Apart from parish registers – births, marriages and deaths – and notarial deeds – mostly contracts, powers of attorney and wills – early written records of life and events in the rural villages of these islands prove to be almost non-existent.

Every minor flicker of light serves to illuminate an almost impenetrable darkness. Every mention, even if seemingly insignificant, can be worth salvaging.

The hefty manuscript tomes of governance by the Order of St John deal almost exclusively with internal matters touching the Hospitaller knights, their careers, their discipline, their problems, their organisation, their estates and finances,  and their foreign affairs.

Extremely rarely do they mention a Maltese or a minor locality on the island.

I will today home on three entries in the Libri Conciliorum that break this rule. One refers to Naxxar, and later ones to Bir Miftuħ, Gudja and Mellieħa.

For a historian, these Books of the Council represent both a massive blessing and an exasperating bane. 

They minute, in the skimpiest of language, the deliberations of the supreme Council of the Order – the essential gist of what was decided, usually reduced to one sentence or two. It’s like having an index to a book, but not the book. These deliberations refer to detailed reports, testimonies, documents, etc., on which the decision relied.

Portrait of the renegade Scipione Cicala who converted to Islam and became a renowned warrior and corsair.

But these supporting documents, testimonies and reports have, most frustratingly, disappeared in their entirety. All the historian is left with are tantalising appetisers, and a total prohibition of touching the food on the table.

Take the Naxxar entry, dated October 13, 1598: “At the request of several men from the village of Naxxar who complained of the damages they suffered through the actions of our militia on the occasion of the passing of the Turkish fleet.

The Grand Master and the Council decreed as follows: referred to the Venerable Procurators of our Common Treasury (for action).”

That’s all.

When petitioners happened to be knights or aristocrats, the records would refer to them by their full Christian name, family surname, nickname, when they had any, and rank. Not the Naxxar oafs – they had to be satisfied with collective anonymity.

And, usually, the recommendation of the Common Treasury would then be registered in a subsequent entry. Not in this case. I presume the Naxxarin petitioned for state compensation, but whether they obtained any or were dismissed with an impatient shrug, the scribe did not deem relevant enough to record.

An entry in the Books of the Council which records the petition of some inhabitants of Naxxar for compensation for damages they suffered in connection with Cicala’s 1598 sortie.

Thankfully, another, less constipated chronicle comes to the rescue. It fills in the historical context airbrushed out of the official arid narrative.

And it fits the Naxxar happening into the larger picture of those turbulent times in which a perpetual and programmatic state of armed conflict simmered between the Christian Knights of Malta and the Ottoman Empire, deemed the reign of the Infidel.

Towards the end of September 1598, news reached the island that a flotilla of Turkish galleys under the command of the renowned Christian renegade Scipione Cicala (c.1544-1605) was heading towards Malta. This happened just after the feared corsair had negotiated a highly emotional visit to his mother Laura Cicala in Messina.

The Italian Cicala progressed through a spectacular military career in the Ottoman Empire, for some time occupying the position admiral of the Turkish naval forces and of Grand Vizir. His marriage to a granddaughter of Suleyman the Magnificent and, on her death, to her younger sister, both of whom bore him offspring, consolidated his virtually unlimited power and wealth.

On confirmation of the news of the approach of Cicala, Grand Master Martin Garzes placed the defences of Malta on red alert.

Eventually, the renegade warrior headed for Gozo and landed per fare l’aquata – to replenish the ships’ water tanks. It is curious how the Italian word aquata had its meaning twisted in Maltese.

F’dawk l-akkwati today has lost all connection with water and just means ‘in the neighbourhood of’.

In Gozo, Cicala and his men faced ferocious resistance from the meagre garrison led by the governor, Fra Andrea Capece, when they re-landed in Gozo the following day.

Capece subjected the invaders to an unrelenting cannonade and to skirmishes which left many Turks dead and wounded, with the loss of only one soldier and two mares on the side of the Gozo garrison. Cicala’s forces retreated to their galleys and left.

Portrait of Grand Master Martin Garzes who ruled Malta when the island feared an attack by the Turks under Scipione Cicala.

Garzes’s preparations included his assembly of all the cavalry units, knights and soldiers and marching them to Naxxar, from where they proceeded to Mdina, and the following daybreak, onward to Mellieħa.

Passing through Naxxar, the Christian forces must have caused some damages to the inhabitants, for which they claimed compensation – victims to a sort of friendly fire.

The year 1598 must have been a sad one for Naxxar. Għargħur, that far part of the Naxxar parish, claimed and obtained its independence and became a separate parish under Dun Mattew Xiricha.

The parish priest of Naxxar, Dun Ġiljan Borg, rebelled and would not accept the dismemberment. The matter preyed on his mind and affected his health to the extent that he suffered a mental breakdown. Bishop Tommaso Gargallo relented and reversed the decision. Three years later, Għargħur reverted to Naxxar, if only temporarily.

Dun Ġiljan Borg (1544-1610) personified all the stereotypes of the problematic and turbulent cleric. The Inquisition ordered his arrest and kept him imprisoned for about two years for spreading heresy.

His parishioners gossiped about his affairs with several women of easy virtue, including Marietta from Mosta, widow of Franġisk l-Għawdxi. He denied all charges, even when subjected to torture.

Don Mattew Xiricha (1569-1646), on the other hand, enjoyed a more orthodox profile. He volunteered as a missionary abroad and is said to have been appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Constantinople.

Altarpiece of the old parish church of Naxxar, 1595, by GioMaria Abela. Courtesy of the Mdina Cathedral Museum.

A later ‘Maltese’ entry in the Books of the Council mentioning Bir Miftuħ/Gudja appears more enigmatic still. All it says is: “November 26, 1602.

The knight Fr Jacques Brussin, nicknamed Messon, was condemned to prison (two years buried alive in the underground guva) because he caused a great riot (magno tumultui in toto ei populo) among all the inhabitants of the village of Bir Miftuħ.”

The records of the Order never mention Brussin as a career hospitaller. He must have been one of many Mr Nobodies who left no footprints on the sands of time. How can he have provoked grievous popular disturbances in a quiet rural village, today incorporated in Gudja?

In the seicento, the Order appointed a knight as ‘Captain’ of every village in Malta.

He had to live and sleep in his designated locality, mainly responsible for security, law and order. I do not believe that lists of the incumbents, who changed frequently, have survived. Brussin then served as the Captain of Bir Miftuħ.

In the year 1602, Malta and Sicily were hit by one of the worse famines in history. Even in normal times, Malta was anything but self-sufficient and depended on massive imports of food, mostly grain, cereals and pulses, from Sicily.

In fact, one of the fundamental conditions of the concession of Malta to the Hospitallers in 1530, established their right to buy yearly quotas of consumables from Sicily without paying export duty – the system known as tratte.

The 1602 entry in the Books of the Council referring to the revolt of people of Bir Miftuħ.

In 1602, Sicily too was in the grips of an unrelenting famine and defaulted on its obligation to export foodstuffs to Malta. This gave rise to a major diplomatic and legal confrontation.

The viceroy claimed that by the laws of necessity, Sicily was not obliged to honour impossible commitments. The welfare of Sicily came first. The Order appointed its legal eagle, the lawyer Giovanni Calli, to argue its claims – Malta is itself an integral part of Sicily, so the viceroy’s argument was self-defeating.

The desperate, starving inhabitants of Malta teetered on the verge of rebellion. I can only speculate that the uncouth Fra Jacques Brussin said or did something (suis malis versationibus) that further inflamed the entire population of Bir Miftuħ of which he was captain.

Early references to Mellieħa prove almost non-existent in the formal records of the Order, with rare exceptions that hint to an ancient and venerated shrine of the Virgin Mary.

The historian Dal Pozzo in 1703 had first noted the attachment of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt to that miraculous image: “Being extremely devoted to the Madonna of Mellieħa, although distant 10 miles from Valletta, he rode on horseback early in the morning, almost every Saturday to hear Mass there and, having done so, returned to the city.”

But Dal Pozzo, generally a reliable and accurate historian, wrote a hundred years after the events he is recounting. I found a bizarre, atypical entry in the 1606 Book of the Council that corroborates Dal Pozzo’s narrative.

It records how on August 9, 1606, the Italian nobleman Don Marzio Tagliaferro from Parma breezed unannounced at the Palace to present his proofs of nobility to Grand Master Wignacourt for admission as a knight of the Order.

The Chancery was taken aback: didn’t he know that the Grand Master would be away at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mellieħa? How could Don Marzio expect Wignacourt to summon the Italian Langue from far away? 

The old parish church of Bir Miftuħ where the inhabitants revolted in 1602.

Tagliaferro must have kicked up quite a stink. He insisted that his request be minuted and dated, for the purposes of a future calculation of his seniority should he be admitted, and the patient scribe dutifully complied, not hiding his irritation entirely.

Tagliaferro professed formally two days later, together with three other Italian nobleman, Giulio Cesare Tana, Giulio Bellanti and Ottavio Solaro.

Acknowledgements

All my gratitude to Paul Catania, Jeremy Debono, Vincent DeGaetano, and Louis Scerri.