Gorg Borg D'Anastasi

Sanctuary of Our Lady of Mellieħa

According to a very old tradition the highly venerated sanctuary of the Nativity of Our Lady of Mellieha was blessed by St. Paul the Apostle. The same tradition would have it that the icon of our Lady painted on the bare rock is the work of St. Luke the Evangelist; a theory supported by Mons. Pirri (1630), Ġan Franġisk Abela, Giacomo Bosio, Count G.A. Ciantar and Mons. O. Bres. On the contrary, Mario Buhagiar wrote that it is “Byzantinesque in inspiration but Sicilian or South Italian in execution, (and) datable to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries.” (The Iconography of the Maltese Islands)