“Magnis nata triumphis insula” : Malta in the Liladamus of Jacques Mayre (1685)

Abstract

The 25th anniversary of the reopening of the Faculty of Arts and, together with it, of the Department of Classics of the University of Malta is a most welcome opportunity not only to celebrate this remarkable event, but also to look closer at Malta itself and its classical legacy in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. An example of the Greek and Byzantine literary production on the island is presented to us in this volume by Jerker Blomqvist, Stephen Harrison, and Stanley Fiorini and Martin Zammit in their discussion of the so-called Trisia ex Melitogaudo, edited, translated and commented by our host, Horatio Vella, and his colleagues Stanley Fiorini and Joseph Busuttil. Another important Neo-Latin text that was written on Malta by a member of the Order of the Knights of Saint John but published in Lyons in France in 1536 is the Insulae Melitae Descriptio ex commentariis rerum quotidianarum by the Frenchman Jean Quintin of Autun (1500-1561), for the first time edited with an introduction, English translation and notes again by Horatio Vella who, in many respects, has rendered outstanding services to the study of the classical tradition and its reception on the island of Malta. [excerpt]