Pierre d'Aubusson

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Pierre d'Aubusson (1423 - June 30, 1503) was a Grand Master of the order of St. John of Jerusalem (the Knights Hospitaller) and a zealous opponent of the Ottoman Empire.

Pierre d'Aubusson was born in the castle of Le Monteil (today: Le Monteil au Vicomte, in the French department of Creuse), the fifth son of Jean d'Aubusson. His older brother Antoine had a brilliant carreer serving Charles VII and Louis XI, and the three other brothers became bishops. Pierre probably joined the Knights of St. John in 1444 or 1445 and then left for Rhodes. (The information concerning his youth up to 1444, which has been printed since the 17th Century, is not reliable, coming from the fertile imagination of R.P. Dominique Bouhours, a Jesuit who published a biography of Pierre d'Aubusson (Paris, Mabre-Cramoisy, 1677) at the behest of Marshall d'Aubusson-La Feuillade.)

Pierre d'Aubusson was elected "Grand Prior" of the "Langue d'Auvergne" in early 1476. In June 1476, he was elected Grand Master of the Order, having been a very close associate of a previous Grand Master, Raymond Zacosta, and responsible for the repair and modernization of the fortifications of the city of Rhodes, the other castles of the Order on the islands of the Dodecanese, and the Château Saint Pierre (formerly Halicarnasse, today Bodrum, Turkey).

It was the period of the conquests of Sultan Mehmed II, who, supreme in the East, now began to threaten Europe. In May 1479 a large Ottoman fleet appeared before Rhodes, carrying an invading army of some 100.000 men under the command of Miseh Pacha (originally a Greek by the name of Michael Paleologue who had converted to Islam after the conquest of Byzantium by the Turks). The siege lasted until July of the next year, when the Knights were reinforced from France by 500 knights aud 2000 soldiers under d'Aubusson's brother Antoine. The Turkish force was compelled to withdraw, leaving behind them 9000 dead. The siege, in which d'Aubusson was wounded three times, enhanced his renown throughout Europe. Sultan Mehmed was furious and would have attacked the island again but for his death in 1481. His succession was disputed between his sons Bayezid and Cem. The latter, after his defeat by Bayezid, sought refuge at Rhodes under a safe-conduct from the Grand Master and the General Convent of the Order.

What followed remains a stain on d'Aubusson's memory. Rhodes not being considered secure, Cem with his own consent was sent to Bourganeuf in France where he was kept under the guard of Guy de Blanchefort, Pierre d'Aubusson's nephew. D'Aubusson accepted an annuity of 45,000 ducats from Sultan Bayezid, in return for which he undertook to guard Cem in such a way as to prevent him from appealing to the Christian powers to aid him against his brother. For six years Cem, in spite of frequent efforts to escape, was kept a close prisoner in various castles of the Order in France, until in 1489 he was handed over to Pope Innocent VIII, who had been vying with the kings of Hungary and Naples for the possession of so valuable a political hostage. D'Aubusson's reward was a cardinal's hat (1489) and the power to confer all benefices connected with the Order without the sanction of the papacy. In addition, the Order of St. John received the assets of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, which was merged into the Order of St. John, and a number of Italian commandries of the Knights of St. Lazarus.

The remaining years of his life d'Aubusson spent attempting to restore discipline and zeal in his Order and to organize a grand crusade against the Turks. The age of the Renaissance, with Rodrigo Borgia on the throne of St. Peter, was, however, not favourable to such an enterprise. The death of Cem in 1495 had removed the most formidable weapon available against the Sultan. And when in 1501 d'Aubusson led an expedition against Mytilene, dissension among his motley host rendered this enterprise wholly abortive. His last years were embittered by chagrin at his failure, which was hardly compensated by his success in extirpating Judaism in Rhodes, by expelling all adult Jews and forcibly baptizing their children.

[edit] References

P. Bouhours, Hist. de Pierre d'Aubusson (Paris, 1676; Hague, 1793; abridged ed. Bruges, 1887)
G. E. Streck, Pierre d'Aubusson, Grossmeister, &c. (Chemnitz, 1873)
J. B. Bury in the Cambridge Modern History vol. i. p. 85, &c. (for relations with Jem). Available online at: http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/cmh/cmh103.html#085
Gilles Rossignol, Pierre d'Aubusson, "Le bouclier de la chrétienté". Les Hospitaliers à Rhodes, Besançon, La Manufacture, 1991, bibliogr. (This biography demonstrates the fertile imagination of R.P. Bouhours concerning the youth of Pierre d'Aubusson). See the French version Pierre d'Aubusson