Today marks the 250th death anniversary of Agius De Soldanis, the Gozitan linguist, historian and cleric who wrote the first lexicon and systematic grammar of the Maltese language. Fr Geoffrey George Attard recalls his life and career.

Few persons in the pluri-millenial history of the island of Gozo represent what is quintessentially Gozitan as renowned 17th-century cleric and polymath Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius De Soldanis. The mere utterance of his name reminds every reader of the second largest island of our archipelago, the place one described as “the island where time stood still”.

Francesco Agius, as was his original name, was born in Victoria on October 31, 1712, the son of Andrea Agius and Valenzia Sultana. He was baptised at St George’s parish church the following morning, as was the tradition at the time.

Primary schools in Gozo at the beginning of the 18th century were scarce and his parents had to send him to the Capuchin Friary in the outskirts of Victoria, to the north of the town, on the road that leads to Marsalforn.

Living in Gozo, he was at a disadvantage considering that the island had no place for secondary education. The diocesan seminary had not yet been founded; Gozo was established as a separate autonomous diocese from Malta in September 1864.

De Soldanis proceeded to the college led by the Jesuits in Valletta where he studied literature, philosophy, theology and law.

Carta e Veduta Dell’Isole Del Gozo e Comino. The title of the map found in de Soldanis’s manuscript Il Gozo Antico-Moderno e Sacro-Profano (Libr. MS 145) preserved at the National Library of Malta.

Remarkable personality

De Soldanis must have been a prodigy for his time as he caught the attention of Fra Paolo Alpheran de Bussan, who was at the time the bishop of both Malta and Gozo. At the tender age of 17, he was chosen by his Ordinary to become Canon of Gozo’s Collegiate Church, known as the Matrice. The year was 1729, an age when belonging to a collegiate church meant receiving a salary. The decent income would help the young man to lead a normal life as a priest and an erudite one for that.

De Soldanis must have been a prodigy for his time

De Soldanis was ordained priest in 1735. He soon became known for his preaching skills and was sought after by many to preach on special occasions. It is recorded that in 1753, he was chosen by the ecclesiastical administrators of the island to be the quaresimalista or official preacher of the advent and lenten sermons in the collegiate church. This was a privilege that was bestowed only on the few.

De Soldanis had a keen interest in numismatics. The coins copied and drawn here date to the Knights’ period. Some of them most probably found their way in the national numismatic collection.

Studies and travels abroad

It was certainly no common thing for a mid-17th century priest from Gozo to travel abroad. One had to not only have the financial means but also had to enjoy connections. It was in the University of Padua, one of the most renowned medieval universities of the late Middle Ages and beyond, that De Soldanis studied law.  Later on, he visited Paris from where he wrote to the State that he was of the opinion that the history of Gozo should be addressed to the Grand Master.

Reading through his correspondence with various prominent people, including princes of the Church, one would come to the conclusion that it was quite normal for him to play up to people in power to obtain what he wanted.

Being so self-conscious of the environment in which he was born and bred, De Soldanis felt almost claustrophobic. There was no way that he would restrict himself to Gozo. It was this love for adventure and will to learn and even publish himself that kept him searching for new ways to enhance his name among the litterati of the age.

The death registration of Canon Agius. Liber Defunctorum of the church of St Paul’s Shipwreck in Valletta.

The literary polymath

De Soldanis bust in Villa Rundle Gozo

De Soldanis’s love for the history of his native island is the stuff of legend. At the end of his detailed biographical sketch of De Soldanis, Joseph Cassar Pullicino, who can be nicknamed the ‘father of Maltese folkloristic studies’, called our prelate “an aspiring ecclesiastic, a dedicated scholar, a staunch upholder of Malta’s Pauline tradition, stout promoter of our national language and a proud historian of his native Gozo” (De Soldanis: Approaches to a Biography, in Essays on de Soldanis: Journal of Maltese Studies 27 (ed. Olvin Vella, University of Malta/Midsea Books, 2010).

As Biagio Vella states in his A Brief Study of the Latin in de Soldanis’ Damma  published in a sumptuous publication from Gozo that was brought together to commemorate De Soldanis’s 300th birth anniversary, his Damma was “not a simple vocabulary or word-list” since he “was well versed in Latin… and quotes Latin authors of the Golden and Silver Ages”.

He was fluent in Latin and Italian but he did not abandon his native language.

The 1,000-page Damma – a dictionary of words – was eventually published in 2016, 250 years after De Soldanis’s last entry in his manuscript volume. In fact, his name is linked to the Maltese language due to his publication entitled Della Lingua Punica presentamente usata da’ Maltesi (1750); although modern researchers do not hold this Punic theory, as Cassar Pullicino stated, “one cannot ignore the positive result of this work in which he proposed and actually used Latin characters for writing Maltese”.

De Soldanis left almost all of his unpublished works to the Public Library, including his magnum opus, the Damma (dictionary).

In June 1763, De Soldanis was appointed as the first librarian of the Order of St John’s Library by the founder of the library himself, Bailli Louis Guerin de Tencin. His friendship with Maltese erudite priest Ignazio Saverio Mifsud must have helped De Soldanis to become more popular on the main island of Malta.

He penned his Damma tal-Kliem Kartaginis mscerred fel fom tal Maltin u Ghaucin in order to immortalise the vocabulary that was extant during his lifetime. However, his most famous work that must have paved the way to him being called the ‘father of Gozitan historiography’, was Il Gozo Antico e Moderno, Sacro e Profano written in 1746 and translated into Maltese in the 1950s by Gozitan librarian Mgr Giuseppe Farrugia Gioioso.

The book sheds light on various aspects relating to the island, from church history to archaeology, and from flora and fauna to toponymy and heraldry.

The name of Canon Ġann Piet Franġisk Agius De Soldanis, whose mortal remains rest in the crypt of St Paul’s Collegiate parish church in Valletta, will go down in history as the most renowned man of letters that Gozo had during the time of the Knights of St John.

However, it is his legendary love for his native Gozo that has rendered his name immortal among the short list of patres patriæ of our island-nation.

De Soldanis died on January 30, 1770, and was buried in the crypt of the church of St Paul Shipwrecked in Valletta.