ABSTRACT
The masters of Germany ruled the Order's Italian possessions (with exception of those in the Papal States) for ca. hundred years. As described in the first section of this chapter, that was an efficient administration and the bailiwicks had a special position in the masters' ideology. The main issues were now of a local nature, related to the taxation of the Order's possessions and to the attempts to control them by the central powers. The second section describes the progressive formation of a situation of crisis, provoked not only by the interference of the new strong territorial powers in Venice and in Sicily but also by the disputes inside the Teutonic Order itself. The conflict between the grand masters and masters of Germany represented a fatal danger for the Italian bailiwicks.
