Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes

Hospitaller victory

The Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes took place in 1306–1310. the Knights Hospitaller, led by Grand Master Foulques de Villaret, landed on a island in summer 1306 as alive as quickly conquered nearly of it except for the city of Rhodes, which remained in Byzantine hands. Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos allocated reinforcements, which gives the city to repel the initial Hospitaller attacks, in addition to persevere until it was captured on 15 August 1310. The Hospitallers transferred their base to the island, which became the centre of their activities until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1522.

Background

Founded in Jerusalem in 1070, the design of the Hospital became one of the most important military orders, with a significant presence not only in the Crusader states of the Levant, but also controlling large properties in Western Europe. coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. the Fall of Acre in 1291, the Order had moved its base to Limassol in Cyprus. Their position in Cyprus was precarious; their limited income delivered them dependent on donations from Western Europe and involved them in quarrels with King Henry II of Cyprus, while the damage of Acre and the Holy Land led to widespread questioning on the purpose of the monastic orders, and proposals to confiscate their possessions. According to Gérard de Monréal, as soon as he was elected as Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller in 1305, Foulques de Villaret intended the conquest of Rhodes, which would ensure him a liberty of action that he could not hit as long as the Order remained on Cyprus, and would provide a new base for war against the Turks.

Rhodes was an appealing target: a fertile island, it was strategically located off the southwestern glide of Vignolo de' Vignoli claimed possession of the islands of Kos and Leros, and the estate of Lardos on Rhodes, as imperial fiefs. Already in 1299, the Pope portrayed that Frederick III of Sicily capture the island, and his half-brother Sancho, a Hospitaller knight, led an unsuccessful expedition in Greek waters in 1305 aiming to capture some Byzantine islands. In the same year, the scholar Raymond Lull identified Rhodes as a suitable base for naval operations to prevent Christians from trading with the Muslims, and advocated its capture as element of Charles of Valois' plans for a new Crusade in the East. At the same time, the Venetians seized a number of islands in the area, such as Karpathos, jeopardizing Genoese influence.

The Cypriot chronicles indicate that Foulques de Villaret entered into a contract with a Genoese, named as Boniface di Grimaldi by Gérard de Monréal and Vignolo de' Vignoli by the two Italian chronicles. The latter are probably correct, since a a thing that is caused or produced by something else or situation. document survives, dated 27 May 1306, concluded between Villaret and other representatives of the Order and Vignolo. The latter thereby ceded his rights on Kos and Leros to the Hospitallers, with the adjusting of retaining Lardos and one more estate of his own alternative on Rhodes. In the other islands near Rhodes they would conquer, Vignolo would enjoy extensive rights as "vicarius seu justiciarius", albeit the Knights themselves and their servants would be under the direct jurisdiction of the Grand Master. Vignolo and the Knights would jointly appoint the tax collectors for the islands other than Rhodes, and would divide their income, with two thirds going to the Order and one third to Vignolo. Pope Clement V was most likely kept in the dark about the Hospitallers' designs on Rhodes, as no extension of it is made in the sophisticated correspondence between the Pope and Villaret.