Pierre d'Aubusson

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Pierre d'Aubusson
engraving around 1725
Cardinal coat of arms of Pierre d'Aubusson

Pierre d'Aubusson (called Shield of the Church ), also Petrus Albussanus , (* 1423 in Le Monteil-au-Vicomte , † July 3, 1503 ) was the 40th Grand Master of the Order of St. John from 1476 until his death and cardinal of the Roman church .

youth

He came from the old French nobility , entered the service of Emperor Sigismund in 1435 and marched against the Turks under Archduke Albrecht of Austria . When the Anglo-French War flared up again, he is said to have distinguished himself during the siege of Montereau in 1437 . He moved with the Armagnaks against the Swiss and fought in 1444 near St. Jakob an der Birs . However, the information on his youth up to 1444, published in the 17th and 18th centuries, is not reliable, as it mostly came from the imagination of RP Dominique Bouhours , a Jesuit who lived in 1677 on behalf of Marshal d'Aubusson-La Feuillade edited a biography of Pierre d'Aubusson.

Order knight

Joined the Order of St. John in 1444 , which had resided in Rhodes since 1309 , d'Aubusson became a knight in 1445. In 1454 he became Commander of Salins , in 1460 castellan of Rhodes with responsibility for building the Rhodian fortress, then captain general of the city, and finally in 1472 Bailli of Lureuil . After the fall of Constantinople (1453), he succeeded in getting the French King Charles VII to allow the tithing of all church property on the occasion of the Turkish War and to give the Order of St. John 16,000 gold thalers. In January 1476, d'Aubusson became a member of the select committee of 16 knights, Procureur du trésor (Keeper of the Treasure), and Grand Prior of the Auvergne Tongue .

The Siege of Rhodes 1480, contemporary illustration by Guillaume Caoursin

Grand Masters and the Defense of Rhodes

On June 17, 1476, d'Aubusson was elected Grand Master of the Order, succeeding Gian Battista Orsini . When the army of Sultan Mehmed under the command of Mesih Pasha , a palaeologist , besieged the city of Rhodes with about 100,000 men from May 23, 1480 to July 28, 1480 , d'Aubusson succeeded in defending the city and island. Due to a request for help on his part, an army with the order's 450 best knights from France and Italy, as well as 2,000 soldiers from France under his brother Antoine, had already come to the rescue. The Turks were finally forced to abandon the siege, and d'Aubusson, who was wounded several times in battle, was celebrated as a hero in Christian Europe and called the “shield of the church”. A chronicle of the siege of Rhodes ("Obsidionis Rhodiae urbis descriptio") wrote his vice-chancellor and historiographer (historian) of the order Guillaume Caoursin , one of the most important authors of his time.

The Cem

After 1481, d'Aubusson played a not exactly glorious role in the bargain for Cem , the brother of the new Ottoman sultan Bayezid II. Cem was defeated in the struggle of the two sons of Mehmed II for his successor and had sought refuge with the knights on Rhodes and have been assured of safe conduct from the Grand Master and the General Convention. Since Rhodes was not considered safe enough, d'Aubusson sent Cem, with his consent, to France, where he spent six years in various castles of the order under the guard of d'Aubusson's nephew Guy de Blanchefort , who from 1512 to 1513 himself was a grand master was held captive. D'Aubusson accepted an annual payment of 45,000 ducats from Sultan Bayezid for preventing Cem from turning to the rulers of Europe for help against his brother. In 1489 Cem was handed over to Pope Innocent VIII , who had competed with the kings of Hungary and Naples for possession of this valuable hostage . From then on, the Pope received the annual payment from Istanbul. Shortly thereafter, on March 9, 1489, D'Aubusson received the cardinal dignity for himself and his successors as Grand Master , and the order received the entire Italian property of the Knightly Order of the Holy Sepulcher, as well as a large number of the Italian Comturs of the Order of Lazarus . However , d'Aubusson did not take part in the papal election in 1492 ( Alexander VI ). Cem died in Naples in 1495.

The last few years

In the last years of his life, d'Aubusson tried to tighten the order internally and to organize a crusade against the Ottomans. A campaign he directed against Mytilene in 1501 failed because of disputes in his contingent. Then, bitterly, he devoted himself to the extermination of Judaism on Rhodes by expelling all adult Jews and forcibly baptizing the children.

literature

  • Guillaume Caoursin : Obsidionis Rhodiae urbis descriptio. Erhard Ratdolt , Venice around 1481.
  • Pierre d'Avity , Johann Ludwig Gottfried : Archontologiae Cosmicae. Book 3. Frankfurt am Main 1628, p. 41. online
  • Dominique Bouhours: Histoire de Pierre d'Aubusson. Mabre-Cramoisy, Paris 1677; The Hague 1793; Bruges 1887.
  • GE Streck: Pierre d'Aubusson, Grand Master, & c. Chemnitz 1873.
  • Gilles Rossignol: Pierre d'Aubusson, "le bouclier de la chrétienté". Les Hospitaliers à Rhodes. La Manufacture, Besançon 1991.
  • Erik Svane, Dan Greenberg: Croisade vers la Terre Sainte. Éditions Paquet, Geneva 2007, ISBN 978-2-88890-228-7 .
  • Histoire journalière de ce qui se passa soubs la conduite du Fr. Pierre d'Aubusson (…) au siège de la ville de Roddès [sic] (…) Paris, BN , ms. fr., coll. Dupuy, n ° 255.

Web links

Commons : Pierre d'Aubusson (GM 40)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
predecessor Office successor
Giovanni Battista Orsini Grand Master of the Order of St. John
1476–1503
Emery d'Amboise