Giovanni Francesco Buonamico’s Gaudia Melitensia

Abstract

Giovanni Francesco Buonamico’s Gaudia Melitensia is a collection of epigrams in Latin extolling Malta’s Pauline cult and traditions. Its title and contents reveal the author’s belief in the fundamental role of these traditions in our religious, cultural and national identity. This study will be commenting on three manuscript versions of this work, pointing out some interesting variants. In all probability, more copies are to be found in religious and private collections, as the work was often quoted by earlier and more recent authors who discussed the Pauline cult, centred mainly round the St Paul’s Grotto complex in Rabat, Malta. The three versions are: one, presumably the original, in the private collection of Dr Giovanni Bonello; a second version in the Cathedral Archives (ACM) at Mdina; and a third version in the National Library of Malta (NLM). A preliminary examination of the texts will readily show that the copies in ACM and NLM are not completely identical to the Bonello version, but copied from another exemplar: the Epigrams are given a different enumeration, and the text in both includes an initial hymn in honour of St Paul which is omitted in Bonello.