Growing up in Hospitaller Malta (1530-1798) : an overview

Abstract

Following the Council of Trent (1545-63), in 1575 Rome sent Mgr Pietro Dusina as Apostolic Visitor to Malta to report on the state of the Maltese Church. By this time, Malta had been administered by the Order of St. John the Baptist of Jerusalem, also known as the Hospitallers, for forty-five years, in which time Malta had experienced the brunt of two major attacks (1551, 1565) by the Ottoman Empire, as well as witnessed the beginnings of a process of urbanization centred around its harbours (See Map 1). The Hospitallers, who were a religious-military community, had the dynamism and resources to drive the generation and expansion of urban communities that would thoroughly transform the social, economic and cultural dynamics of Malta. The juxtaposition of religion and urbanization was a fundamental feature of Hospitaller Malta, which was a theocratic state run by religious men – the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, the Bishop of Malta, and the Inquisitor – all of whom reported directly to the Pope. One way in which this intricate situation can be analysed is by looking at how religious concepts impacted on the experiences of children and adolescents growing up in the Hospitaller towns of early modern Malta, and how this was considered – or not – in the historiography.