The voice of the people – again
Published:
June 23, 2009 at 10:54pm
What can I say? Mr Piano will drop by the Louvre and pick up the “Sword of La Vallette” on his way here from Paris, so as to cut the ribbon when his Valletta project is completed.
Has anyone out there ever tried to follow the thought-process behind some on-line comments?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090622/local/piano
Sandro Zahra (8 hours, 22 minutes ago)
I think that Mr Piano found the right compromise.
And regarding the Sword of La Vallette …. at least we can exhebit it for a couple of weeks when this project will be inaugurated
29 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Probably he has some insider information and Piano was only commissioned to do the job on condition that he gets the sword, even for a few days.
Is there one? A thought-process I mean.
We’re lucky that it still exists in the Louvre.
[Daphne -‘We’? Why ‘we’? It has nothing to do with us. It was a personal gift from a Spanish king to a French knight, and it became the property of the Order of St John when he died. At no point did it belong to Malta, still less to ‘the Maltese’.]
Barely 1% of the gold and silver stolen by the the French from the churches, the nobility and the knights survives in museums. The booty was either melted in order to provide funding of Napoleonic Wars and the most precious pieces ended up in the private collections of Freemasons in France.
[Daphne – Freemasons, eh? Shocking.]
Everything was done in the name of liberalism, equality and fraternity. Some patterns of bigotry never change.
D. Muscat,
For F%^k’s sake, do you even have a clue what freemasons are?
Le hi Deph, La Vallette mhux belti kien?
Where did you get that from? As far as I know, most of that loot lies at the bottom of the Med off Egypt when Napoleon’s fleet was trapped by the British.
Daphne….do you deny the existence of freemasonry in Malta?
[Daphne – That’s a funny question, Mario. Why would I be in a position to confirm or deny the existence of freemasonry in Malta? I’m not even interested in the subject. I think it’s ridiculous the way freemasonry is demonised here when elsewhere it’s just another kind of (superior) Rotary Club. I suppose that’s the influence of the Catholic Church.]
Well, your sarcastic remark….shocking….says it all. I was just wondering what your views on the matter are. And it’s not just a “superior” Rotary Club elsewhere, far from it. I happen to have a very good English friend whom I rib and tease because of his Freemason beliefs, and he isIi believe the number 4 in the pecking order of the English Freemasons, of which Maltese Freemasons form a part.
They have a set of beliefs that I find most unfair, and do untold harm because they favour members above others who are much more capable and qualified in a variety of ways. And they do try and influence politics.Those are basic tenets. The fact that several prominent Maltese play at these boy scout games astounds me, until the underlying reason comes out. That worries me. Unseen hands moving chess-pieces worry me.
[Daphne – Of course Malta’s freemasonry is British freemasonry. That’s because we were ruled by Britain for almost two centuries, so what do you expect? The difference is that in Malta it met with the hostility of the Catholic Church and so it went underground. The result is that the Maltese think of freemasonry in much the same way that they think of the Italian P2 or the Mafia, which is hilarious. Secret and malevolent organisations don’t set up lodges with signs up outside on city high streets, nor do they promote themselves in an official capacity on the web: http://www.ugle.org.uk/ Most English Freemasons are the equivalent of butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers out for a night away from the wife: it really is a sort of Rotary Club. And higher up the ladder they promote each other – so bleeding what? You don’t have to be a Freemason to do that. “Unseen hands moving chess-pieces worry me” – why are the hands unseen? Because fear, suspicion, religious hostility, bigotry and views like your own have made Maltese freemasonry a secret affair. Jews used to poison wells, then homosexuals ate our babies, and later on, Freemasons flew about at night and moved our chess-pieces. X’pajjiz tal-biki.]
I have absolutely no problem with Freemasons “coming out” so to speak, as long as their membership is known. I mean, if they are some kind of Rotary Club, then they shouldn’t have any problems shouldn’t they?
[Daphne – Of course they would. Maltese people think that British Freemasonry is the equivalent of the P2 and that Freemasons are evil creatures who perform magic spells and believe in another religion.]
In Malta, a Mazun means one who does not believe in God. That’s partly correct. But in Malta Freemasons have taken this secrecy and networking to new heights.
[Daphne – Where I come from, ‘Mazun’ isn’t used for a person who doesn’t believe in God. It’s used for somebody who is a Freemason. Maybe things are different in Zurrieq. But your definition illustrates my point about Maltese Catholic propaganda against Freemasons. Lots of Freemasons believe in God, and I know lots of atheists who are not Freemasons.]
I’m amazed at some of the members. I have been told by them that their goal is to make sure that the “higher strata” of society is protected from those lower down, so they actively promote their own and bring down their opponents if possible. This was a senior civil servant speaking.
At first i thought he was joking, until to my horror I realised he was dead serious. It goes without saying that I told these people exactly what I think of them.
In my opinion, it is the Maltese Freemasons who have dug a hole for themselves in Malta. One day, someone will have the courage to publish a list of names. It exists. I know someone has a complete list, and he is a supposed newspaperman who boasts about how fearless he is.
[Daphne – You see what I mean, Mario? Nobody would speak of ‘outing’ Freemasons in Britain, because Freemasonry isn’t perceived as evil or immoral. You think of Freemasonry as evil and immoral, and your attitude is typical of this society. That’s why Freemasons don’t ‘come out’. I think it’s interesting that you’re using the same terminology used for gays in the closet. The reason Freemasons don’t come out is the reason gays don’t come out: rather too many years of propaganda, suspicion and hatred.]
But we digress. La Vallette’s sword and dagger belong here in Malta. Not because we have any real or pretended right to it, but because they morally belong here and the French should know it. After all, the French did make free with Malta, and did confiscate silver belonging to the Maltese diocese, and not the knights.
[Daphne – U ejja, Mario – moral right! There is no such thing. There are only legal rights. But even if you had to acknowledge the existence of a moral right, how on earth did you come to the conclusion that something which didn’t exist in 1798 – the Maltese state – has a moral right to something which belonged to somebody else in that year? ‘The Maltese’ and ‘Malta’ are completely out of the equation – can’t you see that?]
As much as the sword and dagger belong here, so do the large amount of pieces the British pillaged from the Palace Armoury. They are morally ours. So give them back, please.
[Daphne – I’m going to have to disappoint you, Mario, but those pieces are no more ‘ours’ than are that sword and dagger, and for the very same reasons. Power over/ownership of Malta and of the Order’s goods, chattels, and buildings, transferred from the Order of St John, briefly to Napoleon, then to the British, with no hiatus in between. The British simply took what was legally theirs. They could have taken the lot, but obviously thought it would be indecent to do so and that it wouldn’t make for the best diplomatic relations on the road to independence. The only reason we own the things that are in the Palace Armoury now is because the British relinquished ownership of them. We never owned them before and we never had a legal or moral right to them.]
Daphne, please don’t jump to conclusions. Most Maltese take “mazun” to mean a person who does not believe in God.
[Daphne – And 100,000+ Maltese believe that Dom Mintoff was is-salvatur ta’ Malta and that tennis-shoes are called slipper. The fact that most Maltese believe that ‘mazun’ means atheist rather than Freemason does not mean they are correct, or that you and I should make the same mistake because majority rules even where mistakes are concerned.]
It’s got nothing to do with the place I grew up in. It’s in that context that the word was used by the Catholic Church.
[Daphne – Exactly: Catholic propaganda. People who don’t believe in God are called ateji not mazuni. God forbid that everyone who doesn’t believe in God should find himself described as a Freemason.]
The Catholic Church has good reasons to mistrust and distrust Freemasons because their principles are irreconcilable with church doctrine in many ways.
[Daphne – Yes, and many people have good reason to mistrust and distrust the Catholic Church, but we don’t run around calling the archbishop a Freemason.]
Basically a good Catholic shouldn’t join secret societies like the Freemasons.
[Daphne – There are many other things which Catholics shouldn’t do, but I see them being done all around me by almost everyone I know and meet.]
The Maltese Freemasons hardly went out of their way to advertise themselves during the centuries, didn’t they?
As for the chess-pieces, my experience is that this is true. Freemasonry has actually flourished in Malta because people who join it think it will look good on their private CV. And it does.
[Daphne – Where you and I part company is in the belief that these things can be stopped. Ban Freemasonry, and people will dream up some other network. It’s human nature. I happen to be one of those people who believe that what the Catholic Church did here – turning Freemasons into the equivalent of homosexual Jews practising sodomy while poisoning wells – actually made the situation worse by driving it underground. Lodges are not secret societies in Britain so the transactions of Freemasons are easier to track. Not so here.]
I reiterate, that the secrecy surrounding the Freemasons in Malta is their own undoing. They should “come out” for use of a better word, declare themselves to be Freemasons who love dressing up in small multicoloured aprons and playing Secret Agent Boy Scout games, and that will be that. I’m sure that they will be seen for what they are. Taking off the mystique will probably be the end of them because they will find it difficult to try playing power games with people’s lives and businesses. And the bloody church has got nothing to do with this!
[Daphne – The Catholic Church in Malta is largely responsible for driving Freemasons underground, Mario, and if you reread your comment, you will see that you pinpointed it yourself. “Everybody” apparently uses the word mazun interchangeably with atheist (well, not where I come from anyway) because that’s what the priests told them from the pulpit. Maltese people of a certain age grew up listening to priests preaching hellfire against evil Freemasons, and this is the natural consequence. It is also one of the reasons why there are almost no openly homosexual people over the age of 50 on this island, and even fewer in Gozo.]
We’re not parting company on this one. They can’t be stopped. Not when you have a country whose inhabitants believe in klikkek and love this sort of skulduggery. Honest networking is beneficial. It’s when the network becomes more important than the individual that dangers arise.
Granted, the Catholic Church has driven Freemasons underground in Malta and Italy. But there is no doubt that Freemasonry, and the way it is practised, is at best discriminatory, at worst dangerous. A UK magistrate friend of mine told me that he is expected to show a greater degree of leniency if he is judging a Freemason. That’s undermining the law.
[Daphne – Yes, on that we agree.]
What did you expect the Catholic Church to do? How would you have handled it?
[Daphne – I would have stayed out of it. The Catholic Church opposed and undermined any real or perceived rival or threat to its control. The British introduced no reforms which would have upset the bishops, and so made their lives easier here.]
In my view, at least there was a controlling factor. I’d hate to think that the Freemasons would have had a free hand. If that had to happen, there will be far fewer businesses in Malta. It’s already bad enough that the strong do their best by fair means or foul to stifle smaller competition.
Daphne……that was another era. You can’t judge history by modern thinking.
[Daphne – I’m not judging, Mario. I’m making an observation. The Catholic Church inculcated in the Maltese the belief that Freemasons are evil atheists and the end result was that the more uneducated among us still think that mazun means atheist.]
Summing up, for reasons of balance, I still think the Catholic Church was right to oppose Freemasonry in Malta. The very church was driven underground during Roman times. Look at it today.. it has flourished not in buildings and priests, but in the hearts of man. Similarly, for the same cause, but certainly not for the same reasons, Freemasonry has flourished in Malta.
[Daphne – That’s a hopeless comparison, Mario.]
@ Daphne: all the property the Order had became the property of the Maltese. One exception is St John’s Cathedral which La Cassier left to the Church specifically in his will if and when the order leaves Malta.
[Daphne – Haven’t we been through this already, John? Things don’t become the property of a people but of the state. There was no Maltese state at the time. The French arrived and took Malta over the minute the Order of St John left. Hence, whatever was the property of the Order became the property of the French, which is why they took what they were interested in and left the things they weren’t interested in and, for obvious reasons, immovable property. Then the British arrived, Malta became British territory and everything that was owned by the Order became the property of the British – which is why the Valletta auberges and Fort St Angelo, among other things, became colonial administration and military/naval offices and, in the case of the building that is now the Museum of Archaeology, the Union Club, which did not admit Maltese members.]
Daphne, I usually agree with everything you say. However, this time I don’t think I agree with what you’ve said:
“‘We’? Why ‘we’? It has nothing to do with us. It was a personal gift from a Spanish king to a French knight, and it became the property of the Order of St John when he died. At no point did it belong to Malta, still less to ‘the Maltese’.”
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but then, might as well, the government should just sell every building which once belonged to the Order of St. John, and not care about whatever happens to them. Buildings including the co-cathedral, the president’s palace and all the other aubergs, because none of these belonged to the Maltese, they belonged to the Order.
[Daphne – We’re talking at cross purposes here. I’m talking about the sword, which at no point belonged to the Maltese state or to ‘the Maltese people’. The buildings the Order left behind, on the other hand, passed from the French, to the British, to the Maltese state, so I can’t follow your reasoning.]
The Sword of La Vallette reminds us of a great man who led the Knights and the Maltese through a historic siege, which ultimately the Knights, and the Maltese won. So it would be nice to bring it back ‘home’ – now if for a few days, weeks, or forever – that’s another issue.
[Daphne – It would be nice to have many things in life, whether they remind us of something pleasant or not. But tough, if we have no right to them, we have no right to them. Want doesn’t get, as many a parent has told many a child.]
You’re fast. I thought I’d had to wait an hour before my post appears. Again… correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the only reason that the sword didn’t pass to the British and then to the Maltese state because the French stole it? If this is so, then that still doesn’t make France its legitimate owner. Right?
[Daphne – Wrong. The sword was a personal gift from the Spanish king to Jean Parisot de la Valette. It was his personal property. When he died, his goods and chattels, including that sword and its companion dagger, became the property of the Order of St John. When the remaining members of the Order of St John fled from Malta as Napoleon arrived, they left behind many things. Because their flight was permanent, those things were effectively abandoned, and hence no longer theirs. They became the spoils of war, though there was no war as such. The victor – Napoleon – took those spoils in line with the way things were done at the time. It is only the Order of St John which can make any sort of claim for the return of that sword and dagger to its possession, but that claim would be tenuous in the extreme. Also, bear in mind that the Order of St John lived for 250 years at least mainly by stealing from others who didn’t count because they were Muslim (the compliment was returned), through corsairing and slave-trading.
I find it fascinating that ‘the Maltese’ believe that sword is theirs, but the Order of St John, its legitimate owner at the time and an organisation which still exists, does not.
So yes, France is the legitimate owner of that sword and dagger, which I think is entirely appropriate, given that de Valette was French and had his family retained it, it would probably have been donated to the French state in any case. Malta and the Maltese just don’t come into this. We think we own the Order of St John because that is what we have been taught. But the Order of St John was here in much the same way that the British were, and we don’t have any claim on the British, do we? We were a military base for the Order of St John and we were a military base for the British, and that’s the long and the short of it.]
D – some of the timesofmalta.com comments are not even worth repeating. It is quite OK to voice one’s opinion without being sarcastic and sometimes downright stupid. Some of the on-line blobs are only serving to see the level of intelligence of some people which is coming to light and I can tell you, I am disappointed that such stupidity still exists. No doubt people have a right to express their ideas but that there is still such crass ignorance is amazing and disappointing.
Absolutely. What is worrying is that often the ignorant seem to get their way, because they tend to be the loudest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTNWgOz_Ctw
Charles Cauchi, pity the monkeys don’t watch this excellent video. Maybe, just maybe, it might educate some of those brain-boxes we had the misfortune of seeing on the PBS vox pop last night. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would have been hilarious. Amazing how many Renzo Pianos we have managed to clone on this island. We cannot seem to comprehend that once a real pro, sorry, make that a genius, has more than proved his worth, ‘most’ of us should just look on and thank our lucky stars for his services.
He’s not going to get it because tal-customs izzommuh ghax dik “arma letali”.
The cliche that the French carted away riches belonging to the Maltese is incorrect but has been repeated over and over by authors who have not or would not study the documents of the time simply to paint the French in bad light. What was on Napoleon’s flagship The Orient which sank off Egypt was property that belonged to the Order of St John, not the Maltese people. This information is all documented and can be researched. The Knights came mostly from well-to-do families. The Maltese had no legal right to their riches.
Hair splitting. The order were the rulers of Malta and collected taxes from the Maltese population. In addition, for a long period, the main income of the Order came from what can only be described as piracy – by the order’s ships with Maltese crews. By the time they left, that must have accounted for a good percentage of their wealth.
Hair splitting. The British carried away a great deal more than the French did, including the best items in the Palace Armoury. And yet I haven’t heard a single voice suggesting we ask them to return “our” stuff. Blame the French, it’s all in Grajjet Malta.
What is it about the Order that makes us consider it as “one of our own”, when everyone else is a hakkiem barrrrrrrrrani?
Daphne is right about the sword. It is war booty and it was normal for the victors to take the spoils of war. Before being taken by Bonaparte, it belonged to the Order of St John. It is sad to say so but Malta has no rightful legal claim to the sword. I do not agree, however, that “we were a military base for the Order of St John and we were a military base for the British”. The situation was very different.
Whereas Malta was a mere British colony, at the time of the Order of St John, Malta became to all intents and purposes a state, a principality. Though nominally the Order recognised the suzerainty of the Sicilian crown (as successors of the Spanish King), the Order of St John and Malta enjoyed independent status. In fact, ambassadors were sent and received by the Order which, of course, was not the case during British colonial rule.
[Daphne – They were not ambassadors to the Maltese state, but ambassadors to the court of the Grandmaster of the Order of St John.]
There was little or no distinction between the Order and Malta (as there is today) and diplomats accredited to the Order were said to be accredited to Malta.
[Daphne – ‘Malta’ did not exist, except as a geographical location. There was no statehood. When we speak of Malta today, we mean the state, not the actual geographical islands. Malta in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (and most of the 20th, too) was an island in the same way that, say, Santorini is an island. It was the name given to a piece of rock, without the attendant concepts of statehood, to distinguish it from those other pieces of rock, Lampedusa, Djerba and Pantelleria, among others.]
Malta was not merely a base; it was the home of the Order and the combination constituted a state.
[Daphne – That Malta was merely a base for a desperate group of knights who had been turfed out of their previous base and who had nowhere else to go: yes. As for the rest, not at all.]
The Maltese had practically no part to play in this state and the government was autocratic. It was, nevertheless, the Order which planted the roots of statehood in Malta whereas Britain reduced the island to a colony.
[Daphne – Well, that’s a reductive view of the origins of Malta’s statehood, if ever I heard one. Ten thousand feudal serfs living on the edge of starvation on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean do not make for a state. This notion that we are somehow different to every other island in the Mediterranean captivates me. Given your reasoning, Rhodes would be a state, instead of just another island among the many hundreds around mainland Greece.]
Come come, the inhabitants of Malta weren’t exactly living on the edge of starvation, or the population wouldn’t have mushroomed from ten thousand to 200 000 between 1530 and 1800.
As for the rest, sometimes I wonder if there’s anyone else sharing our views, Daffers.
[Daphne – Not 200,000 but c. 100,000: http://www.um.edu.mt/umms/mmj/PDF/140.pdf ]
Still, a tenfold increase. Goddamn that article is sloppy.
Daphne: I suggest you take a course in history.
[Daphne – No thank you. I am already an honours graduate in archaeology.]
The situation in the islands you mention had nothing to do with that obtaining in Malta. Malta had all the trappings of a state at the time and the Order was the government of that state. Of course, by this is not meant a nation-state but it was still very close to being a state with the Grandmaster as its prince. Under the British, the island became a colony. These are the facts and no amount of rhetoric will change them.
[Daphne – Precisely, which means that at no point before 1964 could ‘Malta’ lay claim to any buildings or goods left behind by the Order of St John, which passed from the Order to the French to the British, and finally, to the Maltese nation-state.]
Daphne: you know well that archaeology is a different discipline from history.
[Daphne – Yes. But one degree is quite enough at my age. I am not seeking election on the Labour Party ticket.]
Yes, of course, all property of the Order passed to the French Republic and then to the colonial government (Napoleon donated
St. John’s to the Bishop of Malta to be used as a co-cathedral). Is this in dispute?
[Daphne – Apparently, yes, because there are people who insist that the sword and dagger which departed from Malta with Napoleon somehow belong to ‘the Maltese’, and that the British ‘stole from the Maltese’ certain items of arms and armour.]
What was being discussed was whether Malta had the trappings of a state at the time of the Order, especially in the 18th century.
[Daphne – No, that’s not what was being discussed. We were discussing ownership of the sword and dagger, and how people cannot steal what they legitimately own, while others cannot lay claim to what was never theirs.]
The Order governed what was essentially a principality with the Grandmaster being the prince of a virtually independent “state”, though formally subject to the Sicilian crown. This was different from the position of “colony” at the time of the British – that’s all.
[Daphne – Yes, but it’s irrelevant. It was the Order of St John which owned the sword and dagger, and not the state of Malta.]
John Azzopardi: Yes, the French took as war booty what they could carry away from the property of the Order of St John (Hompesch was allowed to take away the Order’s relics after Bonaparte removed their jewellery ornaments). The French revolutionary government had already nationalized all the property of the Order in France.
Bonaparte decreed that “All the property of the Order of Malta, of the Grand Master and of the different auberges of the knights belongs to the French Republic”. Later on, Vaubois was driven to take forced “loans” from the Maltese to finance his military needs. Taxes were also decreed by the French to pay for the government, the military garrison and the upkeep of roads – all expenses previously paid from the Order’s revenues.
Nevertheless, it was the French who ushered Malta into modern times following the medieval rule of the Order of St John. After the French capitulated and embarked for France with full battle honours, the Maltese were left destitute, having spent most of their money on fighting the French. Yet, in spite of all the sacrifices made by the Maltese, the British denied them the honour of marching into their capital bearing arms as a sign of victory.