The ''Chronicle of the Tocco'' ( el, Χρονικό των Τόκκων) is a chronicle in fifteen-syllable

blank verse Blank verse is poetry written with regular metrical but unrhymed lines, almost always in iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the 16th century", and P ...

written in

medieval Greek Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the Ottoman co ...

. It covers the period of 1375-1425 and focuses on the ascent of the

Tocco family The House of Tocco ( ''Tocchi'', grc-gre, Τόκκος, Tókkos Τόκκοι, ''Tokkoi'') was an Italian noble family from Benevento that came to prominence in the late 14th and 15th centuries, when they ruled various territories in western Gree ...

, and especially

Carlo I Tocco Carlo I Tocco was the hereditary Count palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos from 1376, and ruled as the Despot of Epirus from 1411 until his death on July 4, 1429. Life Carlo I was the son of Count Leonardo I Tocco of Cephalonia and Leukas by Madda ...

Count palatine A count palatine (Latin ''comes palatinus''), also count of the palace or palsgrave (from German ''Pfalzgraf''), was originally an official attached to a royal or imperial palace or household and later a nobleman of a rank above that of an ord ...

Cephalonia Kefalonia or Cephalonia ( el, Κεφαλονιά), formerly also known as Kefallinia or Kephallenia (), is the largest of the Ionian Islands in western Greece and the 6th largest island in Greece after Crete, Euboea, Lesbos, Rhodes and Chios. It i ...

and

Zakynthos Zakynthos (also spelled Zakinthos; el, Ζάκυνθος, Zákynthos ; it, Zacinto ) or Zante (, , ; el, Τζάντε, Tzánte ; from the Venetian form) is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. Za ...

, to the rule over the

Despotate of Epirus The Despotate of Epirus ( gkm, Δεσποτᾶτον τῆς Ἠπείρου) was one of the Greek successor states of the Byzantine Empire established in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 by a branch of the Angelos dynasty. It claim ...

, as well as Carlo's conquest of territories in the

Morea The Morea ( el, Μορέας or ) was the name of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The name was used for the Byzantine province known as the Despotate of the Morea, by the Ottoman ...

. The anonymous author described events that occurred during his own lifetime and must have been present at some of them. He possibly belonged to the court of Carlo I Tocco and came from

Ioannina Ioannina ( el, Ιωάννινα ' ), often called Yannena ( ' ) within Greece, is the capital and largest city of the Ioannina regional unit and of Epirus, an administrative region in north-western Greece. According to the 2011 census, the c ...

. From the text we can deduce that he was not particularly educated since he was using the vernacular Greek language. The author describes the Toccos as fair governors who care for the rights of their people. It is remarkable that he does not mention the Latin descent of the noble family. He appears to cultivate a sense of early Greek nationalism and of xenophobia towards the Albanian tribes. The ''Chronicle'' was published for the first time in 1975 by Giuseppe Schirò (junior) (''Cronaca dei Tocco di Cefalonia; prolegomeni, testo critico e traduzione'',

Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae {{Italic title The ''Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae'' (Latin: "Corpus of Byzantine history sources") or CFHB is an international project aiming to collect, edit and provide textual criticism on the historical sources from the time of the Byzant ...

10. Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1975). It comprises 3923 verses and was found in the ''codex Vaticanus Graecus'' 1831. The beginning and the end of the text are missing. This codex was written before June 1429, possibly by the author, as G. Schirò believed. There is also a 16th-century copy of it, ''codex Vatic. gr.'' 2214.

Elisabeth Zachariadou Elizabeth A. Zachariadou ( el, Ελισάβετ Α. Ζαχαριάδου, 1931 – 26 December 2018) was a Greece, Greek scholar on Turkish studies, specializing in the early Ottoman Empire (ca. 1300–1600). Biography In 1966 she married the Byz ...

proved that the first pages of the codex were placed in a wrong order and suggested a different order for the first 1,000 verses, which makes the text more coherent and easier to understand.E. Zachariadou, "The first thousand verses in the beginning of the ''Chronicle of the Tocco'' (Ε. Ζαχαριάδου, «Οι χίλιοι στίχοι στην αρχή του ''Χρονικού των Τόκκων''»), ''Ipirotika Chronika'' (''Ηπειρωτικά Χρονικά'') 15 (1983) 158-181 (''in Greek'') The ''Chronicle'', despite its unimportant literary quality, has significant value as an historical source, as well as a linguistic source for medieval Greek.

Notes

References

CRONACA DEI TOCCO DI CEFALONIA
* Hans-Georg Beck, ''Ιστορία της Βυζαντινής δημώδους λογοτεχνίας istory of the Byzantine vernacular literature', translated by Nike Eideneier, Μ.Ι.Ε.Τ., Athens 1988. (''in Greek'') * * G. Schirò, ''Το Χρονικό των Τόκκων. Τα Ιωάννινα κατά τας αρχάς του ΙΕ αιώνος he Chronicle of the Tocco. Ioannina at the beginning of the 15th century', Etaireia Ipirotikon Meleton, Ioannina 1965 (''in Greek'') * 15th-century history books Tocco County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos Tocco family Despotate of Epirus Books about monarchs Works of unknown authorship {{italic title