Guarding against contagion : vigilance and the role of fortifications in Malta during the outbreak of Plague in Messina 1743

Abstract

L’Anno del Nostro Signore mille sette cento quaranta tre was not a good year. The dreadful plague had broken out in the city of Messina, a short distance across the sea in nearby Sicily. It also happened to be one of the coldest winters on record to hit the Maltese islands in the course of the eighteenth century.1 For the Hospitaller knights and their Maltese subjects this deadly combination of factors did not augur well for both the Island’s commerce and for the safety of its inhabitants. The Hospitaller Order of St. John was never one to take the news of such deadly outbreaks lightly. Indeed, the Knights’ sanitary departments had always prided themselves on the rigour of their well-proven quarantine laws which had served them well over the centuries and had preserved the Island, their Convent and their subject population from many such calamities. Now, once again, the whole machinery was set in motion. But in this instance, given the close proximity of the source of the contagion and the many maritime, commercial, and social contacts which the Maltese had with the city of Messina, the risks were deemed even higher. The situation demanded even more careful vigilance not the least because of the ferocity of the outbreak.