Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/364

Rh 342 MALTA been conquered and reconquered more than once (Orosius, iv. c. 8). In the Second Punic War the Carthaginians, under Hamilcar, son of Gisco, gave it up to Titus Sempronius, 218 B.C. (Livy, xxi. 51). In the pursuit of manufactures and commerce Malta had attained a high degree of prosperity under the Phoenicians, which still existed under the Romans of the Augustan age. It was especially famous for its textile fabrics (probably of cotton, which is grown and spun there to this day); the Sicilian praetor Verres sent there for women s woven garments. The inhabitants were rich, and there were many artificers of all kinds. Ovid speaks of it as a fertile island (Fast., iii. 567). The remains formerly existed (unfortunately now ibrthe most part dispersed or destroyed) of several fine Grseeo-Roman temples, such as the temple of Juno spoken of by Cicero and Valerius Maximus, whose ornaments and line ivories and carved figures of Victory tempted more than one sacrilegious robber ; the temple of Proserpine, which we learn from an inscription was re paired by Chrestion, a freedman of Augustus, procurator of Malta ; and the temple of Apollo at the chief town Melita, which with a theatre shared the munificence of a wealthy Maltese under the Antonine rule ; these and the ruins of a princely Roman dwelling with mosaics, system of water supply, &c., at the same place, are but a few signs of the luxury enjoyed in the islands. Diodorus noticed the beauty and adornment of the houses in Malta in his time, a few years after the shipwreck of St Paul. One of the islanders was a friend of Cicero, who had thoughts of retiring there himself. A mole and important harbour works, discovered a few years ago, show that the Romans were not behind in strengthening the natural advantages of the islands for shelter. Inscriptions re cording municipal institutions there date from the time of Hadrian ; how much earlier they possessed them is unknown. Before then we hear of Chrestion the procurator mentioned above, and a Roman governor under Augustus, Lucius Castricius, styled irpuros MePu- raioav, &quot; chief man of the Maltese &quot; (Caruana, 1882, p. 134 ; 1881, pp. 20, 21), just as, half a century later, Publius was irp&ros TVJS vTffov, &quot;chief man of the island&quot; (Acts xxviii. 7) ; all these were probably concerned in the local government. The Romans retained the Maltese group for many centuries. At the division of the empire in 337 A.D. it passed with Italy, Illyria, and Africa to Con- stans ; after the reunion, and the final division after the death of Theodosius in 395, Malta, as one of the isles of the Mediterranean, remained with the empire of the East. History has but little to mention regarding it during those early times, except that event of ever-living interest, the shipwreck of St Paul, 58 A.D., which it is now well-ascertained took place in a bay on the north side of Malta. The alleged conversion of the Maltese to Christianity following the three months stay of the apostle and his companions may be a fact ; Chrysostom refers to it (Horn. 54 on Acts). Many Christian monograms and inscriptions have been found, ranging from the 2d to the 9th century ; and the tombs and subterranean cemeteries near Citta Vecchia are said to be arranged like the Christian ceme teries of subterranean Rome (Caruana, 1881, p. 18). Tradition says these were used as hiding-places in times of persecution ; it is certain that Ptolemy at the end of the 2d century notes the famous temples of Hercules and Juno as still in existence ; the old religion and the new must have gone on side by side for a long time. After a time Malta was made a bishopric ; according to R. Pirrus (Sicilia Sacra, Melitensis Eccl. Not. vii., s.v. &quot;Lucillo&quot;) it was, though considered part of Africa, subject to the bishop of Palermo (in 6th century primate of Africa) ; we find Gregory the Great dealing with a contu macious bishop of Malta and directing the bishop of Syracuse and others to depose him, and to aid the successor appointed in his place (Greg., Epist., ii. 44 ; ix. 63 ; x. 1). The Saracens did not gain possession of-Malta without a struggle of many years ; they invaded it three times, in 828, 836 (when it appears to have been chiefly Gozo that suffered), and finally in 870, when the inhabitants of Melita, having massacred the Greek (Byzantine) garrison of 3000, opened their gates to the invaders. The Arabs are said to have destroyed part of the city so as to bring the fortifications within smaller compass, rendering it more easy to defend, and to have changed its name to Medina (great or chief city). In a suburb just outside the present walls there was discovered in 1881 a burial-place containing numerous Arab coffins, overlying the remains of the Roman palace mentioned above, which was thus finally ruined and concealed by the conquerors. It is known that they built a fortress in 973, at the point of Mount Sceberras where Fort St Elmo now stands. A few coins are pre served, but otherwise very little record remains of the Arab dominion, which lasted about two hundred and twenty years; no more Christian bishops are known until after that time, but tradi tion asserts, not without probability, that some of the original natives remained in certain villages and some Greeks in the capital, among whom were Christians. The Norman knights, who brought their conquering arms into Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and even sent ships to Byzantium, were probably the first to bring a Teutonic race and influence into Malta. Through somewhat uncertain dates it appears that Roger I, (youngest son of Tancred, and brother of Guiscard) about 1090 landed in the island and levied tribute, and that about 1127 Roger II., this not being paid, set sail with a fleet, took Medina, then governed by a gaito, Mairnono, and after setting free all the Christians and exacting a large sum in money, mules, and horses, completed the conquest of Malta and Gozo. Walter, bishop of Malta, whose name is found as witness to a document of 1090, is believed to have been now appointed by Roger I., and consecrated by the pope. A succession of Christian bishops, endowments and buildings made, tithes granted, &c., testify to the restoration of the church in the islands, while they shared with Sicily the feudal laws and administration newly established under the Norman rule. In 1193 Malta as a county gave a title to Margarito Brundusio, grand-admiral of Sicily, and three successive counts of Malta followed. After the Norman princes had possessed the islands about a century, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the Maltese islands with it, passed in 1194 to the emperor Henry VI., in pro fessed right of his wife Constance, daughter and heiress of Roger II. In 1223 a Maltese named Henry or Arrigo is stated to have been grand-admiral of Sicily (Pirrus, p. 906 ; Miege, ii. 38). He is probably the same as the distinguished Henry, count of Malta, who with three hundred Maltese youths in 1205 earned the favours of the Genoese by brilliantly taking two forts in Tripoli (Caffarus, Ann. Gcnuenses, in Muratori, t. vi. ), and who took part also in the fourth crusade. No traces of the crusades, however, have been found in these islands, although it is probable that their leaders would not neglect the advantages of Maltese ports and sailors. Henceforward Malta, as a fief of Sicily, followed the fortunes of that country. The Maltese seem to have taken no part in the Sicilian Vespers (1282), but to have held out for Charles of Anjou until Peter of Aragon, crowned king of Sicily, August 1282, won a battle at sea against the French, attacked Notabile and the forts, and thus obtained possession of the islands. For nearly two hundred and fifty years the Spanish house, through fourteen kings of Aragon, bore rule over Sicily and Malta. In 1391 the countship was erected into a marquisate, which lasted two years only. In 1427 a swarm of Moors (18,000) ravaged Malta and Gozo, but were not able to take the city Notabile ; yet the people, though afflicted by the plague in 1431 as not unfrequently at other times were able to sally forth to conquer Gerbi on the coast of Africa in the following year. The king at this time (1432) authorized the demolition of the old castle at Notabile, built three hundred and fifty years before, and gave the ground on which it stood to the town ; but the fortifica tions of the island were strengthened (1466), the chief stronghold in the 15th century being the fortress of St Angelo. The inhabitants, addicted to fighting at sea, were forbidden from 1448 to 1494 to send out armed corsair ships, in order it is said to retain those capable of defence in the islands, the population of which was at the beginning of that period very scant. The Jews were expelled from Malta by the same edict of Ferdinand, in 1492, which turned them out of Spain. By 1514 the population of Malta had doubled ; the two islands together contained 22,000 inhabitants (Miege, ii. 81). They frequently attacked the Moors on the mainland, and suffered reprisals themselves as late as 1526. Their last king of the Spanish house, the emperor Charles V., in 1530 granted Malta and Gozo (with the city of Tripoli) as a noble and free fief to the knights of St John of Jerusalem, still retaining, however, the suzerainty, by the homage of a falcon annually to be given by the knights. Malta thus during many centuries occupied the position of a feudal fief of Sicily ; her laws and her church date from the times of the Normans, and both developed as in other feudal governments. The progress of her political independence in the 15th century, especially under Alphonso I. and John I., has been shown by the historian Miege ; the history of the relations between Malta and the monarchs of Sicily affords an interesting example of feudal obligations with their attendant difficulties. That these fostered a spirit of liberty and independence in the people, and must have tended largely to the prosperity of the islands, is shown by numerous diplomas of the. Aragonese suzerains preserved in the archives at Malta (Eton s Authentic Materials, 1803, p. 108 sq.), whore it is seen that the inhabitants acquired many privileges and were also able to pay on emergency considerable sums of money to increase and preserve their privileges. Thus in 1428, only a century before the knights came, they paid 30,000 florins of gold to King Alphonso in order to secure their tenure by the crown of Sicily without any middle-lords, being the second time they thus bought back their island rights (Eton, p. 84). These things are to be noticed, because, as has been complained, the knights unjustly depreciated the value and advantages of the islands, in order the more readily to obtain the grant from Charles V. Under the kings of Sicily, Notabile was a universita or commune, with its popular council and jurats, a captain-justiciar representing the rights of the crown ; in other words, Malta was a republic governed by its own laws ; the principal magistrate was named by the king out of three persons proposed by the consilio popolarc, and was liable to dismissal on complaint by the people. The king protected the island, and in