We have no less than five national days, each commemorating significant dates in the history of our people. However, there are other dates, also significant, which normally go unnoticed and uncommemorated. Like yesterday, for instance. (From the Facebook page of the National Library): Alfonso V (the Magnanimous) (13961458) succeeded to the throne of Aragon in 1416. An ambitious and vigorous ruler, he engaged in wars to expand Aragonese influence in the Mediterranean and the Levant. In order to finance his expeditions, he pawned the Maltese Islands to Spanish viceroys in 1420 and 1426.
(From Wikipedia): Alfonso V, King of Aragon, was following various campaigns in the Mediterranean and was in need of both money and support. Therefore, he granted the islands to Gonsalvo Monroy, but the contract of payment was signed and the payment made through Viceroy of Sicily Antonio de Cardona on behalf of Monroy.
This caused great trouble in Malta and Gozo since they pledged allegiance to Cardona and not Monroy, after the transfer of jurisdiction to Monroy on the 7th of March 1421. Little is known about the period from 1421 to 1425.
The rebellion of the Maltese and Gozitan populations of 1425-1428 is well known in Malta although it was not the first. The initial violence erupted in Gozo and spilled into Malta by 1426, finally control of the islands fell in the hands of the rebelling populations with Monroy’s garrison and wife Lady Constance de Monroy were encircled in the Castrum Maris.
The tension remained until 1427, when Alfonso V decided that the Universita could buy the fief if they could pay the fee that Monroy paid in 1421, that of 30,000 Aragonese Florins over four months, an effectively impossible task for the poor population of the island and the relatively wealthy local nobility.
By the end of 1427 they had not collected the money and had to bargain for a new deal wherein Viceroy Muntayans held onto 15,000 Aragonese florins worth of seized Maltese assets in Sicily, 400 uncie was given by Francesco Gatto and Marciano Falco local noblemen.
The Universita were to pay 5000 florins within a month while the remaining 10,000 florins were to be paid by October 1428. By the deadline, the Universita still had to pay 10,000 florins this led to a stall in negotiations until April 1429 when Gonsalvo Monroy was on his deathbed and decided to pardon the remaining debt of 10,000 florins.
(From the Facebook page of the National Library): On 20 June 1428, King Alfonso issued a charter whereby he pledged the perpetual incorporation of the Maltese Islands into the Crown of Sicily, hailing them ‘a noteworthy and conspicuous limb and gemstone of the royal crown’. Significantly, the crown guaranteed the population the right to resist with force any future enfeoffment of the Maltese Islands. The document, known as the ‘Magna Carta Libertatis’ was a landmark in the history of the Maltese Islands in relation to the Aragonese Crown. Many of our students may have heard of the British Magna Carta, which the British nobles forced King John to sign in 1215. But many would not have heard of our own Magna Carta, which gives the people of Malta the right to resist any whittling down of the rights of the Maltese.
In reality this document and its highsounding words soon became a dead letter. A century later, Emperor Charles V, the successor of King Alfonso, handed the islands over to the Order of Malta while keeping a purely symbolic role over Malta. These high-sounding documents are many times subjected to encroachments by kings who seek to curtail the rights of the subject people. This happened in England, and this happened in Malta.
Nevertheless, it is important to remember this date and what happened in 1428 and it is important to tell our students about it. Since that day the Maltese have had the right to be free and also to resist those who seek to undermine this freedom.