The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes 1306-1423: Original Texts and English Summaries

The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes 1306–1423 explores the main themes of settlement, population and defence of the countryside of Rhodes from 1306 to 1423, approximately halfway through the period of Hospitaller rule. Based largely on the Hospital’s Rhodian archive, this book is the scientific presentation of 208 documents brought together with detailed English summaries to help readers understand the documents and their technical features.

While the majority of research into this subject has previously been focused on the town of Rhodes, this book concentrates instead on the late-medieval countryside, providing a new angle from which to view this complex period. Through a corpus of Hospitaller texts, it presents many aspects of the Hospitaller Order’s history as well as exploring other crucial developments in the period, including both a discussion of Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s description of Rhodes, and a section dedicated to the sources used within this work. The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes provides an ideal for academics and postgraduates of the crusades.

Anthony Luttrell was educated at Oxford and has held teaching or research posts in many universities. He is currently an honorary research associate at the Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway College. His sixty-five years of study have resulted in over 250 publications, many gathered in the six volumes of his collected studies published in Routledge’s Variorum series, the most recent being Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306: Rhodes and the West (2007). His other publications include The Town of Rhodes 1306–1356 (2003); Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages, with Helen J. Nicholson (2006); Sources for Turkish History in the Hospitallers’ Rhodian Archive 1389–1422 (2008), with Elizabeth Zachariadou; and, with Karl Borchardt and Ekhard Schöffler, Documents Concerning Cyprus from the Hospitallers’ Rhodian Archives: 1409–1459 (2011).

Gregory O’Malley is an independent scholar. He was educated in London and Cambridge. He has published The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (2005) and a number of articles on the Hospitallers born in the British Isles on their links with the Mediterranean and on the Hospitallers’ activities during the later Rhodian period.