Leo Sgouros

Leo Sgouros
Despot and lord of the Argolid, Corinthia and Central Greece
Lead seal of Leo Sgouros as sebastohypertatos
Reign	ca. 1198 – 1208
Predecessor	Theodore Sgouros (as Lord of Nauplia)
Successor	Frankish conquest: Boniface of Montferrat over Central Greece, Otto de la Roche as Lord of Argos and Nauplia
Died	1208 Acrocorinth
Spouse	Eudokia Angelina

Leo Sgouros (Greek: Λέων Σγουρός), Latinized as Leo Sgurus, was a Greek independent lord in the northeastern Peloponnese in the early 13th century. The scion of the magnate Sgouros family, he succeeded his father as hereditary lord in the region of Nauplia. Taking advantage of the disruption caused by the Fourth Crusade, he made himself independent, one of several local rulers that appeared throughout the Byzantine Empire during the final years of the Angeloi dynasty. He expanded his domain into Corinthia and Central Greece, eventually marrying the daughter of former Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos (r. 1195–1203). His conquests, however, were short-lived, as the Crusaders forced him back into the Peloponnese. Blockaded in his stronghold on the Acrocorinth, he committed suicide in 1208.

Leo Sgouros succeeded his father, Theodore Sgouros, in circa 1198 as governor of the area of Nauplia and the Argolid, one of the districts known as oria, that collected taxes and provided ships for the Byzantine navy. In circa 1201/1202, when a rebellion in Thessaly and Macedonia led by Manuel Kamytzes and Dobromir Chrysos cut southern Greece off from Constantinople, several revolts broke out in the Peloponnese: Leo Chamaretos seized control of Sparta, Monemvasia was plagued by violent disputes among its leading families. Leo himself seized the opportunity to establish himself as an independent ruler, capturing the citadels of Argos and Corinth. His hostility to the church, who by that time were seen as the "defenders of the traditional order" in the words of Michael Angold, was profound: the bishop of Nauplion was imprisoned, while the bishop of Corinth was invited to dinner, blinded and thrown to his death from the Acrocorinth. Indeed, Sgouros is generally presented as a violent man: in a letter, Michael Choniates, the bishop of Athens, recounts how Sgouros beat to death a young relative of his who had been delivered as a hostage, merely because he had dropped a glass while waiting at his table.