoral victories of the nationalists forced England to grant in 1921 a new Constitution with elective institutions. But in 1933 the Constitution was suspended; the governor assumed the entire administration and issued increasingly rigid laws for the abolition of Italian in official use and in teaching and for the adoption of Maltese and English. In 1936 the Constitution of 1921 was definitively abolished.

Roberto Palmarocchi

III. DIOCESE

The diocese has a population of 280,000 inhabitants, of whom 278,000 are Catholics; it has 50 parishes with 309 churches served by 402 diocesan priests and 384 regulars, a seminary, 45 male religious communities, 76 female (Ann. Pontif., 1951, p. 261).

In the bay of this island, in A.D. 58, the ship on which St. Paul was being taken to Rome with other prisoners was wrecked (Acts 28:1). The inhabitants of the place, whom St. Luke calls "barbarians" because they were ignorant of the Greek and Roman language, received the shipwrecked men with kindness and took Paul for a god, both because he had remained unharmed by the bite of a viper that had fastened on his hands, and because of the healing he wrought on the father of Publius, the chief of the island (Acts 28:6-9).

On the northern coast of the island of M. there opens toward the east (the direction from which the ship was coming) the inlet of the bay called "St. Paul," and on the northern side of the bay there is the islet of Salmonetta, separated from the mainland by a channel and where the formation of sandy shoals was easy (the two seas: Acts 27:41), on one of which the ship went to pieces. A statue erected near the channel and a chapel commemorate the dramatic landing of St. Paul, patron of the island, celebrated with the feast of February 10.

Christianity in M. is traced back to St. Paul. But Ado confused the Publius of the Acts with the Publius, bishop of Athens, mentioned in the De viris illustribus by St. Jerome, and made him the first bishop of Malta (H. Quentin, Le martyrologes historiques au moyen âge, Paris 1908, pp. 416 and 599). Iulianus or Lucianus is said to have subscribed the "constitutum" of the three chapters of Pope Vigilius in 553 (Hefele-Leclercq, III, II, p. 94).

Lucillus was deposed by Pope Gregory I in 598 (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1196, 1549). He was succeeded by Trajan, formerly abbot of a monastery in Syracuse (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1549, 1887).

The series was interrupted from 874 to 1095 by the Saracen occupation. After the Norman conquest the first bishop was Gualtiero, consecrated by Urban II. The diocese had the Pope as its metropolitan until 1154, the year in which a bull of Adrian IV placed it under the dependence of the archbishop of Palermo.

Pope Pius XII, with the apostolic constitution Melitensem Ecclesiam of January 1, 1944, elevated the church of M. to the rank and dignity of a metropolitan church, assigning to it as suffragan the diocese of Gozo (AAS, 36 [1944], pp. 161-163). The same Pontiff, with an apostolic letter of January 18, 1950, elevated to the dignity of minor basilica the church of St. Helena situated in Birchicara (AAS, 42 [1950], p. 716).

Worthy of note among the bishops of M.: Cardinal Corrado Caracciolo (appointed in 1408), Cardinal Pietro di Foix, nephew of Louis XI (appointed in 1489); Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, nephew of Alexander VI (appointed in 1497). Subsequently Cardinal Raffaele Riario and Cardinal Andrea della Valle were appointed, but renounced the office.

In the cession of M. to the Order, Charles V reserved to himself the appointment of the bishop, to be chosen from three names proposed by the Knights. Around 1574, since the Order had protested because the bishop had been granted the faculty to inquire against the Knights, Gregory XIII instituted the tribunal of the Inquisition of M., which lasted until 1798. In 1584 the same Pope forbade the Knights, whether milites or brothers, to hold the episcopate, which was to be reserved to the chaplain priests of the Order. The relations of the bishops with the Knights were often disturbed by conflicts of a jurisdictional nature. The bitterest conflicts occurred during the episcopates of Tommaso Gargallo (17th century), of Baldassarre Cagliares (17th century) and of Carmine G. Pellerano (18th century). In 1746 Benedict XIV regulated the competences of the bishop and of the Chapter in the administration of the diocese. In 1780 a bull of Pius VI united the archbishopric of Rhodes in partibus to the bishopric of M., confirming the latter, however, as suffragan of that of Palermo. In 1798 the bishop of M. was Vincenzo Labini. The French, on occupying the island, declared that they would guarantee the free exercise of the Catholic religion; but soon afterward they suppressed the religious Orders and confiscated their goods, abolished the tribunal of the Inquisition, and forbade ecclesiastics and the people to have recourse to the pope or the metropolitan in matters concerning the administration of worship. These decrees contributed greatly to stirring up minds against the conquerors. The English too promised full religious freedom. During their occupation the Kingdom of Naples did not renounce its ecclesiastical patronage over the diocese. In 1807 the King appointed as bishop the Maltese Mattei, and London gave its consent; but after the Treaty of Paris, when in 1829, on Mattei's death, the King of Naples claimed the right to choose the successor, England refused it to him. Yielding to English urgings, Gregory XVI abrogated the metropolitan rights of Palermo over M., placing it under the direct dependence of the Holy See. In 1831 he appointed as bishop of M. and archbishop of Rhodes Francesco Saverio Caruana. When the English demanded, as was customary in England for anyone invested with civil or religious offices, the oath to recognize the Hanoverian dynasty and to do nothing against the Anglican religion, the bishop refused and the Holy See approved his conduct. The definitive rupture of every bond with the Kingdom of Naples took place in 1834, when an exchange was agreed upon of the goods that the bishopric of M. possessed at Lentini for those of the Benedictines of Catania on the island. During the long conflict between the Maltese and the English, the Church of M. sided with the former, who defended, together with constitutional liberties and the language, their religion, continually undermined by the British rulers. The sharpest clash was provoked by Strickland's anti-Catholic policy. The Holy See ordered an inquiry, which it entrusted in 1929 to Msgr. Robinson, an English subject. The result was a clear condemnation of Strickland's acts, a condemnation that was made public by pastoral letters of the bishops of M. and of Gozo (the bishopric of Gozo had been instituted in 1864).

Roberto Palmarocchi-Donato Baldi

IV. ARCHAEOLOGY

The first explorations of the Christian hypogea of M. were those of G. F. Abela in 1647; then one must come down to Caruana (1881-97), to A. Mayr (1901), to E. Becker (1909) and to Fr. A. Ferrua (1949).

The ancient Christian cemeteries of M. are all dug into the island's characteristic marly limestone, used as a building material and which has permitted the excavation of large chambers with a typical tomb either with a baldachin or behind a window. The so-called baldachin tomb consists of a large raised sarcophagus for two or more bodies, surrounded by four pillars on which rises an arch with a flat roof, all hewn from the limestone. In a single chamber there are as many as four such tombs, which are sometimes found in Sicily; there are a few examples in Naples and only one in the Roman cemetery inter duos lauros (v.). Sometimes, instead, there are tombs for one or two bodies with an arcosolium situated in a niche in whose vault a window opens, a type exclusive to M. In some cases several window tombs are found in an apsidal space with a characteristic raised platform used for funerary banquets. Some hypogea were closed by massive single-leaf stone doors. Near some Christian hypogea there are Jewish hypogea; the most extensive Christian cemetery is the one called that of St. Paul, beneath the church of St. Agatha.

The epigraphy is poor. In one hypogeum, near an arcosolium, the Latin epitaph was read: «in nomine Domini Ieshus Christi surge et ambulus, + Domine salbum me fac» (A. Heron de Villefosse, Inscription latine chrétienne de M., in Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des inscriptions et belles lettres, 1908, pp. 140-42); three other Christian Latin inscriptions are reported in CIL, X, 7498-500. A Greek inscription uses the expression καυρητήριον for a bisomous tomb (Corpus Inscrip. Graec., IV, Berlin 1877, no. 9540); in another, also Greek, the deceased is called εὐμαδῆς, γραττανὸς καὶ ἱητρός (ibid., 9451). Recently, in the cemetery called that of St. Paul, Fr. A. Ferrua read the Greek burial inscription of a Leonia, bearing the christological monogram.

V. ART

Art flourished in M. especially in the buildings that arose with the establishment of the Order of St. John. The conventual church of the Order dedicated to St. John was erected by G. Cassar between 1573-77. It has a single nave with side chapels belonging to the various langues of the Order; it is sumptuous with decorations, marbles and tapestries (after designs by P. Rubens and N. Poussin). The vault and some chapels were painted by M. Preti; by Caravaggio are The Decollation and the St. Jerome. The crypt contains the tombs of the Grand Masters; that of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1530-1534) is the work of A. Gagini. The church of the Gesù is by F. Bonamici, with paintings by M. Preti, by Caracciolo and by Romanelli; the church of St. James (1710), of Borrominian type, is due to G. Barbara; furthermore the church of St. Catherine of Italy (1576), that of St. Francis (1681) with paintings by M. Preti; that of the Vittoria (1752). The palace of the Grand Masters, now the seat of the Governor, was erected by G. Cassar (1572-81); the auberge of the langue of Provence is from 1575; the Palace of the Knights of Italy (now the National Museum); the Palace of the Knights of Castile and Portugal, the work of Cachia (1744); the Palace of the Knights of Auvergne is today the Palace of Justice; the Palace of the treasury of the Order has been transformed into the Casino Maltese.

In the old city, or Notabile, the Cathedral was rebuilt in 1697 by Lorenzo Gafa; it contains works by M. Preti, as does the church of St. Paul and Publius; the church of St. Mary of Jesus has works by A. Gagini. The Palace of the Grand Master is from the eighteenth century. - See pl. CXXVI.