SCANDERBEG, GIORGIO CASTRIOTA, known as. — Albanian national hero, b. ca. 1404, d. 17 Jan. 1468, repeatedly styled by the Popes of his time with the title of *athleta Christi*. Son of Giovanni, lord of Arbanon and 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 trained for a military career in which he achieved outstanding success, whence his Turkish nickname S.: “Iskander-Beg: Prince Alexander.”
But in 1443, after his father’s death and the seizure of his possessions by the Turks, he took advantage of the opportunity offered by the battle fought at Kunovica near Niš in Serbia, abandoned the field with his men, causing panic and defeat, reclaimed his paternal lands, adding as a stronghold the overhanging Croia, and returned to Christianity (28 Nov. 1443). Immediately he imposed himself on the attention of the other Albanian lords and obtained from them a league against the Turks in the assembly held at Alessio in Venetian territory (19 March 1444). From then on, it was a continuous succession of battles, even pitched ones, against the Turkish armies, among which the two sieges of Croia are memorable (1450, under the personal command of Murād II, and 1466 with Mehmed II), both victoriously sustained. He was not always so fortunate; sometimes overwhelmed by overwhelming enemy forces, sometimes betrayed and left unsupported; but on the whole he was able to maintain his position and more often than not succeed thanks to his mobile and daring cavalry tactics and to his very high personal courage and influence. Even admitting that his biographers exaggerated the numbers, his success for a quarter of a century remains astonishing, faced as he was with hardened armies certainly superior in number and an Empire with inexhaustible supplies. It is therefore understandable the resonance his deeds obtained in Europe, the enthusiastic praise of his biographers, the success of their works (the editions and translations of Barletius’s work are very numerous), the wealth and continuity of the popular tradition among the Albanians who had taken refuge in Italy and to some extent also among the Catholic Albanians who remained in Albania. In reality, one must make allowance for the panegyrical style of the biographers and for the need they felt to render in Latin terms things familiar to them.
Three questions must therefore be resolved to recover the true figure of the Castriota: his internal juridical position in Albania, his exact relations with Venice and Naples, his religious position.
I. JURIDICAL POSITION
It appears that his ancestors, at the time of the Serbian Empire in Albania, held governorships or captaincies in southern Albania, and that his father was lord of Arbanon and part of Matja in north-central Albania with a vague feudal dependence on Venice, then dominant; Croia was a personal conquest of S.; there is no evidence that either his father or he ever bore any princely or feudal title, Byzantine, Serbian, or other, relating to their Albanian territories; the title of prince which some Croatian and other biographers attribute to him, granted by Pius II, is not attested by documents, nor could it have been granted without offending Venice and Naples, at a moment when it was necessary to secure the cooperation, desired by Pius and invoked by the Castriota, for the Crusade; rather, it should be recalled that Albanian historical and popular tradition attaches little importance to titles.II. FEUDAL RELATIONS
At the time of S., the power that had established itself by purchase in much of the Albanian coast was Venice; but previously the Hohenstaufen kings of Naples had held the central-southern part as the dowry of Manfred’s wife, daughter of the despot of Epirus; the Angevins had retained it for some time, the Aragonese left it in the hands of their feudal lords or other lords of Byzantine origin and practically lost interest in it at the time of the first Turkish invasions (end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century); only Alfonso V resumed the old Neapolitan policy in the East and took an active interest in it, not without jealousy of Venice. S., on his return to Albania, maintained an attitude of respect toward Venice, then, for reasons concerning possessions not yet fully clarified, entered into conflict with it and into open war (1447–48); reconciled, though without obtaining what he demanded, he received new recognition, but remained linked to Naples, acknowledging its sovereignty and accepting a garrison in Croia; after Alfonso’s death he went to the Kingdom with a small army to support Ferdinand’s rights, but, having thus discharged his debt to Aragon and obtained fiefs in the Kingdom, he felt no longer bound or guaranteed by the Neapolitan crown and reverted fully to his original relations with Venice, of which he was a noble of the Great Council and commander in its name of the troops at his disposal; at his death, he entrusted his son to the protection of the Republic.III. RELIGIOUS POSITION
According to the greater probability, central Albania as far as Matja to the north, and perhaps even a little beyond, was still in the medieval period of the Greek rite, even if not always schismatic; Venice, which had founded a Latin archbishopric in Durazzo during its brief rule in 1204, restored it on its return at the end of the 15th century, but it can be reckoned that the region of Arbanon retained largely the old rite, though governed by Latin bishops and united with Rome; Giovanni Castriota appears as a Catholic; it is therefore natural to think that, on returning to his homeland and the possessions and traditions of his family, S. returned to Catholicism, though some doubt remains as to the rite he followed; moreover, the political idea that dominated him, the anti-Turkish defense of Albania, could not suggest anything else to him, since the greatest support, if not military at least moral, he could and did obtain from the Holy See. He indeed came to Rome in Dec. 1466 and Paul II granted him in 1467 a discreet sum of money.There remains the question of his ethnic origin, which has been claimed at various times 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 known were dependent on the Serbian Empire, nor by the Slavic names recurring in the family and derived from current fashion and intermarriage with Slavic dynasties or of Slavic culture (e.g., S.’s mother was from a family of dynasties of the Polo, on the borders between present-day Albania and Serbia); the fact remains that both Giovanni and Giorgio Castriota always considered themselves Albanians.