St. Paul's Shipwreck

St. Paul’s Shipwreck (For the Feast of St. Paul, February 10th)

Last week part of my Medieval Mediterranean class focused on St. Paul’s shipwreck, as set forth in the Acts of the Apostles (If you need to refresh your memory, here’s the text from Acts 27-28:10, from the New American Standard Bible, courtesy of the site Biblegateway : http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2027-28:10&showxrefs=no&version=NASB

Paul shakes off the viper into the fire.

 Woodcut by Bernard Salomon (1510-1561), from Biblia Sacra (Lyons, 1558).

 Arca Artium Collection, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Collegeville, MN.

It is a short story with many nuances: the privileges of Roman citizenship (Paul, as a Roman citizen, has the right to be judged by the emperor); the dissemination of Christianity along Roman trade routes (Paul, his friends, and his custodian Julian the Centurion travel in merchant ships before embarking on the large Alexandrian grain ship en route to Rome); and the danger of winter travel in the Roman world (the powerful wind, the storm, and the shipwreck). The story, however, omits the influence of the shipwreck upon the people who rescued Paul. The Acts tell us that the locals first thought Paul was a murderer when the viper bit his hand; but when they saw the viper did not harm him, they changed their minds and decided he was a god instead. Then Publius, the leading man of the island, welcomed the Paul and the other castaways to his house as guests, where Paul healed Publius’s father. Once word of this deed circulated, all the sick people on the island came to be healed, and when they left, the people gave them everything they needed. That’s all the New Testament says happened.

The Latin Vulgate says the name of the island was Militene, which the King James Version translated as Malta. The NASB also says the island was Malta, but offers Melita as an alternate. Melita could be Malta, near Sicily, or Meleda (also Mljet), off the coast of Dubrovnik in the Adriatic sea. Mljet has had its supporters over the years, (more about that below) but cannot compete with Malta when it comes to the modern celebration of the Pauline cult.

No visitor to Malta today can ignore the prominence of Paul in Maltese society. It is not just the numerous paintings and sculptures commemorating Paul and his shipwreck; at least twenty churches and chapels are dedicated to Paul, including the cathedral church in Mdina and the Anglican Cathedral in Valletta. Four churches commemorate Paul’s arrival on Malta: two churches are dedicated to St. Paul Shipwrecked, one to the Shipwreck itself, and one to his welcome on Malta.

A panorama of St. Paul's Bay. Far left: the Wignacort Tower. St. Paul's island, where the shipwreck occurred, is on the right.

Two closeups: one of the statue of Paul on the island, the other of the ducks in the town of St. Paul's Bay. The ducks mark the location where Paul came ashore.





You can travel to the town of St. Paul’s Bay, located on the bay where, according to tradition, the event happened. St. Paul’s Bay has a chapel named St. Paul’s Sanctuary. Nearby, the church of San Pawl Milqi (St. Paul Welcomed) in Bumarrad was built on the site of a Roman villa, where a chapel has stood since the 15th century. Local tradition (and an Italian Archaeological Mission) identifies this villa as the very one where Publius entertained the company for three days. (Heritage Malta, which maintains the site, is more cautious about the Pauline connection). If you can’t get to St. Paul Milqi, the Church of St. Paul’s Shipwreck in Valletta displays Paul’s right wrist bone and part of the column on which he was beheaded. February 10th, the Feast of St. Paul’s Shipwreck, is a public holiday (but not a national holiday) but if you’re in Valletta you can witness the fiesta of St. Paul’s Shipwreck.

Malta’s devotion to St. Paul and his shipwreck predated the arrival of the Knights in 1530. Jean Quintin’s description of Malta, published in 1536, recorded everything the Maltese people told him about the event. Quintin believed that Paul had been shipwrecked on the island of Melita in the Adriatic, but the Maltese sailors corrected him, explained the route of Paul’s ship and directed him to the very bay where it was wrecked.

Quintin's map, showing a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Paul overlooking St. Paul's Bay, shown here on the lower right side of the island with an arrow pointing away from it. Woodcut, from Jean Quintin's Insulæ Melitæ Descrpitio (Lyons, 1536)

Neither St. Luke nor Jean Quintin

told us that Paul also caused a spring

 of fresh water to flow while he was

 helping to build the bonfire.

This monument marks the spot;

 the water, however, is no longer potable. 

Their testimony did not convince Quintin, but he published a map of Malta with his treatise that marks the location of  a chapel dedicated to St. Paul overlooking a bay. Quintin also repeats some features of the story that did not make it into the Acts of the Apostles: that Paul was imprisoned in a cave near Mdina for three months before resuming his journey. During this time he healed the sick and converted the Maltese. And, amazingly, all the venomous serpents on the island left with Paul. Not only that, but any venomous serpents that came to the island quickly lost their sting. As a final gift to the people, the saint imbued the stone of his cave with the ability to cure snakebite. Visitors removed chunks of stones from the cave, and miraculously the cave did not grow bigger. Quintin mentioned that the cave, or grotto, contained two altars, which suggests that it was already a venerated site when he visited the island. It seems, however, that the cult at the grotto decreased in importance during the 16th century.

St. Paul's Grotto today.

What happened next was either a simple act of piety or a deliberate attempt to manipulate the faithful. Or, since two different men were responsible, maybe it was both. Juan Venegas de Cordoba, a Spanish hermit, took up residence in the grotto between 1599 and 1624. Juan Venegas was responsible for reviving the Pauline cult at the grotto. The cult attracted donations, and then in 1617 Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt assumed guardianship of grotto. Wignacourt established a college for chaplains to look after the grotto, and appointed Venegas as the rector. Under the patronage of the Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Malta, the Pauline cult centered on the grotto grew in significance. It was beneficial for the Order to have a connection with Paul, who joined St. John as one of the patrons of the Order. Paul became an important model for the 17th-century Church, particularly as a missionary and teacher.

Giovanni Abela, vice-chanceller of the Order, imagined Paul's shipwreck looking something like this.

The ship comes to grief on the shore to the right; Paul, holding a staff, swims to the left shore, 

where he blesses the bonfire while the centurion looks on. From Abela, Della descrittiione di Malta (Malta 1647)

Paul shows the location of

Mljet on a map of the Adriatic.

What more proof do you need?

Frontispiece of Ignatius Georgius, 

D. Paulus apostolus in mari... 

Venice, 1730. 

But the stories of Paul’s stay on Malta became more fanciful (my favorite is that the prevailing wind carried his sermons to the island of Gozo, causing its inhabitants to convert as well) and the question of the actual site of his shipwreck never went away. The greatest challenge came from Don Ignatius Georgio, a Benedictine monk on the island of Mljet, who published a treatise in 1730 claiming that Melita was the site of the calamity. Georgio’s scholarly presentation persuaded many prominent academicians, but the Maltese seem to have taken his arguments personally and the initial response was emotional. Eight years later, the Maltese scholar Giovanni Antonio Ciantar published a scholarly refutation to Georgio’s work, and the debate went on through the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st century. St. Paul’s shipwreck leaves the historian wondering, not for the first time, which is more important: what actually happened or what people believe happened?




Stuff I read to write this post:

• Abela, Giovanfrancesco. Della descrittiione di Malta isola nel mare Siciliano con le sve antichita, ed altre notitie, libri quattro, del commendatore Fra. Gio. Francesco Abela. Malta: P. Bonacota, 1647.

• Ignatius Georgius, D. Paulus apostolus in mari quod nunc Venetus Sinus dicitur naufragus et Melitae Dalmatensis insulae post naufragium hospes, sive, De genuino significatu duorum locorum in Actibus Apostolicis: Cap. XXVII. 27. Navigantibus nobis in Adria, Cap. XXVIII. 1. Tunc cognovimus, quia Melita insula vocabatur : inspectiones anticriticae. Venice: Cristophor Zane, 1730. (The title says it all -- you don't have to read the book! In English: The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked in the sea, now called Bay of Venice, and after the shipwreck welcomed at the Dalmatian island of Melite, or, The true significance of two places in the Acts of the Apostles, chap. 27. 27. As we were sailing in the Adriatic, Chapter. 28. 1. Then we have known, because the island was called Malta: A critical inquiry.)

• Ciantar, Giovanni Antonio. De B. Paulo Apostolo in Melitam siculo-adriatici maris insulam naufragio ejecto dissertationes apologeticae in inspectiones anticriticas Reverendissimo Patri Domino Ignatii Georgii de Melitensi Apostoli naufragio, descripto in Act. Apost. cap. XXVII. & XXVIII. Venice: C. Zane, 1738. (Again, the title gives away the plot: The Blessed Apostle Paul was shipwrecked on the island of Malta in the Sicilian-Adriatic Sea, a rational discussion of the Reverend Father Lord Ignatius George's Critical Inquiry of the Apostle's shipwreck on Malta, described in the Acts of the Apostles chapters 27 and 28. Note that Ciantar went to the same Venetian publisher, who must have made a packet from the controversy.)

Modern sources I also read:

• John Azzopardi, editor: The Cult of St Paul in the Christian Churches and in the Maltese Tradition//Il culto di San Paolo nelle chiese cristiane e nella tradizione maltese. Malta, 2006. Acts of the International Symposium held June 26-27 2006 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Wignacourt Museum. Msgr. Azzopardi is the curator of the Wignacourt Museum, which is housed in the former college established by the Grand Master to look after the Grotto (see above), and he has a special devotion to St. Paul. This volume contains numerous useful articles, including works by Mario Buhagiar, Stanley Fiorini, Horatio R. C. Vella, John Azzopardi, Thomas Freller and Winston Zammit on the Cult of St. Paul and the Maltese Tradition.

• Mario Buhagiar, "The St Paul Shipwreck Controversy: An Assessment of the Source Material." Proceedings of History Week. (1993): 181-213. Published in Malta : The Malta Historical Society, 1997. Available online at http://melita2historica.x90x.net/hw199310.html

• Otto F. A. Meinardus, "St Paul Shipwrecked in Dalmatia." The Biblical Archaeologist 39 (1976): 145-147. Available online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/3209426. A modern argument for Mljet, based upon: the testimony of older residents; the number of islanders named "Paul" or some form thereof; the failure of the local tourist industry or the church to promote the Pauline cult; a bay where the wreck may have occurred; the presence of snakes on Mljet; and the absence of any traditional Pauline cult. You don't have to be Maltese to remain unconvinced by these arguments.

• Horatio C. R. Vella, The Earliest Description of Malta (Lyons 1536) by Jean Quintin d'Autun. Malta, 1980.