He was a priest and also a notary, with liberal ideas who fell foul of the Inquisition. He was also the one who copied and gave us the Cantilena by his relative Pietro Caxaru, the first known poem in the Maltese language.

But he was also prolific in other areas: at least five children were said to be his by his concubine Caterina and he had other children by his other girlfriend Lorenza Falson.

The Akkademja tal-Malti held a talk given by Dr Joan Abela at Palazzo Sofia in Mdina last Wednesday on the life and times of Brandanu Caxaru.

Dr Abela is the person who singlehandedly is doing a lot to rescue the notarial archives of Malta from neglect. She told the gathering there are still some half a kilometre of shelving full of unclassified material to get through. There may thus be other Cantilenas waiting to be discovered.

Dr Abela focused on Brandanu Caxaru, maybe because there is far more to be discovered about him than about his relative. The fact that Brandanu copied his relative’s poem in early Maltese shows that even then, around 1550, Maltese was no longer the language of the lower classes.

Brandanu is described as ‘da Mosta’ but practised as a notary in Mdina. Together with some priest friends and others, he fell foul of the Inquisitor because they formed part of a sort of a reading club who shared books by Luther, Melanchton and Erasmus. In fact, some of Brandanu’s notarial volumes have disguised references to the books as their frontispiece.

Brandanu was investigated by the Inquisition twice, in 1546 and 1563. In the latter year, perhaps in view of the upcoming Great Siege, or perhaps because of a hardening of the Church’s stance, the trial was more rigorous.

His two friends fared worse. Asciak was given just three days to repent while Gesualdo escaped but was traced to Rome and brought back. He was later burned in the main square of Vittoriosa.

Brandanu was sentenced to a wide range of ‘medicinal’ punishments: he was told to stop acting as priest, sent to jail, later to wear a habit with a red cross identifying him as having fallen foul of the Inquisition, apart from other public punishments.

However, all these punishments do not seem to have stopped him from other habits, which come to light in his testament. In his testament taken down by Notary Bartolomeo Axisa, there is mention for the first time of his having begotten children by his ‘concubine’. Later, in 1563, that is after his trial by the Inquisition, he quotes extensively from the Book of Job in reference to his trials.

Later on, the concubine is identified as Caterina Azzopardi from whom he had seven boys. But in another document it is also said he had a(nother) concubine from whom he had more than five children. At first it was thought this was the same Caterina Azzopardi, but other documents later identify her as Lorenza Falson.

Godfrey Wettinger quotes from the Naxxar baptismal records that he had a daughter.

From the notarial documents, we can also trace his inventories. He admitted to having houses in Rabat, ‘some with ceilings and others without’, as well as two leather chairs (at a time when ordinary people did not have chairs but sat on the floor), and a book of laws.

On 22 June 1563, the bishop allowed him to continue to act as a notary but his last notarial act dates from before his trial by the Inquisition.

Maybe his copying of the Cantilena and its inclusion among his notarial acts stems from his Protestant reading and his reaction to Job’s rather pessimistic view of life. The key verse in the Cantilena (maybe Pietro was quoting a Maltese proverb here) is ‘Min ibiddel l-imkien ibiddel il-vintura’ – changing one’s location may help change one’s fortune.

Brandanu Caxaru died just a few months after the end of the Great Siege in 1565. His notarial archives amount to a staggering 68 volumes, a rich heritage of this country’s social history at a particularly tragic time.