Remembrance of Cruel and Callous
Ages
Popular romantic tales of brave knights
and fair ladies of the Middle Ages
usually do not dwell on the less palatable
aspects of that period, leaving the
unwary with a charming but distorted
impression. We are led to believe
that the practice of knightly virtues
of honor, courage and fidelity, and
the protection of the weak, were not
the exception but the rule. Not surprisingly,
these idealized perceptions are all
too often propagated in western histories
of medieval religious orders, including
those of the Order of the Knights
of the Hospital of St. John. While
this inclination to present an unblemished
picture of those of one's own faith
(and to demonize the foe) may have
been forgivable in more credulous
and biased times, the contemporary
acceptance of more objective approaches
to subjects with a religious content
calls for candid exposure. The discovery
of a mass burial of galley slaves
in what had been the Bodrum Castle's
rubbish dump brought to light cruelty
and callousness with human life, putting
the character of the Hospitaller Knights
in a more accurate perspective.
During an excavation in 1993 in front
of the English Tower the remains of
thirteen fettered galley slaves were
exhumed; another skeleton was disinterred
at a distance of twenty meters from
the mass burial. The presence of pieces
of broken ceramic, animal and fish
bones and other litter served to identify
the venue to have been used as a rubbish
dump by the Knights of St. John. Among
the debris were buckles, beads, knives,
scissors and coins, the latter allowed
dating of the layer to the period
when Emery d'Amboise of France was
Grand Master of the Order, between
1503 and 1512. Since it is on record
that the Knights used enslaved men
- mostly captive Ottoman Turkish crewmen
- as rowers in their galleys, and
because of the manner in which the
feet of the victims were shackled,
it is evident that the exhumed remains
are those of galley slaves slaughtered
and unceremoniously dumped on a garbage
heap by the then-masters of the Bodrum
Castle, the Knights of the Hospital
of St. John.
It is not a pleasure to dwell on
man's brutal behavior to his fellow
man, but the tendency of western historians
to denounce Ottoman Turks for the
inhumane treatment of galley slaves
ignores the fact that no nation in
the Middle Ages was bound by a Geneva
Convention on Prisoners of War and
there was no Charter of Human Rights.
Objective historians may even find
that mercy and compassion were not
exclusively Christian values. The
modest abode that houses the remains
of the unfortunates today is a remembrance
of a cruel and callous era - and it
should remind us of our common humanity.
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