Not much is known about Ġużeppi Callus. The little that is known about him – and the details about him in this article – is thanks to research published by Prof. Stanley Fiorini.
The revenge by de Vallette on Callus was driven by a force deeper than normal human resentment- Noel Ciantar
It is believed Callus was born around 1505, and died in 1561. He was a doctor and lived in Mdina.
He was involved in politics in the council of government in Mdina. According to historians, before the arrival of the Order of St John in Malta in 1530 there already existed a divide between the rulers in Mdina and the rest of Malta’s population.
The Order of St John was a major new challenge to the power in Malta’s capital city, and was yet another source of tension.
In fact, some time around 1560, Callus got into trouble with the Grand Master of the time, Jean de Vallette. Callus had petitioned King Philip – the King of Spain (and Sicily), criticising the rule of de Vallette. Consequently, Callus was arrested and tried for treason under orders from de Vallette. In 1561, he was executed in Rabat.
Although some may question whose interests Callus was protecting, some historians regard him as an early Maltese hero for his resistance against the grand masters.
It is documented in public deeds that he owned a garden or orchard (‘viridarium’ in Latin) at Wied ir-Rum, in the outskirts of Rabat, and that there was a chapel in his garden.
A description of the orchard is contained in his will dated 1558. But de Vallette dispossessed him of his orchard before he was executed.
Since 1995, a lot of confusion has been created due to the association of Callus with the agricultural lands of Wied Ħażrun, limits of Rabat, known as Is-Simblija.
In 1995, a French professor from Sorbonne University, Prof. Alain Blondy, came across an old farm room in a private farm at Is-Simblija and claimed that the room was the chapel of Callus.
The chapel had been visited and documented by Bishop Pietro Dusina in 1575, and later by other bishops.
Based on the pastoral visit of Bishop Dusina, the chapel was dedicated to St Nicholas, although the dedication is omitted in the descriptions by Bishops Balthassar Cagliares and Gerolamo Molina, while Bishop Belaguer Camarasa suggests that the chapel was dedicated to Sta Maria.
In a study of Is-Simblija completed in 2002, the authors, Paul Saliba, Joseph Magro Conti and Claude Borg, advanced the idea that the land had belonged to Callus and that the farm room was a chapel.
Prof. Blondy’s claim gained ground even with historians. Furthermore, the Dingli local council website claims that at Is-Simblija there is “a derelict church referred to in ecclesiastical documents as Sta Maria ta’ Callus”.
Other presumed historians have written in the papers making similar mistakes.
What happened at Is-Simblija was a case of ‘mistaken identity’. It is time that this confusion is cleared and a correction of this mistake made once and for all, rendering justice to Callus.
It seems the revenge rendered by de Vallette on Callus was driven by a hidden force deeper than normal human resentment. For more than 450 years after Callus’s death, even the identification of his property at Wied ir-Rum would remain a mystery, and worse still, it would be attributed to another land.
Callus was deprived of his association with his property not only during his life, but also after his death.
While researching about Callus, I consulted the Malta Illustrata of Count G.A. Ciantar, dated 1772 (which was in turn based on G.F. Abela’s Della Descrizione di Malta of 1647), which, inter alia, gives a brief account of the lands in the rural outskirts of Mdina.
I could not help notice how Ciantar and Abela listed the lands in a sequence, generally from east to west, as they distanced themselves from Mdina.
An orchard by the name of “Ta’ Callus” was mentioned with “Ta’ Xieref” and “San Jacopo” after “Il-Qattara”, all of which lie to the west of Wied Ħażrun.
All those names are still visible on survey sheets of the past hundred years or so. Except for “Ta’ Callus”, which does not appear anywhere – it had been obliterated in the same way that de Vallette had rid himself of Callus.
It was here that I got hold of a book published in 2002 entitled Min kien Callus? in which Prof. Fiorini provided details of what was known about Callus, mostly from his own public deeds and his 1558 will.
In his study, Prof. Fiorini states: “Since we know the location of the cliffs with certainty, we conclude that the property of Callus was sheltered in the valley, and therefore it is distinct from the one recently claimed to be his, when Professor Alain Blondy discovered a farmhouse that may have been a chapel.” (My translation)
Prof. Fiorini also states: “This corresponds with the description given by Dusina, who visited the chapels around and within the Wied ir-Rum... and then visited the chapel of St Nicholas of Callus, located at the bottom of the valley, possibly in the same place where some farms and a water-mill exist today; the adjacent land is known by the farmers as ‘Il-Qattara’.” (My translation)
Despite this, it seems Prof. Fiorini’s proposition has been discarded by researchers and historians who in my view should have studied it further.
Prof. Fiorini did include a minor reference to a document entitled Giardino ta’ Hued ir-Rum tal-Callus, contained in the Cabreo del Magistero, which was compiled by Gio Battista Michallef on the instructions of Grand Master Jean Paul de Lascaris de Castellar, who ruled in Malta from 1636 to 1657, and, as Prof. Fiorini remarks, this means that up to that time, the land confiscated from Callus was still held by the Grand Master.
Strangely, in his book, Prof. Fiorini himself did not elaborate about that description, which is reproduced on the left.
I traced the description of the Giardino ta’ Hued ir-Rum tal-Callus by Gio Battista Michallef at the National Library in Valletta on two occasions, and I remember the scenes.
On the first occasion, I made a photocopy and walked away.
Reading the description, I found that it says that a map was included on folio 10 in the section on maps in the Cabreo.
The Cabreo has a number of sequentially numbered maps crudely drawn in black ink. But folio 10, and some others, were missing.
I was disappointed and was about to leave when the librarian dropped a large register on the desk and told me “This one goes with the one you have in hand” and walked away. It was a register with a different set of maps, drawn in colour.
Like a curious child, I flipped through the pages, hoping I would find something useful.
Bingo! There, on folio 77, was a map with the title of “Giardino ta’ Callus o ta’ Wied Ferin”.
This map lacks details, but the few it has provide the key to the identification of the property, especially because it is unequivocal in the name of the land as “Giardino ta’ Callus”, and because it quotes the alternative name of “Wied Ferin”, which is the name by which that property has been known in public records in recent centuries.
Wied Ferin is a location to the west of Il-Qattara, along the same cliff. It lies along the Wied ir-Rum, at a distance of about half-a-kilometre from the location originally thought to have belonged to Callus. The description in the Cabreo elaborates on the borders of the property, and it is evident that the map reflects those border descriptions.
But the description from the Cabreo comes to life when combined with the map of the Wied Ferin property as contained in an 1887 contract. From the shape, it is clear that the maps in the Cabreo and in the 1887 contract refer to the same property.
The description in the Cabreo states: “In the said orchard, there are two water springs. The large one is under the cliff to the south, with its reservoir within the rocks. The other one is to the west, and there is also a small reservoir.” (My translation)
These two water springs are clearly shown with blue colouring in the 19th-century map. It is important to note that there is no mention of a chapel on the land in the Cabreo description. It is possible that any chapel would have already been desacralised.
The Cabreo description also gives the coordinates of the property with respect to access roads.
It says that “... to the north, it is bounded by the alley which comes from the direction of Dingli, and from the direction of the chapel of St Jacob, which serves as an entrance to the said orchard of Wied ir-Rum.” (My translation)
In fact, the access to Ta’ Callus is via a public road which lies across Wied ir-Rum between the areas of Il-Qattara and San Giakbu.
As a consequence of the mistaken identity described above, other errors have been made, particularly the belief that a farm room noted by Prof. Alain Blondy at Is-Simblija was a chapel, and its association with Dingli.
The old farm room at Is-Simblija is not only not connected to Callus, but it is also not a chapel. It is just a farm room, although there is written evidence that a chapel had existed on the land.
A 1621 document – which was drawn up by a notary public on behalf of the Assemblea of chaplains, and which described in detail the 60 or so properties held by the Assemblea at the time – mentioned the room as “a room with three arches” and then mentions a “desacralised small chapel” as a separate structure somewhere else on the land.
In his pastoral visit of 1615, Bishop Cagliares described a chapel – dedicated to the Virgin Mary – on the land of the Assemblea as being of old origin, with a roof made of reeds and in disrepair in various parts, and, very importantly, having a door towards the east.
A similar description, clearly confirming the same structure and dedication, was later given by Bishop Belaguer Camarrasa in his pastoral visit of 1635-37.
The old farm room at Is-Simblija has a door that faces the south, and has a stone roof supported by three arches, as documented in 1621, and which is still in very good condition. It is clear that the room is not the chapel documented in various pastoral visits.
Moreover, in the pastoral visit of 1680, within the chapter dedicated to the parish of Rabat, Bishop Molina included a list of chapels under the following heading: “The following is a short description of existing desacralised chapels which are administered under the Parochial Church of Rabat and under the attention of the Parish Priest.” (My translation)
Within the list under that heading, Bishop Molina included the abandoned chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary that existed on the land of the Assemblea in Wied Ħazrun. Bishop Molina cross-referenced his note to the visitation of that chapel by Bishop Cagliares in the latter’s pastoral visit of 1615.
In his book Ħad-Dingli, sponsored by Dingli local council, Fr Alexander Bonnici claimed that Bishop Molina, who was appointed as Bishop of Malta on April 18, 1678, played a crucial role in the definition of the parish of Dingli, which was, in fact, formally defined and set up on December 31, 1678.
The above mention by Bishop Molina himself of the chapel on the land of the Assemblea as part of the parish of Rabat, in a visit conducted a full two years after he had separated the parish of Dingli, is clear evidence that the territory of the land of the Assemblea remained tied to the parish of Rabat.
It turns out that the chapel of Ta’ Callus has not been found and it may still lie waiting to be discovered- Noel Ciantar
This Rabat identity remains with the local people to this day.
In the research underlying the 2002 study by Saliba, Magro Conti and Borg, no old standing structure other than the farm room was traced.
It is clear that the chapel of the Assemblea does not exist any more. It was already falling into disrepair in 1615. It must have deteriorated further after 1680 and has since been removed like many other small rural chapels that were documented in the area and in many other rural parts of Malta.
It turns out, therefore, that the chapel of Ta’ Callus has not been found as yet, and, unless it fell to ruins, it may still lie waiting to be discovered.
Meanwhile, it seems a number of websites and history texts on the subject will need to be rewritten. They contain historical errors about Guzeppi Callus, the location of his property and the orchards in the area.
It is sad to note that while researchers were keen to find out more about a Maltese person who died 450 years ago, a contemporary Maltese professor’s research on the subject was ignored. Is this an irony of history?
This article is intended for research purposes only. Properties referred to in this article may be privately held, and this article is not an invitation to anyone to interfere with the said properties without the authorisation of their legal owners.