The Latin inscription on Main Guard

In the issue of December 11, 2009 The Times published a letter in which I referred to the Latin inscription on the façade of the Main Guard. I stated that when the inscription was replaced in 1851 the last word became Confirmat instead of the original Confirmant. I quoted what Marquis Cassar Desain had written in this connection some decades later.

What seems to be irrefutable evidence that the Cassar Desain version was correct can be found much earlier, even before 1851. In 1823, Judge Vincenzo Bonavita finished writing his invaluable Dissertazioni Istorico-Legali, 12 in number, which have largely been ignored by historians. At the end of the first Dissertazione he wrote that, after the treaty of Trancfore, the local government had placed the inscription on the Main Guard with the final words being Has Insulas Confirmant AD 1814.