Fra' Juan de Homedes y Coscón (c. 1477 – 6 September 1553) was a Spanish knight of Aragon who served as the 47th Grand Master of the

Order of Malta The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta ( it, Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme, di Rodi e di Malta; ...

, between 1536 and 1553.

Early life

Little is known about de Homedes' early life, except that he was born in Aragon in around 1477. He eventually joined the Order of Saint John on

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...

, and fought bravely in the Ottoman siege of 1522. He eventually moved to the island of

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

along with the rest of the Order in 1530.

Grandmastership

Upon the death of Didier de Saint-Jaille on 26 September 1536, de Homedes was elected by the Order and he became the 47th Grandmaster of the Order on 20 October of that year. In July 1551, the Ottomans attempted to take Malta but were deterred and so they attacked the sister island of Gozo, which capitulated after some days of fierce fighting. Nearly the entire population of the island were taken as slaves, including the governor Gelatian de Sessa and other knights. In August of that year, the Order suffered another blow when it lost its North African stronghold of Tripoli to an Ottoman force commanded by the famous corsair leader

Dragut Dragut ( tr, Turgut Reis) (1485 – 23 June 1565), known as "The Drawn Sword of Islam", was a Muslim Ottoman Empire, Ottoman naval commander, governor, and Pasha, noble, of Turkic peoples, Turkish or Greek people, Greek descent. Under his comman ...

and the admiral

Sinan Sinan (Arabic: سنان ''sinān'') is a name found in Arabic and Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions, Early Arabic, meaning ''spearhead''. The name may also be related to the Ancient Greek name Sinon. It was used as a male given name. Etymology Th ...

in the

Siege of Tripoli The siege of Tripoli lasted from 1102 until July 12, 1109. It took place on the site of the present day Lebanese city of Tripoli, in the aftermath of the First Crusade. It led to the establishment of the fourth crusader state, the County of Tri ...

. De Homedes blamed the loss on the military governor of Tripoli, Gaspard de Vallier, and had him defrocked and imprisoned. De Vallier was later rehabilitated by Grand Master

Jean Parisot de Valette Fra' Jean "Parisot" de la Valette (4 February 1495 – 21 August 1568) was a French nobleman and 49th Grand Master of the Order of Malta, from 21 August 1557 to his death in 1568. As a Knight Hospitaller, joining the order in the ''Langue de Pr ...

. After the events of 1551, de Homedes began a program to fortify Malta better. The first stone for a new fort,

Fort Saint Michael Fort Saint Michael ( mt, Forti San Mikiel) was a small fort in the land front of the city of Senglea, Malta. It was originally built in the 1552 and it played a significant role in the Great Siege of Malta of 1565. Following the siege, it was r ...

, was laid down on 8 May 1552 on '' l'Isola'', a peninsula adjacent to the Order's capital at

Birgu Birgu ( mt, Il-Birgu , it, Vittoriosa), also known by its title Città Vittoriosa ("''Victorious City''"), is an old fortified city on the south side of the Grand Harbour in the South Eastern Region of Malta. The city occupies a promontory of ...

. Meanwhile

Fort Saint Elmo Fort Saint Elmo ( mt, Forti Sant'Iermu) is a star fort in Valletta, Malta. It stands on the seaward shore of the Sciberras Peninsula that divides Marsamxett Harbour from Grand Harbour, and commands the entrances to both harbours along with Fort ...

began to be built on the Sciberras peninsula, a much larger peninsula facing both Birgu and Isola (on which the city of

Valletta Valletta (, mt, il-Belt Valletta, ) is an administrative unit and capital of Malta. Located on the main island, between Marsamxett Harbour to the west and the Grand Harbour to the east, its population within administrative limits in 2014 wa ...

and the town of

Floriana Floriana ( mt, Il-Furjana or ''Il-Floriana''), also known by its title Borgo Vilhena, is a fortified town in the South Eastern Region area of Malta, just outside the capital city Valletta. It has a population of 2,205 as of March 2014. Floriana ...

were later built). De Homedes died on 6 September 1553 and was succeeded by Claude de la Sengle as Grandmaster, who continued the fortification work started by de Homedes. He was buried in the crypt of the Chapel of St Anne in Fort Saint Angelo but his remains were later moved to St. John's Co-Cathedral in

Portrayal in fiction

De Homedes is portrayed in an unflattering light in Dorothy Dunnett's 1966 novel ''The Disorderly Knights'', which is set in 1551 during the Dragut Raid on Malta and Gozo and the subsequent fall of Tripoli. The novel shows him as miserly, cruel, partisan towards other Spanish knights, lacking in strategy, and extremely selfish. He is also portrayed as an ineffectual and spiteful leader in Marthese Fenech's 2011 novel ''Eight Pointed Cross'', set in Malta and the Ottoman Empire in 1542 through 1551. ''Eight Pointed Cross'' depicts the loss of Gozo and Tripoli to Dragut Raïs and Sinan Pasha, and the Order's failure to help the over five thousand civilians captured in the sieges. De Homedes appears in ''The Course of Fortune'' by Tony Rothman (J. Bolyston, 2015), in which his role in the first siege of Malta (1551), the sack of Gozo (1551) and his prosecution of the knights after the fall of Tripoli are described in detail.

References

External links

Coins of Grandmaster Juan de Omedes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Homedes, Juan de Grand Masters of the Knights Hospitaller Knights of Malta 16th-century Spanish people 1470s births 1553 deaths Burials at Saint John's Co-Cathedral