Buildings and infrastructures of the Teutonic Order in Italy and in Rome. Reassessing the Argument

The Teutonic Order did never have its own dominion (Herrschaftsgebiet) in Italy, but had autonomous territorial cores that were subject to the authority and jurisdiction of its provincial and local commanders. These units could be urban districts within the city walls, suburbs outside the city, or land propriety (including fiefs). The situation was similar in the case of the other military orders on the peninsula and in Sicily, but these, namely the Templars and the Hospitallers, had created a much denser network of commanderies. In the case of the Teutonic Order, the single provinces consisted of cores which were sometimes very distant from each other and which, in order to be administered and controlled, had to be equipped with local commanders. The permanent commanderies of the Teutonic Order were of a certain consistency, in contrast to, for example, the Hospitallers, who had many small commanderies scattered across the territory. The question must be asked whether there was an “infrastructure” of the Teutonic Order in Italy or not: The great distance between the commanderies leads to the fact that we have to abandon the idea of a single “logistical” structure that would have allowed a brother of the order to travel, leaning only on the Order’s houses. Some urban commanderies were conspicuous, such as this in Palermo, which controls an important part of the Kalsa district, or this of Venice on Isola della Dogana. In rural areas some major commanderies can be observed such as Margana in Sicily, Corneto and Siponto in Apulia or Astian-Stigliano in Veneto, that are almost always based on existing local settlement models. The centers of the commanderies consisted of churches and monasteries, but sometimes also of fortified castles or towers. When examining these buildings one has to start from the observation that the statutes of the Teutonic Order forbid the provincial commanders to erect "stone buildings" without the approval of their superiors, and consequently every construction work is theoretically a conscious and planned construction project of the Teutonic Order as a whole. In reality, the matter is more complex, as several buildings were pre-existent to the arrival of the Order in Italy, although those were sometimes significantly modified afterwards. We can investigate the cases of the Magione Church in Palermo, in which important construction work on the outbuildings is documented, and of San Leonardo di Siponto, that was equipped with imposing outbuildings by the Order and whose church has been heavily rebuilt. However, the Teutonic Order also had many new buildings built. Most of them have disappeared, often leaving no iconographic traces, but a number have survived. So we know that two churches were built already before the Teutonic Order was officially founded, one in Brindisi and one in Messina. The Church of Messina, Santa Maria degli Alemanni, is a very special monument that is more associated with the architecture of the Holy Land than with the Sicilian one. Then two construction projects were completed during the stay of the Grand Master of the Order in Venice, namely the construction of the Monterazzano Tower near Viterbo as the residence of a new land commander in Rome and Papal States and that of Torre Alemanna in Capitanata, fortified seat of one of the greatest commanderies of the Order’s province of Apulia. However, other construction projects were not result of the will of the central authorities of the Teutonic Order and even contradicted their interests. This is the case of the construction of Margana Castle in Sicily in the middle of the 14th century, an undertaking that should be viewed as a political mistake as the Teutonic Order became a vassal of the King of Sicily because of it, and that of Risalaimi Castle that was rebuilt in the last quarter of the fifteenth century as a luxurious summer residence for the provincial commander Heinrich Hoemeister. Finally, a special case should be examined, namely that of the residences of the General Procurators of the Teutonic Order in Rome, starting with the Church of Santa Maria in Domnica on Celio, between 1220 and 1312. The Teutonic Order has not significantly changed the appearance of the church, but has equipped it with attached residential buildings. Like the Hospitallers, the brethren of the Teutonic Order remained absent from Rome until the papal curia returned from Avignon and the general procurator resided in a new house in the Città Leonina, near St. Peter's Church. The building, no longer preserved today, was in poor condition and unsuitable for the needs of the Order, so it was sold in 1431 and an expensive "palatial complex" was acquired in the Arenula district (today's Piazza Farnese), which is still preserved.