Per un’indagine prosopografica sull’Anonimo maltese: le evidenze nel carme di supplica a Giorgio di Antiochia (Matrit. 4577)

A long poem in Byzantine dodecasyllables addressed to George of Antioch, prime minister of Roger II, is preserved – incomplete in its opening and closing sections – in the manuscript Matrit. 4577 (Diktyon 40057). The codex was produced in Southern Italy (Salento?) or perhaps Sicily, and as far as we know, it is the only surviving example of one of the longest supplicatory poems of the Greek Middle Ages. The text talks about the poet exiled to the Maltese archipelago (probably on the islet of Gozo) as a learned and loyal official of the Norman king, who had close ties with George of Antioch. The paper will attempt to contribute to a better definition of the prosopographic profile of the Maltese Anonymous through the internal evidence of the poem. Finally, it will provide a more accurate dating of the Matrit. 4577 to the end of the 12th century by the palaeographic analysis of its writing.