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Grazio Grech, Paul Cassar and Anthony Grech
L-Għammiedi – 170 Sena l-Għaxqa tax-Xewkin
188 pages

L-Għammiedi – 170 Sena l-Għaxqa tax-Xewkin (The Baptist – 170 Years the Joy of the People of Xewkija) is the name of a new, sumptuous publication that is the work of a joint effort among three people: father, son and friend.

The publication has been put together to commemorate the 170th anniversary of the arrival of the statue of St John Baptist revered in the Xewkija rotunda in Gozo, the first parish to be established on the island and to still possess the document of erection.

Xewkija was dismembered as an autonomous parish in November 1678. The statue of St John, sculpted in wood by Pietro Paolo Azzopardi, arrived in June 1845, when Dun Nikol Vella was parish priest. It was the second titular statue for a parish in Gozo, the first one having been that of St George which had arrived in 1840.

L-Għammiedi is a very attractive publication. It consists of two main researched articles: the first one by Grazio A. Grech, an authority on the history of musical bands in Gozo, and the second one by Paul Cassar, a young historian of art and a promising researcher in his own field.

Anthony Grech was responsible for the hundreds of full-colour photographs that feature the history of the festa of St John the Baptist, a festa that unfolds over an entire week but which comes to a climax in the weekend preceding or succeeding June 24, the Liturgical Solemnity of St John, the Precursor of Our Lord. Some photographs are quite old and are being published for the first time, making L-Għammiedi a singular publication that will definitely find a place on the shelves of all those who have at heart the Melitensia of our islands.

As Maltese historian Winston L. Zammit – who wrote the introduction – said, this book by these three people who are well versed in their own fields of study is “a precious addition to Melitensia at large and an appropriate commemoration of the 170th anniversary of the statue”.

The publication stands half-way between a festa souvenir booklet and a coffee-table book. It will go down well with lovers of popular and devotional literature, but with the possibility of falling short of pleasing those readers who are more for academic literature.

It is a shame that the name of the printing press does not appear anywhere on the verso (page facing the title page) of the book. The authors are the publishers themselves, so no publishing house is referred to.

The book puts into context the connection of the Xewkija church with the millenary Order of St John of Jerusalem, also known as The Knights of Malta, a bond that knows its roots to the special festivities held back in 1978 in connection with the third centenary of the parish.

It is also in many ways a book that the people of Xewkija will instantly connect with, many of whom will also recognise themselves among the photographic collection.

L-Għammiedi is an album of a people, a pictorial guidebook of a Christian festival, a graphic history book of a Gozitan village forever immortalised in time and space.

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