I have just received a splendid copy of Cynthia de Giorgio’s marvellously illustrated book The Conventual Church of the Knights of Malta, Midsea Books.

High up on St John’s Cathedral’s nave, near the sailing vault, is a beautiful inscription in bold Latin letters in gold on a blue background of the Counter Reformation Ignatian maxim Ad maiorem dei gloriam (For the greater glory of God).

This sounds like a Jesuit tenet, going back to 1524 and 1540 in the Basque country at Loyola, and in Rome respectively, as well as in 1594 in Malta, about when the Jesuits’ Church of the Circumcision of Christ in Valletta was erected in Merchants Street.

“For the greater glory of God” is even a slightly reminiscent reflection of the Moslem tenet Allah hu akbar, meaning ‘God is greater’. All very correct and ecumenical.



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