George II Ghisi

George II Ghisi (Italian: Giorgio Ghisi; died c. 1344/5 or 1352) was a Latin feudal lord in medieval Greece, lord of Tinos and Mykonos and Triarch of Negroponte.

He was the son of Bartholomew II Ghisi. In 1326/27, as part of his father's rapprochement with the Catalans of the Duchy of Athens, George married Simona of Aragon, the daughter of the Catalan vicar-general Alfonso Fadrique. As Simona's dowry, the Ghisi received half the castellany of the Castle of Saint Omer in Thebes, which they held until its destruction in c. 1331/34. Bartholomew II died in 1341, and George succeeded him.

In 1343, at the request of Pope Clement VI, he armed a galley conjointly with John I Sanudo (duke of Naxos) and Balzana Gozzadini (regent of the two other thirds of Negroponte) to join the first Smyrniote crusade. According to Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, his disappearance from the sources after the events of 1344/45 could suggest that he may have participated in person and died in the fighting, as did the leaders Henry of Asti, Martino Zaccaria and the Venetian admiral Pietro Zeno.^[1] However, the date of 1352 was proposed (without justification) by Karl Hopf in the 19th century.^[2]

He was followed by his son, Bartholomew III Ghisi, who was still a minor, under the regency of his mother Simona until 1358.

References

1. Loenertz, Raymond-Joseph (1975). Les Ghisi, dynastes vénitiens dans l'Archipel (1207-1390) (in French). Florence: Olschki. p 162-163
2. Ghisi, in Ersch and Gruber encyclopedy vol 66 pp 336 sq