Unearthing Gozo’s lost medieval past

Abstract

THE ‘COLLECTIVE MEMORY’ OF A SOCIETY, enshrined in the archival depositories of its past, takes pride of place in moulding a nation’s identity and history. Primary sources held in local archives documenting Gozo’s medieval history are rather sparse, and much of what we know about life in Gozo comes to us through the documents of the Gozitan Capitula and surviving ecclesiastical records.1 The rehabilitation project which is currently underway at the Notarial Archives in St Christopher Street, Valletta, unearthed more than half a kilometre of untapped historical manuscript material. This was found either bound, in small formatted books known as bastardelli, or else in loose format having the form of quires, single sheets or fragments. The patient sorting of these records led to the exciting discovery of some of the allegedly ‘lost’ records of Gozitan notaries who practiced before the arrival of the Order of St John in 1530.