ABSTRACT
Late medieval Malta was a poor island with an archaic economy, sparsely inhabited, with a few weak and inadequate walls to defend it; it had its own dialect, which it preserved and eventually developed into a distinct language; it had its own customs and its own set of Christian values and beliefs. In this sense it was ‘a self-contained world’, with a few necessary but unsophisticated links with nearby Sicily. By the sixteenth century, the whole human gamut of civilizing forces in the Mediterranean, from prehistory on without exception, had visited Malta – an eloquent testimony to the appreciation of the island’s strategic value and its geo-physical features. There were no special native commodities and no natural resources to have otherwise enticed early settlers. 1 Some cultures sojourned longer than others, each leaving permanent or transitory traits of their own way of life in its various manifestations. Each trait bears ‘living witness to forgotten revolutions’. 2 In 1530, the island passed into the hands of the military-religious Order of St John. As a direct result, Malta was about to experience long-term changes and assume a new leading role in Mediterranean politics. The Order of the Hospital, as the institution had come to be known, set up its Conventual headquarters on the island. Over the ensuing years, the Order converted a barren rock in the central Mediterranean into a formidable European stronghold against Islam, an impressive fortress-citadel against the spread of plague and other forms of disease, a remarkable base of operations for Christian corsairs, and an international slave market. When, after the brief French interlude, the British eventually replaced the Hospitallers as the ruling body in 1800, a strong element of continuity was retained, both as a fortress, a military and naval base, and as a hospital. 3
