Pope Innocent VIII and Prince Cem

When Cem, brother of Sultan Bayezid II, came to be incarcerated in Rome as the "guest" of Pope Innocent VIII, he had a very comfortable life. Bayezid wanted to keep his rival claimant far away from Constantinople and Ottoman lands, and was willing to pay to do so.

Innocent wanted a Crusade against the Ottomans, but he needed military support from Christian rulers. The death of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary—who had seized Ottoman-held territories in Bosnia—in 1490 created a delay in the plans.

To hold off Innocent, Beyazid promised not to attack Rome or Venice or Rhodes and to pay 40,000 ducats to the pope annually to keep Cem under guard. 10,000 of the ducats were to go to the Knights of St. John in Rhodes, who initially took Cem into custody when he asked for their help against Bayezid. Bayezid also gave Innocent 120,000 crowns—a sum greater than all papal revenues combined—and the Holy Lance. 

Innocent's attempt to convert Cem to Christianity was unsuccessful, and despite the comfort of his lifestyle in Rome, Cem wished fervently to die in Muslim lands. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494 to conquer Naples (at Innocent's urging, although Innocent had died two years before), he stopped in Rome and made Pope Alexander VI surrender Cem. Perhaps Charles wanted to start receiving payments from the Sultan. He took Cem with him on campaign, but Cem died on 24 February 1495.

Sultan Bayezid (no doubt relieved that there was no longer a rival claimant and that he no longer had to pay a fee to keep Cem imprisoned) declared a three-day period of national mourning. He requested Cem's body for a proper Islamic funeral, but Charles kept it, hoping to ransom it for more gold. It took four years for Cem's body to reach Ottoman lands and be buried in Bursa. (The illustration shows his tomb alongside siblings.)

We are not done with Pope Innocent, however, and tomorrow we'll see the statement he made about a different campaign...against witchcraft.

Cem's Offer

When Bayezid II became sultan of the Ottoman Empire in 1481, he had a rival: his half-brother Cem (22 December 1459 - 25 February 1495). Cem was the third son of Sultan Mehmed II, who conquered Constantinople and then died without choosing a successor. Cem and Bayezid each ruled provinces, and each believed himself ready and able to become the next sultan.

The Grand Vizier tried to arrange things so that Cem could arrive at his father's funeral before Bayezid and claim the throne at Constantinople. Bayezid, however, already had several important pashas and the Janissaries in his corner. The Janissaries entered the palace, lynched the Grand Vizier, and Bayezid was urged to reach Constantinople as soon as possible.

Cem fled west with an army loyal to him, declaring himself Sultan of Anatolia and proposing that the empire be split; Bayezid could have the western half. Bayezid disagreed, and sent his army after Cem. A battle ensued in which Cem's side lost, and Cem fled to Cairo.

While in Cairo, he received a letter from Bayezid, offering him 1,000,000 akçes (a silver coin that was the standard unit of Ottoman currency) to give up his claim. Instead, Cem tried to conquer the city of Konya in Turkey, but failed. He then fled to Rhodes and asked for the protection of the Knights of St. John, also known as the Hospitallers.

Cem's offer to them was to create a perpetual peace between the Ottoman Empire and Christianity if they would help him overthrow Bayezid. The grand master of the Knights, Pierre d'Aubusson, knew a war with Bayezid could be disastrous, so when he had a message from Bayezid making a counter-offer, he accepted it. 

The counter-offer was simple: Bayezid would make an annual payment in gold to the Knights if they would take and keep Cem captive. He was sent to France under the saintly King Louis IX (who did not like having a Muslim in his lands), and kept for a year in the Duchy of Savoy, and then five years at Pierre d'Aubusson's birthplace, Limousin. (The illustration shows the tower built specially to hold him in comfort.) After Charles VIII came to the throne, Bayezid asks that Cem be transferred back to Rhodes. His value as a hostage meant several leaders wanted to "host" him, but ultimately Pope Innocent VIII won out.

In March 1489, Cem was transported to Rome and the custody of Pope Innocent VIII. Whenever word came that Bayezid was about to launch an offensive against Christians, Innocent would send a message to Bayezid, threatening to release Cem from captivity and giving the Ottomans an alternative sultan around whom they could form an insurrection.

Bayezid ultimately sent Innocent 120,000 crowns, a relic of the Holy Lance (stored in Constantinople), and an annual fee of 45,000 ducats for Cem's "room and board." Bayezid sent spies to ensure that Cem was kept under lock and key, and even tried to assassinate him.

...and then Innocent wanted a Crusade against the Ottomans. I'll continue that story—and Cem's end—tomorrow.

Pope Innocent VIII

Giovanni Battista Cibo was born in Genoa on 5 November 1432. His father was a prominent politician in Naples and then Rome, and Giovanni grew up exposed to Naples politics. He became a Canon of the Cathedral in Capua, and was given the Priory of Santa Maria d'Arba in Genoa. He resigned these positions at the urging of the Archbishop of Genoa after antagonizing King Alfonso. He went to Padua and then Rome to study.

There he came under the influence of several popes. Pope Paul II made him Bishop of Savona, but in 1473 he became a cardinal by Pope Sixtus IV, after being supported by the man who became Pope Julius II. When Sixtus IV died (1484), the conclave to elect his successor was chaotic because of two opposing factions. One faction disliked the other so much that they gave their votes to Giovanni Cibo to prevent Cardinal Marco Barbo (a cousin of Paul II) from the papacy. Giovanni Cibo won the next vote and became Pope Innocent VIII.

One of the new pope's first acts was to call a Crusade against the Turks—the Ottoman Empire was expanding rapidly, and had conquered Constantinople a generation earlier. This did not get off the ground due to King Ferdinand I of Naples, mostly due to his own orneriness that led to the 1485 Conspiracy of the Barons, a revolt against Ferdinand's attempt to strengthen his own power at the expense of the feudal hierarchy. Innocent excommunicated Ferdinand in 1489 and asked King of France Charles VIII to come to Italy and take over Naples.

Charles was intrigued, because his paternal grandmother was Marie of Anjou, the eldest daughter of Louis II of Anjou who had been a claimant to the throne of Naples (and ruled part of it from 1390 to 1399). In September 1494 (Innocent had died two years earlier!) Charles invaded with 25,000 men, using gunpowder artillery to march practically unopposed through Pavia, Pisa, Florence, and then Naples. (That, however, is an entirely different story that we might never get to; back to Innocent now.)

Innocent could not get his Crusade against the Turks off the ground, but another opportunity to do something about them came because of Bayezid II, who had become sultan of the Ottomans in 1481. Bayezid was opposed by his brother, Cem, who first tried to get help from the Mamluks of Egypt, and then from the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. Cem made an offer to the Christian world that was very tempting; I'll explain tomorrow.

The Mesih End

Mesih Pasha was chosen from obscurity—we don't even know his original name before Mehmed II forced him to convert to Islam and made him a member of the Ottoman administration after the Conquest of Constantinople—and rose to great heights, but sultans can be fickle.

Mesih was Grand Admiral of the Ottoman navy and had great successes. He negotiated (successfully) with the rebelling Janissaries when they occupied the palace, angry at the sultan's imprisoning of one of their favorites. He negotiated a compromise with Sultan Bayezid II's rival half-brother, Cem, who had teamed up with the Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes against Bayezid. (The illustration shows Mesih at Rhodes.)

For some reason, however, he fell out of favor with Bayezid in 1485 and was dismissed from his position as vizier at court, being made simply governor of Filibe (once called Philippopolis, now Plovdiv, the second-largest city in Bulgaria). He was shortly exiled (essentially) to Kaffa, on the northern coast of the Black Sea.

His exile did not last forever. In 1497 he was made sanjak bey, military and administrative leader of the port city Akkerman (now Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in southern Ukraine). While there he halted a Poolish invasion of Moldavia, sending several Polish nobles to Bayezid as tribute.

In 1499 he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, an excuse for leaving his position which gave him a reason to visit Constantinople and try to get back to a position at court. Fortunately, the Venetians were fighting the Ottomans again, and his previous naval experience against the Venetians led to being re-named vizier, and then in 1501 Grand Vizier.

Things were looking up again, but that same year the Venetians attacked Lesbos to get it back from the Ottomans. Bayezid, unhappy that the Venetians felt able to make such a bold move against him, in a fit of pique struck Mesih. We don't know how serious the injury may have been, but soon after, after supervising putting out a fire in a Constantinople suburb, Mesih was supposedly injured. He died in November 1501. He was buried in the Murat Pasha Mosque in Constantinople, begun by his brother Hass Murad Pasha and completed by Mesih himself.

Now for something completely different. The illustration above, a painting of Mesih addressing Rhodes, was painted by an eyewitness of that negotiation! His name was Guillaume Caoursin, and we're going to talk about him next.

The Brothers Murad and Mesih

After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II, he took two young male potential Byzantine heirs, converted them to Islam, and made them important figures in the new administration.

We don't know their original names, or their exact parentage (they were reported by some Ottoman historians to be nephews of the deposed Byzantine Emperor Constantine), but they were converted to Islam and renamed Hass Murad Pasha and Mesih Pasha. Both had powerful career positions.

Hass—a title meaning "private" or "personal"—was also very wealthy. He had accrued a significant amount of wealth by 1465/66 when he began the construction of a new mosque, called the Murat Pasha Mosque in Istanbul (still in use; see illustration).

In 1468, the current Grand Vizier and beylerbey ("lord of lords") was dismissed, and Hass replaced him as beylerbey, the commander-in-chief of the Balkans. Life in the Balkans was not peaceful. In 1473, he led a troop of 20,000 against an uprising. When the enemy retreated, Hass Murad intended to follow.

One of the men under his command, Mahmud Pasha, warned him that this particular enemy employed the tactic of "feigned retreats": pretending to flee in disarray and yet prepared to turn and fight when pursued. Murad did not listen. He crossed the Euphrates, his army was ambushed and many captured, and Hass Murad Pasha was killed.

The other brother, Mesih Pasha, was first mentioned in the records as military and administrative commander of Gelibolu (Gallipoli). Gallipoli was a chief Ottoman naval base, and so Mesih had control of a large part of the navy. There was an Ottoman-Venetian War in 1463 - 1479 in which Mesih conquered Euboea, the second-largest Greek island. 

Venetian records of the time claim that Mesih was willing to surrender Gallipoli to Venice for 40,000 gold ducats, but this arrangement never came to fruition, so may have been a Venetian plan to stir up unrest among the Ottomans, and discredit a successful enemy leader.

A new sultan came to the throne, Bayezid II (1481 - 1512). There were some problems with a rival claim, and when Bayezid imprisoned the Grand Vizier who was sympathetic to Bayezid's rival, the Janissaries revolted and invaded the palace (the Grand Vizier, like the Janissaries, was a devşirme). Mesih was sent to negotiate, which he did successfully.

In January 1485 he fell out of favor with Beyazid. This was not the end of his story, however. I'll continue it next time.