The 1565 Great Siege of Malta and Hipolito Sans's "La Maltea"

Abstract

Until the arrival of the Knights of St John on the island in 1530, Malta was basically considered a marginal outpost of Sicily. The 1565 Great Siege certainly contributed towards establishing the Mediterranean island on the European scene, thus giving it its own specific and autonomous identity. Indeed, myriads of accounts concerning the events of this well-known Ottoman invasion were published in the years immediately following the end of the siege. Despite the fact that the majority of these texts were written in Italian (Galea 1965: 70-95), the most detailed and comprehensive account of the siege was the one written in Spanish by Francisco Balbi di Correggio, and first published in 1567.