A few months ago, a new debate on Mikiel Anton Vassalli was sparked off when Paul Catania of Naxxar discovered an early 19th century prospectus promoting the great patriot's unpublished dictionary and inviting interested parties to leave a deposit with Notary Ignazio Molinos at his Valletta office (TMIS, 25 May).
This fortunate discovery gave rise to a controversial interpretation by Professor Frans Ciappara to which I promptly reacted, indicating that Vassalli had left Italy in the 1790s not because he was running away from some "scatterbrained warrior", as suggested by the Professor, but because he wanted to avoid the perils of war.
Now, that was not the only controversy to emerge. In a spirit of historical debate, I would like to look at other aspects of Professor Ciappara's commentary on that discovery, hoping to raise enough questions to stimulate the reader to discuss the matter meaningfully.
Ciappara noted that "Notary Ignazio Molinos is known to have worked with Dr Cleardo Naudi, one of the first Maltese to become a Protestant". Ciappara then asked, "Did the notary introduce Vassalli to Naudi who in turn introduced Vassalli to the Protestants?"
Documentary evidence seems to hint at the need to ask questions at a deeper level. My research associate and I have been working for some time on one aspect of Vassalli's life which seems to have been neglected: his wife's family.
Vassalli married Caterina Formosa de Fremaux, one of the daughters of Agostino, the first Count of Saint Sofia. We know that de Fremaux was, inter alia, the Consul in Malta for at least two foreign sovereigns, the Malta representative of Jewish merchants from Leghorn, and a Freemason. He also helped negotiate a truce during the French invasion of Malta. According to John Attard Montalto, the origins of de Fremaux's title of nobility remain shrouded in mystery.
Despite the patent importance of her father's role in Maltese society, Caterina seems to have been completely overlooked by historians for reasons which are not apparent.
It now seems that the godfather at Notary Ignacio Molinos' father's baptism was Melchiorre Mamo. Melchiorre Mamo was father to Paolica, wife to Agostino Formosa de Fremaux and mother to Caterina Vassalli, and therefore Caterina's maternal grandfather.
But there's more to it. Cleardo Naudi's father, Gio Batta, was married to Antonia Mamo, another daughter of Melchiorre and sister to Paolica. Furthermore, Gio Batta's father took his son's sister-in-law Eugenia Mamo as his second wife. Caterina was therefore Cleardo Naudi's cousin (as niece to Cleardo's mother) ... and niece to Cleardo's grandfather's second wife!
It seems to me quite obvious how Vassalli got to know Cleardo Naudi and Ignazio Molinos.
There is more to say about other relatives of Caterina Vassalli, and their possible role in Vassalli's life, but this will be done in future writings.
Something else about Cleardo Naudi. His first wife was the daughter of the Noble Franco Azopardi, whose cousin Calcedonio had a son called Vincenzo, who later inherited the family's barony. Caterina Vassalli's sons published Baron Azopardi's Piccolo Dizionario in 1856.
Vincenzo Azopardi appears on the 1815 list of Freemasons belonging to the Lodge of Saint John and St Paul, Lodge number 437 (fol. 110 of the Lodge's register).
On that same page of the Freemasons' register we find another interesting name: "Giovanni Negroponte (merchant)". Again there is a connection with Caterina Vassalli. Caterina's paternal grandmother (mother to Agostino Formosa de Fremaux) was Rosa or Rosalia Negroponte. Her brother's son was Giovanni.
In other words, Giovanni Negroponte was in all probability Caterina Vassalli's father's cousin. I however doubt that this Negroponte was directly involved in Vassalli's post-exile life. Documents seem to indicate that he was either an old man or had passed away by the time Vassalli had returned to Malta. That said, if Negroponte's legacy at the Lodge was a positive one, this would have indirectly helped Vassalli.
However, it cannot be excluded a priori that Giovanni Negroponte's and Agostino Formosa de Fremaux's Masonic affiliations could have influenced Vassalli earlier in his life.
To return to the post-exile period of Vassalli's life, tt has been public knowledge for a long time that Vassalli's friend John Hookham Frere was a Freemason. He belonged to the same lodge as Azopardi and Negroponte (Lodge number 437, fol. 252 of the above-mentioned register). It was Frere who secured Vassalli's appointment to the professorship at the University.
We have to countenance that all this might just be circumstantial evidence of no real value. However, we must also consider that the late 18th and early 19th centuries were marked by intense Masonic activity. The British used Freemasonry to create a united or unified Italy as a continental counterbalance to France, and they made use of Freemasonry elsewhere in their empire-building efforts. Jessica Harland-Jacobs' Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism 1717-1927 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) casts light on this aspect of history.
But the French too were busy on this front. The French scene was characterised by internal struggles between lodges, particularly the Grand Lodge in Paris and the Grand Lodge in Marseilles, the latter wanting to remain independent from the Lodge of the capital city.
The Marseilles Lodge had numerous affiliate lodges all along the Mediterranean basin, including Malta. Their main aim was to increase trade between the French port city and other Mediterranean countries, including Ottoman lands. There are a lot of similarities between the commercial philosophy espoused by the Lodge and that argued by Vassalli and his group before the Grand Master. Vassalli's stay in Marseilles during much of his exile is also another interesting point to factor in.
It therefore seems plausible that Vassalli's in-laws and their circles were key to the Vassalli family's post-exile life in Malta: Naudi with the Protestants; Azopardi with Frere. Furthermore, the fact that one of Vassalli's sons published a book in 1867 (on emigration to North Africa) signed as Vassalli Formosa de Fremaux should be an unequivocal indicator as to the role played by the maternal side in the post-exile lives of the Vassallis.
But there might be more to it than this. In the future, my research associate and I shall be trying to map out more connections and possible explanations. For instance, one Giuseppe Cannolo was married to a Margarita née Negroponte, sister to Caterina Vassalli's paternal grandmother Rosa. If this is indeed the case, then the Cannolo who translated the Gospels was somehow another relative to Caterina Vassalli. This could explain the Cannolo-Naudi-Vassalli-Jowett connection relative to the Maltese translation of the Protestant Gospels. As with many events on this small southern European island, family connections are key to any meaningful explanation.
One other intriguing question, for which there is still no (tentative) answer, is the presence of the Dominus Apap, the Apaps who lived in Siġġiewi at the beginning of Vassalli's life. Whereas Apap stood as Vassalli's baptism godfather, my research associate and I have established that that was the only time between 1764 and 1780 when Apap stood godfather to anyone in the Ħaż-Żebbuġ Parish.
© 2015
Mark A. Sammut