On the Latin introduction to Caxaro's Cantilena

Abstract

On the 22nd of September 1966, Fr Michael Fsadni and Dr Godfrey Wettinger discovered a cantilena of twenty lines in Medieval Maltese, divided into three stanzas of six, four and ten verses respectively, the whole of which was preceded by five lines of Latin by way of an introduction. The importance of such a discovery of written Maltese - and that in the literary genre of lyric - cannot be underestimated both for the study of the developing language itself and for the status of an emerging nation. The nation's laurels and gratitude bestowed upon these two researchers were truly merited considering that they were the first who identified the cantilena for what it really was, and for publishing an in-depth study of it in the context of its historic background, having first thoroughly researched it in strict accordance to academic disciples.