Poutza () was a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

-era settlement near

Adrianople Edirne (; ), historically known as Orestias, Adrianople, is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the Edirne Province, province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, Edirne was the second c ...

Thrace Thrace (, ; ; ; ) is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe roughly corresponding to the province of Thrace in the Roman Empire. Bounded by the Balkan Mountains to the north, the Aegean Sea to the south, and the Black Se ...

. The settlement (qualified as πολίχνιον, "small town") first appears in the ''

Alexiad The ''Alexiad'' () is a medieval historical and biographical text written around the year 1148, by the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene, daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. It was written in a form of artificial Attic Greek. Anna described th ...

'' as the place where the usurper

Constantine Diogenes Constantine Diogenes (; died 1032) was a Byzantine general of the early 11th century, active in the Balkans. He served with distinction in the final stages of the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria under Emperor Basil II, and occupied high commands ...

was captured in 1095. John of Poutza, who in served as finance minister of

Manuel I Komnenos Manuel I Komnenos (; 28 November 1118 – 24 September 1180), Latinized as Comnenus, also called Porphyrogenitus (; " born in the purple"), was a Byzantine emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history o ...

, probably hailed from this locality. Poutza is most likely to be identified with the district of ''pertinentia Pucis et Nicodimi'', which was assigned to the

Republic of Venice The Republic of Venice, officially the Most Serene Republic of Venice and traditionally known as La Serenissima, was a sovereign state and Maritime republics, maritime republic with its capital in Venice. Founded, according to tradition, in 697 ...

in the ''

Partitio Romaniae The ''Partitio terrarum imperii Romaniae'' (Latin for "Partition of the lands of the empire of ''Romania'' .e., the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, or ''Partitio regni Graeci'' ("Partition of the kingdom of the Greeks"), was a treaty signed a ...

'' of 1204, and may also be the ''chastel Peutaces'' that was still held by its Greek inhabitants and was attacked unsuccessfully by the Crusaders under Louis de Blois in 1205. Its exact location or present identification are unknown.

References

Sources

*{{cite book, last=Soustal, first=Peter, title=Tabula Imperii Byzantini, Band 6: Thrakien (Thrakē, Rodopē und Haimimontos), location=Vienna, publisher=Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, year=1991, language=German, isbn=3-7001-1898-8, url-access=registration, url=https://archive.org/details/tabulaimperiibyz0000unse Populated places of the Byzantine Empire Geography of medieval Thrace Former populated places in Europe