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Stanley Fiorini (Ed.) Documentary Sources of Maltese History Part III: Documents of the Maltese Universitas No. 2 The Capitula of Malta and Gozo: 1398-1532. Malta University Press, 2014. 408 pp.

This is yet another major contribution by Stanley Fiorini and the Malta University Press to the proper evaluation of the history of our islands during the 15th and early 16th century. Scripta manent in more than one sense.

In fact, though no doubt the political actors on the stage during those decades of our history could have been ‘making’ events and happenings, what we now know and can appreciate is what the secretaries and scribes registered.

Of course, in this case, the capitula here transcribed (the word is an understatement given the palaeographic and archaic language difficulties) and published, were in themselves acts and reactions with political significance. However, as written and conserved, they have become permanent evidence, while the memory of other oral expressions and indeed of most gestæ has been lost.

The capitula are indeed very reliable evidence, even if most are pleadings and remonstrances, because they are authentic expressions of the relationship between the Maltese Universitas and the foreign rulers or their viceroys, or feudal concessionaries.

They are also indicative of the political, social and cultural climate within both Malta and Gozo.

The picture that emerges is that of two island communities ethnically united but with separate institutions and at times interests, with scant help and assistance from their distant sovereigns, who used them as possessions and security for their loans and who, moreover, at times unjustifiably interfered with their administration.

The imminent threats and occasionally realised aggressions from the Moorish marauders kept both islands always on the alert and, in many ways, united the population of both islands in the organisation of defence.

The difficulties of communication with the authorities in Spain and Sicily reinforced self-government and internal cohesion before the arrival of the resident grandmaster and his order.

The Maltese ran the affairs of their separate islands, manned the walls of their citadels, mounted watch by roster and conducted their own criminal trials and civil suits according to the jus commune and their customs.

Whoever might have doubted the existence of the consciousness of a national identity will be convinced by these documents of the written demarches by our beleaguered forbears, that they not only felt a national separate interest of ‘us’ as distinct from the others outside, but also a regional distinction as ‘Maltese’ and ‘Gozitan’.

Whoever might have doubted the existence of the consciousness of a national identity will be convinced by these documents

Therefore, one capitula asks that all officials with particularly few exceptions should be maltisi. Though the use of Maltese words is scanty, yet it is significant that in a document of 1475, the word casam (presumably what we now write as qasam, and described as possessioni circumdati et inclusi di mura) as said to be in lingua dicte insule while the word in Latin would be fundus.

In 1520, the Maltese Jurats, after congratulating His Catholic Majesty who had been crowned Emperor Charles V, and become Caesarea Majestate, requested that the commissioners sent to Malta be conversant with the language of the inhabitants.

The Gozitan capitula of the following year specified very clearly what happened when the commissioners, being ignorant of the local languge, had to make use of interpreters when interviewing people with no knowledge of the Latin language or of Sicilian.

During the long struggle for self-government, and then independence, in the late 19th and the first part of the 20th century, even the existence of a Maltese commune, of a consiglio popolare was, at times denied.

The capitula now being published confirm the vitality of a Maltese Universitas which was the effective real government of Malta for a whole stretch of time before the coming of the Knights.

The capitula of the early stages of the Order’s presence also show the resistance to the encroachments by the newly arrived Hospitaller warriors into the internal administration of the Islands.

These documents are of great interest for the history of law. The two universitates are here shown to have been attentive to the problems of law and order.

They protested strongly against the deportation to these Islands of criminals (michidiari e malfatturi) from Sicily.

They also suggested that in the case of theft of certain gravity, the courts should be authorised to continue a suit initiated by the victim, even when this private party would wish to abandon the case, excluding any compromise with the miscreants.

This particular petition shows an awareness of the essentially public nature of criminal law. In other parts of Europe the private interest in criminal actions continued to predominate for quite a longer time.

A capitulum asks that imprisonment for crime or for debt should no longer be tolerated in private houses but that imprisonment should only be possible in a public prison.

Later, it was suggested that this public prison should not be situated within the precincts of the castle, but should be installed in the city so that relatives could visit without hindrance.

In a document of 1508, Capitulum X insists on the importance of conducting locally the trials concerning crimes committed in Malta, affirming the principle of territorial jurisdiction and lamenting the fact that some criminals objected to the competence of Maltese and Gozitan courts.

This was in a bid to avoid punishment by the procrastination resulting from referral to the courts in Sicily.

Other capitula concern civil suits and appeals, and betray a vigilant council’s reaction to outside interference with the due process.

Indeed, these documents show that the members of the Universitas were by no means naive or insensitive to the instances of natural justice. Nor was the response from the court at Palermo crude or simply blunt.

Thus, when in the capitula of 1434 King Alphonse was asked to confirm an old, but unwritten, custom in the sense that there should be no appeals from decisions by the jurors, the king’s notary replied by distinguishing between cases; while no appeal would lie when the jurors had decided solely on the basis of viewing with their own eyes but without a formal trial, when a trial had been held, (presumably because the case so merited) then an appeal was possible.

Some capitula enter into such matters as the frequency of court sittings, asking that the custom of having three sittings a week be continued.

Strangely, according to modern standards, the Gozitan Universitas asks that the three civil lay judges selected every year, be audited at the end of their term, to see whether they had, partly through ignorance, caused hardships and damage to the people when delivering judgement.

There are also illustrations of the slow and difficult progress of tolerance: as the Jewish community on its part remonstrated against the intrusion in its affairs by local officials or by the Universitas itself.

The distant sovereign or his viceroy, many a time upheld claims against bigoted practices by some Maltese. When, in 1492, the distant sovereign exiled all Jews from its domains, the local Jewish community seems to have paid all its outstanding debts, inventoried all the belongings of individual families and of the synagogue and departed to seek refuge elsewhere.

This publication, as usual with the other volumes of this series, edited by Fiorini is endowed with a precis in English of the contents of every chapter, a glossary of mediaeval terms, indices and an excellent clarificatory introduction. It is a must-read for specialists. It is of interest not only for collectors of Melitensia, but for all Maltese and Gozitans (in this case it is useful to emphasise the distinct interest) who would wish to understand our national identity.

In particular, one can understand why throughout the stay of the Order of St John, notwithstanding the evident material benefits accruing from that order’s presence, the lingering memory and nostalgia for self-government in the previous period prompted rebellion in the minds of people like Mattew Callus and Dun Gaetano Mannarino, and why during the brief French period the determination of people like Dun Mikiel Xerri and a substantial part of his compatriots, revolted against the army of the French to affirm the same principle of self-determination.

It also explains why, during the British period, the aspirations of so many were inspired by the memory of the experience of the consiglio popolare in order to work for the achievement of self-government, self-determination and finally national independence.

Together with the Acta Juratorum et Consilii Civitatis et Insulæ Maltæ, edited by Godfrey Wettinger in 1993, these documentary sources give ample proof of the communal organisation of self-government by our distant forefathers.

Even if no longer a prop to our claim, as a nation, for reinstatement in our rights, as it was during the long centuries of foreign direct rule, a study of the capitula reinforces our contemporary sense of responsibility as citizens, to contribute to the good self- government of our republic.

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