Edgar Vella: Treasures of Faith, Relics and Reliquaries in the Diocese of Malta during the Baroque Period, 1600 – 1798
Midsea Books, Malta, 2016.

I wanted to believe that my favourite book on relics and reliquaries of the baroque period would always remain Heavenly Bodies, published recently by Paul Koudounaris. A creepy, weird, disturbing volume if ever there was one, a book meant to shock and amaze, to return the dregs of death to a suspended life, perhaps to promote faith by the excesses of faith.

It dealt mostly with how the skeletons from the Roman catacombs, presumed to be those of martyrs, were exported by the hundreds, many to Catholic parts of Germany, to fortify the faithful in their relentless struggle against the relic-bashing Lutherans. And how the Germans turned the holy bones into jewellers’ showcases, sticking emeralds and rubies into every orifice, diamonds and pearls wherever they could hang.

The garb of relics in Malta, sumptuous and lavish though it undoubtedly is, cannot even start comparing with the over-the-top gaudiness, if not macabre exhibitionism, of their German equivalent. Today the vehicle of choice to display jewellery would be a splendid woman, not a wizened skull or skeleton. Worn by the latter, those jewels now create an impossible disconnect.

Fr Edgar Vella, curator of the Mdina Cathedral Museum, has taken it upon himself to record and study systematically the amazing Aladdin’s Cave of Maltese relics and reliquaries. I now vote his work the unchallenged number one on my scale of preferences in books about relics. Because of its staggering visual impact, born from the truly astounding photography by Joe P. Borg, and the paramount graphic standards which Gutenberg Press always sets itself and often surpasses. But, mostly, because of the breath and depth of Vella’s commentary on a subject that has never, so far, been tackled with the vision and reverence the author displays.

Plenty of baloney has, over the centuries, grafted itself onto the subject of relics, which sometimes blurs the boundaries between faith and credulity. The Italian knights of Malta venerated the emerald ring by which baby Jesus married St Catherine, the Order of Malta cherished as its most precious relic the right arm of St John which had baptised Christ, glossing over the fact that there are at least five other rival right arms of the Baptist vying for attention in Christendom.

In 1606 Grand Master Wignacourt dismembered the left foot of St Euphemia to gratify the Sorbonne University of Paris who wanted part of its hallowed patron to venerate

The Siege of Malta, too, left its fair share of relics behind, like the cannon balls that killed Dragut, now Exhibit A in the sanctuary of the Madonna of Valverde in Sicily and the mummified head of the holy Fra Melchior of Monserrat, whose corpse was beheaded by the Turks in St Elmo, recently rediscovered in a small church in Spain.

Some of these relics we can give credence to, for others it is wiser to suspend our disbelief. I trust the good Lord will not be too hard on my doubts about a feather from the Holy Ghost, the phials of milk of the blessed Virgin, the tail of the dragon slain by St George, the piece of clay from which Adam was fashioned and the prepuce of baby Jesus from the Circumcision.

Vella’s is a complete encyclopaedia of relics and reliquaries in the Maltese context. Though he focuses on the Hospitaller period, he sets the evolution of the cult of relics against its earlier historical narrative, in the Eastern and the Western churches, and how and why the cult spread so fast and far.

Vella rather underplays the role of Antonio Bosio in the swell of martyromania throughout Catholic Europe; in my view, Bosio and his pioneering, highly scientific, exploration of the Roman catacombs, were absolutely central to it. Bosio, born in Malta, the love-child of the leading knight of Malta Fra Giannotto Bosio and an ancilla Afra, is as close to international fame as any ‘Maltese’ can ever hope to get.

The huge catalogue of relics venerated in Malta during the period of the Knights has been recorded by Vella. Count Ciantar, in 1780, listed 36 corpi santi – virtually entire skeletons of Roman martyrs – in Maltese and Gozitan churches, and corpi santi account for only a fraction of the vast inventory. Malta even exported relics. In 1606 Grand Master Wignacourt dis- membered the left foot of St Euphemia to gratify the Sorbonne University of Paris, who wanted part of its hallowed patron to venerate. And Grand Master Lascaris, in 1639, gifted the phalanges of a finger of St Anne to Queen Anne, wife of Louis XIII of France.

Though far more sombre than their German counterparts, the reliquaries of Malta prove equally spectacular. Splendour promoted the glory of the saint, but, unspokenly, it also advertised the wealth and aesthetic awareness of the owner. This book is about treasures of the spirit and of the bank vault. It is a treasure in itself.