The book entitled The Earliest Church Register in Gozo 1554 –1628 written by Prof. Horatio C.R. Vella, recently launched at the Exhibition Hall of the Ministry for Gozo, sheds new light on certain aspects of Gozo’s church history. Unfortunately, due to the unwarranted intrusion of Gozitan pseudo historians, the title of this book is misleading. It should have read The First Register of the Gozo Matrice as this book belonged only to this parish church.
Prof. Vella has done a very good job though several historians are of the opinion that an appendix with the exact transcription of the original would have raised the prestige of this important book immensely. However, that would have definitely raised printing costs much higher.
Anyhow, from this book we can now glean very important information hitherto barely known. For example, when one reads Dusina’s Apostolic Visit Report of 1575, one gets the impression that Fr Andreas de Federico, former parish priest of Savina’s parish church, has been missing from the island of Gozo for 24 years. In this new publication we discover that this was not quite true. On page 147 we read that this ex-parish priest of the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady (ta’ Savina) on 28 July 1563 was in Gozo to act as witness in the marriage of Pascal Mirachante to Frances Mangion. The marriage took place at the Matrice of the Assumption and this was two years prior to the Great Siege of Malta.
Other important information concerns the Sansone family living in Gozo at that time. Reminiscent of the activities of this family in Gozo, we still find such names as Wied Sansun (Sansone Valley) on the southwest coast of Gozo and Torre Sansone at the government tenement known to this day by the name Ta’ Bieb it-Torri.
Though in the Preface we read that this book “contains information on the beginnings of two important mother churches”, this allegation of the “two mother churches” is not true. It was only suggested by George Francis Vella who also mentioned the idea in his speech on the occasion of the book launch. During question time, Prof. Vella made it clear that this idea of the “two mother churches” was not a historical discovery he had made, as he would have inserted a footnote to prove the same, but such information was provided by Gozitans, meaning George Francis Vella.
On the other hand, Gozitan historian Mgr Joseph Bezzina in another speech on the same occasion made it clear that this register was not an amalgamation of fascicles or registers belonging to the parishes of the Matrice and St George’s. It belonged solely to the Matrice and was started by parish priest Fr Leonardo de Cace, who incidentally was also a bookbinder by trade and knew quite well from where to procure the rare commodity of fascicles at that time.
Anton F. Attard
VICTORIA