Islands and Military Orders, c.1291-c.1798

Emanuel Buttigieg, Simon Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317111962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

At the heart of this volume is a concern with exploring levels of interaction between two particular objects of study, islands on the one hand, and military orders on the other. According to Fernand Braudel, islands are, 'often brutally', caught 'between the two opposite poles of archaism and innovation.' What happened when these particular environments interacted with the Military Orders? The various contributions in this volume address this question from a variety of angles. 1291 was a significant year for the main military orders: uprooted from their foundations in the Holy Land, they took refuge on Cyprus and in the following years found themselves vulnerable to those who questioned the validity of their continued existence. The Teutonic Order negated this by successfully transferring their headquarters to Prussia; the Knights Templar, however, faced suppression. Meanwhile, the Knights Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes assured both their survival and independence. Islands are often, by definition, seen to be embodiments of 'insularity', of an effort to be separate, distinct, cut-off. Military Orders are, conversely, international in scope, nature and personnel, the 'first international orders of the Church', as they have often been described. Therein lies the crux of the matter: how did insular outposts and international institutions come together to forge distinct and often successful experiments? Hospitaller Rhodes and Malta still impress with their magnificent architectural heritage, but their success went beyond stone and mortar and the story of islands and military orders, as will be clearly shown in this volume, also goes beyond these two small islands. The interaction between the two levels - insulation and internationalisation - and the interstices therein, created spaces conducive to both dynamism and stability as military orders and islands adapted to each other's demands, limitations and opportunities.

PART I
Ideas and Ideals about Island Existence

Chapter 1
The Hospitallers and Concepts of Island Existence

Simon Phillips

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine.¹

What is an island? It seems a simple question that should have an equally simple answer. Dictionary definitions lull us into a false sense of security: 1. a mass of land that is surrounded by water and is smaller than a continent. 2. something resembling this: a traffic island.² An island is also commonly associated with a condition of insularity or isolation, although in recent years this view has become less popular.³ This chapter examines the question of what an island is, including island existence, incorporating research from the disciplines of archaeology and geography, as well as history. It further considers the development of island identity, relating to Rhodes. Finally it asks whether the Hospitallers themselves, as an institution, were influenced by their Rhodian environment or vice versa between 1310 and 1522. Indeed, did they see themselves as an island organisation?

The traditional view of islands is that they are easily identifiable – being a land surface surrounded by water – that they are geographically isolated, and that this leads to their unique development. As Robert Shannan Peckham has observed, ‘From Thomas More’s commonwealth island of Utopia (1516), to Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), the island was identified with political utopias and dystopias’.⁴ This traditional view has come under scrutiny in recent years. Even the idea that an island needs to be encircled by water is not fully accepted. For example, Cyprian Broodbank, recalling Braudel’s observation about ‘islands that the sea does not surround’, identifies what he calls ‘habitat islands’ such as oasis, lakes and montane valleys, ‘analytical islands’ and ‘perceived islands’.⁵ Similarly, Brent D. Shaw argues that the Maghrib can be seen as a Mediterranean island, surrounded on one side by sea and on the other by sand.⁶

Islands need to be considered in the context of the waters surrounding them, in the case of Rhodes, the Aegean and wider Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean itself has come under review in recent years, especially since the publication of Horden and Purcell’s The Corrupting Sea, in 2000, which places emphasis on relationships and interconnections, a theme that Purcell pursues further in his article ‘The Boundless Sea’, with a view to the Mediterranean being part of a much wider area. This is not necessarily a new view, as nineteenth-century geographers such as Friedrich Ratzel saw the Mediterranean as an area of transit between continents.⁷ It is now generally accepted that island societies were engaged in wider circuits of communication and exchange than was previously thought, and that there is no ground to assume that islands were, or are, any more or less isolated than communities based on continents.⁸ Such a view is important in the context of Rhodes, which was on a main trade route between east and west, as well as north and south. Even though islands are not isolated, this does not mean that they are not individual, or that the inhabitants do not consider that they have a distinct identity. Indeed, ethnographic research has shown that a common sense of belonging is reinforced in daily social activities such as fishing or farming.⁹

Turning specifically to the Aegean and the development of island identity, it is known that from antiquity islanders in the Aegean began to identify themselves by their island, rather than their city-state, which indicates an awareness of a common identity.¹⁰ Christy Constantakopoulou has argued that in the Classical and Hellenistic Aegean mobility and interaction resulted in the creation of island networks on the religious, economic and political levels, and that this reinforced a sense of common island identity.¹¹ In the Classical period, Rhodes itself was the first multi-polis island to unify, with the inhabitants of Ialysos, Lindos and Cameiros relocating to Rhodes town in BCE 408–407.¹² Constantakopoulou also used various criteria to assess the emergence of island identity, some of which can be applied to Hospitaller Rhodes. She examined inscriptions, literary evidence, foundation myths and colonization stories. Furthermore, she suggests that the use of an island ethnic name, among other things, ‘indicates that there was a strong sense of island unity for politically fragmented islands’. Moreover, the minting of coins, engaging in political unifications, island federations, religious cults and the practice of island group assessment in the Athenian Tribute Lists are indications of island identity ‘in action’.¹³

What evidence is there, then, that the Hospitallers as an institution influenced and/or became influenced by their island environment? First, it is necessary to observe that, although the individual brethren hailed from various western regions, their institutions, as Anthony Luttrell has commented, had been formed not in the West, but in Syria and Cyprus.¹⁴ Thus, it is necessary to look at the Hospitallers’ development in the eastern Mediterranean, where their headquarters was, and not at Western Europe, to look for evidence of change due to an island environment.

There are a number of different ways in which the Hospitallers were affected by their island environment. Luttrell has observed how, parallel to the Teutonic Order’s development of an Ordensstaat in Prussia, the Hospitallers created a ‘unique “island order state”’ on Rhodes, where after the loss of the Holy Land they fashioned a new role for themselves resisting the Turks of Anatolia and policing the waters of the Southern Aegean.¹⁵ Although the Hospitallers’ nation groupings, the langues, or tongues, had started to develop prior to Rhodes, it is perhaps because of the freedom this independent island order state gave them that they gradually turned into the corporate bodies that they became. As Luttrell notes, before 1291 the tongues had ‘scarcely evolved’, and prior to the conquest of Rhodes there was no indication that they would develop their own organisations, responsibilities or buildings.¹⁶

The Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes did more than create an island order state. Applying Constantakopoulou’s criteria, we can note that after the Hospitallers settled on Rhodes, a network of islands was formed whose bonds became stronger through political union under the Hospitallers. For example, the commandery of Kos also included the islands of Leros and Kalymnos.¹⁷ This political union in turn engendered stronger economic links, the Hospitallers using the resources of these islands to supply their headquarters on Rhodes. As time passed, these economic and administrative links helped the Order to create not only a common island identity, but an inter-island identity.

The Hospitallers may have had their own conception of their Aegean empire, but this did not mean that it was shared by the locals of the islands, even those on Rhodes. On occasion, the Hospitallers found it necessary to supplement incentives for cooperation with heavy pressure in order to achieve their aims. For example, in September 1440, the Grand Master wrote, in Greek, to the Greek community at Lindos, appealing for help to defend the island of Megisti (Kastelorizo) from the Mamluks, promising them freedom from doing Hospitaller service in future if they complied, but also threatening them with death and confiscation of their property if they refused.¹⁸

Another effect of becoming an island-based Order was the development of a navy. Although both the Hospitallers and Templars had had their own ships for at least a century prior to 1291, it was only after the loss of Acre that their number became noteworthy. It was at this time that Pope Nicholas IV (1288–1292) ordered the Templars and Hospitallers to build up their navies and continue their activity at sea, for example to help the Armenians in 1292. It was also after the loss of Acre that the office of admiral was first mentioned in documents in 1299.¹⁹ As early as 1318, the Hospitallers were able to mount a naval campaign that forced the Turks to cease their demand for tribute, and in 1344 Hospitaller ships took part in a naval league which captured Smyrna. In 1365, Rhodes was the departure point for the various forces taking part in Peter I of Cyprus’ campaign to capture Alexandria, the Hospitallers providing a hundred men, four galleys and other craft.²⁰ In 1440, a Hospitaller fleet of seven or eight galleys, four other ships and six lesser vessels was enough to see off a fleet of 18 Mamluk ships, although four years later Hospitaller forces consisting of four great ships and eight galleys needed Burgundian and Catalan help to repel a second Mamluk attack.²¹ The Hospitallers’ fleet may not have been large, but it was enough to defend their shores in most circumstances, to initiate raids and to take part in naval leagues; but against larger forces, such as those faced in 1480 and 1522, it proved inadequate. Nevertheless, an island existence meant that knights did service at sea, rather than on land, and this was sometimes exploited by Western rulers. In England, for example, Priors John Pavely, Robert Hales and John Raddington were appointed admirals of the southern fleet in the fourteenth century, while in the fifteenth century Prior Langstrother’s own ship escorted Henry VI’s son and queen as part of the ill-fated invasion force that hoped to overthrow Edward IV.²²

Still on a military theme, the account of the siege of 1480 might also indicate a common identity, partly through religion, partly through duty, but mostly as islanders against a common enemy. John Kay’s English translation (1483) of Caoursin’s account of the siege notes that ‘every creature in Rhodes of all manner of age, both men and women of all manner of states, put and applied themselves and their goods with great will and great devotion’ in defence of the city of Rhodes.²³ Again, in reference to the defence of St Nicholas’ Tower, we find allusions to a united town, ‘every man with one voice cried that the tower should be diligently and manly kept. Where afterwards the knights of both Latin tongue and Greek’s tongue did worshipfully, as ever did Achilles or Hector.’²⁴ Further, it is noted that there was a ‘common accord among the Greeks and Latins and all the people of Rhodes’ against the Turks.²⁵ Similar sentiments of a unity of common cause are found in the original versions of Obsidionis Rhodiae u...