Hospitaller Rhodes

Hospitaller Rhodes
1310–1522
Flag Coat of arms
Rhodes and other possessions of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John.
Capital	Rhodes
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Government	Elective monarchy
Governor
Historical era	Middle Ages
• Hospitaller occupation of Rhodes	1310
• Ottoman conquest	22 December 1522
Preceded by Succeeded by Byzantine Rhodes (Palaiologos dynasty) Mentese Beylik Ottoman Rhodes
Today part of	Greece

The history of Rhodes under the Order of Saint John lasted from 1310 until 1522. The island of

After the extinction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem with the fall of Acre in 1291, the order sought refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. Finding themselves becoming enmeshed in Cypriot politics, their Master, Guillaume de Villaret, created a plan of acquiring their own temporal domain, selecting Rhodes to be their new home, part of the Byzantine Empire.

Due to repeated disagreements with the

At Rhodes, the resident knights of each langue were headed by a baili. The English Grand Prior at the time was Philip De Thame, who acquired the estates allocated to the English langue from 1330 to 1358. In 1334, the Knights of Rhodes defeated Andronikos III Palaiologos and his Turkish auxiliaries. In the 14th century, there were several other battles in which they fought.^[1]

In 1374, the Knights took over the defence of Smyrna, conquered by a crusade in 1344.^[2] They held it until it was besieged and taken by Timur in 1402.^[2]

On Rhodes the Hospitallers

In 1402, they created a stronghold on the peninsula of Halicarnassus (present Bodrum). They used pieces of the partially destroyed Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, to strengthen their rampart, the Petronium.^[4]

In 1522, an entirely new sort of force arrived: 400 ships under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent delivered 100,000 men to the island^[5] (200,000 in other sources^[6]). Against this force the Knights, under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms and their fortifications. The siege lasted six months, at the end of which the surviving defeated Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to Sicily. Despite the defeat, both Christians and Muslims seem to have regarded the conduct of Phillipe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam as extremely valiant, and the Grand Master was proclaimed a Defender of the Faith by Pope Adrian VI.

Gallery

• 
  Inn of Auvergne
• 
  Inn of England
• 
  Inn of France on the

  Street of the Knights
• 
  Inn of Italy
• 
  Inn of Provence
• 
  Inn of Spain

See also

• Hospitaller Malta
• List of Knights Hospitaller sites

Notes