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Vonko (fl. 1400-1401) was a "Serb-Albanian-Bulgarian-Vlach" who conquered Arta from the Shpata family in 1400, holding it until late 1401, when the Shpatas regained the town.

Not much is known of him. In a Greek monastic chronicle, the Chronicle of Proclus and Comnenus (also known as the Chronicle of Ioannina) from the Panteleimon monastery at Ioannina, the last inclusion mentions: "October 29, on Wednesday (1400), Despot Shpatas enters Eternity (dies). Immediately afterwards, his brother Skurra holds Arta. After some days, the Serb-Albanian-Bulgarian-Vlach Bokoes (Vonko) attacked and expelled Skurra, and started to round up all the elders and imprisoned them in the fort, and he destroyed their possessions." He treated the citizens badly, and they called on the Republic of Venice for help.

By the end of 1401, Vonko had been driven out from Arta. Skurra did not retain the town, instead his nephew Muriq Shpata took over Arta and Skurra took over Angelokastron. No more is mentioned of him.

G. Schiro, who studied the genealogy of Shpata, assumed that the name (Bokoes in the original text) is a variant of Bua, based on linguistic data and the fact that Bua initially had the form of Buchia.

Annotations

1. Name: His name appears in the "Chronicle of Ioannina" as Μποκόης (Bokoes) and has been transliterated as Vonko, or Vango,
or Bokoi in other languages.
2. The wide designation of his ethnicity (Serv-Alvanito-Voulgaro-Vlahos) gives the notion that there was a known symbiosis in that region in the 14th century, comparable with that of Macedonia.

Notes

1. ^ Ellis, p. 151
2. ^ Vakalopoulos, p. 154
3. ^ Banač, p. 328
4. ^ Stoianovich, p. 132
5. ^ Šufflay 1925, pp. 69–70
6. ^ Fine 1994, pp. 355–356
7. Schiró Giuseppe, La genealogia degli Spata tra il XIV e XV sec. e due Bua sconosciouti, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici, Universita di Roma, Roma, 1971-1972, pp. 84-85.
8. Schiró G. p. 71

References

• Šufflay, Milan (1925). Srbi i Arbanasi (in Croatian).
• Ivo Banač, The national question in Yugoslavia: origins, history, politics
• Traian Stoianovich, Balkan worlds: the first and last Europe
• Apostolos Euangelou Vakalopoulos,Origins of the Greek nation: the Byzantine period, 1204-1461
• Steven G. Ellis, Lud'a Klusáková, Imagining frontiers, contesting identities
• Fine, John V. (1994). The Late Medieval Balkans : a Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest. University of Michigan Press. hdl:2027/heb.04995. ISBN 978-0-472-08260-5. OCLC 872155187.

• 14th-century births
• 15th-century deaths
• 15th-century Serbian people
• 15th-century Albanian people
• 15th-century Bulgarian people
• Arta, Greece
• Medieval Epirus
• Medieval Albanian nobility
• Aromanian people