Fr Mark Montebello OP writes:

A man unknown outside literary circles, Fr Michael Fsadni OP will forever be remembered as the one who, in 1966, together with Godfrey Wettinger, discovered Peter Caxaro’s Cantilena, the 15th-century poetic gem in the crown of Maltese literature.

At the time of the discovery, Fr Fsadni was working at the Notarial Archives in Valletta on manuscripts that formed the backbone of his various publications concerning the Dominicans in Malta. In later years, his interests continued to expand, as they always had done, revealing particular curiosity and perceptiveness about the hitherto neglected Maltese girna (the corbelled stone hut), about which he published a significant study in 1992.

Such endeavours, however, barely disclose the type of person Fr Fsadni was. What he probably liked to do most, and at which he excelled, was to cover ground that most neglected. It was in such manner that he began extensively researching the history of the Dominicans in Malta, one which extends from the mid-15th century. His was a work of academic inquisitiveness but foremost of love.

Fr Fsadni was born at Vittoriosa on April 14, 1916 (he celebrated his 97th birthday a week before he died). Before joining the Dominicans, he had studied at the Dockyard School. He made his religious profession on October 21, 1934 and was ordained a priest on June 11, 1939.

At the beginning of World War II, Fr Fsadni was stationed at Vittoriosa. When the convent and the church of the Annunciation took a few direct hits from the air, together with the rest of the community he was transferred to Fleur-de-Lys and then to Rabat. Before the war was over, he was sent to reside at the Inquisitors’ Palace, in Vittoriosa from where he served a battered populace. Due to ill-health, he was then transferred to Rabat, where he remained until his death on April 18, 2013.

Just after the war, Fr Fsadni began to help St Ġorġ Preca with the regulations of the latter’s society. When this was done and over, as librarian and archivist at the Dominican convent at Rabat, Fr Fsadni took his work very seriously. Apart from organising the centuries-old manuscripts, he began to cultivate a keen interest in the history of the Maltese Dominicans, about which next to nothing had been done up till then.

After more than a decade of research and study, Fr Fsadni published his first book in 1965, which covered the first 60 years of the Dominicans in Malta (1450–1512). Other publications followed in the next years. In the meantime, Fr Fsadni had also published a history of the church and convent of Our Lady of the Grotto at Rabat.

The discovery of Caxaro’s Cantilena came unexpectedly in 1966. Fr Fsadni and Wettinger worked together on this vital breakthrough in Maltese literature for two whole years before revealing it in 1968.

Fr Fsadni’s publication, in 1990, about the now famous girna concerned one of his side interests. It is a pity he never published anything about photography, of which he was a keen enthusiast. One of his final publications, in 1994, was a sort of autobiography.

Though the Maltese Dominicans will be forever grateful to Fr Fsadni for his noteworthy work done about their history in Malta, it is Caxaro’s Cantilena that will lend him perpetual fame.

While all those who knew him up close will cherish the memory of his friendship, gaiety and eccentricities, unknowingly the Maltese people have lost a shy but great contributor to their heritage and artistic legacy.

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