Juan de Homedes

Juan de Homedes was grand master of the Knights Hospitaller from 1536 to 1553. His government on Malta strengthened fortifications and founded the towns of Senglea and Burgu’s Fort Saint Michael, but it was also marked by factional disputes and serious military reverses.

Ottoman forces captured the Hospitaller stronghold of Tripoli in 1551, and critics accused Homedes of failing to reinforce it adequately. He died before the Great Siege of Malta transformed the order’s reputation. Juan de Homedes was born in Zaragoza and died in Malta.

Dorothy Dunnett’s The Disorderly Knights portrays Juan de Homedes as the embattled grand master of the Knights Hospitaller during the Ottoman attacks on Malta and the loss of Tripoli in 1551. His suspicious, partisan and ineffectual leadership forms part of the institutional disorder against which Lymond measures the apparently saintly Graham Reid Malett, making the historical grand master an important counterweight to the novel’s fictional rivalry.