Another haven of comparative peace in the surrounding turmoil was Florence. At that time it was the most artistically creative of all the Italian city-states, and was still more remarkable in having evolved perhaps the only successful government by artists and craftsmen that the world has ever seen. Here the effective administrative control lay in the hands of six guild-masters, called Priors of the Arts; their powers were great, but held for only two months at a time. Florence could also look back on an entrenched Guelf tradition which might have preserved her from much of the feuding that so bedeviled less fortunate cities, but towards the end of the century a rift occurred among the Guelfs, and in 1302–Pope Boniface having allied himself with the reactionary ‘blacks’–the leaders of the more moderate ‘white’ party were driven into exile.
Among them was Dante Alighieri, whose Divine Comedy, the greatest single achievement in the Italian language, is among many other things a profound and bitter commentary in which the poet, purporting merely to meet the leading figures of his age as he progresses through the afterworld, in fact sits in awful judgement over them. The grandeur of the conception is as breathtaking as is the technical mastery of a still developing vernacular, but the political ideas within it sometimes seem more redolent of the eleventh century than of the fourteenth. These ideas, which Dante develops more fully in De Monarchia, are in essence a return to the old dream of a worldwide Christian empire, governed in harmonious tandem by Emperor and Pope.
Just how unworkable they had become was shown in 1310 when their most active exponent, Count Henry of Luxemburg, descended into Italy as Emperor-elect. Idealistic and painfully well-meaning, Henry received his first coronation in Milan with a replica of the iron crown of Lombardy (the real one was in pawn), still stressing his impartiality between papalist Guelf and imperialist Ghibelline; but the Guelf cities of Lombardy and Tuscany left him in no doubt of their feelings towards an outmoded imperialism, and he was Ghibelline enough by the time he reached Rome–to the point indeed where he was denied entry to St Peter’s and was forced to accept the crown of empire from papal legates at the Lateran. Meanwhile in Avignon, Clement V under pressure from King Philip had turned against him, as had Charles of Anjou’s reigning grandson, King Robert the Wise of Naples. Reluctantly the new Emperor resorted to war, but it got him nowhere. In 1313 he died of a fever, having incontrovertibly proved the vanity of Dante’s hopes.
Dante had never liked King Robert, whom he describes as a ‘re da sermone’, or ‘king of talk’; in fact, Robert had the makings of a great ruler. He was a scholar, whose genuine love of literature made him a munificent patron of poets and writers–especially of Petrarch, of whom he was a personal friend and who admired him to the point where he expressed the hope that he might one day be lord of all Italy. In more peaceful times he might have raised the Regno out of the miasma in which it always seemed to be sunk; alas, he never had the chance. The endless warring with his Aragonese rivals drained his coffers, and even at home his life was a constant struggle with rebellious barons who allowed him no rest.
Robert died in 1343 to be succeeded by his granddaughter Joanna, the wife of Prince Andrew of Hungary, and for the next half-century the history of Naples becomes a nightmare. (The reader is not expected to follow the rest of this paragraph and its successor, briefly included only to illustrate the level to which Neapolitan politics had sunk.) In 1345 Andrew was assassinated, on the orders of his wife’s great-aunt Catherine of Valois but not without suspicion of Joanna’s own complicity. His brother King Lewis of Hungary, on the pretext of avenging the murder, then claimed the kingdom for himself. He expelled Joanna and her second husband, murdering her brother-in-law for good measure, but he soon returned to Hungary and the local barons recalled Joanna. Her cousin Charles of Durazzo then conquered the kingdom and imprisoned her. Soon afterwards she was murdered in her turn. On Charles’s death a disputed succession caused another civil war, and the kingdom slipped back into its old anarchy.
By the beginning of the following century Charles’s son Ladislas seemed to have won the struggle, and by 1410–thanks to the continuing papal schism106–he had three times occupied Rome itself, which the rightful Pope Gregory XII had been unable to hold. On the last occasion he had fired and sacked the city. His death in 1414 was unlamented by his subjects–at least until his sister and successor, Joanna II, dragged the kingdom down to still lower depths of degradation. In 1415 she married James of Bourbon, who kept her in a state of semi-confinement, murdered her lover and imprisoned her chief captain, Sforza; but his arrogance drove the barons once more to rebellion and they expelled him. There followed a still worse tangle of intrigues between Joanna, Sforza, her new lover Giovanni Caracciolo, her adopted heir Alfonso of Aragon and Louis III of Anjou, whom we find pitted against each other in every possible combination. Though Joanna died in 1435, it was another eight years before Alfonso finally proved victorious and achieved papal recognition as King of Naples.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem had been annihilated by the Mameluke armies, but the three great Military Orders of knighthood lived on–if for rather differing periods of time. The youngest of them, the German Order of the Teutonic Knights, moved after 1291 for a few years to Venice and then in 1308 to Marienburg on the Vistula, where it disappears from our story. The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, on the other hand, continued to play their part in Mediterranean affairs–even though the former did not do so for very long.
Let us consider the Templars first. It is difficult for us nowadays to understand–even to believe–their influence in the later Middle Ages. Founded in the early twelfth century to protect the pilgrims flocking to the Holy Places after the First Crusade, they were within fifty years firmly established in almost every kingdom of Christendom, from Denmark to Spain, from Ireland to Armenia; within a century, ‘the poor fellow-soldiers of Jesus Christ’ were–despite their Benedictine vows of poverty, chastity and obedience–financing half Europe, the most powerful international bankers of the civilised world. By 1250 they were thought to possess some 9,000 landed properties; both in Paris and London, their houses were used as strongholds in which to preserve the royal treasure. From the English Templars Henry III borrowed the purchase money for the island of Oléron in 1235; from the French, Philip the Fair extracted the dowry of his daughter Isabella on her marriage to Edward II of England. For Louis IX they provided the greater part of his ransom, and to Edward I they advanced no less than 25,000 livres tournois, of which they were to remit four-fifths.
The Templars were most powerful of all in France, where they effectively constituted a state within a state; and as their influence steadily increased, it was not surprising that Philip the Fair should have become seriously concerned. But Philip also had another, less honourable reason for acting against them: he was in desperate need of money. He had already dispossessed and expelled the Jews and the Lombard bankers; similar treatment of the Templars–which promised to secure him all Templar wealth and property in his kingdom–would solve his financial problems once and for all. The Order would, he knew, prove a formidable adversary; fortunately, however, he had a weapon ready to hand. For many years there had been rumours circulating about the secret rites practised by the Knights at their midnight meetings. All he now needed to do was to institute an official enquiry; it would not be hard to find witnesses who–in return for a small consideration–would be prepared to give the evidence required. That evidence, when given, was more satisfactory than he had dared to hope. The Templars, it now appeared, were Satanists who at their initiation denied Christ and trampled on the crucifix. Sodomy was not only permitted but actively encouraged. Such illegitimate children as were nevertheless engendered were disposed of by being roasted alive.
On Friday, 13 October 1307, the Grand Master of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, was arrested in Paris with sixty of his leading brethren.107 To force them to confess, they were first tortured by the palace authorities and then handed over to the
official inquisitors to be tortured again. Over the next six weeks no less than 138 Knights were subjected to examination, of whom–not surprisingly–123, including de Molay himself, finally confessed to at least some of the charges levelled against them. Philip, meanwhile, wrote to his fellow monarchs urging them to follow his example. Edward II of England–who probably felt on somewhat shaky ground himself–was initially inclined to cavil with his father-in-law, but when firm instructions arrived from Pope Clement–who was only too willing to assist the French king in any way he could–he hesitated no longer. The English Master of the Order was taken into custody on 9 January 1308. All his Knights followed him soon afterwards.
The Templars had their champions. When de Molay was interrogated by three cardinals sent expressly to Paris by the Pope, he formally revoked his confession and bared his breast to show unmistakable signs of torture. At Clement’s first consistory, no less than ten members of the Sacred College threatened to resign in protest against his policy, and early in February the Inquisition was ordered to suspend its activities against the Order. But it was impossible to reverse the tide. In August the Grand Master, examined yet again, renewed his former confessions.
The public trial of the Order opened on 11 April 1310, when it was announced that any of the accused who attempted to retract an earlier confession would be burned at the stake; on 12 May fifty-four Knights suffered this fate, and in the next two weeks nine others followed them. The whole contemptible affair dragged on for another four years, during which Pope and King continued to confer–a sure sign of the doubts that refused to go away–and to discuss the disposition of the Order’s enormous wealth. Meanwhile Jacques de Molay languished in prison until his fate could be decided. Not until 14 March 1314 did the authorities bring him out on to a scaffold before the Cathedral of Notre-Dame to repeat his confession for the last time.
They had reason to regret their decision. As Grand Master, Jacques de Molay can hardly be said to have distinguished himself over the previous seven years. He had confessed, retracted and confessed again; he had shown no heroism, few qualities even of leadership. But now he was an old man, in his middle seventies and about to meet his God: he had nothing more to lose. And so, supported by his friend Geoffroy de Charnay, he spoke out loud and clear: as God was his witness, he and his Order were totally innocent of all the charges of which they had been accused. At once he and de Charnay were hurried away by the royal marshals, while messengers hastened to Philip. The King delayed his decision no longer. That same evening the two old knights were rowed out to a small island in the Seine, where the stake had been prepared.
It was later rumoured that, just before he died, de Molay had summoned both Pope Clement and King Philip to appear at the judgement seat of God before the year was out, and it did not pass unnoticed that the Pope was dead in little more than a month, and the King killed in a hunting accident towards the end of November.108 The two men faced the flames with courage and died nobly. After night had fallen, the friars of the Augustinian monastery on the further shore came to collect their bones, to be revered as those of saints and martyrs.
Although the Knights Hospitaller of St John had played no part in the persecution and ultimate annihilation of the Templars–and it would be unkind even to suggest that they experienced even a touch of Schadenfreude–there is no doubt that they were far and away the greatest beneficiaries of their brothers’ demise. By a bull dated 2 May 1312, Pope Clement had decreed that all the Templars’ wealth and property–outside the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Portugal and Majorca, on which he deferred his decision–should devolve upon the Order of the Hospital; even though King Philip received most of his expected rewards, it was the Hospitallers who suddenly found themselves richer than they had ever dreamed.
In its origins, their order was older even than that of the Templars. An early hospice for pilgrims to Jerusalem had been established by Charlemagne, and had been active until 1010 when it was destroyed by the fanatically anti-Christian Caliph Hakim; the site was purchased in about 1023 by a group of merchants from Amalfi, who re-established it under the authority of the Benedictines. Soon afterwards it was dedicated to St John the Baptist, and by the time of the Latin conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 its director, Brother Gerard, had made it the centre of its own religious order with a single aim: that of tending, and if possible healing, the sick. It was Gerard’s successor, a certain Raymond of Le Puy, who revised its rule and gave it its second purpose: the military protection of Christian pilgrims. From the 1130s onwards both the Templars and the Hospitallers were taking a regular part in the wars of the Cross. Both were religious orders, whose members took the usual monastic vows; but whereas the Templars were a purely military organisation, the Hospitallers never forgot that they were primarily a nursing brotherhood, whose duty it was to minister to ‘our lords the sick’. When not actually fighting, they were constantly occupied with the building and furnishing of their hospitals, and their standard of medical treatment was the highest in the medieval world.
After the fall of Acre and the end of Frankish Outremer, the Knights of the Hospital first took refuge in Limassol, but they had no wish to subject themselves to the house of Lusignan and in 1306 their Grand Master Foulques de Villaret–with the willing permission of Pope Clement–came to an agreement with a Genoese pirate named Vignolo de’ Vignoli for a concerted attack on the island of Rhodes, then part of the Byzantine Empire. It was, geographically, a perfect choice. The most easterly island of the Aegean, it lay only ten miles off the coast of Asia Minor, the intervening channel carrying much of the merchant shipping that plied between the ports of western Europe and those of the Levant. Its mountain ridge, rising to some 4,000 feet, offered several vantage points from which lookouts could keep a watch on both Asia Minor and the islands of the Dodecanese; on clear days even the outline of Mount Ida in Crete–well over 100 miles away to the southwest–was clearly visible. The fields were rich in orchards and vineyards, ensuring copious supplies of food and wine. Vast pine forests provided virtually limitless wood for shipbuilding. Moreover, the people boasted a seafaring tradition that went back to the days of antiquity. The Roman navy of the east had been largely staffed by Rhodians, as had successive Byzantine fleets. If the Knights, hitherto based firmly on land, were now to become men of the sea, they could not hope to find better instructors in shipbuilding, seamanship and navigation.
First, however, the island had to be conquered. Its people put up a stubborn resistance, and it was only after two years’ hard fighting that the city of Rhodes itself, with its two magnificent harbours, eventually fell to the Knights. On 15 August 1309 it opened its gates, and a year later became the official headquarters of the Order. An agreement was quickly reached with the pirate Vignolo according to which, in return for one-third of their revenues, the Knights were to keep the whole island except two small villages, plus the neighbouring islands of Kos and Kalymnos and several others of the Dodecanese. It was an excellent bargain. After nineteen years, they once again had a permanent home–on an island which, by a subsequent papal decree, was their property absolutely. In these new circumstances they were not only an order of knighthood; they were a sovereign state. Now at last they were able to resume their continuing war against the infidel, with its avowed object of ‘reducing to silence the enemies of Christ’, but even as they did so they never forgot that they had another duty, more pressing still. One of their very first tasks on settling in Rhodes was to start work on their new infirmary. It was to become the best and most celebrated hospital in the world. The great ward–which remains today almost exactly as it was when the Order left it nearly five centuries ago–could accommodate no less than eighty-five patients, all tended by the Knights themselves.
They also established a completely new administrative structure. The head of state was the Grand Master; beneath him the Order was divided into eight langues, or tongues–those of France, Provence, Auvergne, England, Italy, Germany, Aragon and Castile–each of w
hich enjoyed a considerable degree of independence. In order to bind together this motley collection of races and languages, it was decided that each tongue should assume responsibility for an individual task. Thus the Admiral was almost invariably an Italian, the Grand Commander a Provençal, the Marshal an Auvergnat and the Grand Bailiff a German. The English provided the Turcopolier, who was charged with the coastal defences of the island. Every Knight without exception was required to wear on his gown or cloak the characteristic eight-pointed cross, ‘to put him in mind of bearing always in his heart the cross of Jesus Christ, adorned with the eight virtues that attend it’.
Within the tongues, the Knights were of three main classes. First were the Knights of Justice, who were recruited only from the aristocratic families of Europe and were required to give proof of their noble blood. Next in the hierarchy came the serving brothers, who were of slightly lower social status; some would be soldiers, some diplomats and civil servants, others would work in the hospital. The third category was formed by the chaplains who served in the churches and chapels. Each Knight was required to serve two initial years on probation, one of which would be spent in the galleys. Only then was he required to take the oath:
You promise and vow under God, and unto our Lady, and unto our Lord St John Baptist to live and to die in obedience. You likewise promise to live without property of your own. There is also one other promise, made only by the Order: to be the serf and the slave of our lords the sick.
The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean Page 27