Forging faith at the frontier : the Jesuit mission in Hospitaller Malta (1592–1768)

Abstract

It is through these words that Clement VIII instructed the bishop of Malta, Tommaso Gargallo (1578–1614), to establish in his diocese a College for twelve men from the Society of Jesus to carry out their mission, according to the mode of the Society, at the service of the same Church. In truth, the pope was accepting a long-standing desire expressed by Gargallo, in as far back as 1577, when he was a prior of the conventual church of the Order of Saint John, and had donated for this cause ‘una casa comoda’ in Valletta, together with the promise of 400 ducats to support the College’s establishment. As in the rest of Europe, the foundation of this College must be read within the context of the Catholic reform. Malta, a frontier island to a confessionally divided Europe, was considered to be in a state of double risk. Not only had the newly established Inquisition detected the possibility of the circulation of Calvinist ideas among the knights and local intellectuals, but Malta stood as the last frontier between Christian Europe and Islam. Among the first tasks undertaken by Saint Francis Borgia on becoming the third general provost of the Society of Jesus was to send his Jesuit brothers from Sicily and the Sicilian provincial G. Domenecchi to accompany the viceroy of Sicily to help the Order in what were to be the last days of the Great Siege of 1565. Even if, on that occasion, their help had arrived only once victory had been guaranteed, one sees in this desire of these first Jesuits to be sent on a mission to Malta the very embodiment of their later mission on an island where the Muslim threat was always close.