RHODES

RHODES. The largest island of the Dodecanese, located in the south Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey, but within the territory of modern Greece, the entire chain of islands, four dioceses in all, remains under the supervision of the Ecumenical Patriarch (q.v.). The capital and see city of the island, also called Rhodes, was long the capital of a Crusading order, the Knights Hospitalers, who held the island until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire (q.v.) in 1523. In 1961 Rhodes was the site of the first gathering of all local Orthodox churches in several centuries.