Mikiel Anton Vassalli

It is for this reason that the honour of being the author of the first grammar goes to Canon Giovanni Pietro Francesco Agius de Soldanis for his Della lingua púnica presentemente usata da Maltesi in Roma (1750).

For a time he was suspected to have been the author of the Francophile publication, Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur Malte (Paris, 1798), however, this was later attributed to the Maltese lawyer, Onorato Bres.

It was a time of great turmoil when Europe was beset with revolutionary ideas which would come to a head with the French Revolution having as its ideals liberty and power to the people.

As any other active and intelligent youth would, Vassalli closely followed all the developments that were taking place and absorbed the social ideas, besides doing very well in his academic studies.

We can picture this young man bursting with revolutionary ideas, returning to Malta and witnessing the disorder of the final years of the Hospitallers, overwhelmed by financial problems, by divisions running deeply within it and, worst of all, by the backwardness.

Amongst other things he asked: These suggestions were aimed at improving the financial condition of the country on one hand, and on the other of adjusting injustices by which native Maltese were deprived of any right to make their voices heard and to develop intellectually.

This was a dark period spent in France and Spain until, in 1820, aged 56, poor, in bad health and, deprived of the best years of his life, he was allowed to return.

He had a passion for intellectual enlightenment and learning, a broad base for formal education, and a longing for a social and political system more in line with egalitarian and fraternal principles.

Though philosophically Vassalli might not be considered an original thinker – for he drew almost all of his basic concepts and ideas from contemporary French encyclopaedists and illuminists – nonetheless his freedom of thought and his understanding of how philosophy could be socially and politically viable might be indeed regarded as significant.

Vassalli died in 1829 and, having been refused burial by the Catholic Church, he was buried in the Msida Bastion Historic Garden, a Protestant cemetery mainly used by the British.

His grave is to be found in the Msida Bastion Historic Garden, a restored early 19th-century Protestant cemetery in Floriana that is maintained by the national trust Din l-Art Ħelwa.

The novel's main thesis had been proposed by Sammut in an issue of the Journal of Maltese Studies dedicated to Vassalli, namely that Freemasonry played an important part in the patriot's life.