With reference to the article The Grand Master We Know (December 10), please allow me to add to Valette’s woes.

He was not the 49th Master of the Hierosolymitan Order (counting Blessed Gerard as the first, others count from Puy). Valette considered himself the 48th from Gerard (47th from Puy).

I agree he was renumbered twice but this happened well after his lifetime: the first happened in the 1730s, the second sometime in the 19th century. Both occasions resulted by the name of Riccardo Caracciolo being slipped into revised registers of “recognised” Masters.

Caracciolo was appointed Master directly by the Pope in 1383 to replace Jean Heredia (who supported Anti-Popery). By 1395, all of Caracciolo’s acts of appointment were formally zeroed. This was the official position and there is nothing to suggest Valette ever revised this.

The historian Olfert Dapper (1686) does not list Caracciolo as Master. Vertot (1726) did the same, however, he did produce a numbered portrait that was captioned “pending a schism”. (Might this explain why his book was included in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum?)

Something must have happened during Despuig’s Magistracy as we find Sebastiano Paoli listing Caracciolo in his Codice diplomatico (1737).

Apparently, the reprieve was short-lived as could be seen from Caracciolo’s no-show in the very precise Manuel Chronologique et Généalogique des Dynasties Souverains de l’Europe (1797).

With the benefit of hindsight of centuries, the reason for Caracciolo’s second exclusion is clear: staunch aspirants of full sovereignty like Pinto and Rohan would easily have realised that Caracciolo’s name could be used as a dangerous precedent for Papal interference.

This risk was effectively resolved in 1798 when (courtesy of my ancestor and others) the usurping Order was booted out and was no more, at least insofar as Malta is concerned.

Not much time after that, the Pope had attempted directly to appoint two Masters. These were Ruspoli and Tommasi.

The first declined because the blatant interference challenged what the authentic Order last stood for.

The second accepted and, from thereon, a Magistral lineage has been propagated from Gerard through Caracciolo.

Valette might have objected but being conveniently deceased, he’s now also lumbered with the “49 problem”!