Truth vindicated : Tristia ex Melitogaudo

Abstract

A public talk by Professor Jeremy Johns on the 20th of May, 2015, at the Aula Magna of the University of Malta, Valletta Campus, on early Medieval times in Malta concluded with an appendix, quite extraneous to the topic of the lecture, which aimed at marring the work the laborious editio princeps of Tristia ex Melitogaudo: Lament in Greek verse of a XIIth-century exile on Gozo, published in 2010, entailed. This epilogue was Johns’ reference to Marc D. Lauxtermann’s article which appeared in Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik in 2014 entitled ‘Tomi, Mljet, Malta’. The present paper attempts to correct, avoiding however Lauxtermann’s abusive tone, his misunderstanding of the text which treats the crucial passage in Tristia (ff. 84-84v.) and his manipulation of the truth behind that passage to invent a different history of the times under discussion. The honest search for truth requires that one faithfully renders, as closely as possible, a translation of the relevant text before conceiving any historical conclusions. We claim that Lauxtermann, on the contrary, has opted to invent a scenario different from the real one, and then attempted to twist the Greek and a translation of the important passage to support his plan.