Henry Ercole

Henry Ercole (died 1764) was a minor Maltese philosopher who specialised mainly in ethics and logic.

For an unknown reason, some time between 1716 and 1718 Ercole was expelled from Sicily by royal decree, and returned to Malta.

He was particularly close to the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, Manuel Pinto da Fonseca, who consistently showered upon him innumerable favours.

Three works by Rosarius Mary Hagius declare that Ercole gave his assistance in their composition, though they fall short of asserting that he was their co-author.

[2] The manuscript, which is held at National Library of Malta in Valletta, and marked as MS. 759, is made up of 231 folios (though in the extant document the last six pages are missing).

The work is a collection of twenty-six letters, all signed, in which Ercole imagines writing to scholars who had put in doubt the shipwreck of St. Paul on Malta back in the 1st century as recounted in the Bible (Acts of the Apostles, Chapters 27–28).