Culture and the politics of fashion : dressing up in Early Modern Malta

Abstract

On Sunday morning of 13 November 1530, the recently arrived feudal lord of Malta, Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L’Isle Adam, followed by all the Grand Crosses, Council members of the Hospitaller Order of St John, and a multitude of knights, left his new abode in Fort St Angelo sited in the Harbour of Malta on his way to Città Notabile, also known as Mdina, the ancient agro-town at the centre of Malta. The Grand Master was about to take official possession of the Old Town. The chronicler of the Order, Giacomo Bosio depicts the whole event as a great historic landmark for Malta. He claims that the procession was keenly followed by nearly all the inhabitants who eagerly assisted to that first entry of their new ‘Prince’ in the ancient town. Bosio records that the knights were received at Mdina by bearded Maltese, mounted on donkeys, armed with swords, daggers and axes, and dressed in bullet-resistant, arrow-proof lengths of quilted cotton. He does not say much else about the way the Maltese notables were dressed up but the above description may suggest that they were garbed in a fashion long since superseded among the notables of South West Europe.