On the 24th of November, 2014 at St. Ursola Church, Valletta, a book to commemorate the late Fr. George Aquilina ofm, (1939-2012), Scholar, Archivist and Franciscan Friar, was launched. ‘Scientia et Religio’, the name of the book, a work of Studies in Fr. Aquilina’s memory, is a A Wignacourt Museum Publication and edited by Mgr John Azzopardi, Malta 2014. The following is the introductory talk to Book launching by Fr Norbert Ellul-Vincenti OFM.

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Fr George Aquilina, Franciscan Friar and historian. Fortunately, I’m not here like a second Mark Antony to bury or praise him. And it isn’t even incumbent on me to persuade anybody that he is worth commemorating. You all know that already, whether you live in Malta or abroad. And, unlike Mark Antony, I don’t need to persuade anybody about anything, or sway the crowd to light bonfires.

Talking about a dead colleague and brother in the Franciscan Order, on the day when a book published in his honour is being launched, is a great honour for me. Unfortunately I’m not a historian like him, and I know nothing about the art of archivistic research. My line is more literary and cultural with a bias for the Middle Ages and, as theatre critic and book reviewer, a propensity to find words for my appreciation of the beautiful things and ideas of the world.

This is where our two intellectual lines met, as we talked about and discussed our work, filling each other in with what we were about, what we had read, seen or heard, and the occasional trumpeting of a high point reached.

I shall never forget his eyes whenever he reached towards my ear as if he were afraid the friary walls would overhear him, to announce that he had discovered a bombshell. Sometimes the first person “I” turned into a “we” when Stanley Fiorini, with whom he shared many an archival adventure, was part of the great discovery.

I have known Fr George for over half a century. For almost half of that time we lived as next-door neighbours in the Franciscan Friary at St Paul Street in Valletta. When I arrived next door to him 21 years ago, I found him painting my door to make me welcome, greeting me with the words, “Now I shall have somebody to talk with about my work.” He was always a hard worker, even manually, and could never hide for long what he felt inside him. What he thought should be said, he said.

He and I shared the same novice master when we came into the Franciscan Order – though three years apart. Fr Marjanu Vella, saw three novices through, though in different years. There was the unshakeable, phlegmatic, Fr Charles Tonna. And there was Fr George Aquilina, full of sound and fury. And there was yours truly, the first admitted of the three novices, holding for dear life to a precarious golden mean between the two extremes.

From Fr Marjanu we all drew quite a good deal, but most of all a love for literature, art and things Franciscan. Perhaps his frequent conferences on the Franciscan saints initiated Fr. George on the way his life was to take later on.

Fr George was a Qormi man. He never let you forget that. Qormi was the place to be born in. Nothing could compete. And as for St George, no saint was his equal, and the best of the Georges, of course, was the one you know where. But he did have a soft spot for St Joseph, I think, on account of his father’s relationship with the confraternity under his patronage at Qormi.

We do have our own Good Friday procession at Ta’ Giezu in Valletta, which basks in a certain amount of general appreciation. I was very fond of it and wrote about it several times, linking it squarely with the medieval mystery plays. Fr George was interested, but of course, for him the proper Holy Week procession took place at Qormi, even though he established that the earliest recorded one in Malta, is the Valletta procession.

George was very fond of his father, whom I knew because he sometimes came to drive a number of us to the seaside, bringing along a little girl called Doris who couldn’t understand why her father didn’t allow her to engage in mixed bathing with the student friars.

He often spoke of having gone with his father in the very early hours of the morning to trap birds. Describing the laying of nets, was one of Fr George’s delight, adopting the proper vocabulary that his father had taught him. An elder brother, Toni, was very close to his father in this pastime. When Toni died in a terrible accident at the dockyard, George lost a precious part of his life, and in my view, never recovered his wonted ebullience. Later he was to lose his parents and his dear sister Guza to whom he was very much attached.

When he came back from Rome, Fr George had earned a doctorate in Ecclesiastical History. His interest in the Franciscan Order in general and in the Maltese Franciscan Province in particular, drew him towards the local scene, and he became part of the generation that laid the ground for a serious account of Maltese history, relying on documented research rather than hearsay. He was very much a document man. We crossed swords several times over my interest in the philosophy of history and in the various ways in which one can make history. He was, as you can expect, never too keen on revisionism.

He threw himself into the organization of our own Franciscan archives which are particularly extensive, and which had last been organized by another George, the late Fr. George Xerri. But we had lacked a subject index of that friar’s researches until it was finally discovered. Fr. George was provincial librarian and archivist practically all his priestly life, except for the second triennium of Fr. Ivo Tonna’s term of office as Provincial, when the role was passed on to me, and he went to the Retreat House at Bahar ic-Caghak.

He honed his paleographic skills to perfection at the archiepiscopal and notarial archives and elsewhere, during the difficult time of church-state relations when he was asked by Archbishop Mercieca to help trace the legal provenance of Church holdings in the dusty archives.

For a short number of years he was employed by the state Bibljoteka where he further proved his usefulness, until he resigned for personal reasons.

His long hours with documents and dust gained for him a severe infection which lingered for many, long months and had us all worried, but then towards the end of his life Fr. George was ill from many things, and had to follow a diet – when he did follow it – that left him very little choice what to eat.

His greatest loves were for the Franciscan Order and for archival research. About his publications you know sufficiently from the present festschrift and from Mgr. Azzopardi. I will only note his long hours in Rome, Palermo and in Malta’s notarial archives.

His long service to the Sisters of the Sovereign Order of St John at St Ursula and his reorganization of the Abbacy’s archives resulted in a detailed history of the Order which was extremely well received. Such was its success that the original Maltese version was issued in Italian and English versions soon after.

I did see a lot of his work as it was being written, very rarely helping with a little advice with the manuscript or a deft kick-start to the computer machine or software when he was stuck.

His love for archival work resulted in a complete re-oganisation of the Archives in Valletta of the Franciscan Province of Friars Minor. I know of two other archives that he helped re-organise, those of the Sisters of the Sovereign Order of St John at St Ursula Monastery and of the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Crucifix attached to our Church at Valletta.

He was often called by the courts to help transcribe old documents. I know of many occasions when he helped students, often sent along to him by their university tutors, to help both with reading documents and finding material for their theses. It was not unknown for people to come over from abroad, or for him to be called to attend conferences or historical occasions abroad.

His research cooperation with the Sovereign Order of St John lead to his being awarded membership from Rome.

George was an easy person to live with. He was full of memories of the old friars, and always had stories to tell not only about the living but also about the dead, and about what happened centuries ago within the Order. He enjoyed helping others especially those working on subjects related to his, and he would go out of his way to find material, to pass on his own researches to others, and point out possible sources for other researchers.

He was always a good priest and friar, dedicated to the building of community life and zealous in his apostolic work. He was assiduous in preaching, hearing confessions and seeking the lost sheep. His intellectual life was by no means a diversion from his spiritual life, but an integral part of it, and he never neglected one for the other. For him it was a seamless coat of one colour.

As I knew him, Fr George Aquilina, the historian, was ever a good priest and exemplary Franciscan.