Marco I Sanudo
Marco Sanudo (c. 1153 – between 1220 and 1230, most probably 1227) was the creator and first Duke of the Duchy of the Archipelago, in Italian: "Duca del Mare Egeo e Re di Candia", Barone delle Isole di Nasso, Pario, Milo, Marine ed Andri, duchy granted by the Republic of Venice to him and all his descendants.
[4] In 1454, Flavio Biondo published his De Origine et gestis Venetorum, in which he copied Andrea Dandolo's account and introduced the idea of the Venetian Republic giving to its citizens the official right to conquer lands in the Orient, as long as they would never be transmitted to a non-Venetian.
[5] The most commonly used chronicle, because it gives a lot of geographical and chronological details, is the one written by Daniele Barbaro in the 16th century.
[6] The Histoire nouvelle des anciens Ducs de l'Archipel, another widely used account, was written in the second half of the 17th century by a French Jesuit from Naxos monastery, Father Saulger.
[citation needed] Four generations after Pietro IV, a Marco Sanudo is recorded (second half of the 11th century) as a "councilor" and "captain".
He might also have been ambassador to Constantinople where he might have negotiated the Byzantine Emperor's recognition of Venice's domination over Dalmatia and Croatia circa 1084-1085.
In the 10th century, a theme of the Aegean Sea (tò théma toû Aiyaíou Pelágous) ruled by an admiral (dhrungarios) was created.
The Genoan ships ran alongside the West coast of Italy, crossed the Strait of Messina then the Strait of Otranto to Corfu, round the Peloponnese stopping at Monemvasia, up the Aegean and Cyclades with stops in Chios to Constantinople or via Milos, Naxos and Amorgos to Egypt and Syria.
A new Emperor, owing his throne to the crusaders and Venice, was what the city needed to regain its commercial power in the Byzantine Empire.
[19] Finally, on the 13th of April 1204, the Crusaders, or as they became called "Latins" or "Franks", again took Constantinople and divided the conquered Byzantine Empire.
The treaty Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae was probably drafted during the autumn of 1204 by a commission of 24 people (12 Venetians, 12 non-Venetians).
[22] But Macedonia had not been conquered, when the Latin imperial army began the conquest, Boniface rebelled, considering the Emperor was trying to take his share from him.
[23] Some medieval chronicles -after the one by Enrico Dandolo (1360–1362)- say that this Treaty of Adrianople explicitly gave Marco Sanudo lands on Crete.
Marco Sanudo, with his uncle Enrico Dandolo's and the Latin Emperor's blessings, armed with his own money eight galleys that had been entrusted to him in order to fight the Genoans.
Enrico Pescatore, working for Genoa, with a fleet comprising eight galleys had set foot in Crete in 1206.
The Venetian fleet captured four Genoan galleys in Spinalonga, then patrolled the Cretan seas, boarding all ships.
At the end of the campaign, the Venetian fleet went back home and Sanudo sailed to Constantinople to get the new Emperor's (Henry of Flanders) confirmation for this conquest and for his new project of conquering the other Cyclades.
Other relatives, the brothers Andrea and Geremia Ghisi became Lords of Tinos and Mykonos, with fiefs on Kea and Serifos (also in the Sporades[34]).
Marco Sanudo took a dozen of the bigger islands: Naxos, Paros, Antiparos, Milos, Kimolos, Ios, Amorgos, Siphnos, Sikinos, Syros, Folegandros and Kythnos (where the Castelli and the Gozzadini were his vassals).
[15] Guillaume Saint-Guillain, in an article published in 2006, after working on the many medieval chronicles and showing they are unreliable, uses documents produced by the contemporaries of Marco Sanudo.
Thus, the archbishop of Athens, Michael Choniates, who had taken refuge from the Latin troops on Kea wrote at the end of 1208 or at the beginning of 1209 a letter to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in which he refused to take charge of the vacant bishop seat of Paros-Naxos.
[37] Marco Sanudo was the initiator of the two main political lines of all the rulers of the Duchy of Archipelago throughout its existence: independence from the Republic of Venice and good relations with the Greek population of his islands.
[38] In 1210,[39] Marco Sanudo pledged homage to the Latin Emperor Henry who bestowed him the title of Peer of the Byzantine Empire[40] and Duke of the Archipelago.
It is probable that it was this Duchy that created the word "archipelago" from the Venetian, a deformation of the Greek name of the Aegean Sea "Aigaion Pelagos" (Αιγαιον πελαγος).
[41] By that homage, Sanudo chose to become the vassal of the Emperor to avoid ending up as a mere governor of the islands in the name of Venice.
Sanudo rewarded his soldiers and sailors who conquered the islands by conferring knighthood and fiefs in exchange of the usual feudal obligations: aid and counsel.
When the news that yeomen could become knights in Greece reached other lands, a new wave of adventurers arrived from Italy, France or Spain.
At the same time, in Crete, Venice confiscated the properties of the Greek archontés and in doing so alienated them for the following centuries during which the Republic had to face numerous rebellions.
[51] Sanudo changed the face of the island itself by moving the capital (the actual Naxos-town or Chora) from the interior to the seaside, where it used to be during the Antiquity.
It comprised the palace, the exterior walls, a keep, a gothic chapel (since destroyed), the houses of the Latin families and the Catholic cathedral.
