Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes

by Lawrence Durrell

  Yet the direct connection between the Knights of St. John and Rhodes can only be treated tentatively, episodically, because it is only a small part of a larger story which clean overlaps the boundaries of time and place. For a long time Rhodes itself lay, so to speak, in the back areas of that enormous battlefield. Its importance only began to grow when the Knights were expelled from Jerusalem and retired to Cyprus in 1291. At this time, though nominally a dependency of the Emperor of Constantinople the island was in fact very much at the mercy of the Genoese who administered it, and who, as allies of the Byzantines, exercised a sort of pirate’s license over its harbors and coves when they fitted out their galleys for expeditions against the rich commercial traffic of Venice in the Mediterranean.

  High in the catalog of these rogues, who dignified themselves with the title of Admiral, stands Vignolo de’ Vignoli. It was he who first suggested to the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John the idea of an attack on Rhodes and the surrounding islands. The island was his base of operations against Cyprus, and it is possible that he had become increasingly conscious of the Knights as a power lying across the path of these predatory raids. More than this, the Turks themselves were a constant nuisance, operating from the creeks and inlets of what is now Anatolia. They had virtually despoiled all the islands off the mainland. They disturbed Vignoli’s wholehearted concentration on the exercise of his craft. Every time he returned from a raid on the Venetians it was only to hear how, in his absence, the Turks had made an incursion, fired a town, destroyed some galleys, deforested an island.… Why not, thought Vignoli, at a single blow perform a triple feat of skill: neutralize the Knights in Cyprus by an alliance with them; persuade them to consolidate the Dodecanese islands against the Turks: and leave himself free to operate as he pleased?

  Fulk de Villaret, the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers, was a grave and cautious man, deeply conscious of his order and of the faith in which it was founded; Vignoli was both bold and persuasive. The strategic value of the plan itself was obvious—for the Dodecanese islands, as they are now called, offered something like a deep second line of defense to the Crusaders, who were no doubt already aware of having over-stretched their lines of communication with the Europe on which they depended. With Jerusalem lost, Cyprus was like some precarious stepping stone around which the water was already lapping. While they sternly maintained their charge it must have been obvious to them that it could not be held indefinitely against the rising tide of barbarism. It was not as if the sea itself was safe; marauding privateers of every color were abroad. The Knights were like castaways, adrift on the stone rafts of their fortresses, in a sea alive with sharks; these precarious religious enclaves they had founded—each castle which even today seems clenched like a mailed fist—depended on blood and stones for their maintenance.

  They moved across this enchanting landscape, dedicated to impulse, like strange automata, these iron men; bringing purpose and direction to places where only appetite and disorder had reigned; sustaining themselves on the iron rations of a discipline and a moral purpose which awoke something like a halfhearted admiration even in the breasts of their enemies. They burned with a self-dedication which could withstand every temptation—save at last the languorous airs of the Levantine landscape they dominated for so long.

  But Vignoli’s plan offered something new; a string of island fortresses from which the whole variegated coastline of Anatolia could be surveyed and ravaged; a string of stepping stones pointing north to Constantinople. Yet Fulk de Villaret was worldly enough to demand precise and determined articles of the voluble and friendly pirate. The success of their joint attack would give each what he wanted most: to the Knights a defensive barrier, and to Vignoli that treasured peace of mind which was so necessary for the exercise of his talents. The plan was as follows: Rhodes was to go to the Knights except for two villages which were to be held by Vignoli. Leros and Cos, which the pirate already held under the terms perhaps of some Golden Bull, he was prepared to cede to his allies. One third of the revenue of such other islands of the group as might be conquered was to be payable to Vignoli, and two thirds to the Knights. Vignoli reserved the right to be vicar of all the islands save Rhodes itself. It is perhaps not without significance that one of the witnesses to this document was a member of the great Florentine banking house of Peruzzi. There were after all perquisites to be thought of in an expedition of this kind, for trade followed the Order as in later times it was to follow the Union Jack.

  The Grand Master fitted out two great war galleys and four smaller vessels for the expedition. He embarked thirty-five chosen Knights and a force of infantry, and on the 22nd of June the convoy set off in a freshening wind for this new adventure.

  They watered at Castel Rosso for a month while Vignoli went ahead on a reconnaissance. On his return the fleet set sail for the Gulf of Makri where it waited upon a plan of Vignoli’s, who nourished some hopes of a speedy and bloodless conquest of Rhodes. Two Genoese galleys were ordered to enter the harbor and surprise the Byzantines holding the city, but they bungled their work. Their captains were arrested by the authorities, and only managed to escape by a feat of prodigious lying which puzzled their captors. On their return Fulk de Villaret gave the general order for the attack with the whole force. It was not after all going to be as easy as Vignoli had promised.

  The city was attacked by both land and sea, yet by the end of September only Pheraclyea, that mountain of useless rubble, had fallen to the Knights. Phileremo was surprised early in November: a Greek servant of the commandant, to revenge himself for a flogging, showed the invaders an unguarded postern. Here a disgraceful massacre of three hundred Turkish mercenaries took place. The Byzantines themselves claimed sanctuary in the chapel on the mount.

  But by now the winter was setting in. The first light falls of snow whitened the grim butt of Atabyron and swelled the mountain torrents. The north wind drummed day and night upon the northeastern flanks of the island. It became obvious to Fulk de Villaret that his resources were inadequate for the task of reducing Rhodes. His infantry had been badly mauled in the campaign and many of his Knights wounded. Now they had made what shift they could to bivouac on the windy slopes of Phileremo, but watching them shivering round the flapping pine fires they had kindled the Grand Master knew them inadequate for the task ahead. Spring came and summer. The stalemate dragged on. But the Knights had learned the lessons that only long campaigns can teach: patience, tenacity. Their numbers had been increased, it is true, after the bitter fighting around Phileremo, by a fresh body of Knights summoned in haste from Cyprus. But even their present forces were not enough. Worse still, the coffers of the Order were empty.

  The delay was to last two years during which time Fulk de Villaret tried to strengthen his arm, first by an appeal to the Emperor of Constantinople to grant him the island and accept his Knights as vassals on the tenure of military service to be performed by three hundred of their number. This appeal met with point blank refusal. Then he had been forced to turn to the Pope for further aid which was only forthcoming after de Villaret himself had made two summer journeys northward in order to kiss hands and plead his case in person. By the spring of 1309 however he had gathered a large body of troops under his command and could muster twelve galleys, all in his pay. But by now the long wait had sapped the morale of the Byzantines, and when a Genoese transport bound for the garrison with corn and arms, was captured, Fulk de Villaret told its captain to go to Rhodes and open negotiations for the surrender of the island. He was fairly sure they would retreat, and he was right.

  On demanding and receiving suitable guarantees the defenders of the island surrendered on the 15th of August, 1309. The Knights soon acquired a number of other islands, Chalce, Symi, Telos, Nisyros, Cos, Kalymnos and Leros in the north and northwest.

  Castel Rosso also fell to them, and while they made some tentatives against Casos and Carpathos, they quickly withdrew when the Venetians intervened, not wanting any trouble from t
hat quarter.

  Historians have remarked on the gradual change in the character of the Order after it had conquered Rhodes, and had also succeeded to the vast estates left it by the defunct Templars. The accumulation of vast material wealth, say some, was gradually sapping the moral structure of the organization. Secular interests had begun to compete with the spiritual.

  At any rate Fulk de Villaret put on one side all the old statutes which had determined the limits of his powers as Grand Master and after the conquest of Rhodes began to act for all the world as if he were a sovereign. Nor were his Knights slow to resent this and already in 1317 there was an abortive attempt to seize him while he was traveling in the interior of the island. For a while he was besieged in the fortress of Lindos and his deposition was decreed; yet the matter was somehow compromised for his successors continued to exercise much the same power in Rhodes as the Doges themselves.

  Meanwhile however the Rhodians gained immensely by the presence of the Order in the island. The Turks did not dare to attack them as of old; justice prevailed in the law courts; commerce boomed. The harbors of the island offered safe anchorage to merchant ships. The Order found little difficulty now in raising substantial loans abroad—among the great banking houses with which they dealt was, of course, the house of Peruzzi. The frequent forays against the Turkish vessels plying in the Levant brought them immense booty which more than offset any budgetary deficits incurred in fortifying the islands. Rhodes basked in this transitory peace and plenty. Vignoli went about his unlawful business with a quiet mind—loading his privateers to the gunwales with gold and silver, precious stones and silks which he captured from the Turks, and sailing home with whatever would float behind attached to his blameless rudder. Were they not infidels? Was he not a Christian?

  The Knights were hardly less sure of themselves in this context, and took every opportunity of slaughtering the captured infidel. Some horrible massacres are recorded to their credit—or discredit—depending on one’s angle of judgment. But a history of these early years is too thickly planted with detail for us to do more than skim it.

  Irregularities began to grow up within the walled garden of the Order of the Knights Hospitallers. By constitution the member Knights were supposed only to live for the service of the poor and the defense of the true faith. They were supposed to live under the three vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. But by now the Order itself was by repute as rich as all the rest of the Church put together while many of the Knights owned immense estates in their own right. They had began to dress with the utmost luxury, to spend improvidently on gold and silver plate, on rich hangings and carpets bought from the traders of the mainland. They kept strings of richly caparisoned horses. They hawked the island. They neglected the poor. It is true that sumptuary laws were afterwards passed from time to time but it is clear that the rich living no less than the delicious airs of Rhodes had begun to etiolate their characters. How else is one to account for the stories, vague enough perhaps, but for which evidence could be produced, of the Knights themselves indulging in piracies? There were stories, for instance, of Knights disguising themselves and their men as Turks in order to plunder the passing Venetian traffic; while only a few years before the siege of 1522 it was charged that one of the captains serving under a Spanish sea robber who haunted the coasts of Corfu, was a knight.

  Nevertheless these moral lapses had not as yet impaired their fighting powers, as the two great sieges testify; and doubtless viewed through the average townsman’s eyes the Order was still what it always had been—a tower of disciplined strength rising steeply out of a raging sea. It is indeed said that, so great were the dangers and hardships of the life they had chosen, hardly one in twenty of them lived to reach the age of fifty. The youthfulness of many of the Knights was remarkable. One could be admitted to the Order at the age of fourteen, and enjoy the privilege of residing in the fortress and wearing the full dress of the Order, though the admission to full privilege in arms could not be conferred before the age of eighteen. The sons of the nobility and the gentry, however, could gain admission into the Order as students and undergo instruction in the science of war.

  The civil dress of the Order was black with the eight-pointed white cross, instituted before their sad expulsion from Palestine. Their battle dress was red with a square white cross, as shown in so many of the old paintings. In the sombre surroundings of their forts these uniforms in their simplicity must have glowed with all the warmth of Christian reassurance in the eyes of their patients who crowded the great hospitals for treatment. The semi-monastic nature of the Order impressed the Orthodox islanders very much, for military discipline was never at any period lax. The Castle itself was stringently guarded by night and day. Even during times of general relaxation, as during Carnival, nobody in a mask was permitted entry to the fortress on Rhodes. Generally speaking the Knights themselves were not permitted to enter the town unless on horseback or walking two by two. In the case of the Hospital, in Rhodes the warehouses facing the Sea Gate formed the endowment of the prior and chaplain. The physicians were bound by order to visit their patients not less than twice a day. Two surgeons were standing by under their orders to perform whatever operations were found necessary. A large store of herbs and drugs was maintained as part of the charges of the establishment, while the patients were fed upon all kinds of nourishing food. But dicing, chess, and the reading of chronicles, histories, romances or other light fiction of the kind were forbidden.

  The dead were carried out into the town for burial by four men wearing black robes which were set aside specially for that purpose. The townsmen watched them come through St. Catherine’s gate, their faces solemn in the flapping yellow torchlight, their solemn strides measured perhaps by a single kettle drum, walking symbols of a faith which took death as somberly as it took life on earth. Watching such a procession the peasant crossed himself and sighed as he watched these iron men, torn between admiration for their humanity and discipline and distaste for the rigidity and excessive formalism of their lives. Ah! for the good old Byzantine days when everyone had his own opinion—provided he owned a dagger with which to enforce it!

  The Order itself was composed of tongues, eight in all, and the defense of the fortress was parceled out to the various nationalities with due regard to their numbers and prowess. At first the Hospitallers had been mainly French; for the Knights of Provence and of Auvergne were as thoroughly French as the Knights of France were. But in 1376, a Spaniard was elected Grand Master. His tenure of office lasted twenty years, and both his successors were Spaniards. The latter of these took the step of increasing Spanish influence by expanding the tongue of Spain into the tongues of Castile and of Aragon. This was an important step, as voting in the Councils was based not upon the number of Knights but upon the number of nations represented.

  This, then was the organization which made itself responsible for the safety of Rhodes and its inhabitants. Chronicles and studies of this packed and ample age abound, and while the sour Torr, in his notes on the bibliography of this period, finds this chronicler wanting in taste, that in judgment, and all a little wanting in “factual veracity,” nevertheless, for my own purposes more than enough material is available to the student; there is no need for the brief and popular account so much in fashion today to bridge the gap between the joyous pages of Bosio and any of a dozen studies published since.

  The two great sieges by the Turks which occupy the central panel of the medieval picture are no less marvelous than the siege of Demetrius; but so much rich and confused coloring is available with which to paint them that it would be cruel to devote less than a whole book to them. And that must wait. Suffice it to say here that the Order, which for so long withstood not only the genius of the landscape but the momentum of history itself, at length succumbed. In December 1522, after bitter fighting in which 3,000 of the garrison and 230 of the Knights perished, Rhodes surrendered to the infidel.

  The terms of the capitulation were
not unduly onerous. The Knights were free to take their arms and property and to depart; the Sultan himself would provision their ships. Any civilian might leave Rhodes if he wished at any time during the next three years, with all his possessions. Those who stayed would be exempt from all tribute for the next five years; their children too would be forever exempt from conscription as janizaries. Freedom of Christian worship would be guaranteed.

  So, on New Year’s Day, 1523, the Knights entered their battered fleet, and set sail once more for Cyprus.

  Little enough remains now save the chain of ruined forts, and the names of famous battles petrifying slowly in the history books. The culture to which the Knights were heirs took shallow roots which barely outlived their departure. It never penetrated to the heart of the Mediterranean way of life—that mixture of superstition, impulse and myth which so quickly grows up around whatever is imported, seeking to domesticate it. The landscape puts her nymph’s arms about human habits, beliefs, styles of mind so that imperceptibly they are overgrown by the fine net of her caresses—paths choked with weeds, wells blocked by a fallen copingstone, fortresses silvered over with moss. Decay superimposes its own chaos, so that standing on some heap of stones today, watching a shepherd milk his goats, hearing the drizzle of milk in the cans chimed by the whiz of the gnats which hover round him, you wonder whether this mauled assembly of stone is Frankish or Mycenean, Byzantine or Saracen. Often enough the answer is: all of these. But only the eye of a specialist can read it like a palimpsest, text imposed on text, each dedicated to its peculiar folly or poetry.