Rhodes in History

If you visit the Island of Rhodes, you’ll experience centuries of history. Today, Stephen Nichols explores this island’s rich past—from the towering Colossus of Rhodes to the influence of the Knights of St. John—and its connections to biblical and church history.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are exploring Rhodes in history. Now we need to understand how we're spelling it. This is not R-O-A-D-S, as in traveling down roads. This is the island of Rhodes. This island is like a trip through history in one stop. It has ruins from the Greco-Roman period and from the medieval period and from the Ottoman period. Rhodes itself began life as an ancient Greek city. And then it was Roman, and then it was Byzantine, and then it was Catholic with the Knights of St. John. And then it was Ottoman, and then it was Italian. And then after World War II, it was given back to Greece. Well, if you were there when it was a Greek city in the two hundreds BC and you pulled into its very busy harbor, you would've been awed by one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There stood the Colossus of Rhodes. It was over 100 feet tall, and it stood for 54 years. Then along came an earthquake and toppled it. It snapped right off at the knees, but the ruins laid there for 800 years. In fact, in the first century AD, the historian Pliny the elder, visited the island of Rhodes, and he wrote about the fascinating statue and the size of these ruins. He remarked about how a man could barely get his arms around one of the fingers of the Colossus of Rhodes.

Well, in the first century, this island was also visited by the Apostle Paul. In Acts 21:1, we read that “when we had parted from them,” and of course, that's a reference to being at Miletus with the Ephesian elders. Once they had parted from there, they set sale. They “came by a straight course to Cos, and the next day to Rhodes and from there to Patara.” If Rhodes did leave an impression on Paul or Luke or Timothy or one of the others of the party, nothing is recorded of it.

But let's consider Rhodes in church history. We have two different main eras. The first is the Byzantine era from 100 to 1200. There are churches standing on roads that were built in the 12th and 13th century, and these of course were Greek Orthodox. There are many ruins from this period, but not much has been done by way of restoration. The focus has been on the next moment in Rhodes in church history, and that is the Catholic era. Specifically the Knights of St. John era. The Knights of St. John essentially built hospitals that would care for the pilgrims and the crusaders in Jerusalem. Once Jerusalem was taken, they later relocated. And this fascinating group eventually found their headquarters on Rhodes. The Knights of St. John had their own language. It was a dialect of a language called Old Kotin. They used this for their official documents and ceremonies. They had significant engineering skills. They could build sophisticated aqueducts and water systems, and of course, they were knights, so they lived by the Chivalric code of honor and courage and piety. They landed on Rhodes and 1306, and the Byzantines lasted behind their walls for four years during the siege. And finally, the Knights took it over.

They built the Palace of the Grand Masters, their sprawling headquarters, and they built a massive church, St. John's Basilica with mosaics and frescoes. Today it has numerous artworks, including the famous Caravaggio painting, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist. They also converted a number of the Byzantine churches into Roman Catholic churches, architecturally converted that is, as the Knights of St. John added gothic elements to these longstanding churches. In 1522, the Ottoman Empire set their sights on Rhodes and conquered the city, and the churches of roads were once again converted from Catholic to Muslim, and new mosques were created. So there it is, Rhodes, history in one stop. And I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.