No, not another caricature that hurts Islam but one that pokes fun at an old Catholic tradition which could have featured in Charlie Hebdo! It would have provoked a public outcry if it was published at the time it was made, over 300 years ago.

At the Vittoriosa parish museum, which proudly houses the battle sword and hat of Grand Master Jean de Valette, there is a reproduction (the original is privately-owned) of a caricature, about four metres by 25cm long, satirically depicting the procession of St Lawrence at Vittoriosa on his feast-day, August 10, dating to circa 1690.

It is executed in colour in minute detail and artistic mastery showing in correct ritual sequence the various participants, 327 people in all: the confraternities, the clerics, the clergy and parish priest and the musicians. The saint’s squat statue can be seen being carried shoulder-high.

The place of honour in the procession is reserved for the Grand Master who walks at the end of the file, fat and with a bloated aquiline nose, accompanied by a retinue of ramshackle Knights of St John.

For certain, neither the Church nor the Grand Master would have taken this caricature as a joke.