The carnival of Malta

Abstract

The origin of carnival in Malta is commonly traced back, purportedly on the authority of the Order's historiographer Giacomo Bosio, to the one-year reign of Grand Master Pierin del Ponte and more precisely to the year 1535, when it is supposed to have been held for the first time in Birgu. This pious and austere grand master was not, however, one to encourage the sort of revehy which is normally associated with carnival. What he really did, as we have it from another historiographer the Abbe de Vertot, is that, while forbidding the knights, under ve1y severe penalties, from indulging in the 'abuse', which Vertot says had been brought from Italy, of masking themselves during carnival, he in fact endeavoured to substitute for these bacchanals' tilts, tournaments, and other martial exercises 'more suitable to warriors'. Even the apparent attribution of the origin of our Italia n-style carnival to the knights, who in 1535 had been in Malta for no more than five years, is suspect. Indeed, considering Malta 's traditional and long-standing political, social, and commercial ties with Sicily (the Palermo carnival, amongst others, was a well-known one and incidentally, like ours, also ended up with the 'burning of Carnival'), it is difficult to believe that some form of carnival celebrations had not existed in Malta before. Besides, it is rather strange that the knights (presumably the Italian ones) should have so quickly introduced the Italian-style carnival to Malta and not also, during the Order's previous 200 years' stay in Rhodes, to that other island.