The life of a rural village - Mosta : pastoral visits, plague, and the erection of a new parish (1575-1619)

Abstract

It was an unexceptional reality in Malta of the Hospitallers, for the bishops and the grandmasters to be on what may at best be termed as ‘less than amicable relations’. The relationship between Bishop Martin Royas de Portalrubio and Grandmaster Jean l’Evesque de la Cassiere was no exception. During the first decades of the Order’s rule, the bishop in Malta also acted as inquisitor on the island. Then, following the term of Domenico Cubelles (1562-65), after a lapse of eight years during which the islands first experienced a months-long ruthless Ottoman siege, dubbed as the Great Siege of 1565, and then entered the building spree which was to see the birth of a new fortified city named Valletta, a new inquisitor was appointed. Thus Royas, Bishop of Malta, took up the episcopal position which he would occupy between 1572 and 1577.