Hélion de Villeneuve

Hélion de Villeneuve (c. 1270–1346), a Provençal knight and commander of Manosque, led the Hospitallers from the papal court at Avignon for years before he ever reached Rhodes. In 1317 Pope John XXII split the vast priory of Saint-Gilles, as Templar property passed to the order, and made Hélion the first prior of Provence.

In 1319, after Foulques de Villaret gave up the office, the pope gathered the priors at Avignon and they chose Hélion as the order's 26th Grand Master; he kept Provence until 1330. To please the pope, a native of Cahors, he surrendered the order's Templar holdings there in 1320 for 2,000 florins.

Reaching Rhodes in 1332, he garrisoned castles in Cilician Armenia and, with Venice and Byzantium, defeated the Turks in the Gulf of Smyrna in 1334. He died on Rhodes on 27 May 1346.