MALTA TREASURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20690, 12 April 1929, Page 10

MALTA TREASURE

OWNERSHIP IN DISPUTE. FOUR DISTINCT CLAIMANTS. LONDON, April 3.* Four heavy gold caskets, inlaid with diamonds and other precious stones, the contents including a fragment of the tone cross, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, reputed to have been painted by St. Luke, and a relic of St.’ John the Baptist's right hand, known as “The Malta Treasure,” are the subject of four rival claims, says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Mail. The claimants are Russians, anti-Bol-shevik Russians, a group of British bonkers, and the Knights of Malta, to whom Signor Mussolini recently restored legal domicile,in their ancient stronghold at Rhodes. The knights handed the caskets to the Russian Emperor, Paul, when the French seized Malta in 170 D. They eventually went into the possession of the ex-Empress Marie, who passed them on to Russian ecclesiastics. By them they were lodged in the Russian church at Berlin, which assigned them to English bankers as security for a loan of £48,000, which up to the present has not been repaid.