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Series of talks on Malta's relations with other states - Exploring the links ...

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the initiative of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tonio Borg, and in collaboration with Embassies and High Commissions present in Malta, started a series of talks on Malta’s relations with other States in October 2010.

Following an opening speech by Dr Borg, Dr Mario Tabone delivered a talk on relations between Malta and Russia. Afterwards, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Malta, H.E. Boris Yu Marchuk, addressed guests prior to a closing speech by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

During a week-long celebration of Russian-Maltese friendship, the Embassy of the Russian Federation and the Russian Culture and Science Institute organised an exhibition in the Pardo Hall of Palazzo Parisio, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Valletta.

Dr Tabone started his speech by saying that talking about Russia and Malta is a study in contrasts: one of the smallest countries in the world and the largest one in the world. Both have been victims and beneficiaries of their respective geographies: one, in the north, bordering on the Arctic and sweeping across the whole of Northern Asia and rolling down to the Black and Caspian seas; one smack in the centre of the hot and turbulent Mediterranean, in the eye of political, military and cultural hurricanes. And, of course, both have been buffeted by the vagaries and happenstance of history. They also share a burden of size; one too big, the other too small and both had to struggle to achieve nationhood and a sense of identity.

Two cardinal features which Malta and Russia have shaped to their respective psychologies and history: the first is that Malta, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, has been a frontier region between Europe and the Arab-Turkish empires; similarly, Russia’s geopolitical hallmark is its frontier character between Europe and Asia. The second is the coming of Christianity to Malta in 60 AD and its arrival in Kieran Russia in the 9th century, inspiring a splendid medieval civilisation. These events are deeply rooted in the psychology of our peoples and conditioned the course of our history and culture. Not without reason did Putin remark in August 2001, on his visit to the hallowed Solovetsky camp that “without Christianity Russia could hardly exist”. What Tibor Szamuley once said about Russia also applies to Malta: “Of all the burdens Russia has had to bear, heaviest and most relentless of all has been the weight of her past.

Love and Passion in the Christian World: Peter Abélard | Suite101.com

, That it was at this point in his life, that the seeds of his downfall were planted, and that, through the pleasures of the flesh.

Abélard believed very highly of himself. He claimed that he was young and very good looking, and because of his reputation and learning, the seduction of the young Héloise would be for him, a very easy success.

The initial stages of his seduction were very calculated. Abélard, through friends of her uncle Fulbert, convinced him to enter his home and become her private tutor. Fulbert, in his desire to increase her training, agreed to this arrangement and further added the full charge of his niece to Abélard; his goal had been fulfilled.

Regardless of Abélard’s initial intention, soon after having seduced her, he had become completely involved. The desire he felt for the young woman had begun to overwhelm him; he was neglecting his studies, his students and his philosophy. The passion he was feeling towards her grew to a point that he decided to remove her from her uncle’s abode.

Although this decision seemed, at first, to be a good option for the two, it would, fatefully, prove to be catastrophic. Abélard moved her to the nunnery where she grew up in Argenteuil. The location was near enough to Paris that he could visit her, which he did, frequently, and still remain at his cathedral school.

It was in Argenteuil that, as he informs the reader in his Fourth letter to Héloise, the profanity and sinful lust he felt for her overwhelmed him to the point he blasphemed the Lord and His Holy Mother. He reminisces, painfully, those events:

"After our marriage, when you were living in the cloister with the nuns at Argenteuil and I came one day to visit you privately, you know what my uncontrollable desire did with you there, actually in a corner of the refectory, since we had nowhere else to go."

Although, as alluded to in his letter, they had by then been married, the shameful act of fornication in the cloister was, in his mind, a deed too great. It shows, however, the passion that he felt, and also a very erotic and kinky attitude, one that is furthered in the next few lines:

"What wound do you suppose would satisfy God’s justice for the profanation such as I described of a place so sacred to his own Mother?

Term Paper Resource Guide to Medieval History

The New Cambridge Medieval History: c. 500-c. 700

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