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Fourteenth-Century Hospitaller Lawyers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2017
Extract
Most of the Hospitallers of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, who seized Rhodes between 1306 and 1310 and thereafter defended it against the infidels, came from knightly or petty noble families which gave them little formal education; probably many were illiterate. They were well fitted to garrison castles and serve on crusading expeditions in the Levant, and to administer the extensive European estates on which the Order relied for the men and money necessary to maintain its position at Rhodes. The more outstanding brethren were often employed as royal or papal councillors and captains, but they were not normally intellectuals. Faced with the complex legal problems arising from their relationships and disputes with popes, bishops and secular powers, the Hospitallers had to rely on hired professional lawyers. It appeared during the trial of the French Templars, whose background was similar to that of the Hospitallers, that the Master of the Temple was illiterate, that only a few Templars knew Latin, and that their lack of expert legal knowledge prevented them from defending themselves properly in the various inquests and trials which culminated in the dissolution of their Order in 1312. For their part, the Hospitallers' own disadvantages at law must have become especially clear to them during the protracted legal quarrels which ensued in the decades after 1312, when they tried to secure possession of the lands of the Templars which had been transferred to them by the pope. The Hospitallers must also have felt the burden of the heavy fees they had to pay their lawyers.
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References
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