Biography
A native of Languedoc-Roussillon,France,his uncle was Grand Master Guillaume de Villaret. His uncle had done much to foster his early career in the Order,with Foulques being appointed Admiral in 1299,and Grand Commander two years later. By 1303 he was Lieutenant of the Master,and advanced to rank of Grand Master on his uncle's death.
Under his leadership,the Order launched the conquest of Rhodes,in the years 1308 and 1309. Other islands were also taken,including Kastellórizo and Bodrum. The Hospitallers then moved their headquarters to Rhodes.
However,despite the huge benefits to his Order from the suppression of the Knights Templar (the Templars' assets were assigned to the Hospitallers by the Pope in 1312),Villaret's campaigns of territorial expansion ran the Order heavily into debt,and these debts were not paid off until the mid-1330s. Villaret seems to have been a difficult and overbearing man,and eventually alienated his Order.
Allegations were made of increasingly arrogant,even tyrannical,behaviors,although none of the allegations are specific,and one Italian account of the lives of the Grand Masters claimed that he was treated unjustly. In 1317,the Order attempted a coup against Villaret. A group of knights went to assassinate him at his residence at Rhodini,but his chamberlain aided his escape. He fled to the Hospitaller castle at Lindos,where he was besieged by his own Order. They had,in the meantime,elected Maurice de Pagnac as Grand Master in his place,and wrote to Pope John XXII in July to justify their actions.
The Pope summoned both Grand Masters to his court at Avignon to settle the dispute. Meanwhile,Brother Giraud de Pins administered the Order in the Pope's name. The Pope reappointed Villaret –but only so that he could tender his resignation formally. Brother Hélion de Villeneuve was named as Master on 18 June 1319,the elderly Pagnac having died in the meantime. The Pope appointed Villaret as Prior of Capua for life on 29 June,but after more problems there,he was transferred to the Priory of Rome in 1325. That,too,seems to have been unsuccessful,and after April that year,he received only a pension. He returned to his homeland and lived as a mere Brother of the Order at his sister's home in Teyran,near Montpellier. He died on 1 September 1327 and was buried in the former Templar Church at Montpellier.
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Guillaume de Villaret, was the twenty-fourth Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, a position he held from 1296 until 1305, succeeding Odon de Pins. He was succeeded by his nephew, Foulques de Villaret, whose career he had done much to advance.
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The Crusade of the Poor was an unauthorised military expedition—one of the so-called "popular crusades"—undertaken in the spring and summer of 1309 by members of the lower classes from England, Flanders, Brabant, northern France and the German Rhineland. Responding to an appeal for support for a crusade to the Holy Land, the men, overwhelmingly poor, marched to join a small professional army being assembled with Papal approval. Along the way, they engaged in looting, persecution of Jews and combat with local authorities. None of them reached the Holy Land and their expedition was ultimately dispersed.
The Siege of Rhodes was a military engagement involving the Knights Hospitaller and Mamluk Sultanate. The Mamluk fleet landed on the island of Rhodes on 10 August 1444, besieging its citadel. Clashes took place on the western walls of the city and at the Mandraki harbor. On 18 September 1444, the Mamluks departed from the island and lifted the siege.
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The history of the Knights Hospitaller in the Levant is concerned with the early years of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitaller, through 1309. The Order was formed in the later part of the eleventh century and played a major role in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, in particular, the Crusades. This lasted until the West was expelled from the Holy Land, with the Order conquering Rhodes in the early fourteenth century. Among the most important internal events of the early years of the kingdom were the foundation of the Military Orders, which included the Hospitallers, the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Order. Unlike the Hospitallers' beginnings as a benevolent organization, the Templars and Teutonic knights began with a military mission. These three major Orders would play a major role in the military activities of the kingdom, sometimes cooperatively, sometimes not. On the battlefield they frequently shared among them the most important tactical roles, the vanguard and rear-guard.
Roger de Pins was the grand master of the Knights Hospitaller from 1355 to the 1365.
Knights Hospitaller 