https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/134557 Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:44:29 GMT 2026-04-10T11:44:29Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130883 Title: The Jesuit contribution to the compilation of the Escuela de Palas treatise on Baroque-age fortifications Authors: De Lucca, Denis Abstract: Prof. Denis De Lucca has argued in his 2012 book entitled Jesuits and fortifications that the many treatises on military architecture produced by Jesuit mathematicians in the Baroque age reflected the interest of individual members of the Jesuit Order to record their thorough knowledge about a subject that was regularly communicated to students attending their classes and private lessons. In so doing these Jesuits attracted the attention of the people that mattered in contemporary society. Despite repeated warnings from Rome and General Vincenzo Carafa's De Forti.ficationibus prohibition of 1648, many were those Jesuit mathematicians who persisted in their studies, teachings and publications about fortifications. Some of the works outlining their ideas about improving fortification systems were even summarized and publicly acknowledged in a late seventeenth-century treatise produced for the exclusive use of the Spanish armies stationed in Milan. This unique and impressive Escuela de Palas document, the subject of this contribution, took the form of an illustrated 430-folio encyclopaedia of fortification knowledge demonstrating the synergy that existed in Baroque Spain between Jesuit thinking about military mathematics and the various improved f01iification systems that had and were then still being devised by the leading military theorists of early modem Europe. Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130883 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130867 Title: The Journal of Baroque Studies : volume 3 : number 1 Authors: Ciappara, Frans Abstract: Table of contents:; - Women Entrepreneurs in Malta's Porto Grande in the Baroque Age: Christine Muscat; - Late Baroque Sociability, the Culture of Sensibility and the Queen of the Night's Rage in Mozart's The Magic Flute: Charmaine Falzon; - II linguaggio della comicita e dell'amore nelle commedie di tre drammaturghi mediterranei del Seicento: Carlo Magri, Francesco Cavanna, Niccolo Amenta: Mario Pace; - Les Lumieres a travers la correspondance de trois chevaliers de Malte: Carmen Depasquale; - A Seventeenth Century Artistic and Venerated Crucifix at the Capuchin Church in Gozo: Martin Micallef; - Le radici europee della collezione di Giovanni Francesco Abela: Chiara Cecalupo; - Aspects of scientific exchange in the Age of Baroque - Giovanni Francesco Abela and the comunitas litteraria: Thomas Freller; - Filial Churches in Malta: A Historico-Artistic Outline: Hilary Spiteri; - L' ascesa degli lmperi lberici: Esplorazioni ed insediamenti coloniali nei secoli XVII-XVIII: Francesco Frasca; - The Baroque, a sensual explosion, which touches the heart and lifts up the soul: Reno Saliba; - 'La Cappel/a Sistina di Sicilia': The Baroque Church of the Benedictine nunnery of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Piazza Armerina in Sicily.: Denis De Lucca; - Books Received Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130867 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130866 Title: Women entrepreneurs in Malta's Porto grande in the Baroque age Authors: Muscat, Christine Abstract: Four days after Christmas, on the 29 December 1773, Fra Giuseppe Agius recorded the news of the sudden death of a certain Teresin Francesa in his diary. Teresin used to sell embroideries and miscellaneous items next to the main door of the Law Court in Valletta. At first glance this one-line inscription may seem insignificant. However, a closer reading reveals succinct details on one of Valletta's eighteenth-century female entrepreneurs. Reverend Giuseppe Agius was an erudite cleric. He was the Chaplain of a retreat house for Hospitallers known as the Camerata. He was also Master of the Deacons at the Conventual Church of St John the Baptist. His Giornale di Notizie was his private diary, a notebook in which he recorded novelties which he deemed to be worth remembering. The chronicle was not meant to be read by anyone and is inevitably imbued with implicit biases, yet it offers historians a window on the past through which one can quizzically peer into an unfamiliar world. Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130866 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130865 Title: Late Baroque sociability, the culture of sensibility and the queen of the night's rage in Mozart's The magic flute Authors: Falzon, Charmaine Abstract: Apart from prudence and courage, the human quality which was valued the most in the late Baroque period was the ability to make conversation. Among all the misfortunes a man could be a prey to, few were looked upon with such contempt as the condition of having nothing to say for oneself, of having no opinions to expound and defend. There were few people whose company was less likely to be sought after than the anodyne man, the one in whom no topic of contemporary controversy was able to rouse any passion. And despite the fervour which would often characterize eighteenth-century discussions among men, the drinks which came to be favoured as accompaniments for these discussions seemed to be calculated to achieve the opposite effect – one of composed calm. Tea, coffee and hot chocolate, the new, fashionable hot drinks of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in fact, seemed to be perfectly geared to foster the newfound late Baroque love for intellectual conversation among friends. This is because they were at once pleasing to the palate and conducive to serenity of demeanour and alertness of mind. Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/130865 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z