The Knights Hospitaller by John Carr

Author:John Carr [Carr, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Ancient, General, Religion, Christianity
ISBN: 9781473858909
Google: tH4TDgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2016-10-30T22:10:55+00:00

Chapter 9

Rhodes: The Good Years

Settling in – the Tongues – the typical Knight – ouster of Villaret – seizure of Smyrna – naval tactics – Ottoman advances – effects of the papal schism – Juan Fernandez of Heredia – debacle at Nikopolis – Rhodes fortified

Once established in Rhodes, the Knights of Saint John probably did not regard that island as a permanent settlement. Just as when they had fled from Acre to Cyprus nearly twenty years before, they saw their new home as a base from which to harass Muslims in the Mediterranean and plan a hoped-for return to some sort of crusading action. But, especially in the first ten or so years, the need to settle in and reorganize took precedence over everything else. Villaret and the Knights:

gave thanks to God and the Virgin Mary for the wealth and abundance that had come to them. They built a great castle and conquered all around, collecting many fine men who wished to come to Rhodes to reconnoitre and to colonize the island.1

There was plenty to do. As well as with the incessant raids by the Turks, the Knights as papal subjects had to contend with the mistrust of the local Greek Orthodox people and clergy. Always conscious that they were a foreign body in an ethnically-Greek island, the Hospitallers were compelled to maintain a tightly-stratified military organization that from the outset formed a feudal elite whose object was self-preservation through self-perpetuation. The Knights of Rhodes have often been described as a state within a state, but that is not quite correct; there was no wider Rhodian state to speak of, as Byzantine power was all but eclipsed and the Turks were making bold inroads into an island that until 1309 was essentially without a government. Theoretically, the Knights were warrior-monks still, though the steady stream of recruits arriving from the West included all manner of men, many very far from saintly. Theoretically, the main policy continued to be the fight against the infidel Saracen and Turk; as late as 1378 Saint Catherine of Siena could honestly adjure the Hospitaller Prior of Pisa to ‘bathe yourself in the blood of Christ crucified’.2 But all too often, the advantages of life as a colonial power in a pleasant climate became ends in themselves.

The Grand Master continued to be the head of state, as it were, and in the first decade of the Order’s sojourn in Rhodes the office under Fulk de Villaret arrogated greater powers to itself. The Grand Master, who had of course to be a Knight, was answerable only to the pope, and like him, theoretically held office for life. He was chosen by thirteen electors in the last stage of an election after the lesser offices were filled. Theoretically he ruled in consultation with his Council, though there was a check on his power in the form of the Chapter General which met every few years. The rest of the hierarchy remained essentially unchanged since the Outremer era, with

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