The Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes took place in 1306–1310. The Knights Hospitaller, led by Grand Master Foulques de Villaret, landed on the island in summer 1306 and quickly conquered most of it except for the city of Rhodes, which remained in Byzantine hands. Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos sent reinforcements, which allowed the city to repel the initial Hospitaller attacks, and persevere until it was captured on 15 August 1310. The Hospitallers transferred their base to the island, which became the centre of their activities until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1522.
Sources
The conquest of Rhodes by the Knights Hospitaller is narrated by a large number of sources of varying detail and reliability. The most reliable sources include the contemporary Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, whose History only extends to 1307, and the various biographies of Pope Clement V (r. 1305–1314), which offer different details, but do not contradict each other, and are generally reliable. These are complemented by a number of papal ordinances and correspondence in the archives of the Holy See and the Crown of Aragon, as well as the 14th-century French chronicle of Gérard de Monréal (or Chronicle of the Templar of Tyre), and the 16th-century Italian chronicles of Francesco Amadi and Florio Bustron. These are chiefly concerned with the affairs of Cyprus and the troubled relationship between the Hospitallers and the Lusignan kings of the island, and are not very reliable as histories, containing much popular tradition and anecdotal or legendary information.
Background
Founded in Jerusalem in 1070, the Order of the Hospital became one of the most important military orders, with a significant presence not only in the Crusader states of the Levant, but also controlling large properties in Western Europe. Following the Fall of Acre in 1291, the Order had moved its base to Limassol in Cyprus. Their position in Cyprus was precarious; their limited income made them dependent on donations from Western Europe and involved them in quarrels with King Henry II of Cyprus, while the loss of Acre and the Holy Land led to widespread questioning on the purpose of the monastic orders, and proposals to confiscate their possessions. According to Gérard de Monréal, as soon as he was elected as Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller in 1305, Foulques de Villaret planned the conquest of Rhodes, which would ensure him a liberty of action that he could not have as long as the Order remained on Cyprus, and would provide a new base for war against the Turks.
Rhodes was an attractive target: a fertile island, it was strategically located off the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, astride the trade routes to either Constantinople or Alexandria and the Levant. The island was a Byzantine possession, but the empire was in crisis following the Turkish conquest of most of its territories in Asia in the first years of the 14th century and in the face of the devastation of its European territories by the Catalan Company. Its control of its Aegean island territories was increasingly tenuous and in places delegated to Genoese freebooters, who mingled naval service to Byzantium with opportunistic aggression. In 1305 the Genoese Benedetto Zaccaria, already ruler of the port of Phokaia under Byzantine sovereignty, had requested the island of Chios from the Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos (r. 1282–1328), in order to protect it from the Turks and Catalans, before seizing it by force and then securing recognition of his control from the emperor. In the Dodecanese, Andronikos's Genoese admiral Andrea Moresco and his brother Lodovico had been assigned the islands of Kassos and Karpathos, and their relative Vignolo de' Vignoli claimed Kos and Leros and the district of Lardos on Rhodes by imperial grants. However, the power of these Byzantine clients in the islands was forcefully contested by the Republic of Venice and various families of its citizens, who had originally established themselves in the region under the authority of the now defunct Latin Empire of Constantinople.