The Mediterranean Battleground: Gozo Musuem To Host Lecture On Christian Captives In North African Prisons
Join the last public lecture being hosted by Il-Ħaġar Museum where Dr Matthias Ebejer and Maria Dobos Falzon will discuss Religious materiality: Christian captives in north African prisons called “bagnos” during the early modern period on 17th May at 11:00am.
Ebejer is a historian and senior collections specialist, and Dobos Falzon is a collections officer who form part of the Collections Management Unit at the Archdiocese of Malta.
This public lecture will shed light on how the Mediterranean Sea was a backdrop to conflicts and convergences between North African Muslim mariners and European Christians in the early modern period. This conflict was another bi-product of the sea’s allowance for activities that were commercial, diplomatic and leisurely voyages. Religion was a main factor behind captivity and segregation.
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Although the religious items left behind by the captives have not been found so far, detailed accounts of religious ceremonies have been unearthed. The religious materiality served as a medium that, for a limited time, suspended the feeling of captivity and offered the captives a semblance of home.
This materiality can be studied through both the lens of the captive, who is finding in it a conduit of solace; or the captor who extends an offering in the hope of a more docile inmate. This paper will consider examples of religious materiality connected to Christians in captivity in the bagnos of Morocco, Tripoli and Algiers. Rather than focusing on personal materiality that belonged to displaced individuals, this lecture seeks to concentrate on objects which were either shared with all the inmates, or tokens of remembrance offered to churches or mosques by those individuals who managed to return home.
Will you be attending the lecture?
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