Wikipedia

Church of St John of the Collachium

The Church of St John of the Collachium was a medieval church built by the Knights Hospitaller in Rhodes, capital of the island of the same name. It was built in the first half of the fourteenth century and dedicated to the order's patron, John the Baptist. It was the conventual church of the Hospitallers on Rhodes, immediately adjacent to the Palace of the Grand Master, and presided over by the order's most senior religious official. It was used for religious services and processions, meetings of the order's chapter general, and for the elections and funerals of its grand masters.

Church of St John of the Collachium
A ruined medieval wall, in front of a mosque and other modern buildings
Ruins of the church, photographed in 2013
LocationRhodes
DenominationCatholic
History
DedicationJohn the Baptist
Architecture
Years builtc. 1310 – c. 1349
ClosedAfter 1522 (converted to a mosque)
Building details
General information
Destroyed6 November 1856
Archaeological investigations
Site notes
Excavation dates1932–1934, 1988
ArchaeologistsPietro Lojacono

After the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes in 1522, the church became the town's main mosque. The building was destroyed on 6 November 1856 by a lightning strike which ignited gunpowder stored in its cellars, killing at least 200 people. In modern times, only small parts of the northern and eastern foundations remain, and the site has been built over with a school. Small-scale archaeological investigations of the site took place in 1932–1934, under Pietro Lojacono, and in 1988.

History

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Construction

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The Church of St John was built in the collachium ('convent'), an area of Rhodes based on the walled Byzantine town and inhabited by the Hospitallers.[1] The collachium was set apart from the burgus, the area of the city resided in by local inhabitants.[2] The church was in the north-west part of the city, adjacent to the Grand Master's palace.[3] It was dedicated to John the Baptist, the patron of the Knights Hospitaller,[4] and constructed in the Gothic style.[5] The site was previously occupied by an older church, which contained burials dating from the second half of the thirteenth century.[6]

Construction of the church began shortly after the arrival of the Knights Hospitaller on Rhodes in 1305. A manuscript reported by the Flemish army officer B. E. A. Rottiers, who visited the church in 1828, was said to record that Foulques de Villaret, who was Grand Master between 1305 and 1319, laid the foundation stone on 24 June 1310, the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, though the authenticity of this manuscript is now doubted. Construction seems to have finished under Foulques's successor, Hélion de Villeneuve, who was Grand Master until 1346 and whose coat of arms was carved into the church's north wall.[4] Instructions for the staffing and the services of the church were laid down in the statutes of the order's legislative body, the chapter general, on 4 November 1314; a meeting was held in the church in 1318 to appoint a delegation to meet with the Pope, and a woman who died in the same year was interred in a passageway underneath the church.[7]

Use

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The Church of St John was the conventual church of the Hospitallers,[8] and among the largest in the city.[9] Its priest, the Grand Prior of the Covent, was the most senior Hospitaller priest, a member of the order's council, and had responsibility for the knights' religious affairs.[4] The Grand Prior could be a member of any of the order's seven langues ('tongues'), loose ethno-linguistic groupings denoting members' origins in western Europe.[10] The church was used for all of the order's religious services, for meetings of the chapter general, and for the elections and funerals of grand masters.[11] Several annual processions on religious feast days, including the anniversary of the Hospitallers' conquest of Malta,[a] concluded at the church.[12]

The fourteenth-century pilgrim Nicholas de Martoni described the church as small, but a "great place of piety".[3] During the fifteenth century, priests for the church were summoned to Rhodes by the Hospitallers from Catholic parts of Europe.[13] Between 1435 and 1439, the Spanish traveller Pero Tafur visited Rhodes,[14] and noted that the church was filled with relics, and used both for religious services and for meetings of the Hospitallers.[3] In 1489, the Hospitaller Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson was installed as a cardinal in the church.[15]

After the Ottoman conquest of Rhodes in 1522, the church became the town's main mosque, and a mihrab (niche) was added to it.[16]

Destruction

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The church was destroyed on 6 November 1856, in an explosion after lightning struck gunpowder that had been stored in its cellars.[17] At least 200 people were killed, and the explosion damaged nearby houses as well as the adjacent Palace of the Grand Master.[18][b]

The amateur archaeologist Alfred Biliotti, who was serving as a consular official for the United Kingdom on Rhodes, conducted an impromptu excavation to rescue survivors.[20] Building materials, particularly marble floor slabs, were salvaged from the site, which was built over with a school.[16] In modern times, only small parts of the northern and eastern foundations of the church can be seen.[4]

Archaeological investigation

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Italy ruled the Dodecanese from 1912 until 1945;[21] between 1932 and 1934, the engineer Pietro Lojacono made a small-scale archaeological study of the church's ruins. Further archaeological work took place in 1988, after heavy rain caused the collapse of a revetting wall, uncovering a tomb underneath the central part of the church. The tomb contained grave goods, including a hoard of 190 coins dated to between 1488 and 1503, but no skeleton was found, leading to the suggestion that it may have been a child's grave.[16][c]

Footnotes

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Site of the Church of Saint John of the Collachio (Rhodes).

Explanatory notes

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  1. ^ Commemorated on 15 August, the Day of the Assumption of the Virgin.[7]
  2. ^ Chambers's Encyclopaedia, in 1876, gave the total number of destroyed houses as 300 and the death toll as over 1000.[19]
  3. ^ Children's bones are often less well preserved than those of adults, particularly in acidic soils and for the bones of younger individuals, and smaller bones are more likely to be missed by archaeological investigation.[22]

References

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  1. ^ Sire 1994; Balard 2013.
  2. ^ Balard 2013, pp. 29–30.
  3. ^ a b c Balard 2013, p. 32.
  4. ^ a b c d Zoitou 2021, p. 13.
  5. ^ Buttigieg & Phillips 2016, search: "Church of Saint John of the Collachio".
  6. ^ Kasdagli 2018, p. 140.
  7. ^ a b Zoitou 2021, p. 15.
  8. ^ Kasdagli, Katsioti & Michaelidou 2007, p. 44.
  9. ^ Kasdagli 2016, p. 64.
  10. ^ Zoitou 2021, pp. 13, 15. On the langues, see Begg 2020, p. 115.
  11. ^ Zoitou 2021, pp. 15, 35.
  12. ^ Zoitou 2021, pp. 15–16.
  13. ^ Sarnowsky 2015, p. 215.
  14. ^ Vasiliev 1932, p. 78.
  15. ^ Setton 1978, p. 406.
  16. ^ a b c Kasdagli 2018, p. 123.
  17. ^ Harwig 1875, p. 279; Setton 1984, p. 208.
  18. ^ Harwig 1875, p. 279; Petsa-Tzounakou 1996, p. 20.
  19. ^ Chambers & Chambers 1876, p. 239.
  20. ^ Barchard 2006, p. 13.
  21. ^ McGuire 2020, p. 71.
  22. ^ Mays 2002; Baxter 2022.

Sources

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  • Balard, Michel (2013). "The Urban Landscape of Rhodes as Perceived by Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Travellers". In Arbel, Benjamin (ed.). Intercultural Contacts in the Medieval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of David Jacoby. Milton Park: Taylor & Francis. pp. 24–34. ISBN 9781135781958.
  • Barchard, David (2006). "The Fearless and Self-Reliant Servant: The Life and Career of Sir Alfred Biliotti (1833–1915), an Italian Levantine in British Service" (PDF). Studi Miceni ed Egeo-Anatolici. 48: 5–53. ISSN 1126-6651. Retrieved 12 February 2020.
  • Baxter, Jane Eva (2022). The Archaeology of Childhood. London: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442268517.
  • Begg, D. J. Ian (2020). Lost Worlds of Ancient and Modern Greece: Gilbert Bagnani: The Adventures of a Young Italo-Canadian Archaeologist in Greece, 1921–1924. Oxford: Archaeopress. ISBN 9781789694536.
  • Buttigieg, Emanuel; Phillips, Simon (2016). Islands and Military Orders, c. 1291– c. 1798. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781317111962.
  • Chambers, William; Chambers, Robert (1876). Chambers's Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People. Vol. 8 (Revised ed.). London: W. and R. Chambers. OCLC 890772187. Retrieved 18 August 2024.
  • Harwig, Georg (1875). The Aerial World: A Popular Account of the Life and Phenomena of the Atmosphere. New York: D. Appleton. OCLC 2208210 – via Internet Archive.
  • Kasdagli, Anna-Maria; Katsioti, Angeliki; Michaelidou, Maria (2007). "Archaeology on Rhodes and the Knights of St John of Jerusalem". In Edbury, Peter; Kalopissi-Verti, Sophia (eds.). Archaeology on Rhodes and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem: Archaeology and the Crusades, Proceedings of the Round Table, Nicosia, 1 Feb. 2005. Athens: Pierides Foundation. pp. 35–62. ISBN 9789963907120 – via Academia.edu.
  • Kasdagli, Anna-Maria (2016). Stone Carving of the Hospitaller Period in Rhodes: Displaced Pieces and Fragments. Oxford: Archaeopress. ISBN 9781784914790.
  • Kasdagli, Anna-Maria (2018). Coins in Rhodes: From the Monetary Reform of Anastasius I Until the Ottoman Conquest (498–1522). Oxford: Archaeopress. ISBN 9781784918422.
  • Mays, Simon (2002). The Archaeology of Human Bones. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 1134687931.
  • McGuire, Valerie (2020). Italy's Sea: Empire and Nation in the Mediterranean, 1895–1945. University of Liverpool Press. ISBN 9781800346000.
  • Petsa-Tzounakou, Vassilia (1996). Art and History of Rhodes: Lindos, Kamiros, Ialyssos, Embonas. Florence: Bonechi. ISBN 8880294652.
  • Sarnowsky, Jürgen (2015). "The Priests in the Military Orders: A Comparative Approach of their Standing and Role". In Carraz, Damien; Josserand, Philippe; Oliveira, Luís Filipe (eds.). Élites et ordres militaires au Moyen Âge: rencontre autour d'Alain Demurger [Elites and Military Orders in the Middle Ages: Conference around Alain Demurger]. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez. pp. 215–224. ISBN 9788415636885.
  • Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1978). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571. Vol. 2: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. ISBN 0871691272 – via Internet Archive.
  • Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1984). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571. Vol. 3: The Sixteenth Century. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. OCLC 1241678661.
  • Sire, Henry J. A. (1994). The Knights of Malta. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300068859.
  • Vasiliev, Alexander (1932). "Pero Tafur: A Spanish Traveler of the Fifteenth Century and His Visit to Constantinople, Trebizond and Italy". Byzantion. 7 (1): 75–122. ISSN 0378-2506. JSTOR 44167894.
  • Zoitou, Sofia (2021). Staging Holiness: The Case of Hospitaller Rhodes (ca. 1309–1522). Mediterranean Art Histories. Vol. 3. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-44422-5. Retrieved 17 August 2024.
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