Green fingers: the Hospitallers’ encounters with their environment on Rhodes*

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on how the Hospitallers cultivated the island of Rhodes between 1309 and 1522, drawing on both published and unpublished documents from the Hospitallers’ archive on Malta. After their conquest of Rhodes, the Hospitallers not only inherited the available land, but attempted to expand and enhance its productivity and use. This article considers both agricultural and possible recreational spaces, in particular looking at the diverse types of gardens that developed. The paper argues that there were distinct stages to the cultivation of Rhodes, especially apparent in the first half-century of occupation of the island: that is, settlement of Latins and Greeks on the island, which equates to the social cultivation of Rhodes, then bringing uncultivated land into cultivation, the conveying of already cultivated land under Hospitaller control, and finally the maintenance and improvement of farmed lands. This last task was something shared by the many Hospitaller commanderies throughout Europe and continued until their lands were gradually confiscated.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitallers
• Rhodes
• agriculture
• cultivation
• settlement
• recreation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jonathan Phillips, ‘The Latin East, 1098–1291’, in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), 113.

2 Phillips, ‘The Latin East, 1098–1291’, 113–14.

3 Alan Forey, ‘The Military Orders, 1120–1312’ in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995), 198. See also Ronnie Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge, 1997), and Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c.1070–1309 (Basingstoke, 2012), 171–84.

4 Philip Slavin, ‘“With a Grain of Sugar”: Native Agriculture and Colonial Capitalism in the Frankish Levant, c. 1100–1300’, Crusades 22, no. 1 (2023): 30.

5 Anthony Luttrell and Gregory O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes 1306–1423: Original Texts and English Summaries (London, 2019), 45. References to pages 1–71 are to the ‘Introduction’ and the introductory essay ‘Countryside’. From page 81, references are to documents; See also Anthony Luttrell, ‘Sugar and Schism: The Hospitallers in Cyprus from 1378 to 1386’, in The Hospitaller State on Rhodes and its Western Provinces, 1306–1462, ed. Anthony Luttrell (Aldershot, 1999), no. IV, 157–66; idem, ‘The Hospitallers in Cyprus after 1386’, ibid., no. V, 1–20; Karl Borchardt, Anthony Luttrell, and Ekhard Schöffler, Documents Concerning Cyprus from the Hospital’s Rhodian Archives: 1409–1459 (Nicosia, 2011).

6 Slavin, ‘With a Grain of Sugar’, 26–7; Luttrell, Documents Concerning Cyprus, lxxix; Luttrell, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, passim.

7 Anthony Luttrell, ‘The 14th-Century Capitula Rodi’, in Anthony Luttrell, The Hospitallers of Rhodes and their Mediterranean World (Aldershot, 1992), no. VI, 204–11; Jürgen Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft im Johanniterorden des 15. Jahrhunderts: Verfassung und Verwaltung der Johanniter auf Rhodos (1421–1522) (Münster, 2001), 353–60.

8 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 15.

9 See note 5 above.

10 See Zacharias Tsirpanlis, ed., Anekdota eggrapha gia ti Rodo kai tis Noties Sporades apo to archeio ton Ioanniton Ippoton, 1 (1421–1453) [Unpublished documents concerning Rhodes and the Southern Sporades in the archive of the Knights of St. John, 1 (1421–1453)] (Rhodes, 1995); Sarnowsky, Macht und Herrschaft; Michael Heslop, ‘The Hospitallers Dodecanese Islands Before and During the 1522 Siege of Rhodes: Help or Hindrance?’, in The 1522 Siege of Rhodes: Causes, Course and Consequences, ed. Simon Phillips (London, 2022), 63–84; Simon Phillips, ‘Piety and Property in Late Medieval and Early Modern Rhodes: The Case of Trianda’, in The Military Orders, Volume VII: Piety, Pugnacity and Property, ed. Nicholas Morton (Abingdon, 2020), 85–94.

11 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 15–16.

12 Ibid., 17–19.

13 Ibid., 16.

14 Ibid., 85–7. Issued at Rhodes on 14 May 1313.

15 Ibid., 21. Vignolo held Lardos by feudum nobile, that is a feud or fee that was held by guard service, fealty, and homage.

16 Ibid., 88–9.

17 Ibid., 89–90.

18 Ibid., 90–3.

19 Ibid., 162–4.

20 Ibid., 193. A feudatory was a feudal lord or a person who held land under the conditions of the feudal system.

21 Ibid., 193.

22 Ibid., 193.

23 Ibid., 215–17.

24 Ibid., 225–6.

25 Ibid., 245.

26 Ibid., 246–9; Anthony Luttrell, ‘Dragonetto Clavelli: Magistral Procurator on Hospitaller Rhodes 1382–1415’, Studi Melitensi: Rivista del Centro Studi Melitensi 30 (2022): 39.

27 Tsirpanlis, Anekdota eggrapha, 691. Although Tsirpanlis transcribes the document, he does not associate Picoline or Emanuel Vignoli with the Vignoli family connected to Lardos in the fourteenth century.

28 For the few other examples, see Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 35.

29 Peter Edbury, ‘Franks’, in Cyprus: Society and Culture, 1191–1374, ed. Angel Nicolaou-Konnari and Chris Schabel (Leiden, 2005), 67, 77.

30 Anthony Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes, 1306–1366’, in Crusade and Settlement: Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R. C. Smail, ed. Peter Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), 273–81, at 273.

31 Ibid., 275.

32 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 93–4.

33 Ibid., 96; Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 277.

34 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 102–3; Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 278.

35 Calendar of Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office [1288–1509] (hereafter CCR), 45 vols. (London, 1904–63): CCR 1330–1333, 557. This example is from 1332 in England.

36 See, for example, Helen Nicholson, The Knights Hospitaller (Woodbridge, 2001), 98–106; Simon Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2009), 133–61.

37 Alan Forey, ‘Cyprus as a Base for Crusading Expeditions from the West’, in Cyprus and the Crusades, ed. Nicholas Coureas and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Nicosia, 1995), 69–70. For the importance of Rhodes on the pilgrimage route to the East, see Sofia Zoitou, Staging Holiness: The Case of Hospitaller Rhodes (ca. 1309–1522) (Leiden, 2020).

38 See Heslop, ‘The Hospitallers Dodecanese Islands Before and During the 1522 Siege of Rhodes’.

39 Valletta, National Library of Malta, Codex 397, fol. 232v. Folio references in this article are to the new, pencil numbering.

40 Malta Cod. 405, fol. 221v.

41 Malta Cod. 407, fols. 225v–226r. A moggio was the sufficient land area for sowing a bushel of wheat.

42 Text in Anthony Luttrell, The Town of Rhodes, 1306–1356 (Rhodes, 2003), 222.

43 Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 276.

44 Ibid., 274.

45 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 98: ‘attendentes quod nos et domus nostra habemus terras aliquas et monasteria in insula nostra Rodi de quibus nullum seu quasi assequitur comodum vel profectum’. For a more detailed definition of a monastery in the context of Rhodes, see ibid., 11, and Anthony Luttrell, ‘Monkless Monasteria on Hospitaller Rhodes’, in Studi in onore del Prof. Giorgio Fedalto, Istituto Ellenico di studi Bizantini e postbizantini di Venezia – Biblioteca No 32 (Athens – Venice, 2016), 259–70.

46 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 101–2: ‘attendentes quod nos et domus nostra habemus terras aliquas in insula nostra Rodi que per domum nostram habiliter excolli non possunt’. In this context, ‘excolli’, ‘improve’, could also mean ‘cultivate’.

47 Ibid., 98–9.

48 Ibid., 99.

49 Ibid., 119.

50 Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 274, 276; Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 40.

51 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 129.

52 Ibid., 131.

53 Ibid., 133.

54 Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 273.

55 Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes, 146–7; Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 273.

56 Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 275–6.

57 Ibid., 276.

58 Ibid., 276.

59 For an example of the Hospitallers’ use of vinegar as a disinfectant, see Victor Mallia-Milanes, ‘“Vol veder di aver Brandizo ovvero Malta”: The Hospitaller Odyssey From Rhodes to Malta, 1523–1530’, in The 1522 Siege of Rhodes, ed. Phillips, 118.

60 Tsirpanlis, Anekdota eggrapha, 276: ‘viridarium sive jardinum’. It was in the order’s hands after the death of ‘Sophia tou Tsagkari’.

61 Tsirpanlis, Anekdota eggrapha, 361–3, 3 September 1439: ‘peciam terre’, later in the same document described as ‘terram arabilem’, arable land, which can be ploughed. Livada was an area described in a document of 1451 as in the suburbs of Rhodes town (Tsirpanlis, Anekdota eggrapha, 602), though the document in 1439 it does not give the location and there is also an area called Livada south-west of Archangelos. Livada is also mentioned in 1503, Malta, Cod. 394, fol. 270r-v.

62 Tsirpanlis, Anekdota eggrapha, 541–2.

63 Ibid., 376–7, 10 November 1439: a ‘jardinum’, ‘melioratum et augmentatum’, ‘cultivandum et reparandum’.

64 Ibid., 596–7: ‘meliorandum’.

65 Ibid., 602–3: ‘jardinum in suburbio castri nostri in contrata Livada’, where there were other gardens, to ‘meliorandum, augmentandum, colendum’. The exact situation on Rhodes between 1453 and 1500 is my next long-term project.

66 Malta Cod. 394, fol. 233r-v, 26 August 1502: ‘agricolarum negligentiam et imperitiam’.

67 Malta Cod. 395, fols. 183v–184r.

68 Prague, Charles University Central Library, Record No. 000011244: ‘Carta topografica dell'isola di Rodi’, Istituto geografico militare.

69 Malta Cod. 396, fols. 193v–194r: ‘cultivandam et augmentandam’.

70 Malta Cod. 394, fol. 228r-v. ‘Staphilia’ is the Greek word for grapes, which may give an idea of the produce grown in that area; For instances of leases to senior brethren in Trianda, see Phillips, ‘Piety and Property in Late Medieval and Early Modern Rhodes’.

71 CCR 1435–1441, 214–15.

72 Roberto Sanseverino, Viaggio in Terra Santa, ed. Gioacchino Maruffi (Bologna, 1888), 57–9; Alessandro di Filippo Rinuccini, Sanctissimo Peregrinaggio del Sancto Sepolcro 1474, ed. Andrea Calamai (Pisa, 1994), 77.

73 Malta Cod. 369, fol.178v.

74 Malta Cod. 403, fol. 236r-v; Malta Cod. 406, fols. 233v–234r.

75 London, British Library, Additional MS. 15760, fol. 13r.

76 Ogier d’Anglure, Le saint voyage de Jherusalem du seigneur d'Anglure, ed. François Bonnardot et Auguste Longnon (Paris, 1878), 9.

77 For example, I have personally observed such combined cultivation in the north of Karpathos.

78 Malta Cod. 390, f. 205v, described in February 1491 as an ‘orti et jardini cum arboribus’. See also Nicolas of Lobkowicz, ‘What a Pilgrim Saw at Rhodes’, trans. Charles of Schwarzenberg, Annales de l'Ordre Souverain Militaire de Malte 4 (Rome, 1968): 103–6, and Michalis Zerlentis, ‘I apokatastasi ton zonon prasinou me istoriko charaktira sti diadikasia poleodomikon protaseon: I periptosi tis Rodou’ [The restoration of green zones of historical character in the process of urban planning proposals: The case of Rhodes], in 15 chronia ergon apokatastasis sti mesaioniki poli tis Rodou [15 years of restoration works in the medieval town of Rhodes], 2 vols. (Athens, 2007), 2: 246 for map. Other pilgrim accounts of Rhodes post–1480 can be found in Jean-Bernard de Vaivre and Laurent Vissière, eds., ‘Tous des deables d’Enfer’. Relations du siège de Rhodes par les Ottomans en 1480, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 529 (Geneva, 2014).

79 Amedeo Maiuri, ‘L’ospedale dei Cavalieri a Rodi’, Bollettino d'arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione 5 (Rome, 1921): 211–26, at 213. The garden was where the first-floor courtyard is today.

80 Sanseverino, Viaggio in Terra Santa, 57–9; See also Gregory O’Malley, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005), 284–5; Gregory O’Malley, ‘British and Irish Visitors to and Residents in Rhodes, 1409–1522’, in The Hospitallers, the Mediterranean and Europe: Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell, ed. Nikolas Jaspert, Karl Borchardt, and Helen Nicholson (Farnham, 2007), 175.

81 Rinuccini, Sanctissimo Peregrinaggio del Sancto Sepolcro, 77, 130.

82 See Katerina Manousou and Yiorgos Ntellas, ‘The Town of Rhodes After the Siege of 1522: Urban and Architectural Transformations’, in The 1522 Siege of Rhodes, ed. Phillips, 153. Also Albert Gabriel, La Cité de Rhodes MCCCX-MDXXII, 2 vols. (Paris, 1921–3), 2: 38.

83 Gabriel, La Cité de Rhodes, 2: 11, describes the Master’s garden as follows: ‘Sur le terre-plein du boulevard était établi un jardin, planté d'arbres de toutes sortes. De ses appartements, le grand-maître y descendait directement, au moyen de l'escalier à vis de la tour … C’est sur cette terrasse, rafraîchie par la brise du nord, que, durant les splendides journées du long été de Rhodes, les familiers du Palais pouvaient goûter tout le charme de leur résidence’; Berne, Burgerbibliothek of Berne, MSS.h.h.XX.168, p. 55, published in Heinrich Wölflis, Reise nach Jerusalem 1520/1521, ed. Hans Bloesch (Bern, 1929); See also Zerlentis, Zerlentis, ‘I apokatastasi ton zonon prasinou’, 2: 243, where the illustration is reproduced, and 1: 252–3, where he briefly mentions the garden. Additionally, see Elias Kollias, The Medieval City of Rhodes and the Palace of the Grand Master, 3rd ed. (Athens, 2005), 89.

84 Nicolas of Lobkowicz, ‘What a Pilgrim saw at Rhodes’, 104.

85 Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 273.

86 Nicolas of Lobkowicz, ‘What a Pilgrim saw at Rhodes’, 104, mentions hunting by Master's courtiers, using falcons to hunt hares and fallow deer.

87 Ibid., 104. Cony was at this time a word applied to rabbits.

88 Slavin, ‘With a Grain of Sugar’, 26.

89 Luttrell, ‘Settlement on Rhodes’, 275–6.

90 Ibid., 276; Luttrell and O’Malley, The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes,16.