A thick and precious manuscript volume which had belonged to my father is all written in the autograph hand of one of Malta’s most gifted sons: Gian Francesco Buonamico, described by Count Giovan Antonio Ciantar as “an expert astronomer, geographer, antiquarian, geometrician, mathematician, doctor, physician, engineer, poet, and orator”, a man permanently in cultural overdrive.

The elegant, harmonious, highly legible handwriting of Buonamico (1639-1680) covers every sheet in that volume – except for one page, one curious, odd-man-out page, where the script very obviously belongs to a different person. How this one, solitary page, numbered fol. 520, came to find itself bound in Buonamico’s hefty manuscript remains a mystery. This sheet contains an unknown poem about the Great Siege of 1565 written by a Maltese author. The subscription clearly reads ‘Gregorio Xerri, Barone di Cicciano’.

This manuscript volume once belonged to Sir Ferdinand Inglott, KCMG (1820-1893), another Maltese who cultivated varied interests, and my father Vincenzo must have acquired it from his estate. Agostino Levanzin, also an inquisitive person with a highly assorted agenda, first referred to and described this volume in some detail in 1910 when writing an early biography of Buonamico.

Let me say from the outset that, in my view, Xerri’s verses no way qualify as great poetry. I am only interested in researching them because of a paradox. While 16th century poems about the Great Siege of Malta by non-Maltese authors abound, for some reason unknown, extremely few contemporary or almost contemporary ones written by Maltese men of letters have, to date, come to light.

About the only one known so far was O Melita Infelix, written in Latin by the Maltese nobleman Luca de Armenia, discovered in 1981 by historian Dr Carmel Cassar. With this we may now include the Inno della Vittoria by Xerri. Any other additions to such a meagre repertoire of Maltese who turned the Great Siege into verse, or even versified anything at all during the 16th century, would be most welcome.

On what rather slim evidence survives today, 16th-century inhabitants of Malta seem to have systematically rejected poetry and poetry-making. That was a century in which poetry ran off a conveyor belt in most of Europe – but not in Malta.

Why, apart from de Armenia (today Darmenia) and Xerri, no other Maltese felt inspired by the 1565 epic remains difficult to explain. Maybe the answer lies in a highly embarrassing fact: a large part of the Maltese aristocracy and the upper classes had bolted from Malta just before the Siege, so they would have felt no particular eagerness to celebrate what they had so frantically fled away from.

Almost all the Maltese who distinguished themselves in the hostilities seem to have been illiterate or sub-literate – not the ones you would expect to embroider higher emotions in iambics and rhyme. The fact that Xerri did write about the siege is a rather sure indication that he and his family had not joined the hordes of bourgeois Maltese who had swarmed to Sicily in panic when news of the approach of the Turkish armada started reaching Malta.

We cannot fathom what Xerri had in mind when he set himself the task of writing this hymn. Did he mean ‘hymn’ in the generic sense of ode, poem-in-praise, or in the more specific sense of religious verse to be set to music and sung in church? Inno can mean both.

I rather tend to believe the former, as the metre of the lyrics of a formal church hymn would be more regular, and the rhyme more discernible. But maybe Xerri was also the Maltese who pioneered religious hymn composition.

Before the emergence of this poem, Xerri had not made any name for himself as a man of letters. He repeatedly held high public office, and, dying without heirs (but see below), he left his considerable wealth to charities. He has not, as far as I know, been specifically researched so far, and I will here put in some order what little shards of information I have managed to piece together.

Though so far almost unknown, Xerri has his likeness in oils displayed in the Old University in Valletta, one in the series of about 139 portraits of illustrious men and women of Malta commissioned and donated by the surgeon physician Fra Giuseppe Zammit (1650-1740) to the Jesuit College in Valletta in the early settecento.

He was born to Gio Francesco Xerri and his wife Imperia Surdo (the year of their wedding and of his birth do not seem to be recorded anywhere, as registers of baptism and marriage only started being kept several years later). Gio Francesco Xerri, himself a lawyer (the son of the earlier Judge Dr Gregorio Xerri Sr and of Paola Mego – the judges’ families intermarried) had several children besides Gregorio Jr, among others a daughter Caterina who later joined a convent, but not before giving birth to an illegitimate daughter Petronilla, fathered by a knight of Malta whose identity the Xerris preferred not to advertise.

But Gregorio’s father, Gio Francesco Xerri, also had at least two children born out of wedlock: a son Giovanni, who in 1584 married Donna Margarita Ruffo di Sinapoli (recte Sinopoli) in Mdina; and a daughter Maddalena, who in 1603 wed Bartolomeo di Parisi in Birkirkara. The records frequently refer to Gio Francesco merely by the shorter version of his name: Francesco, sometimes adding his law degree UJD – Utriusque Juris Doctor (Doctor of both laws – civil and canon).

The poet, Gregorio Jr, in turn married Imperia Cassia in 1579. His name recurs frequently in the Notarial Archives in property and business transactions. In 1590, Gregorio’s mother Imperia née Surdo entered into a highly complex deal with her son about an apparent cession of long-lease rights on lands at Gued (Wied) Changirum and buildings in Mdina for a consideration. This could very likely have been a way to defeat the ban against lending money with interest, a contract prohibited to Christians. Crafty lawyers had to devise surrogate schemes that camouflaged their intrinsic usury, prohibited by canon law.

Xerri avoids hinting at any input by the Knights – only the Maltese people, the ‘Maltese’ saint, Publius, and the powers of heaven does he credit as the purveyors of victory

One good source states that Gregorio and Imperia had no heirs but his family tree posted on the web seems to indicate he fathered several children, including an illegitimate son, Gio Maria ‘Vito’ de Xerri, who got married in 1586. If this is correct, our poet could have been around 20, maybe younger, during the Great Siege. It is not stated whether the poet had this known love-child before, or after, he got married, though the dates suggest it must have been before. And no, people did not call Gregorio ‘Captain of the Rod’ for this reason.

Gregorio Jr styled himself Baron of Cicciano, a title linked to the fief of Castel Cicciano in the province of Naples. This barony came about as, in 1560, the leading Maltese lawyer, and later judge, of Rhodiot origin, Dr Francesco Mego (a favourite confidante of Grand Master Jean de Valette), had bought this title in cash for the princely sum of 1,500 ducats from the previous title-holder, the Italian Cristoforo Grimaldi, and King Philip of Naples and Sicily had then duly acknowledged this transfer. Mego’s son, Gio Antonio, died without issue in 1580, and the title passed to his sister Paola’s son, Gio Francesco Xerri, father of our Gregorio Jr.

On his father’s death in 1581, the poet took on the title of fourth Baron of Cicciano. After a period during which the financial fortunes of the Xerris appeared to have been at an alarmingly low ebb, Gregorio recovered sufficiently to be able to purchase vast landed properties for considerable sums and to leave a spectacular inheritance when he passed away. Would his miraculous financial recovery be somehow connected with the fact that Gregorio Xerri had a determining say in the administration and disposal of the Grand Master’s real estate?

The Xerri family adopted as its coat of arms three diagonal ‘gold saws’ (bends sinister indented) on a crimson field “as can be seen in the chapel founded by Gregorio Jr in the [Dominican] church of Santa Maria della Grotta [Rabat] and there also in a bas relief representing the Holy Spirit, and in other places in our city”. Possibly the connection is between serra/serrare (to saw) and Xerri.

Gregorio called his 13-verse poem (one line short of a sonnet), in fluent and current Italian, a hymn Inno della Vittoria and rightly so, as it consists, in essence, of a build-up of spiritual and patriotic exhortations addressed first to the Lord of Hosts and then to his countrymen – mostly aimed at innocent Maltese maidens dressed in white: donzelle Maltesi... in bianca veste – and almost as an afterthought, at children, young and old men as well.

He uses modern free verse, not shackled by classical metres, and resorts to rhyme rather erratically: sometimes internal, like Nostra è la vittoria, a Voi sia sempre gloria. Some rhymes sound correct: allegria with Maria; others forced indeed, like giubilo with Publio. Up to the early 20th century, the Maltese used solely Italian as their written language, common to culture, science, literature, commerce, the Church and the law throughout Malta.

Apart from their standing among the very earliest poetic output by a Maltese person known so far, these verses prove to be unique as an expression of patriotic, nationalistic pride. The idea of ‘nation’ as applicable to the Maltese, a strong awareness of identity and an anxiety to be associated with it, were actually almost unknown in the Maltese population in this very early period.

“Noi vincemmo... noi trionfammo” – noi, as in “we Maltese” in a strident triumphalist key. Xerri, deliberately it seems, avoids even hinting at any input by the Knights of Malta – only the Maltese people, the ‘Maltese’ saint, Publius, and the powers of heaven does he credit as the sole purveyors of victory.

The reference to “our Publius” appears to me to be of particular interest. Before Xerri’s poem, I am not aware of any special popular concern for St Publius as a protector of Malta during the 16th century or during the Great Siege. St Publius is not even mentioned once in the encyclopaedic Report of the Apostolic Visitation by Mgr Pietro Dusina in 1575.

These verses prove to be unique as an expression of patriotic, nationalistic pride. The idea of ‘nation’, a strong awareness of identity and an anxiety to be associated with it, were almost unknown in the Maltese in this period

Any curiosity in Publius, and any compelling devotion towards him, only seem to have grown later, at the time of the pioneer research on Publius carried out in 1635, and perhaps rather fancifully, by Fr Girolamo Manduca, the very first recorded Maltese Jesuit after that order had established itself in Malta.

That would possibly make our Xerri one of the earliest Maltese who singled out Publius as a heavenly guardian of Malta against the infidels, or even mentioned him at all. Not even one person named Publius appears in the 1,600-strong militia list of 1419-1420.

The first time St Publius seems to be listed as a protector of Malta is in 1610, almost half a century after Xerri’s poem. In fact, I wonder if, besides Xerri’s reference, the records mention any devotion to Publius in Malta during the whole of the 16th century, let alone earlier.

One would have expected to find in the poem some recall to St Paul, or to St Agatha, the traditional patrons of Malta against the Muslim hordes, or to St John the Baptist, the protector of the Knights, but Xerri mysteriously focussed only on the then wholly obscure Publius. Why?

Was it because Paul and Agatha weren’t Maltese enough and because John the Baptist was identified too intimately with the alien Knights, while Publius could be marketed as more indigenous – Xerri expressly invokes him as ‘our’ Publius? Gregorio’s poem, ignoring as it does the Hospitaller knights completely, may be more eloquent in what it does not say, than in what it does.

For all its bombast, Gregorio’s boast of “we” conquered, “we” triumphed, “ours” is the victory, sounds rather hollow – it is not recorded that Gregorio contributed anything at all to the fighting or to the victory; he was very likely a young worried spectator holed up in Mdina while the gory carnage unfolded in the harbour towns below. His father, Gio Francesco, may have been marginally more active, in a very minor way, as “his name has been mentioned in connection with the group of Maltese who kept an eye on the enemy’s troop movements”.

This Inno, though not incompetently crafted, does not rise, in inspiration, depth, elegance and creativity, above the occasional commemorative composition by the average literate amateur who aspired to poetry – easy, pleasant, but no real challenge to intellectual sophistication.

So far, no other verses by Gregorio Xerri have emerged, but are we to believe that in his whole life he only wrote this one short poem? Although Gregorio did not resort to Maltese for his verses (he must have spoken both Italian and Maltese fluently and was quite likely known to his friends as ‘Gori’), he still remains the second Maltese poet whose verses have been preserved, excluding some in classical Arabic dating from the Norman period. That already validates Xerri’s claim to a place in the history of literature in Malta.

(To be concluded)