[Book review] The Maltese dialogue : Giuseppe Cambiano, history, institutions, and politics of the Maltese Knights (1554–1556)

Abstract

An important feature of Renaissance culture which culminated during the sixteenth century was the ability to create a literary piece using the interaction of different voices – a dialogue which would consist in the setting down of a real or imaginary conversation between different persons. The rise of rhetoric during this period served as a stimulus for authors to produce this form of literature which offered the possibility of presenting both the pro and contra of an argument in a less formal manner. The popularity of this style of writing must also have prompted Fra Giuseppe Cambiano, the author who penned the treatise under discussion, to expose various issues which seem to have been the focus of debate among members of the Hospitaller Order of St John, although, as Petkov informs us, it is not to be considered as ‘a properly humanist work nor an antiquarian endeavour’. Instead, Petkov describes it as a ‘publicist and polemical history with a contingent agenda’ (p. 5).