The Maltese nobility during the Hospitaller period : towards a reappraisal

Abstract

Over the last thirty years the nobilities of early modern Europe have become a subject of major interest for historians working on the social history of the period. This increase in attention has resulted in the development of new approaches to what is a very productive topic of research, in the course of which some established conceptions on the European nobilities have been revised. This paper draws on a number of these new approaches and revisions to suggest ways in which they might illuminate similar research on the Maltese nobility during the Hospitaller period. Through a discussion of the existing research on early modern Maltese society, this paper highlights two broad sets of questions that arise from the study of the Maltese nobility. These questions concern the disintegration of Maltese elites following the arrival of the Order of St John in 1530, and the formation of a new titled elite in the eighteenth century. In the course of addressing the second set of questions, this paper puts forward the hypothesis that the increase in the number of titleholders in the eighteenth century was connected to the contest over jurisdictions and privileges between the magistracy and the inquisition. This paper offers a tour d'horizon of the existing historiography on these topics and draws on some examples from the copious source material that is available for further research.