ABSTRACT
This chapter examines and discusses the role of Hospitaller estates in promoting agricultural production, and more specifically the production of certain products, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Although after the conquest of Rhodes in 1309 the Hospitallers’ role in Cyprus was largely restricted to estate management, nonetheless these estates provided an important income for the Order, were significant in provisioning the island of Rhodes and played an important part in the Cypriot economy. Following the dissolution of the Order of the Temple in 1312, its extensive properties in Cyprus were transferred in 1313 to the Hospitallers, who became the largest landowner in the diocese of Limassol and one of the largest in Cyprus, with allegedly over 60 casalia in 1374. Their estates produced wine, grain, livestock and sugar, which supplied Rhodes on a regular basis. 1 Much emphasis has been placed, rightly, on the Hospitallers’ role in promoting sugar cultivation, but this chapter examines the Order’s role in promoting other forms of agricultural produce in order to place sugar production in a wider context.
