“The Dragon Slayer”

Sale: CNG 82, Lot: 1361. Estimate $25000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 September 2009.  Sold For $19000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

RHODES, Knights of Rhodes (Knights Hospitaller). Dieudonné of Gozon. 1346-1353. AV Ducat (3.51 g, 11h). S IOhЄS B to left, mGR in upper center, F • DЄODAT to right, St. Giovanni Battista standing right, presenting banner to kneeling grandmaster / + hOSPITALIS QVЄnT: RODI, angel seated facing slightly left on empty tomb, with wings displayed and hand on hip, holding lis-tipped scepter. Schlumburger pl. IX, 22 = Metcalf, Crusades, p. 299; N. Papadopoli Aldobrandini, “I primi zecchini dei gran Maestri dell 'ordine di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme” in Proces-verbaux et memoires du Congres international de Numismatique ... (Bruxelles, 1910), pl. 12, 1 = Papadopoli (Castellani) 15643; CCS 11; Friedberg 1 (same dies as illustration). VF, traces of prior mounting. Extremely rare, one of five examples known.

The Knights Hospitaller were the first of the great military/religious monastic orders that were created to defend the Crusader dominions in the Holy Land in the 11th century. After the fall of Acre in 1291, marking the end of the Crusader states, the Order was forced to seek refuge in the Kingdom of Cyprus. In an attempt to avoid becoming enmeshed in the internal disputes of the kingdom, in 1309 the Knights acquired the island of Rhodes, which would serve as the temporal domain of the Order until their ouster by the Ottoman Turks following the Siege of Rhodes in 1522.

Dieudonné of Gozon was Grand Master of the Order from 1346-1353. In 1347-8, he led the forces of the Order when they assisted the Armenians in their successful defense of their country against an army sent by the sultan of Egypt. Other than the fact that he descended from a noble family in Languedoc, France, there is little known of him or his reign. He was purported to have the nickname Extinctor Draconis, meaning "The Dragon Slayer," which was supposed to have been given to him for killing a reptile that had been harassing the local farmers. At the time, there was a tale that a dragon lived on the island, and although it is likely that the reptile that Dieudonné killed was a crocodile, he was credited with killing the mythical beast.