This forgotten tale buried in the archives of the Hospitaller knights is emblematic of an age when settling scores by violence proved widespread and almost acceptable, and private vendetta habitually deputised for a faltering administration of justice.

Homicide then still appealed as an easy, routine and almost natural solution to many disputes. I homed on the sequel of a cinquecento Mussolini saga in Malta for several reasons – for what it has in common with many other life stories of knights, and for what it has so unexplainably different.

Today, the Mussolini name only links with Benito, the fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to his execution in 1945.

It conjures a dark inter-war period when democracy took a backseat, and dreams of an imperial Italy ended disastrously defeated in an alliance with a bloodthirsty Nazi satrap. The Mussolini family seem to have had their origins in two branches, one in Bologna, the other in Venice.

Uncertainty surrounds the origins of the two Mussolini knights of Malta. To be admitted to the ranks of the Order of St John, they necessarily passed through at least three stringent tests – untainted nobility throughout four generations, not a whiff of Jewish or infidel DNA, and whether born in legitimate wedlock (except for bastard offspring of monarchs – those were joyfully embraced).

Portrait of Grand Master Martin Garzes

Fail one test, and wave goodbye to any ambition of joining the Hospitallers. Since Giuseppe and Paolo Mussolini appear repeatedly in the records as knights of St John, they certainly satisfied all the three pre-requisites.

But then again, some pieces of the puzzle do not square up. When Sebastiano del Pozzo published his invaluable list of all the Italian noblemen who had joined the Order from the year 1136 to 1737, together with their city of origin and the date of profession, the two Malta Mussolini do not appear, nor do any other knights of that surname. This omission remains rather curious as del Pozzo distinguished himself by his scrupulous thoroughness.

In truth, del Pozzo did sometimes use his rather capricious discretion as to who to include and who to omit. He airbrushed out of his aristocratic lists – over 300 pages long – some Italian knights convicted of dishonourable crimes, including those expelled from the Order for homosexual offences.

Dust cover of the 1928 book by Giovanni Dolcetti on the origins of the Mussolini family.

The research into the Mussolinis’ membership in the Order is further hampered. 

Every male nobleman aspiring to become a Hospitaller as a knight of justice had to submit a file containing his proofs of nobility – family trees, notarial attestations, certificates, to be scrutinised with a powerful watchmaker’s loupe by an unpardoning commission of elders.

The archives of the Order at the National Library still house these hundreds of nobility dossiers. But the two Mussolini files are, quite inexplicably and frustratingly, missing.

Curiously, Benito Mussolini never claimed any noble ancestry.

When, in 1928, the historian Giovanni Dolcetti was researching to establish a link between the Bologna Mussolinis and the more aristocratic Venice Mussolinis, he only published the first part of his work – about the Venice Mussolinis.

The Duce himself reputedly vetoed the publication of the second part, as the populist dictator had no desire to be identified as elitist.

I came across Paolo and Giuseppe Mussolini first cited in the Maltese records on September 12, 1596, just after the Order had celebrated the anniversary of the victory of the Great Siege. 

They may have been mentioned before, but, if they were, the entry or entries escaped me. And they make their entrance with a loud bang – nothing less than a charge of murder.

The Mussolini family seem to have had their origins in two branches, one in Bologna, the other in Venice

Every entry in the Books of the Council refers to them jointly. Were they brothers? In the absence of their family history documents, we can only speculate. The Latin entries themselves always call them Fratres Josephus et Paulus.

But knights were always referred to as Fra or Fratres – brothers in its symbolical dimension, so Fratres is not helpful at all.

The criminal court of the Order – the sguardio – that day listed three cases on its docket: Fra Antonio de Gregorio stood accused of violence against an unnamed woman; the reverend Perachi Sabuchi had to answer a charge of having failed to attend to his religious duties in St John’s; and a commission of enquiry was appointed to investigate and report on the murder of Gaspare del Fosso by Fra Giuseppe and Fra Paolo  Mussolini in civitate Rhegio, which I take to mean today’s Reggio Calabria.

The commission included some big names in the hierarchy of the Order: Francesco Cibo, Pietro Zaffana, Gio Battista de Juanla, and Jacobo Pistoia.

Portrait of a 16th-century Italian knight of Malta by Giorgio Vasari.

By a bizarre coincidence, another Gaspare del Fosso, archbishop of Reggio Calabria, had died only four years earlier, in 1592. One of the frustrations embedded in this narrative is that we know virtually nothing about the killers and even less about their victims.

The grand master and Council of the Order held on tightly to the prerogative of claiming exclusive criminal jurisdiction to judge any crime committed anywhere by, or against, a knight of Malta.

This extraordinary claim had been ratified by the Roman pontiffs and generally recognised by all Catholic sovereigns, though occasionally it did give rise to conflicts.

The Mussolini murders again hit the agenda of the council, presided over by Grand Master Martin Garzes, in June the following year when a new commission substituted the previous one, now including Alessandro Benzo and Gabriele Simeone, and again 10 days later when Andrea de Ciambari was added.

Portrait of Grand Master Alof de Wignacourt

Fra Gabriele Simeone was one of the hothead companions of Caravaggio who later took part in the violent brawl that led to the imprisonment of the painter and his subsequent expulsion from the Order.

Unfortunately, the entries in the Books of the Council are most ungenerous with information.

They almost never volunteer any details, like the date of the crime, the motive – vendetta, passion, robbery, excessive self-defence, the injustice suffered? Nor the dynamics: did the victim die by firearms, by suffocation, by poison, by stabbing, following a beating? Nothing. Those details all went in the reports by the commissioners which no longer exist.

At the end of August, the council met again to consider a petition by the two accused Mussolinis regarding their trial being held in their absence. This shows that by this time, they had not yet been returned to Malta and were still detained in Italy, likely in the massive Bastione dei Cavalieri di Malta in Lamezia Terme, Calabria.

This petition did not benefit the accused. The council adjourned to September 12, 1597 – exactly a year to the day the criminal proceedings had started. The grand master in council passed solemn judgement that morning. They pronounced the two accused guilty and ordered that they be defrocked and expelled from the Order. In practice, in cases of homicide, treason and sodomy, that amounted to a sentence of death.

The Bastione dei Cavalieri di Malta in Calabria where the Mussolini knights were likely detained.

The Order of St John had long before abolished capital punishment for knights from its arsenal of criminal punishments, but its crafty lawyers left a convenient loophole wide open. While the Order considered putting a knight to death unseemly, the problem faded out of sight if the delinquent was not a knight anymore. 

Being no longer a Hospitaller, he could now be handed over to the lay criminal system – with the loud and frightening message:  we could not execute him when he was a knight. He is now a layman, not a knight. Deal with this murderer as you deem fit. Up to the end of Grand Master Verdalle’s rule, the council frequently minuted a twofold deliberation: expulsion of the convict from the Order and referral of his case to the ordinary lay criminal courts.

This did not happen with the Mussolinis. In December, no doubt after plenty of behind-the-scenes negotiation, the council met again and ‘suspended’ their expulsion from the Order. An inevitable step before a routine pardon. Which came four years later, on May 18, 1601, just after the appointment of the new Grand Master, Alof de Wignacourt.

Everyone rejoiced at Wignacourt’s election, but Gaspare del Fosso did not express an opinion.

Acknowledgement

All my thanks to Jeremy Debono for his prompt assistance.