Esau de 'Buondelmonti

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Esau de 'Buondelmonti (* around 1355 probably in Florence ; † February 6, 1411 in Ioannina ) ruled Epirus from 1385 until his death .

Life

Esau was the son of the Florentine nobleman Manente Buondelmonti and the Lapa Acciaiuoli . His sister Maddalena Buondelmonti had been the wife of Leonardo I Tocco , Count Palatine of Kefalonia and Zakynthos , since 1361 .

At an unknown time before 1375, Esau came from Italy to Greece, where several of his maternal relatives had already acquired domains in the service of the House of Anjou ; his uncle Niccolò Acciaiuoli had been lord of Corinth since 1358 . He began his political and military career at the court of his brother-in-law Leonardo Tocco on the island of Lefkada . In 1378 Esau was one of those Frankish knights who were captured by the Serbian ruler of Epirus, Thomas Preljubović , together with the Grand Master of the Order of St. John , Juan Fernández de Heredia , near Vonitsa in Akarnania . He spent several years in Preljubovićs custody in Ioannina, where he soon with his wife Maria Angelina Doukaina Palaiologina , a subsidiary of Thessaly Tsar Simeon Uroš entertained, a secret love affair.

After Preljubović's death in December 1384, his widow Maria took over the reign of Ioannina. On the advice of her brother and advisor Jovan Uroš , she included Esau de 'Buondelmonti in the rule and married him in May 1386. In the same year, Esau received the title of despot from an embassy of the Byzantine emperor John V , making his government stronger than the Greek subjects has been legitimized. The new prince reversed many unpopular measures taken by his predecessor and also called Archbishop Matthias back from exile .

Immediately after taking power, Esau fended off an attack by the Albanian despot of Arta , Gjin Bua Shpata , in 1385/86 . In order to be able to assert himself permanently, he sought an alliance with the Ottomans , who had meanwhile conquered Macedonia and had risen to become the strongest power in the Balkans . In 1386 he went to Edirne to the Sultan's court and became a vassal of Murad I. With the help of Turkish and Thessalian troops, Esau was able to consolidate and expand his position against the Albanians until the Sultan's death in the Battle of the Amselfeld in 1389. Then the Turkish allies withdrew. The despot's relations with the Republic of Venice were extremely bad because he undermined the Venetian salt monopoly with the salt production in Saiata (near Butrint ) .

On December 28, 1394 Esau's wife Maria died and a new attack by the Albanians followed. The conflict was resolved diplomatically when Esau married Irene , Shpata's daughter, in January 1396 . As a result, the prince and his new Albanian allies took a stand against the Ottomans. But this alliance lasted only a short time and would not have stood a chance in the event of a serious military campaign by the Turks. In 1399 Esau moved against Gjin Zenevisi in the north. But he was defeated at Mesopotam and imprisoned in Gjirokastra . His hometown of Florence brokered his release in return for a ransom of 10,000 guilders . Returning to Ioannina via Corfu , Esau won the support of Bayezids I for further action against the Albanians during a second stay in Edirne (1399/1400) . Supported by Turkish auxiliary troops who, due to the inner Ottoman civil war after 1402, were entirely committed to him, Esau was able to successfully secure his area in central Epirus.

When Esau de 'Buondelmonti died in February 1411, the greats of the country refused to recognize his young son Giorgio from his third marriage to Eudokia Balšić as heir. Both went into exile after 20 days of reign. Esau's nephew Carlo I Tocco was elected the new Prince of Epirus .

swell

literature

  • Sebastián Cirac Estopañán: Bizancio y España: El legado de la basilissa María y de los déspotas Thomas y Esaú de Joannina. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Barcelona 1943, pp. 191–193.
  • Божидар Ферјанчић: Деспоти у Византији и Јужнословенским земљама (= Посебна издашиа .ул. Bd. 336; Византо. Српска академија наука и уметности, Београд 1960, pp. 81–82.
  • John Van Antwerp Fine: The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 1994, ISBN 0-472-08260-4 , pp. 352-355.
  • Donald M. Nicol : The Despotate of Epiros 1267-1479. A contribution to the history of Greece in the middle ages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 0-521-26190-2 , pp. 157-164 and passim .
  • Alexios G. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx (Eds.): Encyclopaedic Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization . Vol. 2: Baanes-Eznik of Kolb . Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2008, ISBN 978-2-503-52377-4 , pp. 405-406.
  • Oliver Jens Schmitt : The Venetian Albania (1392–1479) (= Southeast European works. Vol. 110). Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56569-9 .
  • Erich Trapp , Rainer Walther, Hans-Veit Beyer: Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit . 4. Fascicle: Θαδδαῖος - Ἰωσούφης (= publications of the Commission for Byzantine Studies . Vol. 1/4). Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-7001-0330-1 , pp. 112–113 No. 8147.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ See Fine, Late Medieval Balkans , p. 352.
  2. ↑ The sources give different information about the circumstances of Preljubović's death: While Laonikos Chalkokondyles blames Esau and Maria for a murder, according to the Chronicle of Ioannina he died of natural causes. See EPLBHC 2, p. 405.
  3. ↑ See EPLBHC 2, p. 405.
  4. ↑ See PLP 11, p. 60.
  5. ↑ See Schmitt, Albanien , p. 227.
  6. ↑ See EPLBHC 2, p. 405.
  7. ↑ See PLP 4, p. 112.
personal data
SURNAME Esau de 'Buondelmonti
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Despot in Epirus (1385 / 86-1411)
DATE OF BIRTH around 1355
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Florence
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1411
Place of death Ioannina