Tour Guide, Malta, Malta
| 14 mins read
“BRING ME THE HEAD OF STEFANO BUONACCORSI !!!”
Sir Oliver Starkey a resilient English Catholic Knight in times of great tribulation.
The Russian Centre for Science and Culture has the privilege to be housed in a prominent house by the Co-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in a city which Sir Walter Scott had proclaimed was "built by Gentlemen for Gentlemen”.
Ever since Russian Diplomacy acquired the house in number 36, Merchants Street Valletta and hoisted the Russian Flag on the corner with Santa Lucia Street, there have been continued reports of hauntings which were even reported in the Times of Malta as far back as 1996.
When the late Dr. Elizaveta Zolina headed the Russian Centre for Science and Culture, the persistent stalking both in the private quarters and in the Library area of the premises forced Mme Zolina to seek the help of the local church and conduct exorcism rites and hold mass inside the Centre itself. This, however, did little or nothing at all to convince the entity to leave the premises.
Reports of hauntings by the earthbound spirit persisted through time and the entity keeps manifesting itself from time to time. No one knows what the future will bring, but what is sure is that almost all Diplomatic representatives have experienced its presence directly or indirectly. As a matter of fact, some of the officers preferred to rent out living space elsewhere than spend the nights in the house.
A faded white marble slab on the corner of Merchants street adjacent to Santa Lucia Street marks the building as belonging to an English Knight Sir Oliver Starkey so this is where our journey in time begins:
According to the records published in the History of Parliament; the House of Commons 1509-1558; “Oliver Starkey was born in Antwerp Belgium in 1523, being the illegitimate son of Roger Starkey and Elizabeth of Antwerp and was educated in Louvain later to become a Member of the Order of St.John of Jerusalem, Commander of Quenington Gloucestershire, Grand Master La Valette’s Turcopolier in 1558 and Latin Secretary to the Grand Master in 1560 and titular Balif of Eagle in 1569….”
All the above evidence proves that this highly important English Knight was the right-hand-man of the French Grand Master in Malta’s hour of destiny in 1565 when the Ottoman Army Sieged Malta for three months. More so it was these dramatic events which wrote Malta’s name in blood on the Geopolitical map of the 16th Century, and which fused Starkey’s destiny to Malta for the rest of his life. It is no secret that he was planning to return to England prior to the Turkish attack on Malta.
It is also no secret that Starkey had acquaintances in high ranking places like Cardinal Reginald Pole and kinship with Sir Richard Brooke which could have most likely favourably influenced the English crown in the times of Queen Mary after the destruction which was brought about by the reforms of King Henry VIII which had practically wiped out the English langue within the Order itself. 36,000 English subjects have lost their lives in a span of 12 years because of the religious reforms. The Tyburn Church of Martys near Marble Arch and Edgeware Road London bears witness to this. Evidence also exists of the persecution and execution of some of Cardinal Reginald Pole’s family members in England which was commissioned by Henry VIII.
Sir Oliver, accepted to undertake the daunting task to revive the English House of Catholic Knights ‘per favorem and ad honorem’ which meant that he would not reap any financial benefits from his initiative. He was to live through financial difficulties throughout the last 23 years of his life after the great siege, not that he hadn’t had financial hardships in his youth as well. Throughout his indigent existence, continued to serve as Balif of Eagle, Grand Prior of England and Lieutenant Turcopolier until his death.
Prior to taking up residence in Valletta in the House on Merchants Street, a property conceded to him by the Order, in his final years during the post De Valette era, Sir Oliver Starkey had initially lived in Birgu on Majjistral Street, next to house number 40 which was serving as the Auberge for the English Knights in Malta prior to the conflict King Henry VIII had with the Roman Catholic Church. His house was just around the corner from the Auberge of Provence and Auvergne, previously the official residence of Knight De Valette prior to becoming elected Grand Master of the Order.
In Elizabethan England, Italy and Malta were regarded as exotic destinations in the 16th century. Renowned English playwrights from that era like Sir Christopher Marlowe immortalised Malta’s name in his play “The Jew of Malta” in 1589. There is evidence that this play had achieved considerable box office success at the Rose Theatre in the outskirts of London. This level of success was only to be surpassed by Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe. It is no secret that Christopher Marlowe was himself a spy on her Majesty’s Secret Service, working for Sir Francis Wolsingham’s intelligence service. Marlowe was later to die a horrid death with a dagger stuck in his right eye after a brawl in a pub in Deptford Kent we are led to believe.
Sir Oliver Starkey, was 41 years older than Sir Christopher Marlowe, who was born in 1564, one year before Malta’s Great Siege. In turn, French Grand Master Jean Parisot De Valette was 27 years older than Starkey and served as his fatherly figure. It is not known if Starkey and Marlowe ever met, but one thing is for sure, they had a common aim of keeping the Old Roman Catholic Faith afloat on the British mainland. Marlowe in England was labelled homosexual and was framed with 40 articles of Blasphemy and Heresy. Starkey was the victim of rumours of a homosexual relationship with the Grand Master. Such was the arsenal of foul tongued gossipers in Malta and beyond its shores.
Thanks to the research of International Judge and Historian Dr.Giovanni Bonello it is now revealed the Jean de Valette was throughout his Monastic and Chivalrous life, not abiding by his vote of chastity for quite some time. So much so that he had a mistress from the island of Rhodes by the name of Catarina Grecque who bore the Grandmaster an illegitimate boy and girl, Barthelemy de Valette and Isabella Guasconi. After the victory over the Turks, Barthelemy was sent to the Court of the French King Charles IX who acknowledged him and gave him a title, while young and beautiful Isabella Guasconi was wed to a Florentine Gentleman by the name of Stefano Buonaccorsi, a Florentine gentleman. The wedding which was held in what is today the Conventual Church of St. Laurence in Birgu and the daughter was passed on to the husband by the ‘Godfather’ De Valette. Most probably Sir Oliver Starkey was present for the auspicious occasion paid for by the Grand Master for ‘private reasons’.
In July 1568 trouble ensued. Stefano Buonaccorsi had become jealous of his beautiful young wife and suspected she was seeing someone else, whereupon he plunged a dagger into her heart and killed her. For men, honour was paramount, even more, important than the life of the spouse. Such was the unwritten rule to which all men abided. Stefano Buonaccorsi hastily stole his wife’s jewels, took his belongings and vanished into thin air, nowhere to be seen again.
The scene which awaited Grand Master De Valette was to herald him to his own a grave broken-hearted. The sight of the lifeless body of his love child oozing blood, he could not bear. Sometime later after praying in the chapel of Our Lady of Philermos, he suffered a stroke and high fever eventually to expire on the 21st of August 1568. Sir Oliver Starkey was to witness all this first hand a person of trust to the French Grandmaster.
In the days following Isabella’s murder, De Valette was frantic trying to apprehend Buonaccorsi at all cost, and bring him to justice but to no avail. De Valette all of a sudden was bending the rules and giving orders to the Order’s military sections to which the infamous crime did not correspond forcing them to take unwarranted action. The horrendous crime committed solely pertained to the jurisdiction of the Civil Law Courts but De Valette kept insisting and hoping against hope that the murderer of Isabella would be apprehended. All this embarrassment had to be witnessed by Sir Oliver Starkey first hand. Obviously, seeing such a heroic fearless front line personage like De Valette so distraught and desperate would have left a traumatic effect on anyone and even the English Knight was only human after all.
What happened to De Valette was probably karmic. Less than ten years before this tragic event unfolded, he had behaved as a tyrannical Grandmaster in the case of Guzeppi Callus (1505-1561), a medical doctor and Mdina Gentlemen who had confronted him and went as far as reporting the Grand Master to King Philip II of Spain for unfair taxation measures against Maltese citizens. Guzeppi Callus ended up hanging from the Gallows of Saqqajja Hill convicted of treason against the order of St.John of Jerusalem. De Valette went as far as to dispossess Doctor Callus of the property he had at Simblija limits of Rabat Malta.
De Valette was evidently temperamental and at times impulsive. One such case was when he decapitated numbers of Turkish prisoners of war and shot their heads instead of cannonballs into Turkish lines after what the Turks had done to Fort St. Elmo. On that occasion, he has aroused much criticism for his actions and Sir Oliver Starkey was a first-hand witness to all the fury and embarrassment caused. The life of the Order was hanging on a thread. The months after the Great Siege were to bring with them insubordination, a laissez-faire attitude among the knights who had survived the ordeal and chaos. This was comprehensible.
Sir Oliver Starkey surely was not totally comfortable living in the shadow of such tyranny but he was left with little choice. However, he himself was not lacking in severity when it came to handing down sentences to other Knights who went astray, or when it came to administering discipline in matters concerning loyalty and obligations to the Order. Considering that the Roman Inquisition was yet to establish itself fully in Birgu in 1575, on the 13th September 1561 Sir Oliver was commissioned to investigate disorders onboard galleys of the eastern caravan. The following year he was granted inquisitorial powers to search galleys, auberges and houses of the Order and to seize heretical writings in the light of a suspected invasion by the Turks.
The Sandilands case was soon to follow. John Sandilands was a Scottish knight and suspected heretic. Sir Sandilands was to be accused and found guilty of stealing a Crucifix and Chalice from a church in Birgu, eventually to defrocked and executed by the Maltese Criminal Court. Starkey was even granted special powers to inspect the island’s defences and food reserves.
Upon the demise of GM De Valette and his lying in state in the Lady of Philermo Chapel in Birgu, the remains of De Valette were transferred on a Funeral Barge across the Grand Harbour accompanied by four of the Admiral’s Galleys to the new city on Mount Sceberras which was to bear his name and which at the time of the funeral was still a building site. Sir Oliver Starkey with a torch in hand solemnly followed the bier carried by Priests to the church of Our Lady of Victories where he was initially laid to rest according to his Will until St. John’s Co-Cathedral was built in 1580 and De Valette’s mortal remains transferred to the crypt where he lies today. The inscription present in the Crypt ta’ St.John’s was penned by Sir Oliver himself:
Here lies La Valette.
Worthy of eternal honour,
He who was once the scourge of Africa and Asia,
And the shield of Europe,
Whence he expelled the barbarians by his Holy Arms,
Is the first to be buried in this beloved city,
Whose founder he was.
In April 1565, Sir Thomas Smith, while at Marseilles in his French embassy, wrote of Starkey:
“men doth give him a very good report for wisdom and also for valiantness. But he is very poor and not able without more help than he has of the order there to maintain his estate. It is no news to hearProbitas Laudatur et Alget. I perceive yet he is (as naturally all men be) desirous to return home to his country and very fain would know the Queen’s Majesty’s pleasure touching his commandery and that her Highness would not be offended with him for tarrying there [Malta] being not commanded to the contrary ... He hath also beside the commandery some other patrimony in England of which he hath long time had no profit. By that I can perceive if he do come home he can be content to conform himself to our religion ...”
The beginning of the Great Siege of Malta in May 1565 probably changed Starkey’s outlook. As Latin secretary to Grand Master De Valette Starkey was probably in constant attendance on him; he took part in the council called by De Valette when the siege began and had command of the English post at Birgu, with a force of Maltese and Greeks stationed right opposite what is today the Bighi Naval Hospital in Kalkara in the absence of any other Englishmen. The post was a strong one, and Starkey’s secretarial duties probably occupied more of his time than fighting; he is not mentioned by the chroniclers of the siege as taking part in any of its principal battles or incidents but would have stood by De Valette’s side every hour that passed in the hope that Europe would send help. He was granted a pension by the order and continued to live in the English lodge in Birgu and later, presumably, in Valletta. He took part in several of the precedence disputes that seemed to constitute the main business of the knights in peacetime, and became titular Bailiff of Eagle, Lincolnshire, in 1569. He composed the Latin epitaph on la Valette’s tomb in 1568, and is said to have been—but was almost certainly not—buried in the grandmaster's crypt 20 years later. He had probably remained in Malta and perhaps supplemented his pension from the order, as did James Shelley, by acting as an agent for English merchants. Neither the date nor the place of Starkey’s death is known; he was certainly in Malta on December 1583 but died before April 1586, when a new bailiff of Eagle was appointed.
No image of Sir Oliver survives although it is said that there was a painting featuring him and other English knights which is now lost. However, descriptions from the apparitions in the building of the Russian Centre describe him as a strikingly handsome blonde man of refined taste.
Considering their lives altogether, I find myself at a crossroads and am baffled to think who sinned the most, if it were Sir Oliver or De Valette. It would not surprise me if it were actually to be De Valette ‘s spirit responsible for the haunting considering the prevailing temperament of the spectre and turbulent life which the Fra Jean Parisot had experienced.
It is known that Starkey in his will had left sums of money for Mass for the repose of his soul however Mass was discontinued. Dr.Zolina with her husband decided to pay for Mass once every three months when it was claimed that the hauntings subsided.
We are yet to uncover the sins which oblige Sir Oliver to walk the corridors of the Russian Centre Valletta perpetually. My the Lord have mercy on his soul. May he rest in peace. Pray for him.
Copyright: Stephen Florian
October 2017