Frans Ciappara
Biographic Data
| ID | 1028636 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Frans Ciappara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Frans |
| FAMILY NAME | Ciappara |
| SIGNATURE | CIAPPARA F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Malta |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4755-381X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Bizocche: Female Lay Religiosity in Early Modern Malta
Preaching in Counter‐Reformation Malta: Don Ignazio Saverio Mifsud (1739–54)
This is a study of Don Ignazio Saverio Mifsud's sermons in Maltese, which he delivered between 1739 and 1754. It is divided into three parts. The first discusses Mifsud's sources. The second concentrates on the structure of the sermons and on their themes, emphasising the development of the sermon from the homily through the thematic sermon through the epideictic. Mifsud had the ability to move from one genre to another, inculcating in his listen…
The Professionalization of the Clergy: Parish Priests in Early Modern Malta
This article engages with the role of the parish priests in Malta in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on their degree of professionalization by examining their relations with the bishop and with the other members of the clergy and the laity. It concludes that, as in other countries, it was difficult for the decrees of the council of Trent to be fully implemented in Malta. If some parish priests were diligent in exer…
Confraternal Devotions in Malta, 1670–1798
The aims of this article are twofold. It first discusses how confraternities tried to improve the spiritual worth of their members. The brothers conducted their devotions communally in their oratory, confessing and receiving the Eucharist, hearing mass and listening to sermons. They also participated in processions while the liturgy of the suffrages for the dead was recognised as the special task of confraternities. The brethren also practised th…
Confraternal Charity in Early Modern Malta
This article has two main aims. It shows that the members of confraternities gained merit by dispensing the works of corporal mercy identified in Matthew 25, 42–43; their almsgiving made them pleasing to God and reduced their days in purgatory. Charity, though, is beneficial both to the donor and the receiver. The poor are helped materially in their indigence but the basic welfare, with which the brothers of companies provide them, preserves them…
Members of the Clergy before the Maltese Diocesan Court, 1750-1798
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 cler…
Translating “Holy Bodies” (Corpi Santi) in Malta, 1667-1795
This article discusses the corpi santi, or whole skeletons of saints, which were brought to Malta from the catacombs of Rome in the eighteenth century. Here they had a diff erent meaning than they had in northern Europe. Malta was not aff ected by the Thirty Years’ War and therefore did not have to replace relics destroyed by the Protestants. The Maltese church also had no need to emphasize its connection with Rome. These saints were honored in M…
Christians and Muslims on Malta in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
Samuel P. Huntington has described the encounter between Christianity and Islam as the ‘clash of civilizations’, and so have Norman Daniel and R.W. Southern. This Manichean vision is the result partly of political and religious rivalry which demonizes ‘the other’. Such an interpretation has been challenged by scholars who emphasize a more complex reality and refer to ‘a shared discourse of the Ottoman and European worlds’
Conversion Narratives and the Roman Inquisition in Malta, 1650–1700
This article analyses the conversion narratives which Christian renegades to Islam narrated to the inquisitor on their arrival in Malta in the second half of the seventeenth century. A few of them really believed in their new faith and were declared formal heretics, but the great majority had either been brought up as Muslims since a tender age or else were only suspected of believing that one can save oneself as a Muslim. The inquisitors were ve…
Simulated Sanctity in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Malta
Revelations, apparitions, voices, stigmata and ecstasies were extraordinary phenomena and profoundly emotional, in which God was perceived as communicating with human beings through bodily phenomena. It was up to churchmen to regulate and control divine intervention in daily life and separate truth from deceit. But attempting to fulfil this pastoral duty was a complicated matter. Were these experiences authentic, really proceeding from God or wer…
Marriage and the Family in a Maltese Parish: St. Mary’s (Qrendi) in the Eighteenth Century
This article addresses the Maltese traditional family, taking St. Mary’s (Qrendi) as a test case. It results that couples married in their early twenties, while a high proportion of men and women never married at all. Marriage was not popular so that one-fifth of all marriages were remarriages. Very few widows remarried and it was only for some economic reason that they sought another man. There is no evidence though that a high rate of celibacy …
Religion, kinship and godparenthood as elements of social cohesion in Qrendi, a late-eighteenth-century Maltese parish
This micro-study examines the Maltese parish of St Mary's (Qrendi) in the second half of the eighteenth century. First it will be argued that – as in many other contemporaneous communities – migration to other parishes made its population extremely fluid. A second interest lies in the extent to which social distinctions and unruly behaviour further disrupted village solidarity. Finally there will be a consideration of the thesis that such unstabl…
Strategies for the Afterlife in Eighteenth-Century Malta
According to Protestant eschatology, the dead are no longer with us. In the forceful words of Eamon Duffy they are ‘gone beyond the reach of human contact, even of human prayer’. But if this was the most devastating change in the mind of Protestants, Catholics affirmed Tridentine teaching on the cult of the dead by an ‘obsessional multiplication’ of suffrages or intercessory prayers, especially post mortem masses. This belief was still strong in …
Trent and the Clergy in Late Eighteenth-Century Malta
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Non Gode l'Immunità Ecclesiastica: Sanctuary in Malta, c.1740—1828
Disciplining Diversity: The Roman Inquisition and Social Control in Malta, 1743–98
Having lost northern Europe to the Protestants the Catholic Church tried to preserve control over what remained of the respublica Christiana . The attempt was twofold. First, it was political. The popes declared the entire Catholic world for their diocese. The government of the Christian peoples’, Pius V observed, ‘belongs to Us and We should see that they are governed with charity’. Second, the popes admitted that the Reformation had been the re…
Parish Priest and Community in 18th-century Malta: Patterns of Conflict
This essay explores the relations between parish priests and their parishioners in eighteenth-century Malta. It argues that pastors did not succeed in governing the community and controlling local religious life. Generally, they were outsiders. This was a great liability since rivalry between villages was intense and the inhabitants were reluctant to admit new people, to whom they were often hostile. But the main reason for the rivalry between th…
Una Messa in Perpetuum: Perpetual Mass Bequests in Traditional Malta, 1750-1797
In 1931 Marc Bloch, reviewing Maurice Halbwach's book, Les Causes du Suicide, criticized historians' reluctance to write about death.1 Lucien Febvre made the same comment twenty years later. He did admit that "death is now a fashionable subject," but it was sociologists, doctors, and psychologists who were monopolizing it, not historians.2 The appeal of these founders of the brilliant "Annales School" of French historians3 was not left unanswered…
The Financial Condition of Parish Priests in late Eighteenth-Century Malta
Parish priests in late eighteenth-century Malta often grumbled about their poverty, but their excuses were generally self-serving and related to the financial demands of their bishop; like incumbents in mainland Europe, they were not in a bad financial situation. Their relative affluence was a result of revenues such as tithes, mass legacies and surplice fees. In small communities this income may have been tiny, but parish priests were not entire…
Perceptions of marriage in late-eighteenth-century Malta
Although the Catholic Church claimed to control marriage, in late-eighteenth-century Malta the faithful still considered matrimony to be a personal affair. The study is based upon episcopal court records and parish registers, which reveal substantial numbers of clandestine marriages, contravening the Council of Trent's directives concerning entry into marriage. Couples separated from each other at will, without the Church's consent. A few took ot…
Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century
Ciappara Frans. Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century. In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, n°71, 1994. Le carrefour maltais, sous la direction de Christiane Villain-Gandossi . pp. 109-126
The Financial Condition of Parish Priests in late Eighteenth-Century Malta
Parish priests in late eighteenth-century Malta often grumbled about their poverty, but their excuses were generally self-serving and related to the financial demands of their bishop; like incumbents in mainland Europe, they were not in a bad financial situation. Their relative affluence was a result of revenues such as tithes, mass legacies and surplice fees. In small communities this income may have been tiny, but parish priests were not entire…
Conversion Narratives and the Roman Inquisition in Malta, 1650–1700
This article analyses the conversion narratives which Christian renegades to Islam narrated to the inquisitor on their arrival in Malta in the second half of the seventeenth century. A few of them really believed in their new faith and were declared formal heretics, but the great majority had either been brought up as Muslims since a tender age or else were only suspected of believing that one can save oneself as a Muslim. The inquisitors were ve…
Marriage and the Family in a Maltese Parish: St. Mary’s (Qrendi) in the Eighteenth Century
This article addresses the Maltese traditional family, taking St. Mary’s (Qrendi) as a test case. It results that couples married in their early twenties, while a high proportion of men and women never married at all. Marriage was not popular so that one-fifth of all marriages were remarriages. Very few widows remarried and it was only for some economic reason that they sought another man. There is no evidence though that a high rate of celibacy …
Trent and the Clergy in Late Eighteenth-Century Malta
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Una Messa in Perpetuum: Perpetual Mass Bequests in Traditional Malta, 1750-1797
In 1931 Marc Bloch, reviewing Maurice Halbwach's book, Les Causes du Suicide, criticized historians' reluctance to write about death.1 Lucien Febvre made the same comment twenty years later. He did admit that "death is now a fashionable subject," but it was sociologists, doctors, and psychologists who were monopolizing it, not historians.2 The appeal of these founders of the brilliant "Annales School" of French historians3 was not left unanswered…
Perceptions of marriage in late-eighteenth-century Malta
Although the Catholic Church claimed to control marriage, in late-eighteenth-century Malta the faithful still considered matrimony to be a personal affair. The study is based upon episcopal court records and parish registers, which reveal substantial numbers of clandestine marriages, contravening the Council of Trent's directives concerning entry into marriage. Couples separated from each other at will, without the Church's consent. A few took ot…
Religion, kinship and godparenthood as elements of social cohesion in Qrendi, a late-eighteenth-century Maltese parish
This micro-study examines the Maltese parish of St Mary's (Qrendi) in the second half of the eighteenth century. First it will be argued that – as in many other contemporaneous communities – migration to other parishes made its population extremely fluid. A second interest lies in the extent to which social distinctions and unruly behaviour further disrupted village solidarity. Finally there will be a consideration of the thesis that such unstabl…
Non Gode l'Immunità Ecclesiastica: Sanctuary in Malta, c.1740—1828
Parish Priest and Community in 18th-century Malta: Patterns of Conflict
This essay explores the relations between parish priests and their parishioners in eighteenth-century Malta. It argues that pastors did not succeed in governing the community and controlling local religious life. Generally, they were outsiders. This was a great liability since rivalry between villages was intense and the inhabitants were reluctant to admit new people, to whom they were often hostile. But the main reason for the rivalry between th…
Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century
Ciappara Frans. Private life, religion and enlightenment in Malta in the late eighteenth century. In: Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée, n°71, 1994. Le carrefour maltais, sous la direction de Christiane Villain-Gandossi . pp. 109-126
Perceptions of marriage in late-eighteenth-century Malta
Although the Catholic Church claimed to control marriage, in late-eighteenth-century Malta the faithful still considered matrimony to be a personal affair. The study is based upon episcopal court records and parish registers, which reveal substantial numbers of clandestine marriages, contravening the Council of Trent's directives concerning entry into marriage. Couples separated from each other at will, without the Church's consent. A few took ot…
The Financial Condition of Parish Priests in late Eighteenth-Century Malta
Parish priests in late eighteenth-century Malta often grumbled about their poverty, but their excuses were generally self-serving and related to the financial demands of their bishop; like incumbents in mainland Europe, they were not in a bad financial situation. Their relative affluence was a result of revenues such as tithes, mass legacies and surplice fees. In small communities this income may have been tiny, but parish priests were not entire…
Parish Priest and Community in 18th-century Malta: Patterns of Conflict
This essay explores the relations between parish priests and their parishioners in eighteenth-century Malta. It argues that pastors did not succeed in governing the community and controlling local religious life. Generally, they were outsiders. This was a great liability since rivalry between villages was intense and the inhabitants were reluctant to admit new people, to whom they were often hostile. But the main reason for the rivalry between th…
Una Messa in Perpetuum: Perpetual Mass Bequests in Traditional Malta, 1750-1797
In 1931 Marc Bloch, reviewing Maurice Halbwach's book, Les Causes du Suicide, criticized historians' reluctance to write about death.1 Lucien Febvre made the same comment twenty years later. He did admit that "death is now a fashionable subject," but it was sociologists, doctors, and psychologists who were monopolizing it, not historians.2 The appeal of these founders of the brilliant "Annales School" of French historians3 was not left unanswered…
Disciplining Diversity: The Roman Inquisition and Social Control in Malta, 1743–98
Having lost northern Europe to the Protestants the Catholic Church tried to preserve control over what remained of the respublica Christiana . The attempt was twofold. First, it was political. The popes declared the entire Catholic world for their diocese. The government of the Christian peoples’, Pius V observed, ‘belongs to Us and We should see that they are governed with charity’. Second, the popes admitted that the Reformation had been the re…
Non Gode l'Immunità Ecclesiastica: Sanctuary in Malta, c.1740—1828
Strategies for the Afterlife in Eighteenth-Century Malta
According to Protestant eschatology, the dead are no longer with us. In the forceful words of Eamon Duffy they are ‘gone beyond the reach of human contact, even of human prayer’. But if this was the most devastating change in the mind of Protestants, Catholics affirmed Tridentine teaching on the cult of the dead by an ‘obsessional multiplication’ of suffrages or intercessory prayers, especially post mortem masses. This belief was still strong in …
Trent and the Clergy in Late Eighteenth-Century Malta
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Religion, kinship and godparenthood as elements of social cohesion in Qrendi, a late-eighteenth-century Maltese parish
This micro-study examines the Maltese parish of St Mary's (Qrendi) in the second half of the eighteenth century. First it will be argued that – as in many other contemporaneous communities – migration to other parishes made its population extremely fluid. A second interest lies in the extent to which social distinctions and unruly behaviour further disrupted village solidarity. Finally there will be a consideration of the thesis that such unstabl…
Simulated Sanctity in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Malta
Revelations, apparitions, voices, stigmata and ecstasies were extraordinary phenomena and profoundly emotional, in which God was perceived as communicating with human beings through bodily phenomena. It was up to churchmen to regulate and control divine intervention in daily life and separate truth from deceit. But attempting to fulfil this pastoral duty was a complicated matter. Were these experiences authentic, really proceeding from God or wer…
Marriage and the Family in a Maltese Parish: St. Mary’s (Qrendi) in the Eighteenth Century
This article addresses the Maltese traditional family, taking St. Mary’s (Qrendi) as a test case. It results that couples married in their early twenties, while a high proportion of men and women never married at all. Marriage was not popular so that one-fifth of all marriages were remarriages. Very few widows remarried and it was only for some economic reason that they sought another man. There is no evidence though that a high rate of celibacy …
Christians and Muslims on Malta in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
Samuel P. Huntington has described the encounter between Christianity and Islam as the ‘clash of civilizations’, and so have Norman Daniel and R.W. Southern. This Manichean vision is the result partly of political and religious rivalry which demonizes ‘the other’. Such an interpretation has been challenged by scholars who emphasize a more complex reality and refer to ‘a shared discourse of the Ottoman and European worlds’
Conversion Narratives and the Roman Inquisition in Malta, 1650–1700
This article analyses the conversion narratives which Christian renegades to Islam narrated to the inquisitor on their arrival in Malta in the second half of the seventeenth century. A few of them really believed in their new faith and were declared formal heretics, but the great majority had either been brought up as Muslims since a tender age or else were only suspected of believing that one can save oneself as a Muslim. The inquisitors were ve…
Translating “Holy Bodies” (Corpi Santi) in Malta, 1667-1795
This article discusses the corpi santi, or whole skeletons of saints, which were brought to Malta from the catacombs of Rome in the eighteenth century. Here they had a diff erent meaning than they had in northern Europe. Malta was not aff ected by the Thirty Years’ War and therefore did not have to replace relics destroyed by the Protestants. The Maltese church also had no need to emphasize its connection with Rome. These saints were honored in M…
Confraternal Charity in Early Modern Malta
This article has two main aims. It shows that the members of confraternities gained merit by dispensing the works of corporal mercy identified in Matthew 25, 42–43; their almsgiving made them pleasing to God and reduced their days in purgatory. Charity, though, is beneficial both to the donor and the receiver. The poor are helped materially in their indigence but the basic welfare, with which the brothers of companies provide them, preserves them…
Members of the Clergy before the Maltese Diocesan Court, 1750-1798
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 cler…
Confraternal Devotions in Malta, 1670–1798
The aims of this article are twofold. It first discusses how confraternities tried to improve the spiritual worth of their members. The brothers conducted their devotions communally in their oratory, confessing and receiving the Eucharist, hearing mass and listening to sermons. They also participated in processions while the liturgy of the suffrages for the dead was recognised as the special task of confraternities. The brethren also practised th…
The Professionalization of the Clergy: Parish Priests in Early Modern Malta
This article engages with the role of the parish priests in Malta in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on their degree of professionalization by examining their relations with the bishop and with the other members of the clergy and the laity. It concludes that, as in other countries, it was difficult for the decrees of the council of Trent to be fully implemented in Malta. If some parish priests were diligent in exer…
Preaching in Counter‐Reformation Malta: Don Ignazio Saverio Mifsud (1739–54)
This is a study of Don Ignazio Saverio Mifsud's sermons in Maltese, which he delivered between 1739 and 1754. It is divided into three parts. The first discusses Mifsud's sources. The second concentrates on the structure of the sermons and on their themes, emphasising the development of the sermon from the homily through the thematic sermon through the epideictic. Mifsud had the ability to move from one genre to another, inculcating in his listen…
The Bizocche: Female Lay Religiosity in Early Modern Malta
History (15 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · History (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Art (8 works)