First of all I wish to point out that the excellent turnout for the recent talks by Godfrey Wettinger at Castille and Stanley Fiorini and Charles Dalli at the Curia shows that what happened in late mediaeval Malta generates a lot of interest. The three speakers expounded their views from healthily different angles.

With reference to Prof. Fiorini’s letter (December 14) regarding my article Muslim Malta And Christian Gozo? (December 6), my point is that the poet does not say he was exiled in Gozo and that the manuscript’s notes say the place of confinement was “Malta” twice and “Melitegaudo” once. As to compounds, there are many categories with different semantic associations (a letterbox is a box, a cutthroat is not a throat, a capostazione is a capo, an autostrada is a strada) and there is also the coordinative type (fighter-bomber, Anglo-Saxon, tragicomic, bittersweet). In the poem in question, the compound Melitogaudo/Melitegaudo is used only with reference to Publius and Roger II, two events that affected both islands: the compound is therefore coordinative. This is confirmed by a Greek professor who teaches general linguistics and specialises in word structure.

Drawing in Giliberto Abate complicates matters: his 1241 report was not a census (as Mr Dalli proves), it was drawn up 100 years after the Greek poet’s exile and historians still have to reconcile his figures with the fact that a number of Muslims had already been expelled from Malta in 1223-24 while rebels from Celano were sent here in 1224.

In such a poorly-lit period, hypotheses will remain hypotheses with varying degrees of plausibility. Arguing that Gozo was not Muslimised, because Al-Himyari does not mention it, is as sound as saying that Gozo was not Christianised by St Paul because Luke only mentions Malta. The continuity of Christianity in Malta and Gozo does not depend on the Greek poem. Although I strongly believe in popularisation, I will discuss linguistic evidence on this intriguing matter in detail in a scholarly publication.