Rhodes

Abstract The Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John (also known as the Knights Hospitalers) were organized during the First Crusade and operated a hospital in Jerusalem. These were Christian knights dedicated to spreading and protecting their faith. When the forces of lslam recaptured the city, the Knights withdrew to the port city of Acre. When Muslim forces captured that city after a six-week siege in 1291, a handful of Hospitalers escaped and returned to Italy to rebuild their forces. When, in 1307, the French King Philip IV arrested all members of another military order, the Knights Templar, in an attempt to weaken the military power of the Catholic Church, the Knights Hospitalers fled to avoid the same fate. The Knights of St. John chose the island of Thodes as their headquarters. Since their expulsion from the Holy Land they had concentrated on enhancing their naval as well as military power and owning an island so near their hated Muslim enemy would allow them to harass Muslim shipping and trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The Knights captured the island, and Pope Clement V confirmed their possession of it in 1309. For the next two centuries the Knights were a continuous thorn in the side of Muslim merchant and naval fleets.