Recovering women's voices : Pietro Dusina's apostolic visitation to Malta in 1575

Abstract

This essay re-examines the apostolic visitation conducted by Monsignor Pietro Dusina in Malta in 1575, with particular focus on how women feature in his report. Women were not merely the passive subjects of reform in sixteenth-century Malta, but active participants who conformed but also struggled with the changes being introduced across the Roman Church as whole. The essay first looks at the broader context of Dusina’s visit and then examines the experiences of monastic women, as well as tertiary and secular women, in relation to Tridentine reforms. In recovering these fragmentary voices, the report is revisited as a historical source through which the presence and roles of women – at once visible and obscured – and the challenges that they faced, can be more fully understood. Dusina’s visitation aimed to assess the state of the Church in Malta and to implement the decrees of the Council of Trent. This paper analyses how women were both included and excluded in Dusina’s visitation report, within the ecclesiastical and social context of the sixteenth century. Traditional historical narratives centred on male experiences and largely marginalised women. Exploring perspectives that were often sidelined, widens and enriches our understanding of the past. Recovering women’s lives and experiences can adjust our understanding of early modern Maltese society, particularly in terms of gender roles and power relations.