ABSTRACT
When the Templars were founded to become the first military order, their military engagement was clearly confined to fighting on land. Nevertheless, from the beginning there was a maritime element, because men, materials and horses needed for military campaigns had to be transferred to the Holy Land by sea.1 This also holds true for the other military orders founded or fighting in the Latin East or even in the Baltic, while the situation was somewhat different for the military orders in Spain.2 However, the need for maritime transport did not necessarily lead to the ownership and management of ships or even to the formation of a navy, the ships of which could be used either for trade or for naval warfare. Thus, sometimes only naval support was secured, while in other situations ships were acquired and forms of their employment developed. Different conditions obviously prompted different reactions. Therefore, it is not very surprising that in the later Middle Ages the Hospital of St John built up something like a navy in the modern sense.3 Based on an island, Rhodes, the Hospitallers were forced to use their ships in its defence, and time and again they were also involved in crusading campaigns. When, for example, in the spring of 1344, a fleet of about twenty-five crusader ships led by a papal legate gathered near Negroponte in the Aegean, the Hospitallers contributed six ships under the prior of Lombardy, Giovanni de Biandrate.4 On the other hand, the Temple had
1 Cf. M. Barber, The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the Temple (Cambridge, 1994), esp. pp. 229-79.
