The Benedictines and Malta : 1363-1371

Abstract

In the later middle ages the small islands of Malta and Gozo were politically and economically dependent upon the Kingdom of Sicily and its Aragonese rulers. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries both islands underwent a process of Christianization and Latinization in which many of the inhabitants were converted from Islam but retained their Arabic speech. Sicilians and Italians established themselves either as settlers or as absentee lay landlords and ecclesiastical benefice holders, but the religious orders were slow to participate in this gradual process. The attempt by a Sicilian widow to implant the Benedictines of Catania on her Maltese estates was therefore of some historical significance, and the controversy it provoked generated a small collection of documents which have survived in the archives of the monks at Catania. Given the scarcity of sources for the fourteenth century history of Malta, these documents provide precious information concerning Sicilian influences and the general development of the island.