Epilogue

After Acre fell, the Hospitallers relocated first to Cyprus, then conquered and ruled Rhodes (1309–1522) and Malta (1530–1798). The Sovereign Military Order of Malta survives to the present-day. Philip IV of France probably had financial and political reasons to oppose the Knights Templar. He exerted pressure on Pope Clement V, who responded in 1312 by dissolving the order on probably false grounds of sodomy, magic, and heresy. The raising, transportation, and supply of armies led to flourishing trade between Europe and the crusader states. The Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice flourished through profitable trading communes. Many historians argue that the interaction between western Christian and Islamic cultures was a significant and ultimately positive influence on the development of European civilisation and the Renaissance. Relations between Europeans and the Islamic world stretched across the length of the Mediterranean Sea, making it difficult for historians to identify what proportion of cultural cross-fertilisation originated in the crusader states, Sicily and Spain.