Hospitaller activities in medieval Malta

The Medieval Period in the Mediterranean World is generaly considered to cover a period of about a thousand years, and is considered to initiate with the end of the Roman era heralded by the division of the Roman Empure into two parts between the sons of Theodosius in AD 395. It ended with the advent of the Renaissance movement of the fifteenth century. This period in Malta was to see the Islands come under the influence of the Byzantine Empire encompassing the period prior to the ninth century; the Arab dominance starting in AD 870 and lasting until their formal expulsion in the mid-13th century; and the Latin phase of the late 13th century to the early 16th century when the islands were ceded to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The documentary sources dated to before the 14th century are rather scanty and often limited to ecclesiastical and political matters. A number of extant documents relate to medical matters, particularly with the setting up and management of hospital services and with matters relating to the affairs of hospitaller orders having links to the Maltese Islands.peer-reviewe

A Queer Perspective on Melodrama’s Social Life

A review of Jonathan Goldberg. 2016,' Melodrama: An Aesthetics of Impossibility', Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Review of Zunshine, Lisa, Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England

Dr. Ramsbottom\u27s review of Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Englan

The Évora foundlings between the 16th and the 19th century : the Portuguese public welfare system under analysis

By the beginning of the 16th century, the Portuguese State imposed on local powers the obligation to bring up and take care of foundlings. However, with the creation of the Misericórdia fraternities all over the country, the municipalities transferred the assistance of the children to those charities, with the promise of economic support. Nonetheless, in spite of the State «interest», the concern of local powers and the care provided by the Misericórdias, the results were tragic for the children. In this paper I intend to provide a summary about the welfare services for foundlings in Portugal, and to study the assistance that was given to them in the city of Évora

The concept and range of charitable institutions up to World War I

The so-called Charitable Institutions of Malta and Gozo were organizations devoted to relieving the poor financially; providing them with food and shelter; nursing and treating them when sick either in their own homes or in hospitals; providing care for the aged and the mentally ill and assisting the helpless in any other way such as protecting unwanted babies and orphans and ransoming slaves. In practice all these activities took the form of three services: 1. Hospital Services 2. District Medical Service 3. Social Welfare.peer-reviewe

Historical connections between the foundlings in Naples and in Malta

In most European countries children were considered ‘miniature adults’: they lived in the streets and had lost their innocence. Parents rarely showed affection towards their children and, in most cases, they considered them a burden, especially if their birth contributed towards worse economic conditions. Since sex was quite open and people were unaware of natural contraceptive methods, many abandoned children were registered as ‘ex parentibus ignotis’. The hushed walls of the orphanages conceal terrible stories of newborns and children left in the Foundling Wheel. Each stone of those buildings has a story to narrate and, the revelation of these experiences, inevitably leads to pain. In 19th-century Naples, the Annunziata was considered the worst of these institutions, as stated in the novel Ginevra o l’orfana della Nunziata by Antonio Ranieri. The author reveals the cruelty of abandonment: the reasons that drove parents to abandon their children to the hope of reclaiming them back in the future; from the ceremony during which children were branded to the surname that stigmatized their existence and that of their future generations; from the description of the fiendish nannies to the cruelty of their actions. Even Francesco Mastriani in La Medea di Porta Medina and I vermi portrays the pain of these children. In Malta, the abandonment of unwanted children in the foundling wheel took place in the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Rabat, then in the Sacra Infermeria in Valletta. While leafing through the old documents found in the National Archives of Santo Spirito at Rabat, we can observe obvious connections between the orphanages for foundlings in Malta and the Nunziata of Naples, as narrated by 19th-century Neapolitan authors. In the documents found in Malta attention is given to the nannies, their treatment of children, and the payments received for nursing and raising them. Today the foundling wheels are still there to remind us about these children and remain symbols of violence and solidarity, misery and compassion. They form part of that history we should never forget, an ineffaceable monument like the literary masterpieces that have portrayed them, a warning so that such horrific experiences will never be repeated.peer-reviewe

Report on citizenship law : Philippines

The Philippines has the interesting experience of having gone through two citizenship regimes. From an initial period in which jurisprudence favoured the principle of ius soli the country transitioned to the current regime in which ius sanguinis has been the prevailing principle. The initial period occurred during the first half of the twentieth century when the Philippines was under US colonial rule, while the subsequent period occurred after the Philippines gained independence

Promotion of Eco-Tourism Using the Practice of Wikipedia: The Case-Study of Environmental and Cultural Paths in Zakynthos

The development of sustainable eco tourism and cultural tourism could have positive effects in many socioeconomic factors of a country. A way of promoting eco-tourism is by using the knowledge and the experiences of different people for presenting the natural and cultural resources. This can be achieved using the practice of Wikipedia, in which anyone can submit information on a subject, in our case the environment, and an administrator reviews what will be published. In this work, we focus on the submission of cartographical data concerning the paths and routes that present environmental and cultural interest. These data have been collected and processed using GIS, Remote Sensing and GPS technologies. For each path a description of the type of the path, the terrain involved, experience needed, estimated time required and a classification of the paths according to the difficulty is attempted. In this paper, we present in detail the collection of data and their submission in the platform

Public and Private Stances in Economic Policies. General Historical Notes on Social Services and the Specific Case of Italy in the first half of the XX Century

During the first half of the XX century, both in Europe and North America, a profound dissatisfaction with the numerous different social insurance, unemployment, health and old age insurance systems began to make itself felt. The essay deals with the attitudes of the Western world, and in particular with the Italian one. As regards the United States, debate has spread since the second half of the XIX century on the so-called welfare work, and on welfare capitalism. In Europe social security systems began with their establishment by Bismarck’s German government. In the second half of the 19th century the role played by local administrations augmented in several countries. Unfair distribution was considered to be the condition of the system that made it impossible to abolish need. In Italy assistance indicates a vast system of coordinated activities aimed at reforms that may contextualize arising social questions and define policies to solve them. The Italian regime basically followed the German model of welfare state, implementing social insurance in order to integrate and control the country. The solutions sprang from philanthropy and religious motivations, and also from the fear of the poor as potential criminals or rebels. After World War I legislation was issued predominantly on assistance to the disabled and on accident insurance. In the interwar period the solutions were strictly linked to the corporativistic-authoritarian formulation of the Fascist political system. In the immediate post-second WW period politicians and economists were inspired by the principle of universal social security and public services, and favoured interdependence among people in society.History of political economy; History of economic policy; Social services; William Beveridge; Francesco Vito.