It is not my intention to cross swords with Giovanni Bonello, an established historian and scholar whom I greatly respect.

However, I would like to clarify some points regarding his letter (The Sunday Times of Malta, May 19) replying to my article ‘It is Grand Master Jean De la Valette’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, May 12).

First of all I would like to point out that my original title was ‘It is De La Valette’ naturally leading to my research on the family name. The words ‘Grand Master Jean’ were inserted by the newspaper, presumably to draw readers’ attention on the ongoing healthy scholarly debate regarding Bonello’s insistence that the Grand Master referred to himself, and was exclusively referred to, as ‘De Valette’ in his lifetime.

I have no difficulty in accepting this assumption, especially when Bonello assured the readers that ‘La’ never features in the signature of, or in references to the Grand Master in any of the many manuscripts he had consulted and other material such as medals and coins struck and minted during the Grand Master’s lifetime.

I cannot, and will never try to confute his findings of many years of research. And, as a matter of fact, in the second sentence of my article I stated: “Still, as scholar and historian Giovanni Bonello has proved, during his tenure the Grand Master chose to call himself, sign, and be referred to as De Valette.”

The facts which I have exposed in my article were sparked off by a note in a manuscript I discovered in a library in Italy, back in 1997, which stated: “On November 14, the Bishop of Vabres, brother of Grand Master Frà Giouanni di Valetta, arrived in Malta where he stayed for two months, during which time lavish receptions were held.”

I am not a historian and hence had to read and search, and ask whoever could help me, whether Jean De Valette had a brother who was a bishop and who came to Malta 18 months before the Great Siege. My research included correspondence with the bishopric of Vabres whence I received photocopies of pages from a book showing the names of three bishops of Vabres – François I, François II, and François III – all with the family name ‘De La Valette’, related to each other; the first one was indicated as a grand nephew of the Great Siege hero.

This book was H. Affre’s Dictionnaire des Institutions, Moeurs et Costumes du Rouergue, Rodez, 1903; the biographical notes on the three bishops are found on pp. 181-2.

Another source wherein the family name is given as ‘La Valette’ or ‘De La Valette’, is the Annuaire de la Noblesse de France [publisher M. Borel D’Hauterive], Paris, 1862, pp. 224-5.

Although I quoted other sources where the surname of family members related to our Grand Master is given as ‘De La Valette’, convincing and evident proof of this rendering is the surname of Bishop François I of Vabres, in the epitaph on his tombstone, placed in situ in St Izaire church in 1679: ‘De La Valette’.

I believe I can give some credit to these sources. This is scholarship.

After all, my article was dealing with the family name in general. The fact that our Grand Master chose to sign, be referred to as, and have coins struck with his name Jean De Valette, is another story.