Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century - article ; n°1 ; vol.71, pg 109-126

Frans Ciappara

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Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée - Année 1994 - Volume 71 - Numéro 1 - Pages 109-126
18 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: REVUE_DU_MONDE_MUSULMAN_ET_DE_LA_MEDITERRANEE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1994
• Nombre de lectures: 48
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Frans Ciappara
Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late
eighteenth century
In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, N°71, 1994. pp. 109-126.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Ciappara Frans. Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century. In: Revue du monde musulman
et de la Méditerranée, N°71, 1994. pp. 109-126.
doi : 10.3406/remmm.1994.1638
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/remmm_0997-1327_1994_num_71_1_1638Frans Ciappara
Private life
religion and enlightenment in Malta
in the late eighteenth century
By the late eighteenth century Malta was no longer an isolated, sparsely popul
ated rock in the centre of the Mediterranean at the mercy of the corsairs. The
Hospitallers had been here for two hundred-odd years and had succeeded in
giving the island the status of a nation. Mdina, an inland city, was replaced
by the cosmopolitan Valletta finely situated between two harbours. Mighty for
tifications sprang up (A. Hoppen) to the gaze of the envious foreigners and
the new urban areas contrasted sharply with the tiny villages of a forgotten fo
rmer age. The Maltese, who now reached the hundred thousand mark, acqui
red a new, largely European outlook.1 They were engaged in commerce and
industry while in their turn merchants from all over the Mediterranean litto
ral came here in great numbers with their merchandise. The following are only
three aspects of this highly boisterous and varied society.
Marriage and the family
At first marriage was a very personal affair and no sharp difference separa
ted a promise from actual marriage. The agreement would be privately contracwithout the assistance of a priest and no public ceremony was needed for
a valid marriage. Married couples could separate and make another contract,
RE.M.M.M. 71, 1994/1 1 10 1 Frans Ciappara
which, although null, was to be held as valid by the Church. Others lived in
concubinage under cover of a supposed clandestine marriage (C. A. Corsini).
To abolish such abuses the Council of Trent by means of the decree Tametsi
made it a public event (H. A. Ayrinhac, 234-236). Banns were to be publi
shed during High Mass for at least three consecutive festive days. Marriages
were henceforth to be contracted in the presence of the parish priest (or some
other priest delegated by him) and two witnesses. They were even to be regis
tered in an appropriate Liber Matrimoniorum; while a Liber Baptizatorum
was also to be kept so that impediments to marriage arising out of spiritual
relationships would at once be checked.2 A concrete and unique religious
ritual marked the passage from one state to the next. Marriage was no perso
nal affair which could be conducted privately by the partners but pertained
exclusively to the Church (L. Tittrelli, 769-781).
In traditional Maltese society parents generally helped to find a partner to
their son or daughter. Sometimes, as in Morocco (E. Westermarck, 18-20), a
matchmaker's services were made use of. A widow could ask her father's3 or
her brother's4 approval before accepting a proposal. But as she was an orphan
it was her maternal uncle, Giovanni Maria Romano, who arranged Lorenza
Lias espousal with Paolo Vella on 20 October, 1749.5 An important element
in these marriage negotiations was the dowry, which the girl brings to the marr
iage.6 To whom it is then given varies from one culture to another. Unlike
the custom in Ireland7 in Malta it is kept by the bride and she shares it with
her husband.
When the match had been fixed a small engagement party was usually
held, at which the families of the bride and the bridegroom, as well as their
most intimate friends, were present. The groom presented his bride to the guests
and they all kissed her.8 As a pledge of his word he received a golden ring or
a silk handkerchief.9 Some refreshments were then served, including wine, hazel
nuts, rosolio and cookies (biscottini);10 while sometimes there was music and
dancing too.11
Most betrothals were brought to term and marriage concluded, though
like all other contracts it could be set aside by mutual consent, usually accom
panied by a financial settlement. This is what Simone Bonavia and his bride
did after one year of their engagement. Not only did he let her keep a gold
ring, a pair of ear-rings, three headscarves and a pair of shoes but he gave her
10 scudi besides.12 Contracts could also be conditional and their binding
force suspended till these specified conditions were fulfilled.13 As fornication
with a third party brought the engagement to an end the charge of loose
living was commonly forward by grooms against their brides.14
For the Catholic church, as for the Hebrews (E. Neufeld, 135-141) and
Romans (E. Corbett, 8-23) betrothal was more than a promise of marriage.
If one of the parties withdrew from the agreement the other could appeal to
the Church courts; and if no just reason was given why the contract had been Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century I 111
broken the judge could order die celebration of marriage under pain of excom
munication (G. H. Joyce, 84-86). A way out of these difficulties was to trick
the parish priest in the celebrated syle of Renzo and Lucia of I Promessi Sposi
fame.15
It was difficult not to honour your word. Between 1750 and 1800 the
number of such cases brought in the Bishop's court amounted to 12 1.16 Not
all suits came to sentence. Some were simply abandoned, the plaintiffs renoun
cing their claims, while others could have been settled out of court. Judges were
sometimes reluctant to pass judgement and suits remained undetermined.
The source of many difficulties arose from the fact that the canon law requi
red no special external formalities for the validity of betrothal, which could
be effected even in the village square.17
To decide whether a real promise had been given was a difficult question.
A joke could well incriminate you.18 It was no wonder, then, that a girl would
leave nothing to chance, and like Teresa, the widow of Giovanni Busuttil of
Rabat, Malta, demanded that witnesses should be summoned to attend the
pledging of the groom's word.19 Rosa Xicluna, who lived in the vicinity of
Porta Reale, Valletta, even demanded of Marcello Gatt of casai Lia to give his
promise in writing.20
If a pledge to marry was followed by sex this had the same binding force
as consentir verba de praesenti and the man had to celebrate marriage in facie
ecclesiae (A. Bertola, 30-31). Between 1750 and 1800 out of the 1 17 cases regar
ding injunctions by girls against their men, 41 of them, that is 35.0 per cent,
claimed they had been violated. Nevertheless, the charge of rape was not
always invariably true; it could be a desperate means on the part of women
to make these men marry them.21 Such practices were illegal and parents
guilty of this abuse were to be exiled perpetually, while the girls themselves were
to serve for one year in one of the hospitals for women.22
In the late Eighteenth Century the Maltese did not marry in their teens.
During the period 1750-1798 the mean age of casai Balzan girls at first marr
iage was 22.6 years; that of men, 25-8 years.23 This was not because they were
sexually immature.24 The responsibility of the family rested primarily on
them, which was demonstrated by the predominance of the nuclear family.25
Those who could not maintain their dependants preferred to remain celi
bate; or like Rosa Busuttil and Giuseppe Farrugia, both of Nadur, Gozo, post
poned their union "on acccount of their excessive poverty". This reluctance
to marry was spread through a large section of the population, which is again
emphasized by the great number of remarriages, amounting as table 1 shows,
to a fifth of all marriages.
Marriages between couples from different villages were very frequent. As
in present day Peyrane, a village in southern France,26 movement between
parishes was on a considerable scale27 and it was not an immobile population
at any period. At Kirkop, during the period 1750-1798 only 24.2 per cent of 1 12 1 Frans Ciappara
Table 1.
First marriages and remarriages (1750-1798)
Total First Bachelor Spinster Widow
Marriages Marriages to Widow to Widower to Widower
Balzan 164 202 13 10 15
C. Pinto 1494 1104 89 142 159
12 129 109 5 3 Kirkop
Lija 332 268 16 35 13
Mosta 954 766 37 109 42
Siggiewi 690 522 30 71 37
the local girls had bridegrooms from their own village and at Lija 35.3 of the
marriages were endogamous. This rate, however, was not so in all the vil
lages. At Mosta it stood at 58. 1 per cent while at Siggiewi it was as high as 61 .8
per cent. These latter proportions are very similar to those obtained in Gozo:
53.1 per cent at Xewkija and 70.2 per cent at Gharb.
It is no wonder that in the latter village kin marriages amounted to 14.1
per cent of all marriages. The Church allowed such unions only after obtai
ning a dispensation, which, contrary to popular impression, was not difficult
to obtain. The great amount of marriages by dispensation, seven hundred in
all, is an indication that in Malta the benefits of kinship are greatly a