Leon Chamaretos

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Leon Chamaretos ( Middle Greek Λέων Χαμάρετος ; † spring 1205 or after 1209 at Lakedaimonia ?) Was a Byzantine separatist in the Peloponnese ( Morea ) at the beginning of the 13th century.

Life

Leon Chamaretos belonged to a laconic dynasty family from Monemvasia . It is possible that he already held a prominent position in the Byzantine military hierarchy as archon under Emperor Manuel I. Under Alexios III. he appears as Proedros of Lakedaimonia.

When the central government in Constantinople increasingly lost control of Hellas and the Peloponnese as a result of the uprising sparked by Dobromir Chrysos and Manuel Kamytzes in the spring of 1201 in Macedonia and Thessaly , regional magnates and officials tried to unite themselves and their families from the collapse of the provincial administration To take advantage. Chamaretos also belonged to them, who as toparches established a quasi-autonomous rule in the former imperial heartland of Laconia around Laconia. At about the same time, Leon Sguros also became de facto self-employed in Nauplia and Corinth .

The political situation changed fundamentally for Chamaretos after the army of the Fourth Crusade smashed the Byzantine Empire in April 1204. The Latins , who were militarily much stronger than the overthrown Byzantine emperor, now made preparations to conquer all of Greece. In the winter of 1204/05, a Peloponnesian dynast, identified either with Chamaretos or with Johannes Kantakuzenos , offered the crusader Gottfried von Villehardouin , who was stranded in Methone, an alliance for joint conquests on the peninsula. Shortly afterwards he seems to have died suddenly.

Leon Chamaretos or his son turned against Villehardouin, who fled to Nauplia, where the Frankish army was under Boniface of Montferrat . Villehardouin returned to Messenia in the spring of 1205 together with Wilhelm von Champlitte and an army of knights and decisively defeated the Peloponnesian Greeks in the battle in the olive grove of Kunduros . The two Franks took control of most of Morea and founded the Principality of Achaia on the conquered territory as a vassal state of the Kingdom of Thessaloniki ; Laconia initially remained under Chamaretos' rule.

In 1209 Villehardouin went on the offensive and took Lakedaimonia after a five-day siege; Chamaretos was allowed to retire to an estate. His presumed son (or brother) Johannes continued the resistance against the Latins. He was able to hold himself as a paneutychestates despotes recognized by Nikaia in Monemvasia until an intrigue of his father-in-law Georgios Daimonoioannes forced him to flee to the court of the ruler of Epirus , Theodoros I. Komnenos Dukas , in 1222 .

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literature

  • Antoine Bon: Le Péloponnèse byzantin jusqu'en 1204 (= Bibliotheque Byzantine . Études 1). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1951, pp. 123-124, 172-173, 204 no. 67.
  • Jean-Claude Cheynet: Pouvoir et contestations à Byzance (963-1210) (= Publications de la Sorbonne. Series Byzantina Sorbonensia. Vol. 9). Reimpression. Publications de la Sorbonne Center de Recherches d'Histoire et de Civilization Byzantines, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-85944-168-5 , pp. 152-153 no. 217.
  • Florin Curta : Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, ISBN 0-521-81539-8 .
  • John Van Antwerp Fine: The Late Medieval Balkans: A critical Survey from the late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor MI 1994, ISBN 0-472-08260-4 , pp. 37, 69.
  • Judith Herrin: Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 2013, ISBN 978-1-4008-4522-4 , p. 140.
  • Aneta Ilieva: Frankish Morea, 1205-1262. Socio-cultural Interaction between the Franks and the Local Population (= Historical Monographs . Vol. 9). SD Basilopoulos, Athens 1991, ISBN 960-7100-39-5 , pp. 94, 135.
  • Haris A. Kalligas: Monemvasia: A Byzantine City State. Routledge, London / New York NY 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-24880-8 .
  • Peter Lock: The Franks in the Aegean, 1204-1500 . Pearson / Longman, Harlow 1995, ISBN 0-582-05140-1 .
  • Paul Magdalino: The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2002, ISBN 0-52-152653-1 , pp. 155, 257-258, 491.
  • Andreas Mazarakis: The Lead Bulla of the Despot Ioannis Chamaretos. In: Jean-Claude Cheynet, Claudia Sode (Ed.): Studies in Byzantine Sigillography. Vol. 11. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027114-0 , pp. 111-118.
  • Steven Runciman : Lost Capital of Byzantium. The History of Mistra and the Peloponnese. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2009, ISBN 978-0-674-03405-1 .
  • Alexis GC Savvides: Internal Strife and Unrest in Later Byzantium, XIth – XIIIth Centuries (AD 1025–1261). The Case of Urban and Provincial Insurrections (Causes and Effects). In: Σύμμεικτα ΚΒΕ / ΕΙΕ. Vol. 7, 1987, ISSN  1105-1639 , pp. 237-273, here: p. 272.
  • 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. 190-191.
  • Teresa Shawcross: The Lost Generation (c. 1204 - c.1222): Political Allegiance and Local Interests under the Impact of the Fourth Crusade . In: Judith Herrin, Guillaume Saint-Guillain (ed.): Identities and Allegiances in the Eastern Mediterranean After 1204. Ashgate, Farnham 2011, ISBN 978-1-4094-1098-0 , pp. 9–46, here: pp. 44.
  • Jonathan Shea: The Late Byzantine City: Social, Economic and Institutional Profile. Diss. University of Birmingham, Birmingham 2010 ( PDF file; 8.1 MB ), pp. 47–50.
  • Alicia Simpson: Niketas Choniates. A Historiographical Study. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-967071-0 , p. 313.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ On the controversial identification with the tyrannos mentioned in Choniates or his (eponymous?) Son cf. Shea, Late Byzantine City , pp. 49 f .; Kalligas, Monemvasia , pp. 26 ff .; Curta, Southeastern Europe , p. 375.
  2. ↑ Cf. Magdalino, Empire , pp. 257 f.
  3. ↑ See Mazarakis, Lead Bulla , p. 112 f.
  4. ↑ See Lock, Franks , pp. 71 f .; For the contradicting information in sources and literature, see note 1.
  5. ↑ See Runciman, Lost Capital , p. 21.
  6. ↑ See Kalligas, Monemvasia , p. 27.
personal data
SURNAME Leon Chamaretos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Λέων Χαμάρετος (Middle Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Byzantine magnate in the Peloponnese, rebel against Emperor Alexios III.
DATE OF BIRTH 12th Century
DATE OF DEATH 1205 or after 1209
Place of death uncertain: at Sparta