Although not mentioned by name Ithake doubtless followed the fortunes
of Cephalonia and Zante when those islands were conquered from the
Orsini by John of Gravina, prince of Achaia, in 1324. The “county of
Cephalonia,” of which the island of Odysseus had long formed a part, was
thus under the direct authority of the Angevins, and was transferred by
John of Gravina, together with the principality of Achaia, to Robert of
Taranto in 1333, after which date the same Angevin officials held office
in both Achaia and the insular county till Robert bestowed the latter
in 1357 upon his friend Leonardo Tocco, a Neapolitan courtier, whose
family came from Benevento. In an ecclesiastical document[382] of 1389
the Greek bishop of Methone, writing about the archbishopric of Levkas,
mentions “the duchess Franka (Francesca), lady of Levkas, Ithake, Zante
and Cephalonia,” the allusion being to the daughter of Nerio I Acciajuoli
of Athens, who had in the previous year married Carlo I Tocco, count
of Cephalonia and duke of Levkadia. A little earlier, in a Piedmontese
document[383] of 1387, we find Amedeo of Savoy, one of the claimants
to the principality of Achaia, rewarding the zeal of one of his Greek
supporters, Joannes Laskaris Kalopheros, with Cephalonia, Zante, Val di
Compare, and other places as hereditary possessions—a gift which was, of
course, never carried out, as the islands were not Amedeo’s to bestow.
Spandugino[384] specially mentions “Itaca,” or “Val di Compare,” as
being part of the insular dominions of the Tocchi, and Carlo II Tocco
is described in documents of 1430 and 1433, and by the annalist Stefano
Magno, as _comes palatinus Cephaloniæ, Ithacæ, et Jacinti_—a designation
repeated in a document of 1458 after his death[385]. We find an allusion
to it under both its classical and its mediæval name in the _Liber
Insularum_ of Buondelmonti[386], written in 1422, and the latter also
occurs in a Venetian document of 1430, where Val di Compare[387] is
stated to belong to Carlo II. Six years later the archæologist Cyriacus
of Ancona, visiting the “king of the Epeirotes,” as he calls that prince,
mentions _Itaci_ (sic) _insulæ_ as opposite the mainland[388]. After
Leonardo III lost practically all his continental possessions to the
Turks in 1449 he still retained the islands, Ithake among them, under
the protection of Venice, of which both he and his father were honorary
citizens, and under the nominal suzerainty of the kings of Naples. From
a document of 1558 we learn that it was in his time that the family of
Galates—the only Ithakan family which enjoyed the privileges of nobility
in the Venetian period, and which is still extant in the island—first
received exemptions[389]. It was he too who revived the Orthodox see of
Cephalonia and bestowed it, together with spiritual jurisdiction over
Ithake, upon Gerasimos Loverdo[390].