Talk:Centurione I Zaccaria

Name of son Andronikos

According to C. Hopf's "Chroniques Gréco-Romanes Inédites ou peu Connues", page 472, Andronikos is listed as "Androniko Asano Zaccaria de Damala, heritier d'Arcadia". This is on a page where he is referenced as as a spouse and not as the main subject of the tree. In this reference, he is not listed with his known title of Baron of Chalandritsa. The only title listed is "heritier d'Arcadia" (heir to Arcadia); this is relevant as this tree is about the Lords of Arcadia. With this we can infer that "Damala" is not a title and in fact a part of his surname for several reasons:

1. If it was a title it would be proceeded with "baron" and include all his titles as demonstrated on page 502.

2. It would have included his title of Baron of Chalandritsa, or "et Chalandritsa" (and Chalandritsa) if "de" inferred Baron.

3. He was never given the title of Baron of Damala, as the barony was lost after the death of Centurione I.

Further confirmation of this is given on page 75 of Phillip Argenti's "Libro d' Oro de la Noblesse de Chio" (1955). Chios historian (talk) 00:19, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

You are doing original research and this is not permitted.Yopie (talk) 15:18, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

@Yopie This is not original research. This is simply reading what is in the sources. I have not added any new information. All of this is acknowledged by Hopf and Argenti just to name two. Hopf did not simply make a mistake in how he thoroughly recorded these names.

Do you still disagree? If so, please let me know what your thoughts are. Chios historian (talk) 16:54, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

And this is OR. We cannot speculate, like this, period. Is somewhere, in reliable source, explicitly written that his surname is Damalas? AFAIK no.--Yopie (talk) 18:50, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

This, and Hopf has been shown to be a far from reliable source as far as genealogies are concerned… He has a demonstrated tendency to make things up. Constantine ✍ 20:14, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cplakidas I appreciate you commenting! I was actually going to tag you as you seem like a great person for Greek history.

In this case do you have any reason to believe that is the case here? Everything else on these pages are corroborated by other historians, which I'm sure you're aware of already.

I would very much like to hear your two cents on the matter. Cheers. Chios historian (talk) 20:49, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

@Chios historian: Let me have a look at this in my books later today. Constantine ✍ 06:10, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Yopie Can we agree that Andronikos did not inherit the Barony of Damala? Chios historian (talk) 20:44, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Some remarks: 1)It is not relevant to try to establish a clear neat distinction between titles and family names for these periods, primary (and secondary sources accordingly) use different forms of the names, including or not first names, nobility titles, etc ; Hopf may (or may not) have specified "de Damala" to note that he belonged to the Damala branch of the family - the fact is, that he did'nt mention "de Damala" on the Zaccaria tree, so at least it doesn't look like "de damala" was an usual name for Andronikos. 2) Titles can be attributed and used a long time after the actual territories were lost (kings of spain have a long list of these eg) Phso2 (talk) 08:06, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Phso2 Hello and thanks for joining the conversation. Yes I'm aware of the above. It would just be rather unexplainable why he would include a title never held by him and choose to leave out titles that he did have. It's not even a case of this being a superior previous title, as he held equal and higher titles than Baron of Damala.

I wonder if we should be looking into the fact that his family were also seigneurs of Damala-Galata in the Bosphorus; for some time by then. On the Zaccaria tree on p. 502, Bartolomeo and Centurione are listed as seigneur de damala, not Baron. The different title is confirmed by Bartolomeo holding that title from 1317 which was before Martino's marriage to Jacqueline in 1327 where he acquired the Barony of Damala as a dowry. There's a distinction here to be recognized.

Is there a source that specifies that Centurione received the Barony of Damala? Chios historian (talk) 11:09, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I will try to answer more precisely later, but to begin with, the year 1327 for the marriage of Martino Zaccaria with Jacqueline is considered by Luttrell (Latin Greece and the Hospitallers, VIII, p.52) inconsistent with the information that M. was attested (i.e. on documentary evidence, the grant of the title of "King of Asia Minor" by Philipp and Catherine of Constantinople) as lord of Chalandritsa and Damala in 1325 (Luttrell considers on the same page that Hopfs genealogy of Renaud de la Roche's heirs is "hopelessly confused", by the way). It is not uncommon to find conflicting statements in Hopf's work, and the lack of references on his genealogical tables makes it often impossible to control. The "baron"/"lord" distinction is probably anachronistic, all these are simply called "dominus" in the charters. The date 1317 before the mention "lord of Damala" for bartolomeo doesn't necessarily imply that he was "lord of Damala" this year, since Hopf usually places this kind of date after the mentionned title.--Phso2 (talk) 14:39, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Phso2 Very interesting. I love conversing with people that are in tune with the subject matter. As far as I am aware, no major expert on this section of history disputes the specific study on the Zaccaria. If anything, I do know that many other people that today we regard as experts in the matter, agreed with his work and therefore used it as a source for their own studies. So we must go with the consensus on Wiki. Is that correct? I certainly look forward to your more in depth response later! Chios historian (talk) 16:46, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

As Phso2 correctly points out, 'de Damala' is simply a sobriquet derived from the claim to his father's fief of Damala. Antoine Bon, extensively cited in both the article on Andronikos and on Damala/Veligosti, and other scholars like Topping also call him only as 'Asen Zaccaria'. Constantine ✍ 17:32, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cplakidas So as a nickname in other words; this makes sense. This information is relevant because I have been working on recording the Damala family; a Genoese noble family of Chios. As such, the origins of the family are of course relevant. Argenti and Zolotas brought me here, to name a few experts on the matter. They both include Andronikos as one of the earliest members. Are you familiar with this area of history? Chios historian (talk) 17:56, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Chios historian I tried to check up on the first five sources of the Damalas article, and all three I had access to and could check, failed verification. #37, which you use to assert that "After Centurione, the barony of Damala seems to be lost to the byzantines as his son nor grandson inherited it. Even so, his oldest son was named "Andronikos Asano de Damala"", does not mention Andronikos at all. And the subsequent assertion that " This is the first reference of Damala not being used as a title, but as an extension of the surname. " is unattributed and hence WP:OR. I am very loath to continue discussing when faced with such blatant source misuse... Constantine ✍ 18:05, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cplakidas This article is certainly in need of help. It is my first attempt so there may be some sources in the wrong places that I believed to be relevant for what is being said. Everything is in good faith and I would love your assistance with it as experienced editor! It would be good to be able to communicate more efficiently some way. Chios historian (talk) 18:12, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

My advice is below: don't invent things, don't liberally interpret things, and if a source doesn't explicitly support something or offers multiple interpretations, cover it without cherry-picking. Constantine ✍ 18:15, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I assume you have some connection to the Damalas family? If so, a) you should be aware of WP:COI, b) if you don't want the article to be summarily deleted as unsalvageable, stick close to your sources and do not interpret or infer anything from them. And make sure that whatever you add is verifiable. Constantine ✍ 18:10, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Cplakidas No, I can say that I am not. If you read the talk page you will get a better idea on this. Chios historian (talk) 18:14, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

So I have since a few days made some fastidious enquiries about the elusive marriage of Zaccaria with J. de la Roche (it is not supposed to appear on the articles since it leans on OR, but I sum it up here to illustrate the dangers of using Hopf with not enough caution).

All the secondary sources I met seem to take this marriage as an etablished fact, not providing any primary or secondary source about it. They all probably got the information ultimately from Hopf, perhaps via others authors based on Hopf (Miller eg). In this case, for a once, Hopf gives his source, in his article on the Giustiniani in the Ersch&Gruber encyclopedia([1]) (where one can also find his massive article "Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis auf unsere Zeit"): it is an (unpublished afaik) manuscript of a collection of notarial acts, the Pandette Richeriane.

The interesting bit is that Hopf doesn't state that MZ married JdlR in 1327, but that he married her according to an act dated May 16 1327. It is another illustration that in his genealogical tables, the years given after a fact are not the years the facts happened, but the years that the statements appear to be true in documentary evidence, i.e. here it means that MZ and JdlR appear as married in an act of 1327 (but they can also have been married since a number of years before). The misleading presentation of these geneological tables produced unnumerables problems just like this one.

(Furthermore, since we are in Hopfian context, there is a not implausible possibility that the given notarial source doesn't even clearly states that they were married, but is only merely related to the general matter, and that the (plausible) marriage is nothing but a plausible hypothesis to explain why Martino is depicted as "Lord of Damala" in documentary evidences; Loenertz provides many exemples where Hopf thus presents his hypothesis as evidence-based facts...).

Otherways, in general, I must agree with the advices Constantine gave you ("don't liberally interpret things, and if a source doesn't explicitly support something or offers multiple interpretations, cover it without cherry-picking").Phso2 (talk) 11:32, 17 May 2023 (UTC)