Strength: 3
Type: Siege Unit
Flavor Text: The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out over the earth, and men cannot see it.
Flavor Source: Gospel of Thomas
Artwork: Knights Hospitaller assault on the city of Rhodes in 1310 by Eloi-Firmin Féron (1839)
About the card:
The Knights Hospitaller were a Catholic military order founded in the 12th century in Jerusalem. The conquest of Rhodes by the Knights Hospitaller was part of the ongoing Crusades, due to its prime location on trade routes to Constantinople. In 1306 the Knights Hospitaller landed on the island of Rhodes and conquered all but the city of Rhodes. The Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos sent reinforcements to defend the city and it was not conquered by the Knights Hospitaller until 1310. It remained their center of operations until 1522 when it was retaken by the Ottoman Empire (see also Privateer).
From the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 113. The Gospel of Thomas was found in the Nag Hammadi Library, a series of thirteen codices unearthed in Egypt in 1945. These works were written at the same time as some of the books of the New Testament in the Second and Third centuries AD and are considered works of Gnosticism.
