Leonardo III Tocco

Palatine County of Kefalonia and Zakynthos

Leonardo III Tocco († before August 1503 in Rome ) from the Italian family Tocco was the last despot of Romania from 1448 to 1479 , Duke of Lefkada , Lord of Angelocastro (since 2011 a district of Agrinio ), Vonitsa and Varnazza, loses the first and last ( Lefkada and Varnazza) in 1460 and the second (Vonitsa) in 1479, Count Palatine of Kefalonia and Despot of Arta .

Life

Childhood and youth

Leonardo III Tocco was born the eldest of three sons of Carlo II. Tocco and the Raimondina di Ventimiglia . His younger brothers were Antonio Tocco and Giovanni Tocco .

When his father died on September 30, 1448, Leonardo III was. still too young to rule alone, so before his death his father had put together a regency council, consisting of four governors, who carried out the business of government in Leonardo's name. Immediately after the death of the father, this Regency Council accepted the suzerainty (supremacy) of the Republic of Venice in order to avoid an Ottoman conquest.

The kingdom of Leonardus III. was in a threatening situation: While Leonardo's great-uncle Carlo I Tocco still ruled as a powerful prince, Leonardo's father Carlo II was involved in a war of succession with Memnon Tocco . This illegitimate descendant of the family called on the Ottomans for help and, with their support, conquered large parts of the despotate of Epirus .

Leonardo III as ruler

The Ottomans now used the death of their father Carlo II as an opportunity to invade Epirus again. On March 24, 1449 they conquered Arta and all other Tocci territories on the Greek mainland except for the fortresses Vonitsa, Varnazza and Angelokastro (loses the first and last in 1460 and the second in 1479) without much resistance.

Leonardo III Tocco fled to the Ionian Islands and established his residence in Santa Maura . Although he had lost the despotate of Epirus and Arta, he continued to refer to himself as the "Despot of Arta". He was active as a negotiator for the Venetians .

During the First Ottoman – Venetian War (1463–1479), many refugees fled to the Palatine County of Kefalonia.

With Leonardo's second marriage in 1477 to the Marzano family, one of the oldest noble families in Italy , owners of a large part of Terra di Lavoro , he came closer to the Kingdom of Naples , which, however, was at odds with the Republic of Venice. The Venetians then stopped any support and in 1479 expressly did not include his lands in the Peace Treaty of Constantinople with the Ottomans, which cost him his lands.

Leonardo was contractually obliged not only to pay the sultan an annual tribute of 4,000 ducats , but also had to give him a gift of 500 ducats every time an Ottoman Sanjak-Bey or provincial governor came to Ioannina or Arta. Everything changed when one of these personalities, who was not yet 16 years old and had been demoted from the higher rank of pasha , came and was treated with little consideration by Leonardo, who happened to be his own relative, and was given fruit instead of money . The young governor felt hurt in his pride and complained in Constantinople that Leonardo had given shelter to the Venetian light cavalry on Zakynthos during the First Ottoman – Venetian War and that he had not been included in the Constantinople Peace Treaty.

Agios Georgios Castle on Kefalonia

Sultan Mehmed II took advantage of this opportunity in 1479 to plan his conquests by annexing Leonardo's lands, which were to serve as the basis for his intended attack on Italy. So he ordered Gedik Ahmed Pasha , Sanjak-Bey from Sandzak Vlora attacking Leonardo with 29 ships. Leonardo did not wait for the Ottoman invasion, however. He knew that the Venetians would not help, the Neapolitans could not, and that his own subjects detested him. Long before the Pasha appeared, Leonardo collected all of his portable valuables, hired a Venetian merchant ship and fled from the island of Lefkada to Fort St. George on Kefalonia. But since he did not trust the garrison and the Ottomans, who were approaching, saw his "treasure ship", he boarded another Venetian ship that was in the port with his wife, his son Carlo and his two brothers Antonio and Giovanni in Taranto , from where he wanted to go to Naples .

In exile

Leonardo III was in Naples. with his family kindly received by Ferdinand I , King of Naples , who awarded him an annuity of 500 florines and the lands of Calimera in Apulia and Briatico in Calabria . In 1480 he went to Rome with his son and brothers to ask for a pension from Pope Sixtus IV , who gave him 1000 gold coins and promised him an annual pension of 2000 gold coins. Leonardo became lord of San Mauro and from 1480 Baron of Montesarchio . After a short stay in Rome, he returned to Naples and planned to recapture his rule.

In 1481 Leonardo and a Neapolitan fleet called on the Ottoman military officer of Kefalonia and Zante to surrender in vain. Around the same time, Leonardo's brother Antonio and a group of Catalan mercenaries were able to recapture the two islands, as the garrison of Kefalonia was weak and that of Zakynthos had fled. But Antonio's success aroused the jealousy of Venice, which was unwilling to see the islands owned by the King of Naples or his vassals. The governor of Methoni ousted Antonio and his Catalans from Zakynthos in 1482, but was able to hold Kephalonia until the following year, when his soldiers - who had defected to the Venetians - betrayed him and murdered him in the fortress of Kefalonia. The Tocchi made no further efforts to regain their island domain, as the kings of Naples were now threatened by France and had no intention of inciting the Sultan to make a second attack on Otranto . The Ionian Islands were disputed between the Venetians and the Ottomans for some time until they became Venetian colonies around 1500 . Epirus finally became Ottoman.

Leonardo, who was the Neapolitan ambassador to Spain , where he was received with royal honors, received the Apulian city ​​of Monopoli in 1495 from the French Charles VIII of the House of Valois , when he was called by Pope Innocent VIII to invade Naples .

Carlos' descendants claimed to be treated as princes of the blood as they represented both the Byzantine and Serbian dynasties. They called themselves Despots of Arta until they replaced this title with that of Prince of Achaia in the 17th century , perhaps for the reason that Thomas Palaiologos  - whose representative they were through the female line -, Caterina, the daughter of the last Prince of Achaia, Centurione II. Zaccaria , was.

family

Leonardo married on May 1, 1463 in Dubrovnik Milicia Branković († 1464), daughter of Lazar II. Brankovic and Helena Palaiologina, daughter of Thomas Palaiologos with whom he had a son:

• Carlo III. Tocco (* 1464; † end of 1518 house in Via S. Marco in Rome), despot of Arta and titular count of Zakynthos, received after he had fought in the armies of Emperor Maximilian I , both Neapolitan and papal pensions; married to Andronica Arianiti Comneno (Venetian patrician), daughter of Costantino Arianiti Comneno , titular Sedpot of Macedonia and Thessaly etc. and Francesca Palaiologos, natural and legitimate daughter of Theodore II Palaiologos

In 1477 Leonardo married Francesca Marzano d'Aragona († after 1493), daughter of Giovanni Francesco Marzano (1st Prince of Rossano , 3rd Duke of Sessa , 1st Duke of Squillace ) and Eleonora d'Aragona, niece of King Ferdinand I. with whom he had five children:

• Ramondina (Remusia) ∞ married Antonio Maria Pico of the Lords of Mirandola on March 1, 1492 in Naples ;
• Eleonora, nun;
• Pietro di Tocco
• Ippolita († after 1507)

Child with an unknown mistress :

• Ferrante Tocco († December 1535, buried on December 23, 1535 in the Basilica of San Francisco in Madrid), illegitimate son, received rule over Refrancore from Emperor Maximilian I in 1515 ; Captain of the Spanish army; from 1506 Spanish diplomat at the court of Henry VII of England on the matter of the Duke of Suffolk ; tried to keep the peace between François I and the Emperor Charles V in 1535; died after returning from his mission in England;

Web links

• Leonardo III Tocco. Manfred-hiebl.de, accessed on May 17, 2020 . 
• Family-tree of Tocco (English)
• Tocco (family). Retrieved February 23, 2018 (Italian). 
• Antonio Toraldo: Divagazione araldiche sullo stemma di Casa di Tocco. Retrieved February 23, 2018 (Italian). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Tocco. Retrieved February 20, 2018 (Italian). 
2. ^ William Miller: The Latins in the Levant, a history of Frankish Greece (1204–1566) . EP Dutton and Cpmpany, New York 1908, pp. 416 (English, archive.org ).
3. ^ John Van Antwerp Fine: The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest . University of Michigan Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-472-08260-5 , pp. 563 (English, online preview in Google Book Search).
4. ^ John Van Antwerp Fine, p. 458.
5. ^ ^{A b} John Van Antwerp Fine, p. 485
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} John Van Antwerp Fine, p. 487
7. ^ ^{A b} John Van Antwerp Fine, p. 488
8. ^ John Van Antwerp Fine, p. 489
9. ↑ Leonardo III di Tocco. In: Gw.geneanet.org. Retrieved February 19, 2018 . 
10. ^ Arianiti Comneno. Retrieved February 20, 2018 (Italian). 
11. ^ John Van Antwerp Fine, p. 458.
12. ^ Felice Ceretti: Il conte Antonmaria Pico . In: Atti e memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie dell'Emilia , Volume 3 (Part 2). GT Vincenzi e nipoti, Modena 1878, pp. 255-257; 286-287.

predecessor	Office	successor
Carlo II. Tocco	Despot of Epirus Despot of Arta 1448–1479	(Part of the Ottoman Empire )
Carlo II. Tocco	Count Palatine of Kefalonia 1448–1479	(Ottoman occupation, then Venetian colony )
Carlo II. Tocco	Duke of Leukadia 1448–1479	(Ottoman occupation, then Venetian colony )