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Members of the Clergy before the Maltese Diocesan Court, 1750–1798

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Frans Ciappara*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the International Institute for Baroque Studies at the University of Malta
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This article analyzes the procedure of the Maltese diocesan court in dealing with clerical misconduct in the second half of the eighteenth century. The clergy were accused especially of physical and verbal abuse as well as of sexual incontinence. They were given a fair hearing, being assisted by a lawyer, presenting their own witnesses, and having the right to appeal the sentence. The article also discusses how the court tried to protect the clergy's honor and reputation in an attempt to avoid anticlericalism. Convicted priests could stop proceedings against them with a fine, and those of them guilty of immoral behavior were assigned another parish or else transferred to an oratory where they did penance.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

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Footnotes

Maltese currency: 1 scudo = 12 tarì; 1 tarì = 20 grani; 1 uncia = 2½ scudi = 30 tari. 1 scudo = £3.82 = €4.35 = $4.90

References

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7 These religious orders included the Dominicans, minims, grey friars, Carmelites, Capuchins, Jesuits, Oratorians, and Discalced Carmelites. There were also two feminine orders, both of them secluded nuns: the Benedictines of Mdina and Vittoriosa and the Discalced Carmelites of Cospicua.

8 Archiepiscopal Archives, Malta (hereafter cited as AAM), Corrispondenza 20, fol. 29.

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14 Ciappara, “Trent and the Clergy,” 16–18.

15 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 3. All translations are my own.

16 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 8.

17 Curia Episcopalis Melitensis (hereafter cited as CEM), Acta Originalia (hereafter cited as AO) 689, fols. 56r–88v; and AAM, Dicta 26, nos. 22, 41.

18 CEM, AO 691, fol. 298.

19 Three were killed, including a thirteen-year-old girl, while five were injured. AAM, Dicta 25, no. 47.

20 Luciano Allegra, “Il Parroco: un mediatore fra alta e bassa cultura,” in Storia d'Italia, Annali 4, Intellettuali e Potere, ed. Corrado Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1981), 897–947.

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22 For the bread knife used as a weapon, see Jaritz, Gerhard, “The Bread-Knife,” in Jaritz, Gerhard and Marinković, Ana, Violence and the Medieval Clergy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001), 5565Google Scholar. See also Gadsby, John, My Wanderings: Being Travels in the East, vol. 1 (London: F. Kirby, 1894), 42Google Scholar: “The laboring classes always carry with them knives, with which they cut their bread; but they occasionally use them for worse purposes.”

23 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 32; AAM, Dicta 26, no. 32; and CEM, AO 808, fols. 444r–449v.

24 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 13; and AAM, Dicta 24, no. 5.

25 Schwerhoff, Gerd, “Justice et honneur: Interpréter la violence à Cologne (XVe–XVIIIe siėcle),” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 62, no. 5 (2007): 10401043CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 11.

27 AAM, Dicta 27, no. 62.

28 For shouting being used to make an accusation audible while at the same time “polluting the aural space of others as they lived and worked,” see Bound, Fay, “‘An Angry and Malicious Mind?’ Narratives and Slander at the Church Courts of York, c. 1660–c.1760,” History Workshop Journal 56 (2003): 6768CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 CEM, AO 677, fol. 139.

30 AAM, Dicta 28, no. 7.

31 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 11. See also Blok, Anton, “Rams and Billy-Goats: A Key to the Mediterranean Code of Honour,” Man 16 (1981): 427440CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 For ecclesiastical concubinage in Italy, see Simplicio, Oscar Di, “Le perpetue (stato senese, 1600–1800),” Quaderni storici 23 (1988): 381412Google Scholar.

33 Paul Hair, ed., Before the Bawdy Court: Selections from Church Court and Other Records Relating to the Correction of Moral Offences in England, Scotland, and New England, 1300–1800 (London: Elek, 1972).

34 As Lawrence Duggan suggests, “given widespread clerical concubinage in the fifteenth century, popular indifference to or acceptance of it, and considerable sentiment among clerics for clerical marriage, it is just possible that clerical marriage would have been officially accepted in the sixteenth century had not the doctrinal issues of the Reformation intervened.” Duggan, Lawrence G., “The Unresponsiveness of the Late Medieval Church: A Reconsideration,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 9, no. 1 (April 1978), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ciappara, Mill-Qigħan ta’ l-Istorja, 25–28.

36 Châtellier, Louis, Tradition Chrétienne et Renouveau Catholique dans l'Ancien Diocèse de Strasbourg, 1650–1770 (Paris: Éditions Ophrys, 1981), 178Google Scholar.

37 For the term ex officio, see Henry Ansgar Kelly, “Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses,” Church History 58, no. 4 (December 1989): 439–442.

38 For the duties of the prosecutor, especially in proceedings of the Holy Office, see Errera, Andrea, “Modello accusatorio e modello inquisitorio nel processo contro gli eretici: il ruolo del procuratore fiscal,” Studia borromaica 23 (2009): 151208Google Scholar.

39 AAM, Dicta 24, no. 45.

40 Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 30Google Scholar.

41 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 21; and AAM, Dicta 26, nos. 104, 17.

42 CEM, AO 676, fols. 250r–257v.

43 CEM, AO 696, fols. 36r–49.

44 For this phase of the proceedings, the processo informativo, see Giovanni Battista de Luca, Il Dottor Volgare, ovvero Il Compendio di tutta la legge civile, canonica, feudale, e municipale nelle cose più ricevute in pratica, vol. 6 (Cologne: Modesto Fenzo, 1740), 15–22. For the evolution of this term, see Bellabarba, Marco, “Informazioni e fatti: casi di storia del processo penale nell'Italia centro-settentrionale secoli (XVI–XVII),” Storica 7 (2001): 155175Google Scholar, esp. 168–175.

45 AAM, Dicta 26, nos. 15, 104.

46 Wunderli, Richard M., London Church Courts and Society on the Eve of the Reformation (Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1981), 5560Google Scholar.

47 CEM, AO 677, fol. 94.

48 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 97.

49 The alarii came from the lower ranks of society and combined their trades with court work, assisting the captain only when the need arose. They were primarily bakers, cotton beaters, gardeners, tenant farmers, tavern keepers, and sailors. See AAM, Alarii et Servientes, passim; and AAM, Supplicationes (hereafter cited as Supp.) 16, no. 191.

50 CEM, AO 698, fol. 71. For one such example, see AAM, Dicta 26, no. 98.

51 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 7.

52 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 70; and AAM, Dicta 24, no. 36.

53 AAM, Informationes (hereafter cited as Inform.) 6, no. 92.

54 When again in trouble two years later, Don Salvatore escaped across the roof of a neighboring house and hid himself in a manger. AAM, Dicta 26, no. 97.

55 For the members of the court, see Synodus Dioecesana ab Illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Domino Fratre Cocco Palmerio Episcopo Melitensi (Malta, 1842), 147–151. For the direct intervention of Saint Carlo Borromeo in judicial affairs, see Danilo Zardin, Carlo Borromeo. Cultura, santità, governo (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2010), 223–291.

56 Ciappara, Mill-Qigħan ta’ l-Istorja, 32–41.

57 For the central role of the vicar-general in the administration of justice, see De Luca, Giovanni Battista, Il Vescovo Pratico overo discorsi familiari nell'ore oziose de giorni canicolari dell'anno 1674 (Rome: Corbelletti, 1675), 431432Google Scholar.

58 CEM, AO 704, fol. 277; and AAM, Inform. 6, no. 18.

59 One such exception was Canon Giovanni Maria Azzopardi Castelletti (1758–1764), who seriously disrupted diocesan justice. The charges against him centered especially on his inflexibility, corruption, and simony, which made it easy for prostitutes to get communion tickets. Ciappara, Mill-Qigħan Ta’ l-Istorja, 34–41. For the qualifications of church judges, see AAM, Inform. 6, no. 18.

60 They were recruited from the highly qualified lawyers of Malta like Fabrizio Grech. See Archivum Cathedralae Melitense (hereafter cited as ACM), Misc. 24, fol. 291; Ignazio Saverio Mifsud (CEM, AO 660, fol. 223); and Giuseppe Borg Olivier (CEM, AO 689, fol. 192).

61 For the importance of notaries in diocesan chanceries, see Giorgio Chittolini, “Introduzione,” in I Notai della Curia Arcivescovile di Milano Secoli XIV–XV, eds. Cristina Belloni and Marco Lunari (Rome: Archivi di Stato, 2004), ix–lxxxv.

62 CEM, AO 691, fols. 285r–286; and CEM, AO 677, fols. 90r–91.

63 AAM, Dicta 28A, no. 8.

64 AAM, Inform. 6, no. 65.

65 Frans Ciappara, “The Roman Inquisition Revisited: The Maltese Tribunal in the Eighteenth Century,” The Catholic Historical Review 103, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 446; and Fiorani, Il Concilio Romano del 1725, 251.

66 AAM, Dicta 28A, no. 8.

67 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 97; and AAM, Inform. 6, no. 18.

68 AAM, Dicta 23, no. 39.

69 AAM, Inform. 6, no. 85.

70 AAM, Inform. 6, no. 69.

71 CEM, AO 691, fols. 290r–v; and AAM, Dicta 27, no. 30.

72 On this legal aid, see De Luca, Il Dottor Volgare, 36–37.

73 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 97. For the 1794 nine-page-long report by Don Giuseppe Agius, written in defense of Don Federico Busuttil, a canon of Senglea, see AAM, Dicta 28A, no. 8. For Dr. Giuseppe Calcedonio Debono, see CEM, AO 698, fols. 229r–230v.

74 CEM, AO 698, fol. 74v; and AAM, Dicta 24, no. 21.

75 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 67.

76 AAM, Inform. 6, no. 20; and CEM, AO 702, fols. 13r–21. On this topic see Lawrence R. Poos, “Sex, Lies and the Church Courts of Pre-Reformation England,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25, no. 4 (Spring 1995): 589.

77 AAM, Dicta 28A, no. 8.

78 AAM, Dicta 24, no. 42.

79 AAM, Dicta 28A, no. 6; and CEM, AO 808, fols. 365r–431v.

80 AAM, Supp. 18, no. 50.

81 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 97.

82 Michele Mancino, “Governare la criminalità degli ecclesiastici nell'Italia del primo cinquecento: il caso di Napoli e della Campania,” Studi Storici 50, no. 1 (2009): 123. See also Mancino, “La giustizia penale ecclesiastica nell'Italia del seicento: linee di tendenza,” Studi Storici 51, no. 4 (2010): 1028–1029.

83 Cavarzere, La giustizia del Vescovo, 37. The same can be said for Venice, as seen in Daniela Hacke, Women, Sex and Marriage in Early Modern Venice (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 50–51.

84 Ottavia Niccoli, “Rinuncia, pace, perdono: Rituali di pacificazione della prima età moderna,” Studi Storici 40, no. 1 (1999): 224.

85 Renata Ago, “Una giustizia personalizzata: I tribunal civili di Roma nel XVII secolo,” Quaderni Storici 101, no. 2 (1999): 397.

86 Stuart Carroll, “The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France,” Past and Present 178 (2003): 74–115; Ronald A. Marchant, The Church under the Law: Justice, Administration and Discipline in the Diocese of York, 1560–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 1–11, 243–245; Wunderli, London Church Courts, 49; R. B. Outhwaite, The Rise and Fall of the English Ecclesiastical Courts, 1500–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10; R. H. Helmholz, “Canonical Defamation in Medieval England,” American Journal of Legal History 15, no. 4 (1971): 255–268; Helmholz, “Crime, Compurgation and the Courts of the Medieval Church,” Law and History Review 1, no. 1 (1983): 21; Helmholz, “Usury and the Medieval English Church Courts,” Speculum 61, no. 2 (1986): 377–378; and Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 135–138.

87 For Pope Benedict XIII's 1727 constitution Maxima vigilantia, see Ermanno Loevinson, “La costituzione di Benedetto XIII sugli archivi ecclesiastici: un papa archivista,” Gli archivi italiani 3 (1916): 159–206.

88 For such examples, see CEM, AO 703, fol. 235v; AAM, Dicta 26, nos. 16, 76; AAM, Dicta 27, nos. 29, 54; AAM, Dicta 28, no. 10; and AAM, Supp. 16, no. 108.

89 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 76.

90 Alfred Soman, “Déviance et justice criminelle en Europe occidentale 1300–1800: vers une problématique,” Criminal Justice History 1 (1980): 13–8; and Luisella Cabrini Chiesa, “Gesti e formule di pace: note in margine all'età medievale,” Quaderni di storia religiosa 12 (2005): 47–59.

91 AAM, Dicta 24, no. 64.

92 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 11; and CEM, AO 808, fols. 361r–364v. On this topic, see Martin J. Ingram, “Communities and the Courts: Law and Disorder in Early-Seventeenth-Century Wiltshire,” in Crime in England 1550–1800, ed. James S. Cockburn (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 125–127; and James A. Sharpe, “‘Such Disagreement betwyxt Neighbours’: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 173–178.

93 John Bossy, Christianity and the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 57–75; and Bossy, Peace in the Post-Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

94 Christian brotherhood was also the primary aim of the Capuchins’ and, especially, the Jesuits’ missions. See Frans Ciappara, “Confraternal Organisation in Early Modern Malta,” Confraternitas 29, no. 1 (2018): 13; and Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 292–295.

95 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 4; and AAM, Dicta 24, no. 58.

96 CEM, AO 683, fol. 48v.

97 For this term, see De Luca, Il Dottor Volgare, 45.

98 CEM, AO 705, fol. 47. See also AAM, Dicta 24, no. 36: “de non accedendo ad domum Angelo Bonnici, nec conversando cum Maria eius uxore.”

99 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 15.

100 Mancino and Romeo, Clero criminale, 198; and Minucci Del Rosso, “I Famigli e le Carceri di una corte arcivescovili dal secolo XVI al secolo XVIII,” La Rassegna Nazionale 8, no. 29 (1886): 138.

101 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 84.

102 Irene Fosi, Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500–1750, trans. Thomas V. Cohen (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 169.

103 AAM, Inform. 5, no. 63.

104 Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 81.

105 There is a vast literature on Borromeo. See, for instance, San Carlo e il suo tempo: Atti del Convegno Internazionale nel IV centenario della Morte (Milan, 21–26 maggio 1984) (Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1986); Zardin, Carlo Borromeo; and Giuseppe Alberigo, “Carlo Borromeo come modello di Vescovo nella Chiesa Post-Tridentina,” Rivista Storica Italiana 79, no. 3 (1967): 1031–1052.

106 De Luca, Il Vescovo Pratico, 439–441. For De Luca, see Agostino Lauro, Il Cardinale Giovan Battista De Luca: Diritto e Riforme nello Stato della Chiesa, 1676–1683 (Naples: Jovene, 1991).

107 Mancino and Romeo, Clero criminale, 96.

108 For the transformation of prisons from places of detention to places of punishment, see Nicoletta Sarti, “Appunti su Carcere-Custodia e Carcere-Pena nella Dottrina Civilistica dei Secoli XII–XVI,” Rivista di Storia del Diritto Italiano 53, no. 54 (1980–1981): 67–110. See also Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 221.

109 On this topic, see Karl Härter, “Negoziare sanzioni e norme: la funzione e il significato delle suppliche nella giustizia penale della prima età moderna,” in Suppliche e “gravamina”: politica, amministrazione, giustizia in Europa (secoli xiv–xviii), eds. Cecilia Nubola and Andreas Würgler (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 263–305.

110 CEM, AO 691, fols. 294r–v.

111 AAM, Dicta 24, nos. 21, 45.

112 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 101.

113 AAM, Dicta 25, no. 67.

114 Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils, ed. and trans. Henry Joseph Schroeder (St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1937), 271; and Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 211. For the cardinals’ demand at the Roman provincial council of 1725 that clergy could appeal to Rome even in first instance, see Maria Teresa Fattori, “Il concilio provinciale del 1725: liturgie e concezioni del potere del papa a confront,” Cristianesimo nella storia 29, no. l (2008): 33.

115 On this point, see Paolo Prodi, Una storia della giustizia: Dal pluralismo dei fori al moderno dualismo tra coscienza e diritto (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 288–297. On the bishop’s powers, or lack thereof, see Claudio Donati, “Vescovi e Diocesi d'Italia dall'Età Post-Tridentina alla Caduta dell'Antico Regime,” in Clero e Società nell’ Età moderna, ed. Mario Rosa (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992), 321–389.

116 Archives of the Inquisition Malta (hereafter cited as AIM), Processi 115A, fols. 393r–398v; and AIM, Processi 117B, fols. 534r–537v. See also Marlene Mifsud Chircop and Mark Montebello, Min qatel il-patri? Ġrajja storika (Malta: Midsea, 2016), 104. For central Europe, see Ulrich Lehner, Monastic Prisons and Torture Chambers: Crime and Punishment in Central European Monasteries 1600–1880 (Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2013).

117 For the tribunal of the Roman inquisition in Malta, see Frans Ciappara, Society and the Inquisition in Early Modern Malta (Malta: Publishers Enterprises Group, 2000). For the relations between bishops and inquisitors, see Ciappara, Society and the Inquisition, 237, 346–348; and Ciappara, The Roman Inquisition in Enlightened Malta, 71–76. For Italy, see Giovanni Romeo, L'Inquisizione nell'Italia moderna (Rome: Laterza, 2002); and Andrea Del Col, L'Inquisizione in Italia dal XII al XXI secolo (Milan: Mondadori, 2006).

118 For the relationship between this church department and Italian bishops, see Giovanni Romeo, “La Congregazione dei Vescovi e Regolari e i Visitatori Apostolici nell'Italia post-Tridentina: un primo balancio,” in Per il Cinquecento Religioso Italiano. Cultura e Società, ed. Maurizio Sangalli, vol. 2 (Rome: Edizione dell'Ateneo, 2003), 607–614.

119 De Luca, Il Vescovo Pratico, 446.

120 On this topic, see Marco Cavarzere, “La Giustizia Ecclesiastica in Periferia. Il Pluralismo Giurisdizionale della Chiesa attraverso il Caso di Aquileia,” Giornale di Storia 9 (2012): 1–10.

121 AAM, Supp. 19, no. 99.

122 Ciappara, Frans, Church-State Relations in Late-eighteenth-century Malta: Gio. Nicolò Muscat 1735–1803 (Malta: Malta University Press, 2018), 130133Google Scholar.

123 AAM, Dicta 26, no. 97.

124 AAM, Inform. 6, no. 102.

125 Emmison, Frederick George, Elizabethan Life: Morals and the Church Courts (Chelmsford: Essex County Council, 1973), 281Google Scholar.

126 Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 198. See also Elena Cristina Brambilla, “La polizia dei tribunali ecclesiastici e le riforme della giustizia penale,” in Corpi armati e ordine pubblico in Italia XVI–XIX sec., eds. Livio Antonielli and Claudio Donati (Catanzaro: Rubbettino, 2003), 90–92.

127 AAM, Dicta 27, no. 2.

128 AAM, Dicta 27, no. 43. Yet for some reason, when Luca Cilia, Francesco Canaletto, and Rosa Canaletto manhandled Don Vinvenzo Micallef in 1768, they were absolved from excommunication privately by the parish priest at his residence at Senglea. See AAM, Dicta 30A, no. 66.

129 Mancino and Romeo, Clero Criminale, 79.

130 Mancino, “La giustizia penale,” 1009.

131 Puff, Helmut, “Localizing Sodomy: The ‘Priest and Sodomite’ in Pre-Reformation Germany and Switzerland,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8, no. 2 (1997): 166Google Scholar.

132 AAM, Inform. 5, no. 59; and AAM, Inform. 6, nos. 87, 102.

133 On this subject, see Marco Bellabarba, “Pace pubblica e pace privata: linguaggi e istituzioni processuali nell'Italia moderna,” in Criminalità e giustizia in Germania e in Italia: pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici tra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna, eds. Marco Bellabarba, Andrea Zorzi, and Gerd Schwerhoff, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 189–213.

134 CEM, AO 694, fols. 71r–190v. See also AAM, Corrispondenza 19, fols. 993r–995r.

135 Zardin, Danilo, “Il concilio di Trento e il rinnovamento cattolico dell'età moderna,” in Religione, cerimoniale e società nelle terre milanesi, eds. Zardin, Danilo, Pagani, Fabrizio, and Pisoni, Carlo Alessandro (Germignaga: Magazzeno storico verbanese, 2014), 3145Google Scholar. See also Pierre Janelle, The Catholic Reformation (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1949).

136 Jedin, Hubert, Riforma Cattolica o Controriforma Reformation? (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1957), 7677Google Scholar.

137 O'Malley, John, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 135Google Scholar.