African Slave Remains Found Among Skeletons In Żejtun Church’s Grisly Secret Corridor
The secrets of the skeletons inside St Gregory’s church in Żejtun are slowly being revealed, with the ethnicities of some of the remains finally being uncovered.
The picturesque little church houses a dark secret – a secret, U-shaped passage discovered by accident in 1969 houses the bones of around 92 skeletons.
The original church was among the first ten parishes registered in Malta, listed back in 1436. Originally dedicated to St Catherine, it soon became known as St Gregory’s church as an annual Easter procession would often be held in its vicinity over the years.
However, major questions remained about the remains hidden inside: who did the skeletons belong to?
A new study funded by the Small Initiatives Scheme in collaboration with Heritage Malta, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and Wirt iż-Żejtun found that at least five of the skeletons belonged to women from Africa, most probably slaves who served in the homes of noble families in Żejtun, TVM reported.
The new findings come after the craniums (the part of the skull that houses the brain) of these women were studied in closer detail.
In Malta, female slaves would often live in the same home as their owners, and were often baptised and even registered as local parishioners in their village.
And thanks to carbon dating, it is believed that these specific slaves lived between 1400 and 1850. Even more interesting is that soil was found on the remains, indicating that they may have been buried at first, before being exhumed and placed in this secret corridor.
One reason this may have happened was for the bodies to be left to rest in a sacred environment, like the church. However, it could also be that the slaves belonged to a local noble family – the Bonicis – who owned a private chapel nearby. When the chapel was demolished in 1830, the remains may have been moved into the secret passageway.
These new finds pour cold water on some of the legends surrounding the origins of the skeletons.
One popular legend has it that the skeletons belong to a group of fearful Maltese residents fleeing the Ottomon siege in 1614, who chose to hide in the passageway, before dying inside, their bodies left in the darkness for eternity.
The daughter of the man who discovered the skeletons opened up about the moment her father accidentally fell upon the grisly remains in an interview with the Times of Malta in 2012:
“After more than 42 years of silence, Grezzju Vella, who was only 16 at the time, narrated the horrible day of this gruesome discovery. He had been doing some work near the dome of the church, believed to be one of the earliest domes in Malta, together with his uncle, Carmelo Spiteri, and a fellow worker, Ċikku Zammit. At one point he got fed up and unwittingly began to scrape at a narrow crack between two stone slabs. When the crack widened, he threw a stone inside, expecting to hear it go down into the church, but instead it fell nearby and he realised that there was something underneath the roof.”
“Mr Vella called the others and soon they were joined by Fr Palmier, who was responsible for the church, and by ĠanMarì Debono, who was the sacristan. On the removal of a large stone, a dark void was revealed and since only Mr Vella could pass through the hole in the roof, he was tied to a rope and given a box of matches so that he could inspect the site.”
“Eventually the boy came upon a number of human skeletons and got a terrible fright which left him deeply traumatised. In fact Mr Vella never returned to this church again, notwithstanding that he lives only a few kilometres away. It was only last year that he bravely ventured into the passages and nervously took a look at the human bones, now stacked at the far corner of the third corridor.”
Editor’s note – the son of ĠanMarì Debono contests the above story, stating that his father was the one to discover the skeletons, and not Grezzju Vella, referring to the book ‘The Old Church of St Gregory at Żejtun’ by Walter Zahra.
Have you ever visited St Gregory’s church in Żejtun?
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