Saint Paul of the serpents
Norbert Ellul Vincenti
This is not a book about St Paul as such about the
traditions connected with him and Malta. And not about all the traditions, but
around those having to do with serpents and folklore.
Who is Montinaro? No
other than an actor who has worked with Lattuada, Comencini and Zeffirelli. Of
no mean standing, you could say, as an actor.
He is a student of cultural
anthropology and is interested in particular in the dialectics of religious
phenomena.
This is a book that is respectful of the depositum and the texts
and documents. The author has carefully read all that there is to be read and
carefully noted it.
He acknowledges help from Can. John Azzopardi of the
Cathedral Museum, the Collegiate Chapter, the Commission for the Museum of the
Cathedral, Mdina, Mr Patrick Galea for some illustrations, and Alfonso M. Di
Nola, "anthropologist and historian of religions".
The same Alfonso M. Di
Nola has a longish preface, in which he pays tribute to the work of his
student.
The book not only makes claim to scientific procedure, but is
actually so. This is a careful piece of work, well worth reading and studying.
As Di Nola himself shows, the author is not given to interpretative games or
wild exhibitionism one so often meets hiding under scientific names. He writes,
of course, from a scientific and lay point of view.
The first chapter is
dedicated to Saint Paul of the serpents and headed with the words of the Acts of
the Apostles: Et cun evasissemus tunc cognovimus quia Melita insula
vocabatur (and as we escaped we knew the island was called Malta.)
The
second stage concerns the voyage and the miraculous waters connected with the
saint in Ispica, Siracusa, Reggio Calabria etc. The author even considers
Warnecke's theory. In Malta, the matter concerns Ghan Razul where water issued
either to slake the thirst of the sailors or so that they could all be
baptised.
The next chapter is devoted to the neutralising of the viper in all
the places connected with the traditions. The author has a fascinating section
on the "serpari", the man, throughout history, who capture and keep snakes and
help to heal people.
Finally the author dedicates his full attention to the
Grotta (cave) and the miraculous healings. In a concluding section, he
goes over the ground covered and draws some conclusions ending with the comment
that the feast of St Paul is now celebrated twice in Malta, through a "direct
contact with the saint which is almost fanatic, but without any elements of
magic".
The book is the 88th of a series called La diagonale. The
cover shows one of the panels from the XV century polyptych of the Museum of the
Cathedral in Rabat, showing St Paul against a glorious gold
background.