Carmen Depasquale: La Vie Intellectuelle et Culturelle des Chevaliers Français à Malte au XVIIIe Siècle, Malta University Press.

Carmen Depasquale has published La Vie Intellectuelle et Culturelle des Chevaliers Français à Malte au XVIIIe Siècle (Intellectual and cultural life of the French knights in 18th Century Malta). Written in French, this book is prefaced by François Moureau, the great specialist of 18th century French literature.

The 18th century was a time when French was not, as is so often said, a universal language, but the language of the élite (the lingua franca spoken by merchants was Italian or English). And as the élite was then more important than the merchant class, French was written and read by all those who wanted to be above the rest. As Moureau points out, Malta has one of the most valuable treasures in the world for the study of this refined period, the National Library of Malta.

Thanks to Bailiff de Tencin, a nephew of a cardinal, ambassador of King Louis XV to the Holy See, and the uncle of Dalembert, the Order came into possession of one of the most important libraries of the Enlightenment.

After the departure from Malta of the Order, this library also became an important centre for the archives of the Order and the Knights.

Like several other researchers, Depasquale delved into all these documents and books and succeeded in depicting a perfect portrayal of the cultural life of the French knights who were then the most important element of the convent.

First of all, she shows that contrary to what has so often been written, the Knights, and more specifically, the French knights were not all depraved.

The same went for the Order as for the Church: some joined these institutions because they had a vocation, some wanted to make a career, while others found in them a means to hide their laziness.

She then goes on to show that religious books stressed the duties of the Knights: obedience to the rule and frequent prayer.

In the same way that there existed a genuine religious way of life, there was also strong intellectual activity. Depasquale demonstrates that while there is little evidence of spiritual writings, many knights did not give in to intellectual idleness.

She identifies the leaders of this cultural life: d’Argens, Sainte-Jay, La Tremblaye, Saint-Priest, as well as authors of treatises and projects relating to the well-being of the Order, and, of course, Tencin who succeeded in gathering together all the former libraries alongside his own and that of Cardinal Portocarrero.

This new library was also enriched by the dépropriements of the Knights who left all their books to the Order and also by the privilege granted by Louis XVI whereby a copy of all the books printed in France were added to it. Contrary to what one may think, the ideological field was not the Knights’ favourite.

Indeed, some of them had read Muratori, Pope, Locke, Dalembert, Diderot, Voltaire or Rousseau, but strangely, most of them liked the works of Antiquity or the Italian or French classics: Boccaccio, Tasso, Boileau, La Fontaine and others. In the main, however, they preferred travel literature, focusing on the East, as well as on America.

However, as not all the Knights were old people, Depasquale also devotes due attention to the younger knights. There was a real social life in Malta in which they played centre stage, performing comedy, as well as writing music alongside the Maltese composers, because while the theatre was forbidden to the clergy, it was not prohibited by the Rule of the Order.

One of the main attractions of Depasquale’s book is her description of some of the main characters of the social scene of the time.

With her we discover all those men who made history in the tiny space of the Order’s main city: Chevalier Turgot, brother of Louis XV’s minister, Chevalier de Villages, naval officer of Louis XVI, the knight geologist Dolomieu, Bailiff Dericard who could speak Maltese, or the notorious Abbé Boyer. They shared the intellectual and social life with some Maltese, Agius de Soldanis, Ciantar, Barbaro and others.

Thanks to Depasquale, 18th century Malta acquires a new life. She shows that even if French culture might have been dominant, Neapolitan culture was also really present and the French, like the other Knights, liked the opera buffa and Italian music.

However, because the social scene was confined to Valletta and maybe Vittoriosa, there was a high concentration of aristocratic life made of elegance and futility, so typical of the 18th century art de vivre.