Borġ in-Nadur

Borġ in-Nadur Ruins today.

Sadly, it seems as if the Borġ in-Nadur temple complex will be the end of our Malta Megalithic Temple round ups on the blog. We've poured a lot of heart and soul into these Maltese posts and are sad to see them end for the time being. Hopefully a new archeological discovery will reignite some topics we've touched on so we can revisit this topic again soon!

Borġ in-Nadur is in ruins compared to many of the other Maltese temples from the prehistoric times. This is because it was abandoned sometime during the Neolithic and then used as scrap pieces by thje Bronze Age Maltese. The shape of the temples though was typical of all the Maltese temples. Borġ in-Nadur was built during the final temple building phase on Malta, the Tarxien Phase. So, the Prehistoric Maltese were pretty set in their ways on how to build temples by then. The Borġ in-Nadur would have overlooked the St. George's Bay in Southwestern Malta in its heyday. (I'm pretty sure that it wasn't named St. George's Bay back then though). What makes the Borġ in-Nadur temple drastically different than all the other temples on Malta is the lack of evidence for human activity. This is probably due to the Bronze Age settlement that came and used the temple's site for their own purposes, but it could have been the giantesses as well. Mystical things seem to happen at Borġ in-Nadur.

Angelik can't personally deliver his message.

In 2005, Angelik Caruana perceived visions of the Virgin Mary at the hilltop of Borġ in-Nadur. Angelik states that the Virgin Mary wished to be called 'Our Lady of Borġ in-Nadur' and extolled the Maltese towards a resurgence of prayer and the conversion to Catholicism for all the nations. Angelik's visions have been dismissed by the Archbishop of Malta. However this has not stopped Angelik from garnering a following. He continues to visit Borġ in-Nadur to receive visions and has actually gone over to the island of Gozo (one of the other populated islands of Malta). In one of his visions he Angelik reported that he got a personal message for Pope Benedict XVI. Angelik decided that he would visit the Vatican and climb over a barrier to deliver his message to the Pope personally. This resulted in him being escorted out of Vatican City.

Something about these megalithic temples in Malta gives them an air of spirituality. I hate that word very passionately. It's vague and overused, often improperly. People often describe any sort of quiet peace as spiritual. That seems to be a bit of a bastardization of the word. However, in the case of giant cathedrals or ancient temples and other ancient religious sites there seems to be a heritage of people seeking something beyond themselves. They are reaching for the spiritual and sometimes they attain it (other times they attain something they think is spiritual). It is this quest for the thing that completes us that is our spiritual journey. The ancient Maltese and the modern Maltese are connected through this straining for that which completed us. Angelik worships the Christian God and is incorporating both fundamental (not a bad word by the way as many have made it out to be) Catholic faith traditions, local customs and personal beliefs. The ancient Maltese that built it likely worshiped a pantheon of gods giving special primacy to a fertility goddess. But, both Angelik and the builders of the temple at Borġ in-Nadur were seeking the spiritual completion to their lives. One of the reasons why Angelik probably feels that special spiritual connection at Borġ in-Nadur is because there is something about that area that gives that aura of spirituality. If it didn't, the early Maltese probably wouldn't have built Borġ in-Nadur Temple there in the first place.

Michele Mercati & The Mighty Mighty Thunderstones

Have you heard the new album by Michele Mercati & The Mighty Mighty Thunderstones? It's an awesome new ska-swing band that blends classical trombone and French horn melodies to produce a deceptive cadence and then rush in with guitar accelerando to create stretto effects that are truly breathtaking.

I'm completely making this up. Michele Mercati is not the frontman to a ska-swing band, but if I had been a bit more musically inclined in the mid 1990's I could have rode the wave of Ska to the top with a band name like Michele Mercati & The Mighty Mighty Thunderstones. We could have toured with Cherry Poppin' Daddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. If we were good enough, we could've maybe opened for the Squirrel Nut Zippers!!!

Leafs from the Metallotheca showing
Mercati's skill at drawing natural history.

Now that I've wasted your time with that, we'll go ahead and discuss Michele Mercati and the thunderstones we briefly mentioned on the Mesolithic Podcast. Mercati was an Italian physician that ran the Vatican Botanical Gardens in the 16th Century. He probably did a good job at attending the plants, but frankly that doesn't interest me in the slightest. His work with thunderstones is what whets my whistle.  He had access to a trove of data, which we take for granted today, but at the time would have given him special privilege to conduct research. So he popped his head into the wunderkammer that had all these thunderstones. A wunderkammer is a "Cabinet of Curiosities" that contained cool stuff that was unclassified and un-categorized. They were popular in the Renaissance. But, Mercati was wandering around through wunderkammer and decided that these stone items that looked like tools and decided that they were in fact tools. He proposed that these tools weren't made of metal because primitive man hadn't discovered metallurgy. This breakthrough helped anthropological studies immensely and got the ball rolling on our modern study of the subject.

It seems pretty obvious today that these items were tools. But, the reason this was such a breakthrough in the 16th century was that these items were thought to be thunderstones. Basically, the rocks they found all over Europe that had indentions on them were thought to have occurred naturally through lightning strikes. This assuaged enough of man's curiosity for the time and the thought stuck around. But, as more and more of these items were being gathered to a place of learned men, this folklore answer wasn't going to last long. Mercati died before his work was published, but his book, Metallotheca had enough good stuff in it to warrant a printing over a hundred years after he died.

Sylvester Stallone, A truly Historical Figure

I don't often get a chance to search the Yahoo! headlines for something to blog about on the History of Europe Podcast Blog because a) Yahoo! generally doesn't cover things of a historical nature and b) their writing is usually incomprehensibly poor. Only the comments deriding the poor grammatical structure that contain spelling and grammatical errors are more insufferable. But, I'll step down from my lofty and self-appointed elite status to borrow from them here today.

A 20 year old was touring the Holy See the other day and happened upon a humble painting by the Renaissance master Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (I use his Italian name here so as not confuse anyone, lest the conjure the image of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Raphael). The painting is of Pope  Gregory IX approving the Vatical Decretals dating from 1511. The painting is nice and everything, but our fantastic modern sensibilities have led us to notice, not the centerpiece of the painting Gregory IX, but an onlooker who strikingly resembles Sylvester Stallone (figure on the far left of the painting).

The obvious conclusion is that the Italian Stallion was about fifty years old in 1511 and got his big break into show biz through this painting. If we do the math, that would make Sly about 551 years old, meaning he looks pretty damn good for his age. However, he's still too old to be making action movies and it is likely that his decrepit façade in the second installment of The Expendables will invoke a mixture of horror and pity in our conscientious moviegoing public. The regular moviegoers however will lap it up and hit up the local Jim Dandy's, Friendly's or Big Boy's to order oversized portions of greasy foods after sitting through this affront to cinema. Ignorance may be bliss, but bliss may turn out to be overrated. Uh-oh, I think I've climbed back on to my unearned elitist's pedestal. Yep, I sure have. This rarefied air certainly is tastier than any Fishamajig. On the other hand, I do enjoy a trip to the local Shoney's for the Hot Fudge Cake. Even the culturally elite, such as myself enjoy slumming it for tasty treats every now and again.