Wars and Divisions

The end to this happy age was brought by the disasters of the later fourteenth century, beginning with the Hundred Years War, which devastated the lands west of the Rhone. Provence in the narrower sense remained immune until the outbreak of its own war of succession; the papal schism of 1378, which gave rise to it, was followed by a sixty-year conflict in which the second Angevin dynasty (which obeyed Avignon) made good its claim to Provence and intermittently disturbed its rival’s tenure of Naples, while the House of Durazzo (which upheld the Roman popes) kept a precarious hold on Naples and never succeeded in conquering Provence.

The Hospitallers avoided translating their allegiance to the Avignon anti-popes into political partisanship, but neutrality was breached by the commander of Manosque, Jean de Savine, who helped Louis of Anjou take possession of Provence and fought beside him in his invasion of Naples. In the 1390s Louis II’s absence on

Sainte-Eulalie de Cernon, a 15th-century fortified village of the Order, the seat of one of its richest comnianderies in southern France.

Campaign in Italy enabled rebels to devastate Provence, and by the end of the century the Hospitaller preceptories in the County were ruined. For Manosque by 1411 its great days were a thing of the past; its community had sunk from 51 to 21, its revenues from 2,000 to 530 livres. The thriving religious communities declined to mere endowments for individual knights.

In 1398 confusion was worse confounded when France withdrew its obedience from the anti-pope (Benedict XIII), while Louis of Provence continued to acknowledge him, and the two parties attempted to install rival candidates in the Priory of Saint-Gilles. When France decided to submit to Avignon again the Order’s nominee took up residence in that city, evidently reconciled with Benedict XIII. The situation was clarified, at least locally, when the Council of Pisa elected a third Pope in 1409, since France, Provence and the Hospitallers all supported the conciliar claimant, and Benedict XIII was forced to abandon Avignon.

The dynastic war in Naples continued even after the ending of the Schism, until in 1442 Alfonso V of Aragon annexed the kingdom to his own, and the Provengal nobility found itself with no locus standi in Naples. In 1466 the right of Provencal Hospitallers to the Neapolitan commanderies was formally abolished, as was the double representation of their Langue in the Chapter General. It was a reflexion of the complete bouleversement which ensured that the line of Provencal Masters from 1296 to 1374 found no successor till the sixteenth century.

From their possessions in Gascony, the English were able to range widely over southern France and cause terrible devastation during both the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. When the war ended it became the Order’s policy to lease commanderies, such as that of Pezenas, at easy rates to noblemen who had been ruined by the conflict, thus forging with many families links of attachment that sorhetimes endured for centuries. Another relic of the wars endures in the Larzac, a large territory which was the richest of the T emplar legacies to the Priory of Saint-Gilles. Over this vast heathland, which acknowledged for nearly five centuries the lordship of the Knights of St John, one may travel for miles without seeing a house, though the rock forms walls, towers and castles as if trying to hoodwink one with evidence of a populous antiquity; the

Shapes are deceptive, but the Causse was at one time more thickly peopled, reaching the peak of its prosperity with the wool industry in the seventeenth century. Its capital and the seat of the commanders was the village of Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon, built on the slopes of a lovely wooded river valley typical of those which intersect the Massif Central. To protect the inhabitants from marauding bands the Order built in 1440 three walled villages at Sainte-Eulalie, La Cavalerie and La Couvertoirade, little microcosms of medieval urban life which survive to this day. At La Couvertoirade one might think that nothing had happened within its walls since they were built, except for five centuries of dilapidation.

The great Provencal Hospitallers of the past found few worthy successors until Charles Aleman de la Rochechinard, known as ‘the Good’, whose tenure as Prior of Saint-Gilles was an unbroken record of pious benefactions. The most important was the refounding in 1506 of the decayed collegiate church of Saint-Gilles with provision for four priests and two clerks, whom he endowed with the fief noble of Siive-godesque in his native Dauphine. His many gifts include the ‘Rhodes Missal’ with its rich illuminations, which he gave to the conventual church in 1511. As a former Captain of the Galleys, Aleman combined the martial and religious traditions of the Hospitallers, as did his successor, Pregent de Bidoux (1468-1528), one of the greatest of French seamen, who entered the Order in 1504 with a distinguished naval career already behind him. He exemplifies the repeated reliance of France on the Order of St John in her successive efforts to create a Mediterranean navy: he was given charge of the formation of a fleet of galleys, with which he raised the siege of Genoa in 1507, In 1511 the King created for him the title of Amiral de la Mer du Levant; he fought successfully in the Channel against England and, after succeeding Aleman as Prior of Saint-Gilles in 1514, defeated the Genoese off Aigues Mortes. The Turkish threat to Rhodes caused him to resign his office and to fit out a fleet, with which he defended Lango and reinforced Rhodes during the siege. He later defended Marseilles against the imperial invasion of Provence, and after conducting the embassies of the Order to the courts of France and England he was killed fighting against the Turks in 1528.

Le Poet Laval, a street in the village, with the commandery built in the 17th century.

The fate of the Order’s commanderies in southern France reflects the devastation that the Wars of Religion inflicted on ecclesiastical property. At Saint-Gilles the church and prioral palace were sacked in the 1560s, and the Priors withdrew to Arles across the Rhone, where the peace had not been disturbed. A little further north, however, the commandery of Le Poet-Laval was entrusted in 1569 to Pierre de Gabriac, who promptly withdrew to his family estates, leaving the commandery in the possession of a Protestant chdtelain; he was not replaced until 1590, and the interval of seigneurial favour allowed the Huguenots to gain control of the village. The church was destroyed and the Catholics were reduced to such a small minority that until 1895 the commandery chapel served as their parish church. In Quercy the Prioress of Martel became a Protestant in 1589 and handed over her convent to the consuls of the town.

Prioral palace of Saint-Gilles in Arles (built as the commandery of Trinquetaille in the 14th century), stonework in the

Such defections were rare, however, and for the most part the Knights of Malta were in the forefront of the Catholic cause. The Chevalier de Tourette was one of principal scourges of the Huguenots in the Priory of Toulouse, and was strongly supported by the two Joyeuse brothers Antoine Scipion and Cardinal Francois, who by royal favour held the Priory in succession (1583-88 and 1588-94).

The religious wars struck Languedoc again in the seventeenth century, and the palace of Saint-Gilles was destroyed in 1622. The prioral residence was therefore moved definitively to Arles, where the commandery of Trinquetaille had been rebuilt with a fine situation on the river-front by Melchior Cossa (Prior of Saint-Gilles 14751510). Moreover the fear, provoked by courtiers’ nominations at Toulouse and in Paris, that this most magnificent of the Order’s dignities would soon attract royal cupidity led to a radical dismemberment of its vast estates, from which between 1645 and 1661 five new commanderies were created. Thus what had once been a very rich priory became one of the poorest, a change symbolised by the new residence: though a magnificent commandery, it is an extremely modest palace. Nevertheless its two quaint little courts, its comfortable nooks and galleries and the handsome stonework characteristic of the medieval houses of Arles give it great charm.21 Across the street from it, and boasting a fine carved portal and arcaded courtyard, is the commandery of Saint-Luce (both houses date originally from around 1360, when the devastations of the time drove the two commanders within the city). The Order of Malta acquired a prominent place in Arles society, as is shown by the fashion for Arlesiennes, fanciful variations on the eight-pointed cross worn as jewellery by the ladies of the place; and the palace was sumptuously redecorated by a son of the city, Honore de Quiqueran-Beaujeu, who was Grand Prior from 1637 to 1642.