It was not uncommon in the 16th century for children as young as seven to be promised for marriage.

However, at the time, the Church did not allow them to get married before the groom was 14 and the bride 12.

A Notarial Archive document belonging to notary Nicolò de Agatis records the betrothal of a 10-year-old orphan girl, Agrentam Corsu, by her guardian, Fra Alexandrum, a knight of the Order of St John, in 1541.

“Just to put things in context, this was at the time of Henry VII in England,” Dr Abela said. Little Agrentam was promised to Petrum Pullicinum, who was 17 at the time of the contract. The documents also shed light on the dodarium – the groom’s gift to the wife – which she had the right to keep if the husband died before her.

The inheritance of the dodarium was at times subject to certain conditions imposed by the husband in his last will. In one case, the husband wrote that, should he die, his widow “would receive 50 gold ducats on condition that she lived an honest, virtuous and chaste life”.

“If, on the other hand, she chose to remarry, she had to take as her husband a man of similar reputation and station as his or otherwise lose the remuneration.”