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John Azzopardi, Alain Blondy: Marc’Antonio Haxac and Malta’s Devotion to St Paul, Fondation de Malte, 2012. 160 pp, €18.

In spite of its size, Malta was predestined from the beginning to be an important religious centre.

Two of Malta’s foremost writers regale us with an absorbing study- Charles Xuereb

With this strong belief in mind 17th-century Maltese surgeon Marc’Antonio Haxac, dedicating his manuscript to Cardinal Fabrizio Verallo, ex-Inquisitor on the island, outlines Malta’s divine history spanning thousands of years from the megalithic temples to St Paul’s Roman period.

Almost 400 years later, two of Malta’s foremost writers on the story of Malta’s early Christianity, Mgr John Azzopardi, curator of the Wignacourt Museum and formerly of the Cathedral Archives, together with Prof. Alain Blondy, specialised researcher of the Mediterranean and author of numerous publications in French and English, regale us with an absorbing study on this revealing document with accompanying analysis of the text reflecting the cult introduced during the epoch of the Knights of Malta.

The publication, beautifully presented with pertinent illustrations by Fondation de Malte – now well-established on Mediterranean themes – puts Haxac’s treatise in its context among well known researches of the Pauline tradition, including Jean Quintin’s of 1536.

Haxac’s Relazione consists of 44 paragraphs commencing with descriptions of Malta’s antiquities. The author then furnishes traditional data on St Paul’s shipwreck as well as on Publius.

It is towards the end that his writing becomes even more intriguing with hitherto unknown details on the ambition of a Spanish hermit of Morisco origins, Benegas, who at the time, wanted to join the Order of St John at all costs. The Spaniard lived in Malta for the first 20 years of the 17th century, during which he also brought various holy relics to the Order.

Writing in 1610, when Grandmaster Alof de Wignacourt officially opened the tower in St Paul’s Bay on the saint’s feast day, we find Haxac dedicating and sending a copy of the original manuscript, in 1623, to Cardinal Verallo when the latter had good chances to become pope.

At the time, the cult of the Grotto of St Paul in Rabat was at its highest, yet Haxac does not speak much of the development of the devotion around it.

Azzopardi cites Ignazio Saverio Mifsud in his tracing of Haxac’s noble family and informs us that, as surgeon on the Order’s galleys, the author travelled frequently to Italy, France and Spain. Towards the sunset of his life, he retired at Notabile, dedicating his time to healing his compatriots.

With the benefit of five copies of the document – traced at the Cathedral Archives of Mdina, Wignacourt Museum and the National Library by the indefatigable Dun Ġwann – Blondy formally analyses the text of the document as the first of its kind in giving details of the oral Pauline tradition, embellishing the Acts of the Apostles with stories concerning St Paul’s life as a prisoner in the Rabat grotto, the conversion of the people of the island and the foundation of a church headed by Publius. In other words, Haxac put in writing what, by then, had only been committed to the national collective memory of the Maltese as regards their religion, thus consolidating the importance of presumed origins.

During this century, the Knights had an interest in establishing Malta’s possible apostolic foundation to promote the island as an archbishopric, enabling it to better control its religious dependence on the crown of Sicily.

One observes that this came about almost too late for the Order, as it happened towards the end of the 18th century when Bishop Vincenzo Labini was endorsed as archbishop, a title enjoyed by the Maltese prelate till this very day.

Interestingly, Blondy dwells on the document’s inference to national identity when Malta seems to have been more important than the two powers, Rome and Palermo, that were watching over it in the 17th century.

The island boasted of its own group of people with a common origin, language and culture. Haxac seems to have been keen at establishing the fact that Malta was one of the daughters of St Paul.

This is similar to the case of France, often called the elder daughter of the Church, after King Clovis was baptised by St Remy in 498. The Maltese had a strong case of paternity with St Paul, for long considered as the common ‘father’ of the nazione maltese.

The book, furnished with a handy index, carries the full text in the original Italian manuscript with notes, but also features a most beneficial English translation by Alina Darmanin.

Reading the document, one comes across countless fascinating elements of life in Malta at the time. The author mentions a group of 43 remaining Maltese villages, after coastal ones were abandoned due to fear from corsair attacks.