Marriage prospects in early modern Malta : the integration of Venetian subjects in an alien country

Abstract

The present study intends to analyse the marriage prospects of Venetian migrants in Malta during the epoch of the Hospitaller Knights. The main source for the study is the Status Liberi documents. These documents are linked to the fact that each and every foreigner intending to marry in Malta was asked by the local Church authorities to undergo a court procedure where he/she had to furnish proofs of his/her free status. This meant that the individual had to provide confirmation that he/she was not married, or else prove that he/she was a widower or widow. It was this procedure that earned these documents the Latin name Status Liberi. The raison d'etre for this procedure was to avoid polygamous relationships, especially by seamen, whose job mobility and travels made it proverbially easier for them to have a woman in every port.

The Church's documents cover the period from the late 1580s to date. This study will focus on the time span 1580s to 1798: Le., a substantial part of the Hospitaller rule over the Maltese islands. This was a time of great transformation. The Hospitaller's rule had changed the landscape of Malta both physically and socially. New cities were created and a new social class came into being - the bourgeoisie. In Venice, meanwhile, this was also a period of change. The Republic passed from a major Levantine trading enterprise, whose politics and economic policies were detennined by seafaring, to a predominantly inward looking state, in which land became the most valid investment. The historical record brings to light parallels in the way both states experienced their decline. Both states met a similar destiny at the hands of the same general- Napoleon Bonaparte - and this happened in the same timeframe. Venice fell in 1797, whereas the Hospitallers surrendered to the French forces a year later. For both, the old status and former glories would never again be restored.