Childhood and adolescence in Early Modern Malta (1565-1632)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide insight into the lives of children and adolescents who lived on the Maltese archipelago between 1565 and 1632, a period of significant change for both the people of Malta and their overlords, the Knights Hospitaller of St. John the Baptist. In this study, there is an equal concern with “childhood” and “adolescence” as a set of ideas, and with “children” and “adolescents” as people with experiences, for neither has been looked at before. Such a focus reflects current historiographical debates but is also a consequence of the nature of the sources used here, that is, the court records of the Magna Curia Castellaniae (the secular law court) and the Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition. Ideas about young people and their life experiences were forged through a multifarious interaction among gender, age, religion, law, work, and violence.