TIRANA, Dec. 6 – The works of Father Zef Valentini, a late renowned Albanologist, whose publications on Albania were banned under the communist regime, have been translated and promoted 20 years after the collapse of the dictatorship.
The set of 11 books by Father Valentini were launched under a Culture Ministry project to promote authors who were persecuted during the regime and had their publications prohibited.
Speaking at the book promotion ceremony, Culture Minister Ferdinand Xhaferaj hailed Father Valentini as one of the most prominent figures of Albania’s scientific research promoting Albanian culture, the country’s European identity and especially contributing to the establishment of research institutions on the history of Albania and Albanians.
Father Valentini is known for his publications on Albania’s national hero Skanderbeg and the customary laws dating back to medieval times. His contribution to Albania was acknowledged even by Pope Paul VI in 1968 in Rome on the 500th death anniversary of Albania’s Ottoman resistance hero Skanderbeg.
Father Valentini
Zef Valentini (1900-1979) was another eminent specialist in Albanian studies, whose works were never recognized in communist Albania. He was an Albanian through and through, although he was not actually of Albanian blood. Valentini was an historian, ethnologist, linguist, literature professor, collaborator and editor of scholarly and literary periodicals in Albania and abroad, and a member of several scholarly academies. He had an excellent knowledge of the Albanian language, and of the history and ethnology of the country, and did much to promote the Albanian nation and its culture in the outside world. His works were seminal to Albanian studies. After his departure from Albania, he continued doing research and publishing in the field of Albanology at the University of Palermo, where he headed the International Institute for Albanian Studies. Valentini accomplished the work of an entire institute. His greatest achievement, the Acta Albaniae Veneta, consists of 27 volumes of documents on mediaeval Albanian history. Although he spent all the rest of his life writing about Albania, he was never allowed to visit it during the half a century of dictatorship. His name became taboo; no one was allowed to mention it. Though the communist regime was not able to imprison the scholar himself, who had left Albania one year before the rise of the dictatorship, it did keep his works in custody for half a century, placing them under the letter “R.” (Robert Elsie – specialist in Albanian studies)
