176 Coureas
of Patras over the abbeys of Ierocomata and Provata, and did not succeed
in gaining possession of either, although a decision in their favour had been
reached over the former abbey.62
An attempt to create a new military order was made in the Latin Empire.
This was the Order of St Sampson, originating from a Byzantine hostel of that
name in Constantinople. Its constitution was approved in 1208 by the papal leg-
ate Cardinal Benedict of Santa Susanna and confirmed by Pope Innocent iii,
who placed the order under papal protection. The Latin Emperor Henry granted
it the fortress of Garella near Apros in Thrace and the order was present in the
Latin Empire down to its destruction in 1261. Although most of its properties
were in Constantinople and the surrounding area it also possessed estates in
Hungary and a house at Douai, which the Latin bishop of Thessalonica had
granted it. It never truly developed as a military order, however, and Pope
Honorius iii only granted it a dispensation to use the weapons and horses
granted to it in 1222, when the Greek Despotate of Epirus conquered the Latin
Kingdom of Thessalonica and the very existence of the Latin Empire was
under threat. In 1309 their possessions in the Peloponnese were placed under
the Hospitallers.63 The latter was the only order active militarily in Greece and
the Mediterranean. They conquered Rhodes from Byzantium in around 1309,
acquired Templar properties in Achaea and Crete following the Templars’ dis-
solution in 1312 and the Templar fortress of Sykamino in Attica, although the
house of Brienne acquired the remaining Templar lands in central Greece.
The Hospitallers actively combated Turkish piracy, both alone and in con-
junction with other Christian states in the Mediterranean, Venice, Lusignan
Cyprus, the papacy and Byzantium, in a series of naval alliances formed in the
first half of the 14th century. The culmination of these alliances’ success was
the capture of Smyrna in 1344. Despite internecine quarrels and mismanage-
ment of funds sent to pay the garrison, the Latin Christians were able to hold
62 Schabel, “Antelm the Nasty,” pp. 106–08; Alan Forey, The Military Orders from the Twelfth to
the Early Fourteenth Centuries (Basingstoke, London, 1992), p. 39; Angold, Fourth Crusade,
pp. 134–35; Lock, Franks, pp. 235–36 and 238–39; idem, “The Military Orders in Mainland
Greece,” in The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. Malcolm
Barber (Aldershot, 1994), pp. 336–38; Hubert Houben, “Intercultural Communication:
The Teutonic Knights in Palestine, Armenia and Cyprus,” in Diplomatics in the Eastern
Mediterranean, pp. 143 and 157; idem, “La Quarta Crociata e l’Ordine Teutonico in Grecia,”
in The Fourth Crusade Revisited, ed. Pierantonio Patti, Pontificio Comitato di Scienze
Storici: Atti e Documenti, 25 (Vatican City, 2008), pp. 202–14.
63 Richard, “Latin Church in Constantinople,” p. 53; Angold, Fourth Crusade, p. 135.