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Hazard, H. W. (ed.) / Volume III: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
(1975)
V: The Morea, 1364-1460, pp. 141-166
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Page 165
Ch. V THE MOREA, 1364—1460 165 tine but also gave him the hand of his niece Maddalena, the elder daughter of the late Leonard II. The turn of Patras came in 1429— 1430, when town and citadel yielded successively to the Palaeologus destined to be the last emperor of Byzantium; Constantine had defied a warning from Murad II not to take the city, which paid tribute to the Turks. It fell to Thomas Palaeologus to put an end to the principality of Achaea, now reduced to little more than the baronies of Chalandritsa and Messenian Arcadia. He besieged Centurione Zaccaria, who had been released from his imprisonment, in the castle of Chalandritsa, and forced the prince to give him his older daughter Catherine in marriage, along with all his possessions—except Arcadia—as her dow er (September 1429). The marriage was celebrated at Mistra in January 1430. John Asen, Centurione's natural son, was ignored in these transactions. Centurione, it seems, continued to bear the title "prince of Achaea" until his death in 1432. Then Thomas Palaeo logus not only deprived his mother-in-law of the barony of Arcadia but also confined the unfortunate woman in prison for the rest of her life. Thus after 227 years the Morea was once more entirely under Byzantine control, except for the Venetian establishments in Mes senia and the Argolid. But although there was no longer any orga nized Frankish power in the peninsula there must have been a number of Franks remaining in the land who were willing to join a restoration movement. It is probable that John Asen Zaccaria took refuge in Venetian territory after 1432. During sultan Murad's great invasion of the Morea in 1446 a Greek magnate in rebellion against the despots Thomas and Constantine proclaimed John Asen prince of Achaea. But the rising failed, and Thomas imprisoned the "prince" and his son in the fortress of Clermont. However, during the for midable revolt of the Albanians of the Morea, with the support of Greek rebels, against the despots Thomas and Demetrius Palaeologus in 1453—1454, John Asen Zaccaria escaped and again became a serious menace to the regime. The Venetian doge, Francis Foscari, and king Alfonso V of Naples sent congratulations to him as "prince Centurione." But as usual the fate of the Morea was decided by the sultan. Mehmed II preferred two puppet Byzantine governments in the peninsula to a Graeco-Albanian state in which the Franks might make a comeback with Venetian or Neapolitan support. Accordingly he sent the veteran Turakhan Beg to the Morea to help the despots put down the revolt. John Asen Zaccaria "Centurione" fled to Modon, whence he reached Italy, and was successively pensioned by
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