On the morning of June 18, 1844, Carmelo Spiteri, marshall of the court, and his assistant, made their way through the streets of Valletta. Their destination: No. 83, Strada Ponente; their assignment: to enforce an order of the Court of Appeal which had confirmed a Civil Court decree that the two children residing there should be removed and taken to live with their paternal grandmother, Evangelista Fleri.

Spiteri expected this to be a straightforward task and was not prepared to meet with any resistance. In fact, the master of the house, Michael Angelo Camilleri, was initially cooperative and acknowledged the marshall’s commission; he soon turned violent, however, and attempted to strike the two officers with a large stick. After a brief scuffle the stick was wrested from Camilleri who then called for his arms.

The understandably tearful mother of the two children produced a loaded gun and handed it to their man-servant, who had by now been called to his master’s assistance. In the confusion and alarm which arose, the two officers of the court successfully managed to take the gun away from the servant.

Luckily, no one was injured and Camilleri was put under restraint. The marshall then successfully concluded his mission and quietly accompanied the children to their grandmother’s house and delivered them into her hands.

The unusual circumstances leading up to this fracas make interesting reading. Camilleri was a Roman Catholic priest who had started reading theology at the University of Malta in1834. He was ordained by the bishop in 1836 and awarded a doctorate by the University in 1838. He then carried out his religious duties in Malta and Algeria.

Sometime before 1843 he met Emanuela Fleri, the young widow of Dr Publio Fleri, who had died in 1839. Although there is no proof of this, he probably fell in love with Emanuela while extending his priestly comfort to alleviate her bereavement. The upshot was that Camilleri abjured the Roman Catholic Church and was accepted in the Protestant Church of England.

In early June 1843, Camilleri and Fleri eloped to Gibraltar together with her two children, Luigi and Carmela. Here Camilleri was ordained an Anglican minister by the bishop, the Rev. George Tomlinson, who had himself just been ordained Bishop of Gibraltar and Malta. On June 13, 1843, the bishop officiated at the marriage of Camilleri and Fleri according to the rites of the Anglican Church. The couple then returned to Malta together with Luigi and Carmela and took up residence in Valletta at 83, Strada Ponente.

In February 1844, Emanuela’s mother-in-law, Evangelista Fleri, claimed the right of constituting herself guardian of the two children, in order to bring them up in the religion of their late father, and petitioned the Civil Court to this effect. She supported her petition by stating that Emanuela “was not lawfully married at Gibraltar but was living in a state of concubinage and that she was therefore an improper person to have charge of her children”.

The case was decided, in the first instance in favour of the grandmother, which decision was confirmed by three judges of the Royal Court of Appeal. As described above, the execution of this decision, though eventually accomplished without injury, was far from easy.

The impunity of the Reverend M.A. Camilleri, because he has become a Protestant, is a blow aimed at the institutions of the country, and the religion of the people

On the day after the Strada Ponente incident, Camilleri was brought before the Police Court, where he conducted his own defence and cross-examined the witnesses. The facts were proved and he was sentenced by the sitting magistrate to 20 days imprisonment.

This punishment was chastised by the local Catholic population as being too lenient. Even this punishment was, however, set aside, as the British authorities intervened, with the intercession of the Bishop of Gibraltar, and Camilleri was released after paying the nominal fine of £1, 1s, 7d.

Maltese public opinion was outraged. The Portafoglio Maltese, a local newspaper that was not normally given to stirring up religious controversy, observed: “The impunity of the Reverend M.A. Camilleri, because he has become a Protestant, is a blow aimed at the institutions of the country, and the religion of the people, and will call down upon the Bishop of Gibraltar the odium of all classes.

“His lordship may afford his protection to as many unhappy wanderers as he can press to his bosom, and he will never hear a word from us, as long as he does not trample upon those institutions upon which our security depends… the present attempt against the regular course of justice cannot be allowed to pass unnoticed.”

On the other hand, the Malta Times, an English Evangelical journal, defended Camilleri and considered him to be a “persecuted man”. Incidentally, Bishop Tomlinson married Louisa Stuart in 1848. Stuart was the daughter of Sir Patrick Stuart, who had resigned as one of the most unpopular Governors of Malta in July 1847.

Stuart, a strict Sabbatarian, had withheld permission for the wearing of masks on Carnival Sunday. The Maltese press attacked the measure, declaring it to be “an act of Protestant oppression and an interference with the Catholic religion”. A confrontation between Maltese protesters and armed British troops developed into a Sette Giugno-like incident, which ended, however, without a single shot being fired and without any serious consequences.

Emanuela could not come to terms with the deprivation of her children and she died on July 25, 1845, at the age of 33. Earlier that year she had petitioned the Privy Council to reverse the judgment through which she was denied the upbringing and enjoyment of her children. The petition initially met with some opposition on a technicality, but the appeal was eventually deemed admissible. No further action was taken, however, “in consequence of the death of the appellant”. The children therefore remained in the custody of their grandmother.

Camilleri had in the meantime embarked on his new mission as an Anglican clergyman. His linguistic skills were immediately recognised as an important evangelical tool by the Anglican authorities and he was set the task of translating the Book of Common Prayer into Maltese.

This Maltese version, entitled Ktieb it-Talb ta’ Għalenija, was printed at the M. Weiss printing press and published in 1845 by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Other translations followed, including Il-Għaqda l-Ġdida ta’ Sidna Ġesu Kristu and a revision of M.A. Vassalli’s Maltese translation of the New Testament, which only included the gospels and the Acts. To this he added his own translation of the remaining books of the New Testament.

Two years after Emanuela’s death, Camilleri again got married, this time in Cambridge, to Anne Parsley Clark on September 14, 1848. The newly-married couple proceeded to Cape Town in South Africa where Camilleri had been entrusted with a mission for the Muslim community.

Archdeacon Nathaniel Merriman wrote of Camilleri on his arrival in South Africa: “He seems a man of sober, earnest thoughtfulness and having a great facility of acquiring languages, and knowing already the Arabic besides several European tongues, is likely, as I trust, to become a valuable and successful missionary here.”

One of his first acts was to set up a school at 19, Barrack Street, where he and his wife taught Muslim boys and girls. In June 1849, the bishop reported that Camilleri “is going on very quietly and judiciously with his Mahommedan Mission. He is obliged to be cautious in his way of dealing with people, and is approaching them not only in person but by endeavouring to interest masters and employers, several of whom meet him in class to receive instruction as to the best means of dealing with their servants”.

Besides his missionary activities with the Muslim community, Camilleri was also assigned other religious duties at St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. The South African Commercial Advertiser reported that during a particularly busy period in April-May 1853 he officiated at four christenings and seven marriages.

One of the christenings is of particular interest, as the baby, son of Thomas Clementson, was, in fact, baptised ‘Michael Angelo Camilleri Clementson’. Unfortunately this name did not bring fortune to the child as he passed away at the tender age of 16 months.

Two years earlier, on April 29, 1851, Rev. Camilleri had baptised “an adult person, native of Africa, Sarah, surname Boyes”. Two days later he officiated at the marriage of “Thomas Buller to Sarah Boyes, both natives of Africa”. On May 13, he christened a son of the same Thomas Buller (and, presumably Sarah Boyes) and baptised him Thomas Henry Ropbima Buller.

Two years after Emanuela’s death, Camilleri again got married, and proceeded to Cape Town in South Africa where he had been entrusted with a mission for the Muslim community

Camilleri left South Africa in 1855, having resigned in 1854 “because of his own and his wife’s ill-health, the inability to stand the heat of the Cape and over-exertion in the discharge of my duty”. He was appointed curate at the parish church of St Denys in Stanford-in-the-Vale, Farringdon, Berkshire. His last appointment in 1858 was as vicar of St Mary the Virgin parish in Lyford, Oxfordshire.

The Maltese apostate’s linguistic and evangelical abilities were, however, still in demand. In 1860, he was sent to Italy by the committee of the Anglo-Continental Society on a rather secretive mission. He was instructed not to transgress the law of the land and to avoid any attempt at drawing individuals out of the Italian Church.

His brief was to encourage internal reformation in every way possible, particularly by judicious distribution of the society’s publications and Italian prayer books; by explaining by word of mouth the limitations of the Bishop of Rome; by enforcing on excited minds the necessity of ecclesiastical order; and by convincing Italians of the possibility of a unified Catholic-Protestant Church by maintaining Catholic faith and discipline while rejecting papal usurpation and dogma.

Camilleri kept a detailed journal of his Italian mission, but the society refrained from publishing it in full “because of the absolute necessity of not making public many of the facts given in it and the names of persons who might be compromised”. Though his efforts were praised by the Anglo-Continental Society, it is doubtful whether his mission actually achieved any success. In 1867 he published a treatise in Italian entitled ‘L’Unità della Chiesa’.

A year before his death, Camilleri contributed to the book Roads from Rome: a Series of Personal Narratives, compiled by C.S. Isaacson. Writing from his last residence in Weymouth, Dorset, Camilleri gives a succinct account of his life both as a Roman Catholic priest and as an Anglican minister.

He accounts for his conversion, or as he puts it, his transition, to the Protestant faith as follows: “I began to be alarmed by coming into contact with the treacherous doctrines, or rather practices of the clerical body, and in my own mind I constructed an ideal Church such as I believed it ought to be.

“At this juncture an English prayer book was given to me, and that book opened my eyes to the excellences of the Church of England and the other reformed Churches, and at the age of 30 I became a member of the Church of England”.

Later on he adds: “I trust this book to which I am contributing will do good, and will enlighten the eyes of those who think too well of the papacy. There can be no more fascinating ritual than that of the Roman Church, but one day will show (sic) the awful abyss into which she is drifting”. Clearly Camilleri had not the slightest inclination to revert to Roman Catholicism in his old age.

The eventful life of this Maltese apostate priest came to an end on April 10, 1903, at 5, Kirtleton Avenue, Weymouth, where he died at the ripe old age of 89.