Pietro Zeno (died 1345)

Pietro Zeno[lower-alpha 1] (died 17 January 1345) was the Venetian captain and bailiff of Negroponte (1331–33)[lower-alpha 2] and one of the leaders of the Smyrniote crusade (1343–45).[3]

In May–June 1332, an Aydinid Turkish fleet of 380 ships under Umur Bey attacked Negroponte.[3] Zeno bought them off with a large tribute.[4] On 18 July 1332, Doge Francesco Dandolo charged Zeno and Pietro da Canale with arranging an anti-Turkish alliance.[3] By the end of the year the Naval League, "a union, society and league for the discomfiture of the Turks and the defence of the true faith", had been formally constituted.[5] In 1334 Zeno took command of the league's fleet of twenty galleys and on 14 September defeated the large fleet of Yakhshi, emir of Karasi, off Adramyttium.[3]

In September 1343, the Venetian Grand Council elected Zeno captain of the flotilla of five galleys which it was sending to assist the crusade against Aydinid-held Smyrna.[6] Although the crusade was a great naval success and Smyrna was taken, Zeno was killed by Umur Bey's forces in an ambush while he and the other crusader leaders were attempting to celebrate a mass in a church in the no-man's-land between the battle lines.[7]

Zeno's son, also Pietro Zeno, was a famous diplomat in the eastern Mediterranean.[8]

Notes

  1. ↑ This is an italianised form of the Venetian name Piero Zen.
  2. ↑ He was the second bailiff of that name. The first Pietro Zeno was bailiff in 1276–77[1] or 1277–78.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Morgan 1976, p. 417.
  2. ↑ Hopf 1873, pp. 371.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Setton 1976, pp. 180–82.
  4. ↑ Bury 1887, p. 211.
  5. ↑ Nicol 1988, p. 253.
  6. ↑ Setton 1976, p. 185.
  7. ↑ Setton 1976, p. 192.
  8. ↑ Miller 1908, pp. 593–595.

Sources

  • Bury, John B. (1887). "The Lombards and Venetians in Euboia (1303–1340)". The Journal of Hellenic Studies 8: 194–213. 
  • Hopf, Charles (1873). Chroniques gréco-romanes inédites ou peu connues. Berlin: Weidmann. 
  • Miller, William (1908). The Latins in the Levant, a History of Frankish Greece (1204–1566). New York: E.P. Dutton and Company. 
  • Morgan, Gareth (1976). "The Venetian Claims Commission of 1278". Byzantinische Zeitschrift 69 (2): 411–38. 
  • Nicol, Donald M. (1988). Byzantium and Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
  • Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1976). The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571 1. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. 
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