British academic Jeremy Johns will be giving a public lecture entitled ‘A new Latin-Arabic document for Malta and Gozo (Queen Constance, November 1198) and the history of the Maltese archipelago from the 7th to the 13th centuries’ on Wednesday at 6pm at the Aula Magna, Valletta Campus, University of Malta, St Paul Street, Valletta.

The lecture is organised by the Archaeological Society Malta.

More than 10 years ago, Prof. Johns announced the imminent publication of an edition and study of the Latin-Arabic document which in 1198 the Empress Constance addressed to “the whole people of the entire island of Malta and of the entire island of Gozo, our loyal Christian and Saracen subjects alike (Latin)/to all the Christians and the Muslims of Malta and Gozo – may God guide them! (Arabic)”.

Later this year, the promised study will appear in The heritage of learning: Arabic and Islamic studies dedicated to Wadad al-Qadi (Chicago University Press, 2015).

Prof. Johns will also be introducing another new publication – the study by Marc Lauxtermann, Bywater and Sotheby professor of Byzantine and modern Greek language and literature at the University of Oxford, of the famous anonymous Greek poem addressed to George of Antioch, published in 2010 by J. Busuttil, S. Fiorini and H.C.R. Vella under the title Tristia ex Melitogaudo.

In particular, he will explore the implications for the history of Malta of Lauxtermann’s radical correction of the published translations of the famous passage in this poem that describes the aftermath of Roger II’s conquest of 1127.