Benedetto I Zaccaria (c. 1235 – 1307) was an Italian admiral of the Republic of Genoa. He was the Lord of Phocaea (from 1288) and first Lord of Chios (from 1304), and the founder of Zaccaria fortunes in Byzantine and Latin Greece. He was, at different stages in his life, a diplomat, adventurer, mercenary, and statesman.
Benedetto was the second son of Fulcone Zaccaria and one of his wives: Giulietta or Beatrice. Benedetto assisted his brothers Manuele and Nicolino, his nephew Tedisio, and his son Paleologo in their commercial enterprises.
Benedetto was captured by the Venetians in a battle off Tyre in 1258. [1] In 1264, he was sent as a Genoese ambassador to the Byzantine court of Michael VIII Palaiologos. Although his mission was unsuccessful, his acquaintance with the emperor would stand him in good stead. [1] After eleven years of negotiations which resulted in a renewed accord between the Empire and Genoa, Benedetto re-appeared in Constantinople with his brother Manuele in 1275. Benedetto married one of the emperor's sisters, while Manuele received control over the valuable alum mines of Phocaea. This was an extremely lucrative business, especially after Manuele acquired a near-monopoly after persuading Michael VIII to prohibit the import of alum from the Black Sea, even though this trade was also in the hands of Genoese merchants. [2]
As an agent of the emperor, Benedetto acted as an ambassador to Peter III of Aragon in 1280–1282, and took part in the negotiations that led to the Byzantine–Aragonese alliance and the outbreak of the War of the Sicilian Vespers that ended the threat of an invasion of Byzantium by Charles I of Anjou. [3]
Benedetto returned to Genoa in 1284 and was made an admiral. He was the principal commander of the Genoese fleet which defeated Pisa at the Battle of Meloria. He commanded a fleet of twenty galleys, separate from the main Genoese fleet and initially hidden from sight. His surprise attack led to a decisive Genoese victory and the permanent decline of Pisa's military and mercantile power.
He participated alongside the Castilians under Sancho IV in a victorious campaign against Morocco. At about the same time, he served Philip IV of France as an admiral, blocking the English and Flemish ports.
Before the Ottoman Turks and the Venetians, the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus appealed for his aid. In 1296, the Venetian admiral Ruggero Morosini razed Phocaea.
In 1302, Zaccaria was named admiral by Philip of France, in which capacity he conquered the island of Chios (1304), which had hitherto been in the hands of Moslem corsairs. At first, he gave the government of the island over to his nephew Tedisio. In 1304, he also occupied Samos and Cos, which were almost completely depopulated, and the emperor conceded him sovereignty over those islands and Chios for two years, under Byzantine suzerainty. It is from this date that Benedetto is accounted Lord of Chios and begins his career as a statesman and ruler. In 1306, Tedisio occupied Thasos, then a refuge for Greek pirates.
Zaccaria died in 1307 and his brother Manuele in 1309. His son Paleologo succeeded him in Chios and the rest of his possessions. Zaccaria's wife was an unnamed woman of some relation to the Palaeologi.
The Battle of Meloria was fought near the islet of Meloria in the Ligurian Sea on 5 and 6 August 1284 between the fleets of the Republics of Genoa and Pisa as part of the Genoese-Pisan War. The victory of Genoa and the destruction of the Pisan fleet marked the decline of the Republic of Pisa.
The Lordship of Chios was a short-lived autonomous lordship run by the Genoese Zaccaria family. Its core was the eastern Aegean island of Chios, and in its height it encompassed a number of other islands off the shore of Asia Minor. Although theoretically a vassal of the Byzantine Empire, the Zaccaria ruled the island as a practically independent domain from its capture in 1304 until the Greek-Byzantines recovered it, with the support of the local Greek population, in 1329. The island would return to Genoese control in 1346 under the Maona of Chios and Phocaea.
Martino Zaccaria was the Lord of Chios from 1314 to 1329, ruler of several other Aegean islands, and baron of Veligosti–Damala and Chalandritsa in the Principality of Achaea. He distinguished himself in the fight against Turkish corsairs in the Aegean Sea, and received the title of "King and Despot of Asia Minor" from the titular Latin Emperor, Philip II. He was deposed from his rule of Chios by a Byzantine expedition in 1329, and imprisoned in Constantinople until 1337. Martino then returned to Italy, where he was named the Genoese ambassador to the Holy See. In 1343 he was named commander of the Papal squadron in the Smyrniote crusade against Umur Bey, ruler of the Emirate of Aydin, and participated in the storming of Smyrna in October 1344. He was killed, along with several other of the crusade's leaders, in a Turkish attack on 17 January 1345.
Paleologo Zaccaria was the Lord of Chios and Phocaea, as well as other Aegean islands from 1307 until his death.
The Venetian–Genoese Wars were four conflicts between the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Genoa which took place between 1256 and 1381. Each were resolved almost entirely through naval clashes and connected to each other by interludes during which episodes of piracy and violence between the two Italian trading communities in the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea were commonplace, in a "cold war" climate.
The Zaccaria family was an ancient and noble Genoese dynasty that had great importance in the development and consolidation of the Republic of Genoa in the thirteenth century and in the following period. The Zaccarias were characterized by, according to scholarly handwritten documents of the time, having broad intelligence and their effective way of maintaining political power through manipulation.
The Massacre of the Latins was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, by the Eastern Orthodox population of the city in April 1182.
The Byzantine–Venetian War of 1296–1302 was an offshoot of the second Venetian–Genoese War of 1294–1299.
Benedetto II Zaccaria was the co-Lord of Chios, as well as many other Aegean islands from 1314 until ca. 1325.
The Battle of Chios was a naval battle fought off the shore of the eastern Aegean island of Chios between a Latin Christian—mainly Hospitaller—fleet and a Turkish fleet from the Aydinid emirate. The Christian fleet was victorious, but for the Aydinids, who had been engaging in piracy since the collapse of Byzantine power, it was only a temporary setback in their rise to prominence.
Manuele Zaccaria was the Genoese lord of Phocaea and its profitable alum mines, which he received as a fief from the Byzantine Emperor, from 1275 until his death in 1287/88. He was succeeded by his brother, Benedetto I Zaccaria.
Leo Kalothetos was a provincial governor of the Byzantine Empire.
Andrea Morisco was a Genoese pirate active in the Aegean Sea in the late 13th century, who in 1304 entered the service of the Byzantine Empire. As an admiral and corsair, he was active under Byzantine colours until 1308, when he was captured and executed in Cyprus.
The Lordship of Phocaea was founded after in 1275, when the Genoese nobleman Manuele Zaccaria received the twin towns of Old Phocaea and New Phocaea as a fief from the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos. The Zaccaria family amassed a considerable fortune from their properties there, especially the rich alum mines. The Zaccaria held the lordship until 1340, when it was repossessed by the Byzantines under Andronikos III Palaiologos.
Tedisio Zaccaria was lord of Thasos and governor of Phocaea from 1302 to 1307. A descendant of the important Genoese family of Zaccaria, he was the son of Manuele Zaccaria and Clarisia Fieschi. His father was the brother of Benedetto I Zaccaria, the founder of Zaccaria fortunes in Byzantium and Latin Greece.
In 1268, the Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Venice agreed to temporarily end hostilities which had erupted after the Byzantine recovery of Constantinople by Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1261.
The Zaccaria family was an ancient and noble Genoese dynasty.
The House of Zaccaria-Damalà, or commonly Damalas, is a Genoese-Byzantine noble House established in the 14th century; originating from the island of Chios during the first Genoese occupation. It was created as the result of the marriage between a sister of Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos with Benedetto I Zaccaria, causing this branch of the Zaccaria to grow roots in Byzantium and subsequently the Principality of Achaea through the Barony of Damalà.
In 1320, the Turks of Menteshe launched an unsuccessful attempt to conquer the island of Rhodes from the Knights Hospitaller.
Simone Vignoso was a 14th-century Genoese admiral. In 1346 he led a fleet that conquered the island of Chios and the port of Phocaea, establishing the Genoese-run Maona of Chios and Phocaea company there. Nothing is known of him after 1350.