Synopsis
Sponsored by the Alfred Mizzi Foundation. The Order of St John was an institution depending on privilege. After the loss of the Holy Land, and with the advent of the printing press, it was constantly risking a depletion in donations by the faithful, and a loss of favour by the Catholic monarchs every time a slanderous publication was published levelling criticism at the institution. Therefore, the Order periodically commissioned official histories in order to keep the public informed of its good deeds and of how it served as a bulwark of Christendom. The official histories by Bosio and Dal Pozzo are cases in point. Abbot Luca Cenni is an obscure literary figure. The Order had been looking for a suitable candidate to continue Bosio’s ‘Istoria’ for quite some time. In fact, on 6 September 1663 Grand Master Raphael Cotoner and the council had stressed the urgency to find a competent person to be appointed as the Order’s official historian. On 1 October 1664, his name was presented to the Council by Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner as a possible candidate for the continuation of Bosio’s Istoria. Cenni was officially nominated as the Order’s official historian. A manuscript history of the Order which deals solely with the Battle of Lepanto (1571) survives in the National Library of Malta. New research carried out by the author, who has published a critical edition of the manuscript, has resulted in the discovery that Cenni had written more than the sole surviving manuscript in the National Library of Malta, and that his research was blatantly plagiarized and published by others.
Speaker: Dr Paul George Pisani
Luca Cenni: A Little Known Hospitaller Historian
Speaker: Dr Paul George Pisani
St Paul’s Protestant Cathedral, Valletta
Luca Cenni: A Little Known Hospitaller Historian