There was once a Maltese politician who made it his life mission to separate the State from the church, but this was way before the 20th century.
Some 200 years ago, Nicolò Muscat, who acted as an adviser to the Grandmaster, or, in contemporary terms, was Advocate General, put up a fight with not one, but two Church representatives: the Inquisitor and the Bishop.
Back then he had quite a reputation, with the Pope’s Foreign Affairs Minister calling him ‘nemico del Papa’ (an enemy of the Pope) and being criticised for daring to mention civil marriage – something that was only introduced in Malta in 1975.
Still, Dr Muscat seems to have been practically forgotten following his death. But this is set to change with the launch of fresh research on this first Maltese who succeeded in separating the State and the Church – if only briefly.
The book, called Church-State relations in late-eighteenth-century Malta, was written by Frans Ciappara and will be launched on September 14.
Dr Muscat, a lawyer by profession who identified as Catholic, was adamant that the Church should only intervene in spiritual matters.
According to Prof. Ciappara, who got to know him well posthumously, Dr Muscat was a well-read man, inspired by the European Enlightenment Movement.
He often clashed with the Bishop, who also decided cases relating to the Church’s land ownership and tenancy – something that Dr Muscat considered a civil matter.
Meanwhile, the Inquisitor was also responsible for so-called patentati (patent-holders), including noblemen, merchants and traders. This meant that if one of these patentati murdered someone, he would not be prosecuted in the Grandmaster’s court, but would appear in front of the Inquisitor.
Still, Dr Muscat sometimes had the upper hand in cases appearing in the Church’s courts that required official Vatican documents. Any documents sent to Malta had to first make it through the Grandmaster’s – and therefore Dr Muscat’s office (the exequatur).
This meant that at times, the Church would just halt particular cases, so as not to automatically admit that it was a subordinate of the State.
There were instances when Dr Muscat would send for lawyers appearing in the Church’s courts and threaten them with exile – a threat that he also levelled at Bishop Labini himself.
Dr Muscat was not the first Maltese who dreamt of Church-State separation, however, he was the first one to implement it with such force. At one point, Pope Pius VI wrote to Grandmaster Emmanuel De Rohan asking him to revoke Dr Muscat’s responsibilities.
Dr Muscat was, in fact, removed from AG and reinstated several times, until he was finally ‘exiled’.
“But it was no exile… Muscat knocked on the King’s door in Naples, loaded with documents showing the Church’s ‘intrusion in State affairs’,” Prof. Ciappara noted,
“Upon his return, he was reinstated as AG, however, he finally had to resign when the Order of St John could no longer disobey the Pope towards the end of the 18th century.”
Prof. Ciappara first met Dr Muscat in correspondence between Inquisitor Giovanni Filippo Gallarati Scotti and Rome. His new book, published by the Malta University Press, is based on research mainly at the Inquisition’s archives, the National Library, the Bishop’s Curia, Rome’s Archivio Segreto Vaticano and Archivio di Stato di Napoli.