The Malta Historical Society invites you to a public lecture
๐๐-๐๐ซ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐จ๐ง๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐ ๐๐ข๐๐ ๐๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ: ๐ ๐๐๐ญ๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ค ๐จ๐ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐๐ง ๐ข๐ง ๐๐๐ญ๐ก-๐๐๐ง๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ญ๐ ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ซ๐ฆ๐จ
by Dr Petra Caruana Dingli
Join us on
Wednesday 31 May 2023 at 18:30
At the Auditorium of St Dominicโs Priory, Rabat
This event is kindly sponsored by The Alfred Mizzi Foundation
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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 Cumboโone 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.
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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 ฤฆelwa 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.
MHS Public Lecture: Re-Creating a Monastic Life Story: A Network of Women in 17th-Century Malta and Palermo
Speaker: Dr Petra Caruana Dingli
MHS Public Lecture: Re-Creating a Monastic Life Story: A Network of Women in 17th-Century Malta and Palermo