Victor Mallia-Milanes:Valletta. Malta’s Hospitaller City and Other Essays
Midsea Books, Malta 2019.
History involves much more than the careful search for information and its checking and rechecking. The historian also needs to interpret events and give them a possible narrative which puts them in a context and explains them. The unearthing of new facts and the resulting new interpretations means there can never be a definitive version, which makes the historian’s task never a static one and always subject to debate.
Victor Mallia-Milanes has established a solid reputation as a scholar of Malta’s early modern history. His publications, both locally and abroad have earned him great respect, as has his long-standing position as professor of early modern history at the university.
His latest publication, Valletta. Malta’s Hospitaller City and Other Essays, incidentally the twenty-ninth in Midsea Books’ excellent Maltese Social Studies series, brings together seven of his scholarly papers which deal with Valletta and the Order in a broader sense. Six of the papers had already been published before, with one having had to be drastically rewritten owing to the fact that it had been originally edited ‘in an awful way’. They have also been updated to take into consideration studies published since their original appearance.
In a number of papers Mallia-Milanes does not shy away from a controversial reading which is bound to raise different reactions. Still his reading is one approached on solid interpretations of facts and never superficial or just meant to shock. It certainly provides ample food for thought for other historians to assess and accept or rebut. This aspect is what makes this particular book an important contribution to Maltese history.
The first paper Valletta. Malta’s Hospitaller City: An Epitome of Europe is by far the longest and was first published in 1988 at a time when local banks had the praiseworthy initiative to include scholarly papers with their annual reports and financial statements.
Valletta, the city the Order proudly built after its near annihilation in 1565, remained the precious jewel of the knights who spared no effort or money to make it a capital city worthy of the cream of European aristocracy.
Mallia-Milanes explains the choice of Malta after the Rhodes debacle and the building of Valletta “begun in almost indecent haste” in 1566 after having been “conceived a quarter-century earlier.” Distinguished French and Italian fortification experts were commissioned throughout the Order’s stay to make sure their defences remained in line with the latest developments. Alas, as later history was to prove, the island could never summon enough defenders to man the kilometres of defences built.
Within the walls, no expense was spared to attract the best architects and artists to build and decorate churches and public and private buildings, a steady supply of water was ensued as well as a sewerage system that was the envy of much larger metropolises.
Mallia-Milanes does not shy away from a controversial reading which is bound to raise different reactions
All this development, which made Valletta an expression of “prowess, glory prosperity” are explained in an elegant prose, a fitting tribute to its declaration as the European Capital of Culture in 2018.
The Siege of Malta 1565: A Reassessment argues that the event was not such a great game-changer in the history of the Mediterranean and was ‘not even a decisive turning point’ in the history of the Ottoman empire. It was the Order that pumped up the importance of the siege for obvious reasons, although the island itself would benefit through the structural transformation. The island, attests Mallia-Milanes, would have survived even if it had fallen to the Ottomans; not so the Order.
Just as thought-provoking is the paper on Grand Master Jean de Valette, who is almost apotheosised in the collective memory. In recent years tantalising details of his love life and illegitimate progeny have emerged, and his harshness in dealing with Maltese aspirations for a greater say in running the island have been confirmed. Twice, at least, he was imprisoned for violent behaviour and once confined to Tripoli. Few may know that in 1559 he actively considered moving the convent to Corsica.
The siege’s outcome may have been more due to the Ottomans’ obdurate incompetence but Mallia-Milanes insists that the grand master “deserves more study than he has hitherto received” with “aspects of his life … still in complete or relative obscurity.”
Two papers deal with aspects of engineers connected with the fortification of the city. Perhaps the more appealing is his study of Vittorio Cassar, the fiery architect son of Gerolamo, which presents together the 29 known documents that refer to him. Vittorio seems to have had quite an exciting existence, ‘ever on the alert for affronts and provocations’ and he was twice imprisoned for involvement in brawls, once with his maternal uncle.
Even his stay in Gozo as the Order’s engineer was marked by tensions with the governor. At least twice he was accused in front of the Inquisition for dabbling in sorcery and fortune-telling. Nearly all of Vittorio’s attributions are questioned “in the hope of provoking a thorough rethinking of his true achievements”.
No less controversial is the paper entitled Decline and Fall? The Order of the Hospital’s surrender of Malta, 1798, which builds a case to rebut the generally accepted ideas that the Order was in decline in the eighteenth century and that the fall of the island to Napoleon was attributable to this decline.
Mallia-Milanes argues that “the traditional vision of the fall of Malta demands a redefinition” and points out the need for reassessment of the known and verifiable facts. He makes extensive use of the detailed reports sent to Venice by a local representative who saw the French revolution delivering the coupde grâce.
This is an important study that requires careful reading. Such a short reference fails to do it justice. The author, who supports his views with copious and extensive references, is ready to admit that this view may change (after all history is never written in stone) but there has to be “valid empirical evidence” not a simple acceptance of beliefs that might be mere myths. Of these, Maltese history has more than its fair share.
In the last essay, the author describes as a “form of semi-autobiographical rhapsody dedicated to a ‘Corsican soldier’” to whom has been attributed the end of the Venetian Republic and “adamantly wrongly” the surrender of Malta.
Napoleon’s extinction of the Most Serene Republic was an act of “sadism at its most ferocious,” happening exactly 13 months before the suppression of the Order in Malta.
Yet, ironically, the author describes how both Venice and the Hospital “survived the little ‘great man’ with thrilling pleasure and delight.” Just a handful of years later he would end abandoned and forgotten on a God-forsaken island in the south Atlantic; the millennial heritage of both Venice and the Order would live on; for both “the future is their glorious past, their present.”
Again the author tackles the problem of change and decadence, with one not necessarily leading to the other. The flowing essay is one long paean to the author’s two major long-standing interests (loves?): Venice and the Hospitaller Order.