Mark Camilleri seems to specialise in purveying upsetting, irritating, or otherwise controversial material to Maltese readers. A couple of years ago, he published rebel-without-a-clue Alex Vella Gera’s story about a man whose double appetite was sex and expletives. For that, Camilleri suffered the double punishment of being hauled to court and very nearly handed a medal for service to the Republic.
Not one to give up easily, he is now back with a booklet published by Sensiela Kotba Soċjalisti (SKS) and called Il-Mit Pawlin u l-abbuż tal-istorja Maltija (‘The Pauline Myth and the abuse of Maltese history’). It is, as the title gently suggests, not exactly nihil obstat territory.
What Camilleri does is basically marshal a troop of sources that question, in some way or other, the veracity of a familiar storyline. According to which, the Maltese were converted to Christianity personally by the Apostle in AD 60 and kept the faith since.
It turns out that, even if we leave out the colourful bit about the snake that did no damage, the tale contains a number of assumptions: first, that the ‘Melita’ mentioned in the Acts was indeed our island (an attribution with which many of the islanders of Mljet, off the Dalmatian coast, would disagree); second, that a full-scale swing to Christianity really did take place; and, third, that Malta had to wait until AD 2013 for the next major swing.
The pièce de résistance of Camilleri’s book is an exclusive interview with Godfrey Wettinger. The doyen of Maltese medievalists seems happy enough with the first assumption and not too upset at the second. It’s the third that ruffles his grey feathers.
Wettinger says he is “convinced that following the arrival of the Arabs in 870, Malta was uninhabited for 100 years”. In any case, and even if that informed guess is not entirely accurate, chances are that any people left on the island would have been Muslim rather than Christian.
The reasons why we don’t have solid period evidence of a strongly-rooted Islam are, first, that the Christians who followed made sure we didn’t, and, second, that some rather more modern-day Christians are caught up in a collective archaeological and historical myopia that ranges from lethargy to full-blown conspiracy.
Put simply, the Arab period is best forgotten. Failing that, we can always imagine, à la Laspina’s Outlines of Maltese History, turbanned Arabs chasing unsuccessfully about the Maltese countryside after women intent on keeping their virginity and men intent on keeping their belief in the Virgin.
It’s clear what’s at stake here. Whether Malta was uninhabited or populated by Maltese Muslims, Wettinger’s ideas put a big dent in a comforting story. I did some rudimentary research for this piece and came up with three cherished and largely-unquestioned truths.
First, that it is obvious that St Paul was shipwrecked in Malta and converted the Maltese. Given that there is such a place as Il-gżejjer ta’ San Pawl (St Paul’s Islands), and that the Maltese are indeed Christian, there is no reason to suspect otherwise. Go figure, the Camilleris and Wettingers might say, but the admittedly-circular logic shows the power of topography and tradition.
Second, that St Paul’s mission was made straightforward (with a little help from an obliging snake, shall we say) by the fact that the islanders he came across were religious tabula rasa. Forget the mother goddess and Juno and whatnot, the idea is that St Paul rendered the locals believers, quite out of nothing.
The popular belief, in other words, is that the Maltese are Christian or they are godless. While some may on a charitable day make some elbow room fornon-Christian minorities (emphasis essential), the idea of a population that is Maltese and largely Muslim or Hindu or whatever is simply inconceivable.
It’s fair to say that the story of the shipwreck and the conversion makes us who we think we are
Third, that the Arab period was, at best, a by-lane of history; as the Italians say, an ‘incidente di percorso’ (‘something that happened’). What really matters is that, throughout their history, the Maltese clung on to their faith. Rather like genealogy and family trees, stories of nations do not easily accommodate missing links.
It’s fair to say that the story of the shipwreck and the conversion makes us who we think we are. In return, St Paul was granted full Maltese citizenship, with full honours and free of charge. He became, in the words of Oliver Friggieri’s lyrics to Camilleri’s oratorio of 1985, ‘Pawlu ta’ Malta’.
Never mind that his claims to residency and bloodlinks are dubious, or that he never, as far as we know, invested in a seafront flat. We are quite happy to call him Pawlu, just like the 58 men on the militia list of 1419 (unearthed by Wettinger, ironically enough) were called. He thus joins the ranks of protagonists of Maltese history who were not Maltese.
The list includes Roger the Norman (‘il-Konti Ruġġieru’) and la Valette, both of whom had to do with keeping the faith. I use ‘la’ rather than ‘de’ because while ‘de Valette’ is most probably the historically accurate form, ‘la Valette’ (Maltese ‘Lavallett’) is the man as we know him and as familiarised and indigenised by Maltese history.
It seems to me that Wettinger and his detractors are talking about two different Pauls. The first is the historical St Paul of the Acts, who may or may not have given us a religion that may or may not have endured for two thousand years. The second is Pawlu ta’ Malta, the beginning of Maltese history and the first Maltese man.
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