Consecrated on February 20, 1578, 445 years ago this month, St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta has recently been recognised by TripAdvisor as the overall ‘Travellers’ Choice Best of the Best 2022’ award winner and is listed on the top 25 attractions in Europe.

The sumptuous temple built by Maltese architect Girolamo Cassar (1530-1593) between 1573 and 1577 remains Malta’s most visited tourist attraction with an estimated half a million visitors yearly.

Its founder, French Grandmaster Jean l’Evesque de la Cassière (1572-1581), had it built purposely as the conventual church of the Hospitaller Military Order of St John. It is a prime example of Baroque architecture adorned with an interior beautification, including the oeuvres of Caravaggio and Mattia Preti that appear to be the major benchmarks in what is justifiably perceived as the zenith of Baroque Malta. As Jean Carpentier and François Lebrun concluded: “In the 17th century, thanks to the prosperousness of the Order, Malta became a mostra, a permanent exhibition of baroque art apogee: architecture, sculpture, painting, ornamentation.”

The annexes on the side of the cathedral were added later and feature the coat of arms of Grandmaster António Manoel de Vilhena, who reigned from 1722 to 1736. Hundreds of inlaid marble tombstones dating back to the early 17th century cover the entire floor. Each of these tombs commemorates a Knight of the Order, who died on these islands.

Baroque symbols depicting the Order of the Knights of Malta on an aisle wall inside St John’s. The eight-pointed cross is internationally recognised as the Cross of Malta, representing the Maltese nation. Photo: St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation

Baroque ornamentation

Preti’s work of genius left its mark on many visitors, as witnessed by Dominique Vivant Denon, future director of the Louvre – who visited Malta in 1778 and again in 1798 – remarking on the artist’s style “in the idiom of Paul Veronese in design and colour”. Caravaggio’s intense take on the martyrdom of the Baptist not only mesmerised contemporary visitors but appeared to have matured into a form of local national icon. Up to some decades ago, numerous Maltese households displayed copies of the dramatic Beheading in their modest salotti as if to assert their ownership of Caravaggio’s national bequest.

The temple’s iconic splendour and the religious liturgical rituals this place of worship hosted since its consecration have radiated out to the entire Maltese archipelago, as evidenced in scores of other Baroque churches in towns and villages. It must have helped to inspire Maltese architects and artists to partake of imported Baroque styles in all their creative aspects ranging from architecture, art, literature and music to festive expressions eventually supporting the construction of the Maltese European identity in the post-medieval period. Feasts, rites and public celebrations build collective memory, feeding identity.

Litigious ownership

As a co-cathedral, St John’s shares the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Malta together with the older cathedral of St Paul in Mdina.

Art historian Mario Buhagiar, who in 1990 delivered a researched paper in Madrid on St John’s, points out that up to1798, the Valletta holy place had belonged exclusively to the Order.

The bishop, whose own cathedral church was isolated in Mdina, could not function in it without permission. Since the Knights had made it clear that the bishop had no jurisdiction in the new city, in an attempt to circumvent their intransigence, in 1577, the Maltese Curia built the church dedicated to the Shipwreck of St Paul from which the bishop could officiate on liturgical feasts for Maltese parishioners resident in Valletta.

Later, Bishop Baldassare Cagliares (1614-1635), a previous conventual chaplain and former trusted auditor of Grandmaster Alophe de Wignacourt (1601-1622), acting in disregard of the Knights, acquired a plot within the city and without permission started building his palace. In spite of an angry reaction by the Order, the bishop’s residence materialised, following the intervention of the Holy See.

As a co-cathedral, St John’s shares the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Malta together with the older cathedral of St Paul in Mdina

Curia’s exclusivity

Bonaparte’s chirograph donating the exclusive use of St John’s to Bishop Labini in 1798. Former Museums director Fr Marius Zerafa was of the opinion, and this author concurs, that it should be permanently exhibited at the refurbished St John’s museum.

In 1798, when the Order ceded all of its possessions on the island to the French Republic, General Napoleon Bonaparte, following a request by Bishop Vincenzo Labini (1780-1807), bequeathed the magnificent temple of St John’s to be exclusively used by the Maltese Catholic Church. The benefaction, dated June 13, 1798, and preserved at the Ecclesiastical Archives in Floriana, ordered that the “Church of St John be placed at the disposal of the Bishop of Malta to be used as concathédrale”.

Notwithstanding the original undecipherable final word – linguist and researcher Joseph Brincat attests it must have been miscopied due to its novelty in the liturgical vocabulary of the time – the property of the church remained the prerogative of the legitimate government of the island. Aware of the fact that in the foundation deed in 1577, La Cassière had stipulated that should the Order leave Malta, St John’s was to be officiated by the native clergy, the bishop petitioned and obtained from Rome a temporary sanctioning of Bonaparte’s grant.

After the Knights’ departure, the Maltese appear to have adopted the Order’s splendid legacy to serve as their own testament to their individuality, perpetuating various Baroque symbols – foremost the Maltese eight-pointed cross – and styles as ingredients of distinctiveness that marked them apart during the contrasting non-Catholic, non-Latin and non-Baroque hegemonic characteristics of the ensuing British colonisation (1800-1964).

British claims

Under the British, St John’s, however, soon proved to become a spinous issue: Alexander Ball, the island’s first British commissioner, was adamant in upholding the French republican principle that his government had inherited the temple, as a property, by legal right.  The bishop’s protestations that the church belonged to the Order as a religious body and not as a sovereign power were to no avail. A British royal commission in 1812 found the Maltese Curia’s claims unfounded and maintained, without apparent justification, that the previous government had granted the Maltese Church only temporary use of St John’s. “The endowments and revenues of St John’s,” it maintained, “were considerable and the British Crown could not waive its rights over them.”

This dispute carried on over several years. By May 1808, the new bishop, Mgr Ferdinand Mattei, agreed to allow a royal throne to be erected in both St John’s church and Mdina cathedral. As a reaction, the civil commissioner boycotted all state functions in St John’s.

With the arrival of Thomas Maitland, first British governor on the island in 1813, Bishop Mattei negotiated an agreement whereby the governor was to have a dais outside the altar railings, on the Gospel side, while the bishop was to have his own throne on the Epistle one, opposite the royal throne.

In the following years, the British kept emphasising their exclusive property of the shrine and Protestant zealots lobbied to have it transformed into an Anglican cathedral. Finally, however, better judgement prevailed. The governor and the secretary of state foresaw that such a step would irrevocably alienate the support of the Maltese clergy who, as they well knew, could wield great political power.

The project was therefore dropped and the Anglican community had instead to satisfy itself with a small private chapel inside the governor’s palace and wait until the 1840s to build its own cathedral in Valletta.

In January 1816, Pope Pius VII acquiesced to the bishop’s request and formally gave papal recognition to co-cathedral status. The definitive end of the saga came later when Pope Pius XI sanctioned the conferment of the status in September 1925, after it became obvious that the Order of Malta was not returning to regain possession.

Commercial tenancies

The current court litigation regarding the lease and proposed eviction of commercial tenancies in St John’s complex evokes another litigious incident that took place in 1861. In the course of structural works on some underground rooms belonging to tenements abutting the church in St John’s Square, one of the crypts of the co-cathedral was broken into and some tomb slabs removed, apparently with the permission of the priest in charge.

The then vicar general, Canon Filippo Amato, sought legal redress and obtained from the courts a warrant of inhibition enjoining the Collector of Land Revenue to desist from carrying out further work. The vicar obtained a writ of summons against the colonial government, which was not withdrawn before the work stopped.

Caravaggio thrillers

Fr Zerafa (centre on parvis) is seen here in 1999 directing operations on the return of Caravaggio’s Beheading to St John’s Co-Cathedral after its restoration in Florence. Photo: Charles Xuereb

The persisting ownership issue flared again in 1956, soon after Malta’s referendum on integration with Britain. Caravaggio’s two paintings of the Beheading of St John and the St Jerome were sent to Rome by the Maltese government at the invitation of the Italian state to be restored. Upon completion in February 1957, the paintings arrived back in Malta and, arbitrarily, were taken to the National Museum instead of St John’s, where they had been for centuries.

As expected, the incident caused quite an uproar, with protests, led by the Church, dragging for months. It was debated in parliament, and on April 17, 1958, the two paintings were returned to St John’s at the dead of night. Many contemporary observers believed that though the government had indicated damp as the main reason why the paintings were not installed back in their place, this Caravaggio affair had provided then Maltese premier Dom Mintoff with an excellent opportunity of hitting back at the archbishop after the latter did not support him in the integration campaign.

Caravaggio played a more thrilling role at the end of 1984 when the St Jerome was daringly stolen for a ransom. According to the then director of Museums, Fr Marius Zerafa’s Caravaggio Diaries, published in 2004, a strange and eventful saga ensued until the same erudite Dominican audaciously managed negotiations that led to the retrieval of the painting to everybody’s satisfaction.

The Caravaggio painting of St Jerome which was stolen from the Oratory of St John’s in Valletta in December 1984. It was hung again in its place in 1991 after a thrilling recovery operation and eventual restoration. Photo: Wikipedia.com

A couple of years before he passed away late last year, Fr Marius – a renowned history of art researcher – had confided with this author and several others that he had written a more detailed narrative of the adventurous robbery and the recovery, which he wished to be published after his demise.

He was also of the opinion, and this author concurs, that Bonaparte’s chirograph donating the exclusive use of St John’s to Labini in 1798 should be permanently exhibited at the newly refurbished St John’s museum, once it is reopened. Fr Zerafa further suggested that an enlarged facsimile of the historical document should be displayed on the façade of the temple.

Since 2001, following an agreement between the government and the Catholic Church in Malta, the St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation, governed by a council made up of three members appointed by the Archbishop of Malta and another three by the prime minister, has been the guardian of this prominent Baroque shrine. In its mission statement, besides administering the church, the foundation states that it also “promotes St John’s Co-Cathedral as a research centre, making it accessible for the benefit of the public, scholars and researchers”.