Europe · High and late Middle Ages
House of Tocco
drawn on the map 1363–1414
The County Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos (1185–1479) was an Ionian-island state, part of the Kingdom of Sicily, first granted in 1185 to Margaritus of Brindisi (the Greek admiral of William II of Sicily). It passed to a branch of the Orsini family (to 1325), briefly to the Angevins of Naples, and from 1357 to the Tocco family (Leonardo I Tocco, count from 1357).
- Shown on the map
- 1363–1414
- Peak area
- 2k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
The County Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos (1185–1479) was an Ionian-island state, part of the Kingdom of Sicily, first granted in 1185 to Margaritus of Brindisi (the Greek admiral of William II of Sicily). It passed to a branch of the Orsini family (to 1325), briefly to the Angevins of Naples, and from 1357 to the Tocco family (Leonardo I Tocco, count from 1357). Capital: the Castle of Saint George on Cephalonia. Carlo I Tocco used the county as a springboard to acquire Ioannina (1411) and Arta, reuniting much of Epirus (see entries 25–26); after his death (1429/30) the Ottomans reduced the mainland holdings, leaving his nephew Carlo II (r. 1429–1448) a truncated Ottoman-vassal realm. The last count, Leonardo III Tocco (r. 1448–1479), lost the islands to an Ottoman fleet under Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1479 and fled to Italy; the islands were then contested between the Ottomans and Venice, with Zakynthos passing to Venetian rule (1484) and Cephalonia and Ithaca securely Venetian by 1500. Leonardo III died in Rome before August 1503.
Common questions
- What was the House of Tocco?
- The County Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos (1185–1479) was an Ionian-island state, part of the Kingdom of Sicily, first granted in 1185 to Margaritus of Brindisi (the Greek admiral of William II of Sicily). It passed to a branch of the Orsini family (to 1325), briefly to the Angevins of Naples, and from 1357 to the Tocco family (Leonardo I Tocco, count from 1357).
- When is the House of Tocco shown on the map?
- The border data draws the House of Tocco 1363–1414. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the House of Tocco?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the House of Tocco covered about 2,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each polity as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia and the scholarship of Donald Queller, Thomas Madden and Jonathan Harris on the Fourth Crusade, whose post-conspiracy reading of 1204 this document follows. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — County Palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Palatine_of_Cephalonia_and_Zakynthos
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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