Each year, form May through September, the inhabitants of the small island of Malta stage approximately seventy-five spectacular three-day festas (religious feasts) to honor local patron saints. During these exuberant celebrations - accompanied by religious processions, brass-band marches, rowdy demonstration, and concerts - hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fireworks are shot into the sky.
What explains this fervent and spectacular devotion to saints and fireworks? What does it show in the face of increasing secularization? This article is set out to show that as industrialization and modernization affect interpersonal relations and erode community boundaries in Malta, villagers do battle with ritual weapons to defend the traditional values that they cherish.
Malta's past and present
The inhabitants of the Maltese archipelago - located below Sicily and composed of Malta, Gozo, Comino, and the uninhabited islet of Filfla - have always been devout. Christianity came to Malta early. Each year the Maltese celebrate the apostolic origin of their Catholic faith - St. Paul is popularly believed to have converted the whole island in A.D. 60 when he was shipwrecked there, as recorded in Acts 27-28.
The Maltese have known many foreign masters. After the Romans came the Muslims, followed buy the Normans, Swabians, Angovins, Aragonese, and the Castillians. In 1530, Emperor Charles V placed Malta under father sovereign military order of St. John of Jerusalem, a powerful body of celibate nobles. These "Knights of Malta" constructed the fortified capital city of Valletta, over looking the Grand Harbour. Its fortification and palaces are still extant. Under its rule, Malta evolved from rocky outpost populated by poor peasants to relatively prosperous island state linked by cultural, commercial, and strategic interest to Europe.
The paternalistic rule of the Knights came to an abrupt end even when Napoleon drove them from the islands in 1798. In an eight-day span, he implemented many drastic changes, which upset the Maltese greatly. His attempt to curtail the influence of the church, leading him to try to seize the Carmelite church in Mdina, caused the Maltese to break out into revolt. With the help of the British, the Maltese blockaded the port, isolating and starving the French, who finally capitulated to the British in September 1800.
Malta continued to prosper under the British. Its military infrastructure, particularly the naval facilities in the Grand Harbour, developed enormously. Britain protected the Roman Catholic Church's monopoly on the island by refusing to allow Protestant missionary activities. The colonizers were amicably regarded by their Maltese subjects because of their good relations with the Church and the many jobs that they created. The working class was generally pro-British. (The names of many of their band clubs, which came into being during the second half of the nineteenth century, reflect this: "The Queen's Own," "The Duke of Connaught's Own," "The King's Own," "The Prince of Wales," "The imperial.") When Malta was granted its independence by Britain in 1964, many were sorry to see the end of the colonial era.
Malta's population density (2,934 per sq. mile) is the highest in Europe. The islands
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