Centurione II Zaccaria
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Centurione II Zaccaria (died 1432), scion of Genoese merchant family established in the Morea, was installed as Prince of Achaea by Ladislaus of Naples in 1404 and was the last ruler of Frankish Greece not under Byzantine suzerainty.
Centurione was the son of Andronico Asano Zaccaria. He succeeded his father in the barony of Arcadia in 1402. Though young, he was ambitious and he successfully overthrew his aunt, Maria II Zaccaria, in Achaea in 1404; a move which was approved by his overlord, the king of Naples. Immediately, he reinforced his power on a local basis by marrying Creusa, the daughter of Leonardo II Tocco, lord of Zante, whose dominions coverred Leucadia and Cephalonia and extended to Epirus and the western Peloponessus. Centurione then made his brother Stephen archbishop of Patras.
However, Centurione was quickly at war with his alienated relatives. His wife's cousin Carlo I Tocco, duke of Leucadia, had Ladislaus absolve him from his feudal obligations to Achaea (1406) and then, allied with Theodore I Palaeologus, Despot of Morea, made war on the principality, conquering Glarentsa (1408), long the principality's chief seaport. His brother Stephen, however, abandoned the diocese of Patrasso to the Venetians on loan for five years. Centurione himself was forced to ally with the Venetians and Justinian, Lord of Chios, and to hire Albanian mercenaries, to retake the port on 12 July 1414. In return for military protection, he granted the ports of Glarentsa and Navarino to the Giustinian family of Genoa.
Thereafter for three years, Centurione could obtain no help from Genoa, pressed by the Duke of Milan on land and by the Crown of Aragon at sea. In 1417, the imperial army of Constantinople, led by the despot Theodore II Palaeologus and Emperor John VIII, invaded Achaea. They took Messenia and the Elide and holed up Centurione in Glarentsa, from which he fled by sea in Spring 1418. A little later, Patrasso too fell. Only by the mediation of the Venetians occupying Navarrino was the prince able to secure a truce.
All that was left of the principality which once dominated Greece were a few fortresses, such as the ancestral castle and barony of Chalandritsa. In 1429, Thomas Palaeologus of Morea besieged Centurione in Chalandritsa and extracted a treaty from him whereby his daughter, Catherine, would marry the despot and thus make him Centurione's heir in Achaea. Centurione was allowed to keep his inheritance of Arcadia. Centurione retired to Arcadia in 1430, after the marriage was finalised. He died there a short two years later. His domains passed to the despotate of Morea and into Byzantine hands.
Centurione left one illegitimate son, Giovanni Asano, who was the centre of later revolts against Greek authority.
[edit] Sources
- Foundation for Medieval Genealogy: Latin Lordships in Greece.
- Storia dell’isola di Scio prima dei Giustiniani e principali vicende della famiglia Zaccaria.
- Setton, Kenneth M. (general editor) A History of the Crusades: Volume III — The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Harry W. Hazard, editor. University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, 1975.
