The making and unmaking of the Maltese Universitas

Abstract

The society of fifteenth-century Malta possessed a fully-developed communal organization, generally referred to as the Università, within the framework of the Kingdom of Sicily. It is the medieval Malta with which we have become familiar through the survival and recent exploitation of relatively profuse documentary evidence. It channelled and regulated political relationships in the public sphere and derived its legitimacy as the representative and executive body from its official recognition by the Crown. This recognition was the outcome of a long and protracted process accelerated by the revolution of 1282. Both demanial universitates - that is, local governments of towns which directly formed part of the royal demesne or Crown lands - and feudal universitates, which were subjected to the authority of particular feudal lords - emerged across the length and breadth of the Sicilian state to give life to an unequal and often uneasy partnership between town and Crown. [excerpt]