'Printing in Malta 1642-1839'

Author: William Zammit

Publisher: Gutenberg / 2008

Pages: 423

The recent controversies on the freedom of the press in Malta are nothing new. As this book shows, ever since the technology of printing arrived in Malta from Germany, around the year 1640, it has been subjected to government power play and censorship.

It was only in 1756 that printing returned to Malta. What had happened? When Jean-Paul Lascaris de Castellar became grand master in June 1636, one of his immediate priorities was to set up a printing press such as existed in many towns in neighbouring Sicily and southern Italy.

Meanwhile, the Order found it was being forced to rely increasingly on printed material such as manuals and administrative ephemera imported from abroad.

By late 1636 the grand master sent the 1631 revision of the statutes of the Order to Rome for approval by the Roman Curia. Lascaris intended to have the statutes printed in Malta. But time passed and no approval came despite continuous reminders.

Then on 15 May 1640 Lascaris decided that as the Pope was not in agreement with the Order as to the conditions under which the press in Malta was to operate, the matter was not to be pursued any further.

The Order was in a weak position due to its dual religious-secular nature when it came to the crucial matter of control over any printing activity.

Some 60 years later, when Ramon Perellos was grand master, the same issue cropped up and again the grand master was forced to retreat. But this time the printing press was not to be set up by the grand master but by an entrepreneur who tried his hand at many ventures, from bakery to vase-making, Pompeo de Fiore.

In June 1642, still under Lascaris, de Fiore said he had set up a printing press at considerable expense and effort and asked permission to commence printing. He also asked for a monopoly, which was granted for 20 years.

Then came the sticky point: who was to exercise censorship? The Order wanted to do this itself but the Congregation of the Holy Office wanted the censorship to be done by the Inquisitor.

This became a three-cornered struggle between the secular, inquisitorial and diocesan authorities over who got to put the Imprimatur on a new book. It was this that led to the cessation of printing for a whole century.

The Inquisitor Gori Pannellini had the Holy Office backing him, and also the recent Council of Trent, but Lascaris protested this was extremely prejudicial to his personal sovereign authority over Malta. He then issued permission to de Fiore to start printing.

Malta then did not have printers, so an effort was made to attract printers from Calabria, then from Messina and lastly from Catania.

The works printed at this early stage were mostly aimed at the Order and its members. Thus we may include Ingentis Turcarum and the Relatione of 1644.  Then came Bonacota and his monumental 573-page Della Descrittione di Malta.

In 1647 came the printing of Giovanni Francesco Abela's magnum opus Descrittione di Malta which practically bankrupted the press. It was aimed at a still non-existent Maltese reading public and actual sales of the first edition lingered on for more than a century.

At this point most of the printing done for Malta was still printed abroad. Thus the first edition of the catechism in parallel Italian and Maltese by Francesco Wzzino was printed in Rome.

Then came the introduction of the Bullettini which marked those who had satisfied the annual Easter devotion. And then the massive Bolla Crociata which soon became a huge business.

We mentioned Perellos. The search for a mutually satisfactory agreement between the Order and Rome continued till 1756.

Perellos attempted to re-establish printing. In protracted negotiations in 1698 and the following year the two sides battled the issue out. But ultimately the Rome decision simply confirmed the June 1644 decision. The new decree was deemed by Perellos both unsatisfactory and prejudicial to the political claims of the grand master. Rather than submitting to Rome's viewpoint, Perellos shelved the re-introduction of printing.

It was only settled during Pinto's magistracy in 1746-7. This renewed attempt, the author says, was most probably the indirect result of the re-establishment of the lucrative indult of the Crusade, known as the Bolla Della Santissima Crociata to the Maltese islands in 1744, which required the annual printing of thousands of copies in Sicily by the Order. Also, the papal curia's strict Tridentine adherence to the issue must have mellowed.

On 24 November a decree by Benedict XIV clarified any ambiguity of interpretation in a decree issued just two days previously. This 24 November decree actually granted the grand master more than he had originally asked for.

The way was open for the introduction of printing in Malta.