Skanderbeg, Giorgio Castriota, called

SKANDERBEG, Giorgio Castriota, Called. - Albanian national hero, b. ca. 1404, d. 17 January 1468, several times described by the Popes of his time with the title of athleta Christi. Son of John, lord of Arbanon and of part of the Matja Valley, he spent his childhood and youth as a hostage at the court of the Turkish Sultan in Adrianople, where he was made a Muslim and set on a military career in which he achieved excellent successes, whence the Turkish nickname S.: "Iskander-Beg: Prince Alexander."

But in 1443, when his father died and the Turks occupied his possessions, he took advantage of the opportunity offered him by the battle joined at Kunovica near Niš in Serbia, abandoned the field with his men, causing panic and defeat there, returned to his father's possessions, adding to them as a stronghold the commanding Croja, and returned to Christianity (28 Nov. 1443). He immediately drew the attention of the other Albanian lords and obtained the conclusion with them of an anti-Turkish league at the meeting held in Alessio in Venetian territory (1 March 1444). From then on there was a whole succession of battles, including pitched battles, with the Turkish armies, among which memorable were the two sieges of Croja (1450, under the personal command of Murād II, and 1466 with Mehmed II), both withstood victoriously. He was not always so fortunate, at times overwhelmed by irresistible enemy forces, at times betrayed and not succored; but on the whole he was able to maintain his position and most often to emerge victorious thanks to his mobile and daring cavalry tactics and to his very high valor and personal ascendancy. Even granting that his biographers exaggerated the figures, his success for a quarter of a century remains always marvelous, in the face of battle-hardened armies certainly superior in number and of an Empire disposing of inexhaustible supplies. It is therefore understandable the resonance obtained in Europe by his deeds, the emphatic enthusiasm of his biographers, the fortune obtained by their works (very numerous the editions and translations of that of Barlezio), the richness and continuity of the popular epic among the Albanians who took refuge in Italy and to some degree also among the Albanians who remained Catholic in Albania. In reality one must make allowance for the panegyrical style of the biographers and for the necessity in which they found themselves of translating into Latin terms things familiar to them.

Three questions must therefore be resolved in order to recover the exact figure of Castriota: his internal juridical position in Albania, his exact relations with Venice and with Naples, his religious position.

the promise of the title of king, which according to the biographers would have been made to him by Pius II, is not attested by documents, nor could it have been made without offense to Venice and Naples, at a moment when it was necessary to have their cooperation, desired by Pius and invoked by Castriota, for the Crusade; it should rather be recalled that it is in the Albanian historical and popular tradition to attribute little importance to titles.

II. FEUDAL RELATIONS

At the time of S. the power that had established itself through purchases over a good part of the Albanian coast was Venice; but previously the Hohenstaufen kings of Naples had held the central-southern part of it as the dowry of Manfred's bride, daughter of the despot of Epirus; the Angevins had kept it for some time, the Aragonese left it in the hands of their feudatories or of other lords of Byzantine origin and practically lost interest in it at the time of the first Turkish invasions (end of the 14th century and beginning of the 15th); only Alfonso V resumed the old Neapolitan eastern policy and began to take an active interest in it again, and in fact not without Venice's jealousy. S., on his return to Albania, adopted a deferential attitude toward Venice, then, for reasons of possessions not yet fully clarified, came into conflict with it and into open war (1447-48); once reconciled, although he did not obtain what he demanded, he received a new recognition from it, but remained bound to Naples, acknowledging its sovereignty and accepting a garrison in Krujë; after Alfonso's death he crossed into the Kingdom with a small army to uphold Ferdinand's rights, but, having thus discharged his debt to Aragon and obtained fiefs in the Kingdom, he no longer felt obliged to or guaranteed by the Neapolitan crown and returned fully to his original relations with Venice, of which he was a noble of the Great Council and in whose name he commanded the troops at its disposal; at his death, he entrusted his son to the protection of the Republic.

III. RELIGIOUS SITUATION

According to the greater probability, central Albania up to the Matja in the north, and perhaps even a little beyond, remained throughout the Middle Ages of the Greek rite, even if not always schismatic; Venice, which had founded a Latin archbishopric in Durazzo during the brief dominion of 1204, restored it there upon its return at the end of the 15th century, but one may reckon that the region of the Arbanon preserved in good part the old rite, although governed by Latin bishoprics and united with Rome; Giovanni Castriota appears as a Catholic; it is therefore natural to think that, returning to his homeland and to the possessions and traditions of his family, S. returned to Catholicism, although some doubt remains concerning the rite he followed; moreover, the political idea that dominated him, the anti-Turkish defense of Albania, could not suggest anything else to him, given that the greatest support, if not military, at least moral, he could obtain and did obtain from the Holy See. He indeed came to Rome in Dec. 1466 and Paul II granted him in 1467 a fair amount of financial aid. There now remains the question of his ethnic origin, this having been several times claimed by the Serbs; in fact nothing is known of the origin of the Castriota family; the question is not resolved by the fact that the first of them who are known were in the service of the Serbian Empire, nor by that of Slavic names recurring in the family and derived from the prevailing fashion and from intermarriages with Slavic dynasts or those of Slavic culture (for example, S.'s mother was from a family of dynasts of Polog, on the border between present-day Albania and Serbia); the fact remains that both Giovanni and Giorgio Castriota always felt themselves Albanian.

Giuseppe Valentini