MHS Public Lecture: Re-Creating a Monastic Life Story: A Network of Women in 17th-Century Malta and Palermo

The Malta Historical Society invites you to a public lecture

𝐑𝐞-𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲: 𝐀 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝟏𝟕𝐭𝐡-𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐨
by Dr Petra Caruana Dingli

Join us on

Wednesday 31 May 2023 at 18:30

At the Auditorium of St Dominic’s Priory, Rabat

This event is kindly sponsored by The Alfred Mizzi Foundation

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬
Biographical material on women in seventeenth-century Malta is scarce. Re-creating their life stories is beset with gaps and questions. This talk will explore two versions of a rare biography of a Maltese woman of the period, Geltruda Cumbo—one in manuscript, and the other published in Rome in 1671. She was born in Valletta in 1613 and joined a Discalced Carmelite monastery in Palermo in Sicily. The texts describe a network of female relatives in Malta who attempted to promote a cult around her in the 1660s, for her to be venerated as a saint. They also provide evidence of women in seventeenth-century Malta reading, writing and exchanging personal letters between Malta and Palermo.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫
Dr Petra Caruana Dingli won the 2022 Malta Historical Society Award. She is Senior Lecturer at the Edward de Bono Institute for Creative Thinking and Innovation at the University of Malta, and also lectures within the Faculty of Arts. She is chairperson of the Mdina Cathedral Archives, and a long-standing Council member of the cultural heritage NGO Din l-Art Ħelwa and editor of its magazine Vigilo. She holds a doctorate in the field of literature from the University of Oxford. Today her research interests are interdisciplinary. She has recently published work on 17th- and 19th-century writing and culture, with a special focus on women in early modern.