Professor HENRY FRENDO, Director of the Institute of Maltese Studies, has just returned from a US-organised Mediterranean Studies conference in Corfu’ at which he spoke about the Maltese of Smyrna (Izmir) before and after the ‘Great Fire’ of 1922. He seized the opportunity to find out more about the still surviving and ethnically conscious community of ‘Maltese Corfiots’
Malta is to have a new consul in Corfu’ in the person of Spiros Gauci, a fifth generation Maltese Corfiot. No more deserving candidate could have been identified by the Foreign Ministry because Spiros is a historian, the secretary of the Catholic Archdiocese of the Ionian Islands, and speaks English and Italian as well as Greek. His Maltese as such is gone and understandably so, as it has been very much assimilated and integrated into its Hellenistic context since the early 1800s, but he empathises closely with Maltese ethnicity. He addressed the Emigrants Convention hosted some months ago in Valletta by our Foreign Ministry and is the author of a substantive illustrated bilingual study entitled The Chronicle of the Maltese Sisters in Corfu’ (Corfu’, 2007, pp. 290) in Greek, translated into English by Irena Mouzakiti. (I had somehow found a copy in Gozo, which I bought.)
Maltese Corfiots are one of the very oldest ethnic migrant settler communities in the Mediterranean, who still number some 3,000 or 3,500. Whereas the Maltese communities in North Africa and the Near East were practically all forced out, although a few individual families survive to this day, on the whole fate has been kinder to the Maltese in Greece, as in France.
Some months ago in Bezier, southern France, I had occasion to address some 1,400 pieds noirs at the Cercle Algerianiste, several of whom later came up to me to attest to their Maltese ancestry. One, Monique Cassar from Avignon, spoke fluent Maltese, which her grandmother had taught her!
However, these migrants’ histories are different. Maltese descendants living in France today (most of whom were born in France or were even personally familiar with it) were forced to go there following the bloody Algerian civil war and the subsequent independence of Algeria and Tunisia as recently as the late 1950s or early 1960s. Maltese Corfiots, on the other hand, started settling directly in the Ionian Islands from Governor Thomas Maitland’s time in the first quarter of the 19th century.
Some moved from one Ionian island to another, but the largest ‘colony’ was always in Corfu’ as remains so to this day. Most have also remained Catholics although I met a Greek Orthodox prelate (in Kythera) who claimed Maltese descent (even citing his family’s ancestral village). The Archbishop is a Spiteri (Hellenised to Spiteris). He has been the subject of a just published biography in Italian and Greek (Ioannis Asimakis (Ed), Donorum commutatio: Studi in onore dell’arcivescovo Ionnis Spiteris OFM Cap. Per il suo 70mo genetliaco, Thessaloniki, 2010; pp.821).
The one most tangible living monument to a Maltese presence in Corfu’ is the central, spacious and imposing premises of ‘the Maltese sisters’. Five Malta-born Maltese sisters still work here under the inspired leadership of Madre Monica Pullicino of Gharghur, who also served the Congregation in Rome but has been in Corfu for the past 25 years. Until 1961 they ran a Catholic school, which was then transferred elsewhere and apparently constrained to close later; but the Old Age Home run by the sisters, which has also taken in a few Greek Orthodox senior citizens, is continually trying to improve its services (and currently in need of a van). There are some 35 residents, most of them of Maltese ancestry and of course Catholics. As I had shown in my field study of Australia (‘Religion and Ethnic Identity in the Maltese Australian Community’, Spectrum, Melbourne, 1988, ed. Abe Ata), religion seems to have remained a stronger carrier of Maltese identity than even language. This is certainly the case in the Ionian Islands. Apart from the Maltese sisters themselves, who are Malta-born (Floriana, Hamrun, etc) − Sister Pullicino’s Maltese is impeccable and perfectly idiomatic − hardly any Maltese Corfiot, so far at any rate, speaks or even reads Maltese. Fortunately, English is now a second language, after Greek. Moreover, as in Albania, which is just across the water, Italian too may come in handy. Groups of Maltese-Ionians occasionally visit Malta. I once had occasion to record interviews with a number of them by means of Italian.
Some French is also used. Thus, for example, Photini Karlafti-Moutratidi’s book Aspects de la vie economique a’ Corfou au milieu du 17eme siècle (Athenes, 2005), of which she gave me a copy, is mainly based on the Venetian archives. Venice occupied Corfu’, which like Malta never fell to the Ottoman Empire, for centuries. Photini’s husband is the author of another book about Greeks who found refuge in Corfu’ following the fire and genocide in Smyrna of 1922, some 30,000 of them, of whom a couple of thousand actually settled in Corfu. His father, he told me via an interpreter, was one of them. (This, sadly, is all Greek to me, although I can well appreciate the period photographs). It is known that of the Maltese community in Smyrna, a number had actually re-settled there from the Ionian Islands, although many had held on tightly to their British passports. (My study ‘Maltese Survivors of Smyrna’ was published recently in the Malta Historical Association’s anniversary volume, ed. J.F. Grima, but a revised and extended version of it has been requested for publication in the USA.)
The Franciscan Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, which retains such a live presence inCorfu’, was founded in 1907 by a Gozitan, Mother Margherita De Brincat, with some assistance from Gozo’s bishop, “to offer, in excessive modesty, a new spiritual and educational orientation to the children of the hundreds of Corfiots of Maltese descent, who were working hard in farming and other occupations”. De Brincat was succeeded by another Maltese Superior General of the Order, Suor Anselmina Mifsud, with HQ in Santa Maria del Monte, Rome.
The work continues. This month two First Holy Communion ceremonies for some 40 children were held at the Franciscans’ chapel, followed by parties, in Alexandras Street, which leads straight into the heart of the new town (San Roco Square).
Other still more central, historic and well-known Maltese-connected landmarks in Corfu’ are Maitland’s rotunda monument in a garden-landscaped square known as the Spianada, one of the largest open spaces in Europe; and, most imposing of all, the Palace of St Michael and St George facing it, to the side of the famous old fort, its entrance across bridge and bastions surrounded by a moat. This palace, now a fine Museum of Asian Art, was (is) built of Maltese stone by Maltese craftsmen. On one of its ceilings, one may still see decorations depicting what looks like the Maltese cross.
It is here that a major exhibition is planned, possibly next month − under consular direction, in full liaison with the support of the Greek authorities − about Maltese migrant settlement in the Ionian Islands, with many original documents, maps and other illustrations. I hope that a travel agency such as Fantasy Tours, which currently seems to be the only local means for direct Malta-Corfu’-Malta flights on Air Malta, will take note of such a prime attraction when it materializes, hopefully this summer. Informally, the ‘Maltese’ presence is well-known and readily accepted as part of the furniture – every taxi driver mentions it, and the receptionist at my hotel, Mary Cutayar, told me she had been to (the Catholic) school with Spiros Gauci, and they all ‘knew one another’.
However, it is fair that the Maltese presence and migrant contribution in the Ionian Islands be more officially acknowledged and publicly registered. There have been many other Maltese in parts of Greece over time, from Piraeus to Heraklion, with about 100 Maltese citizens living in Athens, where Malta has an embassy as indeed Greece has in Malta.
Practically all long-time residents are integrated and indeed assimilated, proudly Greek, but practically everyone remains conscious of origin and ancestry, and rightly so. Genetically, given the Mediterranean type, it is easy to mistake a Maltese for a Greek anyway, and vice-versa. (It happened to me repeatedly!). Membership of the EU and certain common regional interests now seem to be bringing Malta and Greece still closer together.