allmalta.com - Maltese Falklore

Maltese History and Folklore

Carmel Cassar Ph.D.

Carmel Cassar was born in Malta in July 1959. He has read for a BA in History and Italian (Malta 1980), an M.Phil in Social Anthropology (Cambridge England, 1989) and a Ph.D in History (Cambridge, England, 1994). He is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society, and a member of several academic institutes including the Royal Anthropological Institute. In April 1996 he was granted a Visiting Fellowship to carry out research for a new study on gender roles in Malta at Grey College Durham, England where he has been invited to give research seminars at Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Exeter and Nottingham. Between 1990-1996 he lectured in History and Anthropology at the University of Malta and is now lecturer in history.

Carmel Cassar is mainly interested in the study of cultural historical values in the 16th and 17th centuries with special emphasis on the role played by religion. He is also interested in the history of witchcraft, gender issues and conspicuous consumption. His most recent publications include Witchcraft, Sorcery and the Inquisition. A Study of Cultural Values in Early Modern Malta (Mireva Publications 1996). His Ph.D dissertation originally entitled: 'Economy, Society and Identity in Early Modern Malta' will be published with a foreword by Peter Burke.

Since 1992 he has been developing an Ethnography Museums Section with the Museums Department with a base at the Inquisitor's Palace, Vittoriosa which is being rehabilitated. The Museum will serve to show how the Inquisition and the Council of Trent had managed to transform the cultural values of Maltese society between the 16th and 18th centuries. Work is also being carried out on the Windmill at Xaghra Gozo and there are plans to upgrade the Gozo Folklore Museum at the Citadel (Victoria) into a Museum of Agrarian society.

A Selection of Publications:

CARMEL CASSAR, Witchcraft, Sorcery and the Inquisition. A Study of Cultural Values in Early Modern Malta. Mireva Publications (Malta, 1996);

Carmel Cassar, Fenkata. An Emblem of Maltese Peasant Resistance? Ministry of Youth and the Arts (Malta, 1994);

Carmel Cassar, 'Witchcraft Beliefs and Social Control in Seventeenth Century Malta', Journal of Mediterranean Studies Vol.3 No.2 (1993), pp.316-334;

Carmel Cassar, 'Popular Perceptions and Values in Hospitaller Malta', V. Mallia-Milanes (ed), Hospitaller Malta 1530-1798: Studies on Early Modern Malta and the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Mireva Publications, (Malta 1993);

Carmel Cassar, 'The Reformation and Sixteenth Century Malta', Melita Historica Vol.X No.1 (1988) pp.51-68;

Carmel Cassar, 'Everyday life in Malta in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries', V. Mallia-Milanes (ed), The British Colonial Experience: 1800-1964. Mireva Publications, (Malta, 1988);

Carmel Cassar, 'The First Decades of the Inquisition 1546-1581', Hyphen - A Journal of Melitensia nad the Humanities Vol.IV 1985;

Carmel Cassar, '"O Melita Infelix". A Poem on the Great Siege of Malta written in 1565', Melita Historica Vol.VIII (1981);

'"U mulu di Malta". Trade in donkeys and mules in early modern Malta'. Storja '96 - Journal of the Malta University History Society (1996);

'An Index of the Inquisition: 1546-1575', Hyphen - A Journal of Melitensia and the Humanities, vol.vi (1990), pp.157-178;

'1564-1696: The Inquisition Index of Knights Hospitallers of the Order of St John', Melita Historica vol.xi (1993), pp.157-196.

Dominic Cutajar & Carmel Cassar, 'Malta and the Sixteenth Century Struggle for the Mediterranean' Mid-Med Bank Report and Accounts 1985 (Malta, 1985);

Dominic Cutajar & Carmel Cassar, 'Malta's Role in Mediterranean Affairs: 1530-1699', in Mid-Med Bank Report and Accounts 1984 (Malta, 1984) 2nd edition with minor changes reprinted in Mid-Med Bank Ltd., Malta: Studies of Its Heritage and History (Malta, 1986);

Dominic Cutajar & Carmel Cassar, 'Budgeting in Seventeenth Century Malta' in Mid-Med Bank Report and Accounts 1983 (Malta, 1983) 2nd edition reprinted in Mid-Med Bank Ltd., Malta: Studies of Its Heritage and History (Malta, 1986.