Anthony Luttrell

Anthony Luttrell
Anthony Luttrell
Born	October 1932 (age 92)
Occupation(s)	Historian, academic, author
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Oxford (MA, PhD)
Thesis	Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Castellan of Amposta (1346–1377), Master of the Order of St. John at Rhodes (1377–1396) (1959)
Academic work
Discipline	history; medieval studies;
Institutions	Royal Holloway, University of London; University of Würzburg; University of Padua; Dumbarton Oaks; French National Centre for Scientific Research; Princeton University; Royal University of Malta; British School at Rome; University of Edinburgh; Swarthmore College;
Main interests	Mediterranean history, the Hospitallers of Rhodes, medieval Malta

Anthony Luttrell (born 1932) is a distinguished British scholar of medieval history, renowned for his expertise in Mediterranean history. His primary focus lies in the history of the Order of St John, for which he is widely recognised as a foremost authority.

Early life

Anthony Thornton Luttrell was born in October 1932.^[1] After graduating from Bryanston School in Dorset in 1951, Luttrell began his studies at Oriel College, Oxford. He graduated in 1954, spending his final year as De Osma Student^[a] at the Instituto Valencia of Don Juan in Madrid. In 1955, he entered the Colegio Mayor Ximénez de Cisneros at Madrid University, then pursued further studies from 1956 to 1958 at the British School at Rome, a British interdisciplinary research centre, as the Rome Scholar in Medieval studies.^[b] In 1959, he completed his studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in the University of Pisa, receiving his MA and D.Phil. from Oxford in the same year.^[4]

Career

From 1960 to 1962, Luttrell taught at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, US. The following year he joined the Department of History of Edinburgh University as a lecturer, serving in that position for four years.^[5] From 1967 to 1973, Luttrell served as assistant director and Librarian of the British School at Rome,^[4] before joining from 1973 to 1976 the Department of History at the Royal University of Malta.^[5] In 1977–1978, he was a visiting fellow at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, followed by research at the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (IRHT/CNRS) in Paris^[4] before returning to the University of Malta in 1979 and 1980 as a lecturer.^[5] In 1980, he was a Fellow of the Harvard University Center for Byzantine Studies, at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC. Two years later, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support his work from 1982 to 1985.^[4] Continuing his scholarly endeavours, in 1985 he conducted research in the Italian Veneto as a Fellow of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation,^[c] served as visiting Professor at the Istituto di Scienze Religiose, University of Padua,^[5] before undertaking the Instituto Español Vicente Cañada Blanch University of London Senior Fellowship in Spain in 1986–87.^[4]

For the following two years, Luttrell was at the University of Würzburg, Germany with support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1987–88). In 1988, he served as a Leverhulme research officer with the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem in London.^[4] His academic journey led him back to the British School in Rome in 1992–93 as a Balsdon Senior Fellow^[d] before becoming director of research in 1993 at IRHT/CNRS in Orléans, France.^[4] In 1999–2000 he returned to the University of Wurzbürg, after receiving the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Prize for foreign humanities scholars.^[5] Since 2001, he has been an honorary research associate at the Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London, with focus on the Knights Hospitaller on Rhodes and Malta; the Greek population of Rhodes in the Medieval Period.^[8]^[9]

Luttrell's extensive research on the Knights of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in Rhodes and Malta inspired him to combine archival research with archaeology throughout the 1970s and 1980s.^[10] His excavation efforts, particularly focused around churches in the area known as Ħal-Millieri, near the village of Żurrieq in Malta shed light on Malta's early and medieval history, providing valuable insights into Mediterranean culture.^[10]

With over sixty-five years of scholarly pursuit, Luttrell has amassed a body of work comprising more than 250 publications. His expertise is epitomized in his seminal six-volume collected studies published by Routledge.^[11] Widely regarded as the foremost historian of the Hospitallers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,^[12]^[4] his notable contributions include "Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306: Rhodes and the West" (2007), "The Town of Rhodes 1306–1356" (2003), and "Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages," co-authored with Medieval historian Helen J. Nicholson (2006).^[11]

Awards

Luttrell's contributions have been recognised with prestigious accolades, including the Prix Gustave Schlumberger by the French learned society Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2012.^[8]

Works

Monographs

Medieval Malta: Studies on Malta Before the Knights, ed. A. Luttrell (London, 1975)
Ħal Millieri: A Maltese Casale, its Churches and Paintings, ed. A. Luttrell (Malta, 1976)
The Hospitallers in Cyprus, Rhodes, Greece and the West, 1291–1440: Collected Studies (London, 1978)
Gozo Citadel, Malta: Report Submitted to the Division of Cultural Heritage, UNESCO (typescript: Malta, 1981)
Latin Greece, the Hospitallers and the Crusades, 1291–1440: Collected Studies (London, 1982)
The Later History of the Maussolleion and its Use in the Hospitaller Castle at Bodrum = The Maussolleion at Halikarnassos: Reports of the Danish Archaeological Expedition to Bodrum, 2 – The Written Sources and their Archaeological Background: Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 15 part 2 (Aarhus, 1986)
with T. Blagg and A. Bonanno, Excavations at Ħal Millieri, Malta (Malta, 1991), pp. 152
The Hospitallers of Rhodes and their Mediterranean World: Collected Studies (London, 1992)
with T. Blagg, Le palais papal et autres bâtiments du XIVe siècle à Sorgues (Sorgues, 1998), pp. 139.
The Hospitaller State on Rhodes and its Western Provinces: 1306–1462 (Aldershot, 1999)
The Making of Christian Malta: From the Early Middle Ages to 1530 (Aldershot, 2002)
La commanderie: institution des ordres militaires dans l'occident médiéval, ed. A. Luttrell and L. Pressouyre (Paris, 2002), pp. 361.
The Town of Rhodes: 1306–1356 (Rhodes, 2003).
Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Luttrell and H. Nicholson (Aldershot, 2006)
Studies on the Hospitallers after 1306: Rhodes and the West (Aldershot, 2007)

References

Explanatory notes

^ The De Osma Studentship is a prestigious scholarship available to members of the University of Oxford. It was established in 1920 by Guillermo J. de Osma, the first Spaniard to study at Oxford.^[2]
^ The Rome Scholarship in Medieval Studies was founded in 1931 to offer students the possibility of conducting research in history, antiquities or literature of some period between A.D. 300 and A.D. 1453.^[3]
^ The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation awards travel grants to individual scholars to support historical research on Venice and the former Venetian empire.^[6]
^ The Balsdon Fellowship supports established UK scholars researching Italian culture from prehistory to modern times at the British School at Rome.^[7]