More Histories Vol. III

Archaeologists, poets and artists, intellectuals, reformers, visionaries, judges, and stewards of history and beauty, all of whom were either Maltese or had some strong connection to the Maltese Islands, are the protagonists of the stories recounted in the third volume of More Histories. As elusive as their personalities might be, what becomes progressively clear, as we sift through the lives recounted between the covers of this volume, is that any kind of judgement we may pass on an individual’s life, work, decisions, and actions is always far more nuanced than the reductive dichotomies of good or bad, right or wrong … Those stumbles and pitfalls, the frequent short-sightedness and occasional long-sightedness, the equal tragic cost of opportunism and of righteousness, the solitude of less popular and even less travelled roads, make such recounted lives all the more accessible, all the more real, and all the more revealing of something far more archaic and far-reaching. It is, perhaps, as one scholar of comparative religions puts it, that ‘thinking well of one’s origins … is part of having a healthy self-image’.

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CONTENTS

Malta’s National Portrait Gallery

Antonio Bosio: Charting an Enigma

Fra' Ciro di Pers: Poet and Knight of Malta

Fra' Gabriele: Forgotten Son of Girolamo Cassar

Gio Nicolò Muscat: A Mild Debunking

Mikiel Anton Vassalli: On the Foundation of a School

and the Derivations of Words

Robert Ganado: A Judge for All Seasons

Sir Arturo Mercieca: A Colossus of the Law

Antonio Sciortino: The Man behind the King

Vincenzo Bonello: Revelations of a Sister Island

Frederick W. Ryan: Great Historian, Greater Visionary

Maurice Caruana Curran: A Meteor of Searing Brightness

Dun Ġwann Azzopardi: Witnesses of a Man

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Creative Director

Michael Lowell

Editor

Giulia Privitelli

Design

Lisa Attard

Layout

Chiara Micallef

Illustrations

Rebecca Bonaci

Produced by

Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti

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