The christianization of Malta

Abstract

Christianity first reached Malta through the accident of St. Paul's shipwreck in AD 60. Symbols and inscriptions in the catacombs and elsewhere attest a periodic if not a continuous Christian presence on the island during subsequent centuries. There were probably a number of churches of the Byzantine type, such as the basilica at Tas-Silg, as well as certain centres of cult, notably the well on the Late Roman farm at San Pawl Milqi which was apparently connected with a tradition concerning the Apostle Paul. Indigenous Christianity may have been reinforced by North African, conceivably even by Egyptian or Syrian, Christians fleeing from Vandals, Berbers or Arabs in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, but ecclesiastically Malta and Gozo depended on the Pope in Rome. There was probably a Bishop of Malta by 553 and there was certainly one by 592, when Pope Gregory I was intervening in the affairs of the bishopric. Probably in or soon after 756 Sicily, and Malta with it, passed under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and by then the Maltese church had presumably adopted the Byzantine rite with Greek as the liturgical language. Malta was conquered by the Muslims in or close to 870; its bishop was imprisoned at Siracusa, columns which came from Malta and probably from a church there were exported to Africa, and in all likelihood the native Christianity of the island was more or less completely extinguished. Malta could still be described as "inhabited by Saracens" in 1175. [excerpt]