Anseau de Toucy comes Soleti e la comunità ellenofona del Salento nella prima Età angioina

The article deals with the biography of Anseau de Toucy, a knight of French origin but born in Constantinople, of Greek mother, during the sixty years of the Latin Em-pire. The biographical traces, recoverable through historiographical sources, that link him to the Polis, to the Principality of Achaia during the rule of his brother-in-law Guillame de Villehardouin, and finally to the Angevin kingdom of Sicily are highlighted. His Franco-Greek ethnicity, common to other Angevin feudal lords who received lands in the Greek-speaking South Salento, is emphasized. The Angevin Age could, in fact, represent for Southern Apulia an important moment of contact with the Greek East. This would have al-lowed the spoken Greek language (the Grìco) in the Salento (still present today) to continue to exist, thanks to new arrivals of hellenophone peoples following the Frankish-Greek feu-dal lords. Some linguistic elements that seem to support this thesis are brought to attention.