Maria Angelina Dukaina Palaiologina

Thomas and his wife Maria. Detail of an icon in the Transfiguration Monastery in Meteora

Maria Angelina Dukaina Palaiologina , also known as Marija Angelina Nemanjić ( Greek : Μαρία Αγγελίνα Δούκαινα Παλαιολογίνα, Serbian Cyrillic : Марија Ангелина Немањић, * around 1350 ; † December 28, 1394 , was from 1384 to 1385 Basilissa (= Empress, Queen) of the Despotate Epirus , who inherited her murdered husband Thomas Preljubović .

Life

Maria was the daughter of the self-proclaimed emperor Simeon Uroš , the half-brother of the emperor Stefan Uroš IV. Dušan of Serbia from the Nemanjić dynasty and his wife Thomais Orsini . Her maternal grandfather was Giovanni II Orsini of Epirus. In 1366 Maria married Thomas Preljubović, who was appointed regent of Ioannina by her father . She was popular with her subjects, but was apparently ill-treated by her husband and was believed to be involved in his murder on December 23, 1384.

The people of Ionnina recognized Mary as ruler. She used the title Basilissa , the feminine form of Basileus . She called her brother Jovan Uroš Dukas Palaiologos (who at that time lived as a monk under the name of Joasaph ) to her court to advise her on state affairs. He suggested that she marry Esau de 'Buondelmonti , a Florentine nobleman who was captured by Thomas in 1379. Maria married Esau in February 1385 and probably died childless on December 28, 1394.

literature

• William Miller: The Latins in the Levant, a History of Frankish Greece (1204–1566) , EP Dutton and Company, New York 1908.
• George Christos Soulis: The Serbs and Byzantium during the reign of Tsar Stephen Dušan (1331-1355) and his successors , Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC 1983, ISBN 0-88402-137-8 .
• Alexander Kazhdan (Ed.): Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 978-0-19-504652-6 .
• 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. 352-355.
• Donald Nicol : The Despotate of Epiros 1267-1479: A Contribution to the History of Greece in the Middle Ages , Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-13089-9 .