Some early Maltese medico-legal documents

Abstract

In 1974 I had the opportunity to study and publish a medico-legal report (perizja) by two Maltese physicians appointed as experts by the Bishop's Court at Mdina in 1542. The case dealt with the annulment of marriage of Catherine nee Busuttil with John Azzopardi on the grounds that the latter had a deformed sexual organ which hindered the performance of the conjugal and procreative act. I drew attention to this document because it is the earliest medicolegal report so far discovered in Malta. In my continued search for such documents I have now come across other sixteenth century manuscripts, though of a later date, among the records of the Bishop's Curia of Mdina. The presence of these medico-legal documents in the files of an ecclesiastical tribunal is accounted for by the fact that by 1575 the inhabitants of the Maltese Islands sought to evade the authority of the Grand Master of the Order of St.John, which then ruled over the Islands, by electing to submit themselves either to the jurisdiction of the Bishop or to that of the Inquisitor in both civil and criminal matters.