ABSTRACT

Medieval Greece brings together twelve articles by historian Michael Heslop, showcasing his long-standing interest in the medieval castles of Greece.

Ten of the articles in this volume focus on the Dodecanese islands, mainly Rhodes, at the time of their rule by the Hospitallers during the period 1306–1522. Scholarly and popular interest in the military orders has grown substantially over the last twenty years, but comparatively little has been written about the Hospitaller Dodecanese. What distinguishes this work is the author’s use of hitherto unpublished documents from the Hospitaller archives in Malta and his assiduous field work on the island sites discussed. Heslop’s work on the Hospitallers on the island of Rhodes has also enabled him to put together an important gazetteer of place-names in the countryside of Rhodes, published here for the first time. The remaining two chapters of the collection summarize ground-breaking detective work to locate Villehardouin’s ‘lost’ castle of Grand Magne in the Mani, and present a wider study of Byzantine fortifications in medieval Greece.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval history, and to all those interested in the history of the Hospitallers. (CS1093).

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

chapter 4|14 pages

Hospitaller Statecraft in the Aegean

Island polity and mainland power?

chapter 5|21 pages

The Countryside of Rhodes and its Defences Under the Hospitallers, 1306–1423

Evidence from unpublished documents and the late medieval texts and maps of Cristoforo Buondelmonti

chapter 6|16 pages

Defending the Frontier

The Hospitallers in Northern Rhodes

chapter 7|29 pages

Rhodes 1306–1423

The landscape evidence and Latin-Greek cohabitation

chapter 8|17 pages

A Florentine Cleric on Rhodes

Bonsignore Bonsignori’s unpublished account of his 1498 visit

chapter 9|21 pages

The Defences of Middle Byzantium in Greece (Seventh–Twelfth Centuries)

The flight to safety in town, countryside and island

chapter 10|30 pages

Prelude to a Gazetteer of Place-Names in the Countryside of Rhodes 1306–1423

Evidence from unpublished documents

chapter 11|60 pages

Villehardouin’s Castle of Grand Magne (Megali Maini)

A re-assessment of the evidence for its location