Despota, patria e famiglia. Strutture di potere nell’Epiro tardomedievale

Abstract

The history of the so-called 'Despotate of Epirus', one of the many territorial principalities which emerged on the former provinces of the Byzantine Empire after the fourth Crusade, covers a wide time span that goes from its foundation by Michael I Doukas (1205) to the flight into Italy of the last despot, Leonard III Tocco, as a result of the Ottoman advance (1479). Nevertheless, the ideology and the power system on which it was based during its centuries-old existence remained pretty stable over time. The despot, or rather the ruling dynasty of the Doukas Komnenoi, represented the core of local politics, towards whom the population had a nearly religious veneration. Secondly, a widespread and deep-rooted separatist feeling permeated the entire society and led the Epirote elites, albeit they were Rhomaic and Orthodox just as the Byzantine aristocracy, to refuse any kind of authority, even the basileus', except for a local prince's, regardless of his ethnicity. Those very elites, which derived their wealth from large landed estates and formed the backbone of the urban ruling class in the most important Epirote cities, enjoyed extensive fiscal privileges and had taken possession of the centers of political and economic power, both lay and ecclesiastic, to the point that they were almost the sole architects of the domestic policy of the Despotate and, under certain circumstances, even of the foreign one.