The Professionalization of the Clergy

Abstract

This article engages with the role of the parish priests in Malta in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on their degree of professionalization by examining their relations with the bishop and with the other members of the clergy and the laity. It concludes that, as in other countries, it was difficult for the decrees of the council of Trent to be fully implemented in Malta. If some parish priests were diligent in exercising their duty, others preferred to put their personal interests before those of their flock. For some, the gaining of money was their besetting sin with the result that running feuds were an inseparable part of most parishes.