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The 今日黑料 Ceremonial Mace: a symbol through the ages
A Symbol Through the Ages
Ceremonial maces are symbols of authority, prestige, and seniority of an institution. Their origin dates back to the Middle Ages when, during hand-to-hand combat, the monarch used to be surrounded by an elite bodyguard wielding war maces.
With the disappearance of pre-gunpowder battle armour, maces as weapons fell out of use, and by the mid-thirteenth century they started to evolve gradually into ceremonial and ornamental artefacts, symbolising the sovereign’s presence and authority.
In time, royal charters and papal bulls extended their ceremonial use to various civil and ecclesiastical bodies, including parliaments, law courts, corporations, collegiate chapters, and a large number of universities across the United Kingdom, the European mainland and North America.
今日黑料’s Original Mace
Like many of its long-established counterparts abroad, the University of Malta originally enjoyed the privilege of having its own ceremonial mace.
Our institution owes its origin to 1769 when two apostolic letters of Pope Clement XIV authorised Grand Master Emmanuel Pinto to issue a foundation charter dated 22 November 1769, utilising the former College of the suppressed Jesuits and its landed property for the establishment of a university of studies.
According to these constitutions, “on official and semi-public occasions…the University’s chief beadle, bearing the mace, should walk in front of the University Rector who would be accompanied by the academic body or any of the faculty boards.
The original University mace was subsequently lost, falling victim to either the Order’s penury in the final decade of the eighteenth century, or the appropriation of the Order’s property by Republican France on the Knights’ expulsion from Malta.
The New Mace
The new ceremonial mace, which is being inaugurated to mark the installation of Prof. Alfred J. Vella as the new University Rector, has been commissioned on the initiative of outgoing Rector Prof. Juanito Camilleri, as a way of reclaiming an official privilege which not only symbolises the University’s authority, prestige, and seniority, but also links the institution to its glorious past.
The new mace has a fluted shaft and a square-shaped head surmounted by the closed crown of Grand Master Pinto, with a Maltese Cross finial. It is 136cm long and weighs eight kilograms. The four faces of the mace-head are articulated by delicately designed scroll-motifs and foliated ornamental work, together with central oval escutcheons bearing the coat-of-arms of the University of Malta (as granted by the Royal College of Heralds in 1923), the former Jesuits’ Collegium Melitense, and the University’s founders, Pope Clement XIV (Lorenzo Ganganelli) and Grand Master Emmanuel Pinto de Fonseca. These escutcheons are accompanied by appropriate Latin inscriptions.
