"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. Philippe Ariès, Pierre Chaunu, Jacques Chiffoleau, and Michel Vovelle are only a few, if the most renowned, researchers who harkened to their call.⁴ Thanks to their efforts death is now a popular subject with the historians of most countries.⁵

Death was too much a part of Maltese daily life in the late eighteenth century. The reasons that made it all too common were the usual causes of disease, dearth, and what Peter Laslett calls "perpetual under-nourishment."⁶ In 1783, for instance, the cotton-crop failed and a "grievous hunger afflicted the island from August till the end of the year."⁷ In such villages as Naxxar, with a population of around 2000, the average number of burials per year in the period 1750–1797 was 67.6, which meant one burial every five days. In some particular years, like 1780, a year of death when the village was at the mercy of smallpox, the annual death toll doubled to 125, or one burial every three days. Death stalked the towns, proverbially unhealthy, more frequently; and at Valletta, whose population hovered round 17,000, it claimed three persons each day.⁸

But if death was omnipresent and familiar, some Maltese negated the existence of an afterlife altogether since "nobody has died and come back from the other world with his face burnt."⁹ Or, as one Pietro exclaimed, "who has ever returned to tell us what is there?"¹⁰ Man was like animals, fish, and birds, others said, so that "when he dies his soul dies with him."¹¹ However, these examples of unbelief in a life beyond the grave, taken from the records of the Roman Inquisition,¹² were only an exception. The great majority of the people, unlike the anatomy lecturer at the university who made fun of the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgment,¹³ were obsessed with the hereafter and attempted to ensure that they were among the elect.

Like most ancient religions, Christianity shared the belief in continued existence after death.¹⁴ But at first the Church offered no precise doctrine as to where the souls stayed before rising up at the end of time. Besides, would the deceased's fate be determined on the day their soul left their body or at the Second Coming?¹⁵ These problems were definitely solved with the "discovery" of purgatory in the twelfth century. Souls were given a fixed place of residence and therefore had to be judged at death to be given the correct punishment.¹⁶

In this decisive hour, the most important experience of life, man was "his own judge" and if he lost the contest (agonia) against his wily adversary he was doomed forever.¹⁷ To help him in the art of dying (ars moriendi)¹⁸ and navigate the journey (viaticum)¹⁹ from this world to the next the priest, who presided over the deathbed, administered to him the last liturgical rites. He heard his confession, gave him communion, and, on the admonition of St. James,²⁰ administered to him the sacrament of extreme unction.²¹ As the sick person lay dying his brothers of the sodalità dell'agonia had a low Mass said for his bono transitu;²² and the holy sacrament was displayed for three hours for them to pray for the buon passaggio (safe passage) of their colleague.²³ Fortified thus with this religious ritual, the parting person eluded with greater ease...