Morea

Morea (Greek Μωρέας or Μωριάς ) is since the Middle Ages, the Latin name of the Peloponnese (Greece ) Peninsula. The name is from a Greek word for mulberry tree, which is important for the silk industry, is derived.

History

1206, the north-west of the area of participants of the Fourth Crusade conquered that there founded the principality of Achaia. 1262 had to cede large areas of the resurgent Byzantine Empire; in Laconia was formed in the aftermath of Mystras ( Mistra ) the Byzantine Despotate of Morea under the Kantakutzenoi and later the Palaiologos. This could bring almost the whole peninsula under their control with time. Mistra, usually a Sekundogenitur of the imperial family, was a center of late Byzantine culture. In addition, Venice had few possessions in the peninsula. 1460 Morea was by the Ottomans under Sultan Mehmed II " Fatih " - taken " the Conqueror ".

For the Republic of Venice, the loss of Crete in the years 1645-1669 gave rise to the reconquest of the Morea. From 1684 conquered Venice under Francesco Morosini, who was in 1688 elected Doge, and was given the honorary title " Peloponnesiacus " awarded by the Venetian Senate, with a major military offensive by land and sea that stretched with General Otto Wilhelm von Königsmarck also to the entire Aegean, the entire peninsula ( Turkish Wars ). It worked with three Saxon regiments under Colonel Schonfeld, who entered in the spring of 1685 the march to Venice and in 1687 reduced by three-quarters, but came back with " rich booty " to Saxony. The money that Johann Georg III. received from Venice for the soldiers, he used to bail out the singer Margarita Salicola out of her contract with Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga - Nevers.

The Morea was thus the first complete and Venetian possession for over three decades. The capital of the new province of Napoli di Romania was determined ( Nauplia ), which later became the first capital of independent Greece also.

In 1715 the Morea under Sultan Ahmed III. taken from the Venetians, in turn, but still held up as the Ionian islands of Corfu and Santa Maura ( Leucas ) and in southern Albania and Epirus in Butrinto, Parga, Preveza and Vonitza to 1797.

After the independence of Greece in 1822 the ancient name Peloponnesus was brought forward again, as well as many place names were Hellenized. That was the name today Pylos to the 19th century Navarino and the island of Euboea Negroponte.