Knights of St. Stefano
The spirit of chivalry had perhaps expired in Europe before Cervantes bestowed on it an immortality of ridicule in the person of Don Quixote. But chivalry continued a thriving trade at most European courts after the spirit had fled, and an idle mimicry of chivalric mummery is still perpetuated by princes to decorate courtiers and chamberlains with stars and ribbons. In the year 1560, Cosmo de' Medici, duke of Florence and Sienna, instituted a new order of chivalry on the model of the Knights of Malta, for the express object of combating the Turks, and called them the Knights of St. Stefano.
The new order was marked by the characteristics of the age. There was as much of the spirit of piracy as of the impulse of chivalry in its institutions. These knights were to seek adventures and glory in the Levant; but they were especially instructed not to overlook plunder and profit while at sea.
The pretext of the duke in establishing the Order was to supply the means of defending the coast of Tuscany against Mohammedan corsairs, and he hoped to give a new direction to the valor of the restless nobles of Italy, by mingling the love of foreign enterprise with their personal feuds and party politics. None but nobles were admitted as knights, and only those who were wealthy or distinguished in arms. The Order was endowed with considerable ecclesiastical revenues by Pius IV, and with large funds by the Duke of Florence, who reserved the office of grand-master to himself and his successors. Several families were also allowed to found hereditary commanderies in the Order by granting it large estates. The ancient city of Pisa was the seat of this new Order of St. Stefano - a noble residence for the revivors of ancient pageantry.
The papal bull of confirmation by Pius IV was dated on the 6th July 1562. Historians have carefully described what dress the knights wore, and they are so eloquent and so minute in their description that future times are likely to know more of the exploits of the tailors of the Order than of the deeds of the knights. Several popes conferred additional privileges on the Order, and Benedict XIV granted them the right of audience without leaving their swords in the papal antechamber, a privilege which is enjoyed by other Orders and by foreign diplomatic agents at Rome, whose tongues, however, rather than their swords, were the weapons which they were most likely to use in a manner offensive to his Holiness.
The Knights of St. Stefano maintained a well-appointed squadron of galleys under their own flag, which, when united with the Florentine ships of war, formed a small fleet. The Duke of Florence was quite as much the master of the one as of the other ; but the Knights of St. Stefano could commit acts of piracy without involving him in such direct responsibility as would have resulted from the commission of similar acts by ships under the Florentine flag. The right of private warfare had ceased, but there were still independent sovereigns in Europe who possessed neither the wealth nor the power of the Knights of St. Stefano.
The plundering expeditions of the Knights of St. Stefano respected neither Greek nor Turkish property where booty could be obtained; but the Florentine government soon discovered that the piratical gains of the Order were insufficient to indemnify the State for the exclusion of its industrious citizens from all participation in the honest trade with the Othoman empire. Duke Francesco I. sought to conclude a commercial treaty with the Porte in 1577, in order to afford the Greeks an opportunity of establishing commercial houses at Leghorn under the protection of an Othoman consul.
During his negotiations with the sultan, he attempted to deny all responsibility for the conduct of the Knights of St. Stefano, but the Porte insisted that he should disarm the galleys of the Order, and engage that it should in future afford no assistance to the Pope and the King of Spain. The duke would not accept these conditions, and his attempt to enjoy the profits of legitimate trade in the sultan's dominions under one flag, while plundering his subjects under another, having failed, the Medici and the Knights of St. Stefano continued their piratical expeditions against the Greek islands with redoubled activity.
The spirit of private warfare, or the love of piracy, was so widely spread in Christian Europe, that even the English merchant-ships frequently coming into collision with the Turks wherever they met, whether in the Red Sea or the Mediterranean, and both parties appear to have generally acted in a way more likely to cause than to prevent such collisions.
Though the Venetians and Turks were at peace from 1573 to 1644, and both powers kept up a very considerable naval force for the express purpose of suppressing piracy, the Greeks never suffered more from pirates than during this period. Indeed, the fleets which were placed to protect them were often their worst oppressors. When there was a want of hands in either fleet, the Greeks were carried off from their homes to labor at the oar. The Venetians made slaves of them because they were heretics, and the Othomans because they were infidels. The great extent of the Othoman coasts, and the immense amount of Venetian property always afloat in commercial undertakings, held out too many inducements to corsairs to pursue their trade of pillage.
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