Joannes Gennadius and Malta

Abstract

The recovery of rare materials and antique documents connected with Malta, in particular abroad, tucked away in distant archives, far away from the shores of Malta and Gozo, has always sent shivers down my spine, triggering off adrenaline and excitement, such as is not experienced in everyday life. The emotion felt in September 1987 at the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome, when I came face to face with the earliest extant dictionary of the Maltese language, or in March 1990 at the Istanbul State Archives, when I held in my hands the hitherto unknown Ottoman 1565 Malta Campaign Register, or in June 2001 when at the Newberry Library in Chicago, I recovered the only extant copy till then of Francesco Vella's 1840 Tahdit Haft u Morali, is something quite difficult to describe. Maybe, it can be compared to the emotions one experiences when one believes s/he is in love... and when this love is actually reciprocated. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it seems that it is much easier for the love of research to remain eternal rather than that between two human beings. Whatever, this "research love" emotion bug hit me again quite strongly in March 2017. I had been invited as a guest lecturer to the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and, as I normally do, I had enquired whether there were any archives or libraries in town that might have, amongst their holdings, old documents of Maltese interest. 'Why not try the Gennadius Library ?', I was told. And this I did.