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• The Last Year of the Hospitallers’ Rule on Rhodes

  83-100

  Jürgen Sarnowsky

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  11

  Early in 1523, the Hospitallers had to leave Rhodes with a small number of ships, after a long siege by the Ottoman forces under Sultan Soliman I. The Hospitaller rule on Rhodes and the Dodecanese had been endangered at least since the middle of the fifteenth century, but the Order had successfully resisted both the sieges by the Mamluks in the 1440s and by the Ottomans in 1480. The paper discusses the perception of a growing danger for Rhodes after the fall of Belgrade (1521) and the measures taken by the Order, based on the surviving registers from the years 1521/1522. While regular administration continued, the new Grand Master fr. Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam who reached Rhodes in September 1521 had to handle the situation. The appeals to the Emperor, the Kings of England and France, the Pope and others set aside, fr. Villiers focussed on strengthening the fortifications, gathering supplies and monies and revising the Order’s contingent on Rhodes. Internal problems were mostly overcome, but without relief from the Western powers who were at war with each other, the Order finally had to surrender.

• Distancing or Breaking? The Relation of the Hungarian Hospitaller Priory to the Central Convent of the Order in the late Middle Ages: Hospitallers

  39-56

  Zsolt Hunyadi

  Views:

  12

  In the course of recent historiography it has been debated that the Hungarian-Slavonian Hospitaller priory became detached from the Order’s central convent in Rhodes by the late Middle Ages: local Hospitallers failed to pay the regular taxes and other dues, they disregarded the centrally appointed priors, and elected their superiors locally. More recently, it has even been suggested that the Hungarian-Slavonian priory, known as the Priory of Vrana, may have also broken away from the administrative structure of the Order. Based on international analogies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the article argues that despite the loosening of the administrative burdens, the Hungarian-Slavonian priory remained an integral part of the Order of the Hospital. Several other priories and bailwicks of the Order showed similar features in the period under query. The author argues that the internal changes of the Hospital, inter alia, the growing independence of the bailiwicks forced the Convent to react: the intensity of visitation manifestly increased in the fifteenth century. On the other hand, one of the most serious constraints that retained the Hungarian priory in the Order was the exemption/privilege that functioned as a basis of the Order’s economy, which the local knights could not renounce.