1 74 Coureas
the throne of Jerusalem. Conflict with the secular Latin Church over paying
tithes was resolved on the basis of two agreements stipulating the payment of
fixed cash sums annually, one with the Templars in 1261 and another with the
Hospitallers in 1255. Following the fall of Acre both these Orders transferred
their headquarters to Cyprus, developed naval arms and tried without success
to co-ordinate attacks on the Muslims with the Mongols.59
The restrictions King Henry ii imposed on them as regarded acquiring
properties caused resentment, and in 1306 the Templars supported the con-
spiracy of his brother Amaury. This did not stop him from arresting them,
however, in 1307 on the receipt of papal instructions. They were put on trial in
May 1310, shortly before King Henry’s restoration with Hospitaller assistance in
the autumn of that year, and despite the favourable testimony given for them
they were incarcerated in 1311 in the dungeons of Keryneia. The Hospitallers
benefited from the Templars’ dissolution in 1312, gaining all the order’s Cypriot
properties and thereby becoming one of the largest landowners in Cyprus,
but following their conquest of Rhodes in around 1309 they moved there. The
Teutonic Order, always much smaller than the other two in Cyprus, moved
to Prussia in the same period. During the 14th century these two orders sim-
ply maintained estates in Cyprus from which they drew incomes, those of
the Hospital, however being considerable. The English order of St Thomas of
Canterbury, first recorded in Cyprus sometime after 1272, maintained its head-
quarters there until the late 14th century. The last reference to a commander
of St Thomas of Canterbury in Cyprus was in 1367 and in 1379 the head of
its London house declared himself head of the whole order. It is not known
when the Teutonic Order ceased to have a presence in the island. As for the
Hospitallers, they maintained estates and incomes in Cyprus, which after
1473 came increasingly under Venetian control, until the Ottoman conquest
of 1570.60
In Latin Greece itself the establishment of military orders was more uneven.
The donation by the Latin Emperor Baldwin i of one-fourth of the duchy of
59 Coureas, Latin Church 1195–1312, pp. 121–37 and 155–69; Coureas and Schabel, Cartulary,
nos. 89 and 91; Alain Demurger, The Last Templar: The Tragedy of Jacques de Molay Last
Grand Master of the Temple, trans. Antonia Neville (London, 2005), pp. 95–138; James
Petrie, Crusader Castles of Cyprus, the Fortifications of Cyprus under the Lusignans: 1191–
1489 (Nicosia, 2012), pp. 319–57; Anthony Luttrell, “The Hospitallers in Cyprus after 1291,”
in Acts of the I International Congress of Cypriot Studies (Nicosia, 1972), pp. 161–71, repr.
in idem, The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291–1440 (Aldershot,
1979), ii.
60 Coureas, Latin Church 1195–1312, pp. 137–55, 171–72 and 178–81; idem, Latin Church 1313–1378,
pp. 416–24; Luttrell, “Hospitallers in Cyprus,” 167–71.