Dieudonné de Gozon
Dieudonné de Gozon ( Latin Deodatus Gozonensis or Deodatus de Gosono , † 1353 ) was the 27th Grand Master of the Order of St. John from 1346 until his death .
He came from a noble family from the Languedoc , thus belonged to the tongue of Provence , the order on Rhodes .
He was nicknamed "Extinctor Draconis", which means dragon slayer . According to tradition, there was a dragon on Rhodes in 1332, which lived in a swamp about two miles from the city and killed the local farmers' cattle. Contrary to the order of the reigning Grand Master not to disturb the monster, de Gozon slew the beast and hung the beast's head on one of the seven city gates. About a hundred years later, when the skull was examined, it was recognized as the head of a large crocodile . In 1798 Schiller processed the legend into his ballad Der Kampf mit dem Drachen .
As a grand master, he had the fortifications of Rhodes completed with a wall facing the port and a pier . During his tenure, the order suffered from economic difficulties, as it had lost large amounts of money between 1343 and 1346 when the Florentine banks Bardi and Peruzzi went bankrupt , and the plague pandemic that raged in Europe in 1348 additionally reduced the income of the religious goods in Europe.
In the spring of 1347, the order's fleet, reinforced by other Latin ships, won a sea battle near Imbros near the Dardanelles in which more than a hundred Turkish ships were destroyed. Despite a weak garrison, Smyrna , conquered in 1344 , could be defended by Aydin against attacks by Umur .
1347/1348 he led the Order at the insistence of the Pope to an expedition to Armenia Minor , where he said there King Constantine IV. In the fight against Mamluk - Sultan of Egypt came to his aid. He ignored another request from the Pope to intervene in Lesser Armenia in 1351.
He died in 1353 and was buried in Rhodes, his grave slab has been preserved and is now in the Musée national du Moyen Age in Paris.
literature
- Frederick W. Hasluck: Dieudonné de Gozon and the Dragon of Rhodes. In: The Annual of the British School at Athens . Volume 20, 1914, pp. 70-79. (here online) .
- Kenneth M. Setton (Ed.): A History of the Crusades . Volume 3: Harry W. Hazard (Ed.): The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1975, ISBN 0-299-06670-3 .
- Pierre d'Avity / Johann Ludwig Gottfried : Archontologiae Cosmicae. Book III, Frankfurt am Main 1628, p. 37 , § 27.
- Charlotte M. Yonge: What Is Better Than Slaying A Dragon. In: Charlotte M. Yonge (Ed.): A Book of Golden Deeds. Blackie & Son, London 1864 (online here) .
Web links
- Dieudonné de Gozon at smom-za.org
- The 79 grandmasters ( memento of December 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) at orderofmalta.org
Individual evidence
- ^ Hazard, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries , p. 291
- ↑ Jonathan Riley-Smith : The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades , Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 339
- ↑ a b Hazard, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries , p. 296.
- ^ A b Hazard, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries , p. 295
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Helion de Villeneuve |
Grand Master of the Order of St. John 1346–1353 |
Pierre de Corneillan |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gozon, Dieudonné de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | 27. Grand Master of the Order of St. John |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 13th century or 14th century |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1353 |