| Antonio I Acciaioli | |
|---|---|
 Antonio I as depicted in a late-17th-century book | |
| Lord/Duke of Athens | |
| Reign | 1403–1435 |
| Successor | Nerio II Acciaioli |
| Died | Summer 1435 |
| Spouse | Helena Kalkondilla Maria Melissena |
| House | Acciaioli |
| Father | Nerio I Acciaioli |
| Mother | Maria Rendi (?) |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Antonio I Acciaioli, also known as Anthony I Acciaioli or Antonio I Acciajuoli (died January 1435), was Duke of Athens from 1403.
Antonio was the illegitimate son of Nerio I Acciaioli. [1] [2] Historians Kenneth Setton and Peter Lock say that Antonio was born to Maria Rendi, [3] [1] but Dionysios Stathakopoulos writes that his parentage is an assumption. [4] Her father, the Orthodox Greek Demetrius Rendi, defended Megara against Nerio Acciaioli, for which Frederick the Simple made him the hereditary chancellor of Athens in the late 1370s. [4] [5] Nerio's capture of Megara in 1374 or 1375 was the first step towards his conquest of the Duchy of Athens that he completed in 1388. [6]
Nerio fathered two legitimate daughters, Bartolomea and Francesca. [6] He gave Bartolomea in marriage to Theodore I Palaiologos, Despot of Morea, and married off Francesca to Carlo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos. [6] Francesca was sent to Euboea (or Negroponte) as hostage to guarantee Nerio's support for Venice against Theodore I Palaiologos in 1390. [2] Stathakopoulos proposes that Antonio may have replaced Francesca as hostage, but he was released in less than 18 months. [7] King Ladislaus of Naples granted the Duchy of Athens to Nerio and his legitimate male heirs on 11 January 1394. [8]
Nerio I Acciaioli made his last will on 17 September 1394. [9] He bequeathed two important castles in Boeotia, Livadeia and Thebes, to Antonio, but willed most of his domains to Francesca and left the town of Athens to the Church of Saint Mary on the Acropolis of Athens. [8] [10] He died on 25 September. [6] Bartolomea and her husband did not respect her father's testament and claimed Corinth from Francesca. [8] Antonio, who supported their claim, joined Theodore I's military campaign against Francesca's domains and they laid siege to Corinth. [11]
A small Ottoman Turk force attacked the Acropolis of Athens and Nerio's brother, Donato, who had inherited the title of Duke of Athens, was in no position to defend the town. [12] The castellan of the Acropolis, Matthew of Montona, sought assistance from Andrea Bembo, the Venetian Bailo of Negroponte, offering the town to Venice. [13] Bembo sent troops to the Acropolis before the end of the year and the Senate of Venice approved his action, acknowledging the annexation of Athens on 18 March 1395. [13] Carlo I Tocco realized that he could not defend his wife's domains against the united forces of Theodore I and Antonio. [13] He first offered to sell Corinth and Megara to Venice, but after the Senate hesitated to accept the offer, he sold both towns to Theodore I in 1396. [13] [14] The Ottomans launched a new invasion of Greece in 1397, plundering the villages in Boeotia and Attica. [14] Thereafter, the Venetians regarded Antonio as the Ottomans' close ally. [15]
Antonio made a surprise attack against Attica and captured the lower town of Athens in the first half of 1402. [10] [16] To force him to abandon the siege of the Acropolis, the Senate of Venice ordered Francesco Bembo, Bailo of Negroponte, to invade Boeotia on 22 August. [16] Instead of lifting the siege, Antonio divided his troops in two groups and ambushed the Venetians in a mountain pass, also capturing Bembo before 2 September. [16] Antonio soon returned to Athens to continue the siege of the Acropolis. [15] Fearing an Ottoman invasion, the Senate of Venice appointed Tommaso Mocenigo to take over the command of Negroponte and to start negotiations with Antonio. [17] Antonio refused to make peace and forced the defenders of the Acropolis to surrender in January or February 1403. [10] [18]
Timur Lenk had annihilated the army of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I in the Battle of Ankara on 28 July 1403. [19] [20] Bayezid's eldest son, Süleyman Çelebi, escaped from the battlefield and returned to Adrianople to rule the European territories of the Ottoman Empire. [20] [21] Both Antonio and the Venetians approached him, Antonio seeking the confirmation of his rule in Athens and the Venetians asking Süleyman's military assistance for the recovery of Athens. [20] Süleyman, who needed the support of Venice, Genoa and other maritime powers against Timur Lenk, concluded an alliance with them, also promising to force Antonio to surrender Athens to Venice. [20] However, Süleyman's war against his brothers prevented him from providing military assistance to Venice. [20]
Antonio's kinsman Cardinal Angelo II Acciaioli persuaded Pope Innocent VII and King Ladislaus of Naples to support Antonio's case. [22] Both Antonio and the Cardinal sent envoys to Venice to start negotiations with the representatives of the Senate. [22] They reached a compromise on 31 March 1405. [22] Antonio agreed to compensate Venice for the munitions seized in the Acropolis and to send a silk robe to St Mark's Basilica every Christmas. [23] He also pledged to prevent Macarius I, Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Athens, who had supported the Ottomans, from visiting his see and to return the goods of the last Venetian governor of Athens, Nicholas Vitturi, to his heirs. [24] In return, Venice recognized Antonio's right to rule Athens and removed a price from his head. [24] Antonio never sent precious robes to St Mark's and failed to compensate Vitturi's heirs. [24] He even captured a Venetian bridgehead in Attica in 1406, but Venice did not punish him. [24]
Antonio, who styled himself as "lord of Athens, Thebes, of all the duchy and its dependencies", was the longest-ruling medieval monarch of Athens. [24] Athens revived during his rule because he preferred it to Thebes (which had been the capital of the duchy for decades). [10] In 1410, he joined the Ottoman Turks to devastate Venetian Nauplia.[ citation needed ] In 1419, a peace between the Turks and Venice called on Mehmed I to ask Antonio to cease harassing the Venetians.[ citation needed ] In 1423, he was at war with Theodore II of Morea and occupied Corinth.[ citation needed ]
Antonio never forgot his Florentine roots and he strove to make Athens a capital of culture by restoring monuments, patronising letters, and encouraging chivalry. On 7 August 1422, he conceded privileges to Florentine merchants in Athens. In that year, Alfonso V of Aragon asserted his claim by appointing Tommaso Beraldo, a Catalan, duke.[ citation needed ] Giovanni Acciaioli, Antonio's uncle and archbishop of Thebes, who was then in Rome, was sent to Venice to appeal the appointment of Tommaso to the senate there, but the pleas were ignored.[ citation needed ]
Antonio died still in power in January 1435 without legitimate children and his succession to the duchy was disputed between his nephews Nerio II and Antonio II and his widow (Maria Melissene?). [25]
Sicyon or Sikyōn was an ancient Greek city state situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day regional unit of Corinthia. The ruins lie just west of the modern village of Sikyona. An ancient monarchy at the times of the Trojan War, the city was ruled by a number of tyrants during the Archaic and Classical period and became a democracy in the 3rd century BC. Sicyon was celebrated for its contributions to ancient Greek art, producing many famous painters and sculptors. In Hellenistic times it was also the home of Aratus of Sicyon, the leader of the Achaean League.
The Duchy of Athens was one of the Crusader states set up in Greece after the conquest of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade as part of the process known as Frankokratia, encompassing the regions of Attica and Boeotia, and surviving until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.
During the late Middle Ages, the two cities of Argos and Nauplia formed a lordship within the Frankish-ruled Morea in southern Greece.
Theodore I Palaiologos was despot (despotēs) in the Morea from 1383 until his death on 24 June 1407. A son of Emperor John V Palaiologos, Theodore was the first member of the Palaiologos dynasty appointed as the Despot of the Morea, following the final defeat of the rival Kantakouzenos clan, who under John VI Kantakouzenos had attempted to usurp rule of the Byzantine Empire.
Carlo I Tocco was the hereditary Count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos from 1376, and ruled as the Despot of Epirus from 1411 until his death on July 4, 1429.
The Duchy of Neopatras was a principality in southern Thessaly, established in 1319. Officially part of the Kingdom of Sicily, itself part of the Crown of Aragon, the duchy was governed in conjunction with the neighbouring Duchy of Athens, it enjoyed a large degree of self-government. From the mid-14th century, the duchies entered a period of decline: most of the Thessalian possessions were lost to the Serbian Empire, internal dissensions arose, along with the menace of Turkish piracy in the Aegean and the onset of Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. Enfeebled, the Catalan possessions were taken over by the Florentine adventurer Nerio I Acciaioli in 1385–1390. The title of Duke of Neopatras was held by the heir of the King of Sicily.
Nerio I Acciaioli or Acciajuoli was the actual ruler of the Duchy of Athens from 1385. Born to a family of Florentine bankers, he became the principal agent of his influential kinsman, Niccolò Acciaioli, in Frankish Greece in 1360. He purchased large domains in the Principality of Achaea and administered them independently of the absent princes. He hired mercenaries and conquered Megara, a strategically important fortress in the Duchy of Athens, in 1374 or 1375. His troops again invaded the duchy in 1385. The Catalans who remained loyal to King Peter IV of Aragon could only keep the Acropolis of Athens, but they were also forced into surrender in 1388.
Nerio II Acciaioli (1416–1451) was the Duke of Athens on two separate occasions from 1435 to 1439 and again from 1441 to 1451.
Chiara Zorzi or Giorgio, also Clara or Claire, was duchess consort of Athens by marriage to Nerio II Acciaioli, Duke of Athens, and regent of Athens during the minority of her son Francesco I from 1451 until 1454.
Francis or Francesco I Acciaioli was the son of Nerio II Acciaioli by his second wife Chiara Zorzi. He succeeded on his father's death in 1451 to the Duchy of Athens under his mother's regency.
Amadeus or Amedeo of Savoy was the son of James of Piedmont and his third wife Marguerite de Beaujeu. By James' will of 16 May 1366, he was declared his firstborn and heir. In 1367, he succeeded his father in his titles of Lord of Piedmont and Prince of Achaea. He was also the lord of Pinerolo.
Louis Fadrique a Catalan nobleman who was Count of Salona, as well as lord of various other towns in Central Greece from ca. 1365 until his death in 1382. In 1375–1381 he also served as the vicar-general of the twin duchy of Athens and Neopatras.
The Morean War, also known as the Sixth Ottoman–Venetian War, was fought between 1684–1699 as part of the wider conflict known as the "Great Turkish War", between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Military operations ranged from Dalmatia to the Aegean Sea, but the war's major campaign was the Venetian conquest of the Morea (Peloponnese) peninsula in southern Greece. On the Venetian side, the war was fought to avenge the loss of Crete in the Cretan War (1645–1669). It happened while the Ottomans were entangled in their northern struggle against the Habsburgs – beginning with the failed Ottoman attempt to conquer Vienna and ending with the Habsburgs gaining Buda and the whole of Hungary, leaving the Ottoman Empire unable to concentrate its forces against the Venetians. As such, the Morean War was the only Ottoman–Venetian conflict from which Venice emerged victorious, gaining significant territory. Venice's expansionist revival would be short-lived, as its gains would be reversed by the Ottomans in 1718.
The Frankokratia, also known as Latinokratia and, for the Venetian domains, Venetokratia or Enetokratia, was the period in Greek history after the Fourth Crusade (1204), when a number of primarily French and Italian states were established by the Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae on the territory of the dissolved Byzantine Empire.
Pietro Zeno, was lord of Andros from 1384 until his death in 1427, and a distinguished diplomat in the service of the Republic of Venice.
Dorotheus I was the Greek Orthodox metropolitan bishop of Athens from c. 1388 to 1392, and the first to reside in the city since 1205.
Matthew of Moncada was count of Aderno and Agosta, the grand seneschal of the Kingdom of Sicily under Frederick the Simple.
The Treaty of Gallipoli, concluded in January or early February 1403, was a peace treaty between Süleyman Çelebi, ruler of the Ottoman territories in the Balkans, and the main Christian regional powers: the Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Duchy of Naxos. Concluded in the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara, while Süleyman tried to strengthen his own position in the succession struggle with his brothers, the treaty brought major concessions to the Christian states, especially the Byzantines, who regained lost territories and achieved a position of nominal superiority over the Ottoman ruler. Its provisions were honoured by Süleyman as well as by Mehmed I, the victor of the Ottoman succession struggle, but collapsed after Mehmed's death in 1421.
Bartolomea Acciaioli or Acciajuoli was the wife of Theodore I Palaiologos, Despot of the Morea from 1385. She was the elder daughter of Nerio I Acciaioli, who held large estates in Frankish Greece. She was famed for her beauty and her father gave her in marriage to the Despot to seal their alliance. Since her father and husband's relations deteriorated in the early 1390s, her father disinherited her in favor of her younger sister, Francesca, and their illegitimate brother, Antonio. Barolomea died childless.
Francesca Acciaioli or Acciajuoli was the wife of Carlo I Tocco, Count Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos.
| De la Roche dynasty (1205–1308) |     | |
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| Brienne–Enghien dynasty (1308–1311/94)§ | ||
| Catalan Domination (1311–1388) | ||
| Acciaioli dynasty (1388–1395, 1402–1458)† | ||
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