ABSTRACT

According to Anthony Luttrell, the Hospitaller Boniface of Calamandrana (d. 1298) was ‘one of the most important brethren of his time’, 1 yet scholars have not paid particular attention to him thus far. While evidence survives only for the last three decades of his life, the documentation is sufficient to show that Boniface played a key role during the final years of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem as well as the decade after the relocation of the Hospitallers’ headquarters to Cyprus (1291). He was a high-level diplomat, operating in the crusader states, Mamluk territory, Cilician Armenia, Italy, the Iberian peninsula and the papal curia. Why was he so successful? Were his talents and connections used to capacity? And what kind of personality emerges from the ‘facts’ of his career? To answer these questions, which have noteworthy implications for the history of the Hospitallers, I will address five aspects of Boniface’s life, in chronological order: his origins; his debut as a Hospitaller; his term as Grand Commander in the East; his diplomatic activities in northern Syria until 1288; and his role as Grand Commander of the West.