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The Hospitallers and the Holy Land
FINANCING THE LATIN EAST 1187-1274
The Order of the Hospital of St John was among the most creative and important institutions of the Middle Ages, its history provoking much debate and controversy. However, there has been very little study of the way in which it operated as an organisation contributing to the survival of the Christian settlement in the East, a gap which this book addresses. It focuses on the impact of the various crises in the East upon the Order, looking at how it reacted to events, the contributions that western priories played in the rehabilitation of the East, and the various efforts made to restore its economic and military strength. In particular, the author shows the key role played by the papacy, both in the Order's recovery, and in determining the fate of the crusader states. Overall, it offers a whole new perspective on the connections between East and West.
JUDITH BRONSTEIN gained her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge
Acknowledgements
This book is partly based on my Ph.D. thesis submitted in 2000 at the University of Cambridge. The basic dissertation, however, has been much changed following additional research, re-evaluation and further reflection. The book could not have been written without the assistance of many scholars and friends to whom I am deeply indebted. My warmest thanks are due to my former supervisor, Jonathan Riley-Smith. His erudition, his open-mindedness, his enthusiasm, his dedication and confidence in his students made working with him a fantastic experience and an enormous privilege. I cannot thank him enough for the encouragement, support and advice he gave, and is still giving, me.
I am also greatly indebted to Sophia Menache. Her inspirational teaching first drew me to the Middle Ages as an undergraduate student, and since then she has given me continuous support and invaluable advice and help, for which I am extremely grateful.
I am happy to take this opportunity to express my gratitude and debt to Malcolm Barber, Luis Garcia-Guijarro Ramos, Anthony Luttrell and Miri Rubin for their assistance and continual advice. I am also grateful to Carlos Barquero Gofi, Jochen Burgtorf, Alan Forey, Anne-Marie Legras, Edna and Eliezer Stern, as well as to my Ph.D. examiners, David Abulafia and Bernard Hamilton, for their suggestions, criticism and help at various stages of this work. It is also a great pleasure to thank Damien Carraz, Ruthy Gertwagen and Jenny Horowitz, who read draft versions of several chapters, always kindly and patiently answered innumerable questions and queries, and offered me many constructive suggestions at the last stages of the preparation of this book. For their kind and helpful guidance at the final stages of the work, I would also like to thank Caroline Palmer and the staff at Boydell & Brewer.
I owe a great debt to the following for their friendship and support: Thomas Biskup, Laura Cameron, Mark Clarke, Itzik Hen, Diana and Peter Lipton, Marwan Nader, Elizabeth O’Beirne-Ranelagh, Greg O’Malley, Iben Schmidt, Shoshi Squires, Shula Wieder and very special thanks to Nora Berend, Lizzie Dougherty, Nick Duncan and Idit Nathan.
I take this oportunity to thank those who provided me with generous financial support, namely the Cambridge Overseas Trust, Emmanuel College, the Ian Karten Charitable Fund, the Lightfoot Fund, and the ORS. I am also grateful to the Council for High Education — Israel, and the University of Haifa, for electing me for a Postdoctoral Fellowship.
I would like to conclude these acknowledgements by thanking the people to whom I owe my greatest debt, my parents. Without their unfailing support, their kindness, and their intellectual encouragement this book would not have become a reality. It is a cause of great sadness to me that my father has not lived to see it. Although a physician, he was an enthusiastic historian, and it is to him, with love, that I dedicate this book.
Introduction
THE MILITARY ORDERS of the Hospital and the Temple are considered the most original products of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. These institutions, the main aim of which was defined in terms of fighting for the Holy Land and caring for the poor and pilgrims, were responsible for the survival of the Latin settlement in the East until the final fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1291. The Hospitallers’ standing at the forefront of the defence of Palestine and Syria exposed them to great expense in maintaining their castles and manpower even in normal times; but natural disasters and the defeat of the Order’s forces on the battlefield had devastating effects. This book examines the Order’s function as a medieval international organization, looking at the strategies employed by the Hospitallers throughout the thirteenth century to provide the brothers in the East with the necessary resources and manpower to fulfil their tasks. The history of the Hospitallers in the Latin East and France from 1187 to 1274 is described, especially their responses, as members of an international Order of the Church, to crises in the East.
The scope of the study is the period between the battle of Hattin in 1187 and the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. The choice of this period requires some clarification. Even before 1187 the Order had suffered setbacks in the East, for example, falling heavily into debt and undergoing an internal crisis owing to the assistance given to King Amalric in his failed campaign to Egypt in 1168.! But the defeat at Hattin was a turning point because it necessitated a complete rehabilitation of the Order’s military forces and finances on an unprecedented scale. Likewise at the end of our period, after almost a century in which the Order had made enormous efforts to reconstruct its defensive array and economic resources in the Latin East, ten years of unceasing Mamluk incursions had, by 1274, created a situation not unlike that just after Hattin. The Latin settlement was reduced to several cities along the coast. The Hospitallers had lost most of their castles and lands, and were entirely dependent on supplies from Europe. In addition, 1274 marks the beginning of a new era in crusading history because of the adoption of new crusading strategies and financial approaches resolved at the Second Council of Lyons that year.
A succession of military defeats and natural disasters powerfully affected the situation of the Hospitallers in the East throughout the thirteenth century. Many letters of appeal show their increasing reliance on the shipment of supplies and manpower from the West. These letters, however, give very little information about their specific needs and none about their use of manpower. To gain a better understanding of the way crises affected the Hospitallers in the East, hence to understand their needs, I have made detailed use of the Order’s sources. The Cartulaire général de VOrdre des Hospitahers de Saint Jean de Férusalem 1s the largest collection of documents available for the study of the Hospitallers in its eastern and western provinces.* It contains charters of donations, records of financial transactions, and also papal bulls, correspondence addressed to or issued by the Order, records of its chapters, and decrees. But the Cartulaire is not comprehensive, and for the history of the Order in the East I have also made use of documents relating to local institutions connected with the Order in the East, using as a guide the Regesta Regni Ferosolymitan. Although the Regesta is now slightly out of date, it is still the main calendar of charters, letters, and papal bulls, issued in or sent to the Holy Land between 1097 and 1291.4 Moreover, many references to the Hospitallers, and the Military Orders in general, are made in contemporary Christian and Arab chronicles. The relationship of the Order with the papacy is mainly illumined by material in the papal registers and also by records of Church councils.
The sources concerning the European priories are extremely valuable. The Hospitallers were able to meet enormous demands for money and manpower at a time of a continuous deterioration of the military and economic situation of the Latin settlement because their wealth was based in Europe. But only scattered information is available as to the supplies sent to the East. No inventories or shipment lists are known to exist for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Although the rule of the Order demanded that written accounts should be sent from Europe, together with the supplies and money, these records have not survived. Any surviving material for the Hospitallers in Europe is in the cartularies of local commanderies, which deal only with local issues, such as charters of donation, purchases, leases, or alienation of property. They do not contain any references to the connections of these houses to the Order’s headquarters in the East. Nevertheless, the response of European priories to crises in the East can be assessed indirectly from their economic activities; the Order’s needs in the East should have been reflected in its economic policy in the West. Selling or renting out property, for example, could mean that the brothers in Europe were trying to liquidate their assets to supply the East with ready cash.
In this study of the Order’s economic activities in Europe, based on an evaluation of their investments and expenditures, the ‘French’ priories of France, St. Gilles, and Auvergne are of special interest.
The terms ‘French’ or ‘France’ are used for convenience; medieval boundaries were so variable that the Order’s provincial division in Europe rather than the geographical limits of kingdoms sets the scene. The boundaries of these three ‘French’ priories were therefore not confined to the boundaries of the medieval kingdom of France. St. Gilles, for example, was responsible for territory, such as Provence, which could be regarded as ‘French-speaking’, in so far as the Langue d’oc is considered a French language, but for most of our period was part of the western empire.
There were two main reasons for focusing on the economic activities of the French priories. They were the biggest and wealthiest in Europe, and although their registers are lost, the rich collections of sources that have survived for their subject commanderies, namely unpublished and published cartularies, yield an overall picture of their financial situation and their ability to support the convent in the East. For commanderies of the priory of France we have the cartularies of Hospitallers’ houses in Brussels, Fieffes and Eterpigny.® For houses of the priory of Auvergne (but until c.1220-40 under the control of the priory of St. Gilles) there is the cartulary of the Hospitallers in Velay, and also charters related to the Order in the rich collection of documents from the county of Forez.? A wealth of material has survived for commanderies under the control of the priory of St. Gilles. It includes bundles of charters related to the Hospitallers in Lyons, Marseilles and Toulouse found respectively in the Archives départementales du Rhéne, des Bouches du Rhone, and de la Haute-Garonne.® There are also printed Hospitaller cartularies from St. Paul les Romans, Avignon, Trinquetaille, and St. Gilles.9
It is always questionable to what extent one can rely on medieval sources. The absence of evidence of investments by the Order’s commanderies in specific periods or geographical areas does not necessarily signify a change in their economic policy. The cartularies may be fragmentary or material has perhaps been lost. This difficulty can be overcome by studying cartularies from other houses nearby, most probably exposed to similar political and economic circumstances. Here, in addition to Hospitaller sources, there is material of other religious and lay institutions in France. Templar cartularies, for example, those from Saulce-sur-Yonne, Bellenglise, and Provins, provide evidence for the economic activities of an institution with similar aims to those of the Hospitallers.!° Hospitaller cartularies and diplomatic documents from other possible European areas of supply to the East, namely the Iberian peninsula, England, and the kingdom of Sicily, while beyond the scope of this book, are also of value.
Although the establishment, ideology, and activities of the Hospitallers are described in many secondary works, hardly any research has been done on the function of the Hospitallers as an international Order and the response of their houses in Europe to the Order’s needs in the East. Two important books on the Order’s general history appeared at the beginning of the last century. In 1904 J. Delaville Le Roulx published a history of the Hospitallers in the Holy Land and Cyprus.!! It is arranged chronologically by mastership and provides valuable information on the history of the Order and its internal organization. Delaville Le Roulx made use for the first time of the large collection of material from the Order’s cartulary, which he himself had edited, as well as contemporary chronicles. However, his is a narrative description, without much analysis. He did not consider the relationship between the convent in the East and the Hospitaller houses in Europe, but dealt with these as two separate issues. The approach of H. Prutz in his history of the Military Orders, published in 1908, was more thematic.!* He studied the Order’s establishment and development in different geographical areas. He also described their financial activities, their involvement in political events, and their relations with the papacy. He made more comprehensive use than Delaville Le Roulx of primary sources, including, for example, material from the papal registers.
Yet despite being highly informative, his book is little more than a very detailed description of the sources and, as is the case with Delaville Le Roulx’s history, it lacks analysis. J. Riley-Smith’s thorough and analytical work on the history of the Hospitallers in Jerusalem and Cyprus from 1050 to 1310, published in 1967, for the first time places the study of the Military Orders in the general context of the history of the crusade movement.!° It considers the Order an institution which developed and operated within the crusader states and was influenced by them. Riley-Smith studied the structure of the Order and its development as an international Order of the Church, and within this discussion he dealt with the relationship of the convent in the Holy Land with the houses in Europe. His emphasis, however, was on the function of the Order in the East rather than the European priories; questions that my work seeks to examine, relating to the response by these priories to the Hospitallers’ needs in the East, were considered only briefly.
Although an impressive amount has been written on the Military Orders since the publication of Riley-Smith’s book, I refer here only to those works which have some direct connection with my field of study. In 1992 A. Forey wrote a general history of all Military Orders from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. It refers to the Orders’ international deployment, yet the topics covered are broad and given brief attention, as is often necessarily the case with general works of this sort. In his book The Templars in the Corona of Aragon Korey has an important chapter on the relations between the Templars’ headquarters in the East and its houses in the Crown of Aragon.!* Also on the Templars, M. Barber’s The New Knighthood, published in 1994, is a comprehensive history of the Order from its foundation to its annulment. It contains valuable information on the deployment of the resources of the Order’s European priories and their supply of resources and manpower to the Latin East.!°
Besides Forey, who dealt with a number of Orders in different crusading theaters, the works mentioned above focus mainly on the history of the Orders in the East and include some references to their European houses and the supplies sent from them to the Levant. A few important articles have been written on this subject: Barber wrote a general article on the ways the Templars established a support network in Europe for the supply of their brothers in the East.!® Using the remaining Angevin archives J. Pryor wrote on the shipments of supplies from Sicily following the conquest of the island by Charles of Anjou in the 1260s. He has also written articles on the supply of horses from Europe to the Holy Land.!” Still, the lack of specific evidence on the dispatch of resources and manpower from the Orders’ European houses may be the reason why these topics, which are crucial for an understanding of the survival of the Christian settlements and the Military Orders in the East in the thirteenth century, have not been more thoroughly studied.
Prosopographical analysis of the members of the Orders might help to clarify how brothers were mobilized. A. Forey’s The Templars in the Corona of Aragén includes a list of officials serving in Aragon, and his article ‘Recruitment to the Military Orders’ concerns issues of places of recruitment and service. But this article is based on the records of the process of the Templars, so it refers to the very late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.!® The works of Delaville Le Roulx, Riley-Smith, and Barber give descriptions of members of the Orders, but they concentrate on masters or high officers. Jochen Burgtof’s doctoral dissertation makes a significant contribution to the study of these high officers of the central convent.!? Barber’s discussion of the mobilization of the Templars in his article ‘Supplying the Crusade States’ is also based on the Templar process, and centres on the last decades of the Order’s existence.?? The rich body of material concerning the Hospitallers both in the Latin East and Europe allowed me to engage in prosopographical research on the members of the Order. I drew up lists of names of brothers serving in the Latin East and in the priories of France, St. Gilles, and Auvergne in the course of the thirteenth century, with which I was able to examine questions of place of origin and service. Although the sources provide only scattered information as to the losses the Order sustained in the East, I could assess the consequences of defeat on the battlefield and to follow the mobilization of manpower from Europe to the East by tracking the brothers’ careers.
While general studies on the Military Orders tend to concentrate on their history in the East, studies of Hospitallers’ houses in Europe are mostly limited to their regions of study and have few if any references to the Holy Land. The two major works on the Hospitallers in France are those by E. Mannier on the priory of France, published in 1872, and by J. Raybaud on the priory of St. Gilles, published in 1904.7! Mannier’s is a well documented, descriptive account of the establishment and development of the priory and the Order’s commanderies in northern France, which does not, however, go beyond the year 1200. Although Raybaud did study the history of the priory of St. Gilles throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, his work is in many cases inaccurate and lacks documentation. Regional studies on specific houses published in the last twenty years by French historians such as D. Le Blévec and P. Santoni make very good use of the archives to describe the establishment and development of Hospitaller houses in southern France.?? A book published in 1999 by D. Selwood on the history of the Hospitallers and the Templars in the same area analyses the ways their houses functioned as religious institutions within the societies in which they were established.
Although it deals with the obligations of the Orders’ houses to supply the East, it refers only briefly to the influence which political and economic changes had on these houses and the way it affected their financial situation.?? This has been recently examined by D. Carraz, who in his doctoral dissertation made an important contribution to the study of the Templars in Provence.?! And yet, no study published so far on the Hospitaller houses in Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including excellent works such as Gervers’s introductions to the Essex cartularies, has thoroughly considered the implications of political and economic changes for the ability of these houses to respond to the needs of the convent in the Holy Land.”
The Hospital of St. John was founded in the eleventh century by merchants from Amalfi as a charitable institution to care for the sick and the poor who arrived in Jerusalem. The instability of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the foundation of the Order of the Templars,”° and the acknowledgement of warfare as a valid expression of Christian charity no doubt contributed to turning the Hospitallers into a Military Order. Besides their hospital work they came to play an important role in the defence of the crusader states.?7 In 1154 the Hospital became an exempt Order of the Church, directly subject to the authority of the pope.?® Extensive donations in Europe had also made it an international Order, which had created a network of support for its activities in the Latin East. The Order’s houses were required to send responstones, annual payment of one third of the produce of their lands or specified goods, to the headquarters in Jerusalem and later in Acre.?9 By the later twelfth century the Hospitallers were an economic and military power in the Latin East. Their income from Europe, and the fact that they held extensive tracts of land, villages, as well as urban properties, made their Order one of the richest institutions in the East. This wealth permitted them to play an essential role in the defence of the Holy Land. They owned at least twenty-five castles in the twelfth century and seven in the thirteenth century, which not only protected the Latin settlement from external attacks but were instruments of conquest and colonization.*? John of Wiirzburg, a German pilgrim who visited the Holy Land around 1160, commented that in addition to the money spent for the sick and the poor, the Order spared no expense supplying its castles with skilled military men to protect the Christian lands from the Muslims.?!
To support their activities in the East the Order developed a distinctive system of government,” under the leadership of the master, who had powers of general administration, exercised supreme command on military campaigns, oversaw the finances, and convened and presided over the general chapter. He was assisted by a number of high officers. The grand commander was the second most important officer, who administered the Order in the master’s absence and was responsible for the property in the East. The treasurer was responsible for the administration of finances. The marshal was in charge of the military forces and had under his command all brothers-at-arms, sergeants-at-arms and military officers. The drapier was in charge of the clothing store, but his importance during the course of the thirteenth century increased considerably, and he appears to have been responsible for the crucial and complicated task of supplying the Order’s forces during military campaigns. The hospitaller stood at the head of the hospital. From the beginning of the thirteenth century the turcopolier commanded the mercenaries. The high officers formed part of the convent, the headquarters of the Order, first in Jerusalem and, after 1192, in Acre.
The master’s authority was not unlimited. His power was counterbalanced by the general chapter, an assembly summoned by him, which met only irregularly, and consisted of all the brothers from the central convent, all brothers-at-arms serving in the Holy Land, and the officers serving in Europe. This was the Order’s most important governing body. It legislated through statutes and regulations and advised the master on political and economic policies. It elected the master, and with his advice also elected all capitular bailiffs serving in the East and Europe. Still, although the master and the general chapter were the supreme authorities and important decisions were reserved to them, the Order developed a system by which the master’s authority was decentralized to provincial administrative units, which enjoyed a great degree of independence.
The most basic unit in the Order’s provincial administration was_ the commandery. In a town it might be a hospice or a conventual house which included a chapel and some buildings. It could also be a small village and its dependent lands or just a group of lands conveniently close. The reasons for the establishment of a commandery varied, but it was usually the result of an original donation followed by further expansion of the Hospitallers in the district. Some commanderies, such as Avignon, developed into rich and important administrative centres, which had smaller houses attached to them. At the head of a commandery stood the commander (also named preceptor, prior, or master; to prevent confusion, throughout the book the term ‘commander’ is used for Hospitallers and ‘preceptor’ for Templars). ‘The commander was responsible for a group of brothers who mainly consisted of the prior of the church, a hospitaller and an almoner, as well as servants, skilled workers, and laymen attached to the house as confratres or donats. All the brothers fulfilled administrative functions. They ran the commandery’s estates, collected taxes or rents, dealt with merchants, or brought agricultural products to the markets. Their economic activities were almost independent, because they managed their own budget and decided on financial transactions such as the purchase or alienation of property. Only from 1262 were they required to keep registers of their financial activities. Their main obligation was to pay the provincial priory (or castellany) the responsiones and additional taxes.
A number of commanderies geographically close together formed a priory. This was the most important administrative unit in Europe, responsible for collecting and transmitting the responsiones to the East and for ensuring the prudent management of the Order’s estates. The priories’ size and wealth varied, but they usually encompassed extensive geographical areas. By the middle of the thirteenth century the Hospitallers had established the priories of St. Gilles, France, Auvergne, Messina, Barletta, Gapua, Lombardy, Venice, Rome, Pisa, Amposta, Navarre, Castile and Leon, Portugal, England, Ireland, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and Morea. Because of his enormous importance in the Order’s administration each prior was appointed by the master and the general chapter and was answerable to them. He was required, if summoned, to travel to the East or to appear before the chapter and report there on the situation of his priory. As the master’s representative he had full power to intervene in legal disputes with lay and ecclesiastical lords and to impose discipline within his priory. He appointed the commanders and had visitation rights in their houses.
In his administrative tasks he was assisted by a provincial chapter, which he had the right to summon once a year. This chapter was attended by his conventual brothers and all the commanders of the priory. It was to this that the commanders were to bring the responsiones. In theory the master and the general chapter could have exercised greater authority over the priors; but the irregularity of the meetings of the general chapter, the distance from the headquarters in the Holy Land, and the immense power and wealth placed in their hands meant that the priors enjoyed great freedom of action. There was a risk that their policies would oppose the interests of the master and the brothers in the East or might have adverse consequences for the economic future of the whole Order. This did indeed happen. To prevent it, the masters usually appointed to the post of prior experienced brothers, who had in the past held high office in the East and were aware of the Order’s needs there.
Another way of overseeing the priories was by creating grand commanderies, larger administrative units, which conjoined temporarily more than one priory. The grand commanders were ad hoc officers, appointed by the master, who had complete authority over the priors. The grand commander of Outremer, for example, oversaw the priories of France, Belgium, and the north of Spain. However, at different times he also had authority over other priories in the Iberian peninsula, as well as the priories of England and Ireland. Because of his overall authority and his power of supervision over a vast geographical area, the grand commander theoretically could have centralized the Order’s activities in the West, by assembling a convened chapter of several priories, to implement, if necessary, changes in economic and political policies. None of the grand commanders who served in the thirteenth century did so.
Equivalent in rank to the prior were the commander and the castellan in the East. Their administrative units were usually based in cities and castles from where the commanders or castellans managed their estates. Because of their geographical closeness to the convent it was not necessary to maintain a commandery-priory structure similar to the one that operated in Europe. Commanders and castellans in the East were capitular bailiffs appointed by the master and the general chapter. They were required to supply responsiones to the convent. The products of these houses and their income from rents and trade were an important component in the Order’s budget and were essential for the day-to-day support of its activities in the East. Not surprisingly, therefore, the master or some of his conventual officers were often involved in the financial transactions of these houses. Still, the commanderies in the East, like all Hospitaller houses in Europe, had their own independent budgets and took independent financial decisions.
An example of this is the commanders of the ships, who were directly subject to the convent in the Holy Land; they probably remained financially dependent on it even though they also operated in Europe.*? Their activities and the Order’s inter-national financial operations are illustrated by loans taken out in Marseilles to reinforce their fleet on the eve of the first crusade of Louis [X of France. In April 1248 William Odet, commander of the Hospitaller ship La Comtesse, borrowed 500 lwres of Marseilles from merchants from Siena to repair and equip his vessel. The security on the loan was the ship itself and a promise not to sail until the money was reimbursed. Similar loans were taken the same year by the commanders of the Hospitaller ships Le Faucon and La Griffone. The loans were taken by the commanders of the ships, who were subject to the master in Acre. The prior of St. Gilles, who was responsible for the Hospitaller’s house in Marseilles, was apparently not involved in these transactions and his representatives only appear as witnesses to some of these agreements. Moreover, the fact that these loans were taken at the same time that the priory of St. Gilles had ready cash to invest to extend its property suggests a clear division of the Order’s finances and a departmental organization of its resources.3#
The first of this book’s four chapters deals with the impact of crises, caused by defeat on the battlefield and natural disasters, on the Hospitallers in the East. It focuses on their efforts to restore the Order’s economic power and military forces, for which supplies and manpower were needed from their houses in Europe. In Chapter 2 the response of the Hospitallers in France to the Order’s needs in the East is set out, covering economic activities, mainly their attitude to land and property. The economic activities of some other priories are described to provide a more comprehensive picture of the Hospitallers’ international deployment. Relations between the Hospitallers and the Holy See are the subject of Chapter 3, where the role of the papacy in the Order’s rehabilitation in the East is elucidated. Chapter 4 sets out the results of the prosopographical research conducted on the members of the Order serving in both the Latin East and its French priories from 1187 to 1274.
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