In the medieval and early modern periods in Europe, November was the month when the living recalled in particular the needs of the dead. Traditionally, this month corresponded with the primeval Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or ‘darker-half’ of the year. The pagan rite of the ‘dying’ was later absorbed by the Christian remembrance of the holy and faithful dead.

Malta was no exception to this tradition. The establishment of the Order of St John in Malta in 1530 cultivated an ever-growing baroque obsession with all kinds of spectacle, which triggered a morbid sensibility to death and a fearful fascination with those who died. This became even more widespread with the Order clamping down on crime through torture and corporal punishment leading to death. This mood was enhanced when in 1574 Grand Master Fra’ Jean l’Evesque de la Cassière invited Pope Gregory XIII to appoint an inquisitor in Malta to guard against the Protestant contagion and the ill deeds of the populace.

These were times when, across European Christian territories, punishment was about reprisal, and about compensation and restoration of social order. The strong analogies between sin and crime and between punishment and penance influenced many gruesome practices. Those who dared commit acts of sedition (crimes against the authority of a state or monarch) were drawn, hanged, beheaded and quartered.

An aerial view of Fort Ricasoli (left), a bastioned fort built by the Order of St John in Kalkara. The same site (right), which prominently faces the entrance to the Grand Harbour, was previously known as Gallows Point. During the 18th century, galley-slaves who tried to escape from their posts were hanged on this spot. The gallows served as a stern warning to crews entering the harbour of the destiny awaiting those convicted of mutiny.

This grisly medieval operation, originally executed on British soil, repurposed arguments about the dying and dead body as an important restorative focus of power in both religious and secular matters. The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged almost to the point of death, emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered, that is, chopped into four pieces.

The traitor’s remains were often displayed in prominent places across the country. This process was reserved for men, since decorum prevented convicted women from this shambling public humiliation. Instead, treatment for women was more straightforward: they were burned at the stake.

Torture and punishment in Malta was similar to practices in other European countries, with a few variations. The dismemberment of the corpse, regardless of race or religion, took the form of beheading, which was then followed by quartering. On some occasions, decapitation gave way to less common approaches to execution, such as stringing up the victim or slitting the throat, culminating in the individual being quartered alive in the Grand Harbour region.

La nuova città e fortizza di Malta chiamata Valletta (based on the work of Matteo Perez d’Aleccio), 1600s, Basel University Library, Switzerland. Detail: The gallows used to be erected just outside the fortifications of Valletta, near the site of the current Girolamo Cassar Avenue.

As in foreign rituals, the dismemberment of the corpse was followed by the parading of the severed body parts, which would generally be hung in elevated locations. These public punishments and executions were tremendous crowd-pullers. Notwithstanding the horror and pity the general populace might have felt towards the convicted, the majority would not forgo the macabre yet unusual occasion of viewing the butchered remains of a human cadaver. Common people were encouraged to attend and witness the events as the aim was to remind the inhabitants of their moral duty to obey the law and thus to deter any wrongdoing.

These public punishments and executions were tremendous crowd-pullers

Be that as it may, these brutal forms of public punishment failed to check the rise of brigandage, a cause of significant social unease in those times which attracted a good deal of attention and which the state made considerable efforts to eliminate. These efforts were seriously hampered by the Church, which offered sanctuary from arrest in churches and filial churches across the islands. State and Church in Malta, therefore, found themselves at loggerheads, sparking off significant political tension.

The age-old practice of sacred places offering asylum to felons has roots in the Old Testament, with people seeking sanctuary in temples. By the fourth century, this practice was institutionalised across Europe and those on the run from the law exercised their right not only on ‘holy’ ground but in some cases, especially in rural buildings, protection was extended to areas surrounding the church including parvises and porticoes. These sanctuaries were especially numerous in the southern region; the north was sparsely populated due to exposure to brutal pillaging, slavery and other dangers.  In the mid-16th century, the right to sanctuary was abolished across Europe. But on this occasion, Malta was an exception to the rule and this privilege was perpetuated till the early 19th century, causing continuous tension between the concerned institutions.

The church dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, known as Tal-Ħlas. The area of Ta’ Ħlas recalls the ruins of an ancient settlement known as Ħerba tal-Ħlas.

A mid-18th century incident in Qormi linked to the filial church dedicated to the Assumption, also known as Tal-Ħlas, was recorded by Grand Master Manoel Pinto de Fonseca in a letter to the Order’s Ambassador in Rome, Fra Laurent Le Tonnelier, Baron de Breteuil.

Pinto recounts that on May 6, 1759, some bandits, while lodging in a filial church on the outskirts of Città Pinto (evidently referring to the Tal-Ħlas church), were bothering the nearby inhabitants. In return, Mgr Bartolomé Rull (in office from 1758 to 1769), Bishop of Malta, commanded his marshals to evict the brigands and escort them to another church. Pinto communicated that this plan encountered an unexpected setback when, upon the arrival of 12 marshals on horseback, the scoundrels opened fire and even wounded some of them before they chased them back to town.

On June 2, the ambassador received further information regarding this confrontation and its aftermath. This was that a total of seven convicts were punished and sent to the gallows. The punishment, as stipulated by law, was a brutal one; following torture, the convicts were decapitated and pillars were erected where the heads and the quarters were exhibited. However, on June 3, during the early hours of the day, one of the bandits who had escaped returned to the scene, dragged one of the pillars down and ran away with one of the severed heads which, reportedly, was found some days later, crushed to pieces, in a well close by.

This episode was regarded as an insult towards both the state (the Order of St John) and the Church (the Bishop’s Curia). Consequently, in 1762, the Maltese Curia definitively revoked ecclesiastical immunity from churches across the islands. The multitude of sacred edifices offering sanctuary across Malta and Gozo was now seen as misguided, an element that undermined public safety and civil stability. Thus, marble inscriptions with the warning “Non Gode l’Immunità Ecclesiastica” (does not enjoy ecclesiastical immunity) were affixed on church façades, warning malefactors who sought refuge that they would not be safe there.

This radical change in the way ecclesiastical immunity was perceived did not come about simply because of the Tal-Ħlas events. Almost a century before, on two occasions (1656 and 1671), the Order of St John had already recommended that the number of churches granting sanctuary be decreased, but nothing had come of it.

Moreover, the 18th-century church building boom, with new sacred buildings emerging across the islands, made the matter more serious. In 1757, some years prior to the Tal-Ħlas incident, Bishop Rull, in reply to the Order’s memo regarding issues of immunity in Maltese and Gozitan churches, remarked that he shared Grand Master Pinto’s reservations. He found no objection and considered Pinto’s demands necessary and just.

As a result, in 1760, the Holy See reduced the number of churches granting immunity to a restricted few. Following this, on January 10, 1762, Rome issued further orders to the Maltese Curia. Citing the 1741 concordat between the Holy See and Naples, the Apostolic See restricted local immunity to parish and filial churches where the Holy Sacrament was kept. The main reasons given for these decisions were “…the intolerable danger to the public peace; and the great number of churches in Malta, amounting to 327”.

On May 30, 1762, the Maltese Curia published the papal edict (in Latin). The English translation is as follows: “The Holy Father declares that the rural churches on the Maltese islands should not enjoy ecclesiastical immunity except for the parish church and their filial churches, where the care of the faithful is maintained, as well as those in which the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist is reserved, and that stone inscriptions must be placed.”

These instructions were handed to parish priests, who were required to read them out and explain the papal orders publicly on Sundays during High Mass. Additionally, on June 1, 1762, ecclesiastical officials started to install notices on the main doors of those churches which had lost their immunity. Needless to say, this decision triggered several petitions by private owners (Jus Patronatum) of filial churches across Malta and Gozo.

The official notice published on April 10, 1828, in the Malta Government Gazette by the British government in Malta, enforcing the 1741 concordat and permanently abolishing the right for sanctuary in churches.

As a result, on June 17, 1762, Mgr Rull backed down from his original ruling and issued an erràta còrrige, stating that the apostolic communication referred only to rural chapels and not to those within towns and inhabited areas. In fact, it is recorded that he reinstated 162 churches to their former status of ecclesiastical immunity.

Ultimately, on April 10, 1828, the centuries-old argument was resolved by the British government in Malta, with an official notice published in the Malta Government Gazette, enforcing the 1741 concordat and abolishing this immunity permanently.

Hilary Spiteri is assistant head of school and head of the Art Department at De La Salle College Sixth Form, Cottonera, where he lectures Art, History of Art and Systems of Knowledge. He is the author of Academic Artistic Training in Early British Malta (Allied Publications, 2011), Filial Churches in Malta – Qormi: A Case Study (Horizons, 2016) and has contributed to the research of various History of Art related publications and exhibitions, including The Life and Work of Lewis Wirth and Helen Cavarra –Their Creative Partnership, Celebrating the Life and Work of Antoine Camilleri (1922-2005) and The Benefits of Art.