De or la: what’s in a name?

I was looking through the video taken of the concert of The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment which was held on January 17 at St John’s Co- Cathedral as part of the Valletta International Baroque Festival. It is almost finished; just a few editorial tweaks and will be shown for the first time (but certainly not the last) on Mezzo Channel on June 19 at 8.30pm.

Not only are the interpretations fantastic but the atmosphere created by the spectacular cathedral, of which we are all so proud, is just too splendiferous to describe. Suffice it to say that I was close to tears most of the time. The emotion of listening and seeing such beauty was overwhelming. Bach’s Magnificat, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Handel’s Zadok the Priest and our own Zerafa Cum Sancto Spiritu, which the OAE surprised us with as an encore in such a setting, was filmed as no other concert has ever been filmed before.

With Valletta filled to the brim with a ruling class that spoke Italian exclusively, one can hardly be surprised that Jean de Valette became Jean de La Valette

What struck me as odd while we were editing the video’s texts was that Valletta in French was referred to as La Valette. Then it occurred to me that the Italians refer to our capital city as La Valletta while we in Malta refer to it as il-Belt Valletta: most times shortened to il-Belt!

I am therefore in no way surprised that the eponymous Grandmaster’s name was altered into De La Valette from simple de Valette. With Valletta filled to the brim with Italian and French knights and with a ruling class that spoke Italian exclusively one can hardly be surprised that Jean de Valette became Jean de La Valette rather like my family became ta’ Bona! We have our brave Jean (whatever became of the Parisot?) referred to as La Valette without the ‘de’ in the 1726 set of engravings and in popular memory and everyday-speak he has for generations untold been referred to with both the ‘de’ and the ‘la’. Now we have been told that during his lifetime at least the Grandmaster who founded our capital city was de Valette exclusively, while it was probably always the city itself that was referred to as La Valette, which is without a doubt the source of the confusion.

So what? Does one rewrite 300 years of history? I am in two minds about it just as I am about the ‘pentimento’ in Preti’s Martyrdom of St Catherine of Alexandria in the Church of St Catherine of Italy. Now that we are aware of even more ‘pentimenti’ because of the wonderful Preti exhibition at the President’s Palace, Faith and Humanity, does one leave them or paint them out?

My own opinion is that if the ‘pentimento’ appeared naturally over the course of centuries then, yes, one should leave it be. If the ‘pentimento’ appeared recently through cleaning or restoration, that, then, is a different ballgame altogether. If from at least the beginning of the 18th Century the name of the founder of Valletta and victor of the Great Siege has become synonymous with that of the city he gave his name to, I feel that this is a form of respect, conscious or unconscious, given to the Grandmaster who saved Christendom in 1565, and should be regarded as such.

Naturally it goes without saying that the recent discoveries by Judge Giovanni Bonello about the lack of a ‘la’ in all contemporary records are to be given every consideration, however the usage in the last three centuries is also to be taken into account. Are we to change the names of august institutions like the La Valette Band Club? I don’t think so, however coming to think of it, it may well be possible that the founders of the band club, certainly all Italian-speaking at the time, were simply calling the band club after the capital city and not the grandmaster. Herein lies the confusion.

We discover things all the time thanks to researchers like Judge Bonello. History is not faith as only faith is indisputable.

The wonderful thing about history is that it is disputable just like the set of eight engravings in my dining room called Histoire d’Angleterre in which the episodes depicted differ radically from the English history we were taught at college; which in my time was when most of the world was still painted red. That is because it is being seen through French eyes of course! I can understand and accept that.

However what I cannot accept is a distortion of history by Dane Munro, author of that magnificent tome, Memento Mori, in which the epitaphs on the tombstones at St John’s were beautifully translated from the Latin. Munro, who is not Maltese, was ‘advised’ to translate the Christian names of the ‘Maltese’ members of the Order buried in St John’s into Maltese Wenzu u Rożi type diminutives. Hence Fra Salvatore Imbroll, Grand Prior of the Langue of Italy and described as melitensium ingeniorum phoenix, is given the name of Salvu.

I am quite sure that this ‘collateral’ ancestor of mine would have had anyone calling him Salvu properly thrashed. Nobody would have dared call a Grand Prior of the Order Salvu... not even his own mother who possibly had to give birth to him in Palermo or Naples for him to join the Italian langue. It was unheard of and shows a total ignorance of our social history... at a time that Maltese was still a Siculo-Arab dialect spoken in the fields and certainly not in the corridors of power of the Magistral Court.

Kenneth Zammit Tabona is Artistic Director of the Valletta International Baroque Festival.