Melitensia

Ghosts in Malta

2014-10-30T15:22:00.001-05:00

Even if it weren't Halloween, ghost stories are perfect for this time of year. Darkness settles in a little earlier each day as the day gets shorter. Plants and animals prepare for winter hibernation. It's time to hunker down against the cold and tell stories about all those funny sounds that you never seem to hear during daylight hours.

Malta has its fair share of ghost stories, along with old buildings that should be haunted, even if they're not. Heritage Malta is opening the Inquisitor's Palace for a fun, over-night sleepover/ghost hunt in November (bring your own sleeping bag). I've never heard of any ghosts in the Inquisitor's palace, although I have it on reasonably good authority that there are white ladies in Mdina and Fort St. Angelo, plus a fierce black knight in Manoel Island. There are some stories I've only heard told in a Maltese setting, and here are some of my favorite Maltese ghosts:

1. The Lady in Distress

This story is set in the British period. Two young officers are on their way back to their quarters after a convivial evening out in Valletta when they encounter a well-dressed woman -- a true lady, in fact -- who's been locked out of her palazzo. The officers are oiled well-enough that they don't wonder what a true lady is doing out on the streets of Valletta by herself in the middle of the night, nor why none of her servants can hear her pounding on the door of the palazzo. One of the officers, who was either more athletic or less drunk, climbed up the palazzo to an open window on the piano nobile. There he entered the house and descended the grand stair to let the lady and his friend into the house. The lady thanks them profusely, and invites them inside for refreshment. Remember, it's late, there's no servants, they've just met by chance -- could this really be a true lady? The two officers have apparently formed their own conclusions, because at this point true gentlemen tip their hats and continue their unsteady way home. But they accept, and spend some twenty-minutes in a well-appointed room before they leave.

The next day, one of the young officers can't stop thinking about the lady -- or he's forgotten some important valuable item, like a cigarette case -- so he returns to the palazzo in Valletta. Imagine his surprise when he finds that it is unoccupied and in a ruinous condition. He enters (sometimes through the same window, or, if he's looking for his possessions, a neighbor with a key lets him in) only to find the furniture in tatters and the floor thick with dust. Proof that it wasn't a dream? On the grimy table are the two glasses he and his friend drank from, and his cigarette case precisely placed in the middle of the table.

Some ghost tours claim to point out the actual palazzo. But there are enough grand residences left in Valletta that are unoccupied and fallen on hard times, and you can tell this about any one of them.

2. Unfinished business

It could have happened fifty years ago, or maybe yesterday. The witness is either an elderly woman or a young boy. They're attending early mass at the local church. (It's usually explained that the boy is there to act as the server to the priest. No one bothers to explain why the elderly woman gets up before dawn to go to mass). The priest shows up, but he looks so strange! So pale! Later that day, the witness discovers that the priest had died the night before. They've seen a ghost! So they return the next day, same place, same time, to encounter Father Phantom again. Again, they attend the mass, even though canon law does not pronounce upon the validity of sacraments administered by ghosts. So they talk to another priest, who goes with them on the third day to confront the ghost. The ghostly priest explains that he died before saying three masses that he had to say as part of the terms of a written bequest in a will. He's just said the third mass, and henceforth he has been released from his responsibility. He's never seen again.

This could be any church or chapel, but I've heard a great version centered on the Greek church in Valletta. A tourist visited the church, and an elderly priest showed him around and they had a great conversation. The tourist returned later, only to find a young priest, who insisted that he was the only priest for the church. Then who was the elderly priest? The tourist asked a local friend, who arranged for him to have dinner with the only priest of the Greek church in Valletta. It was the elderly priest. The young priest was a ghost.

3. Il-hares

In Maltese folklore, houses had a resident spirit that could take any form. It could be mischievous, beneficial, or downright nasty. If the hares liked you, it could shower you with presents; but you could not tell anyone about the hares or the source of the presents.

Many stories describe hares that looked like Ottoman Turks (or were the spirits of Ottoman Turks). These particular hares were like the bogeymen for the children of the household. The children heard the hares on the stairs, or sometimes it even entered their room and stood at the foot of the bed! Now, some of the stories specifically say that the hares only came when the childrens' father was not home, and that the children could not tell their father about the hares because then it would stop giving their mother valuable gifts. I'll leave it at that.

Printed Maltese ghost stories:

Joseph Attard, Ghosts of Malta (1997) (http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghosts-Malta-Joseph-Attard/dp/9990900302)

Do it-yourself Valletta Ghost Walk (http://www.malcolmhanson.co.uk/Malta.html)

The Roman Inquisition in Malta

2014-10-20T15:07:00.000-05:00

Heritage Malta is hosting a great exhibit at the Inquisitor's Palace in Birgu until January 11th, 2015 -- "The Roman Inquisition in Malta," organized with the cooperation of the Mdina Metropolitan Chapter, the University of Malta, the Vatican Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Malta Study Centre of Minnesota. I got a chance to attend the opening back in September, and I must say it is well worth the visit.

The palace of the Roman Inquisitor on Malta. 62 of Malta's 70 Inquisitors lived in this palace, where they heard cases, stored their archives -- and kept their prisoners in the dungeons. Bwa ha ha!

But wait, before you get upset, the Roman Inquisition in Malta was not like other Inquisitions elsewhere. (Then again, what in Malta is like other things elsewhere?) The Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition in Malta existed to keep peace between the Bishop of Malta and the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, and to inform the pope what was going on between these two powerful ecclesiastics. Only an extraordinary individual could undertake this delicate task, and the post of Inquisitor of Malta only went to very able men. The Inquisitors heard heard over 80,000 cases between 1561 and 1798, and almost all concerned relatively minor crimes. The Tribunal in Malta handed down a total of two or three death sentences in its entire existence.

Msgr. Paul Cremona, O.P., Archbishop of Malta, arrives to open the exhibit. If this were the 18th century, the protocol surrounding his visit to the Inquisitor's Palace would be much more elaborate.

Napoleon abolished the Inquisition in Malta in 1798, but the Maltese preserved the archives and the palace. Today, Malta has the only intact Inquisitor's palace in Europe, plus the most complete set of Inquisition archives that has survived. The palace and the archives are an important part of Europe's cultural heritage.

Heritage Malta has restored the palace, and combined it with the Museum of Ethnography. It is an odd combination, especially since the Museum of Ethnography includes displays of Nativity creches and pre-Vatican II church statuary. If you're of a certain age, you know the statues I mean -- the ones where the crucified Christ is coated with painted gore. It's an unfortunate juxtaposition, because historians today downplay the role of torture in extorting confessions before the Inquisition. (Yes, they used it; the prisoner had to pass a physical exam, and then the torture was strictly regulated. At some point, though, the Maltese tribunal stopped using torture to confirm confessions, claiming that no one knew how to do it correctly. In fact, one gets the impression that towards the end of the Inquisition in Malta, the Maltese wardens and prisoners were running the palace for their own convenience.)

The palace, though, gives you the experience of how the tribunal functioned. Imagine if you were a 17th-century Maltese peasant. You may have been summoned to appear before the Tribunal, or your parish priest refused to give you absolution unless you accused yourself before the Inquisitor. You went up a grand flight of stairs to the second floor, the Piano Nobile

The grand staircase, photographed from an upper landing. The two doors facing the stairs led to the chancery of the Inquisition and, on the left, the antechamber to the Tribunal Room. Note the smaller doorway to the left at the very top of the stairs -- anyone appearing before the Tribunal entered through this door. It lead to a short door that forced everyone who entered to lower his or her head in a bow to the Tribunal.

If you were summoned, you wouldn't know what the reason was. The Inquisitor would ask you if you knew of anything that the Tribunal would be interested in. Talk about a leading question! The Inquisition had jurisdiction over such crimes as blasphemy (swearing), mocking the Christian religion, bigamy, fornication (sex), adultery, eating meat on Fridays and during Lent, reading prohibited books, practising magic, or converting to Islam. If someone had it in for you -- say, a neighbor, a servant, or your spouse -- there were a number of ways they could mess up your life. Several knights got into trouble for mocking the Inquisitor's authority.

The Tribunal Room. It's smaller than you expect from all those movies. Think of all the terrified people who have stood in this exact same location over the centuries.

Most cases were over quickly. The Inquisitor would investigate the truth of the matter. If he didn't have jurisdiction, or evidence, or eyewitnesses, he would dismiss the case. If he found you guilty, you might be told to stop swearing, lying about your health so you could eat meat, or turn over the prohibited books and stop reading them. Other punishments were more rigorous -- you might have to say public prayers, reside in a monastery or convent for a period of time, receive the Eucharist, or make public confessions. Repeat offenders, however, received severe punishment, like incarceration or rowing in the galleys.

One of the prison cells in the male section of the prison. This was for prisoners awaiting trial. That grill in the wall and floor was the latrine.

The highlight of any modern visit to the Inquisitor's Palace is the prison of the Inquisition (unlike earlier centuries, when visitors avoided the prisons at all costs.). The cells make up one wing of the complex, and had separate sections for men and women. The warden lived with the prisoners, and it was his responsibility to make sure the prisoners were well and had everything that they needed. The Inquisitor lived in another wing of the palace, and the warden was to summon him if a prisoner wanted to make a quick confession in the middle of the night. This happened more than you think -- just imagine, there you are, alone with your thoughts in the dark, and you know you only have to say two little words to be freed....

The Inquisitor's bedroom.

That's over now. Heritage Malta has renovated the upper story of the palace, creating more space, and installed the exhibit of the Roman Inquisition in Malta there. It has great materials from the Archives of the Inquisition on loan from the Cathedral Archives and the National Library of Malta, artifacts, paintings, and even evidence that the Tribunal collected. The didactics are extremely well done, and explain the connection between the history and the artifacts very clearly.

Here's a list of books that the Inquisitor confiscated and destroyed. It's very vague about the titles. You can make out "The works of Machiavelli in French" and "Sermons in English."

And here is my absolute favorite -- the magic hat made out of paper, with an Arabic spell against headaches written on the inside, confiscated by Inquisitor Fabrizio Verallo (1600-1605).

The Magic Hat for Headaches. I wonder if it still works?

Now Heritage Malta has published a catalog of the exhibit, which is available for 10 euros:

The Roman Inquisition in Malta, is a brilliantly illustrated exhibition catalogue containing all the essentials on the Inquisition in Malta. This through an intriguing narrative illustrated by the 89 exhibits on display.

Introductory essays by John Azzopardi, Frans Ciappara and William Zammit, catalogue entries by Kenneth Cassar, photography and design by Daniel Cilia.

This is another Heritage Malta publication selling at €10 from every Heritage Malta outlet.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/Melitensia/posts/754553527931290

What did you say your name was again?

2014-10-08T13:02:00.000-05:00

I'm currently cataloguing five volumes of the Liber bullarum from the Archives of the Knights of Malta for the National Library of Malta. The Liber bullarum (literally, the "Book of Bulls") records the official correspondence of the Master of the Order of the Hospital. The earliest surviving volume, today known as AOM 316, contains the letters Master Roger de Pins wrote from the Central Convent in Rhodes during the year 1358. The volume also contains tantalizing evidence that earlier books of bulls existed; bound with it are fragments of the correspondence of Deodat de Gozo for the year 1346. (See my earlier blog entry about Deodat de Gozo here).

To someone unfamiliar with medieval manuscripts, five volumes does not seem like much, especially when compared with the hundreds that make up the entire series. It does, however, present challenges. And I don't mean the technical challenges of describing the codex, deciphering the script, and unraveling the prose -- that's a given for working with any manuscript. The Liber bullarum have not been catalogued before, in any format, and the National Library wants an item-level description. Item level means that the cataloguer reads every entry, every letter, and records who sent it, who received it, what it was about, when it was written, and any other information it may contain. Not only that -- the names of people and places must be standardized, according to the Library of Congress authority file.

You can skip this paragraph if you already know about the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress was established for the use of the Congress of the United States. Since then, the Library of Congress has assumed responsibility for the creation of catalog copy and for the maintenance of authority files, which stipulate how book catalogers spell names, places, and subjects found in published books. Just look up any book in your public library's online catalog, and you will see the Library of Congress's authority files. The Library of Congress even creates catalog copy, so that your public library can quickly process J. K. Rowling's Casual Vacancy and get in on the shelves in time for your book club to read it.

The Library of Congress performs a great service, and one cannot blame them for not maintaining authority files for the 14th-century Order of the Hospital. Let's take the master of the Order in 1358, Roger de Pins, who's not in the LOC authority files. He was master between 1355 and 1368, but I can't find a date of birth. And what was his name? He appears in the documentation as Rogerius des Pinibus, but modern writers call him Roger de Pins and not des Pins.

Roger wrote several letters to Juan Fernandez de Heredia, who left more historical evidence than Roger. Juan Fernandez was a big shot at the court of the King of Aragon and at the Avignon Papacy, and even though he was a subordinate to Roger de Pins you can tell it was in name only. He's credited with several books, and so rates an entry in the LOC authority files: Heredia, Juan Fernández de, 1310?-1396.

But that's not his name. He could have called himself Juan, Joao, or Johan, Hernandez or Fernandez, de Heredia or d'Heredia. Heredia, however, was not his last name. He was a member of the Fernandez family from Heredia, therefore his LOC entry should be under "Fernández de Heredia."

And then there's the place names -- all these Hospitaller commanderies in or near small French villages. Someone was the preceptor of St. Felix -- well, there are three villages in France named St. Felix. Two have fascinating histories full of Cathars and Templars, and the third was the Hospitaller commandery where, apparently, nothing happened until the French Revolution. Names have changed since the 14th century -- would you recognize Biturigum as Bordeaux? Not without Orbis Latinus you wouldn't.

Standardization of medieval names is no easy matter. It is something that even the Library of Congress couldn't accomplish unaided. I haven't mentioned establishing the French, Spanish, Italian, or German standardized versions of names. Here are some projects that are working on the problem:

Survey of English Place Names (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ins/survey/index.aspx)
The Survey of English Place‑Names aims to examine the origins and development of all the country’s names. The published work is arranged by historic counties: the first volume, covering Buckinghamshire, appeared in 1925; the eightieth, dealing with part of Shropshire, came out in 2004.

Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/)

The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN) was established to collect and publish all ancient Greek personal names, drawing on the full range of written sources from the 8th century B.C. down to the late Roman Empire.

Prosopography of the Byzantine World (http://www.britac.ac.uk/arp/pbw.cfm)

The goal of the Prosopography of the Byzantine World project is to record in a database all surviving information about every individual mentioned in Byzantine sources during the period from 641 to 1261, and every individual mentioned in non-Byzantine sources during the same period who is 'relevant' (on a generous interpretation) to Byzantine affairs.

The Medieval and Renaissance Italy Prosopographical Database Project (http://www.slu.edu/x19463.xml)

The Medieval and Renaissance Italy Prosopographical Database Project is a major new initiative funded by the Graduate School and the SLU2000 Fund. Its purpose is to construct a large-scale interactive database of Italian prosopography that will reveal for researchers underlying political, social, and cultural trends in the history of these important city-republics. At present the project is focusing on Venice. Eventually this database will be made available to all scholars via a web-based search tool.

Some of these projects, and many more for the ancient, medieval, and modern world, are listed on the site of the Directory of Prosopgraphical Research hosted by the Modern History Research Unit at the University of Oxford: (http://prosopography.modhist.ox.ac.uk/directory.htm)

Magdalene Nuns and Penitent Prostitutes (Valletta)

2014-02-06T13:31:00.002-06:00

At the foot of Merchant's Street in Valletta, Malta, near Fort St. Elmo and the Mediterranean Conference Center, sits a derelict baroque church that has seen better days. The crane attached to the square window in its facade speaks, one hopes, of extensive interior renovations; one fears, however, that it's a souvenir of the building's former ignominious use as a store house for carnival floats.

This building was the church of Santa Maria Maddalena, the monastery for Magdalene nuns established by the Order of Malta in 1595, soon after the construction of Valletta. Christine Muscat writes about the extraordinary women who worshiped in this church in her new book, Magdalene Nuns and Penitent Prostitutes Valletta (BDl LTD, 2013), available from all quality booksellers and the Malta On-Line Bookshop (http://maltaonlinebookshop.com).

Christine Muscat recovers a lost slice of women's history in Malta -- the history and the inhabitants of the monastery of Santa Maria Maddalena in Valletta, run by the Poor Clares (the Franciscan Sisters) under the patronage of the Knights of Malta. Imagine, if you will, the social disruption in Malta caused by the Knight's decision to build Valletta. The city of Valletta was a cosmopolitan port city, wealthy from trading and from corsairing. It was home to the aristocratic Knights and their retinues; and it was home to the poor and the displaced, people like sailors, slaves, and prostitutes, who did not have a place in traditional Maltese society. The Knights were sensitive to criticism that their new capital city housed any number of prostitutes, so at the end of his life Grand Master Hugues Loubenx de Verdale contributed 1,000 scudi for the construction of a monastery for penitent prostitutes in Valletta. His successor imported religious women from Sicily to establish the foundation and teach the Maltese postulates the rule of the Repentite.

The Church and the adjoining monastery in 1833.

Let me hasten to add that Malta was not the only location in Europe to establish religious houses for penitent prostitutes. Muscat places Santa Maria Maddalena in its wider European context: the Church's identification of Mary Magdalene as a reformed prostitute, and the establishment of religious houses for penitent women, called Repentites or, in English, Magdalenes. Ideally, these houses, which frequently followed the Franciscan tertiary rule, allowed former prostitutes to repent and reform to a new life. Santa Maria Maddalena accepted former prostitutes, poor women, and women of illegitimate birth, all of whom would have been barred from other convents in Malta. This generosity led to male authorities dumping women there against their will. The Inquisitorial courts sentenced suspected witches and other female malcontents to the monastery of Santa Maria; the Bishop of Malta placed pregnant girls there; families and guardians forced women and girls to profess as nuns within its walls. The monastery also confronted accusations that its walls contained the mistresses and paramours of the Knights. Muscat relates some of these stories, and devotes a chapter to the Azzopardi brothers, who were accused of conducting an affair with a young nun in 1782.

An early photograph showing the interior of the Church
of Santa Maria Maddalena

Most Magdalene communities were poor, and their inmates were considered of low social status. This changed in 1602 for Santa Maria Maddalena, when Pope Clement VIII gave the house the rights to one fifth of the goods and estates of deceased prostitutes in Malta. This gave the monastery a steady source of income, which it invested in properties and in movable wealth. The wealth transformed the monastery, and it became the home of wealthy and entrepreneurial women. Muscat reproduces some of their wills, together with other documents illustrating life in the monastery. It ended with the French in 1798, who appropriated the monastery's wealth and disbanded its members. Most of them became part of the community of Saint Catherine's monastery, where the last died in 1846. The monastery was destroyed by bombs in 1941. What remains is an intriguing story of a female community of former prostitutes and professed nuns, and how these women survived in a society that was bent on controlling them.

Image sources:
http://www.quddies.com.mt/churches/571/Santa-Marija-Maddalena/Valletta
http://www.malta-canada.com/churches-chapels/Valletta.htm

My Dinner with Ademar

2014-02-01T13:16:00.002-06:00

Lately, I've been spending a lot of my free time with Ademar Dupuis.

For starters, I don't know much about Ademar Dupuis, not even if that is his name. He's also gone by Merri Dupuis, Mary Dupuis (!), and Ademar du Puy. I think he's from Auvergne, in France, but even that is debatable, as you'll see in a minute.

Before you start thinking I'm way too old to be so foolish over a man, Ademar is even older than I am. He died around 1521.

Those of you who were expecting cheap thrills can go to some other blog now. Ademar's attractions are linguistic. He loved to talk and tell stories, and the biggest thing that ever happened to him was the Turkish siege of Hospitaller Rhodes in 1480. I'm not sure, though, that he was present at the siege. The Abbe Vertot and Kelly deVries (hi, Kelly! how ya doing?) both think he was an eyewitness. I think, though, that Ademar was very coy about his experience. He says:

"...Je Mary du Puis gros et rude de sens et de entendement Je vueil parler et descripre au plus brief que Je pourray et au plus pres de la verite se lon que Je peu veoir a lueil. Et peu de temps apres ce que ledit siege fut oste ou leve et aussi pareillement en ce que Je nay ouy parler raconter et aussi pareillement tesmoigner a plusieurs qui y ont este presens et qui ont tout veu tant chevaliers que aultres gens de la ville."

("I, Ademar Dupuis, awkward and ignorant of meaning and knowledge, will say and write in brief as near to the truth as I am able, according to what I have seen with my eyes. And likewise what many others told me a short time after the siege was lifted, knights as well as townspeople who were also present and witnessed it.")

You see, Ademar does tell good stories that no one else does -- it is from him we learn one of the first casualties of the Turkish bombardment was a vat of good wine -- but his narrative is based upon a widely-circulated Latin account written by Guillaume Caorusin, the vicechancellor of the Order of the Hospital who we know was present. Ademar could have arrived soon after the siege, among the reinforcements, and seen for himself the damage and destruction. He could have picked up a few good stories. And then he could say that he wrote about what he saw with his own eyes.

We know about Ademar's account from René Aubert de Vertot, (frequently cited as the Abbé Vertot) who reprinted it in his History of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem 4 volumes (Edinburgh, 1757). Vertot described his source as an old book, written in Gothic text. There was, otherwise, no other record of Ademar, making his account a lost book or manuscript. I found, however, that two copies exist, both in the Bibliothèque nationale de France: Le siège de Rhodes (Lyons: Printer of l'Abusé en court, about 1481) and La siege de rodes (Oudenaarde: Arend de Keysere, 1482). The titles should clue you in that they're not written in the same language. The copy printed in Lyons is written in southern French, and the copy printed in Oudenaarde is written in northern French, which, in the 15th century, were two separate languages. Which version did Ademar write? I don't know. I don't even know which version Vertot used, because he "modernized" the spelling, punctuation, and corrected Ademar's grammar.

Ademar went on to become the Prior of Auvergne, and he died in 1521, just before the Knights lost Rhodes in another siege and came to Malta. His book was forgotten until the 18th century, when Vertot recovered it and reprinted the text. It's not unusual for only one copy of an early printed book to survive. Many editions are lost, especially short accounts of current events like the 1480 Turkish siege of Rhodes. Think of these types of incunables as the blog posts of the 15th century

Sliema Wives and Maltese Women

2013-11-18T11:04:00.000-06:00

I was walking down Republic Street in Valletta when I was stopped in my tracks by a book in the window of the Agenda Bookshop:

Not to be confused with Real Wives of the Jersey Shore

It's a non-fiction book, not a reality-TV program. Sliema Wives is written by a Maltese (man) based on the idea of an American (man) named Chad Kingsly, who's nominated five women to be Woman of the Year. Only one can win. Readers are promised real-life deep dark secrets, scandals, betrayals, rivalry, plastic surgery, and, lust. But no sex. Just lust.

All the online comments I've found are quick to condemn the book as trash. The comments write that real Sliema wives don't live that way. Both men and women are quick to judge the women in the book by their appearance on the cover, but acquaintances of the five women in the book say they (the women in the book) never dress that way when they (the acquaintances) see them. I must agree, I haven't seen anyone walking around Malta in red satin, and I don't know where you could buy any on the island. Maybe there's a shop in Sliema.

Despite the almost universal condemnation, the book is a number 2 best seller in Malta. I hope the Sliema wives are getting a cut, especially the fully-dressed woman in the back who looks embarrassed to be there.

But it got me thinking about what I knew about women in Malta. I know some modern Maltese women, but I realized I knew very little about the historical role of women in Maltese society. I can recite the history of the Knights of Malta, I know anecdotes about the Maltese Inquisition, I can discuss population growth, settlement patterns, domestic and imported architecture, food, painters, and the list goes on, but what about Maltese women? There's a major gap in my knowledge that must be addressed.

See, even trashy books serve a purpose.

Malta Photos

2013-11-01T16:48:00.002-05:00

I was going through my old files looking for cat photos, of all things, and found these photos instead. I took them in Malta in 2004. They show Marsaxlokk Harbor, the facade of Castille (now restored and a completely different color), an eye carved on one of the watchtowers in Senglea overlooking the Grand Harbour, the Red Tower, and, finally, the cat photo that I took in Lija in 2003.

A panorama of the harbor at Marsaxlokk, Malta

The Auburge of Castile

The Auburge of Castile, detail

An eye, carved on a watchtower in the Grand Harbor, Valletta

The Red Tower, Malta

The cat photo I was looking for the whole time, taken in Lija in 2003.

Queen Victoria and the Pigeons

2013-07-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

Just outside the entrance of the National Library of Malta in Valletta sits Queen Victoria, enthroned with crown and scepter, wearing a shawl of Maltese lace and any number of pigeons. This is how she looked when I first visited Malta back in the 90's:

The Queen and the Bibliotheca, both the worse for wear. (photo take ca. 1998)

I'm not the only one fascinated by the statue. The little queen has many fans, even though most of the time her image is obscured by the umbrellas of the cafes. Unfortunately, her most devoted followers today are pigeons.

This wasn't always the case. The white marble statue, sculpted by Giuseppe Valenti, was dedicated in 1891 to commemorate the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Victoria had never been to Malta, and her Golden Jubilee had already taken place in 1887. But the queen had ordered something like 192 pairs of Maltese lace gloves and one Maltese lace scarf to encourage the local lace industry. The people of Malta took her to their collective heart and raised money to erect the statue in a prominent public place, now called Republic Square. It was at the center of civic life.

Public mourning the death of Queen Victoria in Malta. File photo from the Times of Malta, taken in 1910.

But the war, pollution and pigeons took their toll on the statue. By the end of the twentieth century, it was a filthy eyesore that some saw as a monument to colonialism, while it reminded others of their youth. The restoration of the facade of the National Library, which began in 2007, only served to emphasize the statue's decay. Fortunately, Din l-Art Ħelwa raised money for a full restoration and cleaning of the statue in 2011. The result is a gleaming white statue. As we say in the States, Her Majesty cleans up nicely.

Statue of Victoria, photo taken 9 June 2013

No comment yet from the pigeons, who still lurk nearby.

The statue in situ.

Sources:

The Victorian Web: http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/misc/victoria/valente2b.html

The Man who Went to Malta:

http://themanwhowenttomalta.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/queen-victorias-statue-in-valletta/

Din l-Art Ħelwa

http://dinlarthelwa.org/properties/historic-landmarks/the-restoration-of-the-queen-victoria-monument-in-valletta/

George Cini, "Queen Gets a Good Scrub in Valletta" http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110330/life/queen-gets-good-scrub-in-valletta.357385

Hospitaller letters, papal bulls, and why my Kalamazoo paper isn't getting finished.

2013-03-26T15:52:00.000-05:00

At this moment I'm working on my paper for the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, "Issues of Textual Authority: Additions, Emendations, and Glosses on the Statutes of the Order of the Hospital." This involves identifying the manuscripts containing copies of the statutes and looking at them for annotations, underlined passages, manicules (those little pointing hands you see in the margins of manuscripts) and other evidence of human interaction with the written text.

Over the weekend I was culling texts from Delaville le Roulx's Cartulaire, noting which documents are in the Archives of the Order in Malta, which are in Marseilles, Archives des Bouches-du-Rhône, and which he copied from other published editions. I got distracted by two documents dated 1119-1124:

1. Raymond du Puy, Master of the Order of the Hospital, solicits donations from all the prelates of Christendom following the death of Gerard.
2. Calixtus II solicits donations for the Hospital in Jerusalem on behalf of Raymond du Puy.

The five-year span assigned to both documents was curious, and it's unusual to have such an imprecise date for a papal letter. I should have passed them by, because neither document pertains to the statutes or the the rule of the Order of the Hospital. What piqued my interest, though, was that both documents are found in two manuscripts. One is currently in the library of the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl (which the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library had microfilmed in 1967); the other is currently in the Austrian National Library (which HMML had microfilmed in 1968). Neither library is a major depository of Hospitaller archival documents, but microfilms of both manuscripts are literally under my feet. There's no excuse for me not to take a look at them.

I unravelled Delaville le Roulx's citations to determine if he ever looked at the original or if he relied on a published edition. In this case, he reprinted the documents from Philip Jaffe's Monumenta Bambergensia, which is volume 5 of the Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum (1869). There happens to be a copy next door in Alcuin Library (there's also two on archive.org, bless them).

Jaffe's publication is illuminating. Both manuscripts are collections of model letters, compiled by Ulrich of Bamberg in the 12th century. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Ulrich, who died in 1127, compiled several collections of model letters to educate chancellors and statesmen. The two manuscripts that contain the Hospitaller letters wound up in Cistercian monasteries. One remained in Zwettl; the other eventually found its way into the imperial Austrian library, now the ONB.

First up: Zwettl 283

Zwettl 283, p. 324. The beginning of Raymond du Puy's letter is in the middle of the page, underlined in grey.

Zwettl 283, p. 325. The end of Raymond du Puy's letter is at the top of the page. The capital "D" on the first line is the beginning of Calixtus II's letter, which takes up half the page.

Now Wien, ONB 398, f. 145:

ONB 398, f. 145. Raymond du Puy's letter is halfway down column 1; Calixtus II's letter is halfway down column 2.

The same hand wrote the two manuscripts, but the formats are slightly different. The Zwettle codex is in one column, with no physical separation between the different texts. The Vienna codex is in two columns, with the start of each text indicated by two-line initial letters. I'll take Jaffe's assessment that it's a 12th-century script, and I will note that it is heavily abbreviated.

Even though I know for sure that the two texts date from the 12th century, I'm less certain about their authenticity. Philip Jaffe stated his doubts about the Calixtus letter in the Monumenta Bambergensia and in the Regesta Pontificum Romanorum (no. 7089). Despite such obvious textual corruptions as Calixtus referring to himself as the "Lord Pope," however, Jaffe thought that the contents of the letter was valid. Right now I don't agree. Jaffe may not have read Paul Riant's "Inventaire critique des lettres historiques des croisades," (Archives de l'Orient Latin [1881] 1:1-224) which assesses the authenticity of crusader letters based upon various criteria. He may not have known about Heinrich Hagenmeyer's Epistvlæ et chartæ ad historiam primi belli sacri spectantes qvæ svpersvnt ævo æqvales ac genvinæ Die kreuzzugsbriefe aus den jahren 1088-1100 (1901), which takes an even more rigorous approach to rooting out fake crusader letters. For Hagenmeyer, any letter that does not survive in its original format is dubious. Furthermore, any dubious letter that displays flagrant examples of corrupted text should be marked with buoys and bullhorns as a hazard to historical navigation.

Jaffe, who knew papal letters inside and out, was doubtful about the Calixtus letter because he was familiar with the correct chancery format. If the papal letter caused doubts in such an experienced scholar, what should we make of the letter of Raymond du Puy? We know so little about the products of the early Hospitaller chancery. We don't know how they would have composed such a letter, or why. And, if Raymond sent such a letter to all the prelates in Europe, why would only one man in Bamberg make a copy of it? Why didn't the Order's nascent European priories copy it? Furthermore, why didn't any of the Hospitallers save a copy of Calixtus's letter for themselves? They saved other papal letters that were useful for them.

Admittedly, I haven't gotten much further today with my goal of establishing how medieval Hospitallers experienced the text of their statutes. If anything, I've muddied the already murky waters of the origin and development of the Order. I must go back and focus on Delaville le Roulx.

900 Years of Faith in Action: 1113-2013, The Bull of Pascal II

2013-03-14T16:18:00.000-05:00

The exhibit will be coming down in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. In case you missed it, here is a look at the ten panels. You can enlarge them by clicking on the image, or visit the Picasa web folder.

Exhibit Design: Rachel Witt
Photography: Mary Hoppe, Wayne Torborg, Theresa Vann
Text: Theresa Vann

900th Anniversary of the Order of Malta

2013-02-20T15:36:00.000-06:00

Warning: contains traces of medieval history and Latin.

Last weekend my colleague Erin Lonergan and I were the guests of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta Western Association for their 900th anniversary celebration of Pie postulatio voluntatis. I've been preparing the Malta Study Center's exhibit about the bull for this event. The exhibit is now on display in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and, despite what I wrote last week, the Blessed Gerard is still there. It was explained to me that once he was installed he didn't want to leave. A likely story, and if this were the middle ages the Knights of San Francisco would raid the Knights of Los Angeles to get him back.

At the opening of the exhibit, from left to right: Jeffrey Littell, KM; Theresa Vann, Ph.D.; John Dunlap, KM and member of the Sovereign Council; the Blessed Gerard (in the open box in the case); Marchese Gian Luca Chiavari, KM and Receiver of the Common Treasure; and Antonio Sanchez-Corea, KM, member of the Sovereign Council. I'm smiling a smile of relief.

Father Eric Hollas, in his after-dinner remarks, told us that the Aljazeera news agency had filed a story about the 900th anniversary liturgies held at the Vatican on February 9th. The story focused on the historical evolution of the Order from crusaders to volunteering medical and disaster relief. You can watch the piece yourself: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/02/201329195753214201.html#.USJKeWJDa8E.facebook

Acting on the theory that news agencies cover events they consider relevant, I looked to see if the Order is doing any relief work in the Middle East. I found that in 2012 the Order of Malta has provided aid to more than 20,000 displaced Syrians in Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon, and in January planned an expansion of relief aid to help an additional 10,000 refugees survive the winter. I guess that's relevance enough for the editors of Aljazeera.

Out of curiosity I browsed the Internet to see the coverage the news media gave the 900th Anniversary. Aljazeera was not the only news agency to cover the event. National Public Radio's Sylvia Paggioli filed a similar story from the Vatican, and she mentioned the Order's relief efforts in Syria:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/08/171506669/knights-of-malta-celebrates-900th-anniversary-at-vatican

In the United States the American associations of the Order run soup kitchens, free clinics, homeless shelters, and provide relief aid for national disasters. In addition, NPR listeners know about the connection between the Knights of Malta and The Maltese Falcon, so the story was well worth the air time.

The Nation, the English-language newspaper of Kenya, covered the event and quoted Benedict XVI's comments to the Order:

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/world/Pope-receives-Knights-of-Malta/-/1068/1689926/-/ct29x9z/-/index.html

In 2011 the Order supported over 43,000 drought victims in north Kenya. Last year it began a three-year initiative to help nomadic peoples there prepare for drought. Kenya is the gateway for the Order's aid to other parts of Africa. Kenyans would be very familiar with the Knights.

In the United Kingdom the Order is better known through its affiliate, the St. John's Ambulance. Also, the Grand Master, Fra' Matthew Festing, is British. The BBC covered the anniversary in Rome (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21397225) and wrote an additional story explaining the Order's history, mission, and sovereign status: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21396696.

American news coverage was not as complete as the Beeb's. The Order is little known in the United States. ABC carried the AP report on the event (http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/vatican-celebrates-knights-maltas-900-years-18448884).

The New York Times ran a photo.

CNN had nil.

Finally, I checked Fox News and found http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/02/09/knights-malta-noble-order-would-be-sovereign-state-marks-its-00-years-with/

The headline alone opens up realms of speculation: "Knights of Malta, noble order, would-be sovereign state, marks its 900 years with Vatican Mass."
Wow. That's a long time to be affiliated with anything, let alone a Vatican Mass.
Maybe the lede will explain the story: "The Knights of Malta, one of the most peculiar organizations in the world, is marking its 900th birthday with a colorful procession through St. Peter's Square, a Mass in the basilica and an audience with Pope Benedict XVI."

I don't know what the Fox News editors were thinking. Perhaps they want the Order to send them disaster relief.

Jerusalem, 900 Years Ago Today

2013-02-15T12:35:00.001-06:00

Today I’m in Los Angeles for the opening of an exhibition "900 Years of Faith: 1113-2013, The Bull of Pascal II. I (aka "The Malta Study Center") curated the exhibit, which is sponsored by the Western Association of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta (aka "The Knights of Malta"). The exhibit commemorates the 900^th anniversary of the bull Pie postulatio voluntatis (see previous post). The exhibit is at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (free admission!) and will be up until March 15th. Do stop by if you're in the area.

The high-resolution digital image of the bull is the centerpiece of the exhibit. The original bull is on exhibit at the National Library of Malta this month. The National Library of Malta is also issuing commemorative stamps. Do stop by if you're in the area, admire Maroma Camilleri's exhibit of the bull, buy some stamps, and support Oliver Mamo's work.

Just for today, and today only, a relic of the Blessed Gerard will be here in Los Angeles. Gerard was the founder of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem (the original name of the Knights of Malta). The relic is a very, very, very, very small fragment of bone from his skull, which today is venerated at the Ursuline convent in Valletta, Malta.

Brother Gerard today.
Relic located at the Monastery of St. Ursula, The Jerosolimitan nuns, Valletta.
Disclaimer: The entire skull of Br. Gerard HAS NOT traveled to L.A. The relic on view in L. A. today is a microscopic fragment of the skull that will be displayed in a liturgical setting. The Malta Study Center exhibit DOES NOT contain any human remains.

The Malta Study Center exhibit contains digitized images from its collection that show what Jerusalem was like 900 years ago. It was extremely difficult to find images of the Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem. We know it was located right by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the district now called the Muristan. The only building still extent is a 5th-century Byzantine church, which was already standing when the Hospital was founded sometime in the middle of the 11th century.

The Apse of the Church of St. John the Baptist, Jerusalem.

The front of the church has been extensively restored, but if you traipse through the streets of the Muristan, you can find the unrestored back of the church. Now, 5th-century Byzantine churches are admirable, but there's nothing here that speaks of the size and the scope of the 11th-century Hospital. So the Venerable Order, the Grand Priory of the British Realm (aka St. John's Ambulance) placed a marker nearby.

Commemorative stone marking the site of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Jerusalem.

This stone serves a useful purpose. Now, visitors coming to Jerusalem are informed that there was a Hospital of St. John, it was located nearby, and they may photograph the stone in lieu of any surviving buildings. The Venerable Order also indulged in some shameless self-promotion by informing the passer-by of their more recent charitable works for the people of the city. And, as my students would observe, they carved it in English so everyone could read it.

I didn't include the monument in the exhibit, and not because of rivalry between the Western Association of the Knights of Malta (Americans) and the Venerable Order (Brits). The monument presents one interpretation of the Order's history in Jerusalem. I wanted a more archaeological approach. I turned to the work of Denys Pringle, who has published a multi-volume corpus titled The churches of the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. Volume 3 contains the churches of Jerusalem. Pringle has published archaeological surveys of the Muristan, historic 19th-century photos that the British Palestine Exploration fund took of the remains of the Hospital, and descriptions of the four churches (yes, four) that made up the Hospitaller complex.

The earliest surviving drawing of the Hospital dates from the late 15th century.Bernhard von Breydenbach, a canon of the cathedral of Mainz, journeyed to the Holy Land in 1483-1484 with a large retinue that included the printer and engraver Erhard Reuwich. Reuwich drew from life each of the major cities where Breydenbach stopped on his journey. He made prints from his work and published them with Breydenbach’s description of his pilgrimage. Reuwich drew Jerusalem as seen from the Mount of Olives. The Dome of the Rock, labeled the Temple of Solomon, is in the immediate foreground (colored yellow). The Church of the Holy Sepulcher lies beyond, to the right of the Dome of the Rock (colored blue). The remains of the Hospital are located immediately to the left of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (colored red). The Latin caption translates as “The hospital in which pilgrims coming to Jerusalem were placed.”

Erhard Reuwich, Detail of a print of Jerusalem. Published in Bernhard von Breydenbach, Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctum (Pilgrimage to the Holy Land), printed in Mainz, 1486.

The Muristan, view from the south-east. Photograph by H. H. Kitchener, 1874, for the Palestine Exploration Fund. The buildings of the Hospitaller complex continued to house pilgrims through the 16th century, although the buildings were not maintained and they fell into ruin. In the 16th century the Sultan quarried the buildings to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and in the 19th century dressed stones from the Muristan were re-used to build the Church of the Redeemer. This photo records the appearance of what appears to be the kitchens of the complex (tinted red). Beyond is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tinted blue.

Archaeological plan of the Muristan, from Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Volume 3: The City of Jerusalem

The archaeological plan shows the size and the complexity of the Hospitaller complex, which could house 1,000 male patients and an unknown number of female patients. During times of emergency, such as after a battle, the Hospital could take care of 2,000 patients. The complex had to take care of the physical needs of a large number of people, so the kitchens, service areas, latrines, and cisterns take up a good part of the area. The only surviving part -- the little church of St. John the Baptist -- is located in the lower left hand corner of the plan.

Warning! Contains Latin. Google Translate and the Knights of Malta

2013-01-07T14:25:00.000-06:00

Originally posted January 25, 2011, on www.hmml.org

Google Translate added Latin to its free, on-line translation service on September 30th 2010. Just for fun, on October 1st I tested it with the Malta Study Center’s most recent acquisition: an early 16th-century letter that Grand Master L'isle Adam sent to the Duke of Milan. The letter introduced Fra Scipio Cocopazzi as the Order of the Hospital’s new receiver in Italy. The results were more bizarre than anything I perpetuated in high school Latin class.

I fed Google Translate my Latin transcription and got back gibberish, especially where the program recognized enough words to attempt an English sentence. Thus the name “Frater Scipio de Coconato” became “A brother of Scipio, Coconato;” “Hominem siquidem nos anse ipsius adducti virtutibus et nobilitate” became “For indeed, we man a goose of the virtues and the nobility;” and the date “Melite die iiiia Aprilis M D XXXIIII” was translated “Melite, the day of the fourth man therefore 500 of April 1000.”

There are Latin dictionaries and translation programs on the web. One of my favorites is William Whitaker’s Words, a free on-line Latin dictionary that can also be downloaded as a DOS prompt stand alone program (online: http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe, also http://archives.nd.edu/latgramm.htm). I find the DOS version particularly helpful deciphering words or abbreviations in archives that lack internet access. QuickLatin, a translation tool based upon Words, allows a thirty-day trial period. Both Words and QuickLatin are intended as teaching aids, to help students studying classical Latin figure out what the text says. Google Translate’s attempts to interpret the sentence for you, however, always seemed more suitable to business and net applications. Can’t read that German website? Google will translate it for you. Need to write business letters in Spanish? Google translate produces workmanlike results. But Latin? Why would anyone who wasn’t flunking Latin Grammar 101 need an application to translate Latin web pages?

Well, some people do use Latin on the internet. The official Vatican website offers Latin as one of its languages (http://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_index.html). There is a “Living Latin” movement, which uses Latin as a living Romance language. There is even a Latin edition of Wikipedia, Vicipædia Latina (http://la.wikipedia.org/ ) which has over 47,000 articles (source: “Latin Wikipedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Wikipedia, consulted 18 December 2010).

Oh, yes, Fra Scipio. After I shared my initial results online I learned that this was the "alpha" version of Google Translate, which was continually being improved and updated by its initial users. So I tried again, and found that Google Translate had indeed changed to the point that it almost made sense before it descended into gibberish. For example, instead of “We man a goose,” the program returned “For indeed, we a man before his virtues and the nobility of being led by their fond of one great height.” The closing “et felicite Deus conservet” was rendered as “have a happy God, able to conserve them.” The most notable improvement was at the end, where the program recognized the date as 4 April 1534.

However, Google Translate introduces a strange subtext. It cannot comprehend context, so, for example, the machine translation of "altitudinis" is "tallest." Thus Master L'Isle Adam describes Fra Scipio’s height as his chief virtue ("beloved by all because he is tall") and the Master recommends him to the Duke because he is the tallest knight available. This would make sense if L’Isle Adam were writing to, say, Fredrick William I of Prussia (1688-1740) who obtained tall men by any means possible for his regiment of giants. But "nobleminded," "profound," or "trustworthy" would all make better sense of the text.

The truth is, throwing Google Translate a 16th-century formal Latin letter when it’s being trained on Vicipædia Latina is not the best test of its abilities. A Latin secretary, not L’Isle Adam, would have composed the letter to the Duke of Milan. The secretary would use the most graceful, elegant, and artificial Latin at his command to impress the Duke and his court. Fra Scipio had established himself in the Order as a solid administrator, a man able to improve failing Italian commanderies and thus increase the revenues of the Central Convent in Malta. His promotion to receiver required him to collect the revenues from the Order’s extensive Italian properties and send them to the Common Treasury in Malta. He would need the support of the Duke of Milan to succeed in his job. But other rulers had found willing servants in the Order’s receivers because they were trustworthy men who understood accounting.

Thus the letter introduces Fra Scipio as one of the Order’s most accomplished soldiers, and devout; the letter assures the Duke that the Fra is worthy of admittance to his court; he can inform the Duke of the conditions of the Order; and that he enjoys the trust and confidence of the Master:

Frater Scipio de Coconato, commendatarius de Inverno unus est nostris militibus ornatissimus, et celsitudim vestre (sicuti et nostri omnes) addictiss: quartuor adhuic mensibus huc venit, multis quidem nomnibus commendatus ille nobis, sed in primis altitudinis. Vester litteris, quibus nihil non tribuimus. Hominem siquidem nos ante ipsius adducti virtutibus et nobilitatem amabamus vehementer: et nonnullum senserat amoris nostri signum: sed acceptis ex:tie vester. litteris, iam nobis charior esse incepit: amoremque amore: ac beneficium beneficio in gratiam caelis. Vester. cumulavimus. quemadmodum is planius coram singula narrabit, cum nostro etiam, ordinisque nostri statu, et conditione, si quid forte ista audire Iuvet, Altitudo Vester nos rensque nostras omneis pro more suo quem commendatissimos semper istic habebit Quam duitissime valentem et felicite Deus conservet. Melite die iiiia Aprilis M D XXXIIII.
**********************************************************************
Update January 3 2012:

In the first version of the blog, I did not provide a complete Google Latin translation, nor one of my own translations. In the interest of fairness, here's what Google Latin translate spewed forth today:

Coconato brother of Scipio, commendatarius Inverno is one of the most accomplished of our soldiers, and your highness (like that of all our) addictiss: He came hither quartuor adhuic months, the names of many he recommended us but in the height of the first. Your letters, which we attribute to no. We loved and the nobility of man before his virtues induced by violently: and some felt our love sign: but receive one from: your team. literature, and now began to be dearer to us: the love of love, and the benefit of the benefit into the grace of the heavens. Your. upon it. Shall it be told as it more clearly, the presence of each, also with our, our ordinisque the state and the condition of, or what if this pleases you to hear, your depth of all our rensque for us there is always more, whom I will have commendatissimos How duitissime worth a God preserve and success. Fourth day of April 1000 34 500 Melite.

Some felt our love sign? Sounds like a lyric from an eighties power ballad.

############################################################################################################

January 7, 2013
I'm cleaning things out, and I see that this blog still hasn't been reposted. And, since my good colleague has cleaned out the HMML website, the original version is gone. So here it goes. But, by happy coincidence, I can also see if Google Latin has improved in a year. What do you think?

Brother of Scipio Coconato, commendator of Inverness is one of our most distinguished soldiers, and your height (just like ours all) addictiss: quartuor adhuic months he came here, he was recommended to us by name, even many, but particularly high. Your letters, do not assign to which there is nothing. For we have been led to a man before his acts, and of the nobility was very fond of one another: felt, and even some of our sign of love, but receive one from: your tie. literature, we have already started to be dear, and love of love, kindness and generosity in favor of heaven. Clothing. amassed. as it will tell the individual level before, with our also ordinisque our state, and the condition, if any chance to hear such a delight for all our usual rensque us your height in there which is always commendable to have a vigorous and successful duitissime God preserve. Fourth day Melite April 1000 500 34.

You know, I think my original interpretation two years ago was right -- they were obsessed with size!

Wrestling with the Papal Bull

2012-12-28T16:28:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: this post has no bearing whatsoever upon the modern-day Vatican. A papal bull is any document or edict that the pope seals with a lead seal. The lead seal is known by the Latin word "bullum" (which also means a bubble, an amulet, or a knob). The English language shortened the word "bullum" to "bull." The medieval popes did not foresee that English would eventually replace Latin as a major international language, nor that in 2013 "bull" would be better known as the first word of a two-word phrase.

Last month I mentioned Pie postulatio voluntatis, the papal bull that Paschal II issued in 1113 recognizing Gerard's hospital for pilgrims in Jerusalem, in my post on the murky origins of the Order of the Hospital. 2013 is the 900th anniversary of the document, and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta is gearing up for the celebrations. I am curating a traveling exhibit about the bull and the early days of the Order in Jerusalem. The centerpiece of the exhibit is going to be a high-quality digital image of the original bull, provided by the National Library of Malta.

Despite the high-quality digital image, Paschal's bull looks like Grand Master Jean de la Vallette folded it up and carried it in his pocket all through the Great Siege of Malta in 1565:

Pie postulatio voluntatis, courtesy of the National Library of Malta

As you can see, the document shows water stains, abraded ink, and holes along one of the fold lines. It has survived intact because it was written on parchment, which is the preserved skin of a sheep, goat, cow, or perhaps an actual bull.

Although the document is damaged, the text has not been lost. It has been copied over and published in printed editions many times. Therefore I intended to create a didactic that would explain to the viewer exactly what they were looking at. For example, today the first eight words look like this:

Below is my transcription, created with the help of the text Joseph Delaville Le Roulx published in his Cartulaire général de l'Ordre des hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem, 1100-1310 (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894.) The square brackets identify the missing letters:

PASCHA[LIS EPISCOPUS SERVUS SERVOR]UM [DEI] VENERABILI FILI GIRALDO

(Bishop Paschal, Servant of the Servants of God, to his beloved son Gerard)

Four words have disappeared from the eight words Paschal needs to write "Dear Gerard" in Latin.

I continued comparing what's left of the charter with the text in the Cartulaire, and I noticed that somebody corrected the spelling and added punctuation. It was typical of 19th- and early 20th-century editors to "correct" the Latin, although it is not accepted practice now. The editor also added or omitted some small words, and I had to make editorial decisions. I had to decide if Delaville le Roulx saw words that had since been erased, and I wondered how the charter looked when he saw it. But then I looked closely at his edition and I realized he never did:

Delaville le Roulx's sources for Pie postulatio voluntatis

Usually editors list the oldest version of a document first, and give precedence to the original (if it survives). Delaville le Roulx gave precedence to the 14th-century copy that Juan de Heredia collected in the Cartulario Magno. You have to go down to the fifth line to see that our bull, the one I'm working over, was "lost"! ("aujourd'hui perdu").

Short rant here. Delaville le Roulx collected and published all the Hospitaller charters that predate the year 1310, and his work is the standard. But, but, but, I don't think he ever visited Malta to see the archives for himself. And if he did, he didn't stay long enough to make new transcriptions. Or if he sent an assistant to do it for him, the assistant cheated him.

The transcriptions of charters from the Archives of the Order of Malta from the National Library of Malta published in Delaville le Roulx's Cartulaire are copied from Sebastiano Paoli, Codice diplomatico del Sacro militare ordine gerosolimitano oggi di Malta (In Lucca: Per Salvatore e Giandomenico Marescandoli, 1733-1737). And Paoli had seen the original bull:

Paoli, Codice dipolomatico ("Of the papal bulls present in the Archives of Malta, these few are printed, which serve to illustrate the deeds of 'Knights of Jerusalem in Syria...")

Paoli gives no indication of the condition of Pie postulatio voluntatis, and his transcription implies an intact document. I could have gone to Bosio, at this point, to see if he mentioned the holes (maybe he carried it around Rome folded up in his pocket?) but instead I turned to another manuscript copy of the bull in the Archives of the Order: AOM 1126, the sixteenth-century bullarium formerly known as ms 1118.

I find that it's slightly more reliable than Delaville, but it contains one whopper of an error. Let me direct your attention to the honking big holes created when somebody folded up the bull and damaged it. Those holes obscure one of the most commented-upon parts of the bull, the European place names that Paschal recognized as part of the Hospital in Jerusalem and thus exempt from local episcopal authority. This is how it looks today:

The second line reads: ...[i]noccidentis partibus penes bur[gum] [GIANT HOLE] Asten[se] Pisam Barum ydrontum |

According to the printed texts and the 16th-century copy, the GIANT HOLE gobbled up the words "S. Egidii." The English translations of the Latin place names are St. Gilles (S. Egidii, located near Marseilles), Asti (Astense), Pisa (Pisam), Bari (Barum) and Otranto (ydrontum). With the exception of St. Gilles, all these places are Italian seaports. The 16th-century copyist, however, transcribed "ydrontum" as "Hispanium," thus laying claim to the entire Iberian peninsula! Talk about finding loopholes in your papal bulls.

(Edited 1/2/2013 to include image of the giant hole)

The Origins of the Order of the Hospital (With Video)

2012-11-21T13:17:00.000-06:00

Among the treasures of the National Library of Malta is the original papal bull that Pope Paschal II sent to Gerard, the provost of a hospital for pilgrims located near the church of St. John in Jerusalem, on 15 February 1113. The bull (so-called because it once carried Paschal’s seal, and the Latin word for seal is “bulla”) placed Gerard’s hospital under the direct authority of the papacy and prevented any local authorities, either ecclesiastical or lay, from interfering with its members or its activities. The pope’s bull promised that when Gerard died the brethren of his hospital could select the next provost, and that they could keep all the properties in Europe and Asia that had been given to the hospital in Gerard’s lifetime. At the close of the bull, just before the list of witnesses, Paschal listed seven houses in Europe that at that time were already under the authority of Gerard and his Jerusalem hospital: St. Giles, Asti, Pisa, Bari, Otranto, Tarente, and Messina.

Paschal’s bull, known by its first words “Pie postulatio voluntatis,” established Gerard’s hospital as an independent religious foundation. The privileges Paschal conferred upon Gerard and his brethren allowed them to develop into one of the first international religious orders, with headquarters located in the Latin East and members from western Europe. It became known as the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and its brethren as the Hospitallers.

The Order of the Hospital existed, however, before the year 1113. According to legend, Gerard was the provost of the hospital when the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem forced him to assist in the defense of the city when the armies of the first crusade besieged it in 1099. Gerard, seeing that the Christian army was hungry, threw bread to the crusaders outside the walls. Miraculously, the bread turned to stone when the Muslims accused Gerard of aiding the enemy. They abused Gerard terribly, but he survived the siege and immediately began to solicit donations for his hospital from the crusaders.

Documentary evidence proves Gerard’s organization received at least twenty donations of lands and money located in western Europe and Jerusalem between 1099 and 1113. Godfrey of Bouillon, the crusader who captured Jerusalem and ruled it under the title of Defender of the Holy Sepulcher (because, he said, there was only One King of Jerusalem) gave Gerard a village sometime between 1099 and his death in 1100. Godfrey’s younger brother, Baldwin, who had no scruples against calling himself King of Jerusalem, confirmed that gift and all the other donations that Gerard and his hospital had received in Jerusalem in 1110.

What more we know about Gerard and his hospital comes from the pen of the late 12^th century historian, William, Archbishop of Tyre and Chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. William, author of the chronicle History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, wrote that merchants from Amalfi, Italy, established a Benedictine monastery next to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem before the crusaders came to Jerusalem in 1099. Modern historians think this happened sometime between 1036 and 1094. This monastery, known as St. Mary of the Latins, operated a hospice for pilgrims under the administration of one of the brothers.

The 12^th-century Hospitallers wrote the least credible accounts of their own foundation. In collections of miracles and legends that were copied into manuscripts of the rules and the statutes, the Hospitallers traced their origins to Judas Maccabeus; claimed Zachary, father of John the Baptist, as one of the governors of their hospital in Jerusalem; and named Christ and his Apostles as frequent visitors. These accounts survived in the Order’s archive to lead later historians astray. Thus William Caoursin, the 15^th-century vice chancellor of the Order and a man who should have known better, embraced Judas Maccabeus as the founder of the Hospital.

On Wednesday, 14 November 2012, I gave a talk at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library about the history of the origins of the Order of the Hospital. Saint John University's Alcuin Library video'ed the talk and posted it on their Digital Commons site. It's about 45 minutes long:

http://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/hmml_lectures/6/

Or go straight to YouTube below:

The Malta Story

2012-08-16T16:15:00.001-05:00

"Another Great Performance in the Alec Guinness Hall of Fame!"

The cover of my DVD of the movie, and the source of the above quote.

No. No, sorry, it's not. This 1953 movie was released on DVD in 2011 by VCI Entertainment, a company that specializes in the release of "classic" British films. Classics like Alistair Sim in "A Christmas Carol" and "Doctor at Large." The sort of black and white classics my oldest brother Frank would watch Saturday afternoons on the color TV, and this dialogue was repeated every week in our living room:

Mom: Why are you watching that crap? (sorry, Mom, but that is what you said)
Frank: It's not crap! It's a classic!
Mom: It's a grade B movie! Why don't you watch something good, something in color!

And it went on from there. I don't recall if Frank watched "The Malta Story"; I only heard of it myself this year, and I finally got around to watching it this summer.

Another version of the DVD cover

Alec Guinness is the nominal star of the film, but don't watch it for him. (Sorry again, Mom.) Sir Alec is sadly miscast as the romantic hero. He could have played it if his character remained an eccentric archaeologist type, who inadvertently gets his wish to visit Malta's megalithic temples when he was stranded there en route to Cairo in 1942 to join his unit. His character, Peter Ross, gets appointed the new aerial reconnaissance pilot on the island, and gets into trouble when he wastes precious fuel following train tracks. Turns out he finds proof that the Fascists are shipping gliders to Sicily, which is bad news for Malta. They could have gone with that, but no, they had to throw in a love story for Peter Ross, and Sir Alec just didn't know how to handle it. At times I found myself shouting at the screen Lord Larry's advice to Dustin Hoffman in "Marathon Man" -- "Why don't you just act, for crying out loud! It's easier!"

No, the star of the film is Malta during the second World War. This is the film to watch if you've visited the National War Museum in Valletta and want to see actual newsreel footage of the bombing, the air raids, the destruction, and the aftermath. The director, Brian Hurst, skillfully blended archival footage with scenes he shot in Malta and at Pinehurst Studios. He made good use of his location shots in Malta. I'm pretty sure the production crew used the Lascaris War Rooms, particularly the tunnel outside the entrance. (I don't suppose NATO let them use the Sector Room with its plotting table for filming, but the set sure looks like they did.) They filmed in Valletta, in the countryside, and at the temples, too.

Some of the on-line commentators describe the film as a documentary with a love story, and I think that is the best description of the movie. It explains, in simple narrative format, Malta's strategic importance, the position of the British forces on the island, the difficulties of supplying Malta with food and fuel, and the extreme privation that the Maltese people suffered during the war. Malta had to import food and fuel by ship, and like any siege, the enemy tried to prevent its arrival. This is the real drama -- will the convoys get through? Will the tankers make it in time? When will the British be forced to surrender the island or let the people starve?

Alec Guinness chastely kisses Muriel Pavlov in The Malta Story.

The love story exists to present Maltese ambivalence about British rule in wartime. Muriel Pavlov plays Maria Gonzar, who has two brothers: one serving in the King's Own Malta Regiment, the other interned in Italy until he returns to Malta to spy against the British. Not for the Fascists, mind you; against the British. Flora Robson plays their mother like she's in a different movie, a Russian one perhaps, full of symbolism and suffering. Flora's character is supposed to be Mother Malta herself, who endures so much woe for the sake of her children. (No wonder Sir Alec looks so uncomfortable when she asks him his intentions towards her daughter!)

No, don't watch it for Alec Guinness. If you're a fan of British actors, watch it for uncredited glimpses of Peter Bull, Rosalie Crutchley, Maurice Denham, Gordon Jackson, and others. Watch it for Jack Hawkins, worrying about his Spitfires landing safely; watch it for the heroic arrival of the Ohio receiving full military honors as it limps into the Grand Harbor; watch it for the authentic glimpses of Malta during its last great siege.

Some related links:
The Malta Story at IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046029/
VCI Entertainment: http://vcientertainment.com/
Heritage Malta, National War Museum: http://www.heritagemalta.org/museums/warmuseum/warmuseuminfo.html
Fondazzjoni Wirtartna, Lascaris War Rooms: http://www.wirtartna.org/Default.aspx?tabid=2483

Bloody Script

2012-06-29T12:18:00.000-05:00

People ask me what I do at HMML. Sometimes it's hard to explain.

Kufic
Maghribi
Naskh

You see, a good part of my job is overseeing an ever-growing monster, the Library's on-line manuscript catalog called OLIVER. OLIVER is named for Oliver Kapsner, one-time librarian at Saint John's University and HMML's first field director. Many years ago he wrote a letter to the new librarian, Mike Kathman (now retired) complaining that a computerized library catalog could never replace the card catalog. Oliver Kapsner is dead now, and HMML named its electronic catalog after him.

Nastaʿlīq
Ruqʿa
Taʿlīq

I've worked with and on HMML's manuscript database since its beginning years ago. That's years of design, data entry, web delivery, edits, corrections, and fixing entries. At first we hired student workers to do the data entry from the microfilm inventory cards written in German, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, French ... they did their best to get the city, library, shelfmark and project number right, then shoehorned the rest wherever it might fit. Today there are 97,877 manuscript records in Oliver, which contain over a quarter of a million texts. New records from Malta and the Eastern Christian Cataloging project are added weekly.

Script, Malayalam
Malayalam

The past two weeks I've focused on the Script field, which is located in tablemspart. We're creating a Lexicon for a new online project, currently called Manuweb. The purpose of Manuweb is to move manuscript teaching and research from our Marcel Breuer-designed underground bunker into the e-world. The Lexicon of manuscript terms is only one part of the project.

Script, Roman
Anglo Saxon
Majuscule
Minuscule

It's time, I think, to add the scripts to the Lexicon. Did you know that the names of scripts are not standardized? There is no consensus among paleographers what to call a script. And I suspect that no one at ISO is going to jump on the project of standardizing medieval manuscript names. I decide to start with the names of scripts that are already in OLIVER, because they're in a number of different languages and were cataloged by many different paleographers. I should get a good sampling.

Script, Roman
Latin
Anglican, Anglicana
Bastard
Baroque
Bastard, Bastarda, Batârde, Batarda

I sort the records by Script and find over 3,000 records with something entered in the field. I copy and paste just the script names into an Excel spreadsheet, sort alphabetically and start eliminating duplicates. Almost immediately I run into problems.

Bastard
Anglicana
Cologne style
Cursive

No, not bastards. Tedious corrections of "almost right" mistakes. The Script field is for the name of actual scripts, but for centuries carefree catalogers have written descriptions without naming names. For example, there appears to be a German script called "eine Hand" (one hand); the OLIVER database, however, has a separate field for the number of scribes. Or an Ethiopian manuscript is "in a crude hand" (which I am sure is not the name of a Ge'ez script). The most tedious are the number of manuscripts apparently written in a script called "Schrift und Kunstwerke" (Writing and Decoration).

Gothic
Gothica hybrida media
Gothica libraria textualis formata
Gothica semi-quadrata formata
Gothico-antiqua

Tübingen's Indic collection is the biggest headache. It was cataloged in German; the inventory cards were typed in German; the manuscripts are in Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, and Malayalam. The languages, according to the OLIVER records, are Devanagari Script, Latin, and Sarada Script.

Minuscule
Alemannic
Caroline, Carolingian
diminutive
early
late

I see the records are all entered by the same student worker, who graduated ten years ago. There are 23 records whose language is Sarada Script and 277 records showing Devanagari Script. 103 records say the language is Latin. I return to the original catalog, R. Roth's Systematisch-alphabetischer Hauptkatalog. Verzeichniss der indischen Handschriften (Tübingen, 1899) and check each record. I determine the language is Sanskrit, and I correct each record. I decide to leave the Latin ones for another day because they encompass all of Tübingen's collection of eastern manuscripts, which means checking all the Tübingen catalogs

Script, Syriac
Estrangela
East Syriac, Madnḥāyā
Melkite
Serto

After two weeks work I have a list of 235 scripts used to write 14 alphabets from HMML's manuscript collection. I have cleaned up and standardized the Script field in 2,793 records. I also have a good list of adjectives, too, that paleographers use to describe scripts:

Bold
Crude
Angular
Looped
Sharp
Schooled
Pretty
Beautiful
Bloody Scripts

Deodat de Gozon and the Dragon of Rhodes

2012-06-15T15:30:00.001-05:00

I got this email this week. Read it for yourself:

I work for a production company in London and we are currently working on a programme for the National Geographic Channel about the history of dragon mythology. One particular story we will be focusing on will be the legend of Dieudonne de Gozon and the dragon of Rhodes.

De Gozon was a knight of the Order of St John when the Order was at Rhodes and was made grand master a while after his legendary defeat of the ‘dragon’ .

We are going to be filming on location in Rhodes and also at the Museum of St John in London.

Pamela Willis at the Museum of St John suggested that we got in touch with you as she has been reading through the writings of Bosio and thinks that he mentions the Council of the Order, as he was put in front of the council due to disobeying the Grand Master’s ban on challenging the ‘dragon’. Would it be possible for you to locate the relevant Council Minutes for his disciplinary, following his battle with the dragon?

It would be fantastic and much appreciated if you are able to give me any information about this.

If you need any other information from me, please let me know.

Kind regards,

Becky

I love that story. Other than St. George, how many actual historical figures are credited with slaying a dragon? Deodat (Dieudonne's Latin name) de Gozon really lived. The dragon incident was attributed to the year 1342, while Helion de Villeneuve was Master of the Order. And, as I regretfully wrote Becky, there are no records of the Council of the Order earlier than 1459. The magisterial bulls, which might have mentioned the exploit, start in the year 1346, when our hero Deodat became master. So there's no historical evidence for the story.

But the story exists, and it's repeated by some very credible sources. Giacomo Bosio devoted pages to it. So did the Abbe Vertot, although he had to have gotten the story from Bosio. The story, much abbreviated, is that a dragon took up residence in a cave near a marsh at the foot of St. Stephen’s mountain close to the city of Rhodes and, as is the nature of dragons, proceeded to terrorize the inhabitants. It ate sheep, cows, and the occasional shepherd. Hearing of this, several brave knights of Rhodes went to slay the dragon, as brave knights are wont to do. Being brave, they went one by one, ignoring the excellent advice on this t-shirt:

Available from www.buzzymultimedia.com

Alarmed at the number of knights who were becoming dragon fodder, the Master of the Order forbade anyone else from approaching the cave. Gozon, however, had an idea (or he wanted to impress the master -- it depends upon who is telling the story). He went back to France where he trained his dogs to attack a fake dragon. Having succeeded in teaching his dogs this useful skill, he returned to Rhodes with his dogs and took them to the dragon’s cave. The rest is the stuff of myth. The master, instead of punishing Gozon, rewarded him. The people of Rhodes celebrated him. When the Master died, Deodat de Gozon nominated himself to succeed him because he was the bravest knight he knew, and had a dead dragon to prove it.

Great story. It's a pity to debunk it. But that's what I do.

There's no contemporary record supporting the story. The earliest written accounts date from the 16th century, and first appeared in printed form in Giacomo Bosio's history of the Order. Bosio gives the story credibility by repeating the speech that Gozon made in 1346 when he nominated himself to be the next master. Bosio, who was so reliable on other things, took this story not from the archives but from a 16^th-century manuscript history of the Order entitled Historia de la sacra religión y milicia de San Juan Bautista de Jerusalén, en la que se contienen los hechos de los grandes maestros y religiosos, desde su principio y fundación hasta el año 1553 by Fra Jean Antoine Foxa (or Johannes de Foxa, or Juan Antonio de Foxá ).

This manuscript was never printed, which is a shame, because I bet Juan had lots of good stories that would make great television programmes (sic).

Joseph Delaville le Roulx researched the story thoroughly and established, long before I ever came along, that there was no historical basis for Deodat and the dragon. This made him sad, I think, because it suggests that the Hospitallers and Bosio made things up from time to time. Besides, he pointed out, there was a woods in Rhodes known as the Dragon's woods, and therefore there must be something to it. Delaville le Roulx offered three hypothesis to explain the story, the most exciting one being that an actual crocodile somehow made its way to Rhodes, where Gozon's specially-trained dogs dispatched it. The other two are slightly more dull: an oddly-shaped rock in the landscape might have inspired the story of a dragon slain by a heroic knight of old, and the story somehow became attached to Deodat de Gozon; or the Gozon family had a bezoar or a stone that had the miraculous property of curing snake bites. The dragon's body became the source for the family's miraculous bezoar.

F. W. Hasluck, however, was not impressed by Delaville le Roulx's arguments, even the place-name evidence. The Dragon's woods, he argues, referred to a previous owner's nickname and not to an actual reptile. Instead, he focused on Gozon's trip to France to train dragon-fighting dogs, which he says is unique to the story. He pointed out that there were numerous festivals in medieval France which featured a staged combat between an armed knight and a fake dragon. He suggests that the story could have come to Rhodes from France, and that Foxa, a relative of Gozon's, affixed it to his famous relation.

So, shucks. It's pure fiction. Darn. Time for another t-shirt:

Never tickle a sleeping dragon. Available
from http://gotees.spreadshirt.com/

Stuff I read to write this:

Giacomo Bosio's Dell'Istoria della sacra religione et ill.ma militia di San Giovanni Gierosolimitano di Iacomo Bosio parte .... 1. (Roma: Stamperia Apostolica Vaticana, 1594.

Joseph Delaville le Roulx, Les Hospitalliers a Rhodes (Variorum reprint, 1974), pp. 104-106

F. W. Hasluck, "Dieudonné de Gozon and the Dragon of Rhodes," The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 20, (1913/1914), pp. 70-79
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30096465

Abbe Vertot, The History of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem (Edinburgh, 1857), vol. 2.

Love and Marriage and Death in the World of Placido Abella

2012-04-05T14:37:00.005-05:00

The Auberge of England, built ca. 1533.

Placido Abella was a notary. In 1557 he practiced his profession in Birgu, the "new city" of Malta. The "old city" of Mdina was the stronghold of the Maltese aristocracy, and Valletta had not yet been built. The Knights of the Order of the Hospital chose to establish their convent at the site of the Castle by the Sea, an old Norman fortification on the tip of one of the peninsulas jutting out like fingers into the Great Harbor. The Knights modernized the Castle and fortified the fishing village clustered under its walls. There they built their auberges, infirmary, and other buildings along narrow, twisting streets lined with small Maltese houses. Birgu of the Knights was small in scale. Today, it is a very charming place to visit.

The Episcopal Palace, purchased in 1542.

The business of the Knights kept Placido Abella busy in the years 1557 and 1558. His register contains over 300 separate items, such as wills, inventories, contracts, agreements, transactions, depositions, and court testimony. He worked for a tribunal that Grand Master Jean de la Vallette appointed to decide civil cases involving Maltese citizens. On October 2nd, 1557, Placido recorded the testimony leading to a decision in a case of disputed inheritance heard before two judges, the knights Fra Alfonso Correa and Fra Jacobo de Santo Johanne.

Notarial Archives of Malta, R4, vol. 1, f. 2r. Placido had very nice handwriting!

I'd like to know more about the woman who testified before him that day. There, second line from the bottom, last two words on the line, is her name: Grace Gaulitana. Below is a closer look at the document, with her name underlined. She told Placido the story of her life up to that point, and Placido took her words and translated them into Latin formulae for the court.

The last name is written on two lines; that "=" sign is the hyphen. The Latin is very emphatic: "uxor relicta quondam hon rodorici calleya," which literally means "The honorable woman Grace Gaulitana, the left-behind wife of the now dead honorable Roderick Calleya." The Latin doesn't pull any punches, does it? "Relicta" is the root of our modern word "derelict."

Grace was the widow of the late Roderick Calleya. They met while they were both held captive in the city of Constantinople. I'd want more information at that point, but Placido doesn't record why they were captives in Constantinople. Maybe he didn't think it was so unusual. Turkish pirates raided the Maltese islands regularly and stole people to enslave or hold for ransom. Only six years earlier, in 1551, Dragut Reis and his fleet had raided the Maltese islands and kidnapped almost the entire population of Gozo, some 5,000 people. Grace's last name, Gaulitana, means she's from the island of Gozo. She and Roderick may have been two among the many.

They fell in love and married in Constantinople. Well, I think they loved each other, because after they were ransomed they repeated their vows before the Bishop of Malta, who confirmed the marriage. They had a daughter, Marietta. Grace was pregnant with another child when Roderick died intestate. Now Roderick's father challenged Grace for Roderick's movable goods, claiming that by law they belonged to him to settle Roderick's debts. The movable goods were the furniture and the household items, like the bed she slept in, the pots she cooked in, possibly even the clothes she wore. Several clues suggest that these items could have been quite valuable: Grace and Roderick had been ransomed by their families (captives from poor families remained in slavery); both Grace and Roderick were entitled to the honorific "honorable"; and both families retained legal counsel and went to court, something that even then required considerable sums of money (Grace was represented by her relative, the honorable Michael Damphasino of Gozo).

Grace testified that she was Roderick's legal wife and entitled to his estate. Now it becomes clear why her testimony begins with her captivity in Constantinople. Normally, two families that wanted to merge arranged marriages for their children. The families drew up a contract that itemized what the bride brought to the marriage, what the groom would give her, and what belonged to the widow or the widower. But Grace and Roderick arranged their own marriage. Before the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church permitted couples to marry by exchanging vows with each other before consummating the marriage. They was no need for a priest, or even witnesses. Parishes did not record marriages until after the Council of Trent. Parish registers in Malta began recording baptisms, deaths, and marriages in 1587; the first recorded baptism in Gozo was in 1554. So Grace testified that in Constantinople she and Roderick exchanged vows, followed by "carnali copula" (sexual intercourse). They then cohabited as husband and wife. After their return and the Bishop's confirmation of their marriage, they continued to live as husband and wife. Everyone recognized them as a married couple. When Marietta was born, Roderick acknowledged her as his natural and legitimate child.

The two knights ruled in Grace's favor, permitting her to keep the goods but requiring her to settle Roderick's debts. These came to eight scudo and some change, plus the expenses of Roderick's funeral. The scudo was the highest-value silver coin the Order minted, but I haven't found the purchasing power of 16th-century scudo.

That's all I found of Grace's story. There are no corroborating details in the Acta of the Magna Curia Castellania. The year 1557 is missing from volume 1, which contains the years 1543-53, 1559-62, and 1565-66. Placido's last register is dated 1591. He would have experienced the return of Dragut in 1565, the Great Siege, and the subsequent construction of Valletta on the Sciberras peninsula across the Great Harbor. He was long dead when Axis bombers destroyed many buildings in Birgu and damaged his own registers.

Stuff I read to write this post:

NOTM R4, vol. 1, ff 2r-3v
Lino Bugeja, Mario Buhagiar, and Stanley Fiorini, Birgu: A Maltese Maritime City. 2 vols. Msida: Malta University Services, 1993.
Frans Ciappara, Marriage in Malta in the Late Eighteenth Century. Malta, 1988.
Stanley Fiorini, "The Resettlement of Gozo after 1551." Melita Historica 9 (1986): 203-240.
Horatio C. R. Vella, The Earliest Church Register in Gozo, 1554-1628. Malta, 2010.

Not books, but very useful:

http://www.agius.com/birgu/links.htm. A directory of links about Birgu, maintained by Raymond Agius. Last updated March 2012.
http://birgu.gov.mt/content/history/77. Web page of the Birgu Local Council, with a good history section.
"A Walking Tour of the Cottonera: Vittoriosa-Senglea-Cospicua." A free pamphlet from the Malta Tourism Authority, and much better at identifying historical buildings than Google maps.

Update: This cat is a descendant of a cat that knew Placido Abella!

Dwarf Elephants are Adorable!

2012-03-08T11:43:00.002-06:00

Skeleton of an extinct dwarf elephant. Abela saw bones

similar to these found elsewhere in Malta and assumed

they proved that giant Cyclops built the temples.

Photo: Jean-Christophe Benoist,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GharDalam-ElephantNain.JPG

I’ve plunged into Maltese prehistory for no better reason than I think dwarf elephants are adorable. Never mind they’ve been dead for thousands of years. Just look at these specimens on display in the Għar Dalam Museum in Malta, and just tell me that you wouldn’t love to have an elephant as big as a mastiff but without the slobber. On the other hand, the dwarf elephants may have lacked the intelligence, loyalty, and good nature that mastiffs exhibit in their natural habitat on the living room couch. If you’re leery of tusked creatures, dwarf hippopotamuses the size of a Shetland pony also roamed pre-historic Malta. But they might be as fierce as Thor, the Demon Pony From Hell, at Mississippi View Farm. I don't even want to think about the giant dormice.

The giant Maltese dormouse was as

big as the Għar Dalam Museum cat,

shown here. Makes you think, doesn't

it?

We know about the prehistoric mammals of Malta because their bones were preserved in the Għar Dalam cave near Birkirkara. The origins of the cave (Għar means “cave” in Maltese; despite modern folk etymologies, the name means “Dalam’s cave.”) date back to the Pleistocene era, about two million years ago. Northern Europe was in the grip of the Ice Age, but Malta and the Mediterranean were undergoing millennia of heavy rainfall. Rainwater leached into the limestone, gradually eroding a long underground tube that burrowed across the Wied Dalam (Wied means “valley” in Maltese) near the modern town of Birzibbuga. Far above ground, a river flowed over the cave at a right angle, taking the shortest route to the nearby sea. Gradually, the river eroded meters of rock and breached the cave. The river breached the cave long after it was formed, maybe a million and a half years later. This event flooded the cave and washed thousands of animal carcasses into it. It did not flood the entire cave; the layers of bones extend about 75 meters into the cave. The erosion continued, taking with it the middle of the cave and leaving the two ends facing each other in the cliffs high above the valley the river created. One end is Għar Dalam, and is open to the public; the other end is not.

In the Għar Dalam Museum gardens, looking down towards

the Wied Dalam. Somewhere, down there, is the entrance

to the cave.

Evidence for dwarf specimens of full-sized African mammals is found on other Mediterranean islands. The current theory is that the elephants, hippos, deer, and dormice meandered the dry Mediterranean basin before it refilled with water at the beginning of the Pliocene era (5.4 to 2.4 million years ago), leaving them stranded on the islands that remained above sea level, such as Sicily. There they evolved, or devolved, becoming smaller as the species adapted to living on an island with less amounts of food and water. The animals migrated to Malta and Gozo at various times during the Pleistocene era as the sea levels rose and fell (about ca. 781 to 126 thousand years ago). Compare that time scale with the earliest evidence for human inhabitants in the cave, which dates to about 7,500 years ago. Which leads me to conclude that, alas, the earliest inhabitants of Malta did not coexist with dwarf elephants.

The Maltese have known about the cave for some time. Giorgio Francesco Abela’s Descrittione di Malta (1647) briefly mentions a very spacious cave called “Għar Dalmau.” Within historical memory the cave was used as a cattle pen, an air-raid shelter, and as a fuel storage depot during World War II. The cave wasn’t “discovered” as an archaeological site until an Italian, Arturo Issel, visited the site in 1865. Apparently Issel was more interested in mollusks and Liguria, and I’ve not found any of his publications on his work at Għar Dalam. This began a long tradition of archaeologists working in Għar Dalam and neither publishing their excavations nor documenting their discoveries. The result was reports of anomalous findings, such as Issel’s reported discovery of human bones together with a hippopotamus bone that had the marrow extracted. Could this be proof that humans had hunted hippos on Malta? Without either the report or the artifacts, hearsay accounts of Issel’s excavations does not prove humans settled on Malta 126,000 years ago.

At last, you're looking in the mouth of the cave. See all those lights in there?

Just think, people lived here without lights on top of layers of animal bones.

Yes, it is a good thing you weren't living then.

The next anomalous finding occurred in 1917, when George Despott received the princely sum of £10 from the British Association to excavate prehistoric sites in Malta. Despott (that’s Despott with two t’s) was Curator of the Natural History Museum of Malta, then located in St John Street opposite the Co-Cathedral of St. John in Valletta. According to a 1908 Baedeker guide to Southern Italy, the oldest items in museum’s collection were Phoenician and Punic architectural fragments and objects found in tombs in Malta and Gozo. Most of Baedeker’s readers, who visited Malta on day trips from Sicily, were probably more interested in “Lord Grenfell’s collection of Egyptian antiquities,” on the museum’s first floor, which surely contained a mummy or two.* But Despott was part of a team of scholars at the Museum, headed by Sir Themistocles Zammit, who were excavating sites on Malta and Gozo that turned out to be some of the most important prehistoric sites in the Mediterranean. That summer, Despott sank his money into three trenches at Għar Dalam. The most exciting find was, of all things, a bull-shaped or “taurodont” human tooth. This is a human tooth with a big “body” and almost non-existent roots. Arthur Keith read Despott’s reports on the teeth and concluded that they showed the existence of Neanderthals in Malta, which meant that humans lived on the island some 24,000-30,000 years ago. Later examination, however, showed that the teeth were actually about 7,500 years old, and belonged to Neolithic humans. Although Despott did not find Neanderthals, he still discovered the oldest evidence for humans on Malta.

From inside, looking out. It does look like you're inside a giant mouth, doesn't it?

The Natural History Museum sponsored other excavations in Għar Dalam, but lacked a place to store and exhibit all the artifacts. Apparently, at the beginning of the 1930s, the specimens were stored at the entrance to the cave (although I can’t determine if this meant in the cave itself). The Għar Dalam museum, with its wonderful old-fashioned display of bones arranged by shape, size, and species, was opened in 1933. Heritage Malta opened a new museum in 2002 which explains the cave and its contents to modern children. It’s worth a visit, even if the only thing you take away is a desire to domesticate a dwarf elephant.

* Lord Grenfell’s Collection is currently housed at the Bournemouth Natural Science Society, Dorset, UK. Apparently, in its present state, it contains no mummies. (http://www.bnss.fslife.co.uk/museum.html)

You can read my blog post, or you can read the didactic posted at the cave. Or both, or neither. It's up to you.

Stuff I read to write this post

Baedeker, Southern Italy and Sicily: with excursions to Malta, Sardinia, Tunis, and Corfu; handbook for travellers (Google eBook). K. Baedeker, 1908.

Anton Bugeja, “Dr J. G. Baldacchino and his Archaeological Bequest to St. George’s Parish Church, Qormi (Malta),” in Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 18: Punic Antiquities of Malta and other Ancient Artifacts held in Private Collections, 2. Peeters, 2006.

G. Despott, “Excavations conducted at Għar Dalam (Malta) in the Summer of 1917,” in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 48 (1918): 214-21.

Idem, “Excavations at Għar Dalam (Dalam Cave), Malta,” in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 53 (1923): 18-35.

A. van der Geer, G. Lyras, J. de Vos and M. Dermitzakis, Evolution of Island Mammals: Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands, Blackwell Publishing: 1^st edition, 2010.
Graham Hancock, Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization. Three Rivers Press, 2002. Hancock devotes an entire chapter to explain how the Maltese government and scholars are determined to conceal the taurodent teeth of Għar Dalam in order to conceal the Neanderthal origins of the Maltese. His source for the excavation history of Ghar Dalam and the fate of its artifacts is A. Mifsud and Simon Mifsud, Dossier Malta: Evidence for the Magdalenian. Malta: Proprint Company Limited, 1997. I have not been able to consult this book.

Arthur Keith, “Neanderthal Man in Malta,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 54(1924): 251-60.

David Trump, Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Midsea Books, 2002. This is part of the Heritage Malta series of guidebooks to the history and heritage of the Maltese islands. I also recommend their website, which is almost as good as being there in person:

Godfrey Wettinger, Place-Names of the Maltese Islands ca. 1300-1800. PEG, Malta, 2000.

St. Paul's Shipwreck

2012-02-21T16:32:00.001-06:00

St. Paul’s Shipwreck (For the Feast of St. Paul, February 10th)

Last week part of my Medieval Mediterranean class focused on St. Paul’s shipwreck, as set forth in the Acts of the Apostles (If you need to refresh your memory, here’s the text from Acts 27-28:10, from the New American Standard Bible, courtesy of the site Biblegateway : http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2027-28:10&showxrefs=no&version=NASB

Paul shakes off the viper into the fire.

Woodcut by Bernard Salomon (1510-1561), from Biblia Sacra (Lyons, 1558).

Arca Artium Collection, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Collegeville, MN.

It is a short story with many nuances: the privileges of Roman citizenship (Paul, as a Roman citizen, has the right to be judged by the emperor); the dissemination of Christianity along Roman trade routes (Paul, his friends, and his custodian Julian the Centurion travel in merchant ships before embarking on the large Alexandrian grain ship en route to Rome); and the danger of winter travel in the Roman world (the powerful wind, the storm, and the shipwreck). The story, however, omits the influence of the shipwreck upon the people who rescued Paul. The Acts tell us that the locals first thought Paul was a murderer when the viper bit his hand; but when they saw the viper did not harm him, they changed their minds and decided he was a god instead. Then Publius, the leading man of the island, welcomed the Paul and the other castaways to his house as guests, where Paul healed Publius’s father. Once word of this deed circulated, all the sick people on the island came to be healed, and when they left, the people gave them everything they needed. That’s all the New Testament says happened.

The Latin Vulgate says the name of the island was Militene, which the King James Version translated as Malta. The NASB also says the island was Malta, but offers Melita as an alternate. Melita could be Malta, near Sicily, or Meleda (also Mljet), off the coast of Dubrovnik in the Adriatic sea. Mljet has had its supporters over the years, (more about that below) but cannot compete with Malta when it comes to the modern celebration of the Pauline cult.

No visitor to Malta today can ignore the prominence of Paul in Maltese society. It is not just the numerous paintings and sculptures commemorating Paul and his shipwreck; at least twenty churches and chapels are dedicated to Paul, including the cathedral church in Mdina and the Anglican Cathedral in Valletta. Four churches commemorate Paul’s arrival on Malta: two churches are dedicated to St. Paul Shipwrecked, one to the Shipwreck itself, and one to his welcome on Malta.

A panorama of St. Paul's Bay. Far left: the Wignacort Tower. St. Paul's island, where the shipwreck occurred, is on the right.

Two closeups: one of the statue of Paul on the island, the other of the ducks in the town of St. Paul's Bay. The ducks mark the location where Paul came ashore.

You can travel to the town of St. Paul’s Bay, located on the bay where, according to tradition, the event happened. St. Paul’s Bay has a chapel named St. Paul’s Sanctuary. Nearby, the church of San Pawl Milqi (St. Paul Welcomed) in Bumarrad was built on the site of a Roman villa, where a chapel has stood since the 15th century. Local tradition (and an Italian Archaeological Mission) identifies this villa as the very one where Publius entertained the company for three days. (Heritage Malta, which maintains the site, is more cautious about the Pauline connection). If you can’t get to St. Paul Milqi, the Church of St. Paul’s Shipwreck in Valletta displays Paul’s right wrist bone and part of the column on which he was beheaded. February 10th, the Feast of St. Paul’s Shipwreck, is a public holiday (but not a national holiday) but if you’re in Valletta you can witness the fiesta of St. Paul’s Shipwreck.

Malta’s devotion to St. Paul and his shipwreck predated the arrival of the Knights in 1530. Jean Quintin’s description of Malta, published in 1536, recorded everything the Maltese people told him about the event. Quintin believed that Paul had been shipwrecked on the island of Melita in the Adriatic, but the Maltese sailors corrected him, explained the route of Paul’s ship and directed him to the very bay where it was wrecked.

Quintin's map, showing a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Paul overlooking St. Paul's Bay, shown here on the lower right side of the island with an arrow pointing away from it. Woodcut, from Jean Quintin's Insulæ Melitæ Descrpitio (Lyons, 1536)

Neither St. Luke nor Jean Quintin

told us that Paul also caused a spring

of fresh water to flow while he was

helping to build the bonfire.

This monument marks the spot;

the water, however, is no longer potable.

Their testimony did not convince Quintin, but he published a map of Malta with his treatise that marks the location of a chapel dedicated to St. Paul overlooking a bay. Quintin also repeats some features of the story that did not make it into the Acts of the Apostles: that Paul was imprisoned in a cave near Mdina for three months before resuming his journey. During this time he healed the sick and converted the Maltese. And, amazingly, all the venomous serpents on the island left with Paul. Not only that, but any venomous serpents that came to the island quickly lost their sting. As a final gift to the people, the saint imbued the stone of his cave with the ability to cure snakebite. Visitors removed chunks of stones from the cave, and miraculously the cave did not grow bigger. Quintin mentioned that the cave, or grotto, contained two altars, which suggests that it was already a venerated site when he visited the island. It seems, however, that the cult at the grotto decreased in importance during the 16th century.

St. Paul's Grotto today.

What happened next was either a simple act of piety or a deliberate attempt to manipulate the faithful. Or, since two different men were responsible, maybe it was both. Juan Venegas de Cordoba, a Spanish hermit, took up residence in the grotto between 1599 and 1624. Juan Venegas was responsible for reviving the Pauline cult at the grotto. The cult attracted donations, and then in 1617 Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt assumed guardianship of grotto. Wignacourt established a college for chaplains to look after the grotto, and appointed Venegas as the rector. Under the patronage of the Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Malta, the Pauline cult centered on the grotto grew in significance. It was beneficial for the Order to have a connection with Paul, who joined St. John as one of the patrons of the Order. Paul became an important model for the 17th-century Church, particularly as a missionary and teacher.

Giovanni Abela, vice-chanceller of the Order, imagined Paul's shipwreck looking something like this.

The ship comes to grief on the shore to the right; Paul, holding a staff, swims to the left shore,

where he blesses the bonfire while the centurion looks on. From Abela, Della descrittiione di Malta (Malta 1647)

Paul shows the location of

Mljet on a map of the Adriatic.

What more proof do you need?

Frontispiece of Ignatius Georgius,

D. Paulus apostolus in mari...

Venice, 1730.

But the stories of Paul’s stay on Malta became more fanciful (my favorite is that the prevailing wind carried his sermons to the island of Gozo, causing its inhabitants to convert as well) and the question of the actual site of his shipwreck never went away. The greatest challenge came from Don Ignatius Georgio, a Benedictine monk on the island of Mljet, who published a treatise in 1730 claiming that Melita was the site of the calamity. Georgio’s scholarly presentation persuaded many prominent academicians, but the Maltese seem to have taken his arguments personally and the initial response was emotional. Eight years later, the Maltese scholar Giovanni Antonio Ciantar published a scholarly refutation to Georgio’s work, and the debate went on through the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century. St. Paul’s shipwreck leaves the historian wondering, not for the first time, which is more important: what actually happened or what people believe happened?

Stuff I read to write this post:

Abela, Giovanfrancesco. Della descrittiione di Malta isola nel mare Siciliano con le sve antichita, ed altre notitie, libri quattro, del commendatore Fra. Gio. Francesco Abela. Malta: P. Bonacota, 1647.

Ignatius Georgius, D. Paulus apostolus in mari quod nunc Venetus Sinus dicitur naufragus et Melitae Dalmatensis insulae post naufragium hospes, sive, De genuino significatu duorum locorum in Actibus Apostolicis: Cap. XXVII. 27. Navigantibus nobis in Adria, Cap. XXVIII. 1. Tunc cognovimus, quia Melita insula vocabatur : inspectiones anticriticae. Venice: Cristophor Zane, 1730. (The title says it all -- you don't have to read the book! In English: The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked in the sea, now called Bay of Venice, and after the shipwreck welcomed at the Dalmatian island of Melite, or, The true significance of two places in the Acts of the Apostles, chap. 27. 27. As we were sailing in the Adriatic, Chapter. 28. 1. Then we have known, because the island was called Malta: A critical inquiry.)

Ciantar, Giovanni Antonio. De B. Paulo Apostolo in Melitam siculo-adriatici maris insulam naufragio ejecto dissertationes apologeticae in inspectiones anticriticas Reverendissimo Patri Domino Ignatii Georgii de Melitensi Apostoli naufragio, descripto in Act. Apost. cap. XXVII. & XXVIII. Venice: C. Zane, 1738. (Again, the title gives away the plot: The Blessed Apostle Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta in the Sicilian-Adriatic Sea, a rational discussion of the Reverend Father Lord Ignatius George's Critical Inquiry of the Apostle's shipwreck on Malta, described in the Acts of the Apostles chapters 27 and 28. Note that Ciantar went to the same Venetian publisher, who must have made a packet from the controversy.)

Modern sources I also read:

John Azzopardi, editor: The Cult of St Paul in the Christian Churches and in the Maltese Tradition//Il culto di San Paolo nelle chiese cristiane e nella tradizione maltese. Malta, 2006. Acts of the International Symposium held June 26-27 2006 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Wignacourt Museum. Msgr. Azzopardi is the curator of the Wignacourt Museum, which is housed in the former college established by the Grand Master to look after the Grotto (see above), and he has a special devotion to St. Paul. This volume contains numerous useful articles, including works by Mario Buhagiar, Stanley Fiorini, Horatio R. C. Vella, John Azzopardi, Thomas Freller and Winston Zammit on the Cult of St. Paul and the Maltese Tradition.

Mario Buhagiar, "The St Paul Shipwreck Controversy: An Assessment of the Source Material." Proceedings of History Week. (1993): 181-213. Published in Malta : The Malta Historical Society, 1997. Available online at http://melita2historica.x90x.net/hw199310.html

Otto F. A. Meinardus, "St Paul Shipwrecked in Dalmatia." The Biblical Archaeologist 39 (1976): 145-147. Available online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/3209426. A modern argument for Mljet, based upon: the testimony of older residents; the number of islanders named "Paul" or some form thereof; the failure of the local tourist industry or the church to promote the Pauline cult; a bay where the wreck may have occurred; the presence of snakes on Mljet; and the absence of any traditional Pauline cult. You don't have to be Maltese to remain unconvinced by these arguments.

Horatio C. R. Vella, The Earliest Description of Malta (Lyons 1536) by Jean Quintin d'Autun. Malta, 1980.

Pirates of the Mediterranean

2012-01-03T16:07:00.001-06:00

(Originally Posted March 18th, 2011)

I have on my desk Molly Greene’s Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Mediterranean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). The title, combined with a cover illustration of a turbaned, mustached seaman holding the tiller of boat, has excited some comment among those of my colleagues who think it impossible for Catholics to be pirates. If they opened up the book and read it they’d be in for a bigger shock, because Greene does not hesitate to label the Knights of the Order of St. John as pirates.

“Pirate,“ like “traitor” and “rebel,” is a word we usually apply to our enemies; our brave sailors are “corsairs.” It is revelatory that most writings about the navy of the Order of St. John use the word “corsair.” Anthony Luttrell explained the reasons why he used a variation of the word, “corso,” in his work:

The Mediterranean world knew many forms of informal naval violence ranging from straightforward piracy to a variety of legalized or quasi-legal activities involving reprisals, privateering and corsairing. The type of corso which developed on Rhodes during the fifteenth century was officially licensed by an established authority, the Master of the Hospital, and was limited, in theory at least though often not in practice, to attacks on infidel enemies of the religious order state settled on Rhodes.

(Anthony Luttrell, “The Earliest Documents on the Hospitaller Corso at Rhodes: 1413 and 1416,” Mediterranean Historical Review 10 (1995): 177.)

Luttrell has researched extensively in the archives of the Order of Malta, and is intimately familiar with the Order’s documentation. Compare his choice of words with those of Nicholas Vatin, who has combed the archives of the Ottoman Turks:

Rhodes, surtout à partir du début du XVIe siècle, fut le coeur de la course/piraterie chrétienne au Levant. Non seulement les Chevaliers et leurs sujets se livraient eux-mêmes à la course, mais le Grand-Maître ouvrait volontiers son port aux pirates, allant jusqu’à soliciter leur venue dans certaines périodes.

(Rhodes, especially at the beginning of the 16th century, was the heart of Christian corsairing/piracy in the Levant. Not only did the Knights and their subjects indulge themselves in the corso, but the Grand Master willingly opened the port to pirates, even inviting them to enter at certain times).

(Nicolas Vatin, L’Ordre de Saint-Jean-de-Jérusalem, l’Empire ottoman et la Méditerranée orientale entre les deux sièges de Rhodes 1480-1522 (Louvain-Paris, 1994) p. 60.)

Vatin’s book concludes that the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent considered Rhodes a nest of pirates lying just off his shores, and that, even more than their religion, was the reason for his subjugation of the island in 1522.

Greene used the records from the Order’s own courts on Malta itself, where many of their victims, Christian Greeks who lived under Ottoman rule, appeared to recover the ships and cargos captured by the Knights. They were, largely, unsuccessful. It was difficult enough for Greek captains and merchants to travel to Malta; they had to pursue their case in a foreign court system and seek damages for goods that had long since been destroyed or sold. It is clear to Green that they are seeking redress for acts of piracy, because the merchants were neither Muslims nor at war with the Order.

Were the Knights pirates or corsairs? The Order’s archives for the period between 1453 and 1480 contain no evidence of Hospitaller piracy. The legislation and statutes specifically barred pirates from entering the port of Rhodes. Nor do they contain linguistic evidence for the “corso.” The magisterial licenses to arm ships against the enemies of Rhodes did not use the word “corso,” but they did who the enemies were: the Ottoman Turks and their Christian allies. The Muslim allies of the Knights (in this case, the Mamluks) were not legitimate prey. This evidence indicates that the Order’s commerce raiders were not carrying on the crusades by alternate means; they served the political needs of the Order.

The pirate/corsair dichotomy is too simplistic to describe the actual situation. But if a historian of the medieval Mediterranean must use either word, the historian should use the same word for all commerce raiders, no matter what their religion. These are the tactics of medieval and early modern Mediterranean naval warfare, disguised as an exercise in semantics.