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Rhodes 1306–1423: the landscape evidence and Latin-Greek cohabitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2019

Michael Heslop
Michael Heslop*
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of Londonmichaelheslop@ntlworld.com
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Abstract

This article focuses on what hitherto unpublished land grant documents from the Malta archives of the Order of St John tell us about the countryside of Rhodes during the fourteenth century. In so doing, an attempt is made to discern trends in various aspects of these land grants, utilizing quantitative weightings where possible. We see that the relationship between the Latins and the Greeks in fourteenth century Rhodes was on the whole amicable and mutually rewarding. The countryside of Rhodes appears to have enjoyed one of the more harmonious relationships between Latins and Greeks to be found in the post-1204 Byzantine world.

Keywords

RhodesHospitallersland grantsLatin-Greek relationships
Type
Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 83 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek, University of Birmingham, 2019 

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References

1 Bosworth, C. E., ‘Arab attacks on Rhodes in the pre-Ottoman period’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 6.2 (1996) 157–64Google Scholar; Savvides, A., Η Βυζαντινή Ρόδος και οι Μουσουλμάνοι, 2nd edn (Athens 1995)Google Scholar.

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7 Savvides, A., ‘Rhodes from the end of the Gabalas rule to the conquest by the Hospitallers, AD 1250–1309’, Byzantina Domos 2 (1988) 199–232Google Scholar. Attacks continued throughout the early years of the Hospitaller occupation.

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10 As for instance, Ogier d'Anglure in 1396, Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem du Seigneur D'Anglure, eds. Bonnardot, F. and Longnon, A. (Paris 1878) 93Google Scholar.

11 Roger, J.-M., ‘Christophe Buondelmonti, doyen de l’église cathédrale (1430)’, Byzantion 82 (2012) 323–46Google Scholar, describes the background to his appointment.

12 Some 70 pre-1500 manuscripts of his book exist, together with a range of adaptions and translations. The most comprehensive list is contained in Luttrell, A., The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos, II: The Written Sources and their Archaeological Background: the Later History of the Maussolleion and its Utilization in the Hospitaller Castle at Bodrum (Aarhus 1986) 193–4Google Scholar.

13 Only five registers survive for the period 1348–61. The 49 documents relating to the countryside which are excluded here have to do with topics such as the manumission of slaves, the administration of justice and taxation and the control of exports, particularly grain. Only a small part of the archives from Rhodes was saved in 1523 and taken to Malta, much being lost for the period between 1291 and 1346. Almost everything taken to Malta in 1530 is still there.

14 I am indebted to the late Julian Chrysostomides and Gregory O'Malley for access to transcriptions of documents from the Rhodian archives in Malta and to Anthony Luttrell for his summaries of these documents. Twelve of the documents [1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 13, 22, 33, 35, 62, 74, 142] have been published by Luttrell (passim), while two [150, 151] appear in Tsirpanlis, Z. N., Ανέκδοτα έγγραφα για τη Ρόδο και τις Νότιες Σποράδες από το αρχείο των Ιοαννίτων, vol. I: 1421–1453 (Rhodes 1995) 223–31Google Scholar, hereafter Tsirpanlis 1995. I am also indebted to the late David Jacoby for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

15 These other documents relate to donations and endowments, transfers and exchanges, receipts (quittances) for payment of rents, a mortgage for a loan, appointment of officers, and an award of certain rights to a monastery.

16 It is understood that a statistical approach to analyzing these documents does suffer from not having all the relevant documents available, as the registers are so incomplete. Nevertheless, it is considered that this approach, however inadequate, is superior to one that relies purely on anecdotal evidence.

17 These defences have been described in my study ‘The countryside of Rhodes and its defences under the Hospitallers 1306–1423: evidence from unpublished documents and the late medieval texts and maps of Cristoforo Buondelmonti’, Crusades 15 (2016) 177–97Google Scholar. A possibility exists that the trend of grants was influenced by the Black Death which arrived in Rhodes in 1347–48: see Gregoras, Nicephorus, Historiae Byzantinae, ed. Bekker, I., II (Bonn 1855) 797Google Scholar. A serious plague reappeared in 1361. See The Life of St Peter Thomas by Philippe de Mézières, ed. Smet, J. (Rome 1954) 97Google Scholar.

18 For instance, Fr. Domenico de Alamania was in 1381 [86] Commander for the Hospitallers of Naples and Cicciano and lieutenant of the Master and Convent in Italy.

19 Above, 85.

20 The identity of the casale is known from Paris, Ms. fr. 1978, f. 120v-121. The text, cited by Gabriel, A., La Cité de Rhodes (MCCCX-MDXXII): Topographie, Architecture Militaire, II (Paris 1921–3) 221Google Scholar and Tsirpanlis 1995, 43, reads ‘…et Calopetra jusques confines de Damatrie et Diascore, le casal qui fu de sire Vignol….’ Dyascoros, meaning ‘Two villages’, does not exist today but, given the adjoining features noted in [81] and [151], the village must have been close to Soroni and Fanes.

21 The loss of most pre-1347 documents is unfortunate in this respect, but a number of documents from 1347 up to 1365 [6, 20, 56, 66], which refer to the need to develop uncultivated land, suggest that there had not been a large response to the Hospital's appeal. In Crete, by contrast, it is known that 120 settlers answered the first call of the Venetian authorities in 1211: see Tafel, G. L. F. and Thomas, G. M., Urkunden zur ãlteren Handels-und Staatsgesichte der Republik Venedig, II (Vienna 1856–7) 129–36Google Scholar, and Jacoby, D., ‘La colonization militaire vénitienne de la Crète au XIIIe siècle: une nouvelle approche’, in Balard, M. and Ducellier, A. eds., Le partage du monde. Echanges et colonisation dans la Méditerranée medieval (Byzantina Sorbonensis, 17) (Paris 1988) 297–313Google Scholar, repr. in Jacoby, Latins, Greeks and Muslims: Encounters in the Eastern Mediterranean, 10th-15th Centuries (Farnham 2009)Google Scholar no IV. Any manpower shortages on the island throughout the period were partly met by the import of slaves.

22 The names of some of the archontes appear to survive in a few of the place-names mentioned in the documents. Thus, the name Tu Monomaca [13] probably relates to the Byzantine aristocratic family from Asia Minor. Other names surviving include Pandiris [8], Mesta [50] and Parmeni [64]. Incidentally, it has been estimated by Luttrell passim that the population of the island amounted to no more than 10,000 people or even considerably less. Perhaps half of these lived in the countryside.

23 Above, note 20.

24 The Dodecanese today do have the best land registry records in the whole of Greece, not because of the Hospitallers, but as a result of the Italian occupation following their acquisition of the islands in 1912.

25 For example, Salakos [13].

26 Trianda is called a districtus or territorium in one document [114], but otherwise the term districtus is not used.

27 As exemplified in [34], when the casale of Kalamonas, once belonging to the late soror Margarita of Negroponte, along with slaves, animals and other possessions, was awarded to Fr. Raymund de Lescure. A further definition of a village in this context is a ‘productive unit consisting of arable land, vineyards, woods, streams, mills, and inhabitants with their vineyards, gardens, fruit-trees, and livestock’ in Laiou-Thomadakis, A. E., Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire: a Social and Demographic Study (Princeton 1979) 46Google Scholar.

28 Above, 88.

29 Below, 94.

30 The Byzantine modios, from which some have thought the Rhodian modiate was derived, like all medieval measurements, differed from area to area but was approximately one thousand square metres: see Lefort, J. et al. , Géometries du fisc byzantine (Paris 1991) 216–7Google Scholar. The extent of the Rhodian modiata is unknown but, based upon the area calculated for identified boundaries in document [56], it is assumed in this paper to be sixty-seven square metres.

31 Above, 88, for the meaning of territorium.

32 Tsirpanlis 1995 (passim) translates a jardinum as an orchard rather than a garden.

33 A platea is deemed to be a flat area of land.

34 Malta, Cod. 280, f. 37v.

35 An annual rent, for instance, implies emphyteusis. A commentary on such contracts inherited from Byzantium is provided by Jacoby, D., ‘Rural exploitation and market economy in the late medieval Peloponnese’, in Gerstel, S. (ed.), Viewing the Morea: Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese (Washington, D.C. 2013) 213–76Google Scholar.

36 The non-family acquirers of shares of Vignolo de Vignoli's casale of Lardos also inherited his feudum nobile rights [107, 133, 134].

37 Payments in kind include animals (goats), birds (capon) and goods (wax, grain and wine).

38 Helion de Villeneuve, Master from 1319 to 1346, issued anonymous deniers, silver aspers and silver gigliati after his return to the island in 1332 and these coins remained in circulation until the end of the period covered in this paper: see Kasdagli, A.-M., ‘The provenance of coins found in Rhodes, AD 498–1522: An overview’, in Papageorgiadou, Ch. and Gianikouri, A. (eds.), Sailing in the Aegean: Readings on the Economy and Trade Routes (Athens 2008) 241Google Scholar.

39 Pegolotti, F. B., La Pratica della Mercatura, ed. Evans, A. (Cambridge, MA 1936) 92, 102–5, 363–5Google Scholar.

40 A. Luttrell, personal communication 22 April 2010.

41 A. Luttrell, personal communication, 22 April 2010. The Rhodian ducat was minted from 1409 until the 1420s.

42 Document [2] dated 1313.

43 Luttrell, A., The Town of Rhodes: 1306–1356 (Rhodes 2003) 209Google Scholar. The exchange rate applies to the period between 1335 and 1341.

44 This analysis is, of course, severely limited by the small number of grants being studied.

45 See O'Malley, Gregory, ’Some aspects of the use and exploitation of mills by the Order of St John in Rhodes and Cyprus’, in Buttigieg, E. and Phillips, S. (eds.), Islands and Military Orders c. 1291–1798 (Farnham 2013) 225–38Google Scholar, for more details. Jacoby, ‘Rural exploitation’, 246–8, provides comparative information for the Morea.

46 Nicephorus Gregoras, Historiae Byzantinae, III, 11–13.

47 Palaiologos, Manuel II, Funeral Oration on his Brother Theodore, ed. Chrysostomides, J., Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, xxvi (Thessalonike 1985) 168–9Google Scholar.