In the run-up to the Great Siege of 1565, Żurrieq only gets mentioned three times in the solemn registers of the Order:

In 1563, news of a dastardly homicide shook the peace of that quiet, rustic village.

The criminal prosecution services of the Hospitallers geared into overdrive when info reached Vittoriosa that the murdered corpse of Ioannis Spiglioti had been found. This followed shortly after court litigation in 1556 and another mysterious murder in 1560.

Spiglioti was not a native of the village. The proceedings list him as a qualified surgeon, probably employed at the Order’s Sacred Infirmary in Vittoriosa, and as the father of some children.

His surname suggests Greek ancestry, quite likely one of the hordes of craftsmen and professionals whose families had followed the Order after its expulsion by Suleiman from Rhodes in 1523. That is all the records tell us about the victim, nor do other documents ever seem to mention him.

The first entry in the Books of the Council relating to the murder in Żurrieq of Ioannis Spiglioti in 1563.

Most of the information about this homicide comes from one set of registers in the archives of the Hospitallers – the minutes of the Supreme Council of the Order, the organ made up of the grand master and the elder dignitaries, who together acted as cabinet ministers, as parliament and as both civil and criminal court of the Order, all rolled up in one cosy body, with joyful disregard for the constraints of the blessings of the ‘separation of powers’. Crimes committed anywhere in Malta or elsewhere, either by, or against a Hospitaller knight, could only be tried by the council.

These voluminous minute books – the famed Libri Conciliorum, have thankfully survived and, for the historian, prove to be simultaneously a godsend and a frustrating and tormenting vexation. Like all minutes, they only contain the skimpiest, the most indispensable information expressed in the tersest of languages.

The bulging investigation files, the rich dossiers of the actual criminal process with the evidence, the documents, the experts’ reports, have disappeared – no one knows why or when. In default, we have to rely solely on the stingy two- or three-liners in the minutes to attempt to reconstruct anything resembling a coherent narrative of some criminal activity.

Żurrieq, a pleasant ancient village to the south of the island, has a richer prehistory than it has written history. It boasts the distinction of hosting the only surviving Phoenician-Punic structure in the island. Mostly inhabited by people who made their living from the sea and from agriculture, its antique landmarks refer to defensive constructions and to an impressive number of minor places of early Christian worship.

Very rarely do the conurbation or its early inhabitants make an appearance in history with a capital H. Microhistory does not aspire to become more than that. In all the many hundreds of documents relating to Malta housed in the State Archives of Palermo, dated 1250 to 1500, Żurrieq only gets one single mention – in 1399, when Chaucer was still alive. Simone Sciriha and his consort Prisinda, in their own name and on behalf of Nicolaus his brother and Galgana his sister, petitioned the king to repossess a vineyard in Żurrieq.

The other early official records treat Żurrieq equally stingily. Starting from 1398, the voluminous documents of the Mdina Università, the almost self-governing council of the island headed by the Captain of the Rod, first mention Żurrieq only in 1513.

One of the coats of arms of the noble Pagano family.

This entry refers to the litigation between two farmers from the village, Simone Zammit and Simone Mifsud, over canals for the collection of rainwater, in Bjar Markiż, Żurrieq.

Or the 1522 conflicts between neighbours Dionisius Mizzi and Philippus Mizzi, when the former claimed the latter’s building was causing damage to his property. The Jurats travelled all the way from Mdina to Żurrieq for an inspection in situ.

The following year the Università issued a proclamation urging volunteers in Żurrieq to repair a water cistern in Santa Caterina tal-Baqqari within a fortnight as, in default, the reservoir would be made available only to Thomas Bajada.

Two later entries deserve mention. In 1526 a certain Nicolaus from Żurrieq, allegedly destitute, denounced to the Viceroy of Sicily one of the leading aristocrats of Mdina, Jacobus de Inguanez and his sons Marcus and Antonius, accusing them of having encroached on and misappropriated public land. They reacted by clapping him in chains, beating him with cudgels and leaving him wounded (bastuniatu et ferero).

From Sicily, the Viceroy ordered the Mdina Jurats to investigate Nicolaus’s complaint. The Jurats retorted by protesting indignantly that the Viceroy’s intervention breached their privileges. I should perhaps add that Inguanez himself served alternatively as Captain of the Rod and as Jurat of the Mdina Council.

Possibly linked with this squalid episode could be a report of a convocactione – an incitement, an uprising – the year following, against the same Jacobus Inguanez, by the inhabitants of Żurrieq, that “disturbed the peace of the same village”. The Jurats again ruled, by majority vote, that any accusation against Inguanez to the Viceroy of Sicily violated their privileges, which apparently included usurping public land with impunity, and persecuting anyone who objected.

At the time of the Spiglioti murder, estimates calculate Żurrieq’s inhabitants to have been about 2,000 souls.

On July 16, 1563, a prominent item on the criminal agenda of the Hospitaller Council featured the homicide of the surgeon (chirurgus) Iohannis Spiglioti in Żurrieq. The elders did not seem to entertain doubts as to who was responsible for the murder.

The rich dossiers of the actual criminal process with the evidence, the documents, the experts’ reports, have disappeared

They ordered the detention of Fra Giovanni Battista Pagano and his accomplices, and that they be subjected to interrogation under torture. Not at all surprisingly, the minutes give no inkling about the motive behind Pagano’s homicidal determination, nor any details about the dynamics of the murder. There is, however, a once-only mention of ‘accomplices’.

The surviving records do not indicate why the homicide of a surgeon was committed in the remote rural village of Żurrieq by an aristocratic knight. I can only suggest one reason, admittedly speculative. On settling in Malta, the Order appointed a knight as captain of each town and village, however small or remote.

The armorial bearings of the Inguanez family inside Mdina Gate.

For three years, the captains had to live and sleep in the village and be responsible for law and order. Unfortunately, the list of the captains of Żurrieq does not seem to have survived. Was Pagano captain in 1563?

Pagano, from a noble Roman family, had professed in the Order in December 1550, the very first of that family to join the Hospitallers, but hardly the last. I have counted at least 15 others who followed his footsteps. In Vittoriosa, his affectionate nickname was Il Romanino, though his was to be anything but a distinguished career in Malta.

In July 1555, the Council had already found him guilty of violently brawling with Fra Giovanni de la Porta (a relapsing violent lout) and condemned them both to a double septena sine disciplina. This meant two weeks fasting on bread and water only, confined to their room, with prayers recited kneeling, but without flogging.

The Council ordered Pagano interrogated under torture. The prevalent legal doctrine required that suspects could only be found guilty if they admitted the charge. Some gentle persuasion from the rack, or the cavalletto or the strappo, put the judges’ mind at rest that they were condemning both the guilty and the innocent, without discrimination.

Fra Giovanni Battista’s trial before the Council took place on February 7, 1564. The elders found him guilty of the homicide of Spiglioti, sentenced him to spend two years imprisoned in Fort St Elmo, and to pay the surgeon’s children a hundred scudi compensation – a remarkably high sum.

In the next mention of him, on August 31, 1564, things take on a more dramatic turn. Pagano, transferred to Gozo to serve his sentence there, had escaped and disappeared from the islands. The Council hastily expelled him from the Order in his absence in the usual manner, tamquam membrum putridum et foetidum – amputated like a decomposing and stinking limb – and appointed commissioners to investigate and report how the break-out could have happened.

Is this the last we hear of Fra Giovanni Battista Pagano? Was he readmitted, after saying sorry? The evidence is unclear. With the Turkish invasion approaching inevitably, the need for young knights trained in warfare increased and the records start getting more haphazard – no minutes at all were kept during the Great Siege – knights had killing and not being killed as a priority more pressing than any bother about bureaucracy.

Grand Master Jean de Valette, who ruled over the Order and Malta when the three Żurrieq-related incidents occurred.

What we know is that a Fra Giovanni Battista Pagano became one of the iconic heroes in the desperate defence of Fort St Elmo. In June 1565, he died in excruciating pain when half his body caught fire. The besieged knights were experimenting with a new lethal weapon ‒ hoops of fire hurled from the bastions on the besiegers. The historian Vertot claims Grand Master de Valette himself had invented these huge flaming rings, never used elsewhere before. His companions rushed Pagano to the infirmary in Birgu, but he died on arrival. Was he collateral damage?

By sheer coincidence, immediately before the invasion, in February 1565, another nobleman from Rome, also Giovanni Battista Pagano, professed as a Hospitaller knight. He formed part of a large contingent from the Italian aristocracy who joined the Order to rush to the defence of Malta, when the Siege became inevitable. We will never know if the Siege martyr was the Żurrieq villain who came to Malta to kill, or his namesake, the one who came to Malta to die.

 A murder in 1560

Appointing a knight to be captain of Żurrieq did not seem to attract good luck on the incumbent. Only three years before the Spiglioti homicide, on September 29, 1560, the police informed the Council of the Order under Grand Master de Valette, that Fr Pierre de Rourre, captain of Żurrieq, had been murdered, and commissioners were routinely appointed to investigate and report back.

In a separate entry of the minutes, the council gave the enquiring officers unusual powers and instructions – to enter any home, whether belonging to knights or to laymen, to examine any blades, daggers or swords (enses, pugiones, gladios) and other pointed and cutting weapons and to interrogate all those suspected of the homicide of Rourre.

Was Pierre the victim’s real Christian name? Acquaintances referred to most French knights of those times by their nickname rather than by their baptismal name. In his list of all noblemen who enrolled in the French Langue, the historian Vertot only mentions one who could possibly be the doomed captain of Żurrieq: Fra Alderard de la Rouere, who professed in 1551.

Investigations seem to have encountered an impenetrable wall. No follow-ups on the death of the wretched Rourre seem recorded. One more cold case.

The first mention of Żurrieq I came across in the minutes of the Council, dated September 18, 1556, referred to hotly disputed civil litigation between two knights – Fra Jean de Very, captain of the village, and Fra Antonio Geufre, the lieutenant of the Turcopolier (honorary head of the extinct English Langue).

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Stanley Fiorini, without whose monumental corpus of research, parts of this paper would have been impossible, to Joan Abela and to Jeremy Debono for help from the National Library.