Paul Catania: In-Naxxar, Stejjer, Ġrajjiet, u Laqmijiet
BDL Publishing, €12.95.

The part played by dedicated local historians in adding to our knowledge of our national past is remarkable. These researchers often carry out their work in quiet solitude, amassing a great amount of invaluable data and information, their main reward being the publication of articles in the local festa programmes that are destined to reach only the few.

These are people like Karmenu Bonavia, Dun Ġużepp Micallef, Joe F. Grima, Winston Zammit, Fr Alexander Bonnici, Paul Callus, Horatio Vella, to mention just a few, to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude for the spadework they have carried out. Little by little they make available the bricks out of which large edifices will be later built.

Paul Catania is one of these parish historians whose love for his native Naxxar led him to dedicate a lifetime of scouring dusty archives and interviewing village elders in the search for lesser-known details and information. His regular contributions to the former parish news sheet, and to the annual festa programmes of the local band clubs, have always been eagerly expected.

Back in 1999 he had published his first collection of articles, followed by the collection of scholarly papers Naxxar, a village and its people, which I co-edited with him, and then in 2015 The People of the North, the study of Naxxar in the late 16th and early 17th century, an excellent work which deserved much more notice than it actually received.

Catania is fortunate in that Naxxar, listed as one of the original 12 parishes by Senatore de Mello in 1436, has the oldest parish records. But luck is only part of the story; for many years he has been putting these archival records in order, a painstaking job but one that has earned him several serendipitous moments as a reward. The latest is new information about Mikiel Anton Vassalli.

But his work is not limited to his work in the parish records. He has also been carefully researching national archives, and dipping wherever he suspects there could be a reference, even the most minute, to his village.

In his latest book, the 416-page In-Naxxar, stejjer, ġrajjiet, u laqmijiet, Catania presents 32 articles which are the fruit of his recent researches, some of which have appeared in the festa programmes or had been given in public lectures, all duly updated. The presentation in a handsome publication, laudably supported by the local council, means that his research will now become available to a much wider audience and in a more permanent form.

The first chapters deal with the history of the 11 surviving filial churches to be found in Naxxar and its hinterland, a work which Catania has updated to include his latest information.

These include the twin churches dedicated to Our Lady of Victory and St Lucy respectively. Paolo Cuschieri sought sanctuary in the latter church and lived in it for a number of years before making his way to Licata, from where he sent a bell as a token of his gratitude.

The church of the Assumption at Magħtab is said to have been built by a grateful father where a donkey was stopped which had run away with his son on a cart. It is one of the best-kept country churches.

The church of St Michael at Salini, opposite the Bird Park, is said to owe its origin to a Jew who used to light a candle in front of a statue of the saint and was later saved from being seized by corsairs thanks to a saintly intervention.

The church of St James the Great in the square in front of the former Trade Fair, still holds its little feast, complete with a few fireworks, on the saint’s day, July 25.

The nearby church of St Paul was rebuilt in 1699, a few feet away from  its original site which is marked by a wayside cross. Its lovely altarpiece by Giuseppe Arena was long believed to be a work by Francesco Zahra. Zahra had actually restored it and added his own self-portrait as the man with the fez in the lower left-hand corner who looks directly at the viewer. This art historical information merited more than a mere mention in an endnote. The church of St Catherine in Wied il-Għasel has 17th-century frescoes which may be unique. Today it lies among dusty batching plants in an area of general abandonment. Vandals had made a regular feast of it but it has since been properly restored and saved from imminent destruction. The promised regeneration of the valley might make it possible for the church to return to its former glory.    

They make available the bricks out of which large edifices will be later built

Of the small churches that have not survived, Catania mentions the twin churches dedicated to St Sebastian and St Roque, and to St Margaret respectively which were bulldozed for the building of Labour Avenue in 1956, that of St Catherine at Xwieki which suffered great structural damage in a storm in 1935, and the troglodyte church of St Peter. Of the latter only a smallish nondescript cave survives below Tarġa Heights. It needs great imagination to see it as a former church.

Incidentally it would certainly be a fine idea if the council could find funds to rebuild the cross that up to a few decades ago was to be found near the upper bend of T’Alla w Ommu hill. Its base was still there a few years ago. Catania believes that this cross was erected to mark the desecration of the church of St Peter.

Octagonal-shaped chapel in Naxxar

Catania has made excellent use of the rich information to be found in the various pastoral visits in several of his articles. In 1618 Bishop Cagliares left valuable information about the parish church which was being built, the church which Bishop Balaguer in 1653 and Bishop Molina in 1680 were to describe as the finest church in Malta. These visits are used to throw light on the social and economic conditions of the village which by all accounts had a good number of fairly well-off residents.

Bishop Paul Alpheran, who consecrated the new church in 1729, carried out four pastoral visits and left many interesting details about its furniture and reliquaries, and also about the filial churches.

One of the very important, forward-looking initiatives probably made by parish priest Giorgio Fiteni was the setting up of the Cassa Dei Poveri in the 1780s. Years before the state was to introduce such benefits, the Cassa provided funds for indigent parishioners, such as paying for medicines, for transport to and from the hospital, and even for an għonella for a poor woman who did not have one to go to church in.

Another paper describes the church year in the late 18th century. The Good Friday procession was already a popular manifestation and fireworks used to be fired as each statue left the church.        

The 19th century saw Naxxar passing through many changes, especially during the years when Giuseppe Camilleri was parish priest (1849-65). A diary left by Notary Debono furnishes many details and incidents that occurred during the tenure of Camilleri who died suddenly of a stroke in church.

Another diary of even greater detail and importance is that by Dr Ignazio Micallef which today lies in the parish archives. It is a diary that transcends the locality and should be published, ideally in an English translation, for its social content of Malta in the 19th century. Catania uses this diary to describe events at the end of turn of the 20th century, when one of the main controversies concerned whether the old parish church should be enlarged, or a new one built a few yards away.

Although originally an agricultural village, Naxxar was later to develop into a centre renowned for craftsmen, in particular blacksmiths and carpenters and cabinet makers. Indeed the parish church has some fine exemplars of traditional ferrobattuto, with local smiths winning prizes and recognition, even abroad. Today only a couple of smiths still ply their traditional trade and the sound of hammer beating hot iron on the anvil is hardly to be heard. Welding has made such work easier, but the poetry has been taken out of it.

Catania writes two chapters about the village blacksmiths and carpenters respectively, tracing the origin of the trades to centuries ago. The trades increased popularity in the second half of the 19th century, when the village attracted a number of well-to-do business and aristocratic families who built fine residences and sought craftsmen to embellish them. The parish church itself boasts of some outstanding work in ferrobattuto. Many of the names of the craftsmen he mentions are still alive in the memory of Naxxarin.

The titular statue of Our Lady on feast day

Another article describes Naxxar during the term of office of parish priest Dun Nerik Cordina Perez (1926-34) who was responsible for several successful innovations, and stressed the importance of spirituality in many of the church’s activities. He too left a rich detailed-filled manuscript account of the principal events that occurred during his time.

The celebrations of the feast of the Bambina in 1927 were marked by several innovations both inside and outside the church. Marquis John Scicluna, the great philanthropist who lived in Palazzo Parisio across from the church, donated a fine velvet valance for the statue which was recently restored to its original glory. Most of the external festa furniture were completed and are still in use, having survived a call by the authorities for them to be used as firewood for the Victory Kitchens. The festa furniture was mostly made by employees of the marquis. The works are really a great showcase of the craftsmanship of the Naxxar workers in wood and iron.

One of Catania’s prolific sources are the copious writings left by Naxxar-born Dun Anton Sciberras who although ironically transferred to the parish of St Julian’s a year after his ordination, remained a proud Naxxari with a keen interest in all that happened there. One invaluable source was the diary he kept, as a teenager, throughout World War II which is a treasure trove of details mostly relating to Naxxar, but also to what was happening in Malta and beyond.      

Catania gives an overview of the war years in Naxxar as jotted down by Dun Anton. He describes the various places where bombs fell and the local victims, the harsh living in the shelters, the very scarce food supply (when his mother’s hen lays an egg, he makes a feast of it by mixing it in his minestra), the activities of the Irish fusiliers billeted at San Pawl tat-Tarġa and their interaction with the villagers, local tiffs and tragedies, and so on. His constant villains are the thieving employees of the Victory Kitchen! This diary is definitely another manuscript that deserves to be published.

Detailed notes left by Dun Anton also made possible an account of Naxxar in the post-war days when the village continued to grow and prosper. One memorable year was 1954, a Marian year. On a tragic note, the verger died when the ladder he was on in the church, slipped.

 For many Naxxarin, the most fascinating section must be the one dealing with the nicknames of the village, a work that Catania started over 40 years and is assiduously continuing to add to, keeping his records up to date. It is truly an impressive sociological and linguistic study which includes over 2,500 nicknames recorded in one source or another since the end of the 18th century, of which just 27 have survived till the present.

Catania gives the nickname in its original transcription as he found it in various manuscripts, its present transcribed form, and the surname of the family or families that bore it, together with when it first and last appeared.

The book is pleasantly produced but aesthetically suffers from inconstant changes in fonts and leading in several papers. Larger illustrations would also have been welcome, although the perennial problem of costs must have influenced the decision. Irritatingly the name Agatha is consistently misspelled throughout.

Still Catania’s book is one of the best of its genre, and is bound to provide lots of source material for other researchers. The generous subsidy by the Naxxar local council means that it is also a bargain price-wise.