During the two-year (1962-64) teachers’ training course at St Michael’s College of Education, my special subjects were Italian and Maltese. Lecturing us in the latter subject was Joe Zammit Mangion.

One of the requisites in the subject was the writing of a thesis. Zammit Mangion provided us a list of titles to choose from. I chose ‘Priedki bil-Malti ta’ Ignazio Saverio Mifsud’.

On Wednesday afternoons, I used to go to the National Library, in Valletta, ask for Library Manuscript No. 48 and began to read from the handwritten homilies of Mifsud. I found it truly fascinating.

I chose two sermons and started copying them; one of these was ‘Panigerico in Idioma Maltese Sopra L’Immacolata Concezione di Maria Vergine…’ delivered on December 8, 1739 in the small church dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, in Msida. 

At one point, I came across the Latin quotation ‘Tota pulchra es amica mea, et macula non est in te’ which Mifsud quoted from an ‘Idiota’.

Was I reading well? 

Zammit Mangion suggested I seek the help of Ġużè Cassar Pullicino, who had used some paragraphs from the sermons of Mifsud in his Kitba u kittieba tal-Malti. I met Cassar Pullicino in his office at the Health Department in Merchants Street, Valletta.

“Are you sure you are reading the manuscript well,” was his first observation.

When I insisted I was, he phoned a monsignor friend of his and asked him where the quote could have come from. Cassar Pullicino eventually told me that the quotation was part of an old Catholic prayer, one of the five antiphons for the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Further research revealed that ‘Idiota’ (originally ‘idiot’) was the pseudonym used by Fr Theophilus Raynaud, SJ, the author of several works. The quotation was probably found in his Treatise on the Blessed Virgin. 

My success in tracing who ‘Idiota’ was encouraged me and instilled in me my passion for research.

In 1976, I was transferred to the Higher Secondary School, in Valletta. Here, besides delivering lessons at A level, I was given the responsibility to edit a stencilled students’ magazine: Mill-Mixtla tal-Letteratura Maltija, in which I published the panegyric on the Immaculate Conception with entitled Bejn Kitba u Studju.

And when Hyphen magazine – of which board I formed part – began to be published, I contributed with an enhanced version of the same panegyric entitled Malti tas-Seklu XVIII (1985).

The love I had grown for Mifsud’s sermons and panegyrics led me to transcribe, edit and publish other studies. But it was the decision to take up all of his homilies in Maltese and present a critical thesis for a PhD with the University of Malta in 2005 (published: Il-Priedki bil-Malti ta’ Ignazio Saverio Mifsud, Malta 2008) that made me realise that the erudite preacher was a very great devotee of the Immaculate Conception.

Belief in the Immaculate Conception in the 18th century

Many Christians in Europe believed in the Kunċizzjoni or Immaculate Conception years before the proclamation of the dogma on this mystery in 1854.  From a number of sermons, most of them panegyrics written in Maltese or Italian, by Mifsud, we know that there was great devotion to Our Lady with the title of ‘Immaculate’ in Malta in the 18th century.

Sermons in honour of the Immaculate Conception

Mifsud delivered four sermons in honour of the Immaculate Conception; the one mentioned above in 1739, two in Italian – one in 1741 and another in 1742− and another one, also in Maltese, in 1743. 

The latter took place when the teaching on the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady was hotly debated. Before the proclamation of the dogma in its favour, the Christian world accepted both opinions for and against this belief.

Catholics in Malta were also allowed to embrace this belief or not, even though there were a number of chapels already dedicated to the Immaculate Conception as evidenced in the series Teżori fil-Knejjes Maltin by Tony Terribile and published by PIN.

Believers accused

In the days of Mifsud there were people, even among the clergy, who not only refused to believe, but, moreover, scorned whoever accepted this teaching. 

A case in point is Fr Ġużepp Zammit. He stated in front of the Inquistor that, on the solemnity of the holy Conception of Mary, in 1728, he had heard a panegyric on the subject delivered by a diocesan priest.

Fr Wistin Borg, OP, who overheard him, immediately intervened, saying “He (the priest) said stupidities,” and “Yes, stupidities. Forget all these ideas about the Kunċizzjoni because they are stupidities.”

The Church was not rigorous and did not take any action against those who did not agree with the teaching and, hence, Fr Borg was not even summoned by the Inquisitor. [Alexander Bonnici, Storja ta’ l-Inkwiżizzjoni ta’ Malta, (Dekadenza u Soppressjoni tat-Tribunal), Malta, 1994, pp. 73-4.] 

Another case associated with this teaching involved a Franciscan friar who was called to appear in front of the Inquisitor because he called “monsters” those who did not believe in the Immaculate Conception. [‘… the Franciscan who described his opponents as ‘monsters’ was summoned before the inquisition’, Frans Ciappara, Society and the Inquisition in Early Modern Malta, Malta, 2001, pp. 85-6.] 

Firm belief in the Immaculate Conception

However, Mifsud firmly believed in this teaching. His first sermon in honour of the Immaculate Conception was on the feast day proper, in 1739. 

Delivering this sermon and those in 1741 and 1742, in Italian, in the Jesuits’ church, might have meant that this belief was also embraced by the Jesuit fathers, who were also his teachers. The other sermon, in Maltese, which Mifsud presented in St Francis’s church, in today’s Republic Street, is enough evidence that the Franciscan ‘brothers’ were also in favour of this devotion, which had been promulgated by their brother, Blessed John (Johannes) Duns Scotus, OFM (c. 1266–1308), many years earlier.

Besides, when he was caught in rough seas while on a speronara on his way to Rome, in 1746, and felt his life was threatened, Mifsud promised that, if he survived, after taking Holy Orders, he would say Mass in honour of the Immaculate Conception every Saturday for two whole years.

Mifsud makes reference to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, mother of God, even in other sermons of his: ‘[…] M(ari)a S(antissim)a […] inhamlet minhair tebha […]’ (‘Holy Mary … was born without sin’) − a sermon delivered during the novena in honour of St Anne, in 1741. 

With his sermons on the subject and the support of the Jesuit fathers and the Franciscan conventual friars, who invited him to preach in their churches, we may presume that the teaching on the Immaculate Conception in Malta had already gathered ground and must have been accepted by many. 

Devotion towards the Immaculate Conception scapular and fraternity

The congregation gathered for Mifsud’s sermon on December 15, 1743 included a number of faithful enrolled in the Fraternity of the Immaculate Conception and others who wore regularly the Immaculate Conception scapular. 

The sermon took place at St Francis church, Valletta, when Mifsud was still 21 years of age. He gives the names of the other preachers in the ottava: Fr Patri Costanzo ‘da Malta’, OFM, Oss.; Fr M. Attard, OFM, Conv.; and Abate Fra Giovanni Picaò, who delivered the only sermon in Italian.

In his sermon, Mifsud elaborated on the devotion to the Immaculate Conception scapular and showed that this was already very popular in both Milan and Malta. 

Belief and devotion today

Today, every Catholic should believe in the Immaculate Conception of Holy Mary, a feast which the Church solemnly celebrates today, December 8. By the dogma Ineffabilis Deus, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, the Catholic Church requires that Christians believe that Christ’s mother, Mary, was conceived without any sin, including the original sin, thus she was born immaculate. 

The teaching of this dogma was further strengthened by the same words of Holy Mary in her answer during one of her apparitions to Bernadette at Lourdes four years later, in 1858: “Que soy era Immaculada Counchetsiou!”, dialectal French for “I am the Immaculate Conception”.