The Crusades and the Latin East in the Memories of the Hispanic Hospitallers (14th Century)

Abstract

A set of memories forged an institutional history, disseminated for and by the Catalan, Aragonese, and Navarrese Hospitallers, that paid attention to the crusader past in the Latin East as justification for their functional and administrative features after the Order was re-founded in Rhodes. The translated versions of the statutes were a key means for transmitting the Order’s iconic references to the time of the crusades in the Holy Land. These images operated as a mirror that permitted Hospitallers to recreate identity functions and mythical characters in the most emblematic phase and places, after becoming the crusader Order par excellence in the eastern Mediterranean in Rhodes. Reports on military actions from the 12th to 13th centuries and other allusions stood out in a historiographical tour that extolled its mission and identified itself with symbolic places and people. All this was without forgetting the importance of their caring and religious roles in these narratives. This paper analyses the uses of the memory of the Eastern Hispanic priories of the 14th century found in the crusades and in the history of the Latin East fundamental arguments to affirm and guarantee the strong links between East and West in the headquarters in Rhodes.