The Christianisation of Malta

An in-depth study of the origins and early consolidation of the Latin Christian identity of the Maltese islands has just been published.

The book, authored by Mario Buhagiar and called The Christianisation Of Malta: Catacombs, Cult Centres And Churches In Malta to 1530, is the 1674th volume in the BAR international series of scholarly monographs.

In the book, Prof. Buhagiar re-proposes the conclusions of a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of London in 1993.

It is a painstaking analysis of the available source material relating to a most seminally important formative period in the moulding of the Maltese national identity.

Documentary evidence, often of a very fragmentary nature, is considered and interpreted from the perspective of the non-written evidence that the author utilises as a valuable alternative discipline.

Archaeology and art become tools of paramount importance in the historical investigative process.

The book opens with an investigation of the evidence for the shipwreck of St Paul in 60 A.D.

It then moves on to discuss in chronological order, the Roman prelude to Early Christian Malta, the Early Christian and Byzantine period, the long Islamic interlude, and the traumatic re-Christianisation process when the Latin rite found an initial stiff competition from Sicilian Greek liturgy.

This is the latest publication by Prof. Buhagiar whose book The Art and Architecture of Late Mediaeval Malta (Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, 2005) was a first coherent attempt at proving wrong the widespread belief that pre-Knights Malta was a cultural desert.

The two books are, in many ways companion volumes.

Prof. Buhagiar is a leading art historian and academic with a specialised interest in Early Christian, Byzantine and mediaeval art. He is the Head of the Department of History of Art at the University of Malta and lectures in Christian and mediaeval archaeology in the Department of Classics and Archaeology.

His other major publications include The Iconography Of The Maltese Islands: Painting 1400-1900 (Malta, 1987), Late Roman And Byzantine Catacombs And Related Burial Places In The Maltese Islands (Oxford, 1986), and the two volumes of Mdina The Cathedral City Of Malta, co-authored with Prof. Stanley Fiorini (Malta, 1986).

Copies of The Christianisation Of Malta: Catacombs, Cult Centres And Churches In Malta to 1530 (ISBN 978 1 4073 0109 9) will be available within the next couple of weeks.

For more information contact Midsea Books on 2149 7046/2149 6911. e-mail: admin@midseabooks.com.