THE KNIGHTS ON RHODES

Following the definitive defeat of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem with the loss of Acre in 1291, the Order transferred its headquarters to the island of Cyprus. It had already acquired substantial estates in each of the countries of the seven, later eight Langues and, following the suppression of the Knights Templars,  was granted much of the latter's properties by a Bull of May 2, 1312, effectively doubling the wealth of the Order. The Hospitallers estates were further augmented by union with the Order of the Canons of the Holy Sepulcher of Our Lord and the Militia of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, by a Bull of 1489, although the priories of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher in Poland and Germany regained their autonomy in 1497.[1] Like the Templars and Teutonic knights, the Hospitallers had become a major international political and military force. Renowned for their courage, the members of the crusader Orders were a professional fighting body still dedicated to the monastic tradition and endowed with enormous wealth, thus they provided a serious potential challenge to the existing monarchical states in which their properties were situated. Fortunately for the Hospitallers, they were able to find an important role in the Mediterranean, but without this new responsibility as the protector of Christian shipping, it is probable that ultimately the Order either would have been suppressed or at least been forced to forgo its military function.  

Now established as an independent, autonomous entity but without a permanent base, the knights hospitaller soon perceived that the nearby island of Rhodes would be a suitable site for their new headquarters. They appear to have tried to reach a settlement with the Byzantine Emperor, nominal ruler of Rhodes, offering to hold the island in feudal tenure, but the Emperor had refused and instead formed an alliance with the Saracens against the Order. The knights seem to have established their Convent on the island by 1309, soon proceeding to assume the responsibilities of sovereign rulers. A contemporary chronicler described the aftermath of the conquest as follows:[2] "The Grand Master Fulk de Villaret, and the valiant Brothers of the Hospital gave thanks to God and the Virgin Mary for the wealth and abundance which had come to them. They built a great castle and conquered all around, collecting many fine men who wished to come to Rhodes and reconnoiter and to colonize the island. Then they had many places in Anatolia submit to their authority, which gave them tribute. They did not allow the passage of evil traders, nor might any such load up in Anatolia with passengers, or goods, or anything else for transportation to Egypt. And if any should set sails, the Hospitallers had galleys to seize and despoil them. In this way God ordained divine aid for the noble Master and the valiant knights of the Hospital. They freely held a great franchise, and combined mastery of the seas with independence of any other authority". The Order's knights and soldiers were now compelled to convert themselves from a land-based to an essentially naval function, maintaining a substantial fleet of galleys to protect Christian shipping from the Moslem raiders.   

The government of the Order, which was, as such, also the sovereign ruler of Rhodes, was headed by the Master, with the Prior responsible for the Chaplains and the supervision of the religious life of the Order. The adminsitration was delegated to eight Bailiffs of the Convent: the Grand Commander who, with the Treasurer, controlled the Common Treasure, presided over the Accounts committee, acted as Master of the Artillery and selected certain conventual chaplains; the Marshal, later Grand Marshal, who acted as military chief of staff, commanding all the brothers except Grand Crosses and their lieutenants; the Hospitaller or Grand Hospitaller, who superintended the work of the hospitals and infirmaries; the Drapier, from 1539 Grand Conservator, who was the quartermaster of the armed forces of the Order and responsible for the maintenance of certain buildings;  the Admiral, or Grand Admiral, a post created when the Order left the Holy Land and who commanded the galleys; the Turcopolier or Turcopilier, who commanded the Turcopoles,[3] the Order's cavalry in Palestine and, on Rhodes and Malta, was responsible for the coast guard;[4] the Grand Chancellor, who counter-signed all the acts of government, held the official seal and regulated all bulls and decrees; and, from 1428, the Grand Bailiff, responsible on Rhodes for the defense of the Castle of Saint Peter and later of the Island of Gozo.  

The members of the Order were divided into three principal classes. First the knights, who provided the core of the Order and would ultimately make profession by taking the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They alone could be appointed Bailifss of the Convent. Secondly the Chaplains, who were priest-brothers exempted from fighting but whose responsibility was to serve the spritiual needs of the knights and those living in areas under their rule. The Prior was chosen from among their ranks. Thirdly the Serjeants-at-Arms, later Serving Brothers, divided into Brothers of Arms who could, until 1364, become knights, and Brothers of Office, who fulfilled a more lowly role.[5] Until the loss of Malta the Serving-Brothers of Arms, although not noble, could also make full profession as religious-brothers and were no less members of the Order than the knights of Justice. They were called to the elections of the Grand Masters, to which they could contribute their votes, although they were excluded from any senior executive responsibility.[6] Later a fourth division of Sisters were added, divided into Sisters of Justice and Sisters of Grace, who lived in convents with their own Superior but were under the authority of their Langue. 

Postulants for knighthood were later divided into those who could make the required proofs of nobility and who were admitted as novice knights of Justice, and those non-nobles who were occasionally admitted as knights of Obedience and who could later be promoted to knight of Grace. On extremely rare occasions the Grand Master could promote a knight of Grace to the rank of Justice, generally to enable the knight to hold an office limited to that rank. Both professed knights of Justice and Grace, with sufficient seniority, could be entitled to a commandery. Neither novice knights of Justice nor knights of Obedience, who made only a limited religious promise, could hold any of the great offices of the Order from which even the professed knights of Grace were excluded.[7] By the sixteenth century the rank of knight of Devotion was being conferred with increasing regularity; such members did not make the monastic promises and lived in the community. Today this latter class make up the vast majority of the membership. 

Vertot (op.cit.) and some later writers have suggested that there were originally four Langues (French, Spanish, Italian and German), which were increased to seven (adding Provence, Auvergne and England) at a later date. Modern scholars, however, have found that all seven apparently emerged virtually simultaneously.[8] In 1462 the Spanish Langue was divided into two, Aragon and Castile, totaling the eight who were represented by each point of the Order's cross. One of the Conventual Bailiffs was placed at the head of each Langue, as chief or Pillier; with the separation of the Spanish Langue these posts were distributed as follows: Provence - the Grand Commander, Auvergne - the Marshal, France - the Hospitaller, Italy - the Admiral, Aragon - the Drapier (later Grand Conservator), England - the Turcopilier, Germany - the Grand Bailiff (a post invented to satisfy the Germans), and Castille-Portugal - the Grand Chancellor. Each of the eight Langues established its own headquarters on the island (as they later did on Malta), called an Auberge, in which the knights lived with their own Conventual Bailiff as their immediate Superior. The 16th century Langues were divided into twenty-three Grand Priories,  increased to twenty-five Grand Priories and twenty Bailiwicks by the time of the fall of Malta. 

The Grand Priories, Priories and Bailiwicks (there were many of these subordinate to the Grand Priories) were divided into Commanderies, small religious communities generally composed of an estate with a conventual house in which the commander and two or three professed or younger novice knights would be resident with a larger number of serving-brothers and a chaplain-brother. The grant of a commandery was, until 1354, in the hands of the local Grand Prior but because of abuses of authority then became the responsibility of the Grand Master in Council. All appointments were by seniority, with two exceptions - the Grand Master was permitted to make a nomination of a commander "of Grace" once every five years and the Grand Prior was permitted the same privilege in his own province. Furthermore, each Priory had a Magistral commandery, the ex-officio property of the Grand Master, to which he could appoint a commander at his own discretion. If the Grand Master failed to fill such commanderies the Pope could also claim the privilege, but this caused resentment on the part of the Order's government.  

To be eligible for a commandery, the knight, chaplain or, very occasionally, serving-brother,  had to have resided for at least five years in the Convent and to have performed a minimum of three "caravans",  service on board the Order's galleys. Even then the knight was supposed to wait until a commandery was vacant in his own province, i.e. a Pole could not be appointed to a Danish commandery, a Sicilian could not be appointed to a Lombard commandery. After five further years the commander, having proved that he had made improvements ("ameliorations") to his commandery, could apply to be promoted to one with a larger endowment. After fifteen years service, of which ten must have been spent in the Convent, he could be promoted to Conventual or Capitular Bailiff provided there was a vacancy, which dignity carried with it the grand cross and a seat on the Chapter-General. Each commander was required to send one third of his revenues (the Responsions) to the Convent of the Order,[9] while retaining the balance to support him and his fellow residents of the commandery chapter-house. With the death of a commander the whole revenue accrued to the Treasury until 1 May and for one year following, along with four-fifths of all the personal property of deceased brethren (the remaining fifth being disposed of by Will). 

The Commanders superiors in rank were the Bailiffs, appointed per favorem et ad honorem, called grand crosses of Grace, who took precedence immediately after the bailiffs of Justice and were likewise members of the Chapter-General. Their appointment was the prerogative of the Grand Master in Council. The title of Bailiff had its origin in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, deriving from the ancient bailiwicks ("bajulis") and has been perpetuated in several other extant Orders, including ones which never had a presence in the Holy Land.[10] With the later and more frequent introduction of knights and, very rarely, dames of Honor, who were given the Cross of Devotion, it became customary to accord the grand cross to knights of Honor and, eventually, the title of Bailiff. 

Based at Rhodes for more than two hundred years, the Order's first task was to build up its strength on the mainland of Asia Minor while it was still engaged in constant clashes with the Moslems. The crusader castles along the coast of Halicarnassus provided safe refuge for Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem who, while persecuted, were not forbidden entry to the city as they brought prosperity to its inhabitants. The majority of the knights serving with the Order in Rhodes and in the galleys were of French origin, as were most of the Grand Masters, with a few Spanish and Italian. It was a French Grand Master, Pierre d'Aubusson, who successfully drove off the Turks to end the first siege of Rhodes on 27 July 1480 and later another Frenchman who led the Order at the siege of Malta eighty years later.  

Several memorials on Rhodes testify to the knights' devotion to the cult of the Virgin, particularly appropriate since the Order had purportedly occupied the island on 15 August, Assumption Day.[11] The first Cathedral Church, built by Grand Master Fulk de Villaret, was dedicated to the Virgin (Sainte-Marie du Chateau)  and his successor, Grand Master Helion de Villeneuve, built a second church (Saint-Marie du Bourg), which in 1476 replaced the earlier building as the Cathedral Church of the island. Grand Master de Lastic placed a bas-relief sculpture of the Virgin and Child in the walls of a central defensive tower, called the Tour Sainte-Marie in 1441 and Grand Master d'Aubusson, while preparing for the Turkish attack in 1480, instituted a chapel in honor of the Virgin in the church of Monteil au Vicomte. With the victory over the Turks, the Grand Master acknowledged his belief that the island had been given the special protection of the mother of Our Lord by initiating the construction of the magnificent Church of Our Lady of Victory (now destroyed), completed in 1491. 

Forty-two years later, in 1522, the Order once again faced a major crisis. The Grand Master Philippe de Villiers de l'Isle Adam, who had been elected instead of the more renowned English Grand Prior Thomas Docwra and now abandoned by the Christian powers, was forced to capitulate to the much larger Turkish forces in the final battle of the Order's ongoing struggle with the Moslems for control of Rhodes. Although there had been some tentative peace negotiations between the Sultan and the Grand Master, the former's proposals had been couched in such insulting terms that the Grand Master was unable to accept the Turkish demands and the Sultan determined on invasion. The contemporary Moslem chronicler, Hajii Khalifeh, described the siege by the Moslem leader, Suleiman II (the "Magnificent"), as follows:[12] on "..a day when the omens were good, about seven hundred ships set sail from Constantinople for the Mediterranean. The fleet anchored off Rhodes, and then the larger ships were left to guard the channel while the pasha, with three hundred galleys, sailed into the bay where the fortress of Rhodes stood. They placed their cannons in position and began the siege on the fifth of Ramadan. A week later Bali Beg arrived from Egypt preceded by twenty-four galleys carrying more ammunition and provisions. Fierce battles raged until orders were given to capture the Arab tower from which enemy soldiers ceaselessly harassed the besieging army, but although the pasha's men crossed the moat and planted their standard on the rampart wall, they were eventually pushed back. On the advice of the most experienced among the pasha's men and despite continuous fighting, an earth mound was built which, after five months work, reached up to the rampart walls. Inside the fortress the besieged army, unable to protect itself from cannon and musket fire, surrendered on [20 December 1522]".  

It was the Greek civilian inhabitants, persuaded by Suleiman's agents that if they surrendered they would be spared, who demanded that the knights should capitulate. Faced with little choice, Villiers de l'Isle Adam agreed terms with the Sultan (requiring the Catholic faith to be maintained, the churches not to be profaned and the knights to be able to leave with their weapons, treasure and sacred vessels) and the surviving knights abandoned the island on 1 January 1523. The Grand Master's galley, "with a single banner lowered to half mast, on which was painted the picture of the Glorious Virgin Mary in tears, holding her dead Son in her arms, and the inscription Afflictis tu spes unica rebus, that is: In all which afflicts us thou art our only hope",[13] set sail for Candia bearing, along with the leading knights, the venerable icons of Our Lady of Philermo, Our Lady of Mercy and Our Lady of Damascus as well as the relics of the True Cross, the right hand of Saint John the Baptist, the archives of the Order and the key of the city of Rhodes.  

For seven years the knights were without a permanent home. Fortunately they were supported by Pope Clement VII, a Medici and former Hospitaller knight, whose security was threatened by the French army and who hoped to benefit from the Order's military support. After several years of negotiations the Emperor Charles V, as King of Sicily, agreed to cede the islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino and the city of Tripoli (this last abandoned in 1551) and their dependent territories to the Order. These were granted as a fief of the Kingdom of Sicily, for which an annual tribute of a falcon was paid until 1798, by letters patent dated 24 March 1530, ratified by Pope Clement  VII on 25 April 1530.[14] After some further negotiations over minor details of the transfer, the Order took possession of its new home on 26 October of the same year.