Twelve persons were put to death in Malta in 1672 following the murder by a 19-year-old girl of her father, her mother and two infants. A pamphlet, printed in Bologna, records in great detail this gory Maltese drama.

Though anonymous, the author stated at the very outset that he is Maltese “Malta, mia Patria”. That chapbook made sure that the outstandingly atrocious features of this cluster of crimes, and their no less atrocious aftermath, found resonance throughout Europe.

Translated into English, the full title of this pamphlet runs thus:

A new and detailed / report / of a diabolical resolution / that came to pass in the capital city / of Malta / of a 19-year-old girl who, possessed / by the devil, has murdered her own father/ and mother, and two children, one aged three / months, and the other 15. / With the severe, and just punishment meted out by / justice, and a warning she gave / the people before her death. / Happened on the 10th of August of the year 1672. / In Bologna, (printed) by Giacomo Monti, 1672. By permission of the authorities.

Today, this pamphlet is exceptionally rare. I am aware of only one copy that has survived – housed in the university library of the law faculty of Turin. The library of the University of Malta had a copy too (but by a different printer, Antonio Malatesta), which is apparently mislaid, and the inventories of the National Library never listed one.

Extreme rarity is often the fate of pamphlets. Though printed in large numbers, few thought them worthy of preservation. Book jargon refers to them as ephemera, objects with no staying power, disposable after use, papers no one knows where they go to die. It is estimated that only one in 10,000 British ephemera from the 16th century survives today.

The year 1672 did not serve on Malta anything particularly eventful. The good Grand Master Nicholas Cotoner ruled over the peaceful and fairly prosperous islands – until this diabolical series of murders disrupted the monotonous routine of the quotidian.

I will follow the story as it unfolds in almost literal translation from the quaint original Italian. The author uses long and convoluted sentences, with a punctuation that at times seems distinctly eager to be unhelpful. That accounts for a few hesitations in the translation.

The moral introduction goes along the (familiar) lines of ‘Oh what has the world come to “Do not wonder, o good reader, if you daily watch the world going from bad to worse, and commerce declining, and if the heavens visit us with punishments like earthquakes or other curses, as human evil has so advanced that, disregarding the commandments of God, very few observe them; would to God that I were lying in what I am saying; I will not be recounting events that occurred many years ago, but what happened on the 10th of August of this year 1672, in the most noble capital city of Malta, my native land, a happening so barbarous and cruel, as to make the eyebrows of the reader arch with dismay and the hair of those who listen curl with marvel.”

Isabella warned her: ‘Mother, you are determined not to let me have what I want most. You will pay for it dearly’

The facts start after this introduction. In the most famous city of Valletta dwelt a noble couple who were very rich but also most unhappy for not having any descendants on whom to will their great wealth after their death. In their quest for a son or a daughter they daily distributed large sums of money to the poor, provided marriage dowries to girls who did not have one, and performed other pious works of mercy – all to obtain from heaven the grace of conceiving a child.

Some time passed, and the heavens answered their prayers. The wife gave birth to a daughter who they named Isabella and who grew to become a young girl of unsurpassable beauty. By the age of 15, passersby stopped to admire her, and young men suoi pari (her age? of her condition?) started vying with each other pressing her father to allow them to take her as their wife. Because, the author adds quite cynically, besides securing her great beauty, they did not have any great aversion to the prospect of inheriting all that wealth at the death of her parents.

But Satan, always the enemy of our peace, declared a malevolent war on that unfortunate family, never desisting before its total destruction. To procure the fulfilment of their evil destiny, in front of the palace where this family resided, lived a very rich merchant who had three incomparably handsome children, the eldest of whom, 19 years old, had been baptised Ferdinando.

He had many accomplishments, among others that of playing music masterfully, and he indulged in this pastime most of the time. Isabella fell in love with his music, but above all, with him, though they never exchanged a word or a letter.

On his part, Ferdinando distressed himself knowing that she was noble by birth and wealthy, while he, though equally rich in worldly goods, was handicapped by his lower birth. His pain increased as he had come to know how others of higher condition than him, had already asked her father to have her in marriage. And this disheartened him so much that within a few days he was contemplating death.

One day, he imprudently spoke of his love to a wicked old woman who worked in Isabella’s household, and she divulged what he had told her in confidence. When Ferdinando came to know of this, without showing his grief openly, he locked himself up in his room, and gave vent to his jealousy by speaking aloud to himself:

“O wretched Isabella, what does it profit you to be young, beautiful and rich and to be by so many coveted as wife, if the person on whom you had placed all your desires to become your husband now despises you and refuses to see you and, what hurts most, leaves you for a new lover; and such is the passion felt as to almost succumb to his pain.”

Either I am missing something, or the reasoning in this garbled paragraph does not strike me as being quite consequential. Thankfully the prose gets clearer after this.

One day, Isabella, having ascertained the reason why Ferdinando was not responding to her love, wrote him a letter and sent it by her crafty old retainer in whom she confided everything, to make him understand that he should persist in her love for her, and not to be disheartened because so many had asked her father to be allowed to marry her. She reassured him that, though he was of humble birth, she would promote him to nobility through his marriage to her, and among many other things she wrote, she added that ultimately it was she who had to say yes, not her parents.

Ferdinando answered that he did not want to make enemies of those to whom her father had almost promised Isabella as spouse.

Isabella flew into a rage, and the following morning, wearing her richest clothes and jewels, she visited her poor mother, who already knew of the girl’s determination (that Ferdinando was to be hers at all costs), but, not to upset her further, did not find the courage to tell her anything.

Isabella, shedding all shame, warned her: “Mother, for many days now you have been asking me the reason for my sadness, but I know that you are already aware of it. Yet you are all determined not to let me have what I want most. Now allow me to speak to you frankly, since you want to hear it directly from my very lips, I tell you that all my misery is the result of love, and as you will not satisfy me in what I desire, I say it to you loudly that you will pay for it dearly.”

She armed herself with a long dagger and plunged the blade into her father’s heart with such violence that its point emerged from his back

Leaving her sad mother overcome by grief, she returned to her room, where, with renewed boldness and in the grips of fury, she wrote another letter to Ferdinando her beloved, to tell him to be, the following night at seven hours, behind her palace, near the garden gate at the Marina (Porta di Monte), as she had important matters to discuss with him.

She sent this letter by means of her nurse to whom she also gave a large sum of money, to buy, in great secrecy, two sets of men’s clothes, and to hire a felucca well manned by sailors, without holding back on the costs. She insisted on the utmost secrecy – the thing that counted most – and that the boat should not depart before the seventh hour, when she would meet her loved one in the agreed place.

Meanwhile, she got hold of the most valuable jewels belonging to her mother and all the cash she could lay her hands on and packed everything in a small trunk trimmed in red velvet.

All this time, the unworthy girl had been plotting, like a modern Nero (the Roman emperor had murdered his mother Agrippina and his step-brother Britannicus), how to avenge herself against her wretched father and mother.

When finally the night arrived, she waited for her parents to fall asleep, and at the fourth hour, this devil incarnate entered the bedroom where the unhappy father and the unfortunate mother were resting. She armed herself with a long dagger – hear and shudder at how barbaric and inhuman she was – and she plunged the blade into her father’s heart, with such violence that its point emerged from his back.

To kill her mother this sacrilegious creature cracked her skull with a large hammer, causing her brain to fly out. While dealing the blow to her sleeping mother, she opened her cursed mouth to address her parents thus: “Receive death, o unworthy parents, by the hand of the one to whom you refused life by thwarting her happiness”.

This diabolical parricide and matricide, not satisfied with having soiled her hands with the blood of those who had given her life, also wanted to wash them in the blood of two little babies, children of the nurse, one three months old and the other 15; these her parents had arranged should sleep with them in their bedroom, as they loved them like their own children. They slept in a cot at the foot of the matrimonial bed.

In the commotion, they had burst out crying, as if invoking vengeance from heaven. Isabella, hearing their cries and fearing this would attract attention from others in the house, and that her crimes would be discovered, undid a crimson cord from which a large mirror was suspended, and tying a hangman’s knot at either end made those two innocent creatures suffer a horrible death, one that would have suited her much better.

Having strangled them, she left them hanging on the cord from the same hook where the mirror had been. And, to make sure they were dead, she also stabbed them with the dagger she had already used on her father.

Only after having ripped their chest open, did she turn her back and leave that miserable tragedy behind, heading in high spirits for the Marina, as if she had done something worthy of applause, but in truth, driven only by the sensuality which had enslaved her. The wicked nurse was already waiting for her there.

Isabella did not know, or did not recall that God, who shows compassion for human frailty, can also scourge with terrible punishments those who disdain His mercy.

No sooner had the felucca started on its flight, than it was discovered stealthily leaving in the dark and was captured by another vessel well armed with soldiers and firearms; the guard ship suspected that the felucca was carrying slaves who had escaped from the galleys and were heading for the Barbary Coast.

When the guards boarded the felucca, they did not find any runaway slaves, but uncovered all the other evils. God permitted this to ensure that the unworthy creature would not get away arrogantly with her barbaric cruelty.

Captured and exposed, they were taken to the place where she had committed the brutal crimes. They confessed everything and denied nothing, and the following morning, the nine miserable sailors who had been manning the felucca were executed with no need felt for a trial.

The following Saturday, the nurse was hanged, her body quartered and the four hulks of flesh placed on display round the Marina.

Little did the defences Ferdinando put up serve the pitiable and innocent innamorato. All he obtained was the grace of being beheaded by the blow of an axe.

The executioner paraded Isabella through the city on a cart, tormenting her flesh with pincers, and her hand was cut off in front of her father’s home. She requested half an hour’s time, and ordered that the cart carrying her to her execution be all draped in black fabric and that she be allowed to wear a black robe with a large bonnet in the guise of a turban, with an inscription on it ‘you who do not know, learn from me’.

When all this was done, she addressed the crowds, causing them to shed copious tears. She said: “Mirror yourselves in me, o sons and daughters, in that Isabella who, for refusing to follow her parents’ will, has now come to the state you see her in; and o you fathers, discipline your children from an early age if you do not want to see them ending like me, besides having to account for your deeds to the goodness of God”.

And thus Isabella ended her miserable life at the age of 19.

To be concluded.