I read with interest Giovanni Bonello’s article ‘Mysteries of the Main Guard inscription’, (The Sunday Times of Malta, January 14).

Originally built as the Guardia del Palazzo in October 1617 during the reign of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt (1601-1622), it was converted into the Main Guard in 1814 through the addition of a neoclassical portico, most probably on the design of our architect Giorgio Pullicino (1775-1851).

Governor Sir Thomas Maitland ordered that a Latin inscription be set up on the portico to commemorate the annexation of Malta and Gozo to the British Crown, brought about by the love of the Maltese and the voice of Europe. The curious problem is why the singular confirmat was used instead of the plural confirmant to cover both concepts. As Dr Bonello wrote, the inscription was most likely composed by Abbate Luigi Rigord (1737-1823), a well-known Latinist.

There seems to be little doubt that the original inscription was in the singular, an acknowledged anomaly. As I had written in The Times of July 6, 2010, the first record of the Latin inscription is to be found in the guide book published by the Italian Giu­seppe Pericciouli Borzesi of Siena. It was repeated in the second edition. Besides, the American traveller Andrew Bigelow, who visited Malta in 1827, wrote in his book dated 1831 that the inscription had caught his eye as the Latin wording was questionable, and he copied it “for the sake of accuracy”.

By 1851, the inscription had weathered so much that it was impossible to restore it, and it was destroyed on June 26, 1851, ac­cording to two manuscript diaries. Colonel Federico Gatt CMG (1841-1892) wrote fu rimossa, while Dr Cesare Vassallo (1801-1882) was more specific: fu oggi spezzata e gittata giù.

Various theories have been advanced to try and explain the word confirmat. Dr Bonello suggested that perhaps it had been abbreviated by means of a macron, a diacritical sign over the last vowel to stand for the missing ‘n’. If so, the macron must have escaped the notice of both Pericciouli Borzesi and Bigelow. On the other hand, Joseph Anthony Debono had pointed out in The Times of June 22, 2010, that he had sometimes come across singular verbs in Latin used with composite subjects in the best classical prose.

The matter is further compounded by what David Dandria had written in The Times on June 22, 2010, that two other visitors to Malta had transcribed the word confirmant in their publications, respectively of 1838 and 1847, unless, of course, they had given the correct version as it should have been, as it seems Judge Vincenzo Bonavita (1752-1829) had perhaps done in 1823 at the end of the first chapter of his manuscript Dissertazioni Istorico-Legale.

Marquis Cassar Desain, in his 1880 Genealogia della famiglia Testaferrata in Malta, gave the inscription in capital letters, including the word CONFIRMANT, while criticising the pretty arbitrary declaration in the Treaty of Paris of May 30, 1814, that the Maltese islands were to fall under the sovereignty of Great Britain. Was the weathered slab of the inscription renewed more than once since 1851?

This may perhaps be established from the records of the Public Works Department.

As a footnote I might add that the Wignacourt guard room could not appear on the map in the first edition of Bosio’s history of the Order which was published in 1602, but it is depicted on the Valletta plan manu­script of around 1636 described in an article I have written jointly with architect William Soler soon to be published. It is an unknown map that shows the advanced construction of Valletta, almost certainly drawn by the builder of Floriana, Pietro Paolo Floriani (1585-1638).

This map is in a manuscript of Fabio Ghigi, later Pope Alexander VII, extant at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. It is unique in the sense that it is the first one after the Bosio map by Fra Francesco dell’Antella which shows the internal layout of the buildings on plan. The guard room is depicted with arcades on the side of Piazza San Giorgio facing the Magistral Palace.

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