YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LATINS IN THE LEVANT

PREFACE
PROFESSOR KRUMBACHER says in his History of Byzantine
Literature, that, when he announced his intention of devoting
himself to that subject, one of his classical friends solemnly
remonstrated with him, on the ground that there could be
nothing of interest in a period when the Greek preposition
airo governed the accusative instead of the genitive case.
I am afraid that many people are of the opinion of that
orthodox grammarian. There has long prevailed in some
quarters an idea that, from the time of the Roman Conquest
in 146 B.C. to the day when Archbishop Germanos raised
the standard of Independence at Kalavryta in 1821, the
annals of Greece were practically a blank, and that that
country thus enjoyed for nearly twenty centuries that form
of happiness which consists in having no history. Forty
years ago there was, perhaps, some excuse for this theory :
but the case is very different now. The great cemeteries of
mediaeval Greece — I mean the Archives of Venice, Naples,
Palermo, and Barcelona — have given up their dead. We
know now, year by year — yes, almost month by month — the
vicissitudes of Hellas under her Frankish masters, and all
that is required now is to breathe life into the dry bones, and
bring upon the stage in flesh and blopd that picturesque and
motley crowd of Burgundian, Flemish, and Lombard nobles,
German knights, rough soldiers of fortune from Catalufia
and Navarre, Florentine financiers, Neapolitan courtiers,
shrewd Venetian and Genoese merchant princes, and last
but not least, the bevy of high-born dames, sprung from the
oldest families of France, who make up, together with the
Greek archons and the Greek serfs, the persons of the
romantic drama of which Greece was the theatre for 250
vii

viii PREFACE
years. The present volume is an attempt to accomplish
that delightful but difficult task.
Throughout I have based the narrative upon first-hand
authorities. I can conscientiously say that I have consulted
all the printed books known to me in Greek, Italian, Spanish,
French, German, English, and Latin, which deal in any way
with the subject; and I have endeavoured to focus all the
scattered notices concerning the Frankish period which have
appeared in periodical literature, and in the documents of
the epoch which have been published. These I have
supplemented by further research in the archives of Rome
and Venice. My aim has been to present as complete an
account, as is possible in the existing state of our knowledge
of this most fascinating stage in the life of Greece. I have
also visited all the chief castles and sites connected with
the Frankish period, believing that before a writer can hope
to make the Franks live on paper, he must see where they
lived in the flesh. Enormous as is the debt which every
student of mediaeval Greek history owes to the late Karl
Hopf, it was here that he failed, and it was hence that his
Frankish barons are labelled skeletons in a vast, cold museum,
instead of human beings of like passions with ourselves.
One word as to the arrangement of the book. The
historian of Frankish Greece is confronted at the outset
with the problem of telling his tale in the clearest possible
manner. He may describe, like Finlay, the history of each
small state separately — a course which not only involves
repetition, but prevents the reader from obtaining a view of
the country as a whole ; or he may, like Hopf, combine the
separate narratives in one — a policy which inevitably leads
to confusion. I have adopted an intermediate course.
The three states of the Morea and continental Greece — the
principality of Achaia, the duchy of Athens, and the Despotat
of Epiros — were so closely connected as to form a fairly
homogeneous whole ; and with them naturally go the island
county of Cephalonia and the island of Eubcea. The duchy
of the Archipelago and the Venetian colony of Corfu, on the
other hand, form separate sections, for their evolution differed
widely from the other states. I have therefore treated them
apart. Crete I have omitted for two reasons : it is not yet

PREFACE ix
a part of the Greek kingdom, and it so happens that Frankish
Greece almost exactly coincided with the area of modern
Greece ; moreover, the history of Venetian Crete cannot be
written till the eighty-seven volumes of the " Duca di Candia "
documents at Venice are published.
I owe thanks to many friends for help and advice,
especially to K. A. M. Idromenos of Corfu.
W. M.
ROME, December 1907.

a 2

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
GREECE AT THE TIME OF THE FRANKISH CONQUEST p
Administrative divisions. The Ionian islands. Thessaly. Sla
vonic elements. Tzakones. Jews. Italians. Byzantine
oppression. Piracy. Local tyrants. The Church. Material
condition of Athens. The Ancient Monuments : the Par
thenon, the Erechtheion, the Theseion. Byzantine Churches.
Monasteries. Culture. English at Athens. Thebes. Chalkis.
The Peloponnese. Corfu. The Cyclades

CHAPTER II
THE FRANKISH CONQUEST (1204-1207)
The deed of partition. Sale of Crete to Venice. Boniface of
Montferrat marches into Greece. Leon Sgouros besieges
Athens. Bestowal of baronies in Thessaly. Marquisate of
Boudonitza. Barony of Salona. Capture of Athens by the
Franks. Akomindtos in Exile. Attica ancl Bceotia bestowed
on Othon de la Roche. D'Avesnes takes Eubcea. Siege of
Corinth. Geoffroy de Villehardouin lands in Messenia.
Meeting with Champlitte. Conquest of the Morea. Battle
of Koundoura. Doxapatres. Champlitte "Prince of all
Achaia." Venice takes Modon and Coron. Death of
Boniface. Michael I. Angelos founds the Despotat of Epiros.
Marco I. Sanudo founds the duchy of the Archipelago.
The triarchs of Eubcea. The Venetians colonise Corfu.
Crete ........ 27

xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER III
THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST (1207-1214)
PAGE
Departure of Champlitte. Villehafdouin bailie of Achaia. The
baronies of Achaia. Feudal Society : the prince, the great
barons, the Greeks, the serfs. Continuation of the conquest
of Achaia. Treaty with Venice. Geoffrey I. becomes
"Prince of Achaia." Capture of Corinth, Nauplia, and Argos.
Organisation of the Church in Achaia. Society in Attica.
Othon de la Roche : his family and dominions. The Athenian
Church. Death of Akomindtos. The Lombard rebellion.
The Parliaments of Ravenika. Venice obtains a footing in
Eubcea. Michael I. of Epiros captures Corfu : his death . 49
CHAPTER IV
THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE (1214-I262)
Fall of the Kingdom of Salonika. Theodore of Epiros becomes
its Emperor. Marriage and reign of Geoffrey II. of Achaia :
he builds Chloumovitsi : his quarrel with the Church : the
Concordat of 1223 : his services to the Latin Empire.
Reign and retirement of Othon de la Roche of Athens : Guy
I. succeeds him. Union of the Greek Empires of Nice and
Salonika. Michael II. "Despot of Hellas." Prince William
of Achaia. Siege and surrender of Monemvasia. Building of
Mistra, Old Maina, and Beaufort. Splendour and commercial
prosperity of Achaia. The mint at Chloumoutsi. The
Eubcean war. Frankish Athens fights Frankish Sparta:
battle of Karydi. The Parliament of Nikli. Guy I. becomes
Duke of Athens : history of the title. William of Achaia
becomes involved in Epiros. Battle of Pelagonia. Imprison
ment ofthe prince. The Emperor Baldwin II. at Athens.
The " Ladies' Parliament." Cession of the three fortresses!
Treaty of Thebes. General situation in 1262 . . 52

CHAPTER V
THE GREEK REVIVAL ( 1 262- 1 278)
Franco-Greek war in the Morea. Battle of Prinitsa. The Turks

CONTENTS xiii PAGE
desert to the Franks. Battle of Makryplagi. First Settlement
of Turks in the Morea. Treaty of Viterbo. The Angevin
connection. Prince William at, Tagliacozzo. Marriage of
Princess Isabelle with Philip of Anjou. Resumption of the
war in the Morea. Death of Michael II. of Epiros.
Division of the Despotat : the duchy of Neopatras. War
between Byzantium and Neopatras. John of Athens aids
the duke. Naval battle off Demetrias. Rise and career of
Licario in Eubcea. Capture of John of Athens : his release
and death. Feudal difficulties in Achaia : the cases of Skortd
and Akova. Death of Prince William. Condition of the great
baronies. The Gasmides. General situation of Frankish
Greece in 1278. Commerce and agriculture. Culture :
Leonardo of Veroli's library. Piracy. General insecurity.
Frankish nomenclature . . . . . .120

CHAPTER VI
THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE (1278-1307)
Charles I. of Anjou Prince of Achaia. Rule of his bailies : Galeran
d'lvry, Filippo de Lagonessa, and Guy de la TremouiUe.
William, Duke of Athens and bailie of Achaia. Nicholas de
St Omer bailie : he builds the castles of St Omer and Avarino.
Origin of the name Navarino. Geoffroy de Bruyeres captures
Bucelet. Florent of Hainault marries Isabelle de Villehar-
douin and becomes Prince of Achaia. The Angevins in
Epiros. Capture of Sully. Latin coalition against the Greek
Empire : treaty of Orvieto. Effect of the Sicilian Vespers on
Greece. Collapse of the coalition. War between the Greeks
in Thessaly. Seven years' peace in Achaia. Condition of
Epiros : Florent intervenes there. History and origin of Sta.
Mavra. Philip of Taranto marries Thamar of Epiros and
becomes suzerain of all the Frankish states. The Angevins
at Lepanto. Roger de Lluria ravages the* Morea. Surprise
ofKalamata. Unpopularity of the Flemings : story of Photios.
The market at Vervaina : capture of St George. Death of
Florent. Coming of age of Guy II. of Athens : the scene at
Thebes. Boniface of Verona. Guy II. marries Matilda of
Hainault. Isabelle of Achaia at the Jubilee of 1300: her
marriage with Philip of Savoy. Philip as Prince of Achaia :
his quarrel with St Omer : his extortionate government.
Guy II. of Athens guardian of Thessaly: spread of French
influence there : his campaign against Epiros. The tourna-

xiv CONTENTS PAOB
ment on the Isthmus. Charles II. of Anjou makes Philip of
Taranto Prince of Achaia. Exile and death of Princess
Isabelle. The Savoyard " Princes of Achaia." Great pros
perity of Athens. Review of the Frankish states in 1307 . 161

CHAPTER VII
THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY (1302-1311)
Origin of the Catalan Grand Company. Roger de Flor. The
Company enters the Byzantine service. Quarrels with the
Emperor. Ravages Thrace and Macedonia. The Infant
Ferdinand of Majorca. His arrest with Muntaner at Negro-
ponte. His imprisonment at Thebes. The Catalans negotiate
with Duke Guy II. They murder their captains. Death of
Guy II. The disputed succession: decision of the High
Court of Achaia. Duke Walter of Brienne. The Catalans
in Thessaly. Walter employs them against the Greeks. His
quarrel with them. Battle of the Kephissos( 15th March 1311).
The Catalans occupy the duchy of Athens. Memorials of
the French dukes . . . . . .211

CHAPTER VIII
THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
(I3"-I333)
The Company places the duchy under Sicilian protection. Man
fred of Sicily Duke of Athens. Estanol sent as governor.
Organisation of the Catalan duchy. The vicar-general. The
marshal. The veguers, captains, and castellanos. Represen
tative and municipal institutions. Code of law and language.
Ecclesiastical organisation. Treatment of the Greeks. Fin
ances. Estafiol's administration. Alfonso Fadrique head of
the Company. His Euboean marriage and campaign. Truce
with Venice in 1319. Importance of the Piraaus. Turkish
danger. Death ofthe last Greek Duke of Neopatras : break
up of his dominions. Venice takes Pteleon. The Catalan
duchy of Neopatras. First appearance of the Albanians in
Thessaly. The Venetian marquisate of Boudonitza. End of
the Angeli in Epiros. The Orsini in Epiros. Their crimes
and Greek culture. The principality of Achaia : Louis of

CONTENTS xv

PAGE

Burgundy marries Matilda of Hainault and becomes prince.
Tragic end of the Lady of Akova. Civil war in Elis : expe
dition of Ferdinand of Majorca. Death of both claimants.
John of Gravina Prince of Achaia. The last of the Villehar-
douins. Expansion of the Byzantine province : loss of
Arkadia. First mention of the Acciajuoli. Achaia exchanged
for Durazzo. Walter of Brienne attempts to recover Athens.
Destruction of the castle of St Omer. Subsequent career of
Walter. Condition of Greece in 1333 .... 235

CHAPTER IX
THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI (i 333-1 373)
Catherine of Valois in Achaia. Niccolo Acciajuoli. Byzantine
annexation of Epiros. The Achaian barons treat with James
II. of Majorca: report on the principality in 1344. The
papacy recognises the Catalans at Athens. Frederick III. of
Sicily becomes Duke of Athens. Condition of the duchies.
Moncada vicar-general. The Serbs in Thessaly. Greek
revival in the Morea : the Cantacuzenes at Mistra. Character
of the Moreot archons : revolt of Lampoiidios. Manuel's
national policy. Franco-Greek alliance against the Turks.
Roger de Lluria invites the Turks to Thebes. Their defeat
at Megara. The Emperor Robert Prince of Achaia. Niccolo
Acciajuoli receives Corinth. Death of Prince Robert : a
disputed succession. Exploits of Carlo Zeno, canon of
Patras. Nerio Acciajuoli's origin and establishment at
Corinth. Rise of the Tocchi. Leonardo Tocco becomes
Count of Cephalonia and Duke of Leucadia. Epiros divided
between Serbs and Albanians. Foundation of Meteora.
Condition of Athens : dissensions between Lluria and Pedro
de Pou. Lluria vicar-general. Schemes of the house of
Enghien for the recovery of Athens. State of the Venetian
colonies. General position of the Frankish states in 1373 . 269

CHAPTER X
THE NAVARRESE COMPANY ( 1 373- 1 388)
Congress at Thebes. Nerio Acciajuoli seizes Megara. Death of
King Frederick III. of Sicily : disputed succession at Athens.
The majority proclaims Pedro IV. of Aragon as duke. Inter
vention of the Navarrese Company. Its origin. Jacques de
Baux claims Achaia. Queen Joanna I. of Naples Princess of

xvi CONTENTS PAGE
Achaia. The principality pawned to the Knights of St John.
Heredia in Greece. The Albanians capture Lepanto. The
Navarrese in Attica. Capture of Thebes. The Akropolis
defended by Bellarbe. The capitulations of Athens and
Salona. Pedro IV. and the Akropolis. Rocaberti vicar-
general. The head of St George. Albanian immigration into
Attica. The Navarrese Company established in the Morea.
Various claimants to the principality. Growth of Venetian
influence in Argolis and Eubcea. Rocaberti recalled. Nerio
Acciajuoli seizes Attica. Pedro de Pau defends the Akropolis :
its surrender. Fate of the survivors : Catalan families still
left in Greece. Memorials of Catalan rule : the Catalan
Madonna. State of Athens in the Catalan period. "Catalan"
as a term of reproach. The Florentines in Epiros : Esau
Buondelmonti becomes Despot. Review of Greece in 1388 . 303

CHAPTER XI
FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS (1388-I415)
Restoration of the Greek see of Athens. Nerio's philhellenic
policy. Greek becomes the official language. Venice pur
chases Argos and Nauplia. Theodore Palaiologos seizes
Argos. Nerio the prisoner of the Navarrese : his release :
he strips the Parthenon to pay his ransom. His alliance
with Amadeo of Savoy. List of the Achaian baronies in 1391.
The Turks in Greece : Evrenosbeg ravages Attica. Tragic
end of the last Countess of Salona. Nerio created " Duke of
Athens": his death and will: feud between his heirs.
Venice accepts the city of Athens. The Venetian administra
tion. Description of Athens in 1395. Fresh Turkish
inroads. Antonio Acciajuoli master of Athens. Venice
acquires Lepanto. Further Venetian gains : condition of
Negroponte. State of the Morea : Albanian colonisation :
Theodore Palaiologos sells Corinth to the Knights of St John.
Centurione Zaccaria last Prince of Achaia. The Duchess
Francesca Tocco's court at Cephalonia : Froissart's descrip
tion. Carlo I. Tocco conquers Epiros. End of the mar-
quisate of Boudonitza . . „,.
• j34

CHAPTER XII
THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA (1415-1441)
The Emperor Manuel II. restores the Hexamilion. Platonic

CONTENTS xvii PACK
proposals of Gemistbs Pl&hon. The satire of Mdzaris.
Civilisation of Maina. Extension of the Venetian colonies in
Messenia : purchase of Navarino. Venice meditates buying
the Morea : report on its condition in 1422 : Turakhan invades
it. Constantine Palaiologos in the Morea. He captures Patras.
End of the Frankish principality of Achaia. The Turks take
Salonika and Joannina : Carlo II. Tocco a tributary of the
sultan. Antonio Acciajuoli's successful rule at Athens.
Florentine society there. The Akropolis under the Acciajuoli :
their palace in the Propylasa : the Frankish Tower. Other
Florentine buildings at Athens. Literary culture. Depopu
lation : slavery at Athens. Death of Antonio : conspiracy of
Chalkokondyles. Nerio II. proclaimed. Antonio II. sup
plants him. Nerio II.'s restoration. .... 377

CHAPTER XIII
THE TURKISH CONQUEST (144I-I460)
Quarrels ofthe Palaiologoi brothers. State of the Morea. Con
stantine's triumphs in Northern Greece : Athens tributary
to him. Battle of Varna. Murad II. storms the Hexamilion.
Constantine crowned emperor at Mistri/ End of Italian rule
in Akarnania. Cyriacus of Ancona visits Greece : the anti
quary at Athens. Death of Ple'thon. /Turakhan invades the
Morea : battle of Dervenaki. Effect ofthe taking of Constan
tinople on Greece. Albanian insurrection in the Peloponnese.
Centurione's son claims the principality. The rising subdued
by Turkish aid. The Palaiol6goi omit to pay their tribute.
Mohammed II.'s campaign in the Morea. Surrender of
Corinth. Turkish province constituted. Death of Nerio II.
Usurpation of Chiara Zorzi at Athens : her tragic end. Franco
Acciajuoli. Omar takes Athens : end of Frankish rule there.
Mohammed visits Athens. The anonymous account of the
antiquities. The sultan in Bceotia and Negroponte. Fratri
cidal war in the Morea. Mohammed's second Peloponnesian
campaign : surrender of Demetrios. Monemvasia holds out
and becomes papal . territory. Flight of Thomas. Heroic
defence of Salmenikon. Fate of the Palaiologoi. End of
PhrantzSs. Murder of Franco Acciajuoli. End of the duchy
of Athens. Subsequent history of the Acciajuoli. Condition
of the Venetian colonies : acquisition of ^Egina and of the
Northern Sporades ...... 407

xviii CONTENTS
CHAPTER XIV
THE VENETIAN COLONIES (1462-1540)
Removal of St George's head from ^Egina to Venice. Turco-
Venetian war of 1463. Greeks and Albanians rise against the
Turks. The Venetians rebuild the Isthmian wall. Death of
Bertoldo d'Este at Corinth. Monemvasia becomes Venetian.
Sigismondo Malatesta in the Morea. Siege of Mistra.
Plethon's remains removed to Rimini. Vettore Cappello
captures Athens. Second anonymous description of the city.
Venetian defeats at Patras and Kalamata. Death of Cappello in
Euboea. Siege of Negroponte : Canale's fatal inaction. Fall
of Negroponte : indignation in Venice. Fate of the survivors.
The Turks repulsed at Lepanto. Peace of 1479. Origin of
the stradioti. Venice abandons the Tocchi. Prosperity of
Cephalonia and Zante under Leonardo III. The Turks con
quer the palatine county. Antonio Tocco recovers Zante and
Cephalonia. Venice dislodges him, and keeps Zante. Later
history of the Tocchi. The twenty years' peace : insurrection
of Korkodeilos KladSs : schemes of Andrew Palaiologos.
Turco- Venetian war of 1499. Loss of Lepanto. Condition
of Modon, and its capture by the Turks. Loss of Navarino and
Coron. Venice takes Cephalonia and Sta. Mavra. Cession
of Sta. Mavra. Peace of 1502-3. State of the remaining
Venetian colonies : , Nauplia, ^Egina, Monemvasia. The
Knights of St John seize Modon. Andrea Doria captures
Coron. Its abandonment by the Spaniards. Fate of its
inhabitants. Turco-Venetian war of 1537. Sack of ^Egina
by Barbarossa. Heroic defence of Nauplia. Peace of 1540.
Cession of Nauplia and Monemvasia : disappearance of
Venice from the Greek mainland

CHAPTER XV
CORFU (1214-1485)
Corfu under the Despots of Epiros : zenith of the Greek Church.
Civil administration. Filippo Chinardo. Charles I. of Anjou
master of Corfu. Disestablishment of the Greek Church :
Catholic predominance. Jewish immigration. Angevin ad
ministration : the Captain, the Magister Ma^sarius, the Curia
Regis, the " annual judges." The four bailiwicks. The feudal
system. Economic value of the island. Philip of Taranto
" Lord of Corfu." Robert and Philip II. Origin ofthe Corfiote

464

CONTENTS xix
PAGE
gypsies. Joanna I. of Naples Lady of Corfu. The Navarrese
Company conquers the island for Jacques de Baux. Charles
III. of Naples its ruler. Venice occupies Corfu. The
Venetian charter. Formal purchase of the island. Effects
and traces of Angevin sway. Venetian administration : the
bailie, councillors, andprovvedttore. Thefirovveditore generate
del Levante. Local government : the General Assembly and
the Council of 1 50. The " Golden Book." The dependencies
of Corfu : Butrinto, Parga, the islands of the Harpies.
Ecclesiastical organisation. The Jews. The feudal system.
The gypsies' fief. The serfs. Neglect of education. The
Greek language. Trade. Taxes. Present memorials of
Venetian rule. Aspect of the town in Venetian times.
Genoese attacks. The Turkish peril. Greek exiles in Corfu
after 1453. St Spiridion. Services ofthe Corfiotes to Venice 512

CHAPTER XVI
THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE (1485-1540)
Acquisition of Zante. Its colonisation and administration. The
Catholic Church. The Greek Church. Cephalonia a Vene
tian colony : its administration. Character ofthe Cephalonians.
Ithaka. Prosperity of Zante and Cephalonia. First Turkish
siege of Corfu. History of Cerigo : the Venieri : the Mono-
yannai. Cerigo a Venetian colony. Its partial restoration to
the Venieri. Its organisation. Barbarossa's raid. The
Ionian islands in 1540 ...... 550

CHAPTER XVII
THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO (1207-1463)
Marco I. Sanudo does homage to the Emperor Henry. Creation
of the duchy. Marco's treachery in Crete. His capture by
the Greeks of Nice. His religious tolerance. Foundation of
the Catholic Church in the Cyclades. Angelo Sanudo a vassal
of the Prince of Achaia. He imitates his father in Crete. The
castles of the Cyclades. Marco II. Loss of the Northern
Sporades and many other islands. Venice claims suzerainty
over the duchy. Piracy. War of the Ass. The worship of
St Pachys. Recovery of the lost Cyclades. New Latin
families established there. The Knights of St John at Delos.
Exploits of Niccolb I. Sanudo. State ofthe Archipelago about

Greece in 1214
Greece in 1278
Greece in 1388
Greece in 1462 464

THE LATINS IN THE LEVANT
CHAPTER I
GREECE AT THE TIME OF THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
THE history of Frankish Greece begins with the Fourth
Crusade — that memorable expedition which influenced for
centuries the annals of Eastern Europe, and which forms
the historical basis of the Eastern question. We all know
how the Crusaders set out with the laudable object of freeing
the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel, how they turned aside
to the easier and more lucrative task of overturning the
oldest empire in the world, and how they placed on the
throne of all the Caesars Count Baldwin of Flanders as first
Latin emperor of Constantinople. The Greeks fled to Asia
Minor, and there, at Nice, the city of the famous council, and
at Trebizond, on the shores of the Black Sea, founded two
empires, of which the former served as a basis for the re
conquest of Byzantium, while the latter survived for a few
years the Turkish Conquest of the new Rome.
At the time of the Latin Conquest, most of Greece was still
.nominally under the authority ofthe Byzantine emperor. The
.system of provincial administration, which had been completed
by Leo the Isaurian early in the eighth century, was, with some
alterations, still in force, and the empire was parcelled out
into divisions called Themes — a name originally applied to a
regiment, and then to the district where it was quartered.
Continental Greece, from the Isthmus to the river Peneios
in the north and to ^Etolia in the west, composed the Theme
of Hellas, which thus included Attica, Bceotia, Phokis, Lokris,
part of Thessaly, and the islands of Eubcea and ^Egina ; the
Peloponnese gave its name to a second Theme, but at this
A

2 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
time these two Themes were administered together by the
same official.1 Nikopolis, the Roman colony which Octavian
had founded to commemorate the battle of Actium, formed a
third Theme, which included Akarnania, ^Etolia, and Epiros.
Of the islands, the Cyclades, or Dodekanesos, as they were
then called, were included in the JEgea.n Theme, the Northern
Sporades in that of Salonika, while Crete, since its restoration
to the Byzantine Empire from the Saracens two-and-a-half
centuries earlier, was governed by an imperial viceroy.
But most of the Ionian islands no longer formed part of
the emperor's dominions. Five years before the Latins
conquered Constantinople, a bold Genoese pirate named
Vetrano had made himself master of the then rich and
fertile island of Corfu, which he may have still held ; while
Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithaka had been permanently severed
from the empire by the invasion of the Normans from Sicily
twenty years before, and had been occupied by their admiral,
Margaritone of Brindisi.2 At the time of the Fourth Crusade,
they were in the possession of a Count Maio, or Matthew, a
member of the great Roman family of Orsini, who seems to
have been a native of Monopoli in Apulia and to have married
the daughter of the admiral, acknowledging the suzerainty
of the king of Sicily. A considerable Italian colony from
Brindisi had settled in Cephalonia under the auspices of
these Apulian adventurers.3
In Thessaly, too, the imperial writ no longer ran.
Benjamin of Tudela,4 who travelled through Greece about
forty years before the Latin Conquest, found a part of that
province in the possession of the Wallachs, whose confines
extended as far south as Lamia. Whatever may have been
the origin of this mysterious and interesting race, which still
dwells in summer on the slopes of Pindos and on the banks
of the Aspropotamos, migrating in winter to the plains of
1 Ldmpros, M«x<^\ 'A/co^tou, i., 157, 160 ; A! 'Afljwu repl to, riXr, tov
SuiSeiciiTov olwvos, 25-6.
2 Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Regis Ricardi, ii., 190, in Rolls
Series. 3 Libro de los fechos, 53-4 ; Epistola Innocentii UI., vol. ii.,
pp. 16, 73 ; A. Dandolo afiud Muratori, Rerum ltalicarum Scrifitores,
xu., 336 ; Archivio Veneto, xx., 93.
4 Asher, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, i., 45-9.

WALLACHS AND SLAVS 3
Bceotia, they had firmly established themselves in Northern
Greece by the middle of the twelfth century, and the district
where they lived already bore the name of Great Wallachia.1
That the Wallachs are of Roman descent scarcely admits of
doubt. At the present day the Roumanians claim them as
belonging to the same family as themselves; but the
worthy Rabbi of Tudela argued, from their Jewish names
and the fact that they called the Jews " brethren," that they
were connected with his own race. They showed, however,
their brotherly love by contenting themselves with merely
robbing the Israelites, while they both robbed and murdered
the Greeks, when they descended from their mountains to
pillage the plains. A terror to all, the Vlachi would submit
to no king ; and, twenty years before the fall of the Byzantine
Empire, the foolish attempt of Isaac II. Angelos to place a
tax upon their flocks and herds caused a general rising,
which led to the formation of the second Bulgarian, or
Bulgaro-Wallachian Empire, in the Balkans. Their dis
affection and readiness for revolt was further proved, only
three years before the Conquest of Constantinople, when an
ambitious Byzantine commander, Manuel Kamytzes, made
himself master of Thessaly with the aid of a Wallachian
officer, and disturbed the peace of both continental Greece
and the Peloponnese, till the revolt was suppressed.2
The population of Greece at this time was not exclusively
Hellenic. Besides the Wallachians in Thessaly, another
alien element was represented by the Slavs of the Arkadian
and Lakonian mountains, descendants of those Slavonian
colonists who had entered the Peloponnese several centuries
before. No one now accepts the once famous theory of
Fallmerayer, that the inhabitants of modern Greece have
" not a single drop of genuine Greek bldod in their veins."
No unbiassed historian can, however, deny the immigration
of a large body of Slavs into the Peloponnese, where such
names as Charvati (the village near Mycenae) and Slavochorio
still preserve the memory of their presence. But the wise
measures of the Emperor Nikephdros I. in the ninth
century and the marvellous power of the Hellenic race for
1 So Nik&as Chonidtes (p. 841) calls it.
2 Nik6tas Choni£tes, 708-9.

4 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
absorbing and Hellenising foreign races— a power like that of
the Americans in our day-had prevented the Peloponnese
from becoming a Slav state-a Southern Servia or Bulgaria.
At this time, accordingly, they were confined to the mountain
fastnesses of Arkadia and Taygetos (called in the Chronicles
"the mountain of the Slavs"),1 where one of their tribes, the
Melings, is often mentioned as residing. In the Peloponnese,
too were to be found the mysterious Tzakones— a race
which is now only existing at Leonidi, in the south-east of
the peninsula, and in the adjacent villages, but was then
apparently occupying a wider area. Opinions differ as to
the origin of this tribe, which has, to this day, a dialect quite
distinct from that spoken anywhere else in Greek lands,
and which was noticed as a "barbarian" tongue by the
Byzantine satirist, Mazaris, in the fifteenth century. But the
first living authority on their language, who has lived among
them, regards them as descendants of the Lakonians and
calls their speech " New Doric," 2 and both Mazaris and the
Byzantine historians, Pachymeres and Nikeph6ros Gregoras,
expressly say that their name was a vulgar corruption of the
word " Lakones." Scattered about, wherever money was to
be made by trade, were colonies of Jews. We read of Jews
at Sparta in the tenth century, and I have myself seen
numbers of later Jewish inscriptions at Mistra. Benjamin of
Tudela found the largest Hebrew settlement at Thebes,
where the Jews were, in his day, "the most eminent
manufacturers of silk and purple cloth in all Greece." Among
the, 2000 Jewish inhabitants of that ancient city there
were also " many eminent Talmudic scholars," indeed, the
1 Libro de los fechos, 48-9 ; T6 Xpovutiv tov Jiopiws, 11. 3040, 4605 ;
Le Livre de la Conqueste, 95, 100.
2 Dr Deffher of Athens, who has written a Tzakonic grammar. See
his Zakonisches in Monatsbericht der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Berlin. Features of their language are the Doric a for the ordinary
Greek ij, and the digamma in some words. Dr Deffher regards TfoKuwis
as a corruption of roin A&icwvas, and Mizaris says the Lakonians "are
now called Tz&kones." Constantine Porphyrogenitus (i., 696) mentions
Tffowxes in the tenth century, PachymeYes (i., 309) and Nikeph6ros (i., 98)
Tfd/cui'es in the thirteenth. It is difficult, in the face of this evidence, to
understand how Hopf could have believed them to be Slavs. The name
is still common as a proper name, e.g. the leading, surgeon at Athens is
so called.

JEWS AND ITALIANS 5
enthusiastic Rabbi says that " no scholars like them are to
be met with in the whole Grecian Empire, except at
Constantinople." Next came Halmyros with "about 400
Jews," Corinth with " about 300," Negroponte with 200, and
Crissa, now the squalid village of Chryso, on the way up to
Delphi, with the same number, who " live there by themselves
on Mount Parnassos and carry on agriculture upon their own
land and property" — an example of rural Judaism to be
paralleled to-day near Salonika. Naupaktos and Ravenika
had 100 Jews apiece, Patras and Lamia, or Zetounion, as it
was then called, about half that number, and there were a
few in ^Etolia and Akarnania. The present large Jewish
colony at Corfu was then represented by only one man.
The Italian element had become prominent commercially
long before the Latin Conquest made the Franks territorial
masters of Greece. A century earlier, Alexios I. had con
ceded immense, and, as it proved, fatal privileges to the
Venetians, in return for their aid against the Norman
invaders ; and Manuel I., in order to counteract the embar
rassing Venetian influence, gave encouragement to the
trading communities of Pisa, Genoa, and Amain. The
Genoese asked in particular for the same privileges as their
Venetian rivals in the Theban silk market. Benjamin of
Tudela had found Venetian, Pisan, Genoese, and many
other merchants frequenting " the large commercial city "
of Halmyros in Thessaly,1 and the commercial treaty of
1 199 between Venice and Alexios III. granted to the
subjects of the republic free-trade not only at Halmyros,
but at numerous other places in Greece. Among them we
notice the Ionian islands of Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, and
Ithaka (called in the document by its classical name) ; the
towns of Patras, Methone, Corinth, Argos, and Nauplia in
the Peloponnese; Thebes and "the district of Athens" in
continental Greece; the towns of Domoko, Larissa, and
Trikkala in the north ; and the islands of Eubcea, Crete, and
the Archipelago.2 But there cannot have been much love
lost between the Greeks and these foreigners from the west.
Old men would still remember the sack of Thebes and Corinth
1 Asher, loc. eit.
3 Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. II., B. xii., 264-7.

6 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
by the Normans of Sicily ; middle-aged men would have
heard of the horrors of the sack of Salonika by a later Sicilian
force ; and the children of the islands or coasts must have
shuddered when they were told that the dreaded Genoese
pirates, Vetrano or Caffaro, were coming. Moreover, ever
since the final separation of the Greek and Latin churches
in the middle of the eleventh century, a fanatical hatred had
been kindled between west and east, which is not wholly
extinguished to-day.
But even the rule of the Franks must have seemed to
many Greeks a welcome relief from the financial oppression
of the Byzantine Government. Greece was, at the date of
the Conquest, afflicted by three terrible plagues: the tax-
collectors, the pirates, and the native tyrants. The Imperial
Government did nothing for the provinces, but wasted the
money, which should have been spent on the defences of
Greece, in extravagant ostentation at the capital. One
emperor after another had exhausted the resources of his
dominions by lavish expenditure, and Byzantine officials
sent to Greece regarded that classic land, in the phrase of
Niketas,1 as an " utter hole," an uncomfortable place of exile.
The Themes of Hellas and the Peloponnese were at this
time governed by one of these authorities, styled prcetor,
protoprcetor, or "general,"2 whose headquarters were at
Thebes. We have from the pen of Michael Akominatos, the
last metropolitan of Athens before the Conquest, and brother
of the historian Niketas, a vivid, if somewhat rhetorical,
account of the exactions of these personages. Theoreti
cally, the city of Athens was a privileged community. A
golden bull of the emperor forbade the proetor to enter it
with an armed force, so that the Athenians might be spared
the annoyance and expense of having soldiers quartered
upon them.3 Its regular contribution to the imperial
exchequer was limited to a land-tax, and it was expected to
1 P. 78.
2 npaiTwp, TpwroirpalTuip, o-rparriyds, all occur on two leaden seals of
governors of Hellas and the Peloponnese at this period. Ldmpros,
Al A9fjvat, 25.
8 Professor Lampros (op. eit.) points out that the idea that the preetor
might not visit Athens at all is erroneous ; his infraction of the city's
privilege consisted in coming with an armed following.

FINANCIAL OPPRESSION 7
send a golden wreath as a coronation offering to a new
emperor. When the Byzantine Government, too, following
a policy similar to that which cost our King Charles I. his
throne, levied ship-money on the Greek provinces, really for
the purpose of its own coffers, nominally for the suppression
of piracy, Athens expected to be assessed on a lighter scale
than the far richer communities of Thebes and Chalkis, and
the number of sailors whom it had to furnish was fixed by
a special decree. But, in practice, these privileges were apt
to be ignored. The Athenians were compelled to contribute
more ship-money than either of those cities, not only to
the prater, but to Leon Sgouros, the powerful magnate of
Nauplia;1 while the Thebans, who were less exposed to
piracy, managed, no doubt by judicious bribery at Con
stantinople, to obtain a golden bull releasing them from
naval service, and the reduction of their pecuniary con
tributions below those of Athens. The indignant metro
politan complains that the prcstor, under the pretext of
worshipping in the church of " Our Lady of Athens," 2 as
the Parthenon was then called, visited the city with a large
retinue. He laments that one of these imperial governors
had treated the city " more barbarously than Xerxes," and
that the leaves of the trees, nay almost every hair on the
heads of the unfortunate Athenians, had been numbered.
The authority of the prcetor, he says, is like Medea in
the legend : just as she scattered her poisons over Thessaly,
so it scatters injustice over Greece — a classical simile which
had its justification in the hard fact that it had long been
the custom of the Byzantine Empire to pay the governors
of the European provinces no salaries, but to make their
office self-supporting — a practice still followed by the Turkish
Government. Thus, as we learn from the addresses of the
worthy metropolitan, the sufferings of the Greeks depended
1 Lampros, MixaijX ' Axopuvdrov, i., 308.
2 Ldmpros (Al' Afloat, 35-9) deduces this title from two leaden seals,
one of which was probably that of Michael. Moreover, a bull of Isaac
Angelos in 1186 mentions rrjs Seffiroiviqs Qeor&KOV rrjs iv 'ABfyais Tip.oip.4vqs.
Miklosich und Muller, Acta et Diplomala Greeca Medii JEvi, vi., 121. A.
Mommsen (Athena Christiana, p. 33) has shown that there is no authority
for the theory that the Parthenon was dedicated by the Christians to the
Divine Wisdom.

8 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
very much upon the personality of the prcetor. Worse, how
ever, than the presence of this high official was that of his
underlings; so that the Athenians came to regard his
coming in person as much the minor of two evils. Yet, we
must make some deduction for the rhetorical and professional
exaggeration of the ecclesiastical author. At that time the
bishops were, as they still are in Turkey, the representatives
of their flocks, and Akominatos was naturally anxious to
make out as good a case as possible for his clients. He
admits to his brother's connections that the annual ship-
money extracted from Athens amounted to no more than
£320 of our money — which may be taken as a proof of
either the poverty of the place or of the exaggeration of his
complaints ; and he boasts that he had " lightened, or rather
eradicated, the taxes."1 But, at the same time, taxation
had become so oppressive in the Theme of Nikopolis, that the
people arose and killed their tyrannical governor, and we are
expressly told that the Corfiotes had welcomed the Normans
half a century earlier because of the heavy taxation of their
island.2 Piracy was then, as so often, the curse of the islands and
the deeply indented coast of Greece. We learn from the
English chronicle ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough,3
which gives a graphic account of Greece as it was in 1191,
that many of the islands were uninhabited from fear of
pirates, and that others were their chosen lairs. Cephalonia
and Ithaka, which now appears under its mediaeval name of
Val di Compare — first used, so far as I know, by the Genoese
historian Caffaro,4 in the first half of the twelfth century —
had a specially evil reputation, and bold was the sailor who
dared venture through the channel between them. Near
Athens, the islands of ^Egina, Salamis, and Makronesi,
opposite Lavrion, were strongholds of Corsairs, before whom
most of the yEginetan population had fled, while those who
1 Lampros, Mtxa.4)X 'AKop.ivi.rou, ii., 107 ; 'laropla rrjs irAXews 'Afrp'up,
ii., 729-
2 Nikdtas Chonidtes, 97.
3 Gesta Regis Ricardi, ii., 197-200 ; 203-5.
* Liberatio Orientis, apud Pertz, Monumenta Germania historica,
xviii., 46.

NATIVE TYRANTS 9
remained had fraternised with the pirates. Attica was full
of persons mutilated by these robbers, who feared neither
God nor man. They injured the property of the Athenian
church, and dangerously wounded the nephew of the
metropolitan, who found it almost impossible to collect the
ecclesiastical revenues of ^Egina.1 The dangers run by the
venerable Akominatos himself on an ecclesiastical visitation
to Naupaktos long remained celebrated, and we find allusions
to that venturesome journey years after his death. The
remedy for piracy was, as we have seen, almost worse than
the disease. The Lord High Admiral, Michael Stryphnos,
protected by his close relationship with the Empress
Euphrosyne, sold the naval stores for his own profit ; and a
visit, which he paid to Athens for the ostensible purpose of
laying an offering in the church of Our Lady, was regarded
by Akominatos with ill-concealed alarm. Well might the
anxious metropolitan tell his unwelcome guest that the
Athenians regarded their proximity to the sea as the
greatest of their misfortunes.2
Besides the Byzantine officials and the pirates, the Greeks
had a third set of tormentors, in the shape of a brood of
native tyrants, whose feuds divided city against city, and
divided communities into rival parties. Even in those parts
of Greece where the emperor was still nominally sovereign,
the real power was often in the hands of local magnates, who
had revived, on the eve of the Latin Conquest, the petty
tyrannies of ancient Greece. Under the dynasty of the
Comneni, who imitated and introduced the usages of western
chivalry, feudalism had made considerable inroads into the
east. At the time of the Fourth Crusade, local families were
in possession of large tracts of territory, which they governed
almost like independent princes. We find a great part of
fertile Messenia belonging to the clans of Branas and
Cantacuzene ; Leon Chamaretos, whom a modern Greek
writer 3 has made the hero of an historical novel, owned much
of Lakonia ; the impregnable rock of Monemvasia, the
1 Miklosich und Miiller, op. eit., iii., 61.
2 Lampros, MixoijX 'AKOptivdrov, ii., 42, 43, 68, 75, 170, 238 ; 'IcTopia. ttjs
7r6Xews 'A9rivwv, ii., 702-8 ; Al 'Adrjvai, 56, 57, 86, 97.
3 A. RhangabSs, '0 aidivT-qs tov Mopius.

10 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
Gibraltar of Greece, which had enjoyed special liberties
since the time of the Emperor Maurice, belonged to the
three great local families of Mamonis, Eudaimonoyannes,
and Sophian6s, the first of which is not yet extinct in
Greece,1 and Leon Sgouros, hereditary lord of Nauplia, had
extended his sway over Argos of the goodly steeds, and had
seized the city and fortress of Corinth, proudly styling
himself by a high-sounding Byzantine title, and placing his
fortunes under the protection of St Theodore the Warrior.2
North of the Isthmus, the family of Petraleiphas, of Frankish
origin, hailing, as its name Petrus de Alpibus implies, from
the Alps, held its own in the mountains of Agrapha ; while
in Crete, the scions of those Byzantine families which had
gone there after its reconquest, had developed into hereditary
lords, whose fiefs were confirmed to them by the emperor's
representative.3 In addition to these local magnates, members
of the imperial family owned vast tracts of land in Greece.
The extravagant Empress Euphrosyne, wife of Alexios III.,
had huge estates in Thessaly, and Princess Irene, daughter
of Alexios III., owned property near Patras.4 The manners
of these local magnates were no less savage than those of
the western barons of the same period. Sgouros, the most
prominent of them, on one occasion invited the metropolitan
of Corinth to dinner, and then put out the eyes of his guest,
and hurled him over the rocks of the citadel of Nauplia.
The contemporary historian Niketas,5 who was no friend of
the Franks, has painted in the darkest colours the character
of the Greek archons, upon whom he lays the chief responsi
bility for the evils which befell their country. He speaks of
them as " inflamed by ambition against their own fatherland,
slavish men, spoiled by luxury, who made themselves tyrants,
instead of fighting the Latins." Thus, on the eve of the
1 Phrantz£s, 398.
2 A leaden seal of Sgouros has been preserved, showing St Theodore
on one side and invoking his protection for o-tpatTToviripTaTov p.t Aiovra
'S.yovpov on the other. Ldmpros, Al A9?jrai, 99, and plate.
3 Document of 1 182, quoted by Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, Allge-
meine Encyklopadie, Ixxxv., 179 ; Miklosich und Miiller, op. eit, iii., 235-7.
4 The deed of partition specially mentions the villa Kyreherinis, filie
Imperatoris Kyrialexii. Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. ii., B. xii., 470.
6 Pp. 840-2; Ldmpros, ^Uxa^\\' Ako^ivAtov^ ii., 170.

THE CHURCH 11
Frankish Conquest, Greece presented the spectacle of a land
oppressed by the Central Government, and torn asunder by
the jealousies of its local aristocracy.
The Church still occupied an important place in Greek
society. Greece at this time was ecclesiastically under the
jurisdiction of the oecumenical patriarch, and contained twelve
metropolitan sees, of which Corinth and Athens were the two
most important, while Patras, Larissa, Naupaktos, Neopatras,
Thebes, Corfu, Naxos, Lacedaemonia, Argos, and the Cretan
see of Gortyna completed the dozen.1 Besides these, the
islands of Leukas and ^Egina, and the town of Arta were
archbishoprics, and each metropolitan see had numerous
bishops under it. Such was the arrangement which, with
a few alterations, had been in force since the days of
Leo the philosopher, three centuries earlier. There were
still among the higher clergy distinguished men of learning,
who bore aloft the torch of literature, which the Greek
Church had received from the last writers of antiquity. Of
these the most eminent then living was Michael Akominatos,
the metropolitan of Athens, to whom allusion has
already been made. Brother of the statesman and his
torian, Niketas of Chonae, or Colossae, he had sat at the feet
of the great Homeric scholar, Eustathios, afterwards arch
bishop of Salonika, from whom he imbibed that classical
culture which inspires all his numerous productions. In
the year 1 175, or, according to others, in 1180 or 1 182, he
was appointed to the see of Athens, and from that time to
the Frankish Conquest he never ceased to plead the cause
of the city, to write to influential personages in Con
stantinople, and to address memorials to the emperor on
1 To these should be added Monemvasia, if we may trust the story of
the fifteenth century historian Phrantzes (pp. 398-9), himself a Monem-
vasiote, accepted by Finlay, that it became a metropolitan see under
the Emperor Maurice. But an ecclesiastical document of 1397 (Miklosich
und Miiller, op. eit, ii., 287) states that it was a suffragan bishopric of
Corinth down to the Latin Conquest. We know from Phrantzes (loc. eit),
and from the Golden Bull of Andr6nikos II. in the National Library and
the Christian Archaeological Museum at Athens, that he raised it to be
the tenth metropolitan see of the empire in 1293, and gave it other
privileges. Cf. Dor6theos of Monemvasia, BifiKlov la-Topwov, p. 397 ; Le
Quien, Oriens Christianus, ii., 216.

12 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
its behalf. But he was not the only literary light of the
Church in Greece. Among his contemporaries were
Euthymios, the metropolitan of Neopatras, the modern
Hypate, near Lamia, who wrote on theology; Ap6kaukos
of Naupaktos, who composed tolerable iambics and better
letters;1 George Koupharas of Corfu, whose letters to the
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and other eminent personages
of his day have been preserved in translation, and the
latter's successors, the controversialist, Pediadites, and the
theologian and poet, George Bardanes.2 Somewhat earlier,
Nicholas, bishop of Methone in Messenia, had issued a refuta
tion of neo-Platonism, two polemics against Catholic doctrines,
and a life of Meletios, the reviver of monasticism in Greece ;
a Lacedaemonian abbot had written a biography of St Nikon,
the evangelist of Crete and the patron of Sparta, where his
memory is still held in honour ; and Gregory, metropolitan of
Corinth, had published a grammatical work, which still survives.
But Akominatos has left us a sordid picture of the Athenian
clergy of his time, and it is to be feared that the priests of
the great church on the Akropolis were but little inspired
by the majesty of their surroundings. The metropolitan
found the keeper of the sacred vessels both blind and
illiterate, while another of these divines had cheated his
brother out of his property, and allowed him to starve. If
such was the state of the clergy, " the wicked Athenian
priests," as he calls them, it was not to be supposed that the
monks were much better.3 The number of monastic houses
in Greece had greatly increased under the dynasty of the
Comneni. It was then, according to tradition, that the still
existing Chozobiotissa monastery was founded on the island
1 L^mpros, op. eit., ii., 25-30 ; 35-8 ; 'Uropta. ttjs jrAXcus 'ABrivuv, ii.,
730-7 ; Bufa>/ra/a Xpovuca, iii., 240 sqq.
2 Mustoxidi, Delle Cose Corciresi, 417-22, xl.-xlix. ; Illustrasiom
Corciresi, ii., 181-4. The theory of Dr Kurtz (Byzantinische Zeitschrift,
xv., 603-13) that all these letters were written by the later metropolitan of
Corfu, George Bardanes, and that Frederick is therefore not Barbarossa
but Frederick II., and Manuel not the emperor but the Despot of Epiros,
seems to me disproved by the phrase in which the writer speaks of
Manuel as cognato Imperii tui. The emperors Manuel I. and Conrad
III. married sisters.
3 Lampros, MixcnjX 'Akop,i.v&tov, ii., 30, 240 417.

THE MONKS 13
of Amorgos ; l it was then, too, that the Boeotian monastery
of Sagmatas received a piece of the true cross and the lake
of Paralimni, into which the waters of the Copais now drain.2
A Cappadocian monk, Meletios, whose monastery may still
be seen from the road between Athens and Thebes, had
revived monasticism by his miracles in Greece towards the
end of the eleventh century, and had enjoyed the patronage
of the Emperor Alexios I., who assigned him an annuity out
of the taxes of Attica. To him was largely due the plague
of monks, often robbers in disguise, of whose ignorance
Eustathios, the learned archbishop of Salonika, drew up
such a tremendous indictment.3 Then, as now, the thoughts
of the Greek monks centred mainly on mere externals ;
obeisances in church, the care of their gardens, and such
political questions as arose, occupied their ample leisure ;
while scandals were no less frequent then than at the present
day. Akominatos rebukes the abbot ofthe famous monastery
of Kaisariane, at the foot of Hymettos, for misappropriating
other people's bees.4 Yet the same Akominatos has left a
funeral oration over an Athenian archimandrite of that
period, which shows that, even on the eve of the Frankish
Conquest, there were men of conspicuous piety and self-
sacrificing life in the Athenian monasteries.5 The Athenians
of that day, however, seem to have taken their religion lightly,
comparing unfavourably with the pious folk of Eubcea,
though nowhere else in Greece was the service so elaborate.
Their spiritual pastor found them irregular in their
attendance at church, even though that church was that
" heavenly house," the Parthenon — a cathedral of which any
bishop and any congregation might have been proud. Even
when they did attend, they spent their time in unseasonable
conversation, or in thinking about the qares of their daily
lives. Moreover, the metropolitan himself had mundane
cares in plenty. Besides his task of defending his flock
against rapacious governors, whom he addressed on behalf of
1 Meliardkes in AcXrLov t^s Terr, /col 'E0i\ 'Eratplas, i., 598-9 ; Byzan-
tinische Zeitschrift, ii., 294-6.
2 Miklosich und Miiller, op. eit, v., 253.
3 'ETTiV/ce^ts fiLov hovolxikov in Eustathii Opuscula (ed. Tafel).
4 Lampros, op. eit., ii., 311. 5 Ibid., i., 259.

14 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
the city at their arrival, besides missions and memorials to
Constantinople, he had to guard the revenues of the see from
the clutches of the imperial treasury officials, whom its
agent at the capital, the so-called mystikos, could not always
keep at a distance.1
There was some excuse for the preoccupation of the
Athenians with their worldly affairs, when we consider the
material condition of their city at this period. From the
silence of almost every authority, it would seem that the
Norman Invasion of 1146, which fell with such force upon
Thebes and Corinth, had spared Athens.2 The Athenians,
perhaps, owed their immunity on that occasion to their
insignificance. Their only manufactures at the time of the
Frankish Conquest were soap and the weaving of monkish
habits. They were no longer engaged in the dyeing trade,
of which traces have been found in the Odeion of Herodes
Atticus, but the ships of the Piraeus still took part, with those
of Chalkis and Karystos, in the purple-fishing off the lonely
island of Gyaros— the Botany Bay of the Roman Empire.
There was still some trade at the Piraeus, for when the
Byzantine admiral, Stryphn6s, visited Athens, he found
vessels there, and Akominatos tells us of ships from
Monemvasia in the port; while we may infer from the
mention of Athens in the commercial treaties between
Venice and the Byzantine Empire, that the astute republicans
saw some prospect of making money there. But the " thin
soil" of Attica was as unproductive as in the days of
Thucydides, and yielded nothing but oil, honey, and wine,
the last strongly flavoured with resin, as it still is, so that
the metropolitan, wishing to give a friend some idea of its
flavour, wrote to him that it "seems to be pressed from the
juice of the pine rather than from that of the grape." The
harvest was always meagre, and famines were common On
one occasion, only two or three of the well-to-do inhabitants
could afford to eat bread ; on another, the Emperor Andr6-
mkos I. ordered a grant of corn to be distributed among the
starving people, and we find Alexios II. remitting arrears of
» Ldmpros, op. eit., i., 310 ; Pitra, Analecta Sacra, vi., 619.
scri^l TJ r?ising {De- Gestis Friderici> a^d Muratori> *™* !*¦
Script., vi., 668) alone mentions Athens.

STATE OF ATHENS 15
taxation to Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, so great was their
distress. Even ordinary necessaries were not always obtain
able in the Athens of the last years of the twelfth century.
Akomindtos could not find a good carriage-builder in the
place ; and, just as most Athenian coaches are now built at
Thebes, so he had to beg the bishop of Gardiki, which
Benjamin of Tudela had described as a " ruined place," to send
him some coach-builders. In his despair at the absence of
blacksmiths and workers in iron, he was constrained to apply
to Athens the words of Jeremiah : " The bellows are burnt."
The general poverty of the city was made more striking by
the selfishness of the few who were comfortably off, who
composed a " rich oligarchy," and who ground down the face
of the poor. Under these circumstances, it is not remarkable
that emigration was draining off the able-bodied poor, so
that the population had greatly diminished, and the city
threatened to become what Aristophanes had called " a
Scythian wilderness." x
Externally, the visitor to the Athens of that day must
have been struck by the marked contrast between the
splendid monuments of the classic age and the squalid
surroundings of the new town. The walls were lying in
ruins; the houses of the emigrants had been pulled down,
and their sites had become ploughed land ; the streets, where
once the sages of antiquity had walked, were now desolate.
Even though Akominatos had built new houses, and restored
some of those that had fallen, Athens was no longer the
" populous city, surrounded by gardens and fields " which the
Arabian geographer Edrisi had described tp King Roger II.
of Sicily half a century before the coming of the Franks.2
But the hand of the invader and the tooth of time had, on
the whole, dealt gently with the Athenian monuments.
Although the Odeion of PeriklSs had perished in the siege of
the city by Sulla, it had been restored by the Cappadocian
king, Ariobarzanes II., and his son ; but Sulla had carried
off a few columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus, while the
pictures of Polygnotos, which the traveller Pausanias had
1 Lampros, op. eit, i., 174, 178, 307 ; ii., 12, 25, 26, 29, 42, 54, 65, 137,
275,3"- 2 Jaubert, Gdographie dEdrisi, ii., 295.

16 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
seen in the Painted Porch, had excited the covetousness of
an imperial governor under Theodosius II. The temple of
Asklepios had fallen a victim to Christian fanaticism; the
gold and ivory statue of Athena, the work of Phidias, had
long ago vanished from the Parthenon, and Justinian had
adorned the new church of the Divine Wisdom at Con
stantinople with pillars from Athens.1 Akominatos laments
that the closest investigation could not discover a trace of
the Helisea, the Peripatos, or the Lyceum, and found sheep
grazing among the few remains of the Painted Porch. " I
live in Athens," he wrote in a poem on the decay of the city;
"yet it is not Athens that I see." But still Athens possessed
many memorials of her former greatness at the close of the
twelfth century. The Parthenon, converted long before into
the cathedral of Our Lady of Athens, was then almost as
entire, and as little damaged by the injuries of time, as if it
had only just been built. The metopes, the pediments, and
the frieze were still intact. On the walls were the frescoes,
traces of which are still visible, executed by order of the
Emperor Basil II., "the slayer of the Bulgarians," when he
had offered up thanks at that shrine of the Virgin for his
victories over the great enemies of Hellenism, nearly two
centuries earlier. Within, in the treasury, were the rich gifts
which he had presented to the church. Over the altar was
a golden dove representing the Holy Ghost, and ever flying
with perpetual motion. In the cathedral, too, was an ever
burning lamp, fed by oil that never failed, which was the
marvel of the pilgrims. Every year people flocked thither
from the highlands and islands to the feast of the Virgin, and
so widely spread was the fame of the Athenian minster, that
the great folk of Constantinople, in spite of their supercilious
contempt for the provinces and dislike of travel, came to do
obeisance there — personages of the rank of Stryphn6s, the
Lord High Admiral, with his wife,2 the sister of the empress,
and Kamater6s, brother-in-law of the emperor ; while, as we
saw, the prator made a pilgrimage to St Mary's on the
Akropolis an excuse for raising money out of the city.
Akomindtos was intensely proud, as well he might be, of his
1 Lampros, op. eit., i., 160 ; ii., 398.
2 Ibid., i., 319, 325, 332 ; Ilapvacro-is, vii., 23.

THE ANCIENT BUILDINGS 17
cathedral. He tells us that he " further beautified it, provided
new vessels and furniture, increased its property in land
and in flocks and herds, and augmented the number of the
clergy." 1
Of the other ancient buildings on the sacred rock, the
graceful temple of Nike Apteros had been turned into a
chapel; the Erechtheion had become a church of the
Saviour, or a chapel of the Virgin ; while the episcopal
residence, which is known to have then been on the Akro
polis, was probably in the Propylaea, where the discovery
of a fresco of St Gabriel and St Michael seventy years ago
indicates the existence in Byzantine times of a chapel of
the archangels.2 The whole Akropolis had for centuries
been made into a fortress, the only defence which Athens
then possessed, strong enough to have resisted the attack of
a Greek magnate like Sgour6s, but incapable of repulsing a
Latin army.
Like the Parthenon, the Theseion had become a Christian
church, dedicated to St George. Akominatos calls it " St
George in the Kerameikos," and at the time of the Frankish
Conquest it was entrusted to the care of a monk named
Luke. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries a monastery
and a nunnery seem to have stood there, for the names of
various abbots and nuns with dates of that period have
been scratched on some of the pillars, just as we learn
the names of Akomindtos's three immediate predecessors,
Nicholas Hagiotheodorites, George Xer6s, and George
Boiirtzes, from similar scrawls on the pillars of the Par
thenon.3 Under the splendid ruins of the temple of Zeus
Olympios had grown up a chapel of St John, surnamed " at
the columns," and Byzantine inscriptions on some of the
huge pillars still preserve the prayers of 'the priests. On
one of them in the Middle Ages an imitator of St Simeon
1 Ldmpros, 'IffTopla ttis n-AXews "'AB-qv&v, ii., 729.
2 Ibid. Mixa^X 'Akop.lv6.tov, ii., 12. The inscription, invoking the
Virgin, found in the Erechtheion (Neroutsos in Aekrlov ttjs'Io-t. 'Ercuplas,
iii., 25), may, however, only prove that "the humble chorister of the
cathedral of Athens," who invokes her aid, resided with other members
ofthe clergy in the Erechtheion. Cf. A. Mommsen, op. eit., 40-1.
3 Ibid., Mix<i7;X 'Akoju.v6.tov, ii., 238, and Al 'AB-qvat, 21. Kampoii-
roglos, 'lo-ropla tQv 'AB-qvalwv, ii., 308-9, 293. Bys. Zeitschrift, ii., 589.
B

18 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
Stylites had taken up his aerial abode. Already strange
legends and new names had begun to grow round some of
the classical monuments. The choragic monument of
Lysikrates was already popularly known as " the lantern of
Demosthenes,"1 its usual designation during the Turkish
domination, when it became the Capuchin convent, serving
in 1811 as a study to Lord Byron, who from within its walls
launched his bitter poem against the filcher of the Elgin
marbles— and the credulous West was told that Jason had
founded the Propylaea. But even at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, many of the ancient names of places,
sometimes names and nothing more, lingered in the mouths
of the people. The classically cultured metropolitan was
gratified, as a good Philhellene, to hear that the Piraeus
and Hymettos, Eleusis and Marathon, the Areopagos and
Kallirrhoe, Psyttaleia, Salamis, and ^Egina were still called
by names which the contemporaries of Perikles had used,
even though Eleusis and ^Egina were devastated by pirates,
the Areopagos was nothing but a bare rock, the plain of
Marathon yielded no corn, and the " beautifully -flowing "
fountain had ceased to flow. But new, uncouth names were
beginning to creep in; thus, the partition treaty of 1204
describes Salamis as " Culuris " (or, " the lizard "), a vulgar
name, derived from the shape of the island, which I have
heard used in Attica at the present day.2
Besides the remains of classical antiquity, Athens was
then rich in Byzantine churches, of which not a few have
still survived the storms of the War of Independence and the
Vandalism of those who laid out the modern town. Tradition
has ascribed to the two Athenian Empresses of the East,
Eudokia and Irene, the foundation of many churches in their
native city, and the modern inscription inside the curious
little Kapnikaraea church embodies the popular belief that
the former had been its founder. The charming little
Gorgoepekoos church, wrongly called the Old Metropolis,
may have been the work of the latter, and was probably
standing at this period. We know for certain, however,
1 Ldmpros, MixaijX 'Akop.lv6.tov, i., 98.
2 Ibid, ii., 13, 14, 26, 44 ; Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. ii., B.
xii., 469.

CULTURE AT ATHENS 19
from the inscription over the door of St Theodore's, that
that church had been erected a century and a half before
the Frankish Conquest, and there then lay just outside
the city the church of the Athenian martyr Leonidas,
who had died upon the cross.1 Attica possessed, too, many
monasteries, built in pleasant spots, as Greek monasteries
always are. There was the beautiful abbey of Kaisariane,
with its plenteous springs of water, in a leafy glen at the
foot of Hymettos ; there was the monastery of St John the
Hunter, still a white landmark on the spur of the mountain
visible from all parts of Athens, and founded or restored by
the above-mentioned monk Luke at this very time.2 Finer
than all, there was that gem of Byzantine art, the monastery
of Daphni in the pass between Athens and Eleusis, of which
we find mention about the end of the eleventh century,3 and
which a later popular tradition connected with the romantic
story of the fair Maguelonne and her lover, Pierre de
Provence. Of the intellectual condition of Athens we should form
but a low estimate, if we judged entirely from the lamenta
tions of the elegant Byzantine scholar whom fate had made
its metropolitan. Akomindtos found that his tropes and
fine periods and classical allusions were far over the heads of
the Athenians who came to hear him, and who talked in his
cathedral, even though that cathedral was the Parthenon.
He wrote, like Apollonios of Tyana before him, that his
long residence in Greece had made him a barbarian. Yet he
was able to add to his store of manuscripts in this small
provincial town, where a copyist of theological treatises was
probably then working. Moreover, that Athens still produced
persons of some culture, is evident from the fact that one of
Akominatos's own correspondents, John, * metropolitan of
Salonika, was an Athenian ; while the future metropolitan of
Corfu, Barddnes, if not an Athenian by birth, may have
owed his surname of Atticus to the Attic eloquence which
he had learned from Akomindtos — a surname already applied
1 Lampros, op. eit, i., 151.
2 Ibid., ii., 247 ; Kampouroglos, op. eit, ii., 204-15.
3 Millet, Le Monastere de Daphni, 18 ; Kampouroglos, Mv-qp.eia, ii.
230; Spon, Voyage, ii., 211.

20 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
to the scholarly Kosmas of /Egina, who half a century earlier
had mounted the patriarchal throne at Constantinople.1
There is, too, some evidence to prove that, even at this late
period, Athens was a place of study, whither English came
from the West to obtain a liberal education. Matthew Paris 2
tells us of Master John of Basingstoke, archdeacon of
Leicester in the reign of Henry III., who used often to say
that whatever scientific knowledge he possessed had been
acquired from the youthful daughter of the Archbishop of
Athens. This young lady could forecast the advent of
pestilences, thunderstorms, eclipses, and earthquakes. From
learned Greeks at Athens Master John professed to have
heard some things of which the Latins had no knowledge;
he found there the testaments of the twelve patriarchs, now
in the Cambridge University library, and he brought back
to England the Greek numerals and many books, including a
Greek grammar which had been compiled for him at Athens.
The same author3 tells us, too, of "certain Greek philo
sophers " — that is, in mediaeval Greek parlance, monks — who
came from Athens at this very time to the court of King
John, and disputed about nice sharp quillets of theology with
English divines. The only difficulty about these statements
is that Akominatos expressly says that he had no children,
while he might have been expected to mention any adopted
daughter of such talent. An eminent Paris doctor of this
period, John ^-Egidius, is also reported to have studied at
Athens 4 ; but it is possible that this is merely a repetition
of the story that a much earlier ^Egidius, or Gislenus, had
imbibed philosophy in its ancient home during the seventh
century.5 One is tempted to believe the romantic story that
the Georgian poet, Chota Roustaveli, together with others of
his countrymen spent several years there at the end of the
twelfth century ; and that, two or three generations earlier,
the enlightened Georgian monarch, David II., prompted by
1 Lampros, MixcrijX 'Akop.lv6.tov, ii., 118, 289; napvaoodt, vi., 159;
Nikdtas, 105, 106.
2 Chronica Majora, v., 285-7, in Rolls Series.
3 Historia Minor, ii., 194 ; iii., 64.
4 Leyser, Historia Poetarum Medii yEvi, 499.
5 Acta Sanctorum, October ; iv., 1030.

THEBES 21
his Greek wife, Irene, founded a monastery "on a mountain
near Athens," and sent twenty young people every year to
study in the schools there.1 But neither the thirteenth
century Armenian historian, Wardan, nor Tschamtschian
makes any mention of Georgians at Athens, and the story
seems to have arisen through a confusion between Athens
and Mount Athos, where there were many Iberian monks
two hundred years earlier, and where the " Monastery of the
Iberians " still preserves their name.2
While such was the material and the intellectual condition
of Athens, there were other places in Greece far more
prosperous. Thebes, the residence of the Byzantine governor,
had recovered from the ravages of the Normans from Sicily
half a century before, when they had ransacked the houses
and churches, and had dragged off the most skilful weavers
and dyers to Palermo. Benjamin of Tudela, as we saw, had
found the Theban silk manufacture still flourishing even
after the Norman invasion ; Akomindtos specially says that
the luxurious inhabitants of Constantinople obtained their
silken garments from Theban and Corinthian looms ; and
the forty pieces of silk, with which Alexios III. purchased
the friendship of the Sultan of Angora, were made by his
Theban subjects. Even to-day though there are no silks
manufactured there, I have seen mulberry-trees growing in
the little Boeotian town, and the memory of the silk-worms,
which fed upon their leaves, lingers on in the name of
morokarnpos ("the mulberry plain"), still applied by the
peasants to the flat land near Thebes. The population of
the city was numerous, and the castle, the ancient Kadmeia,
was strong, if resolutely defended. Nor was Thebes the
only important commercial town in Northern Greece. Both
Benjamin of Tudela and Edrisi describe Halmyros as a big
emporium ; Larissa produced figs and wine ; the fertile plain
of Thessaly to which Horace had alluded in his day, and
which now yields splendid harvests, provided the capital of
the empire with bread ; and the even richer Lelantian plain
of Eubcea, and the vineyards of Pteleon at the entrance of
1 Freygang, Lettres sur le Caucase, 109.
2 Kindly communicated by Mr F. C. Conybeare of Oxford, our lead
ing authority on that subject. Cf. Neroutsos in AeXr/oi/, iii., 52-3.

22 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
the Pagasaean gulf sent it cargoes of wine.1 Negroponte, as
the Italians called first the town of Chalkis and then the island
of Eubcea, from a corruption of the word Euripos, the fitful
channel which separates the island from the mainland, was
"a large city to which merchants resorted from all parts,"
and whose seamen were engaged in the purple-fishery of the
/Egean. Thirty-five years before the Conquest, the island
was rich enough to equip six galleys for the imperial fleet,
and the fortifications of Chalkis strong enough to resist the
attack of the Venetians. Akomindtos pays a tribute, which
every modern visitor must endorse, to the beauty of its
situation, and he contrasts the strength of the island capital,
united to the continent by a narrow bridge, which could
easily be defended, with the defenceless condition of the city
of Athens. " I admired," he told the islanders, " your numbers
and your devotion to your spiritual pastor," who was one of
his suffragans.2
The Peloponnese, half a century before the Conquest, had
contained thirteen cities and many fortresses, but we are
told that the Franks found only twelve castles in the whole
peninsula. At the time of the Norman raid, the strength of
Akrocorinth had excited the wonder of the Sicilian admiral,
and the lower town, "the emporium" as it was then called,
had yielded him an even richer booty than Thebes, for its
two harbours made it doubly prosperous, while the ancient
tramway was still used for dragging small ships across the
isthmus. Its silk manufactories still existed, and, at the date
of the Frankish invasion, it was defended by walls and towers.
The noble citadel was held by the dread archon of Nauplia,
Leon Sgour6s, whose enormities Akomindtos, his deadly enemy,
has depicted with all the resources of Byzantine eloquence. Of
1 Niketas, 608; Lampros, op. eit., i., 315 ; ii., 83.
2 Ibid., i., 181, 182, 315 ; ii., 106. Euripos appears as a name for
Chalkis in Akomindtos and Nikdtas. This was corrupted into Egripos
("^gripons" in Innocent I II.'s Letters, vol. ii., 267), then from the
accusative «fa t6v "EypLTov was formed Negripon, which popular etymology,
from a supposed connection with the bridge at Chalkis over the Euripos,
converted into Negroponte. Similarly, ris tAs 'AS^vat became Setines, «'s
tV to\lv Stamboul, els t%v A?,p.vov Stalimene. Villehardouin, La ConquiU
de Constantinople (I., 80, ch. lxii.) calls Eubcea "Nigre" and Chalkis
" Nigrepont." Cf. Bury, The Lombards and Venetians in Euboia, i., 5.

THE PELOPONNESE 23
the other two cities which owned the tyrant's sway, Argos lay
spread out " like a tent " in the rich plain at the foot of the
imposing castle, the mighty Larissa on the hill above ; while
Nauplia, across the beautiful bay, was strongly protected
against attack, though the lofty eminence of Palamidi, where
the convict-prison now stands, was then unfortified ; the modern
town was then covered by the shallow water, and the city con
sisted of the rocky peninsula of Itsh Kaleh alone. Farther
to the south, and stronger still, lay the "sacred city" of
Monemvasia, the Malmsey of our ancestors, accessible by
the narrow causeway alone (/novr) eiufiacris) to which it owed
its name. Thanks to its natural position, to the wisdom of
its three archons, and to the liberties which its inhabitants
enjoyed, it had repelled the Norman attack ; its trading vessels
were seen in the Piraeus, and its chief artistic treasure, the
famous picture of Christ being "dragged," which gave its
name to the 'EkKOfievos Church,1 had attracted the covetous-
ness ofthe Emperor Isaac II. On the west of the Pelopon
nese, Patras, whose wealth had been almost fabulous three
centuries before, must still have had considerable commerce
to attract a Jewish colony and to make it worth while for
the Venetians to secure trading facilities there in their last
treaty with the Byzantine Empire. In the fertile plain of
Elis the finest place at the time of the Conquest was the
unwalled town of Andravida, now only a squalid village
which the traveller passes on the railway to Olympia. On
the west coast, farther to the south, Kyparissia, then called
Arkadia, was in Edrisi's time a large place with a much-
frequented harbour — a position which it is now recovering
since the new railway has connected it with Kalamata and
Patras. The Franks considered the anchorage bad ; but on
the hill, which commands the whole rich plain of Triphylia,
and enjoys a prospect of the sea as far as Zante, Cephalonia,
and the islands of the Harpies, " the giants," so the country
folk said, had built the strong Hellenic tower, which forms
the nucleus of the present castle.
1 Td XpoviKbv tov Mo/j&is, 11. 1406, 1462, 1 525-6; Niketas, 97-100,
581-2; Lampros, op. eit, ii., 83, 137, 171 ; Phrantzgs, 397-8 ; of course,
the remarkable pictures in the present 'EXfcA/ievos .church, which was
restored in 1697, are of Venetian origin and workmanship.

24 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
The Messenian port of Methone, or Modon, destined to
play so important a part in Frankish times as a half-way
house between Venice and the East, then lay deserted, for in
1 125 the Venetians had destroyed this nest of corsairs who
had preyed on their merchantmen homeward-bound from the
Levant, and the Sicilian admiral had again made it a heap
of ruins. The other Messenian station of Korone, or Coron,
which we shall find always associated with it under the rule
of Venice, produced such a quantity of olive oil that no other
place in the world, so it was said, could compare with it. In
the far south of the peninsula, the people of Maina had a bad
reputation among the Crusaders, whom the waves cast on
their iron-bound coast ; while the fertility of the rich Messenian
plain, in which Kalamata lies, was no less extraordinary than
now, though the fortress which should have defended the
place was weak. At the other end of the picturesque
Langada gorge, on the low hills near the right bank of the
Eurotas, stood the large city of Lacedaemonia, the Byzantine
town which had succeeded the classic Sparta ; in the tenth
century Venetian merchants had frequented this prosperous
mart, and the efforts of St Nikon to expel the Jews from the
community afford a further proof of its commercial importance
at that period. The excavations of the British school have
brought to light curious pieces of Byzantine pottery and
Byzantine coins, and the traveller may still see the remains
of the fine walls and towers, which, as the Chronicle of the
Morea tells us, surrounded Lacedaemonia at the time of the
Frankish Conquest. Towards the centre of the peninsula,
" the middle land," or Mesarea, as Arkadia was then called,
there had arisen near the site of the classic Tegea the
important and well-fortified Byzantine town of Nikli, a trace
of which may still be found in a Christian font in the little
museum of the squalid village of Piali ; while, due south of
Megalopolis, the city of Veligosti, now a mere name, was
then sufficiently flourishing to be coupled by the chronicler
with Nikli as one of the " chief places in all the Morea." 1
1 TA XpovLKbv rod Mo^ws, 11. 1426-9, 1680, 1690-4, 1712, 1740-1, 1753,
2052-3 ; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 44 ; Benedict of Peterborough, toe.
eit. I accept the derivation of Mesarea, given by the Italian version of
the Chronicle (p. 428) and by Hatziddkis, as more probable than that of
Meliardkes (AeXrfoi', iv., 262) from the Italian massa

THE ISLANDS 25
Of the islands, Corfu is described as " rich and fertile " by
everyone who visited it at that period. We are told in 1191
that it paid "15 quintals" (or 1500 lbs.) "ofthe purest gold"
into the imperial treasury every year, the equivalent of about
9,000,000 drachmai, or more than the total amount raised by
the present Greek exchequer from all the Ionian islands.
Dotted about the beautiful hillsides were various towns and
many strong castles. But what most interested returning
Crusaders was the local legend that the deserted castle of
Butentrost, or Butrinto, on the opposite coast of Epiros,
which scholars associate with the voyage of ^Eneas, was the
birthplace of Judas Iscariot — a legend which we find at Corfu
centuries later, and which may have arisen out of a popular
etymology, connecting the surname of the traitor with
Scheria, the Homeric name of Corfu, still enshrined in the
Corfiote village of Skaria.1 The Cyclades, or Dodekanesos, had
suffered so much from pirates, that many of them had been
abandoned, while in some fortified positions, like the Byzantine
castle of Apaliri at Naxos, corsairs had established themselves.
The " Queen of the Cyclades," however, even then raised
cattle, as she still does ; Andros, the second island of the
group, was very populous, though it had been recently
overrun by the Crusaders on their way to Constantinople,
and the ancient Panachrdntou monastery, ascribed by
tradition to Nikeph6ros Phokas, the conqueror of Crete,
together with the beautiful little Byzantine church of the
Archangel Michael at Messaria, the Byzantine capital of the
island, which dates from the time of Manuel I., are evidence of
its importance in the last two centuries before the Conquest.
Its geographical position on the direct course of ships on
their way from Italy to Constantinople made it also a good
place for hearing news. But the school of philosophy for
which Andros had been celebrated much earlier, and which
was revived within the memory of many now living in the
person of Ka'fres, had long ceased to exist.2 Another island,
then populous, was Amorgos, the ancient home of Simonides ;
while Keos, the birthplace of his namesake, was, as we shall
1 Villehardouin, op. eit., i., 74, ch. lviii. ; Benedict of Peterborough,
op. eit, ii., 204 ; Roman6s, Vpa.TL0.vb1 Ztbpt-qs, 120-1,
2 L£mpros, op. eit., ii., 145.

26 GREECE AT TIME OF FRANKISH CONQUEST
presently see, by no means a luxurious exile for an educated
man accustomed to live even in the Athens of the twelfth
century. Such was the condition of Greece when the Latin
conquerors of Constantinople entered the land which the
strangest of accidents had placed at their mercy. Such was
the El Dorado which was to provide principalities and
duchies, marquisates and baronies, for the adventurous
younger sons of the Western nobility.

CHAPTER II
THE FRANKISH CONQUEST (1204-1207)
When, in October 1204, the Crusaders and their Venetian
allies sat down at Constantinople to partition the Byzantine
Empire, they paid as little heed as any modern congress of
diplomatists to the doctrine of nationalities, or to the wishes
of the peoples whose fate hung upon their decisions. , It had
been agreed by a preliminary compact, that a fourth part of
the Byzantine dominions should be first set aside to form
the new Latin Empire of Romania, of which Baldwin, Count
of Flanders, was elected Emperor. The remaining three-
fourths were then to be divided in equal shares between
the Venetian Republic and the Crusaders, whose leader was
Boniface, Marquis of Montferrat, the rival of Baldwin for the
throne of the East. The Greek provinces in Asia and " the
isle of Greece," as the French chronicler calls the Pelopon
nese, had originally been intended as the portion of the
unsuccessful competitor, who was to do homage to the
emperor for his dominions.1 But this arrangement did not
suit the plans of the crusading chief, who wished to exchange
the promised land of Asia Minor for a compact extent of
territory nearer home. His marriage with the Dowager
Empress Margaret, widow of Isaac II., and daughter of the
King of Hungary, made him the more desirous to be
established somewhere in the Balkan peninsula, within
easier reach of her native land.2 His brother, Rainer, had
1 Villehardouin, op. eit, i., 178, ch. cxxxiii. A various reading is
Piste de Crlte; but that already belonged to Boniface. (Del Carretto and
Sangeorgio in Historia patria Monumenta, v., 1141 ; 1322.)
2 Ibid., i., 182, ch. cxxxvii. ; Robert de Clary apud Hopf, Chroniques
grdco-romanes, 76.
27

28 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
received from Manuel I., twenty-five years before, the title of
King of Salonika, after his marriage with that emperor's
daughter Maria, and the marquis now sought to convert his
dead brother's empty title into a living reality.1 Baldwin I.
was, however, in no mood to accept an arrangement which
effectually severed the connection between the Empire of
Romania and Greece proper at the very outset. He had
actually occupied Salonika, and civil war menaced the Latin
dominion in the Levant before its foundations had been
securely laid. But the intervention of the old doge Dandolo,
assisted by influential nobles of the crusading army, men
like Ravano dalle Carceri of Verona, the Burgundian
Othon de la Roche, the Fleming Jacques d'Avesnes, and
Guillaume de Champlitte, styled " of Champagne," who are
described as being " most highly esteemed in the councils of
the marquis," succeeded in preventing this catastrophe.
Boniface took an oath of allegiance to the Latin emperor for
his kingdom of Salonika, which was to include a large part of
Greece, as yet unconquered. " I am your man in respect of
it," he said, " and I hold it from you." 2
The deed of partition, which was obviously based on the
last commercial treaty between Venice and the Emperor
Alexios III., assigned to Boniface and his army of Crusaders
in Greece " the district of Larissa, the province of Wallachia
(i.e. Thessaly), with the private and monastic property which
they contained, the estates of the ex-Empress Euphrosyne,
viz., Vessena (near Pelion), Pharsala, Domok6, Ravenika,
Upper and Lower Halmyros, and Demetrias." It also
awarded them "the territory of Neopatras" (the modern
Hypate), Velestino, the village near the modern battlefield,
and "the district of Athens with the territory of Megara."
But the Venetians, with their shrewd commercial instincts
and their much more intimate knowledge of the country,
1 Robertus de Monte in Rerum German. Scriptores, iii., 924 ; Mem
orial Potestatum Regiensiumj and B. de S. Georgio, Historia Montis-
ferrati, apud Muratori, Rerum Ital. Ssriptores, viii., 1 165; xxiii., 373;
which prove that this grant was not a subsequent invention to justify
Boniface's title, as Finlay (iii., 149) imagined.
2 Villehardouin, op. eit., I., 183, 192, 198, 358, chs, exxxvii., cxlv., cl.,
eclxxiii,

THE PARTITION TREATY 29
had secured in the partition treaty all the best harbours,
islands, and markets in the Levant. Their share included
in the Peloponnese " the province of Lacedaemonia, Kalavryta,
the districts of Patras and Methone with all their appurten
ances, viz., the territory of the Branas family, the territory
of the Cantacuzene family, and the towns belonging to
Princess Irene, daughter of Alexios III." In Epiros the
republic had obtained " Nikopolis, with the territory of
Arta;" in ^Etolia "Acheloos and Anatoliko." The Ionian
islands of Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, and Leukas had also
fallen to her share. Oreos in the north, and Karystos in
the south, of Eubcea were to belong to Venice ; in the
Saronic Gulf, ^Egina and " Culuris," as Salamis was
described in the partition treaty, were marked as hers ; and
finally, " the province of Sunium with the Cyclades," among
which Andros, and perhaps Naxos, are specially mentioned,
rounded off the Venetian possessions. In addition, the
Marquis of Montferrat, by a solemn "deed of Refutation,"
signed August 12, 1204, had sold Crete, which had been
" given or promised " to him by Alexios IV. during his stay
at Corfu fifteen months earlier, to the Venetians for 1000
marks of silver down and the promise of possessions in the
western part of the empire sufficient to bring him in an
income of 10,000 gold hyperpers (£4480). The only items
of the emperor's share which concern our subject are the
islands of Lemnos, Tenos, and Skyros ; the rest of his
portion was outside the limits of Greece proper.1
Besides these territorial acquisitions, the careful republic
had stipulated that all the commercial privileges which she
had enjoyed in the time of the Byzantine Empire should be
1 Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. ii., B. xii., 468-73, 476-7, 486-8,
513-15 ; Da Canal, La Chronique des Veniciens in Archivio Storico
Italiano, viii., 340-4. Colonie would seem to be Sunium (Cape Colonna).
The chief difficulty is whether tbe Cyclades fell to the Venetians or to
the Crusaders. The text ofthe deed assigns the Dodecanisos to tbe latter,
and Spruner-Menke (Handatlas fiir die Geschichte des Mittelalters, p. 40)
and Mr Fotheringham accept this statement. But the Dodecanisos occurs
in the midst of places in Macedonia, next to Prespa. Can it be a corrup
tion for the island on Ochrida, the former Bulgarian capital ? I follow
Tafel and Thomas, who conjectured cum Cycladibus for Conchilari in the
Venetian portion, to which the Cyclades would naturally belong.

30 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
continued to her. Thus, the Venetian lion had secured the
lion's share. Well might the doge describe himself, as he
did for the next century and a half, " ruler of one quarter
and half a quarter of the whole Empire of Romania." 1 Long
after that ephemeral empire had fallen, the Venetians kept
their hold on the Levant, and to-day many a fortress, from
Candia to Chalkis, from Nauplia to Corfu, preserves on its
walls the winged lion of the evangelist. But, for the moment,
the lion had obtained more than he could digest. Imposing
as the Venetian share looked on paper, much of it required
to be conquered. Besides the places which were still occupied
by the Byzantine garrisons or by local Greek magnates,
Corfu was in the hands of the Genoese pirate Vetrano,
while Zante and Cephalonia belonged to Count Maio, or
Matteo, Orsini. In short, it soon became evident, that the
allies had partitioned the empire much as mediaeval popes
drew lines of demarcation on the map of Africa.
Having settled his differences with the Emperor Baldwin,
Boniface set out in the autumn of 1204 to conquer his Greek
dominions. The new King of Salonika belonged to a family
which was no stranger to the ways of the Orient. One of
his brothers, as we saw, had married the daughter of the
Emperor Manuel I. Another brother and a nephew of
Boniface were kings of Jerusalem— a vain dignity which has
descended from them, together with the marquisate of
Montferrat, to the present Italian dynasty. Married to the
affable widow of the Emperor Isaac IL, Boniface was a
sympathetic figure to the Greeks, who had speedily flocked
in numbers to his side,2 and several of them accompanied
him on his march through Greece, among them his stepson,
Manuel Angelos, and a much more dangerous member of
the same family, the bastard Michael, first cousin of Isaac II3
With the King of Salonika there went, too, a motley crowd of
Crusaders in quest of fiefs, men of many nationalities,
Lombards, Flemings, Frenchmen, and Germans There
were Guillaume de Champlitte, Viscount of Dijon who
derived his name from the village of Champlitte in Franche-
1 Akropolita, 15 ; X. r. M., 11. 1025, sqg., L. d. C, -1
Villehardouin, op. eit, i., i94) I96, chs. cxlviii, cxlix.
3 Ibid., i., 210, ch. clix.

BONIFACE'S COMRADES 31
Comte, but who was surnamed le Champenois after his
grandfather, the Count of Champagne ; Othon de la Roche,
son of a Burgundian noble, Ponce de la Roche-sur-Ognon,1
a castle which still commands the rolling plains of the
Haute-Sadne ; Jacques d'Avesnes, son of a Flemish Crusader
who had been at the siege of Acre, and his two nephews,
Jacques and Nicholas de St Omer ; Berthold von Katzenel-
lenbogen, a Rhenish warrior who had given the signal for
setting fire to Constantinople ; the Marquis Guido PaUavicini,
youngest son of a nobleman from near Parma who had gone
to Greece because at home every common man could hale him
before the courts ; Thomas de Stromoncourt, and Ravano dalle
Carceri of Verona.2 To record his deeds, the king of Salonika
took with him Rambaud de Vaqueiras, a troubadour from
Provence, who afterwards boasted in one of the letters in
verse, which he addressed to his patron, that he " had helped
to conquer the empire of the East and the kingdom of
Salonika, the island of Pelops, and the duchy of Athens."3
There was one man still left in Greece who might have
been expected to offer a determined resistance to the
invaders. Leon Sgouros, the proud lord of Nauplia, Argos,
and Corinth, was the strongest of the native archons, but he
showed more desire to profit by his country's misfortunes
than to fight against its enemies. He had long cast covetous
glances at Athens, whence he had once already levied
blackmail, and he availed himself of the general confusion,
consequent on the invasion of the capital by the Franks, to
attack the Athenians by land and sea. The noble metro
politan proved himself at this crisis a worthy representative
of those classic heroes whose lives he had so carefully studied ;
and his brother, the historian Niketas, might well interrupt
his stilted narrative to express his pride at being the near
kinsman of such a man. From the sacred rock of' the
Akropolis he solemnly warned the selfish magnate of the
' Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, i., Ixxxiv.-lxxxix.
2 Litta, Lefamiglie celebri Italiane, vol. v., plate xiv.
3 Schultz-Gora, Le Epistole del Trovatore Rambaldo di Vaqueiras,
p. 6. " Ai vos aiudat
" A conquerre emperi e regnat
" d'aquesta terra e Visla e'l augat."

32 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
double iniquity of a Greek fighting against Greeks, a Christian
against Christians. He made a personal appeal to an assailant,
whom he had counted among his spiritual children, who had
never refused him the titles of father and pastor. But the
archonol Nauplia was unmoved by these spiritual arguments;
he cynically replied that, at the time when the capital of the
empire was in the hands of the foe, it behoved everyone to
look after his own interests ; and, as an excuse for his attack,
demanded the surrender of an Athenian youth of notoriously
bad character. The metropolitan refused to give up even
the least worthy of his flock, and defended the walls of the
Akropolis with engines of war. His material proved better
than his spiritual weapons, and Sgour6s had to content
himself with setting fire to the houses of the town, and
carrying off a nephew of the metropolitan as a page, whom
he afterwards murdered in a fit of passion for his clumsiness
in breaking a glass cup. From Athens he marched upon
Thebes, which, though a stronger position, afforded an
instance of the truth of Thucydides' saying, that it is not
walls, but the men who man them that make a city. The
chief town in Greece yielded to the first attack, and the victor
continued his march unchecked to Larissa. There he met
the fugitive Emperor Alexios III., who bestowed upon him
the hand of his daughter Eudokia, a lady who had already
been thrice married to one monarch after another.1
It was at this moment that Boniface and his army
traversed the classic vale of Tempe and entered the fertile
plain of Thessaly. At the news of his approach Sgour6s —
"Lasgur," as the Franks called him— retreated to
Thermopylae,2 allowing the invaders to occupy Larissa. The
king of Salonika bestowed that ancient city upon a Lombard
noble, who henceforth styled himself Guglielmo de Larsa
from his Thessalian fief, and who also received the important
town of Halmyros where the Venetian and Pisan colonies
continued to flourish. Velestino, the ancient Pherae, the
scene of the legend of Admetos and Alkestis, fell to the
share of Count Berthold von Katzenellenbogen, whose name
1 Niketas, 799-807 ; Lampros, Mixot/X 'Akop.lv6.tov, ii., 162-87 ; Libra de
losfechos, 15.
2 Villehardouin, op. eit, i., 210, ch. dix.

MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 33
must have proved a stumbling-block to his Thessalian vassals.1
The army then took the usual route by way of Pharsala and
Domok6 — names familiar in the ancient and modern history
of Greek warfare, down to Lamia, and thence across the
Trachinian plain to Thermopylae, where Sgouros was await
ing it. But the memories of Leonidas failed to inspire the
archon of Nauplia to follow his example. Niketas2 tells us
that the mere sight of the Latin knights in their coats of
mail sufficed to make him flee straight to his own fastness
of Akrocorinth, leaving the pass undefended. Conscious of
its strength — for Thermopylae must have been far more of a
defile then than now — Boniface resolved to secure it
permanently against attack. He therefore invested the
Marquis Guido PaUavicini, nicknamed by the Greeks
" Marchesopoulo," with the fief of Boudonitza, which
commanded the other end of the pass. Thus arose the
famous marquisate of Boudonitza, which was destined to
play an important part in the Frankish history of Greece,
and which, after a continuous existence of over two centuries,
as guardian of the northern marches, has left a memory of
its fallen greatness in the ruins of the castle and chapel of its
former lords, of whose descendants, the Zorzi of Venice,
there are still living some thirty representatives in that city.
Following the present carriage-road from Lamia to the
Corinthian Gulf, Boniface established another defensive post
at the pass of Gravia, so famous centuries afterwards in the
War of Independence, conferring it as a fief on the two
brothers, Jacques and Nicholas de St Omer.3 At the foot of
Parnassos, on the site of the ancient Amphissa, he next
founded the celebrated barony of Salona, which lasted
almost as long as the marquisate of Boudonitza. Upon the
almost Cyclopean stones of the classic Akropolis, which
Philip of Macedon had destroyed fifteen centuries before,
Thomas de Stromoncourt built himself the fortress, of which
the majestic ruins — perhaps the finest Frankish remains in
Greece — still stand among the corn-fields on the hill above
the modern town. According to the local tradition, the
1 Epistola Innocentii III., vol. ii., pp. 214, 464-5, 549; Documenti
sulle relazioni toscane coll 'Oriente, pp. 88-90.
2 P. 799. 3 L. d. C, 413.

34 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
name of Salona, which the place still bears in common
parlance, despite the usual official efforts to revive the
classical terminology, is derived from the King of
Salonika, its second founder. The lord of Salona soon
extended his sway down to the harbour of Galaxidi, and the
barony became so important that two at least of the house
of Stromoncourt struck coins of their own, which are still
preserved.1 Boniface next marched into Bceotia, where the people,
glad to be relieved from the oppression of Sgour6s, at once
submitted. Thebes joyfully opened her gates, and then the
invaders pursued their way to Athens. The metropolitan
thought it useless to defend the city, and a Frankish guard
was soon stationed on the Akropolis. The Crusaders had
no respect for the great cathedral. To these soldiers of
fortune the classic glories of the Parthenon appealed as
little as the sanctity of the Orthodox Church. The rich
treasury of the cathedral was plundered, the holy vessels
were melted down, the library which the metropolitan had
collected was dispersed. Unable to bear the sight,
Akomindtos, like his colleague of Thebes, quitted the scene
of his long labours, and after wandering about for a time in
Salonika and Eubcea, perhaps in the hope of coming to terms
with the Papal Legate, finally settled down in the island of
Keos, one of the eleven suffragan bishoprics, which had, in
happier times, owned his benevolent sway. From there he
could at least see the coast of Attica — that Attica which he
had once described as "a Scythian wilderness," but which
he now lamented as " a garden of Eden." 2
Thebes with Bceotia, and Athens with Attica and the
Megarid were bestowed by the King of Salonika upon his
trusty comrade in arms, Othon de la Roche, who had
rendered him a valuable service by assisting to settle the
dispute between him and the Emperor Baldwin, and who
1 Siithas, TA XPovlk6v toO TaXafeiSiou, 201. This chronicle, compiled in
1703 from old documents, ascribes to Thomas I. the title of Count,
whereas the Chronicle of the Morea (11. 3294, 3633), describes Thomas II.
of Salona as simply " lord," i.^ivr-qi. Sdthas (op. eit.), gives a coin of
Thomas IL, and another of Thomas III.
2 Niketas, 805 ; Lampros, Mtxa^X 'Akop.lv6.tov, i., 357, ii., i46, 178, 259,
295. 3'2.

OTHON DE LA ROCHE AT ATHENS 35
afterwards negotiated the marriage between Boniface's
daughter and Baldwin's brother and successor on the throne.
Thus, in the words of a monkish chronicler, " Othon de la
Roche, son of a certain Burgundian noble, became, as by a
miracle, Duke of the Athenians and Thebans."1 The
chronicler was only wrong in the title which he attributed to
the lucky Frenchman, who had thus succeeded to the glories
of the heroes and sages of Athens. Othon modestly styled
himself Sire dAthenes, or Dominus Athenarum, in official
documents, which his Greek subjects magnified into "the
great Lord " (Meya? Kvp, or Me'ya? Kvpw), and Dante, who
had probably heard that such had been the title of the
first Frankish ruler of Athens, transferred it by a poetic
anachronism to Pisistratos.2 Contemporary accounts make
no mention of any resistance to the Lord of Athens on the
part of the Greeks. Later Venetian writers, however,
actuated perhaps by patriotic bias, propagated a story, that
the Athenians sent an embassy to offer their city to Venice,
but that their scheme was frustrated, " not without bloodshed,
by the men of Champagne under the Lord de la Roche." 3
Meanwhile, the soldierly Fleming, Jacques d'Avesnes,
leaving the main body of the Franks, had received the
submission of Eubcea — an island where they had already
stopped on their way to Constantinople. After building a
fortress in the middle of the Euripos and garrisoning the
place,4 d'Avesnes hastened to join the King of Salonika and
the Lord of Athens in their attack upon the strongholds of
Sgourds in the Peloponnese. The Franks routed the
1 Albericus Trium Fontium, Chronicon, ii., 439 ; Henri de Valen
ciennes, ch. xxxv.
2 X. r. M., 11. 1555, 2595, 3194 sqq., 4365. Epistola Innocentii 111.,
bk. xi., No. 244 ; bk. xiii., No. 16. Buchon, RecKerches, ii., 385 sqq.
Dante, Purgatorio, xv., 97. Ducange, Histoire de I 'Empire de Con
stantinople, i., 436-7.
3 Andrea Dandolo, Chronicon Venetum, apud Muratori, Rerum Itali-
carum Scriptores, xii., 335. Laurentius de Monacis (Chronicon, 143), and
Stefano Magno, apud Hopf, Chroniques grdco-romanes, 179, repeat
him. Out of this, and a misunderstanding of Othon's title the historian
Fanelli, who wrote his Atene Attica soon after Morosini's victories, states
(p. 278) that the embassy was imprisoned by a certain "Magaduce
Tiranno " !
4 Niketas, 806.

36 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
Greek army at the Isthmus, and, while Boniface marched on
to besiege Nauplia, Jacques d'Avesnes and Othon de la Roche
attacked Corinth. The lower town, though strongly fortified,
was taken by escalade, but Akrocorinth proved, in the hands
of Sgouros, an impregnable fortress. In vain the Franks
built two castles to coerce it into submission, one on the hill
to the south of Akrocorinth, which they called Montesquiou,
a name now corrupted into the modern 'Penteskouphia
(" Five Caps "), the other to the north. Sgour6s succeeded in
making a night sortie and in surprising the Franks in the
lower town ; many of the besiegers were slain, and their
leader, d'Avesnes, was wounded.1
But the Greek archon's resolute defence of Akrocorinth
could not prevent the conquest of the Peloponnese, for the
attack upon that peninsula came from a wholly unexpected
quarter. It chanced that, a little before the capture of
Constantinople, Geoffroy de Villehardouin, nephew of the
Marshal of Champagne and quaint chronicler of the Fourth
Crusade, had set out on a pilgrimage to Palestine. On his
arrival in Syria, he heard of the great achievements of the
Crusaders, and resolved without loss of time to join them at
Constantinople. But his ship was driven out of her course
by a violent tempest, and Geoffroy was forced to take shelter
in the harbour of Methone on the coast of Messenia. During
the winter of 1204, which he spent at that spot, he received an
invitation from a local magnate to join him in an attack on the
lands of the neighbouring Greeks. Villehardouin, nothing
loth, placed his sword at the disposal of the Greek traitor,
and success crowned the arms of these unnatural allies.
But the Greek archon died, and his son, more patriotic, or
more prudent than the father, repudiated the dangerous
alliance with the Frankish stranger. But it was too late.
Villehardouin had discovered the fatal secret that the Greeks
of the Peloponnese were an unwarlike race, and that their
land would fall an easy conquest to a resolute band of Latins.
At this moment tidings reached him that Boniface was
1 Niketas, 807; Villehardouin, op. eit, i., 210, 226, 232, chs. clix.,
clxxiv., clxxix. ; X. t. M., 11. 1528-38, 2805-8. The last passage gives the
name of the fort, but places its construction at a later period erroneously,
as Hopf has shown. Cf. L. rf. C, 37, 87.

CONQUEST OF THE MOREA 37
besieging Nauplia, and he at once set out on a six days'
journey across a hostile country to seek his aid. Boniface
endeavoured to detain him in his own service by the offer of
lands and possessions, but in the camp Villehardouin found
an old friend and fellow-countryman, Guillaume de Champ
litte, who was willing to assist him, for Villehardouin came
from a village of Champagne, in the domain of Champlitte's
ancestors, a place between Bar and Arcis-sur-Aube. He
described to Champlitte the richness of the land which men
called " the Morea " — a term which now occurs for almost the
first time in history, and which seems to have been originally
applied to the coast of Elis and thence extended to the whole
peninsula, just as the name Italy, originally confined to a
part of Calabria, has similarly spread over the whole country.1
He professed his willingness to recognise Champlitte as his
liege lord in return for his aid, and Boniface finally consented
to their undertaking. With a hundred knights and some
men-at-arms, the two friends rode out from the camp before
Nauplia to conquer the ancient land which had once given
birth to Spartan men.2
The fate of the Morea, like that of Saxon England,
was decided by a single pitched battle. The city of Patras
was captured at the first assault, whereupon the castle at
once surrendered on terms ; from the defenceless town of
Andravida, the capital of Elis, the magnates and the com
munity issued forth, with the priests bearing the cross and
the sacred eikons, and did homage to Champlitte on con-
1 The derivation ofthe word "Morea," which is first found in a MS.
of nil, is much disputed. The traditional explanation, now returning
to favour, was that it came from ptopia (" mulberry-tree "), either because
of the trees grown there, or because of the shape of the peninsula. The
Slavonic more (" sea ") ; a former town on the coast of Elis nearKatakolo ;
and a transformation of the word Romaia have all been suggested. Both
the Greek (e.g. 11. 1427, 1610, 1642, 5708) and the French (p. 359) versions
of the Chronicle of the Morea at times use it in the restricted sense of
" Elis." Sdthas, Mv-qpteta 'EW-qvLKrjs 'loTopias, i., pp. xxx.-xxxviii. ; Papar-
regopoulos, 'lo-Topla toO 'EXXijxikoO "EBvovs, v., 88-92; Hopf apud Ersch u.
Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopadie, lxxxv., 264-7 ; Finlay, iv. 24 ;
Hatzidalcis in Byz. Zeit, ii., 284.
2 I have here followed Villehardouin (i., 226-32), who is naturally a
better authority for what concerns his nephew than is the much later
Chronicle of the Morea, which narrates these events differently.

38 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
dition that he respected their property; the archons of
the rest of Elis and of Mesarea, " the middle land," as Arkadia
was then called, followed the example of Andravida ;^ the
low-walled fortress of Pontikokastro, or " Mouse Castle," the
ruins of which still stand on the hill above the harbour of
Katakolo, was easily taken and garrisoned. The tower of
" the giants " at Arkadia (or Kyparissia) and the castle of
Kalamata did indeed hold out for a time ; but of the two
forts on either side of the Messenian promontory, Modon
was after all these years still lying deserted, while the garrison
of Coron soon surrendered when their houses and property
were guaranteed to them. The more patriotic and energetic
of the natives did, indeed, succeed in collecting an army some
four to six thousand strong, consisting of the Greeks of
Nikli, Veligosti, and Lacedaemonia, the warlike Slavonic
tribe of Melings, who had been so troublesome to the old
Imperial Government, and a detachment under Michael
Angelos, who had quitted Boniface and had established
himself as Lord, or Despot, of Epiros, and who crossed
over the Gulf of Corinth to attack the common enemy.
The Hastings of the Morea was fought in the olive-grove of ,
Koundoura, in the north-east of Messenia. The little
Frankish force, numbering between five and seven hundred
men, completely routed the over-confident Greeks ; the
Despot retired to his mountains, and one place after
another fell into the hands of the Franks. One heroic
warrior, Doxapatres, seems to have held manfully the small
but strongly situated castle of Araklovon, which commanded
a defile of the Arkadian mountains, and his rare heroism,
dismissed in a few lines of the Greek Chronicle, made a
lasting impression on romantic minds. The compilers of
the Aragonese version say that no man could lift his mace,
and that his cuirass weighed more than 150 pounds ; a local
legend has kept alive the splendid courage of his daughter,
who allowed herself to be hurled to death from the castle
tower rather than become the conqueror's mistress; and a
modern Greek dramatist has made Maria Doxapatre the
heroine of one of his tragedies.1 Though the three strong-
1 X. t. M., 11. 1410-41, 1641-3, 1661-1790; L. d. C, 34-5, 38-44;
Villehardouin, loc. eit. ; Muntaner, Cronaca, ch. cclxi. ; Libro de losfechos,
27 ; Bernardalces, Mapia Ao^ajraTprj.

VENICE IN MESSENIA 39
holds of Sgouros, Corinth, Nauplia, and the Larissa of Argos,
still held out ; though Veligosti, Nikli, and Lacedaemonia
were urtconquered ; though the isolated rock of Monemvasia,
whose sailors had often manned the imperial navies, whose
soldiers had repelled a Latin host before, still preserved its
traditional liberties ; though the Tzdkones of Leonidi and
the Slav tribe of Melings in the fortresses of Taygetos as
yet acknowledged no master, Innocent III., not without reason,
already styled Champlitte " Prince of all Achaia." 1
The new prince rewarded Villehardouin, the real author
of this daring scheme of conquest, with the town of Coron.2
But, at this point, a new competitor appeared on the scene.
It will be remembered, that, by the deed of partition, large
portions of the Peloponnese, including the haven of
Modon, had fallen to the share of Venice. So vast were
the dominions which had been assigned to the republic,
that she had been slower than the other parties to the deed
in occupying her portion of the former Byzantine Empire.
Many places, indeed, she never effectively occupied at all.
But the twin stations of Modon and Coron were valuable
stepping-stones on the way to Crete and Egypt, while there
was always danger that the former, in foreign hands, might
once more become a refuge of corsairs. Accordingly, in
1206, a fleet was despatched under Premarini and the son
of Dandolo, which, after a struggle captured both places from
the weak garrisons left there by the Franks. Opinions were
divided as to the policy of maintaining the two places ; but
Dandolo's son offered to keep them up at his own cost, and
thus saved them for the republic. The walls of Modon
were again destroyed, as a measure of precaution ; but
Coron seems to have been made a provisioning station,
where all passing ships could receive a month's rations — a
custom maintained, we are told, when the place became a
regular Venetian colony.3 Thus began the long Venetian
occupation of these two spots, the first territorial acquisition
1 Epislola,Vk. viii., Lett. 153 (Nov. 19, 1205).
2 Villehardouin, loc. eit.
3 Martin da Canal in Archivio Storico Italiano, viii., 348-50 ; A.
Dandolo apud Muratori, xii., 335 ; E. Dandolo, " Cronaca Veneta" (MS.),
fol. 43 ; Sdthas, Mv^/iela, i., 318.

40 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
of the republic in the Greek peninsula, which came to be
" the receptacle and special nest of all our galleys, ships, and
vessels on their way to the Levant," as a Venetian document
quaintly says, and about which there is a whole literature in
the Venetian archives.
Thus, almost without effort, a small body of Lombards,
Burgundians, and Germans had over-run continental Greece
and the Morea. The local leaders had, with one or two
exceptions, preferred to cringe to the conquerors rather than
to fight ; there was no hope of succour from other nations ;
the people were disused to warfare, oppressed by burdens,
and indifferent, or even agreeable, to a change of masters.
It was remarked by a Byzantine historian1 that the
European Greeks were weak defenders of fortresses, and
ready to fall at the feet of every tyrant, and in the Morea
fortresses were few. Moreover, the conquerors seem to have
shown a great amount of tact towards the conquered, when
once they had convinced the latter that they had come to
stay. Thus, Champlitte promised the magnates of Elis and
Arkadia to respect the privileges which they had received
from the Byzantine Emperors and to recognise their titles to
their estates, while the residue, consisting of the old imperial
domains and other vacant lands, should be divided among the
Franks.2 Six Greek archons were accordingly invited to join
the same number of Franks in a preliminary commission for
the purpose of defining these lands and liberties of the native
and the Frankish aristocracy. Still, the poet ofthe Conquest,
Rambaud de Vaqueiras, was scarcely exaggerating, when he
wrote that neither Alexander nor Charlemagne had achieved
such feats as the men of the Fourth Crusade.
But fortune, so favourable to the Franks in Greece, had
already deserted them in Macedonia. The first Latin
emperor, within a year of his coronation, had fallen into the
hands of the Bulgarian Tsar, whose aid the Macedonian
Greeks had invoked, and vanished in the dungeons of the
Bulgarian capital. Boniface, on hearing the news, had
abandoned the siege of Nauplia to defend his Macedonian
dominions from this new enemy, and had endeavoured to
1 Akropolita, 178 ; L. d. C, 58.
2 X. r. M., 11. 1649-50 ; L. d. C, 39.

THE DESPOTAT OF EPIROS 41
strengthen the Frankish cause by doing homage for his
kingdom to the new Emperor Henry and by bestowing upon
him the hand of his daughter — a union arranged by his
trusty friend, Othon de la Roche, Lord of Athens.1 But the
chivalrous King of Salonika shortly afterwards met his fate
in an obscure skirmish with the Bulgarians, and his kingdom
passed, at this critical moment, to his infant son Demetrios,
under guardianship of Oberto, the ambitious Count of
Biandrate, a town between Vercelli and Novara.
Meanwhile, in three other directions, the Byzantine
monarchy had shown signs of revival. At Nice, the scene of
the famous council, Theodore Ldskaris, son-in-law of the
Emperor Alexios III., founded an empire which, fifty-five
years later, absorbed the ephemeral Latin realm of Romania ;
at Trebizond, on the shores of the Black Sea, another
Alexios, the grandson of the Emperor Andr6nikos I.,
established another empire, which survived the Turkish
capture of Constantinople ; while in Europe, the bastard
Michael Angelos, first cousin of the Emperor Isaac II.,
created a Greek principality, the Despotat of Epiros, Hellas,
or Arta, as it was variously called, which played a great part
in the history of Frankish Greece. The founder of this new
Greek dynasty in Epiros was no ordinary man ; son of a
former governor of that province, he had been given as a
hostage in earlier life to the Emperor Barbarossa, when
that monarch was on his way to the Holy Land, and he had
received the post of governor of the Themes of Hellas and the
Peloponnese shortly before Constantinople fell. After that
catastrophe, he had attached himself, as we saw, to Boniface
in the hope of obtaining some advantage from him. The
discontent of the Greeks of the province of Nikopolis, which
included Akarnania, ^Etolia and Epiros, wi|h the tyranny of
their Byzantine governor, Senacherim, at this moment
reached his ears ; he slipped away from the Frankish camp,
went to Arta, and, finding the governor dead, married his
widow, a daughter of the great family of Melissenos, and
established himself as an independent Greek sovereign,
whose sway extended from his capital of Arta to Joannina in
the north, to Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth in the south,
1 Villehardouin, op. eit, i., 274, 358, chs. ccx., eclxxiii.

42 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
and apparently included the island of Leukas in the Ionian
sea.1 Ere long, Durazzo became his northern, and part of
Thessaly his eastern, boundary, and he succeeded in
enlisting the sympathies of the three different races — Greeks,
Albanians, and Wallachians, who formed the population
of his dominions. The Greeks naturally welcomed a man
whose wife was a native of the country and whose father had
been its governor. The Albanians were ready to serve a
ruler who paid them well and regarded their predatory
habits as a positive benefit when they were exercised at the
cost of his foes. The Wallachians of Thessaly sought
protection against the Franks, and all three races recognised
his ability and experience. Moreover, the machinery of the
Byzantine administration lay ready to his hand. There was
merely a change of name but not of system, except in so far
as the taxes were now expended in the country instead of
being sent to the distant capital. The configuration of
Epiros has always made it a difficult land to conquer ; and
in the first years of his reign, Michael's enemies were busy
elsewhere. He felt so secure, that he crossed into the
Peloponnese to assist the Greeks in their stand against the
Franks at Koundoura, as we saw above ; even though he
was defeated with considerable loss, he accepted the damnosa
hereditas of Nauplia, Argos, and Corinth, when, in 1208,
Sgouros at last in despair leapt on horseback from
Akrocorinth and perished a formless mass of broken bones
on the rocks below. Henceforth, Michael was the sole
champion of Hellenism in Europe ; he was styled " the lord
of Corinth," and his brother Theodore governed the heritage
of Sgour6s in his name. 2
The Greek- islands had been, for the most part, allotted to
Venice by the partition treaty, the Cyclades among them.
1 Villehardouin, op. eit, I., 210, ch. clix. ; Akropolita, 15-16 ; Niketas,
841 ; Nikephoros Gregorys, I., 13 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II.,
1., 401-2. There is no direct evidence as to Leukas, except that it
was ecclesiastically under the Despots' influence ; but its inclusion in
the Despotat at this period is probable. Cf. Romanos, Tpa.Tw.vbt ZcStf,*,
297 ; Blanks, 'H Afw&s ivb roils ipiymv,, 4 ; Bufai/ni/A XpovtKi, iii., 270, 276.
2 Ldmpros, 'loropla Tijs T&Xeon'AB-qvwv, i., 42 1, «. 1 ; Henri de Valenciennes,
apud Buchon, Recherches et Mattriaux, ii., 209. Only one MS. adds the
title le signour de Chorynte.

THE CYCLADES 43
But the Venetian Government, with its usual commercial
astuteness, soon came to the conclusion that the conquest of
that large group of islands would too severely tax the
resources of the state. It was therefore decided to leave the
task of occupying them to private citizens, who would plant
Venetian colonies in the ^Egean, and live on friendly terms
with the republic. There was no lack of enterprise among
the Venetians of that generation, and it so happened that at
that very moment the Venetian colony at Constantinople
contained the very man for such an undertaking. The old
doge Dandolo had taken with him on the crusade his
nephew, Marco Sanudo, a bold warrior and a skilful
diplomatist, who had signalised himself by negotiating the
sale of Crete to the republic, and was then filling the post of
judge in what we should now call the Consular Court at
Constantinople. On hearing the decision of his government,
Sanudo quitted the bench, gathered round him a band of
adventurous spirits, to whom he promised fiefs in the El
Dorado of the JEgean, equipped eight galleys at his own cost,
and sailed with them to carve out a duchy for himself in the
islands of the Archipelago. There was no one to dispute his
claim, though Leon Gabalas, the Greek archon of Rhodes
and Karpathos, styled himself " Lord of the Cyclades," and
even " Caesar." x Seventeen islands speedily submitted, and
at one spot alone did Sanudo meet with any real resistance.
Naxos has always been the pearl of the ^Egean : poets
placed there the beautiful myth of Ariadne and Dionysos ;
Herodotos describes it as "excelling the other islands in
prosperity " ; even to-day, when so many of the Cyclades are
barren rocks, the orange and lemon groves of Naxos entitle
it, even more than Zante, to the proud name of " flower of
the Levant." This was the island which now opposed the
Venetian filibuster, as centuries before it had opposed the
Persians. A body of Genoese pirates had occupied the
Byzantine castle before Sanudo's arrival ; but that shrewd
leader, who knew the value of rashness in an emergency,
burnt his galleys, and then bade his companions conquer or
die. The castle surrendered after a five weeks' siege, so that
by 1207 Sanudo and his comrades had conquered a duchy,
1 Akropolita, 49, 92 ; Niketas, 842.

44 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
which lasted between three and four centuries. His
duchy included, besides Naxos, where he fixed his capital,
the famous marble island of Paros; Antiparos, with its
curious grotto ; Kimolos, celebrated for its fuller's earth ;
Melos, whose sad fortunes had furnished Thucydides with
one of the most curious passages in his history ; Amorgos,
the home of Simonides, los or Nio, the supposed tomb of
Homer : Kythnos, Sikinos, and Siphnos ; and Syra, destined
at a much later date to be the most important of all the
Cyclades. True to his promise, Sanudo divided some of the
islands among his companions; thus Marino Dandolo,
another nephew of the great doge, who had captured
Andros, held that fine island, the second largest of the group,
as a sub-fief of his cousin's duchy ; Leonardo Foscolo
received on similar terms the distant island of Anaphe ; the
volcanic island of Santorin, as the classic Thera was called
in the Middle Ages, from the martyrdom on its rocks of one of
the many St Irenes in the Greek calendar, fell to the share
of Jacopo Barozzi, and Astypalaia, or Stampalia, to that of
the Quirini with whose name it is still associated in that of a
street, a bridge, and a palace at Venice. The brothers
Andrea and Geremia Ghisi, both enterprising men, not only
acquired Tenos and Mykonos, but extended their conquests
to the northern Sporades, occupying Skyros, Skopelos, and
Skiathos, regardless of the fact that two of these islands
Tenos and Skyros, belonged to the Emperor of Romania,
according to the deed of partition. With the aid of Domenico
Michieli and Pietro Giustiniani, they added to their island
domain little Seriphos, the Botany Bay of the early Roman
Empire, and Keos, the refuge of Akomindtos, which a few
years earlier had repulsed the Italian tax-gatherers from
Eubcea.1 Patmos, doubtless by reason of its religious
associations, was not only allowed to be independent, but the
monks received many privileges from the Venetians.
Lemnos, which had been included in the imperial share at
the partition, became the fief of the Navigajosi, who
1 A. Dandolo, M. Sanudo, and Navagero apud Muratori, op. eit, xii.,
334 ; xxii., 545 ; xxiii., 986 ; Enrico Dandolo, Cronaca Veneta, fol. 45 ;
Laurentius de Monacis, Chronicon, 143 ; Ldmpros, Mtxo^jX ' 'Akoiux&tw,
i., 389-90.

EUBGEA 45
received from the emperor the title of Grand Duke, borne in
Byzantine days by the Imperial Lord High Admiral. The
remote island of Kythera, in later times strangely reckoned
as one of the Ionian group, was claimed by Marco Venier,
on the ground that the birthplace of Venus belonged of right
to a family which boasted its descent from her, while the
Viari became marquises of tiny Cerigotto.1
The long island of Eubcea, which belongs rather to con
tinental Greece than to the Archipelago, had various vicissi
tudes. It had been taken in 1205, as we saw,' by Jacques
d'Avesnes, who was too much occupied with the siege of
Corinth to concern himself greatly with the island, and as
he died without heirs a few years later, he founded no
dynasty in Negroponte, merely bestowing lands there upon
the Templars for the repose of his soul.2 Boniface, however,
divided Eubcea into three large fiefs, which were granted to
three gentlemen of Verona — Ravano dalle Carceri, his relative
Giberto, and Pegoraro dei Pegorari. The Dalle Carceri
family, long ago extinct, was at that time influential at
Verona. One of the two town councillors in 1178 was a
member of the clan; and, of Ravano's two brothers,
Redondello was Podesta in 12 10, and built the old wooden
Casa dei Mercanti, as a modern inscription on the later
building still reminds the traveller, while Henry was bishop
of Mantua.3 Ravano himself had rendered signal service to
the King of Salonika by assisting Marco Sanudo in arranging
the sale of Crete, while the names of the other two appear
as witnesses to the deed of sale. Ignoring the assignment
of Oreos and Karystos to Venice by the treaty of partition,
Boniface invested Pegoraro with the north, Giberto with the
centre, and Ravano with the south of the island, and the
three lords assumed the name of terzieri, terciers, or triarchs,
of Eubcea. With the southern barony of Karystos seems to
have been united the island of ^Egina, likewise on paper a
Venetian possession.4 Ere long, by the return of Pegoraro
1 Romanes, op. eit, 228.
2 Epistola Innocentii III., bk. xiii., lett. 146.
3 Antiche Cronache Veronesi, i., 388 ; Panvinius, Antiquitatum
Veronensium, 153, 189; Turresanus, Elogium historicarum nobilium
Verona Propaginum, 76-7 ; Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, xiii., 90.
4 A. Dandolo apud Muratori, xii., 334 ; E. Dandolo, Cronaca Veneta,

46 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
to Italy and the death of Giberto, Ravano became sole lord
of Eubcea. The republic adopted in the case of Corfu much the
same plan as that which she employed in the Cyclades. It
was, however, first necessary to dislodge the Genoese pirate,
Leone Vetrano, who had made the island his headquarters
a few years before the Crusade.1 It is not clear whether his
men were actually occupying the castle, or whether the
islanders had temporarily reverted 2 to the Byzantine Empire
at the time when the Crusaders halted there on their way to
Constantinople. But in either case the hardy Genoese
captain, as his compatriots called him, had no intention of
abandoning an island at once so rich and so splendidly
situated for the purposes of his profession. To the Venetians,
on the other hand, Corfu was naturally a position of import
ance, the first link in the chain of their newly-acquired Greek
possessions; least of all did they desire it to fall into the
hands of a pirate who was — what was worse — a Genoese.
Accordingly, the fleet which bore the first Latin patriarch
to Constantinople in 1205 formally took possession of Corfu
in the name of the republic, after considerable resistance on
the part of the inhabitants. A Venetian bailie was left in
the island, which was placed at first under the direct authority
of the Commune of Venice. But scarcely had the fleet sailed
than Vetrano reappeared upon the scene; the Corfiotes
gladly gave him provisions and admitted his men, thereby
calling down upon themselves a second Venetian visitation.
In 1206, a large fleet under the command of the old doge
Dandolo's son arrived in the harbour ; the castle, in spite of
a spirited defence, was taken by escalade, and the capture of
Vetrano on the high seas and his execution at Corfu, together
with some sixty of his partisans, was intended as a salutary
lesson to the rest of the islanders. The castle, whose twin
summits (Kopv<f>w) gave the island its mediaeval and modern
name, was fortified and a governor appointed. But the
republic realised, as in the case of the Cyclades, that she had
fol. 44; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 179; Hopf, Karystos (tr. Sar-
dagna), 33 ; Urkunden undZusatze zur Geschichte der Inset Andros 225.
1 Serra, Storia della antica Liguria, i., 465.
2 As Roman6s and Idromdnos maintain,

CORFU 47
not the requisite strength for the direct government of so
troublesome a possession. Accordingly, in 1207, Corfu,
together with the islets belonging to it, was transferred to
ten Venetian nobles, for themselves and their heirs, on
consideration that they maintained the defences and made
an annual payment of " 500 good gold pieces of the Emperor
Manuel." The republic reserved special trade privileges to
her subjects in the colony, and great care was taken to
protect the Greeks, who were to be made to swear fealty
to her. The colonists were enjoined to exact from the
natives no further dues than they had been accustomed to
pay in Byzantine times, and pledged themselves to respect
the existing rights of the Greek Church. This arrangement,
it was fondly hoped, would secure the possession of the
island.1 At any rate, the fate of Vetrano was not without
its effect in other parts of the Ionian group. Alarmed at
his fellow-pirate's end on the gallows, Count Maio, or
Matthew, Orsini, who ruled over Cephalonia and Zante,
discovered that he had qualms about the state of his soul,
and, in 1207, placed his territories under the authority of
Pope Innocent III., whose interest in Greek affairs strikes
every reader of his correspondence. Two years later,
however, the count thought it wiser to acknowledge the
overlordship of Venice, which accordingly left him in
undisturbed possession of his islands, although they were
hers by the letter of the partition treaty.2
Lastly, there remained to be occupied the largest of all
the Greek islands, that of Crete, which Boniface had sold so
cheaply to the Venetians. Even before that transaction, the
great rivals of Venice, the Genoese, had established a colony
there, so that it was clear from the outset that the island
would be an apple of discord between the* two commercial
commonwealths. The Venetians began their occupation by
landing a small garrison at Spinalonga in the east of the
1 Martin da Canal, La Chronique des Veniciens in Archivio Storico,
Italiano, viii., 346, 348, 720 ; A. Dandolo and Sanudo apud Muratori
xii., 335 ; xxiii., 535 ; E. Dandolo, Cronaca Veneta, fol. 43 ; Tafel und
Thomas, Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, xii., 569; xiii., 55-9; Mustoxidi,
Delle Cose Corciresi, vi.-viii.
2 Epistola Innocentii 111., vol. ii., pp.' 16, 73 ; A. Dandolo apud
Muratori, xii., 336

48 THE FRANKISH CONQUEST
island ; but, before the rest of it could be annexed, a Genoese
citizen, Enrico Pescatore, Count of Malta, and one of the most
daring seamen of that adventurous age, set foot in Crete, at
the instigation of Genoa, and received the homage of the
Cretans and the submission of the helpless and isolated
Venetian garrison.1 A larger force was then despatched
from * Venice, which drove out the Maltese corsair, and
appointed Tiepolo as the first Venetian governor, or duke,
as he was styled, of Crete. But Venice was not yet to have
undisputed possession of her purchase. The Count of Malta
appealed, as a faithful son of the Church, to Innocent III.;
Genoa espoused his cause as her own, and five years elapsed
before the count was finally defeated and an armistice with
Genoa permitted the Venetians in 1212 to make the first
comprehensive attempt at colonising the island and organis
ing its administration. Thus early the merchants of San
Marco began to learn the lesson that Crete, though it cost
little to buy, was a most expensive possession to maintain.2
1 Niketas, 843.
2 Laurentius de Monacis, Chronicon, 153. This chronicler, who
wrote in 1413, and was Venetian Chancellor of Crete, is the best authority
for the island's history down to 1354. Gerola (La Dominazione Genovese
in Creta) gives the best modern account of these first years.

CHAPTER III
THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST (1207-1214)
HAVING thus described the manner in which the Franks
occupied the various portions of Greece, let us see how they
proceeded to organise their conquests. The usual tendency
of the desperately logical Latin intellect, when brought face
to face with a new set of political conditions, is to frame a
paper constitution, absolutely perfect in theory, and absolutely
unworkable in practice. But the French noblemen, whom
an extraordinary accident had converted into Spartan and
Athenian law-givers, resisted this temptation, nor did they
seek inspiration from the laws of Solon and Lycurgus. They
simply transplanted the feudal system, to which, as we saw, the
Greeks had not been altogether strangers under the dynasty
of the Comneni ; and they applied the legal principles, em
bodied a century earlier in the famous " Assizes of Jerusalem,"
and much more recently borrowed by Amauri de Lusignan
for his kingdom of Cyprus, to the new Frankish states in
Greece.1 We have, however, a detailed account ofthe political
organisation of only one of these principalities — that of
Achaia, the largest and the most important at this stage of
Frankish history.
It was not the lot of Champlitte to do more than lay the
foundations of his principality. While he was engaged in
this work of organisation, he received the news that his
eldest surviving brother Louis had died without heirs — an
event which necessitated his return to France to claim his
Burgundian inheritance. But before he set out, he appointed
a commission, consisting of two Latin bishops, two bannerets,
1 X. -r. M., 11. 2611-14, L. d. C, 79.
49 D

50 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
and four or five leading Greeks, under the presidency of
Villehardouin, for the purpose of dividing the Morea into
fiefs, and of assigning these to the members of the conquering
force according to their wealth and the number of their
followers. Champlitte approved the commission's report,
and bestowed upon Villehardouin the baronies of Kalamata
and Arkadia (or Kyparissia) as compensation for the loss of
his original fief of Coron, now in the hands of the Venetians.
He then appointed his nephew Hugh as his deputy or bailie
in Achaia, and sailed in 1209 for the West. But on the
journey through Apulia he died, and, as his nephew did
not long survive him, Villehardouin carried on the govern
ment as bailie till the next-of-kin should arrive from France
to claim it.1
Villehardouin's first act was to summon a parliament at
Andravida, then the seat of government, where the book, or
" register " as the chronicler calls it, containing the report of
the commission was produced. According to this Achaian
Doomsday Book, twelve baronies, whose number recalls the
twelve peers of Charlemagne, had been created, their holders,
with the other lieges, forming a high court, which not only
advised the prince in political matters, but acted as a judicial
tribunal for the decision of feudal questions. In the creation
of these twelve baronies, due regard was paid to the fact that
the Franks were a military colony in the midst of an alien
and possibly hostile population, spread over a country
possessing remarkable strategic positions. Later on, after
the distribution of the baronies, strong castles were erected
in each, upon some natural coign of vantage, from which the
baron could overawe the surrounding country. The main
object of this system may be seen from the name of the
famous Arkadian fortress of Matagrifon2 ("Kill-Greek," the
Greeks being usually called Grifon by the French chroniclers),
built near the modern Demetsana by the baron of Akova,
1 The Chronicle of the Morea says that Champlitte appointed
Villehardouin as his bailie. But I nnocent 1 1 1., a contemporary extremely
well informed in Greek affairs, specially mentions " Hugo de Cham" as
the bailie. (Epistola, bk. xiii., lett. 170).
2 Or "Stop-Greek" from mater. The name of Matagrifon existed
also at Messenia.

THE BARONIES OF ACHAIA 51
Gautier de Rozieres, to protect the rich valley of the Alpheios.
The splendid remains of the castle of Karytaina, the Greek
Toledo, which dominates the gorge of that classic river,
which the Franks called Charbon, still mark the spot where
Hugues de Bruyeres and his son Geoffrey built a stronghold
out of the ruins of the Hellenic Brenthe to terrify the
Slavs of Skorta, the ancient Gortys, and the special impor
tance of these two baronies was demonstrated by the bestowal
of twenty-four knights' fees upon the former, and of twenty-
two upon the latter. The castle-crowned hill of Passava,
near Gytheion, so called from the French war-cry "Passe
Avant," still reminds us how Jean de Neuilly, hereditary
marshal of Achaia and holder of four fees, once watched the
restless men of Maina ; and, if earthquakes have left no
mediaeval buildings at Vostitza, the classic Aigion, where
Hugues de Lille de Charpigny received eight knights' fees,
his family name still survives in the village of Kerpine,
now a station on the funicular railway between Diakophto
and Kalavryta. At Kalavryta itself, Othon de Tournay, and
at Chalandritza, to the south of Patras, Audebert de la
TremouiUe, scion of a family famous in the history of France,
were established, with twelve and four fiefs respectively.
Veligosti, near Megalopolis, with four, fell to the share of the
Belgian Matthieu de Valaincourt de Mons, and Nikli, near
Tegea, with six, to that of Guillaume de Morlay. Guy de
Nivelet kept the Tzdkones of Leonidi in check and watched
the plain of Lakonia from his barony of Geraki with its six
fiefs ; and Gritzena, entrusted to a baron named Luke,1 with
four fiefs depending on it, guarded the ravines of the
mountainous region round Kalamata. Patras became the
barony of Guillaume Aleman, a member of a Provencal
family, whose name still exists at Corfu, and 'the bold baron
did not scruple to build his castle out of the house and
church of the Latin archbishop. Finally, the dozen was
completed by the fiefs of Kalamata and Arkadia, which the
bailie had received from Champlitte. In addition to these
twelve temporal peers, there were seven ecclesiastical barons,
1 Dordtheos of Monemvasia (Bi/3X/oi/ 'loropLKhv, 464) alone gives his
surname as TowTCT&TrpowTe, an obvious corruption of " de Charpigny."

52 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
whose sees were carved out on the lines of the existing Greek
organisation, and of whom Antelme of Clugny, Latin
archbishop of Patras and primate of Achaia, was the chief.
Under him were his six suffragans of Olena (whose bishop
took his title from a small village near the modern Pyrgos,
but who resided at Andravida), Modon, Coron, Veligosti,
Amyklai, and Lacedaemonia. The archbishop received
eight knights' fees, the bishops four a-piece, and the same
number was assigned to each of the three great military
orders of the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of St John, and
the Templars. The headquarters of the Teutonic Knights
were at Mostenitsa, near Kalamata, while the Knights of St
John were established in the neighbourhood of Modon.
When, a century later, the Templars were dissolved, their
possessions in Achaia and Elis went to the Knights of St
John. In Elis, too, was the domain of the prince, and his
usual residence, when he was not at Andravida (or
Andreville), was at Lacedaemonia, or La Cremonie, as the
Franks called it. The knights and esquires who received
one fief each, were too numerous for the patience of the
chronicler. The serfs living on the baronies were assigned,
like so many chattels, to their new lords.
After the distribution of the baronies came the assign
ment of military service. All the vassals were liable to
render four months' service in the field, and to spend four
months in garrison (from which the prelates and the three
military orders were alone exempted); and even during the
remaining four months, which they could pass at home, they
were expected to hold themselves ready to obey the
summons of the prince, who could fix what months of the
year he chose for the performance of their military duties.
After the age of sixty (or, according to a less probable
reading, forty), personal service was no longer required, but
the vassal must send his son, or, if he had no son, someone
else in his stead. Those vassals who held four fiefs, the
bannerets as they were called, had each to appear with one
knight and twelve esquires mustered beneath the folds of his
banner, while the holder of more than four was bound to
equip, for every additional fief that he held, two mounted
esquires or one knight ; every knight or esquire, " sergeants

LEGAL TRIBUNALS 53
of the conquest" as they were called, must render service
with his own body for his single fief. Thus, the Franks were
on a constant war footing ; their whole organisation was
military — a fact which explains the ease with which they held
down the unwarlike Greeks, so many times their superiors in
numbers. This military organisation had, however, as the
eminent modern Greek historian Paparreg6poulos has
pointed out, the effect of making the Greeks, too, imbibe in
course of time something ofthe spirit oftheir conquerors.
Besides the twelve barons and the other lieges, the
ecclesiastical peers had the right of taking part in the
proceedings of the High Court, except when it was sitting
to try cases of murder ; and the bishop of Olena, in particular,
as being nearest to the capital of Andravida, whither his
residence was ere long transferred, is mentioned by the
chronicler as being present at its deliberations.1 According
to the usual Frankish system, there was a second court of
burgesses, presided over by the prince's nominee, who bore
the title of viscount. We hear on several occasions of an
assembly of the burgesses in the Chronicle of the Morea?
and towards the close of the Burgundian dynasty at Athens,
the viscount is specially mentioned.3 Before this lower court
came the legal business of plain citizens ; and, at least in the
fourteenth century, the prince had two tribunals, at the
important towns of Glarentza and Androusa. Each of the
great baronies seems also to have had a court of its own ;
we are specially told, on one occasion, how " the elders " of
the barony of Akova were summoned, and how they were
bidden to bring " the minutes " (ra irpaxTiKa) of their pro
ceedings with them.4 Round the prince there grew up a
hierarchy of great officials, with high-sounding titles, to
which the Greeks had no difficulty in fitting Byzantine
equivalents. We hear of the hereditary marshal (irpooTocTT-
1 Canciani, Barbarorum Leges Antiqua, iii., 511, 513. X. r. M., 11.
1903-2016, 3145-72 ; L. d. C, 50-6 ; L. d. P., 28-32. The Aragonese
version gives details, derived from a later date, of the distribution of
lands to the knights, and mentions the serfs.
2 LI. 3209, 5848, 8632 ; L. d. C, 297.
3 L. d. C, 409.
X. -. M.,11. 7682-3.

54 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
paropai) ; of the chancellor (\oyo6erw), who presided over the
High Court when the prince wished to argue a case before
it, and who represented his master as a plenipotentiary
abroad and signed treaties on his behalf; of the chamberlain
(TrpwToPia-Tidpw, or nrpwrofiitTTiipioii) ; of the great constable
(/coi/to'o-tciiAo?) ; of the treasurer (rpitovpikpw) ; and of the
inspector of fortifications (irpofieovpn'S tu>v Kacrrpwv). The
prince himself bore a sceptre as the insignia of his office,
when he presided over the sessions of the High Court
We learn from the Book ofthe Customs of the Empire of
Romania— -a codification of the Assizes made apparently in
the first quarter of the fourteenth century under Angevin
auspices and still extant in a Venetian version of a century
later — something about the way in which the feudal system
worked in the principality of Achaia. Society was there
composed of six main elements — the prince, the holders of
the twelve great baronies, or bers de terre in feudal parlance;
the greater and the lesser vassals (called respectively ligii
and homines plani homagii), among whom were some
members of the conquered race ; the freemen ; and the serfs.
The prince, at his accession, had to swear on the gospels to
observe all the franchises and usages of the Empire of
Romania, to which the barons tenaciously held, and then
he received the homage of the barons and the lieges, signified
by a kiss, and the oath of his inferior subjects. The prince
and his twelve peers (who, at the time when the Assizes
were codified, consisted of the Dukes of Athens and of Naxos,
the triarchs of Negroponte, the Marquis of Boudonitza, the
Count of Cephalonia, and the Moreote barons of Karytaina,
Patras, Matagrifon, and Kalavryta, together with the heredi
tary marshal of the principality) alone possessed the power
of inflicting life and death ; but not even the prince himself
could punish one of his feudatories without the consent of
a majority of the lieges. If he were taken prisoner, as
happened to the third Villehardouin, he could call upon his
vassals to become hostages in his place until he had raised
the amount of his ransom. No one, except the twelve peers,
was permitted to build a castle in Achaia without his leave ;
and any vassal who quitted the principality and stayed
abroad without his consent, was liable to lose his fief. Leave

POWERS OF THE PRINCE 55
of absence was, however, never refused, if the vassal wished
to claim the succession to a fief abroad, to contract a marriage,
or to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, to the
churches of St Peter and St Paul in Rome, or to that of
St James at Compostella ; but in such cases the absentee
must return within two years and two days. On the other
hand, the prince could neither demolish nor surrender a
frontier fortress without the consent of the lieges — a clause
which we shall find invoked by Guillaume de Villehardouin
in 1262. It was his bounden duty to provide for the support
of a feudatory whose fief had been captured by the enemy ;
and his powers were further restricted by the provision that
he could arrest one of his lieges for homicide or high
treason alone. Nor could he levy any taxes on the feudatories,
the freemen, or their serfs, without the consent of the lieges,
feudatories, and freemen. A liege could in theory, and did
in practice, bring what we should call a petition of right
against the crown. In such cases, of which we have a
striking example, it was the duty of the prince to leave his
seat as president of the High Court, and to hand his sceptre
to a substitute, in order that he might argue the case for the
crown in person — a remarkable proof of the equality of the
sovereign before the feudal law. Again and again we shall
see in the course of this history that a prince of Achaia was
not an autocrat, but merely primus inter pares, whose will
was limited by the feudal code and by the proud and powerful
barons, its living personification. One further provision
tended above all else to weaken the central authority.
Except in the duchy of Naxos, under the Crispo dynasty,
the Salic law did not obtain in the Latin states of the Levant,
and, by an unfortunate freak of nature, many of the most
important baronies, and the principality ifself, passed into
the hands of women. There are few other periods of history
in which they have played so prominent a part, and this
participation of the weaker sex in the government of a
purely military community, while adding immensely to the
romance of the subject, had disastrous effects upon the
fortunes of the Latin orient and especially of Achaia. Nor
was it the princely dignity alone which suffered by being
entrusted to a weak woman, whose sex and position made

56 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
her the object of dynastic and matrimonial intrigue, and
whose husband was always a foreigner and therefore exposed
to the contempt which a proud aristocracy usually feels for
a prince consort. It happened on one occasion that almost
the entire baronage of Achaia was annihilated on the field of
battle or detained in the prisons of the enemy, and the fate
of the principality was accordingly decided by the votes of
its ladies. Most of the misfortunes of that warlike state may
be traced directly or indirectly to the remarkable lack of
male heirs in most of the great Frankish families, and to the
absence of the Salic law — a law admirably suited to the
government of a purely military community, surrounded by
enemies. It was vital to the success of the feudal system that the
feudatories should be persons well -affected to the prince, and
great care was accordingly taken to prevent fiefs falling into
the hands of strangers. The greater vassals could not sell
their fiefs without the prince's consent ; but if the liege were
a widow, she might marry whom she pleased, on payment of
one-third of a year's income, provided that her intended
husband were not an enemy of the prince. On the death of
her husband, she was entitled to a moiety of his fiefs and
castles, as well as one-half of all the property which he had
acquired during their marriage. When a fief fell vacant, the
successor must needs appear to advance his claim within a
year and a day if he were in Achaia, within two years and
two days if he were abroad. Failure to put in such an
appearance cost him his prospective fief. All freemen
enjoyed the right of testamentary disposition, and everyone
was allowed to sell his produce in, or out of the principality.
But no feudatory, however eminent, might give his land to
the church, to a community, or to a villain, without the
leave of the prince, who was alone entitled to make such a
grant to the ecclesiastical establishment. This salutary
rule, intended to ensure the maintenance of feudal land in
the possession of those able and liable to render the full
feudal services, came, however, to be seriously infringed at
an early period in the history of Achaia.
The lower ranks of this feudal society were composed
almost entirely of the Greeks, for on the one hand the

THE SERFS 57
number of French soldiers and camp-followers who had
entered Achaia at the conquest was not numerous, and on
the other, the " Greek feudatories," of whom the Book of
the Customs speaks, must have formed a small class, as
compared with the vast mass of their countrymen. The
Greek archons of Elis and Arkadia, as we saw, had made
special terms with Champlitte, that they should retain their
ancient privileges, their lands, and their serfs ; and similar
concessions were obtained by the citizens of places which
surrendered, such as Coron, Kalamata, Arkadia, Nikli, and
Lacedaemonia ; but the bulk of the native population lived
and died in a state of serfdom.
The position of the serf was not to be envied. He could
neither marry, nor give his daughter in marriage, without the
consent of his lord ; if he died without heirs, his lord
succeeded to all his possessions ; during his lifetime, he had
no motive to be industrious, for his lord was entitled to take
all his goods and give them to another serf, provided that
he was left with just enough to keep body and soul together.
Even his body was regarded as a mere chattel, for, if a liege
killed his neighbour's serf by mistake, he must give the dead
man's master another serf as compensation, and he could at
all times give away his own serfs to whomsoever he pleased.
If a female vassal married a serf, not only she, but her
children also, descended into the rank of serfdom. There were
only two ways in which the serf could become a freeman : by
the act of the prince ; or, in the case of a female serf, by
marrying a freeman. No serf might receive a gift of feudal
land without the prince's leave ; and, if the serf were a Greek,
his evidence could not be tendered in criminal cases against
a liege. Still, even in feudal Achaia, the serf had some
rights. He could sell his animals, if he chose ; he could
pasture his pigs on the acorns that covered the ground of the
oak-forests, where, like everyone else, he might cut firewood
indiscriminately, to the great detriment of the country ; and
his lord could not imprison him for more than a single
night. In practice, too, if we may believe the Aragonese
version of the Chronicle of the Morea, the conquerors
did not disturb the serfs in the possession of their goods.
But, save for some few privileges, the serf was almost a slave,

58 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
who worked for the prince, for the prince's vassals, or for the
alien church of the Franks, in the pregnant words of Pope
Innocent III., " without pay and without expenses."1
Having thus established the feudal constitution of the
principality, Villehardouin proceeded, with the assistance of
the Greeks, to attack Veligosti and Nikli, which, though
already granted as fiefs, were still unconquered. The low
hill of Veligosti was soon taken ; the high walls of Nikli
proved a more serious obstacle ; but, when the besieger
vowed that he would put the garrison to the sword, their
Greek relatives in his camp urged them to surrender on
terms. These two places were then handed over to their
appointed feudal lords. The large walled town of Lacedae
monia now yielded after a five days' siege, and became one
of Villehardouin's favourite residences. Thence a raid was
effected into the country inhabited by the Tzakones, and the
French troops penetrated as far as the causeway which leads
to the impregnable fortress of Monemvasia. At the request,
however, of the Lacedaemonian archons who had lands in
that district, Villehardouin recalled the raiders, and set about
the conquest of those places which still refused him homage.
With his usual tact, he called the leading Greeks to his
councils, and consulted with them how he could reduce to
his authority the strong Peloponnesian quadrilateral of
Corinth, Argos, Nauplia, and Monemvasia. They pointed
out what the Franks had already discovered, that those
four strongholds were difficult to take by force; but they
expressed their willingness to assist him, on condition that
he swore in writing that neither they nor their children should
be forced to change their faith and their ancient customs.
The French conqueror willingly consented, for, like the
other Frankish rulers of Greece, he was not a religious
enthusiast.2 It was true that the invaders had seized the
Greek bishoprics, that the metropolitan of Patras had dis
appeared in nameless exile,3 that a Latin prelate occupied
1 Epistola, bk. xiii., lett. 159 ; Canciani, Barbarorum Leges Antigua,
>»•> 493-534 ; X. r. M., 11. 7587-9, 7669.70, 7876-87, 7880-95 ; L. d. C,
399, 436 ; L. d. P., 31-2. 2 X. r. M., 11. 2017-97.
3 Ldmpros.Mixai/X'AKO/uw&Tou.ii., 356; Meliardkes/Iaropi'a roD Ba<r.Xe(ov
ttjs Niko(os, 114.

TREATY WITH VENICE 59
his see, and that more than a century elapses before we
hear of another Greek metropolitan of that diocese, and then
only in name.1 But, fortunately for the success of the
Frankish settlement, these extremely shrewd crusaders were
neither bigots nor fanatics. The greatest of the popes
might desire the union of the churches ; but he received
little assistance from the mundane barons who had founded
" a new France " in the Levant., On the contrary, they were
usually more disposed to oppress the Latin Church than to
help it in the hopeless task — hopeless then as now — of pro
selytising among a people, so wedded, at least to the forms
of their own religion, as the Greeks, whose leaders cared far
more for their religious freedom than for their political
independence, and were willing to barter the latter for the
former. Thus, aided by the Greek archons, and seconded
by Othon de la Roche of Athens, Villehardouin proceeded
to resume the siege of Akrocorinth, now held by Theodore,
brother of the Despot of Epiros. But a summons to attend
the parliament which the Emperor Henry had convened
at Ravenika in the spring of 1209, temporarily interrupted
the siege. The two friends, attended by sixty well-appointed
knights, appeared at the gathering ; Villehardouin became
"the man of the Emperor," 'and received as the reward of
his allegiance the office of Seneschal of Romania.2
His next step was to come to terms with Venice, which
he saw that he could not dislodge from the two Messenian
stations of Modon and Coron. The republic had just sent
out a new governor of her Peloponnesian colony, and
Villehardouin, hastening back from Ravenika, met him in
the summer on the island of Sapienza off Modon. The two
high contracting parties there executed a deed, by which
Villehardouin relinquished all claim to Modon and Coron,
whose territory was to extend as far north as the little
stream which falls into the bay of Navarino exactly opposite
the classic islet of Sphakteria. The two bishoprics were,
however, still to remain under the jurisdiction of the primate
of Achaia. He further did homage to the republic for all
1 Miklosich und Miiller, op. eit, i., 5, 8.
2 Henri de Valenciennes, ch. xxxiii.; Buchon, Recherches et Matfriaux,
i., 89, n. 2,

60 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
the land which had been assigned to her in the treaty of
partition as far as Corinth, " without prejudice, however, to
his fealty to his lord, the Emperor of Romania;" and in
token thereof, he undertook to send three silken garments to
Venice every year, one for the doge, the others for the
church of St Mark. He promised to conquer all that
portion of Lakonia which was not already his, to hand over
one-quarter thereof to the doge, and to do homage for the
remaining three-fourths. Finally, he pledged himself to
grant to all Venetian citizens free-trade throughout the
land, and a church, a warehouse, and a law-court of their
own in every town, while he himself and his successors were
to become Venetians, and own a house at Venice. By these
wise concessions, he secured the support of the republic for
his scheme of making himself lord of " Maureson," as the
deed quaintly styles the Morea. It was not long before he
required it.1
The news soon reached the Morea, that a cousin of
Champlitte, Robert by name, was on his way to claim the
succession. It had been stipulated on the departure of
Champlitte for France, that any lawful claimant must appear
to put forward his claim within the term of a year and a day,
otherwise the claim would lapse. Villehardouin, accordingly,
resolved to place every obstacle in the way of young Robert's
arrival. He wrote to the doge, asking his assistance, and
that crafty statesman managed to detain the passing guest
on one excuse or another for more than two months at
Venice. When at last Robert put to sea, the ship's captain
received orders to leave him on shore at the Venetian colony
of Corfu, and to apprise Villehardouin of what had occurred.
With difficulty Robert obtained a passage on board an
Apulian brig from Corfu to the port of St Zacharias, in the
Morea, the usual landing-place from Europe, better known
by its later name of Glarentza. In spite of the time thus
wasted on the journey, he had not yet exceeded the term
appointed, for he had twelve days still to spare. He at once
enquired where the bailie was, and, on being informed that
he was at Andravida, sent a messenger thither to request
1 Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. ii., B. xiii., 97-100; Dandolo
apud Muratori, xii., 336.

VILLEHARDOUIN OBTAINS ACHAIA 61
that horses might be sent for his journey. The messenger
found the crafty Villehardouin absent, but the captain of the
town, with the leading citizens, came down to the coast in
person to escort the claimant to his capital. There Robert
was told that the bailie was at Vlisiri, or La Glisiere, a castle
near Katakolo. His suspicions were now aroused, and before
proceeding thither, he obtained from the captain of Andravida
a certificate showing the date of his arrival in the country.
But Villehardouin, by moving from one place to another,
managed to avoid meeting him until the full period had
elapsed. Then at last he awaited Robert at Lacedaemonia,
where a parliament was summoned to examine into the
claimant's title. The parliament reported that the term had
expired a fortnight before, and that Robert had accordingly
forfeited his claim. The latter had no course open to him
but to acquiesce in this decision ; his wounded pride pre-
, vented him from accepting his rival's flattering offers, if he
would remain in the country ; and he returned to France,
leaving Geoffrey, to the great joy of his subjects, lord
(a<f>evT}js) of the Morea. Thus, according to the Chronicle
of the Morea} did Villehardouin obtain the principality for
himself by fraud and legal quibbles.' But behind these
quibbles lay the hard fact that the barons, who had borne
the burden and heat of the conquest, were reluctant to
receive as their prince an inexperienced youth accompanied
by a horde of needy followers. In the beginnings of all
dynasties a prince must be able ; and Geoffrey possessed
that combination of courage and craft, which both the bold
barons and the wily Greeks admired. Moreover, his tact
and his fairness towards them had particularly endeared him
to the latter.
No attempt was made to dispute the> decision of the
Achaian parliament, and the family of Champlitte hence
forth vanishes from the history of Greece. Innocent III.,2
who usually recognised accomplished facts, hastened to style
Villehardouin " Prince of Achaia " ; but the prince considered
1 X. T. M., 11. 2096-437; L. d. C, 59-69; L. d. P., 34-43- The
"Assizes of Jerusalem" confirm the account of the Chronicle. Beugnot,
Recueil des historiens des Croisades, Lois, ii., 401.
2 Epistola, bk. xiii., lett. 23 ; X. t. M., 11. 2770-2.

62 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
himself unworthy of the title, so long as he was not master
of the Peleponnesian quadrilateral. Accordingly, with the
assistance of the Greek archons, whom his tolerance had won
to his side, he now resumed the long-drawn siege of Corinth.
Othon de la Roche of Athens again supported him ; and, in
1210, the citadel at last surrendered, though its defender,
Theodore Angelos, succeeded in conveying the treasures of
the Corinthian Church to Argos, while many of the inhabi
tants sought and found a home on the impregnable rock of
Monemvasia, which now became a metropolitan see and a
place of exceptional importance as the last refuge of Hellenism.
For the other two Greek strongholds did not long survive
the fall of Corinth. Thanks to the maritime assistance of
his Venetian friends at Coron, Villehardouin was able to
reduce Nauplia, on condition that the lower and westernmost
of the two castles on Itsh Kaleh remained in the hands of the
Greeks — an arrangement which gave rise to the local names
of " Greeks' castle " and " Franks' castle," still current in the
seventeenth century. Finally, in 12 12, the Larissa of Argos
was taken, and the Athenian and Moreot rulers, with a dis
regard for ecclesiastical property which scandalised the pope,1
seized the treasures "of the Corinthian Church, which they
found there, and divided its goods among their followers.
As a still more substantial reward for his aid, Othon de la
Roche received Argos and Nauplia as fiefs of the principality
of Achaia, and an annual charge of 400 hyperperi (£179, 5 s.)
upon the tolls of Corinth.
The capture of Corinth led to the completion of the
ecclesiastical organisation of the principality. That city now
became the see of a second Latin archbishop, whose cathedral
bore the name of St Theodore the warrior, the patron of its
late defender, and under whom Innocent III. placed the
seven bishoprics of Argos, Damala (near the ancient Trcezen)
Monemvasia, "Gilas" (or Helos), "Gimenes" (or Zemeno)
—both former Greek bishoprics, the one in Lakonia, the other
near Sikyon— and the two Ionian dioceses of Cephalonia and
1 Epistola, bk. xiii., lett. 6, xv., 77 ; Miklosich und Miiller, ii., 287 ;
X. r. M., 2860-81 ; L. d. C, 89-91 ; C. d. M., 436; Sanudo, Istoria del
Regno di Romania, 100 ; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, 471.

ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH 63
Zante.1 But this arrangement was largely theoretical, and
was soon modified. Monemvasia was still, and long remained,
in the hands of the Greeks ; Helos was so poor that a bishop
was never appointed, and in 1223 was fused with the diocese
of Lacedaemonia ; Zemend, a year earlier, was amalgamated
with Corinth ; and at the same time, Damala, which had
never had a Latin bishop because it contained no Frankish
settlers, was divided between Corinth and Argos ; while
Cephalonia and Zante, which had been transferred in 1213 to
the nearer archbishopric of Patras, were made into a single
diocese. In 1222, also, Honorius III.,2 by the light of the
experience which he had then gained, reorganised the
suffragan bishoprics of Patras, dividing the diocese of
Veligosti, or Christianopolis, as it was called in ecclesiastical
parlance, by an adaptation of the classic name Megalopolis,
between the Messenian sees of Modon and Coron, and
amalgamating Amyklai with Lacedaemonia — an arrangement
confirmed by Innocent IV.3 Meanwhile, Lacedaemonia had
been transferred to the jurisdiction of Corinth, and a new
bishopric, that of Maina, arose in the place of Helos, so that
in the middle of the century, when the Frank principality
was at its zenith, the Roman Church in Achaia consisted of
the archbishopric of Patras, with its suffragans of Olena,
Cephalonia, Coron, and Modon (the last exempted, however,
by Alexander IV.4 from the jurisdiction of the primate), and
of that of Corinth, with its suffragans of Argos, Monemvasia,
Lacedaemonia, and Maina.
The organisation of the Church was a fruitful source of
quarrels. The Venetians had obtained the right to the
newly-created Latin patriarchate of Constantinople, and the
patriarch, as the representative of the pope in the Empire of
Romania, had the right of conferring the pallium upon
archbishops. But the primate of Achaia, a Frenchman, fretted
1 Epistola, bk. xv., lett. 58, 61 ; Buchon, Recherches historiques, i.,
pp. xxxix., lxi., Ixxxiii.; Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii JEvi, i., 188,
218. Albericus Trium Fontium (ii., 558) says, however, that in 1236
Argos was a suffragan bishopric of Athens, to which it belonged politi
cally. The golden bull of Andronikos II. in 1293, mentions both Helos
and Zemeno, which Neroutsos (AeXHov, iv., 95 n. 2) places near Sikyon.
2 Regesta, ii., 50, 163. 3 Registres, i., 212. i Registres, i., 188.

64 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
at being placed under the jurisdiction of a Venetian patriarch,
who had promised his government to appoint none but
Venetians to archbishoprics. He was not satisfied till his
assertion of independence, which Innocent III. refused to
sanction, was at last ratified by that great pope's successor.
His suffragans had inherited from their Greek predecessors
time-honoured but tiresome quarrels as to the boundaries of
their dioceses ; the clergy disputed with the bishops, the
Templars with the primate. Most of the French canons,
whom Champlitte had installed in the cathedral church of St
Andrew at Patras, where the relics of the saint were then
preserved, soon began to experience the usual French
malady of home-sickness, and sailed for " Europe." Many of
the Latin priests were absentees who drew the incomes,
without doing the work, of their livings ; many more were
mere adventurers who tried to obtain benefices under false
pretences. The primate himself was suspended by Honorius
III. for squandering the goods of the Church, and Archbishop
Walter of Corinth sent back to his monastery for misconduct
by Innocent III. The correspondence of Innocent, who took
the keenest interest in the establishment of Catholicism in
the realm of Romania, is full of complaints against the
hostile attitude of the Franks towards the Latin clergy.
Nowhere were his complaints better grounded than in
Achaia, and nowhere was the Catholic Church in so pitiful
a plight. The primate was not safe even in his own palace.
Aleman, who, as we saw, had received Patras as a fief, consider
ing the archiepiscopal plan of fortifying the town against
pirates amateurish, carried the archbishop off to prison, cut
off the nose of his bailie, and hastily converted his residence
and the adjacent church of St Theodore into the present
castle, using the drums of ancient columns and pieces of
sculpture with all the Franks' scorn for archaeology.
Fragments of ecclesiastical architecture, and what was
apparently once the archiepiscopal throne, may still be seen
built into the walls. Villehardouin himself was not much
better. He neither paid tithes himself, nor compelled his
Greek and Latin subjects to pay them, though he and his
barons had sworn on the Holy Sacrament to do so, if they
returned safe from battle against the Despot of Epiros;

THE ATHENIAN COURT 65
he forced the clergy to plead disputed cases before his
secular tribunals, " making no difference between the priests
and the laity," as the pope exclaimed in horror; he not
only curtailed the ancient possessions of the metropolitan
see of Patras, but forbade the pious to grant it more, and, in
pursuance of his philhellenic policy, he relieved the Greek
priests and monks from the jurisdiction of the archbishop,
bidding them pay dues to him alone, while the Greek serfs
were not allowed to show due obedience to the Latin Church.
Moreover, most of the Greek bishops who had been placed
under the archbishop's jurisdiction, had fled at the outset
from fear of the conquerors, and declined to return. The
archbishop's suffragans told much the same story, though
things were better in the Venetian possessions in Messenia.
Yet even there, the governor of Coron forbade the bishop to
enter his cathedral or to reside in the castle. Innocent III.
might well write that " the new plantation of Latins, which
the hand of God has transported to the parts of Achaia,
seems to have less firm roots in consequence of the recent
change." 1
Meanwhile, the Burgundian Lord of Athens had been
engaged in transplanting the feudal system to his classic
state. But there was a considerable difference between
feudal society in Attica and in the Morea. While in the
latter principality the prince was merely primus inter pares
among a number of proud and powerful barons, at Athens
the " Great Lord " had, at the most, one exalted noble, the
head of the great house of St Omer, near his throne. It is
obvious from the silence of all the authorities, that the
Burgundians, who settled with Othon de la Roche in his
Greek dominions, were men of inferior social position to him
self — a fact farther demonstrated by the comrJarative lack in
Attica and Bceotia of those baronial castles, so common in
the Morea. He had, therefore, less necessity for providing
important fiefs for personages of distinction than had the
princes of Achaia. Indeed, it is probable that in one respect
the court of Athens under the De la Roche resembled the
1 Epistola Innocentii 111., bk. viii., lett. 153; xii., 143; xiii., 26, 50,
51, 56, 143, 161-5, 171-3; xv., 44, 46, 47, 55 ; Regesta Honorii III., ii.,
85, 255 ; Les Registres d Innocent IV., iii., 61 ; Eubel, i., 218. E

66 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
present court of King George, namely, that there was no one,
except the members of his own family, with whom the ruler
could associate on equal terms. But, as in modern, so in
Frankish Athens, the family of the sovereign was soon
numerous enough to form a coterie of its own. Not only
did Othon marry, soon after his arrival in Greece, Isabelle,
heiress of Guy de Ray, in Franche-Comte, by whom he had
two sons, but the news of their adventurous relative's
astounding good fortune attracted to Attica several members
of his clan from their homes in Burgundy. They doubtless
received their share of the good things which had fallen to
Othon ; at any rate, we know that one of his nephews, Guy,
who had undergone with him the risks of the Crusade,
divided with his uncle the lordship of Thebes, and that a
little later the other half was bestowed upon a niece named
Bonne, who, after marrying young Demetrios, King of
Salonika, brought her share of the Boeotian barony to her
second husband, Bela de St Omer. Another nephew,
William, settled in Greece, and ultimately became by marriage
Baron of Veligosti ; a sister of Othon became the mother of
the future Baron of Karystos,. Othon de Cicon ; while a more
distant relative, Peter, was appointed governor of the Castle
of Athens.1 Other Burgundians will have followed in their
wake; for in the thirteenth century Greece was to the
younger sons of French noble houses what the British
Colonies were fifty years ago to impecunious but energetic
Englishmen. There was yet another marked distinction between Attica
and the Morea. Niketas mentions no great local magnates
as settled at Athens or Thebes in the last days of the
Byzantine Empire, and those were the most important places
of the Frankish state. We hear, indeed, of Theban archons
in 1209; but, with that exception, during the whole century
for which the Frankish sway existed over Athens, not a single
Greek of eminence is so much as named by any writer.'
1 Epistola Innocentii III., bk. xi., lett. 244 ; Guillaume, Histoire des
Sires de Salins, i., 67, 83 ; L. d. P., 44.
2 The treaty between Ravano dalle Carceri and Venice and the deed
of 1 2 16 (see below) specially mention "Graci Magnates" in Negroponte.
Lampros, M»x»^X 'AnopwArov, ii., 277, 280. Michael Laskaris, the Athenian

BURGUNDIAN ATHENS 67
Thus, whereas Crete, Negroponte, and the Morea still
retained old native families, which, in the case of Crete,
furnished leaders for constant insurrections against the
foreigner, and in that of Negroponte showed a tendency to
emigrate to the court of Nice, nothing of the kind occurred
in Burgundian Athens. It is only at a much later period
that we hear of a Greek party there. That the sway of
Othon was mild, may be inferred from the fact that friends
of Michael Akomindtos, and even his own nephew, returned
from their exile to Athens, and were quite content to remain
there under the Latin sway.1 As for the peasants, their lot
must have been the same as that of their fellows in Achaia.
Othon's dominions were large, if measured by the small
standard of classical Greece. Burgundian Athens embraced
Attica, Bceotia, Megaris, the fortresses of Argos and Nauplia,
and the ancient Opuntian Lokris. The Marquis of Boudonitza
on the north, the Lord of Salona on the west, were the
neighbours, and the latter, later on, the vassal, of the Sire of
Athens, his bulwarks against the expanding power of the
Greek Despot of Epiros. Thus situated, the Athenian state
had a considerable coast-line and at least four ports — the
Piraeus, Nauplia, the harbour of Atalante opposite Eubcea,
and Livadostro, or Rive d'Ostre, as the Franks called it, on
the Gulf of Corinth — the usual port of embarkation for the
West. Yet the Burgundian rulers of Athens made little
attempt to create a navy, confining themselves to a little
amateur piracy. The strictly professional pirate availed
himself of this lack of sea-power to ply his trade in the early
Frankish, as in the late Byzantine days ; Latin corsairs,
named Capelletti, regardless of the fact that Attica was now
a Latin state, rendered its coast unsafe, a sail down the
Corinthian Gulf was called " a voyage to Acheron," and the
bishop of Thermopylae had to move his residence farther
inland to escape these sea-robbers.2
We are not told where Othon resided ; but it is probable
that, like his successor, he held his court at Thebes, the most
patriot of the fourteenth century, in K. Rhangabes play, "The Duchess of
Athens," is unhappily a poetic anachronism.
1 Lampros, Mix^X ' Ako/mv&tov, ii., 267, 301.
2 Regesta Honorii HI., ii., 167 ; Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 61.

68 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
important town of his estates. Both the Akropolis at Athens,
the " Castle of Sathines," as it came to be called, and the
Kadmeia at Thebes, were under the command of a military
governor, and both places were the residences of Latin arch
bishops. In the room of Akomindtos, in the magnificent
church of Our Lady of Athens, a Frenchman, Berard, perhaps
Othon's chaplain, was installed as archbishop, with the
sanction of Innocent 1 1 1., who took the church and chapter
of Athens under his protection. " The renewal of the divine
grace," wrote the enthusiastic pope to Berard, "suffers not
the ancient glory of the city of Athens to grow old. The
citadel of most famous Pallas has been humbled to become
the seat of the most glorious Mother of God. Well may we
call this city ' Kirjathsepher,' which, when Othniel had sub
dued to the rule of Caleb, ' he gave him Achsah, his daughter
to wife.'"1 Cardinal Benedict, the papal legate who was
sent to arrange ecclesiastical affairs in the East, fixed the
number of the canons, and the pope granted the request of
the archbishop and chapter, that the Athenian Church should
be governed by the customs of the Church of Paris. He
also confirmed the ancient jurisdiction of the archbishop,
derived from the days of the Greek metropolitans, over the
eleven sees of Negroponte, Thermopylae, Daulia, Avlonari,2
Oreos,3 Karystos, Koronea, Andros, Megara, Skyros, and
Keos — an arrangement which was modified by his successor,
who merged the three Eubcean sees of Avlonari, Oreos, and
Karystos, with that of Negroponte, and placed Salona and
^Egina under Archbishop Conrad of Athens.4
Innocent mentions among the possessions of the Church
of Athens, and confirms to its use, Phyle, Menidi, and
1 Epistola, bk. xi., lett. 111-13,238, 240, 252, 256, quoting Judges, i.,
12-13. 2 So Neroutsos (Aekriov, iv., 59) and Prof. Bury (The Lombards and
Venetians in Euboia, 11) interpret the papal adjective Abelonensem,
putting this see at Avlonari, south of Kyme. A bishop of Avalona is
mentioned in 1343. (Predelli, Commemoriali, ii., 123, 126.)
3 The most probable interpretation of the word Zorconensem, as Oreos
in North Eubcea is known to have been a Greek bishopric. Nerofltsps
and Prof. Bury (11. cc.) identify the place with Zarka, near Karystos.
4 Melanges de P/cole franeaise de Rome, 1895, p. 74 ; Regesta Horwrii
III., ii., 50, 163 ; Registres de Gr/goire IX., ii., 40-1, 629.

THE ATHENIAN CHURCH 69
Marathon; the monasteries of Kaisariane (Sancti Siriani),
St John (the Hunter), St Nicholas of the Columns (probably
near Cape Colonna or Sunium), St Mary of Blachernai, St
Nicholas of Katapersica, St Kosmas and St Damian (whom
the Greeks call the "Ayiot 'Avdpyvpoi), St George of the
Island,1 and St Luke. To the Athenian Church belonged,
too, " the markets of Negroponte and Athens, and the rivers,"
not very full of water, it is to be feared, " whence the gardens
are watered." The Church was to enjoy its ancient exemption
from all exactions of the secular authorities ; no man was " to
lay rash hands upon it or its possessions," no one was " to
harass it with vexations of any kind." Such was the
privileged position of the Church of Athens, which Inno
cent2 confirmed, obviously from the documents ofthe former
Greek metropolitan see, in 1208. But the theory was very
different from the reality. Othon de la Roche was, indeed,
at times inclined to further the interests of the Church. Thus,
we find him begging the pope to appoint a Catholic priest
in every castle and town of his estates where twelve Latins
had fixed their abodes, and he was willing to hold the import
ant Boeotian fortress of Livadia as a fief of the Holy See,
and to pay two silver marks a year as rent for it.3 But, when
it suited his purpose, he did not hesitate to infringe the
privileges of his Church. Soon after his marriage, possibly
to provide a place for one of his wife's relatives, he compelled
Berard to give him the appointment to the post of ecclesi
astical treasurer — -an appointment which the pope revoked.
Both he and other feudal lords of continental Greece, like
Villehardouin in the Morea, forbade their subjects to give or
bequeath their possessions to the Church, levied dues from
the clergy, and showed no desire either to pay; tithes them
selves, or to make the Greek and Latin population pay them.
At Thebes matters were worse than at Athens. Othon and
his nephew Guy, the joint owners of that city, seized the
greater part of the archbishop's revenue under the guise of
1 Makronesi, opposite Lavrion — the monastery mentioned above as a
lair of pirates in the time of Akomindtos. Neroutsos, however (AeXWoc,
iv., 70), identifies it with St George (Belbina), off Sunium, and Our Lady
of Blachernai with Daphni.
2 Epistola, bk. xi., lett. 256. 3 Muratori, Antiquitates Italiae, v., 234-

70 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
land-tax, so that the Theban Church found its income thus
arbitrarily reduced from 900 to 200 hyperperi (from ^403 to
£90) ; later on, however, the lords of Thebes relented, and
contented themselves with an annual contribution of £72 from
the Theban chapter. But out of his income the archbishop
was requested by the pope to assist his two wretchedly poor
suffragans of Zaratoria and Kastoria — places which have been
identified with Zagora on Helicon and Kastalia. Instead of
doing so, the dean and canons of Thebes, assisted by the
captain of the Kadmeia and other laymen, broke into the
house of the bishop of Zaratoria, and carried off a man from
his very arms. In short, the domestic quarrels of the Latin
Church, whose best representatives did not come to Greece,
must have been edifying to the Greeks. Now we find the
Theban archbishop harassing and excommunicating his
canons ; now it is the canons of Athens, who are too proud
to serve personally in the noblest of all cathedrals — the
majestic Parthenon, where, later on, a descendant of Othon
himself was glad to find a modest stall.1
As in the Morea, so in continental Greece, the military
orders and the monks from the west obtained lands and
monasteries. The splendid monastery of the Blessed Luke
between Delphi and Livadia, the gem of all Byzantine
foundations in Greece, was given to the prior and chapter of
the Holy Sepulchre. The Knights of St John held property
near Thebes, and seized the goods of the Thessalian bishopric
of Gardiki, and even the episcopal residence, heedless of its
inmate's thunders. The Templars held " the church of Sta.
Lucia," outside Thebes, Ravenika, and the neighbouring
town of Lamia, where they built a castle, probably that
which still stands on the hill there.2 Othon de la Roche gave
the beautiful Athenian monastery of Daphni, which still bears
the marks of his followers' lances on its splendid cupola, to
the Cistercians of the Burgundian Abbey of Bellevaux, to
1 Neroutsos in AeKrlov, iv., 59; Innocent III., Epistola, bk. xi., lett.
116, 118, 121, 153, 244, 246 ; xiii., 15, 16, no ; xiv., no; xv., 26, 30.
2 Ibid., xiii., 114, 115, 120, 136, 143, 144 ; xv., 69. I believe that the
ecclesia Sanctoe Lucia qua Fota nuncupatur is none other than the
famous church of St Luke, outside Thebes, containing his spurious tomb.
The papal orthography is very shaky.

THE GREEK CHURCH 71
which he was devotedly attached, and at Dalphino, or Dal-
phinet, as the Franks called it, the last Athenian duke of his
house found his grave. The Cruciferi, or " Crutched Friars,"
of Bologna had a hospice at Negroponte. The Minorites
followed Benedict of Arezzo to Greece in 1 2 1 6, and established
their monasteries in various parts of the country. A century
later their abbey near Athens, probably "the Frankish
monastery " at the foot of Pentelikon, figured in the will of
Duke Walter of Brienne, and in 1260 their "province of
Romania" embraced the three districts of Negroponte,
Thebes, and Glarentza, where their church of St Francis is
mentioned in the Chronicle of the Morea as a place where the
High Court of the principality met. At the end of the
fourteenth century they had twelve monasteries in Greece,
two of which still survive under another form — the church of
Sta. Maria delle Grazie at Zante, and the orthodox monastery
of Sisia in Cephalonia, which still bears the emblem of the
Franciscans and preserves in its name the memory of Assisi,
whence St Francis came.1
The Greek Church had been better treated than might
have been expected from the way in which St Mary's minster
on the Akropolis had been seized. It is true that from the
time of Akomindtos no Greek metropolitan of Athens fixed
his residence in that city till the close of the fourteenth
century, but the titular metropolitan resided at Con
stantinople, after its recapture by the Greeks, and is often
mentioned in the fourteenth century as a member of the
Holy Synod. But the Greek bishop of Negroponte, who
had done obeisance to the Latin archbishop of Athens, was
allowed by Innocent III. to retain his see.2 Akomindtos
himself even ventured over once from Keos to the scene of
his former labours, but he hastened his returrf, " from fear of
becoming a morsel for the teeth of the Italians," as he calls
the Burgundians of Athens.8 Yet, though he was too honest
1 Wadding, Annates Minorum, i., 202 ; ii., 206 ; iv., 350 ; Regesta
Honorii III., i., 59, 60, 61, 168; X. r. M., 11. 2659, 7518 ; Romanos,
Tpariavbs Zcipfijs, 38, 39 ; D'Arbois de Jubain ville, Voyage paUographique,
336 ; Meliardkes, Teuiypatpla, x-oXcruri) too vopiov KetpaWrivlas, pp. 36, 1 78.
2 Epistola, bk. xi., lett. 179 ; Miklosich und. Miiller, i., 453, 456, 459,
476,477,488,498,558,564. 3 Lampros, Mixa^jX 'Ako/ilv6,tov, ii., 327.

72 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
or too proud to recognise the authority of the Frenchman
who sat on his metropolitan throne, he recommended the
abbot of Kaisariane, who had come to terms with the
Franks, to render obedience to the powers that be. Even
in his island he was not long free from Latin rule, for the
brothers Ghisi and their allies occupied Keos soon after
his arrival, and suspected him of secret intrigues with the
Greek Despot of Epiros. Age crept on, one after another his
old friends died ; worst blow of all, his brother, Niketas,
the historian, died also, commemorated by the exile in a
touching monody, still preserved, which is, however, a less
enduring monument than his own valuable history. A few
books, saved by friends from the wreck of his library,
occasional presents from his old admirers at Athens, now
and then a letter from one of his former flock, may have
cheered a little the long days of his solitude. Above all, he
found distraction in the theorems of Euclid. More than
once a message came from the imperial court of Nice,
bidding him join the Greek patriarch there, and offering
him the vacant post of metropolitan of Naxos. At another
time the Despot Theodore of Epiros invited him to his
court at Arta ; but he was practically a political prisoner in
his cell; his strength was failing; he could not, in that
uncivilised spot, carry out the treatment prescribed by his
doctor ; he could scarcely cross his own threshold. He had
but one pleasure left — to gaze across the sea at the coast of
Attica.1 At last the end came, and about 1220 the grand
old ecclesiastic died, alone in his humble cell of the monastery
of St John the Baptist, founded by one of the Comneni. One
of his nephews pronounced a monody over him, which has
survived. The monastery, however, has disappeared, but a
modern Greek geographer found that its church had become
a public school.2 It is to be hoped that the pupils learn
something of the life of the last metropolitan of Byzantine
Athens, a man worthy to take his place beside the patriots
of classical days.
Meanwhile, the Franks of Northern Greece were by
1 Lampros, op. eit, i., 345 sqq. ; ii., 154, 219, 236, 242-43, 295, 301,
311, 326, 328 ; 'Ap/tovla, III., 273-284.
2 Meliardkes, Kim, 225.

THE LOMBARD REBELLION 73
no means unitedly striving to develop their newly-won
dominions. After the death of Boniface, the relations
between the kingdom of Salonika and the empire of
Romania, which had been strained in his lifetime, had
become hostile in the extreme. The Count of Biandrate
and the Lombard nobles of Salonika were resolved to shake
off the feudal tie which bound them to the empire, and most
of the great lords of northern Greece, the baron of Larissa,
the Marquis of Boudonitza, Ravano dalle Carceri of Eubcea,
and two brothers from Canossa, who seem to have owned
lands near the skdla of Oropos,1 joined their party. Their
attempt to secure the aid of Othon de la Roche failed, but
his espousal of the emperor's cause cost him the temporary
loss of Thebes, which Albertino of Canossa attacked, and
of which that Italian rebel styled himself " Lord." The
Count of Biandrate now openly claimed in the name of the
infant king of Salonika, or of his half-brother, William,
Marquis of Montferrat, all the land from Durazzo to
Megara, the Peloponnese, and the suzerainty over Epiros.
The emperor replied by marching into Salonika to suppress
the revolt. Biandrate was imprisoned in the castle of Serres,
which was bestowed upon his gaoler, the loyal Count
Berthold von Katzenellenbogen of Velestino ; but the other
Lombard leaders withdrew to the castle of Larissa, whither
Henry followed them. Like the Greeks in the war of 1897,
they had neglected to destroy the bridge over the Peneios,
the pont de FArse, as the chronicler calls it; the imperial
force crossed it, and forced the adjoining castle on the old
Akropolis to surrender. The kindly, tactful emperor showed
a wise clemency to the rebels, and allowed the baron of
Larissa to retain his fiefs. The Greeks, whom Henry had
" treated as his own people," 2 everywhere received him with
enthusiasm ; at Halmyros, his next stopping-place, they met
him with the eikons, and wished him " many years " of life
(ttoWo. xpdvia). But the rebellion was not yet quelled. The
Marquis of Boudonitza, Albertino of Canossa, and Ravano
dalle Carceri were still up in arms, and the triarch of Eubcea,
1 Epistola Innocentii III., ii., 480, 482, 636 ; Cairels apud Buchon,
Histoire des ConquGtes, 449.
2 Akropolita, 31.

74 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
who as an island-baron could dispose of a flotilla, tried to
capture a vessel from before the emperor's eyes in the
harbour of Halmyros. Henry's advisers prudently suggested
negotiations, with the object of stopping the fratricidal war.
Summonses were issued to a parliament, to be held in May
1209, in the valley of Ravenika, near Lamia, which, as we
saw, Othon de la Roche and Villehardouin attended, and at
which the latter became the emperor's vassal, and received
as the reward of his allegiance the office of Seneschal of
Romania. But if the ambitious bailie of Achaia had good
reasons for supporting the emperor, who might be expected
in turn to sanction his projected usurpation of the princi
pality, the Lombard barons, instead of attending the
parliament, remained defiantly behind the walls of the
Kadmeia at Thebes. Thither Henry now set out by way
of Thermopylae, sleeping a night at the rebel castle of
Boudonitza on the way. The native population bowed
before him ; at Thebes, Greek priests and archons came out
to greet him with such a glad sound of drums and trumpets
that the ground shook, while the Latin archbishop and
clergy escorted him to the minster of Our Lady, where he
fell on his knees and returned thanks to God for his past
successes. The castle was, however, strong, and its defenders
stubborn, so that it was not till he had ordered long scaling
ladders to be applied to the walls, that Ravano and Albertino
asked for an armistice. Once again the emperor was
merciful ; Thebes, indeed, he restored to his trusty Othon de
la Roche, its legal owner ; but he ordered Biandrate to be
released, and allowed the rebels to retain their fiefs. Then
Henry was able to proceed to Athens, the first emperor who
had visited the city since Basil, " the Bulgar-slayer," nearly
two centuries earlier, had come there in triumph. Like
Basil II., Henry ascended to the Akropolis, and " offered up
prayers in the minster of Athens,1 which men call Our
Lady, and Othon de la Roche, who was lord thereof— for to
him the Marquis (of Montferrat) had given it, paid him
every honour in his power." After two days' stay, he set
out for Negroponte, accompanied by the "Great Lord" ; on
1 Henri de Valenciennes (ed. P. Paris), ch. xxxv. Buchon in his
two editions reads Thebes for Athaines.

ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS 75
the way he was warned that his arch-enemy, Biandrate,
had preceded him thither, and was plotting to have him
assassinated in his bed. The plot, however, failed, owing to
the chivalry of the emperor's late foe, Ravano. " The city of
Negroponte," quoth the triarch, " is mine ; my head shall
answer for your safety there." The gentleman of Verona
was as good as his word ; he bitterly reproached Biandrate
with his treachery ; the emperor spent three days in
Negroponte as his guest, enthusiastically welcomed by the
Greeks, who even escorted him to the Latin church of Notre
Dame, and then returned safe and sound to Thebes. The
Lombard rebellion was at an end. So great was his prestige
at this moment, that the crafty Despot of Epiros did him
homage. The silvery eloquence of the emperor's envoy,
Conon de Bethune, one of the most distinguished poets of
the day, as well as one of the best fighters in the crusading
army, had such an effect on the Greek ruler, that he presented
his daughter's hand and a third of his lands to the emperor's
brother.1 We have seen how constant were the conflicts between
the Frankish barons and the Latin clergy. During his
progress through Thessaly and his visit to Eubcea, the
emperor must have heard much about the question, for the
two Thessalian archbishops of Larissa and Neopatras had
both caused public scandals — the one by unjust exactions
from his suffragans and the monasteries in his diocese, the
other by helping Sgouros to defend Corinth and by slaying
his fellow-Latins. Moreover, in both Thessaly and Eubcea,
the barons maltreated the Church, occupying monasteries and
churches and molesting the religious orders.2 Henry
accordingly thought it a favourable moment to come to an
agreement with the Roman hierarchy, and therefore sum
moned a second parliament at Ravenika in May 1210, for
the purpose of arranging ecclesiastical affairs. All the chief
feudal lords of Northern Greece were present — Othon de la
1 Henri de Valenciennes, chs. xviii., xxix. -xxxviii. The author,
obviously an eye-witness, was, according to some, the emperor himself.
Epistola Innocentii 111., bk. xiii., lett. 184.
2 Ibid., bk. xi., lett. 117, 154 ; xiii., 104, 109, 136, 137, 192, 299 5 xiv.,
94, 98.

76 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
Roche and Ravano dalle Carceri ; the Marquis of Boudonitza
and Thomas de Stromoncourt of Salona; Nicholas de St
Omer and Albertino of Canossa ; the two great Thessalian
barons, William of Larissa and Count Berthold of Velestino ;
and Rainer of Travaglia, owner of the spot where the
parliament met, to whom the emperor had also transferred
the Templars' castle of Lamia. There came, too, three out
of the four archbishops of the north — their graces of Athens,
Neopatras, and Larissa, with eight of their suffragans — a
thoroughly representative assembly of Church and State.
A concordat, subsequently approved by Innocent III., was
then drawn up, by the terms of which all churches,
monasteries, and other ecclesiastical possessions, "from the
boundary of the kingdom of Salonika to Corinth," were
entrusted, free of all feudal services, to the Latin patriarch
of Constantinople, as representing the pope. On the other
hand, it was stipulated that the clergy, whether Greek or
Latin, should pay the old Byzantine akrdstichon, or land-tax,
to the temporal authorities ; and that, in default of payment,
their goods might be siezed ; but the family of a Greek
priest could not be imprisoned, if he failed to pay. His sons,
if unordained, were, however, liable to render feudal services ;
but after ordination they were to enjoy the same privilege
as the Roman clergy.1 The concordat of Ravenika was not,
however, signed by the ruler of the Morea, who continued to
pursue his anti-clerical policy, seizing the goods of the
Archbishop of Patras, and annulling all gifts to his see.
Even in continental Greece, to which it specially applied, the
concordat often remained a dead letter. Thus, both Othon de
la Roche and Villehardouin were subsequently excommuni
cated by their respective archbishops for appropriating
church property, and also placed under an interdict by the
Latin patriarch of Constantinople, who laid claim to the
monasteries and ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the diocese of
Thebes.2 The Lombard rebellion had a more lasting result than
the summoning of the parliaments at Ravenika— the intro-
1 Text in Honorii III., Opera, iv., 414-16, and Epistola Imwcentii III.,
»•, 835-7- 2 Ibid., bk. xvi., 08.

VENICE IN EUBCEA 77
duction of Venetian influence into the island of Eubcea.
Ravano dalle Carceri, before he had made his peace with
Henry, had been so much alarmed at his isolated position,
that he had offered, through his brother, the bishop of
Mantua, to become the vassal of Venice. His offer gave the
Venetians the opportunity of making good their claims to
the island, which the partition treaty had given them, but
which they had not yet advanced. Ravano accordingly, in
1 209, recognised the republic as his suzerain, promising to
send every year 2100 gold hyperperi (£940, 16s.) and a silken
garment woven with gold to the doge, as well as an altar-
cloth for St Mark's. The Venetians were to have the right
of trading wherever they wished, and a church and a warehouse
in all the towns of the island. With their usual care for the
interests of the natives, of which we have already seen an
instance at Corfu, they made Ravarto promise to keep the
Greeks in the same state as they had been in the time of the
Emperor Manuel. The republic of St Mark thus obtained,
without trouble, most of the practical advantages which
would have accrued from a conquest of the island. A
Venetian bailie was soon appointed to govern the Venetian
settlements in the island of Negroponte,1 and the history of
Eubcea from that date till the Turkish Conquest shows the
gradual spread of his authority over the whole of it. The
first step in this direction was taken after the death of
Ravano in 12 16. The Venetian bailie, acting on the system
of divide et impera, then intervened between the six claimants
to the island — Ravano's widow and daughter, two nephews
whom he had adopted, and the two sons of Giberto, the
former triarch. The bailie divided the island into sixths,
giving two-sixths to each pair of claimants, with the proviso
that if one hexarch, or sestiere, died, his fellow, and not his
heir, should succeed to his share. This system left the
bailie the real arbiter of the island. Though its capital
remained common to all the hexarchs, who usually
resided there and had their own judge, " the Podesta of the
1 Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. ii., B. xiii., 89-96 ; Laurentius de
Monacis, 143-4 ; A. Dandolo apud Muratori, xii., 336. The first bailie is
mentioned in 1216, but one may have been appointed as early as 121 1;
he is styled " in toti insula bajulus.''

78 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
Lombards," and only the part near the sea was subject to
Venetian jurisdiction, the bailie's authority became pre
dominant, and Ravano's former palace was soon converted
into his official residence. The hexarchs and the Greek
magnates swore fealty to him as the representative of the
republic, and the value of his services may be estimated from
the amount of his salary — at first 450 gold hyperperi
(£20 1, 12 s.), and then, after the capture of Constantinople by
the Greeks, increased, as his position became more important,
to 1000 hyperperi (£448) — as compared with the 250 hyperperi
(£1 12), paid to each of the castellani, or captains, of Coron and
Modon. Venetian weights and measures were introduced
into all the towns of the island,1 two Venetian judges and
three councillors (afterwards reduced to two, and entrusted
with levying the dues) had already been appointed, and the
church of St Mark at Chalkis, which belonged to the church
of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, was endowed by the
hexarchs, and was subsequently supported by death-duties
of 2 J per cent, on all the property of deceased members of
the Venetian colony. A considerable number of Venetian
settlers now arrived, and there also flocked to the island
impecunious " gentlemen of Verona," relatives of the feudal
lords, so that it soon contained quite a large and fairly
harmonious western society, for the Lombard character
harmonised better than that of the warlike French with the
mercantile Venetians. Castles rose all over the long island,
the imposing ruins of which still remain to tell of the days of
Lombard rule. On the way to Eretria the traveller passes
at the village of Basilikd a large, square tower, whose only
entrance is a hole 25 feet from the ground ; on a hill behind
the village stands the large castle of Filla, while two tall
towers, close together on another eminence, dominate the
Lelantian plain, no less fertile now than in the days of
Theognis, and still called Lilanto in the Lombard times.2
A large mediaeval castle still rises to the right of Aliveri,
and the author has seen another between Achmetaga and
Limne. We often hear of La Cuppa, near Avlonari, of
1 Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 179-80; Predelli, Liber Communis,
PP- 34, 97 5 Bifrons, fol. 71 ; Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, xiii., 175-84.
2 Ibid., xiv., 132 ; Sanudo a/«</Hopf, Chroniques, 127.

VENICE IN EUBCEA 79
Larmena, near Styra, and of La Clisura, which commanded
the gorge or clisura, between Chalkis and Achmetaga,
while, if little remains of the once famous fortress of Oreos
in the north, Karystos in the south still boasts its Castel
Rosso. From these strongholds the Lombard barons would
issue forth to scour the seas in quest of rich booty ; and, in
the intervals of piracy, met in each others' palaces in the
common capital, where brilliant balls were often held. There,
too, besides Lombards and Venetians, was the Jewish colony,
which Benjamin of Tudela had found there, and which
naturally continued to exist under the auspices of Venice.
A large proportion of the taxation was placed upon it ; in
1355 it was confined in a ghetto on the southern side of the
town, and the public executioner was selected from its ranks.
It was, however, attracted to the island, as to Thebes, by the
manufacture of silk, from which the Venetian bailie was ex
pressly not debarred. Otherwise Venice, unlike Great Britain,
did not wish her Levantine consuls to be men engaged in
business. Hence she was well served and well informed.
In yet another part of the Greek world the Venetians
succeeded in gaining substantial advantages without the
expense of annexation. We have seen how the crafty
Despot of Epiros had done homage to the Emperor Henry,
then at the summit of his good fortune. But that "most
potent traitor," as the emperor called him, aided by Franks
whom he had taken into his pay, again and again broke his
solemn vows to his suzerain, and in 12 10 recognised the over-
lordship of Venice over all his dominions, from Durazzo to
" Nepantum " or Naupaktos, promising to give the Venetians
a quarter in every town and the right of exporting corn, to
protect their young colony in Corfu against Albanians or
Corfiotes, and to pay to the republic a tribute of 42 lbs.
of hyperperi (£2063, 12s.) every year. Thus the republic
became the suzerain of those territories in Epiros and
^Etolia which had been assigned to her in the partition
treaty,1 while the Despot felt at liberty to carry out his
1 Innocent III., Epistola, bk. xiii., lett. 184. Pontes Rerum Austria-
carum, xiii.,. 119-23. This is, so far as I know, the earliest use of
" Nepantum " — the transition form between " Naupaktos " and " Lepanto."
In the accounts of this treaty by A. Dandolo (Muratori, xii., 336), and

80 THE ORGANISATION OF THE CONQUEST
ambitious designs in other directions. The fall of the Argive
fortresses, which his brother held for him in the Peloponnese,
ended, however, any plans which he might have had for the
extension of his rule to the south of the Gulf of Corinth ; but
he penetrated eastward into the territory of the French Lord
of Salona. With the aid of the men of Galaxidi, the little
town which the traveller passes as he steams into the bay of
Itea, and which rendered such noble services to the Greek
cause in the War of Independence, the Despot routed the
Franks in a pitched battle at Salona, in which Thomas de
Stromoncourt was slain. Faithless to all his engagements,
the victor next turned westward, and, in spite of his solemn
pledges, conquered the fine island of Corfu, where the
Venetian colony had scarcely taken root, and where the
natives gladly welcomed a ruler of their own race and religion.
The local tradition ascribes to him the castle of Sant' Angelo,
built to repel the attacks of Genoese pirates, which still
stands, an imposing ruin, high above the western shore of the
island, near the monastery of Palaiokastrizza. The Greek
clergy long afterwards cited his golden bull confirming their
privileges. Possessed of such wide dominions, he might well
coin his own money. A bronze coin, attributed to him,
bearing his effigy and that of St Demetrios on one side, and
the figure of the Archangel Michael on the other, has been
found in Epiros ; one of his leaden seals, also showing the
Archangel Michael, was discovered in Corfu.1 But his triumph
was not for long. He was murdered in bed by a slave in
1214,2 and it was reserved for his brother Theodore, an abler
general, and an even more unscrupulous statesman, to
prosecute his policy of expansion. Partisan hatred still
obscures the history of these two reigns. The latest Greek
historian of Epiros regards the first two Despots as patriots
Laurentius de Monacis (p. 144) we find " Neopantum" and " Neopatum."
The Livre de la Conqueste (p. 323) calls it " Nepant," and it so figures
on the coins of Philip of Taranto.
1 Sdthas, XpovLKbv toD raUfcLSlov, 201 ; Roman6s, Uepirov Aemrm-iiroii rqs
Hirclpov, 23 ; Barone, Notizie Storiche di Re Carlo 111. di Durazzo, 61 ;
Marmora, Historia di Corf A, 210 ; Buchon, Recherches et Matbiaux, ii.,
211, and Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 403; Mustoxidi, Delle Cose
Corciresi, 400-1 ; Schlumberger, Numismatique, 373.
2 Akropolita, 27.

XXSKFROS

S'ZaAaria^/'" . 'mdanyta, ~\^ie9'V2i^ " nam\Jj) fXpaoRos-'^ — IEITOS

^x

x

L  3 Ducky of the Archipelago
J Palatine Cvuitbf of Ceph/.ils>nios.
E3H Mrj-rqiMJicUss of Cerigo and GerUfotto
_j Greek, Posh •esshans (DpspntatofKpiros,(\>ft'ii.f'(ij.-o, Leukas,and Mm
Prmyiftohly of ' Aehaub . .
VerteUarv CblonUa (Modxm, Coron,, ChaUds)
H TJtre&Saroniea afiJEuboeob, wiai Aeginou.
¦ Lordship ofAthenB^-witfoiraJupluv a^ui Argos.
The capitals of* QievarijoiJuS stales are underluijtd, irublasJi 

Htxmwos
X ^r58
X "'X""

^4MOR(?OS

«D

SUMMARY OF THE FIRST DECADE 81
and heroes ; the Latin authorities, and the Byzantine
historians, who drew their inspiration from the rival Greek
court at Nice, describe them as monsters and barbarians.
The truth probably lies between the two extremes.
We have thus described the conquest and organisation of
Greece by the Franks. We have seen a Lombard kingdom
established at Salonika, a Burgundian nobleman invested
with Athens, a French principality carved out of the
Peloponnese. The Venetians have founded and lost a colony
at Corfu, occupied Crete, sent forth a swarm of adventurers
to seize the Cyclades, made themselves the real masters of
Euboea, and gained a footing at two valuable stations in
Messenia. Over the Morea and Epiros they have acquired a
shadowy suzerainty, with the practical advantages of free
trade. But the Greek flag still waves over Monemvasia, and
the tribes of Leonidi and Taygetos still own no lord. In the
mountains of Epiros and the plains of Bithynia two inde
pendent Greek states have arisen out of the ashes of
Byzantium, to keep alive the torch of Hellenic freedom. We
shall see in the next chapter how the ephemeral Lombard
kingdom fell before the vigorous attack of the Epirote
Greeks, how Thessaly felt the force of the same strong arm,
how the Latin Empire of Constantinople began to shake, as
the generation of the bold crusaders passed away and the
power of its rivals revived, and how, after reaching its zenith,
the principality of Achaia received its first shock.

CHAPTER IV
THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE (1214-I262)
The new Despot of Epiros had not been long on the throne,
when the Latin Empire of Romania received a blow, which
was severely felt throughout continental Greece. The
Emperor Henry suddenly died in 1216, perhaps poisoned by
the relentless Count of Biandrate, still in the prime of life, " a
second Ares" in war, a friend to the Greeks, the ablest
among the Latins of Constantinople. As he left no heirs,
Peter of Courtenay, the husband of his sister Jolanda,
succeeded him as emperor, and from that moment the
fortunes of the empire began to decline. Peter never lived to
reach his capital. After receiving his crown from the hands
of Pope Honorius III. in the church of S. Lorenzo, outside
the walls of Rome, he crossed over to Durazzo with the
intention of marching along the classic Via Egnatia, which so
many a Latin commander had trod, to Salonika and the East
Albania was even then a dangerous country, and the crafty
ruler of Epiros saw a splendid opportunity of destroying the
emperor of his natural enemies, the Franks. The Epirote
troops fell upon the unfortunate Peter in the defiles near
Elbassan ; the emperor and the papal legate who accom
panied him were captured ; and, while the latter was
ultimately released, the former died in prison, perhaps by the
sword.1 His death, as the historian Akropolita says, was "no
1 There is great difference of opinion among the authorities as to
the death of Peter. The continuation of William of Tyre (Recueil des
Historiens des Croisades, ii., 291-3), which gives the most detailed account,
says that he was treacherously captured at a banquet, and died in prison ;
so, too, Dandolo (apud Muratori, xii., 340) ; the Chronicle of Fossa Nova
(ibid., vii..^ 895-6) says that he was imprisoned ; Mouskes (Chromque

GREEK EMPIRE OF SALONIKA 83
slight aid to the Greek cause," for both the Latin Empire and
the kingdom of Salonika were now in the hands of women,
as regents — the Empress Jolanda and Margaret, the widow of
Boniface, whose chief adviser was the Marquis of Boudonitza.1
The victorious Despot of Epiros, energetic and ambitious,
followed up his success by extending his dominions at the
expense of his Frankish and Bulgarian neighbours in Thessaly
and Macedonia ; soon Larissa alone survived of the Thes-
salian baronies, for the doughty Katzenellenbogen, who
might have resisted him, had returned to his home on the
Rhine, and, in 1222, Theodore's career of conquest culminated
with the acquisition of Salonika and the extinction of that-
ephemeral Lombard kingdom. Thus, after only eighteen
years of existence, it fell ingloriously — the first of the
creations of the Fourth Crusade to succumb. For the
conqueror of a kingdom the title of Despot seemed too
humble. So, with a fine disregard for the oath which he had
once sworn to recognise no other emperor than him of Nice,
Theodore had himself crowned at Salonika, assumed the
imperial title, the purple mantle, and the red sandals of
Byzantine royalty, and appointed all the great officials of an
imperial court. The metropolitan of Salonika, faithful to the
oecumenical patriarch whose seat was at Nice, refused to
perform the coronation ceremony ; but his place was taken
by the Archbishop of Ochrida and all Bulgaria.2 The result
was a deadly feud between the rival Greek Empires of Nice
and Salonika, which had the effect of giving the Latin Empire
of Constantinople a brief respite. The ecclesiastics of the two
Greek capitals espoused with all the zeal of their profession
the quarrel of the respective sovereigns — for the political
schism at once affected so essentially political an institution as
the Greek Church. An emperor whose sway extended from
the Adriatic to the Jigean, and from Macedonia to the Gulf
rimee, 11. 23,019-31) that he died there ; Akropolita (p. 28) that he
" perished by the sword " ; the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of
the Morea, that he was poisoned in prison. Cf. Meliarakes, 'laTopla. tov
BanXeiov ttjs NiKaias, 125 ; Romanos, Ilepl tov Aeoiror&Tov ttjs 'Hirelpov, 27.
1 Raynaldus, Annates E celestas tiei, i., 492.
2 Akropolita, 27-8, 36 ; Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 25-6 ; PachymeYes,
i„ 82.

84 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
of Corinth, might consider himself the heir of Constantinople
with as much reason as " the true Emperor ofthe Romans " at
Nice ; his clergy, who looked to him for the advancement of
themselves and of the Greek idea, could easily meet the
Nicene theologians with plausible arguments for ecclesiastical
autonomy. One of these apologies for Salonika and its ruler
has been preserved in the shape of a verbose and long epistle
from George Bardanes, metropolitan of Corfu, to German6s,
the oecumenical patriarch. The Corfiote divine, who also
composed theological treatises against the Minorites, on the
use of leavened bread in the Sacrament, and on the
procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, had
received the epithet of Atticus from his literary skill, and
some tolerable iambics, the sole relic of the old cathedral at
Corfu, have been ascribed to him.1 We learn from his letter
that his beloved emperor " imitated the mildness of David,"
and that at his court " learning lacked not arms, nor yet the
armed man learning." The metropolitan had his reward.
Theodore, who signed himself " King and Emperor of the
Romans," confirmed by a golden bull of 1228, all the privileges
of the church of Corfu, granted by Alexios I. and Manuel I.2
Among the gifts of the latter emperor were 220 serfs, the
living chattels of the church, such as we saw in the possession
of the Latin archbishopric of Patras, and a number of
" sacred slaves " (ayioSovXoi), whose task it was to till the glebe
and do other work, and whose name still survives in that of a
Corfiote village.
The capture of Salonika made a great impression in the
west. Pope Honorius III. ordered the two bulwarks of
Northern Greece, the castles of Salona and Boudonitza, to
be put in a thorough state of defence ; bade the rulers of
Athens and Achaia to be of good cheer and to attack the
conquered city, and endeavoured to organise a new crusade
for its recovery.3 The prelates and clergy generously sub-
1 Marmora, Della Historia di Corf,), 198-200; Mustoxidi, Delle Cost
Corciresi, 423 sqq., l.-lvi.
2 Miklosich und Miiller, v., 14-15 ; Mustoxidi, 439, 689, lvi.-lvii. The
pillar containing the inscription is now in the Magazzino Archeologko, on
the Caslian at Rome.
3 Regcsta, ii., 164, 207, 286, 304, 333.

END OF THE KINGDOM OF SALONIKA 85
scribed money for the defence of Boudonitza, and Demetrios,
the ex-king of Salonika, and his half-brother, the Marquis
William of Montferrat, did, indeed, head an expedition
against the usurper Theodore, which penetrated as far as
Thessaly. There the marquis died, poisoned it was said,
and the feeble Demetrios x then returned to Italy, where he
too died, soon afterwards, in 1227. No further attempt was
made to recapture his kingdom ; but for another century one
person after another was pleased to style himself titular king
of Salonika. The Emperor ^Frederick II., the marquises
of Montferrat, and one of the triarchs of Eubcea bore the
empty title, which passed by marriage with a princess of
Montferrat to the Greek Emperor Andr6nikos II. , who thus
combined in his own person the real and the nominal
sovereignty. Even then there continued to be titular kings
of Salonika among the members of the ducal House of
Burgundy, which had received the barren honour from the
last Latin emperor of the East. Their shadowy claim was
finally sold to Philip of Taranto in 1320, after which this
phantom royalty vexed court heralds no more.2
The fall of the kingdom of Salonika separated the Frank
states in the south from the Latin Empire at Constantinople,
and the fate of the latter had therefore comparatively little
influence upon the much stronger dynasties of Athens and
Achaia. There Geoffroy de Villehardouin had crowned his
successful career by marrying his elder son and heir to
Agnes, daughter of the Emperor Peter of Courtenay. Before
that ill-fated monarch had started for Constantinople by
land, he had sent his wife and daughter on by sea. On the
way, the imperial ladies put into the port of Katakolo, at
which the traveller now lands for Olympia, arjd which owes
its name to the great Byzantine family of Katakaldn.3
Geoffrey chanced to be in the neighbourhood, and, hearing
of their arrival, hastened down to greet them, and invited
them up to the adjoining " Mouse Castle," Pontikokastro,
1 S. Georgio, Historia Montisferratis, afmd Muratori, xxiii., 374, 381,
382. 2 Ducange, Histoire de I 'Empire de Constantinople, i., 454-5 ; Buchon,
Recherches et MatMaux, i., 69.
3 S^thas, Mi/ij/ieio 'EXXijMfrijs 'loToplas, i., p. xxxiii,

86 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
which the Franks had appropriately christened Beauvoir
from the splendid view of the sea and the islands which it
commands. During their visit, at the suggestion of Geoffrey's
advisers, and by the mediation of the Bishop of Olena, a
marriage was arranged between young Geoffrey and the
daughter of the Empress Jolanda, to the advantage of both
parties, for the empress saw that her child would be well
married, while in all Achaia there was no daughter worthy
of the ruler's son. One result of this alliance was that, later
on, the Emperor Robert, son and successor of Peter, officially
recognised his brother-in-law as " Prince of Achaia " — a title
which, though applied by Innocent III., as we saw, to both
Champlitte and Geoffrey I., and used by the latter in docu
ments, had not previously received the imperial sanction.1
A year later, in 121 8, Geoffrey I. died, and great was the
grief throughout the Morea. "All mourned," we are told,
" rich and poor alike, as if each were lamenting his own
father's death, so great was his goodness."2 An able, if
unscrupulous, statesman, he had shown great skill in con
ciliating the Greeks, and we may endorse the judgment of a
modern Greek historian, that he was " perhaps the ablest of
all the Frank princes of the East."
The prosperous reign of his son and successor, Geoffrey
1 Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, ii., 291 ; Albericus Trium
Fontium, ii., 497. The Chronicle of the Morea twice tells the story of
Geoffrey II. and the daughter of the Emperor Robert, who was on her
way to marry the King of Aragon. X. t. M., 11. 1185-98, 2472, sqq. ;
L. d. C. 23, 74-7 ; L. d. P., 44-6 (which correctly makes the bride
Robert's sister). Hopf has shown that this is an anachronism, for (1)
Robert had no daughter ; (2) the King of Aragon was then aged nine.
The prologue of the Liber Consuetudinum Imperii Romania (Canciani,
op. eit, iii., 499) copies and quotes the Chronicle — lo libro della Cm-
quista. Cf. also Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 180. Both the
Chronicle and the Book of Customs wrongly ascribe to this occasion
the appointment of the prince as Seneschal of Romania (really made at
Ravenika in 1209), the permission to coin money (really granted to
Guillaume de Villehardouin much later), and the suzerainty over the
duchy of the Archipelago (really conferred upon Geoffrey II. by Baldwin
II. in 1236). Geoffrey I. styles himself "Prince of Achaia" in a docu
ment of 12 10. Ducange, op. eit, i., 425 ; so, too, does Geoffrey II. in
one of 1219 (ibid., i., 426), i.e., before the date of Robert's accession.
2 X. r. M., 11. 2461-4 ; L. d. C, 73.

PROSPERITY OF ACHAIA 87
II., whom the Venetian historian, Sanudo the elder, calls,
with technical accuracy, " the first Prince of Achaia," was of
great benefit to the principality. (" He possessed a broad
domain and great riches ; he was wont to send his most
confidential advisers from time to time to the courts of his
vassals, to see how they lived and how they treated their
subjects. At his own court he constantly maintained eighty
knights with golden spurs, to whom he gave all that they
required besides their pay ; so knights came from France,
from Burgundy, and, above all, from Champagne, to follow
him. Some came to amuse themselves, others to pay their
debts, others because of crimes which they had committed
at home. " y The only difficulty which the prince had to face
was the unpatriotic conduct of the Latin clergy, who, in the
snug enjoyment of nearly one-third of the land, declined to
assist him in driving the Greeks out of the still unconquered
stronghold of Monemvasia. As we saw, by the constitution
of the principality, the fiefs of the clergy depended upon the
performance of certain military services ; so that when they
refused to serve, on the ground that they owed obedience to
the pope alone, Geoffrey was strictly within his rights in
confiscating their fiefs. But, in order to show his own dis
interested patriotism, he spent the funds which thus accrued
to his exchequer in building a great fortress at Glarentza,
in the west of Elis, then the chief port of the Morea, and
now recovering some of its mediaeval importance. This
castle, the ruins of which still stand out like the boss of a
shield from a round hill — a landmark for miles around — took
three years to construct, and was then called Clermont, or
Chloumoutsi, to which the later name of Castel Tornese was
added, when it became the mint for the coins known as
tournois, so called because they had been originally minted
at Tours.2 The prince proceeded calmly with his building,
regardless of interdicts and excommunications ; but when
the castle was finished, he laid the whole matter before
the pope, who had hitherto taken the side of the clergy, and
had described Geoffrey as " more inhuman than Pharaoh "
1 ApudHopi, Chroniques, ico-i ; L. d. C, 23, 79.
3 X. r. M., 11. 2631-57 ; Cronaca di Morea (versione italiana) apiid
Hopf., op. eit, 435.

88 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
in his treatment of them. He pointed out that, if the Latin
priests would not help him to fight the Greeks, they would
only have themselves to blame if the principality, and with
it their Church, fell under the sway of those schismatics.
Honorius III. saw the force of this argument ; the ecclesiastical
thunders ceased, and a concordat was drawn up in 1223
between Church and State, on the lines laid down for Northern
Greece at the second parliament of Ravenika. It was
arranged that all Achaian sees should have, free from all
secular dues and jurisdiction, all the estates which were or
had been theirs from the coronation of the Emperor Alexios
Mourtzouphlos,1 that is to say, all the estates of the Greek
Church in the Peloponnese on the eve of the Latin Conquest
The prince was to keep the treasures and moveable property
of the Church, on condition that he, his barons, and other
Greek and Latin subjects, paid a tithe estimated at 1000
hyperperi (£448) a year — a sum which was apportioned
between the two archbishoprics of Patras and Corinth, and
the six bishoprics of Lacedaemonia, Amyklai, Coron, Modon,
Olena, and Argos. The concordat farther regulated the
position of the Greek priests, whom the prince had been
accused of treating as his own peasants. The number of the
country popes who were allowed exemption from all secular
jurisdiction was fixed in proportion to the size of the village —
two in a hamlet of from 25 to 70 households, four in a
village of from 70 to 125 families, six in places of a still
larger population. Where the number of households was
less than 25, that number was made up out of the scattered
dwellings of the neighbourhood. The exemption was
extended to the wives and families of the priests, provided
that their children lived at home. All the other country
popes were bound to perform the usual services to the
secular authorities, but their temporal lord might not lay
hands upon their sacred persons, and the clergy of the towns
were to be accorded similar treatment.2 This system was
1 So Prof. Lampros interprets the Alexii Bambacoratii of the text.
'loTopta ttjs irSKcws A6r)vu>v, {., 439, n.
2 X. t. M., 1. 2658 sqq. ; Epistola Innocentii III., ii., 835-7 ; Honorii
III, Opera, iv., 409-16; Regesta, ii., 158, 159, 161, 163; Raynaldus,
Annates Ecclesiastici, i., 501-2.

GEOFFREY II. AIDS CONSTANTINOPLE 89
based upon a just principle. It limited the number of idle
priests ; while it exempted the poor and fully-occupied
country clergy from all services and dues. Henceforth peace
usually reigned between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities
of the Morea. Ten years later, however, we find Geoffrey
complaining to Gregory IX.1 that the Archbishop of Patras,
to whom the prince had entrusted that important castle,
apparently on the death of Walter Aleman, had made a
truce with the Greeks, the prince's enemies, and had allowed
them to enter the principality — an incident which would
seem to indicate a Greek invasion from Epiros, to which
Patras would be naturally exposed.
But, when the Latin Empire was menaced by the attacks
ofthe Greek Emperor of Nice and the Bulgarian Tsar in 1236,
both prince and clergy alike responded to the papal appeal,
urging them to contribute money towards its maintenance.
The tithe of all ecclesiastical revenues was to be devoted to
the cause, while Geoffrey, in whose land the Emperor Robert,2
his brother-in-law, had ended his wretched existence in 1228,
offered a yearly subsidy of 22,000 hyperperi (£9856) to his
successor, Baldwin II., for the defence of Constantinople — a
striking proof of the excellent state of his finances. He also
proceeded to Constantinople with a considerable force,
including six vessels, although Venice was so jealous of
another Latin sea-power arising in the near East, that she had
taken proceedings against one of her subjects who had sold
him a galley. With this fleet he broke the Greeks' line, and
entered the harbour, after destroying fifteen of their ships.3
1 Registres, i., 902 ; ii., 538.
2 Recueil des Historiens, ii., 295 ; Dandolo apud Muratori, Rerum It.
Script, xii., 343. Akropolita (p. 47) makes him die in Eubcea ; the
Aragonese Chronicle places the death of a Latin emperor at Patras.
Buchon (La Grece Continentale, 244) thought that the two tombs in the
crypt of Hosios Louk&s were those of Robert and his father Peter of
Courtenay. The tradition ascribes them to the Emperor Romands II. and
his wife. The Hegoiimenos expressed to me, when I visited the monastery,
a disbelief in the latter theory ; the former is a mere conjecture. Sir
Rennell Rodd (The Princes of Achaia, i., 142) surmises that Robert's tomb
is to be found in the monastery of Blachernai, near Chloumoutsi.
3 Albericus Trium Fontium, ii., 558, who says that he had 120 ships ;
Mousk6s, Chronique rimde, 11. 29,238-41, 29,602-9, 31,191-8 ; Registres de
Grigoire IX., ii., 506, 521, 860; Predelli, Liber Communis, p. 128,

90 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
As a reward for this service, Baldwin conferred upon him
the suzerainty over the duchy of the Archipelago, which had
been a fief of the Latin Empire since the time of the Emperor
Henry, and over the island of Eubcea, which was in reality
under the overlordship of Venice, but which the Latin
Emperor might consider as his to bestow in virtue of its
former dependence on the extinct kingdom of Salonika.
The three lords of Eubcea were bound by this investiture to
supply a galley, or eight knights, to their new suzerain, who
also received a grant of land in their island. Nor did the
imperial marks of favour stop here. The prince, who, like
his sire, was Seneschal of Romania, also became suzerain of
Boudonitza,1 and received, as the price of further aid, the
emperor's family fief of Courtenay, which, however, Louis IX,
of France declined to permit. A second papal appeal found
him willing to equip ten galleys for Baldwin's service, and on
a false rumour of the emperor's death, he proceeded to
Constantinople with ships and a large retinue to act as
regent. Once again, in 1244, Innocent IV. urged him to
defend the capital of the Latin Empire, and allowed him to
deduct from the annual revenues of the Peloponnesian Church
sufficient for the maintenance of 100 archers. He was justly
regarded as the strongest Frank prince of his time, the
leading man in " New France," where the Empire of Romania
grew yearly weaker. Such was his prestige, that the Despot
Manuel of Epiros and the Count of Cephalonia and Zante
voluntarily became his vassals, and the latter was henceforth
reckoned, like the three barons of Eubcea and the Duke of
the Archipelago, among the peers of the principality of
Achaia.2 Now that the Venetians had lost Corfu, the crafty
count had no longer the same motive for acknowledging their
supremacy. 1 Sanudo apud Hopf, op. eit, 99-100; Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna),
167. The Chronicle of the Morea, by an anachronism, says that
Boniface of Montferrat conferred upon Champlitte the suzerainty over
Eubcea and Boudonitza, and that Robert gave to Geoffrey II. that over
the Archipelago (11. 1553-67, 2603-4). The last statement is repeated by
the Liber Consuetudinum (Caneiani, op. eit., iii., 499).
2 Albericus Trium Fontium, ii., 55S ; L. d. P., 53-4. Romanes,
Tpa.TLavbs %il>pfrfs, 1 32 -4.

RETIREMENT OF OTHON DE LA ROCHE 91
Although he had resolved to be master in his own house,
Geoffrey II. was no enemy of the Church, when it did not
neglect its duties to the State. He invited the Cistercians,
already established, as we saw, at Athens, to send some of
their order to the Morea, where both they and the
Dominicans founded monasteries ; the Chronicle tells us
that when he felt himself dying he bade his brother, William
of Kalamata, carry out a vow which he had himself omitted
to fulfil, that of building a church in which his body and that
of his father could repose.1 But we learn from the corre
spondence of Pope Gregory IX. that it was his father who
founded the church and hospital of St James at Andravida,
where in due course the bones of the three first Villehardouin
rulers of Achaia were laid. The two accounts are not, how
ever, inconsistent, if we suppose that Geoffrey I. built no
more than a modest chapel, leaving it to his sons to
erect a more ambitious memorial church, "the glorious
minster of Monseigneur St James," as the French Chronicle
calls it. Little now remains of this famous mausoleum of the
Villehardouin family; like its founder, it has passed into
history. But a Norman arch near the little railway station
still testifies to the past glories of Sta. Sophia, the cathedral
of the Frankish capital.
Meanwhile, the next most important French state in
Greece, that of Athens, had passed into the hands of a new
ruler. Othon de la Roche, like Berthold von Katzenellen-
bogen and several other doughty barons of the Conquest,
felt, as age crept on, that he would like to spend the evening
of his days in his native land, which he had never forgotten
in his splendid exile. Almost to the end of his reign, we
find him under the ban of the Church ; in 1225, soon after he
had made his peace with the pope, he departed for Burgundy
with his wife and his two sons, leaving his Greek dominions
to his nephew Guy, who had already enjoyed the ownership
of half Thebes.2 If the Burgundian noble, whom chance had

1 X. t, M., 11. 2735-47, 7790-4 ; Registres de Gre"goire IX., ii., 770. I
owe the suggestion in the text to Sir Rennell Rodd.
2 Regesta Honorii 111., ii., 304 (Feb. 12, 1225) — the last allusion to
Othon in Greece,

92 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
made the successor of Kodros at Athens, of Agamemnon at
Argos, had the least imagination, or had enjoyed the classical
culture of the Greek divine whom he had driven from the
Akropolis, he must have been stirred by the thought that it
was his lot to rule over the most famous land of the ancient
world. But classical allusions did not appeal to the Frank
conquerors of the thirteenth century, who looked upon
Greece much as we look upon Africa. Cultured men there
were among them ; Conon de Bethune was a poet and an
orator ; even the first Geoffroy de Villehardouin wrote verses
which have been preserved ; Elias Cairels is a poetic
authority for the Lombard rebellion ; but the most inspired
of them all, the troubadour Rambaud de Vaqueiras, though
rewarded for his songs by honours and lands in Greece,
sighed for the days when he made love to a fair dame in the
Far West, when canto pur Beatrice in Monferrato} Home
sickness, the special malady which prevents the French from
being colonists, seems to have afflicted many of the founders
of " New France."
Othon passed the rest of his life in his beloved Franche-
Comte, where he lived at the most some nine years more,
and where his descendants became extinct only in the seven
teenth century. His sepulchre is doubtful ; but the archives
of the Haute-Sadne contain his seal bearing the arms of his
family — .azur equipolle" a quatre points d'echiquier d'or. The
counter-seal, consisting of an ancient gem of Hellenic
workmanship, which Othon may have picked up at the sack
of Constantinople or in some shop at Thebes, represents
three naked children teasing a large dog. This is the sole
relic of the Megaskyr.2 Guy I., his successor, resided at
Thebes, the most flourishing town in his dominions. Half
of that city now passed, by the second marriage of Othon's
niece, to Bela de St Omer, a member of that famous Flemish
family whose name still survives, after the lapse of centuries,
in the Santameri tower at Thebes and in the Santameri
mountains of the Peloponnese. Thus, as the residence of
1 Buchon, Recherches et Matdriaux, i., 419-26 ; Recherches historiques,
ii., 376 ; Histoire des ConquUes, 29, 206, 449 ; Giomale Ligustico, v.,
241-71. 3 Acaetemie de Besancon (1880), pp. 140-4 ; plate iii.

ATHENS UNDER GUY I. 93
two such important and allied clans, the old Boeotian capital
attained to great celebrity. The silk manufacture still
continued there, and the Jewish colony was tolerated, for
we hear of Hebrew poets at Thebes under Othon — bards
whose verses, so a rival singer tells us, were a mass of
barbarisms. Besides the Jews, there was also a Genoese
settlement there, which already had its own consul. In
1240 he negotiated a commercial treaty with Guy, by which
" the Lord of Athens " granted Genoese merchants freedom
from all taxes, " except the usual duty paid on all silk stuffs
woven in his land." He also permitted them to have not
only their own consul, but also their own court of justice for
all except criminal cases and appeals, which were reserved
for the tribunals of the country. Both at Athens and Thebes,
an open space and consular buildings were assigned to them.1
In return for these favours, the Genoese were to protect " the
Lord of Athens," his land, and his subjects. The Greeks, too,
as well as the Jews and the Genoese, enjoyed the protection
of this enlightened ruler. When the Archdeacon of Athens
insisted on levying marriage-fees in money, instead of the
hen and the loaf, which the Athenian bridegrooms had paid
from time immemorial, he was made to disgorge. Every
traveller to Marathon has seen by the side of the road, nearly
seven miles out of the city, a Byzantine column with an
inscription in iambics. The inscription tells us how "the
servant of the Lord, Neophytos by name," made a road to
the monastery of St John the Hunter, of which he was
probably the abbot. Those who have visited the famous
fort of Phyle may have turned aside to rest at the quaint
little monastery of the Virgin of the Defile (Uavayia ra>v
Kkeia-Twv). I was there informed by the abbot that the
more modern of the two churches was founded in 1242, that
is to say, under the rule of Guy. These two examples show
that the Greek monks were usually unmolested by the
Franks of Athens in his time. Once, indeed, we find him
begging the pope to turn out the inmates of a monastery
near the frontier, suspected of betraying state secrets to his
enemies. For his capital, we are told, was exposed to
"frequent devastations" by the Greeks. But Guy was no
1 Liber furium Reipublica Genuensis, i., 992-3.

94 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
lover of adventures, and turned a deaf ear to the papal
appeal, urging him to join the Prince of Achaia and Count
Matthew of Cephalonia, in defending Constantinople.1
While Athens thus enjoyed comparative peace, the. new
Greek Empire of Salonika had been shaken to its founda
tions. Theodore Angelos was not the man to be content
with the vast dominions which he had conquered. He was
now at the zenith of his power ; his Italian neighbour, Count
Matthew of Cephalonia, was glad to purchase his friendship
and secure immunity from attack by marrying his sister — the
first of the matrimonial unions between the Greeks of Epiros
and the Franks. Even the Emperor Frederick II., the most
remarkable ruler of the Middle Ages, did not scorn an
alliance with his brother of Salonika, brought about by the
good offices of the count, the brother-in-law of one party,
the vassal of the other. Copper coins are still extant, showing
Theodore and St Demetrios, the patron saint of Salonika,2
supporting the imperial city, which might claim to have
taken the place of Byzantium as the seat of the Greek
Empire. But ambition urged Theodore to attack the power
ful Bulgarian Tsar, John Asen II., in spite of the treaty of
peace which existed between them. The tsar advanced to
meet him, bearing aloft on his standard the written oath of
the perjurer, and at Klokotinitza, on the Maritza, he routed
the Epirote army, and took his adversary prisoner. The
Bulgarian, less savage than his kind, treated his captive well,
till he detected him plotting fresh schemes of conquest To
unfit him for further political adventures, the tsar ordered
his eyes to be put out— the traditional punishment of the
Byzantine Empire. Profiting by Theodore's misfortunes,
his younger brother, Manuel, seized the remains of his
empire, styling himself Despot and Emperor, striking gold
and silver coins with the effigy of St Demetrios, and counting
upon the toleration of the Bulgarian Tsar, whose illegitimate
1 Registres de Grdgoirc IX., i, 636; ii., IoS, 421, 607; Registres
d Innocent IV, ,,112; Kampouroglos ; 'XvTopU t&v 'AfVoW, ii ,1,-ie ;
238-9. He gives the date of the church as 1204. The older church, I
was told, was built in 742.
2 Albericus, ii 558 ; Ricardus de S. Germano, apud Muratori, vii,
1015 ; Mionnet, Description de MMailles, Supp. III., 172.

STATE OF NORTHERN GREECE 95
daughter he had married. Determined to reign at any cost,
the new emperor first endeavoured to pacify the court and
Church of Nice by ecclesiastical re-union. He wrote to the
oecumenical patriarch, apologising for the consecration of
his bishops by the Metropolitan of Naupaktos, and suggesting
that, as pirates made the journey to Nice too dangerous for
the ecclesiastics of Epiros, the patriarch should either allow
the present system to continue, or should permit some Nicene
divine to run the risks of the voyage. Naturally, the
patriarch did not see the force of this argument ; " when," he
said, "had piracy not existed? All this talk is a mere
excuse." Having thus failed to conciliate the patriarch,
Manuel promised submission to the pope, sending the ever-
useful metropolitan Bardanes on a mission to Rome, and
even took an oath of homage to the powerful Prince of
Achaia1 But meanwhile, the heart of the Bulgarian monarch
had been touched by the beauty of blind Theodore's daughter.
She accepted his offer of marriage on condition that he
released her father, and the latter was no sooner free than he
resumed his schemes. Entering Salonika in disguise, he
quickly won over a considerable party by his skilful intrigues ;
his friends aided him in driving out his usurping brother;
and, though his physical infirmity prevented him from re-
occupying the throne himself, he was able to exercise the
real power in the name of his son John, who received the
nominal dignity of emperor. The independent Greek Empire
of Salonika was, however, not destined to survive the attacks
of its stronger rival at Nice, where the powerful emperor,
John Vatatzes, was bent on restoring the unity of the free
Greeks under his sceptre. Thus, the exiled Manuel not only
found a welcome at his court, but by his assistance was
enabled to invade Thessaly, where he rapidly* made himself
master of the principal towns, and became the ally of the
triarchs of Eubcea as well as of the Prince of Achaia. In
vain Theodore tried to keep the empire in the family by
making terms with his brother. Vatatzes crossed over into
Macedonia, and compelled the feeble Emperor John, whom
1 Akropolita, 44-7 ; Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 28 ; Albericus, p. 558.
Sabatier, Description gendrale des monnaies byzantines, ii., 303-4 ; Mik-
losich und Miiller, iii., 59-66 ; Registres de Grdgoire IX., i., 491.

96 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
nature had meant for a monk and his father had placed on
the throne, to abandon the coveted title of emperor, the red
sandals, and the ruby-topped " pyramid " of pearls, and
resume the less dignified style of Despot. On these terms,
he was allowed to keep his possessions ; but, on his death,
his brother and successor, Demetrios, so greatly irritated his
subjects by his debaucheries that they were glad to welcome
the troops of Vatatzes. No opposition was to be feared from
the Bulgarians, for their great tsar was dead, so, in 1 246, the
Emperor of Nice annexed the short-lived Greek Empire of
Salonika to his dominions. These rival and scattered Greek
forces were thus combined, and their fraternal divisions,
which had given the tottering Latin Empire of Constantinople
a respite, ceased for the present.
Even yet, however, Hellenism was not united against
the foreign foe. The Despotat of Epiros, thanks to the
energy of another member of the house of Angelos, had
survived the untimely fall of the less stable, but more
pretentious, Empire of Salonika. Ten years before that
event, a bastard son of the first Despot, styling himself
"Michael II., Despot of Hellas," had made himself master
of Epiros, /Etolia, and Corfu. Circumstances favoured his
usurpation, for the Empire of Salonika had not recovered ¦
from the blow which the Bulgarians had dealt it, Theodore
was still a prisoner, and the Epirotes saw that they must
have a strong man to rule over them. Michael II. won over
the Corfiotes by following the traditional policy of his family
towards them. Just as Michael I. and Manuel had
guaranteed the privileges of the metropolitan church and
people of the island, so Michael II., by four successive bulls,
exempted them from practically all taxes and duties, relieved
the clergy from all forced labour, and granted the Ragusan
traders equal rights with the islanders. On the death of his
uncle, Manuel, in 1 241, he succeeded to the latter's Thessalian
dominions, while old blind Theodore, with whom the love of
power was still the ruling passion, managed to retain, even
after the fall of Salonika, a small piece of territory round
Vodena in Macedonia.1
' Akropolita, 65-73, 75-6, 85-91; Nikephoros Gregorys, i., p. 47 i
X. t. M„ 11. 3061, 3561, 3815; Mustoxidi, Delle Cose Corciresi, 401;

THEODORA OF EPIROS 97
Michael II. was at first anxious to remain on good terms
with the powerful Emperor of Nice. He had married a
saintly woman, whose life,1 written by a monk in the
seventeenth century, is one long record of ill-treatment
patiently borne, of Christian forgiveness, and of a devotion to
her husband, ill-requited by that passionate man. The
Blessed Theodora was the daughter of John Petraleiphas, a
member of a distinguished Frankish family from Provence,
Pierre d'Aulps (or de Alpibus), established even before the
Conquest in the mountainous region of Agrapha. The
legend tells us that her husband, tempted by the devil and
enchanted by the charms and spells of a fair Greek, called
Gangrene, drove his lawful wife into the wilderness and
received his paramour into the palace. Remorse, or the
remonstrances of his councillors, at last prevailed upon him
to recall Theodora, and, as a sign of his repentance, he
founded, at her request, the monastery of the Saviour at
Galaxidi, on the Gulf of Corinth, which, though now ruined by
earthquakes, was still inhabited in the eighteenth century,
when it produced the short, but interesting Chronicle of
Galaxidi? which is one of our authorities for the history of
Frankish and Turkish Greece. But Theodora united the
usually incompatible qualities of a saint and a diplomatist ;
she readily went on a mission to arrange a match between
her son Nikephdros and the grand-daughter of the Greek
Emperor Vatatzes. The emperor consented, and it seemed as
if peace were firmly cemented between Nice and Epiros.
Indeed, the Emperor Frederick II. actually wrote to the
Despot in 1250, begging him to grant a free passage across
Epiros to the troops, which his own son-in-law, Vatatzes, was
sending him to assist in his struggle against Pope
Innocent IV.3
Such was the condition of Northern Greece when, in 1246,
Geoffroy de Villehardouin died,4 and his brother William
Barone, Notizie Storiche di Re Carlo 111. di Durazzo, 61-6 ; AeXHovr^s
'lo-ropLKTjs 'T&Taiplas, ii., 594-6 ; Byz. Zeitsch., i., 336.
1 Job apud Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 401-6.
3 Pp. 136, 198-200; Aekrlov tt\i X/kot. 'Apx. 'Eraiprias, iii., 69.
3 Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 68-9.
4 He is last mentioned as alive in a letter of May 6, 1246. Registres
d Innocent IV., i., 275. G

98 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
became Prince of Achaia in his stead. During his long reign
of over thirty years, he is the central figure in Greek
history, for he intervened in the affairs of nearly every state
in Greece, in Eubcea, in Attica, and in Epiros. The new
prince was the first of his race born in the country — for his
birthplace had been the family castle of Kalamata, which had
been his father's fief, and he spoke Greek as his native
tongue.1 In cleverness and energy he surpassed all his
subjects ; he was the most adventurous and knightly figure of
Frankish Greece, combining at times the chivalrous spirit of
France with the wiles of the Homeric Odysseus. He, too, has
been made the hero of a poem, The Chronicle of the Morea,
which in jog-tot "political" verse that is almost prose
extols the deeds of this prince "who toiled more than all
who were born in the parts of Romania." But his reign was,
thanks to his love of fighting, an almost unbroken series of
wars ; and if he was able for a brief space to effect the
complete conquest of the peninsula, it was in his days that
its reconquest by the Greeks began.
His first enterprise was the subjugation of Monemvasia,
the last Greek stronghold, which had defied his three pre
decessors, and which was in uninterrupted communication
with the Emperor of Nice.2 No one who has seen that
picturesque spot can wonder at its continued independence
in the face of such arms as the Franks could bring against
it. The great rock of Monemvasia, the Gibraltar of Greece,
stands out defiantly in the sea, and is only accessible from
the land by a narrow causeway, the " single entrance," to
which it owes its name. It had long enjoyed special
privileges from the Byzantine emperors, and was governed
by three local magnates, who styled themselves archons—
Mamonas, Daimonoyannes, and Sophian6s. William made
elaborate preparations for the siege. He summoned to his
1 X.r. M., I.4130.
2 Ibid, 11. 2765-9, 2946-7. All the three families were still living there
when the Chronicle was composed; throughout the Frankish period
we hear of them, and the Mamonddes are even now extant. Their history
from 1248 to the present day was written by Meliardkes. Olxoyimt
Ma/xuvS.. 'lo-TopiKti fieXiri, rijs ofco-ywdaj Ma/twxa diri -rijs i/j.tpa,vl<rem aiWjs ft
tv 'Itrroptq, >*x/" o^epov. Like many archontic families, they bore the
imperial eagle.

SURRENDER OF MONEMVASIA 99
aid the great vassals of the principality — Guy I. of Athens,
who owed him allegiance for Argos and Nauplia ; the three
barons of Eubcea ; Angelo Sanudo, Duke of Naxos, with the
other lords of the Cyclades ; and the veteran Count Matteo
Orsini of Cephalonia.1 But he saw that without the naval
assistance of Venice, which had taken care that his principality
should not become a sea-power, he could never capture the
place. He accordingly obtained the aid of four Venetian
galleys, and then proceeded to invest the great rock-fortress
by land and water. For three long years or more the garrison
held out, "like a nightingale in its cage," as the chronicler
quaintly says — and the simile is most appropriate, for the
rock abounds with those songsters — till all supplies were
exhausted, and they had eaten the very cats and mice.
Even then, however, they only surrendered on condition that
they should be excused from all feudal services, except at
sea, and should even in that case be paid. True to the
conciliatory policy of his family, William wisely granted their
terms, and then the three archons of Monemvasia advanced
along the narrow causeway to his camp, and offered him the
keys of their town. The conqueror received them with the
respect of one brave man for another, loaded them with
costly gifts, and gave them fiefs in the district of Vatika, near
Cape Malea. A Frankish garrison was installed in the
coveted fortress, a Latin bishop at last occupied the episcopal
palace there ; but the traveller searches in vain among the
picturesque Byzantine and Venetian remains of the rock for
the least trace of the French prince's brief rule of thirteen
years over the Gibraltar of the Morea. Local tradition,
however, still indicates the spot on the mainland where his
cavalry was left. The surrender of Monemvasia was
followed by the submission not only of Vatika, but of the
Tzakones also, whose lands had been ravaged by Geoffrey I.,
but who, even if they had promised to obey him, had never
really acknowledged the Frankish sway till now.2 To com-
1 X. t. M., U. 2891-6; Roman6s, Vpa.Tta.vbi Zdpfys, 136. The French
version of the Chronicle omits the Naxian and Cephalonian con
tingents. The Chronicle by an anachronism, makes the surrender of
Coron and Modon to Venice, really surrendered in 1209, the price of
the Venetians galleys, 11. 2783-5, 2854-9.
2 Ibid., 11. 2064-72, 2960-5.

100 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
plete the subjugation of the Morea, William built three
strong castles, specially intended to overawe the Slavs of
Taygetos and the mountaineers of Maina. Three miles from
Sparta, on a steep hill which is one of the spurs of Taygetos,
and was perhaps the site of the " dove-haunted Messe " of
Homer, he erected the fortress of Mizithra, or Mistra, the
ruins of which are still one of the mediaeval glories of the
Morea, and which played a great part in the history of the
next two centuries. One wonders, on visiting Villehardouin's
castle to-day, how the ancient Spartans can have neglected
a strategic position so incomparably superior to their open
village down in the plain by the Eurotas, and even now,
when it is abandoned to the tortoises and the sheep, the hill
of Mistra looks down, as it were, with feudal pride upon the
brand-new streets and hideous cathedral of the modern
Sparta Scholars differ as to the origin of its name, but
whether it be of Slavonic derivation,1 or whether it be
Greek, Mizithra stands, more than any other spot, except
Constantinople, for the preservation of mediaeval Hellenism
against the Franks. But the French prince was not content
with Mistra alone. Down in the direction of Cape Matapan,
he built the castle of Old Maina, and on the western side of
the promontory, near Kisternes, he constructed yet a third
fortress, which the Greeks called Levtro and the French
Beaufort.2 The immediate result of this policy was the
submission of the Slavonic tribe of Melings, who had given
so much trouble to the Byzantine authorities in earlier days,
but who now saw that the new forts confined them to the
barren mountains, where they could not find subsistence.
Accordingly, they promised to be the prince's vassals, and to
1 Mufifya, in modern Greek means a sort of cheese, but Hopf thinks
the name Slavonic. Cf. Hatzidakis in Bufairr. Xpon/td, ii., 58.
2 X. t. M., 11. 2985-3042 ; L d. C, 91-5 ; L. d. P., 48-9. The site of
Old Maina is placed by Finlay (iv., 198-9) and Sir Rennell Rodd(ii.,
277) near Cape Matapan, which tallies with the description in the X. t. M.,
which speaks (1. 3005) of a " Cape," and with the description of Nikephdros
Gregoras (i., 80). Leake (Peloponnesiaca, 142) thinks it is the castle still
so called above Porto Quaglio. Mr Traquair informs me that there is
no Frankish work now visible there. A Venetian document of 1278
(Pontes Rer. Aust, xiv., 232, 234) mentions Castrum de Belforte in
partibus Sclavonic

THE COURT OF LACEDAEMONIA 101
serve in his army on the same terms as in the time of the
Byzantine emperors, on condition that they were held exempt
from dues and other feudal service. The last two castles
also shut in the Mainates, so that William's sway was now
acknowledged all over the Morea, save where the lion banner
of St Mark floated over the two Messenian stations of Modon
and Coron. In their own barren land, however, the Mainates
continued to indulge in warfare, for, a few years later, the
Catholic bishop of Maina was allowed by Pope Alexander IV.
to reside in Italy, because the prevailing strife prevented
him from living in his own see.1
The principality had now reached its zenith. The barons
had built themselves castles all over the country, whence they
took their titles, and where they lived " the fairest life that a
man can." The prince's court at Lacedaemonia, which the
Franks called La Cremonie, and of which an Englishman,
William of Faversham, was then bishop, was considered as
the best school of chivalry in the East, and " more brilliant
than that of a great king." The sons of his great vassals and
of the other Frank rulers of the Levant came there to learn
war and manners; and personages like Marco II. Sanudo,
afterwards Duke of Naxos, from whom our chief authority,
Marino Sanudo the elder, derived his information, and Hugh,
Duke of Burgundy, were his honoured guests. Never since
the days of the ancient Spartans had such splendid warriors
been seen on the banks of the Eurotas, and Louis IX. of
France, the mightiest Latin sovereign of the age, might well
wish that he had the giant knights of Achaia to assist him in
his crusade against the infidel. From 700 to 1000 of these
horsemen always attended the prince, and William was able
to fit out a fleet of about 24 vessels and sail with 400 knights
to meet the King of France in Cyprus, and to leave behind in
Rhodes " more than a hundred noble men and good cavaliers,"
to assist the Genoese in defending that fine island, which they
had recently captured, against the Empire of Nice. We are
told that the Morea was at this time the favourite resort of
the chivalry of France, and the French soldiers, who had been
collected for the defence of Constantinople in 1238, had been
content to stop short in Achaia and remain there. But all
1 Registres, i., 184.

102 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
this brilliance was not merely on the surface. Trade
flourished, and "merchants," says Sanudo, "went up and
down without money, and lodged in the houses of the
bailies, and on their simple note of hand people gave them
money."1 Commercial travellers from Florence and Siena
visited Andravida, and Urban IV. could write to the bishops
of Achaia to send him some of those silken garments for
which Greece was still famed. For a prince so martial and a
state so important, where commercial transactions were
constant, a local coinage had become a necessity. William
therefore availed himself of his meeting with the King of
France in Cyprus to obtain the right of coining money from
that sovereign. " Sire," said the soldierly prince, " you are a
mightier lord than I, and can lead as many men as you like
where you please without money; I cannot do so." The
king thereupon permitted him to coin tournois, such as
circulated in France. The Achaian mint was established in
the castle of Chloumoutsi, which thus obtained its Italian
name of Castel Tornese, and ere long coins bearing the
princely title, the church of St Martin of Tours, and the
inscription De Clarencid, were issued from it.2 For more
than a century it continued working, and many thousands of
its tournois have been found in Greece.
Unfortunately, William's ambition, not content with ruling
over a realm compared with which that of ancient Sparta
was small, soon plunged the country into another, and this
time a fratricidal, war. Geoffrey II. on his deathbed had
urged his brother to marry again, and secure the succession in
the family ; and William had hastened to follow his advice.
His second wife, Carintana, was one of the Dalle Carceri of
Eubcea, and baroness in her own right in the northern third
1 Sanudo apud Hopf, Chroniques grcco-romanes, 102. The historian
visited his ducal relative several times, and probably wrote in 1328,
making additions in 1333, while living in Constantinople. Joinville,
Vie de St Louis (ed. de Wailly) 53, 151 ; Akropolita, 94 ; L. d. C, 101 ;
Registres dUrbain IV., i., 15-16 ; Mouskes, Chronique rime'e, 11. 29,602-9,
Eubel, i., 302.
2 Sanudo, loc. eit.; Schlumberger (Numismatique, 312) thinks, however,
that some coins with G. Princeps Achate on them had been struck before
this date at Corinth — a name which appears on most of them — probably
by William. One coin, not a tournois, was struck at "Clarencia"
(Supplement, 15).

WAR IN EUBCEA 103
of that island. When she died in 1255, her husband claimed
her barony as her heir, and actually had coins minted with
the superscription " Triarch of Negroponte." Although the
Prince of Achaia was suzerain of the island, neither the other
triarchs nor the Venetian bailie were desirous that so restless
a man should become their neighbour. One of the triarchs,
Guglielmo da Verona, was, indeed, the prince's kinsman, for
he was married to Villehardouin 's niece; but he could not
forget that, by a former marriage, he was titular king of
Salonika, and therefore a great personage in heraldic lists, and
he was rich enough to keep 400 knights at his court. Accord
ingly, he and his fellow-triarch, Narzotto dalle Carceri, placed
his nephew Grapella in possession of the disputed barony.
They then concluded treaties with the Venetian bailie,
promising to wage " lively war" against the Prince of Achaia,1
and to make no peace with him without the consent of the
republic, which, in return, was to consult them before ceasing
hostilities. The castle on the bridge of Negroponte was to
be entrusted to the Venetians, who were also to receive a
strip of land from St Mary of the Crutched Friars down
towards the castle and two other strips in the vicinity. The
former pacts of 1209 and 12 16 were renewed, with the
exception that, instead of the payment of 700 hyperperi
from each of the triarchs, Venice should take all the tolls,
the triarchs being, however, exempt from paying them.
A further treaty localised the war to the Empire of
Romania. The Prince of Achaia was not the man to be deterred by
coalitions. Using his late wife's Eubcean barony as a base
of operations, he summoned the two triarchs, Narzotto and
Guglielmo, to appear before him, their suzerain, at Oropos ;
and, so strong was the feudal tie which bound a vassal to
his lord, that they obeyed his summons, and were at once
arrested, remaining in captivity till after the capture of their
own captor. Their wives, accompanied by many knights of
the Dalle Carceri clan, now numerous in the island, went
weeping to the Venetian bailie, with dishevelled hair and
clothes rent, and implored his aid. The bailie, moved alike
1 Ibid., 356 ; Bury, The Lombards and Venetians in Euboia, i., 13-21 ;
Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 1-16.

104 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
by policy and sympathy, at the spectacle of the two noble
dames, consented ; but the energy of the Achaian prince had
already secured the town of Negroponte. Thrice the capital
changed hands, till finally, after a siege of thirteen months,
the Venetians succeeded in re-occupying it, and then inflicted
a crushing defeat on the famous cavalry of Achaia. Mean
while, in spite of the wise warnings of Pope Alexander IV.,
who urged the prince to release his prisoners and make
peace " lest the Greeks should become more powerful in the
Empire of Romania," the war had spread to the Morea and
continental Greece. Guillaume de la Roche, brother of the
" Great Lord " of Athens, though by marriage he had become
baron of Veligosti and Damala (the ancient Trcezen), and
therefore a vassal of the Prince of Achaia, had actively
assisted the Venetians at the siege of Negroponte, and they
had granted him lands in their territory, and had promised him
an annuity in case his Peloponnesian barony was confiscated.
He had set his name as a witness to the arrangements
between Venice and the triarchs, and one of those treaties
had actually been " done at Thebes," in the capital of his
brother, Guy I. On the other hand, the Prince of Achaia
had summoned the " Great Lord " of Athens, his vassal for
Argos and Nauplia, to assist him in the conflict against the
Eubcean barons and their Venetian allies. It was even
pretended that Attica and Bceotia, the marquisate of Bou
donitza, and the three Eubcean baronies, had been placed by
Boniface of Salonika under the suzerainty of the first Frank
ruler of Achaia at the time of the Conquest. The result of
such a claim, recorded by the author of the Chronicle of the
Morea, perhaps for the glorification of his favourite hero
William, perhaps by an anachronism pardonable in one who
wrote in the following century, would have been to establish
the supreme authority of that ambitious prince over all the
Frankish states of Greece. But, as we have seen, the
suzerainty over the three Eubcean baronies and Boudonitza
had been given much more recently to William's brother by
the Emperor Baldwin II., while the Sire of Athens owed
him allegiance for Nauplia and Argos alone. Although
Guy I. had married one of William's nieces, he not only
refused to assist him, but aided his enemies, despatching

BATTLE OF KARYDI 105
troops to Negroponte and Corinth, and sending out his
galleys from Nauplia to prey upon any passing ships, with
out regard for the rights of neutrals. Another Frank
potentate, also married to a niece of William, Thomas II.
de Stromoncourt, Lord of Salona, joined the Sire of Athens
and Ubertino PaUavicini, Marquis of Boudonitza, against
the Prince of Achaia, while Geoffroy de Bruyeres, baron of
Karytaina, "the best soldier in all the realm of Romania,"
who had fought for his prince in Negroponte, after a struggle
between conflicting ties of kinship, deserted his liege lord
and uncle, William, for the side of his father-in-law, Guy.
Thus a baron's league was formed against the prince, whose
pretensions were doubtless resented and feared by all the
Frank states of Northern Greece.1 William was not, how
ever, without allies. The Genoese, ever ready to injure
their great commercial rivals the Venetians, and grateful
for the assistance which the knights of Achaia had rendered
them in Rhodes, manned his galleys, which darted out from
behind the rock of Monemvasia when the lion-banner was
seen out at sea; while Othon de Cicon, though a relative
of the Sire of Athens, held the fine castle of Karystos and
made the difficult passage of the Doro Channel even still
more difficult for Venetian vessels. William displayed his
restless activity in all directions. At one moment he was
besieging the Venetians in Coron ; at another, he was nearly
captured on a rash raid into Attica. Then he resolved on a
regular invasion of the Athenian state. Accordingly, in
1258, he mustered all the forces of the principality at Nikli,
near the classic Tegea, crossed the isthmus, and, forcing the
narrow and ill-famed road which leads along the rocky coast
of the Saronic Gulf towards Megara, the Kcucy ovcaAa, as it is
still called, met Guy's army at the pass of Mount Karydi,
" the walnut mountain," which lies three hours from Megara
on the way to Thebes. There took place the first battle
between Frankish Athens and Frankish Sparta ; the Sire of
Athens was routed ; and, leaving many of his warriors dead
1 Sanudo, 103-4 ; Dandolo and Navagero apud Muratori, xii., 363 ;
xxiii., 997-8 ; Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 29-31 ; X. t. M., 11. 1553-67, 3185-7 ;
L. d. C, 102, 1 10 ; Muntaner (ch. cclxi.) expressly says that Athens was
originally free of all suzerainty.

106 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
on the field, took refuge with his allies behind the ramparts
of Thebes. Thither William followed him, but the prayers
of the archbishop and the arguments of his own nobles,
who pleaded for peace between relatives and old comrades-
in-arms, prevailed upon him to desist from an assault upon
his enemy's capital. Guy thereupon promised to appear
before the High Court of the barons of Achaia and to per
form any penalty which it should inflict upon him for having
borne arms against the prince.
The High Court met at Nikli, and the Sire of Athens
appeared before it, escorted by all his chivalry — a brave
sight to all beholders. If William had expected that his
barons would humiliate his rival, he was disappointed.
They decided that they were not Guy's peers, and therefore
were incompetent to be his judges. They accordingly
proposed to refer the matter to Louis IX. of France, the
most chivalrous and saintly monarch of that age, and the
natural protector of the French barons of the East, many of
whom had seen him in Cyprus a few years before. William,
a powerful prince, but still only primus inter pares by feudal
law, felt bound to accept their decision, and, summoning
Guy to his presence and that of his great lords, bade him go
in person for judgment to the King of France. Then came
the turn of the traitor Geoffroy de Bruyeres. With a halter
round his neck, the proud baron of Karytaina came before
his prince. Moved by the sad spectacle of so famous a
warrior in the guise of a criminal, his fellow-barons flung
themselves on their knees, and implored William's mercy for
his erring vassal and kinsman. The prince was long
obdurate, for Geoffroy was his undoubted subject, and had
been guilty of the gravest of all feudal offences, that of aiding
the enemies of his liege lord. At last he yielded, and
restored to the culprit his forfeited fief, but only for life,
unless he left direct heirs of his body. Then the parliament
broke up with jousts, tourneys, and tilting at the ring on the
fair plain of Nikli.1
When the spring came, Guy started for Paris, leaving his
brother Othon as his deputy at Thebes, and stopping some
1 Sanudo, 105-6; X. ,. M., 11. 3207-370; L. d. C, 101-12 ; L. d. F,
49-52.

GUY I., DUKE OF ATHENS 10?
time on the way in his native Burgundy to see his relatives
and borrow money "for the needs of his land."1 Louis IX.
received him graciously, and also the messenger of Prince
William, who bore the written statement of the case. The
king referred the matter to a parliament at Paris, which
decided that Guy, being a vassal of William, had been guilty
of a technical offence in taking up arms against his lord, but
that as he, in fact, had never paid homage to the Prince, he
was not liable to the forfeiture of his fief. Moreover, it was
considered that his long and costly journey to France was
a quite sufficient punishment for any offence he might have
committed. The king then told him that he must not
return empty-handed, and asked what mark of royal favour
he desired. Guy replied that he would prize above all else
the title of " Duke of Athens," for which, he told the king,
there was an ancient precedent. Neither Guy nor his
predecessor had ever borne it, but the Byzantine historian,
Nikephoros Gregoras, writing in the next century, tells a
fabulous story, that in the time of Constantine the Great the
governor of the Peloponnese had received the rank of
" Prince," the commander of Attica and Athens, the title of
" Grand-Duke," and his fellow of Bceotia and Thebes that of
" First Lord " (-rrpififiiK^ptos) ; this last name, he adds, " has
now been corrupted by an alteration of the first syllable
into ' Great Lord ' (/j.iyag Kvpio<s), while the ruler of Athens
has dropped his adjective and become ' Duke,' instead of
' Grand-Duke.' " 2 There is, however, no trace of such an
official at Athens in Byzantine times ; though the Latin
word " Duke " was sometimes used, even by Greek writers,
as the equivalent of their own word " General " (arpaTtiyos)-
But it is quite natural that the Sire of Athens, in asking for
a title which would put him on a level with the Duke of
Naxos, should, after the manner of the newly-ennobled in
all ages, seek for some venerable precedent for it. Louis IX.
willingly conferred it upon him, and the title, borne by his
successors for two centuries, has become famous in literature,
1 Two documents of his, dated 1260 (new style), printed by
Ducange, Histoire de [Empire de Constantinople, i., 436-7.
2 X. ,. M., 11. 3458-61 ; L. d. C, 1 12-17, Nikeph6ros Gregoras, i., p.
239-

108 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
as well as in history, from its bestowal, by a pardonable
anacronism, upon Theseus by Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and
Shakespeare, and upon Menelaos by the Catalan chronicler,
Ram6n Muntaner.1 All of these authors, except Shakespeare,
were the contemporaries, one of them — Muntaner — the
friend, of Athenian dukes. Accordingly, they transferred to
the legendary founder of Athens the style of its mediaeval
rulers, whose names were well known in Italy, and thence
passed to England.
During Guy's absence in France, great events had
happened in Greece. The success of William at Karydi,
coupled with another victory of his forces over the Venetians
at Oreos, in North Eubcea, had induced the doge to
authorise the bailie of Negroponte to make terms with
the victor.2 But suddenly, by a turn of fortune and his own
rashness, the victorious prince had himself become a
prisoner of war. Since the death of his wife, Carintana,
William had been looking out for a third consort, who would
give him an heir, and in 1259, his choice fell upon Anna,
daughter of Michael II., the ambitious Despot of Epiros.
The alliance involved him in the politics of that troubled
state. The peace between the two Greek states of Nice and
Epiros had been of short duration. Abetted by that restless
intriguer, blind old Theodore, Michael had, in 1251, once
more resumed hostilities. But the rapid successes of
Vatatzes in Macedonia, and the defection of his own
supporters, convinced him that he had better temporise.
His enemy accepted the suggestion that they should come to
terms, and sent the historian George Akropolita as one of
his envoys to Larissa to arrange conditions of peace. The
historian returned to his master with old Theodore in chains,
and the varied career of that versatile and ambitious man
closed in the dungeons of Nice. But Michael II. was only
waiting for a favourable opportunity to renew the attack, and
1 Dante, Inferno, xii., 16-18 ; Boccaccio, Decamerone, Novel 7, Day 2 ;
and La Teseide, i., 13-14 ; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 11., 862-3 ; Shake
speare, Midsummer Nights Dream ; Muntaner, ch. ccxiv. (ed. Lanz.).
Buchon's translation is here quite misleading.
2 Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 25-8.

PRINCE WILLIAM'S GREEK MARRIAGE 109
it was not long in coming. After the death of Vatatzes, in
1254, his son and successor, Theodore II. Laskaris, had
invested the worthy Akropolita with the chief civil command
in his European provinces. The historian soon found that
his post was no sinecure. The Despot of Epiros had been
further incensed by being compelled to cede the valuable
fortress of Durazzo, on the Adriatic, which his predecessors
had taken and strengthened, as the price of his son's tardy
and long-delayed marriage with the daughter of the new
emperor. He accordingly excited the Albanians to rise,
and blockaded the historian in the strong castle of Prilap.
The treachery of the garrison opened the gates to the
besiegers, and the historian, in his turn, was led off in chains
to the prison of Arta, where he had ample leisure for medita
ting that literary revenge, which colours his history of his
own times. Michael was now master of all the country to
the west of the river Vardar, and the death of the Emperor
Theodore II., in 1258, and the succession of a child to the
throne of Nice, might well encourage his aspirations to
displace the tottering Latin Empire of Romania and reign at
Byzantium. An alliance between so important a ruler and
the powerful Prince of Achaia seemed to both parties to have
much to commend it. William doubtless thought that a
Greek marriage would please his own Greek subjects, whom
it was the traditional policy of his dynasty to conciliate ;
Michael II. was anxious to have the assistance of the famous
chivalry of Achaia in his coming struggle with the Nicene
Empire for the hegemony of the Greek world. Determined
to make himself doubly sure, the Despot, whose daughters,
like Montenegrin princesses in our own day, were a
valuable political asset, had given Anna's lovely sister,
Helene, to Manfred the ill-fated king of the two Sicilies,
who received as her dowry several valuable places in Epiros,
which had once belonged to his Norman predecessors, and the
splendid island of Corfu, which he entrusted to his
admiral, Filippo Chinardo, a Cypriot Frank of distinguished
bravery. Indeed, it is probable, as a Byzantine historian
suggests, that Michael's two sons-in-law were both scheming
to carve out for themselves a vast domain in Northern
Greece at his expense. William may well have aspired to

110 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
revive the Lombard kingdom of Salonika, and rule from
Macedonia to Matapan.
It was not long before the wily Despot had to invoke the
aid of his new allies. The real power of the Nicene Empire
was now wielded by a strong man, Michael Palaiologos, scion
of a family which is first mentioned about the middle of the
eleventh century, and which was connected by marriage with
the imperial house of Comnenos. The great-grandson of
Alexios III. on his mother's side, Michael Palaiol6gos had
been more than once accused of aiming at the purple, and
his strong character and great experience of affairs quite
overshadowed the child in whose name he ruled. He had
already held command in Europe, like his father before him,
and was therefore well acquainted with the character and
designs of his namesake of Epiros. One of his first acts as
regent was to despatch his brother John with a force against
the Despot, while, by the agency of a special envoy, he gave
the latter the option of peace on very favourable terms.
But Michael of Epiros, relying on the two great alliances
which he had contracted, replied with insolence to the
proposals of Palaiol6gos, who had now mounted, as Michael
VIII., the imperial throne of Nice. The envoy returned
to his master after a sinister threat that ere long the Despot
should feel the force of the imperial arm. Embassies sent
from Nice to the Sicilian and Achaian courts proved equally
futile. Accordingly the emperor ordered his brother to
march without delay against the rival who dared to reject
his offers. Meanwhile, Manfred had responded to his
father-in-law's appeal by sending him 400 German knights
in full armour, and William came in person at the head of a
force, mainly consisting of Franks, but also containing a
contingent of Moreot Greeks. So great was the prince's
prestige after his recent successes, that the troops of Eubcea
and of the Archipelago, Count Richard of Cephalonia,
Thomas II. of Salona and Ubertino of Boudonitza, and a
body of soldiers from Thebes and Athens under the
command of Guy's brother and deputy Othon, did not fail
this time to rally round the flag of Achaia. Never had the
prince commanded so fine an army, gathered from every
quarter of Frankish Greece.

BATTLE OF PELAGONIA 111
After spending some time in plundering, the allied army
met the imperial forces on the plain of Pelagonia, in Western
Macedonia, in 1259 — a spot where, centuries before, the
Spartan Brasidas had encountered the Illyrian hosts. The
imperial general had wisely hired foreign troops to contend
against the dreaded Frankish chivalry — 300 German horsemen
under the Duke of Carinthia, 1500 mounted archers from
Hungary, and 600 more from Servia, a detachment of
Bulgarians, a large number of Anatolian warriors accustomed
to fight against the Turks, 500 Turkish mercenaries, and 2000
light Cuman bowmen on horseback. Various devices were
adopted to exaggerate the size of his army, and a scout was
sent privily to spread discord between the Franks and
Greeks. The lack of harmony between the unnatural allies
was increased by a private quarrel between the Prince of
Achaia and John, the Despot's bastard, who complained that
some of the Frank knights had paid unwarrantable attentions
to his beautiful wife, and received for reply from the prince,
instead of justice, an insulting allusion to his birth. The
bastard, in revenge, deserted to the enemy at a critical
moment ; the Despot, warned of his son's intended treachery,
fled in the night, and the Franks were left alone to face the
foe. For an instant even William's courage seems to have
failed him ; but the reproaches of that stalwart baron,
Geoffroy de Bruyeres, prevailed on him to lead his diminished
but now homogeneous army against the heterogeneous host
of Greeks, Hungarians, Germans, Slavs, and Turks. The
Franks fought with all the courage of their race ; picking out
the Germans as their most dangerous enemies, they fell upon
them with lance and sword ; Geoffroy de Bruyeres slew the
Duke of Carinthia in single combat, and the German knights
dropped before the sweep of his blade "like grass upon a
meadow." The Greek commander then ordered his Hungarian
and Cuman bowmen to shoot at the horses of the Frankish
knights now inextricably mingled with his German
mercenaries, whose lives he cheerfully sacrificed. The
archers did their work well ; horseman after horseman fell ;
Geoffroy de Bruyeres, " the flower of the Achaian chivalry,"
was taken prisoner, and the prince, while charging to the
rescue of his nephew, was unhorsed. The prince tried to

112 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
conceal himself under a heap of straw, but was discovered
and identified by his prominent front teeth. Only the rank
and file escaped, and of those, only some evaded the clutches
of the predatory Wallachs of Thessaly, who were devoted to
the person of the treacherous bastard, and made their way
back to the Morea. William and the other principal prisoners
were led to the tent of the Greek commander, where the
prince's knowledge of the Greek tongue, which he spoke with
native fluency, enabled him to hold his own against the
reproaches of his conqueror. Sending his prisoners to his
brother's court at Lampsakos, the Greek general followed up
his victory in Epiros and Thessaly. While one detachment
of his army besieged Joannina and occupied Arta, the two
chief towns of the Despotat, releasing the unhappy Akropolita
from prison, he marched with the Despot's bastard through
Thessaly to Neopatras, and thence to Thebes. He was
engaged in plundering that city, when the bastard again
turned traitor and fled to his father, who had taken refuge
with his family in the islands of Leukas and Cephalonia.
The house of Angelos was popular in Epiros, where the
natives regarded the Greeks of Nice as interlopers, and the
tactless conduct of the victors soon aroused the discontent of
the vanquished ; Arta declared for its old Despot, the siege
of Joannina was raised, and the imperial commander thought
it prudent to abandon Bceotia and return home.1
The versatile Despot of Epiros speedily recovered from
the results of this campaign. A year after the battle of
Pelagonia he received a fresh contingent of troops from his
son-in-law Manfred, with which his eldest son, Nikephoros,
severely defeated the imperial general, Alexios Strateg6poulos,
and took him prisoner. A brief truce followed, Strategopoulos
was released, and was thus enabled to cover himself with
glory by capturing Constantinople from the Latins in the
1 Akropolita, 95-9, 141-2, 148-53, 156-61, 167-8, 171, 174-84; Nike-
ph6ros Gregoras, i., 47-9, 71-5; Pachymeres, i., 81-6; Sanudo, 106-7;
Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 240 ; X. r. M., 11. 3060-137, 3469-4191 ; L. d. C,
96-100, 117-42 ; L. d. P., 53-63 ; M. Palaioldgos, De vitA suA, 6-7. The
Chronicle, though it contains historical matter, traces the war to a family
quarrel between the sons of Michael II., Nikephoros and John, whom
it calls Theodore.

VILLEHARDOUIN A PRISONER 113
following year. But the captor of Constantinople, by a
sudden change of fortune which astounded the Byzantine
historians and led them to compare him with Cyrus,
Hannibal, and Pompey, again became the captive of the
crafty Despot, whom he had a second time attacked, and
was sent to the custody of Manfred, where he remained till
he was exchanged for the King of Sicily's sister, Anna.
Three years later, the emperor's brother John, the victor of
Pelagonia, once more attacked his old enemy with such
success that Michael II. had to invoke the diplomatic aid of
his saintly wife, who went to Constantinople with her second
son John, and left him there as a hostage for her husband's
good behaviour. The expostulations ofthe patriarch, who re
buked the emperor for making war against a fellow- Christian
— that is to say, a member of the Orthodox Church —
combined, with the expense and difficulty of these Epirote
campaigns, to bring about peace ; and the Despot's eldest son,
Nikephoros, now a widower, received the emperor's niece
as a wife and a pledge of union between the two Greek states.1
But, while the battle of Pelagonia had thus only a passing
effect upon the fortunes of Epiros, it was a fatal blow to the
Frankish principality of Achaia. It was the primary cause
of all the subsequent disasters, for the capture of the prince
gave the astute Emperor Michael the means of gaining a
foothold in the Morea, from which, little by little, Byzantine
rule was extended once more over the whole peninsula. Such
was the result of Villehardouin's rashness. Well, indeed,
might the troubadours of France lament the captivity of
their hero, and mournfully prophesy the loss of Achaia after
that of Constantinople.
When the prisoners had arrived, the empejor summoned
them before him, and offered them money for the purchase
of broad lands in France, on condition that William should
cede to him the Morea. The prince replied that it was not
in his power to cede that, in which he had only a qualified
share. He explained that the land had been conquered by
his father and his father's comrades, that the Prince of Achaia
was no absolute monarch, but was bound in all matters to
1 Pachymeres, i., 89, 106-7, 137, 185, 205-7, 214, 242. Nikephoros
Gregoras, i., 83, 90-2, 98. H

114 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
consult the opinion of his peers, and to observe the agree
ments made at the time of the Conquest. The emperor,
irritated at this plain statement of the principles of feudalism,
ordered his Varangian guards, among whom there may have
been some of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, to take the prince
and his companions back to their prison. For three long
years they remained prisoners, while their captor dealt the
Latin Empire of Romania its death-blow, and restored the
Greek throne from Nice to Constantinople.1
The capture of the prince and so many of his barons had
deprived the principality of all its leading men. Accordingly,
the princess and those Franks who remained, in order to
prevent a threatening rising ofthe Greeks, wrote to the Duke
of Athens,2 who was still in France, offering him the post of
Bailie of Achaia. Rarely had the wheel of fortune turned
with such rapidity ; the victor of Karydi was now a prisoner,
the vanquished whom he had haled before the High Court
at Nikli as a rebellious vassal was now a Duke of Athens
and administrator of his conqueror's estates. He had been
detained in France owing to the troublesome complaints of
some French merchants and pilgrims to King Louis, that
they had been injured by the Athenian privateers which
issued from the port of Nauplia, and had not received com
pensation from the duke.3 Guy now settled this matter,
and started for the Morea. His first act on landing was to
order the liberation of the two imprisoned triarchs of
Eubcea ; and he commemorated his governorship of Achaia
and his acquisition of the ducal title by striking a coin at the
mint of Glarentza — the earliest coin of an Athenian duke
which we possess.4 He was engaged in administering the
country to the general satisfaction, when the startling news
of the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks and of the
flight of the last Latin emperor, Baldwin II., reached him.
The fugitive first stopped at Negroponte, where his wife had
stayed to raise money from the wealthy citizens thirteen
1 X. r. M., 11. 4217-323 ; L. d. C, 141-6.
2 L. d. P., 65, 66 ; Sanudo, 107. 3 j^^ Io6
4 Schlumberger, Numismatique, 337, 340, who thinks that this coin is
a forgery. Buchon, Atlas, plate xxv. One of his coins is in the Archaeo
logical Museum at Venice; his previous currency bears the title Dominus.

THE LAST LATIN EMPEROR AT ATHENS 115
years before, and where the three barons received him with
the magnificent honours due to his exalted rank. Thence he
proceeded to Thebes and Athens, where he found the duke
waiting to greet him. In the Castle of the Kadmeia and on
the ancient Akropolis, which, fifty years earlier, had welcomed
another Latin emperor in his hour of triumph, there gathered
round their feudal chief, now a landless exile, the barons who
had survived the fatal day of Pelagonia and the prisons of
Palaiologos. The Duchess of Naxos came with her ladies
to offer presents to him, and Othon de Cicon, lord of Karystos
and ^Egina, who had played so active a part in the Eubcean
war, and had lent him 5000 hyperperi (£2240) in his sore
need. Baldwin had nothing but barren titles and a few
relics, the remnant of the Byzantine sacristies, to bestow.
But he was generous of knighthoods, and he liquidated his
debt to the baron of Karystos with an arm of St John the
Baptist, which the pious Othon subsequently presented to the
Burgundian Abbey of Citeaux. Thus, on the venerable
rock of Athens was played the last pitiful scene in the brief
drama of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Then
Baldwin sailed from the Piraeus for Monemvasia ; and,
leaving behind him not a few of his noble retinue in the
Morea, set out for Europe, to solicit aid for his lost cause and
to play the sorry part of an emperor in exile.1
The "new Constantine," as Michael Palaiologos styled
himself after the recovery of Constantinople, was now doubly
anxious to restore Greek rule in the Morea also. Three
years of confinement had somewhat broken William's
Frankish pride ; some of his fellow-captives had died in
prison ; and, as Michael VIII. was now more moderate in his
demands, a compromise was possible. The emperor desired
Argos and Nauplia to be included among the places to be
ceded to him ; but his prisoner could plead that they were
the fief of the Duke of Athens. William might, however,
conscientiously agree to the surrender of the three castles of
Monemvasia, Maina, and Mistra, which he had either captured
or built himself, and which were therefore his to bestow. The
1 Sanudo, 115, 172 ; X. -,. M., 11. 1301-32 ; L. d. C, 27-31 ; Ducange,
Histoire de VEmpire de Constantinople, i., 432 ; Dandolo apud Muratori,
xii., 369 ; Exuvice Sacra Constantinopolitana, ii., 144-8.

116 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
contemporary Greek historian, Pachymeres, anxious to
magnify the emperor, adds that the prince was to become
Michael's vassal for the rest of the principality and received
from his suzerain the title of Grand Seneschal — an obvious
attempt at explaining, in a way flattering to Greek vanity,
the origin of an office which the Latin emperors had con
ferred upon the rulers of Achaia. In return for the three
castles, William and his comrades were to be set at liberty,
and the prince swore a most solemn oath over the baptismal
font of the emperor's infant son that he would never levy war
against Michael again. Geoffroy de Bruyeres, who was a
special favourite of the emperor, was released from prison and
sent to arrange for the transference of the castles to the
imperial authorities.1
Guy of Athens received the message with grave mis
givings. He saw that the three castles would be a lever with
which the emperor could shake the Frankish power in the
peninsula, and that Monemvasia in particular would provide
him with an admirable landing-place for his troops. As was
his duty, he convened the High Court of the principality at
Nikli, the same spot where he had himself stood to await his
sentence. But this time it was a ladies' parliament which
met on the plain to decide the future of the state — for all the
men of mark had been slain at Pelagonia or were in prison at
Constantinople, and their wives or widows had to take their
places at the council. Only two of the stronger sex were
present, the Chancellor of Achaia, Leonardo of Veroli in
Latium, and Pierre de Vaux, "the wisest head in all the
principality." It was only natural that with an assembly so
constituted sentiment should have had more weight than
reasons of state. In vain the Duke of Athens argued in
scriptural language, that " it were better that one man should
die for the people rather than that the other Franks of the
Morea should lose the fruit of their fathers' labours " ; in vain,
to show his disinterestedness, he offered to take the prince's
place in prison or pledge his own duchy to provide a ransom.
The men were, we are told, unwilling to cede the castles,
1 Sanudo, 108 ; X. ,. M., 11. 4324-4S ; L. d. C, 146-7 ; Pachymeres, i.,
88 ; Nikeph6ros Gregoras I., 79-80. Pachymeres adds Geraki, and the
Aragonese version ofthe Chronicle (p. 67) Corinth, to the list of castles.

TREATY OF THEBES 117
justly surmising that this might be the ruin of the country.
But the conjugal feelings of the ladies who formed the
majority found a convenient legal excuse for the surrender of
the three castles in the technical argument that they were the
prince's to give or to keep, and Guy, anxious not to lay
himself open in Greece and at the French court to the charge
of cherishing malice against his late enemy, finally yielded.
The castles were forthwith surrendered, and two noble dames,
Marguerite, daughter of Jean de Neuilly, Marshal of Achaia,
and the sister of Jean de Chauderon, the Grand Constable of
the principality and nephew of the prince, were sent as
hostages to Constantinople.1
As soon as he was released, William set out for
Negroponte, where he was received with great honour, and
where the Duke of Athens met him and escorted him to
Thebes. There, in the house of the Archbishop Henry, a
treaty of peace between the Prince of Achaia of the one part,
and Venice and the triarchs of the other part, was concluded.
The treaty of Thebes practically restored the status quo before
the death of Carintana, which had been the occasion for the
war. William recognised Guglielmo da Verona, Narzotto
dalle Carceri, and Grapella as triarchs, and they, in turn,
recognised him as their suzerain, and promised to destroy the
castle of Negroponte at their own expense, retaining its site
for themselves. Venice kept the strips of land conceded
to her by the triarchs in 1256, as well as the right of levying
the tolls ; but the prince, as well as the triarchs with their
Greek and Latin retainers, and all clerics were exempted from
paying them, and the house of his agent at Negroponte was
restored to him. Finally, the republic engaged to cancel all
fiefs granted by her bailie since the death of Carintana, and
received from the prince the right of free trade and personal
security for all her subjects throughout his estates. Thus, of
all the parties, Venice had gained least by the Eubcean war.
She had incurred great expense for no special result, and the
island had suffered from the ravages of the soldiers. The
Venetian Government felt the failure of its Eubcean policy so
strongly, that it prohibited its bailies in Eubcea from interfer-
1 X, t. M., H.4360-512 ; Sanudo, 108 ; L. d. C, 148-53; L. d. P.,67-8,

118 THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE
ing in questions of feudal rights — a salutary provision, which
long remained in 'force.1
The combatants had good reason for making up their
differences. They were all alarmed at the restoration of the
Greek Empire in Constantinople, and Venice feared even
more than the Greeks her ancient rival Genoa, which had
just become their ally. A year earlier, shortly before the
Latin Empire fell, the Genoese had concluded a treaty with
the Emperor Michael VIII. at Nymphaion in Lydia, which by
a stroke of the pen transferred from Venice to themselves the
monopoly of the Levantine trade. The Ligurian republic,
which had taken no part in the labours of the Fourth
Crusade, was now granted, in return for its pledge to make
war against Venice, free trade throughout the Greek empire
and in the Venetian islands of Crete and Negroponte, which
the emperor hoped to conquer. The Genoese received per
mission to found colonies at Anaea, Lesbos, and in the rich
mastic-island of Chios, which had been captured from the Latin
Empire by Vatatzes fourteen years earlier ; they obtained the
city of Smyrna, and were assigned after the conquest of
Constantinople, the suburb of Galata as their special quarter,2
Finally, the Black Sea was closed to their enemies. From
the treaty of Nymphaion in 1261 dates the growth of Genoa
as a Levantine power ; from that moment she became an
important factor in the Eastern question.
The Prince of Achaia might reasonably imagine that he
had nothing to fear from the Genoese, for they had been his
allies against Venice, and they had expressly stipulated at
Nymphaion that they should not be called upon to make
war upon him. But he knew full well that he would ere
long have to grapple with the Byzantine Empire in his own
land. The Emperor Michael VIII. attached much import
ance to the new Byzantine province in the Morea, which not
only furnished him with excellent light troops, whom he
settled at Constantinople and employed as marines on his
1 Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 46-55 ; Sanudo, 108, in.
2 Liber furium Reipublica Genuensis, i., 1345 sqq. : a better text is
that given in Atti della Societd Ligure, xxviii., 791-809 ; X. r. M., 11.
1277-84 ; Nik. Gregoras, i., 97 ; Hopf, Les Giustiniani, 5 ; Ducange, i.,
438-53-

BYZANTINE PROVINCE IN THE MOREA 119
ships,1 but was also a stepping-stone towards the reconquest
of the whole peninsula. An imperial viceroy, called " Captain
(/ceoSaX>?) of the Territory in the Peloponnese and its Castles,"
was appointed, at first for an annual term ; a marshal
(irpwTocrTpaTwp, TrpwToaWayaTivp) was instituted, as in the
Frankish principality ; and a Byzantine hierarchy grew up
around the viceregal residence at Mistra.2 It was there
fore obvious that ere long war must ensue between the
prince and the imperial viceroy. From 1262, the date of
the cession of the fortresses, began the decline of Frankish
power in the Peloponnese. Henceforth the rivalry between
the Franks of the principality and the Greeks of the adjoin
ing Byzantine province led to almost constant conflicts,
which devastated the country, especially as mercenaries were
usually employed on both sides, who, in default of their pay,
pillaged the hapless inhabitants without mercy. Moreover,
in the neighbouring Byzantine districts the discontented
Greek subjects of the Franks found support and encourage
ment ; the unity of the Morea was destroyed almost as soon
as it had been established, and by the same wilful ruler, and
the way was thus ultimately prepared for the Turkish
conquest. In 1263, a year after the peace had been signed in his
capital of Thebes, Guy I. of Athens died. During his long
reign he had experienced various extremes of fortune, and
had enjoyed the privilege of heaping coals of fire upon the
head of the foe who had defeated him. He had emerged
from his defeat with honour, and he was able to leave to his
elder son John, not only a ducal title, but a state which was
more prosperous than any other in Greece.
Thus the seventh decade of the thirteenth century marks
the close of an era in the history of the Latins in the Levant.
The Latin Empire has fallen ; a Greek emperor rules once
more on the Bosporos, and has gained a foothold in the
Morea ; a rival of his own race faces him in Epiros, but he
has learned the art of dividing the Latins against each other,
and has found in Genoa a makeweight against Venice.
1 Pachymeres, i., 188, 309.
2 These titles occur in the Mistra inscriptions. Bulletin de Corresp.
helUnique, xxiii., 115, 123.

CHAPTER V
THE GREEK REVIVAL (1262-1278)
It was not to be expected that either Villehardouin or the
emperor would long desist — the one from the reconquest of
his three lost castles, the other from an extension of his
power. On his return to the Morea, the prince set out on a
tour of inspection, accompanied by a brilliant retinue. From
the rock of Mistra the imperial garrison could see the tall
Frankish knights and their gallant lord pricking across the
fertile plain of the Eurotas to the prince's favourite residence
of Lacedaemonia. Not unnaturally, their suspicions were
aroused, and they regarded this brave display as a hostile
demonstration against themselves. Without delay they
called upon the warlike Melings to quit the gorges of
Taygetos and rally round the double eagle of Byzantium,
and messengers were sent post-haste to apprise the imperial
governor of Monemvasia of what seemed to be a breach of
the peace. Pope Urban IV., who, as a Frenchman, felt
special interest in the prosperity of the " New France "
which his countrymen had created oversea, and furnished
William with money for its defence,1 salved any qualms of
conscience that the Prince of Achaia might have felt, by
telling him that his solemn oath to the emperor had been
wrung from him when he was a prisoner, and was therefore
not binding ; and the Franks might pretend that the Greek
garrisons had committed acts of pillage and received the
prince's discontented Greek subjects. The news was speedily
communicated from Monemvasia to the emperor, who sent
thither an army under his brother Constantine, assisted by
Philes and Makren6s, two high officials. He had engaged
for the campaign a body of 1500 Turks and a number of
1 Les Registres dUrbain IV., ii., 47 ; Pontes Rer. Auslr., xiv., 57.

WAR IN THE MOREA 121
warlike Greeks from Asia Minor, and he strongly enjoined
upon his commander to win as many allies as possible in the
Morea by the gift of privileges under the imperial seal.
Meanwhile, a fleet was despatched under Philanthropen6s,
mostly manned with Tzakonians from the Peloponnese and
with the so-called GasmoAloi, or " bastards," the offspring of
mixed marriages between Franks and Greek women, who
were particularly valuable soldiers, because they combined
Greek caution with Latin courage.1 This fleet operated
against the islands of the ^Egean, of which the Prince of
Achaia was suzerain, and the south coast of the Morea. The
Genoese, unmindful of his services, assisted his enemies by
landing a great number of the imperial troops at Monem
vasia, and by joining in the attack upon the islands.
The arrival of the imperial force, and the prompt seces
sion of the Melings, the Tzakonians, and the restless
inhabitants of the two promontories of Malea and Matapan,
whose chiefs were easily won by the promise of privileges
and the gift of high-sounding titles, had caused William to
summon his great vassals to his aid. They seem to have
been somewhat slow in responding to his appeal, but one of
them, his old enemy, Guglielmo da Verona, the richest and
most powerful of the Eubcean barons, rendered him such
great services, that the prince was inclined to reward him
with the overlordship over his fellow-triarchs and over the
Duke of Athens. An Athenian contingent came to aid in
defending the Morea,2 but the fine flower of all the Achaian
chivalry, the doughty Geoffroy de Bruyeres, had been
ensnared by the charms of a beautiful woman, and had
gone with his mistress to Apulia, under the pretext of a
visit to the famous shrines of St Nicholas at Bari and of St
Michael, on one of the spurs of Monte Gargarto. No longer
kept in check by the great castle of Karytaina, in the absence
of its master, the Slavs of Skorta soon joined those of
Taygetos against the Franks.
1 Les Registres dClrbain IV., ii.,100, 341. The latter part of the word,
ynoCXos, is Moreot Greek for a " bastard " ; the first part may be the French
gars. See Prof. Karolides' note to Paparregdpoulos, 'lirTopla tov 'EW-qvlkoS
"ESrous, v., 130.
2 Sanudo, 116. The Chronicle says that it did not come.

122 THE GREEK REVIVAL
Meanwhile, William was waiting for his great vassals at
Corinth, and the imperial commander, who had so far met
with no opposition, and had taken Lacedaemonia and other
towns, boasted to the emperor that a third of the Morea was
already his, and that if he had more men, he could conquer
the whole. Michael VIII. sent him reinforcements, and a
distinguished soldier, Michael Cantacuzene, grandfather of
the subsequent emperor and historian, and member of an
old family which we saw settled in Messenia at the time of
the Frankish Conquest, also arrived in the Morea. The
imperial commanders had now 6000 cavalry and a large
force of infantry at their disposal ; they accordingly divided
the cavalry into eighteen squadrons, and ordered a march on
Andravida, the Frankish capital Leaving the mart of
Veligosti a smoking ruin, they marched past Karytaina, and,
guided by some of the Slavs of Skorta, reached Prinitsa, not
far from Olympia, having burnt on the way the Latin
monastery of Our Lady of Isova, whose Gothic windows
still survey the valley of the Alpheios, the Charbon, as the
Franks called it.1 At Prinitsa they were met by a small body
of 312 Franks, under the command of Jean de Catavas,
husband of the lady with whom Geoffroy de Bruyeres had
eloped, and a valiant but rheumatic warrior whom the prince
had left in charge during his absence at Corinth. Despite
the smallness of his forces and his own physical infirmity,
which prevented him from holding sword or lance, he
ordered the prince's standard — the anchored cross of the
Villehardouins — to be tied fast to his hand, and, reminding
his men that they were Franks and their enemies men of
many nations, bade them win fame which would endure " so
long as the ark remains on Ararat." The little band of
Franks seemed lost among the Greeks, but they cut down
their foes with their swords, " as a scythe mows the meadow
grass," while their leader, as he made straight for the tent
of Constantine Palaiol6gos, dressed all in white, seemed to
the superstitious Greeks to be none other than St George,
guiding the Franks to victory. Some cried that this was the
vengeance of the Virgin for the sacrilege at Isova, others
that it was retribution for the perjury of the emperor, and
1 Buchon, La Grece Continentale, 497.

FIRST TURKISH ALLIANCE 123
Constantine was glad to mount his swift Turkish horse and
ride for his life by devious paths to Mistra, leaving his men
to escape to the woods.
The season of 1263 was now far advanced, and it was
not till the following spring that Constantine re-assembled
his Slav and Tzakonian allies, and marched again upon
Andravida. Near the chapel of St Nicholas at Mesisklin,
a spot not far from the Frankish capital, the two armies
met. A Frank had warned the Byzantine general, that one
horseman of Achaia was worth twenty Greeks, and that he
must use artifice rather than force if he wished to conquer.
Despite this warning, Cantacuzene, who was possessed of
that boastful spirit which the Greeks usually regarded as a
peculiarly Frankish characteristic, insisted upon showing off
his horsemanship in front of the enemy's line, and paid with
his life for his rashness. At this disaster the Greeks retired
without giving battle, and the Prince of Achaia was persuaded
to act with prudence and refrain from pursuing them.
Dissensions now broke out between Constantine and his
Turkish mercenaries. Six months' pay was already owing
to them, and as he refused to give it to them, they offered
their services to William, whom they believed to be a man
of his word. On the banks of the river of Elis the first
unholy alliance was made between a Frank ruler of Greece
and its future masters. Ancelin de Toucy, a great noble
who had settled in the Morea after the fall of Constantinople,1
and who spoke Turkish, acted as go-between, and William
gladly accepted the offer of the Turkish chiefs, Melik and
Salik, who were eager to punish their late employers. The
Franco-Turkish forces accordingly marched southwards in
the direction of Kalamata, and then ascended the beautiful
pass of Makryplagi, " the broad hillside," up which the present
railway climbs. When Ancelin, who was in command of
the van, reached the ridge, the Greeks sprang up from their
ambuscade, and fell upon him. Twice the Franks were
beaten back, but their commander bade them cease " playing
hide-and-seek " with their enemies ; 2 they stormed the ridge ;
the Turks, coming up behind, completed the discomfiture of
the Greeks, and the Greek commanders, who had sought
» X, r, M., U. 1321-4. 2 Ibid,, 1. 5395.

124 THE GREEK REVIVAL
refuge in the grotto of Gardiki— a place celebrated two
centuries later for two appalling massacres — were discovered
by the Turks, and led prisoners before the prince. The
emperor's brother had, fortunately for him, returned home
before the battle,1 but his two surviving colleagues, Makrenos
and Philes, and many of their followers, were now at
William's mercy. The two principal captives were sent to
the strong castle of Chloumoutsi, where Philes died, and his
fellow-prisoner, though subsequently exchanged, was accused
on his return to Constantinople of collusion with William,
who was said to have promised him, as the reward of his
treachery, the hand of the- widowed daughter of the late
Emperor Theodore II., Laskaris, who was living on her
Moreot barony of Veligosti.2 The suspicions of the usurper,
Michael VIII., were easily aroused, and he put out the eyes
of a general, who might have espoused the claims of the
dethroned dynasty.
The victory of Makryplagi had removed all fear of a
further attack by the Greeks, and William was able to
proceed to his beloved Lacedaemonia, the Greek population
of which had fled to Mistra. He supplied their places with
trusty Franks, whom he bade restore the deserted town,
sent his forces to ravage Tzakonia and the country round
Monemvasia, and ordered the Turks to plunder the Slavs of
Skorta, who, though lately pardoned, had again risen in the
absence of the baron of Karytaina. Soon after, Geoffroy de
Bruyeres, stung by the reproaches of King Manfred, returned
penitent to the Morea. He flung himself down before the
prince, with his girdle round his neck, in the church of Santa
Sofia at Andravida, and, thanks to the good offices of Manfred
and the intercession of the nobles, he was a second time
forgiven. From that time to his death he loyally served his
uncle and prince.
The fighting was now over, and the Turks asked per
mission to return to their homes in Asia. In vain William
pressed their chief to stay; but some of his followers con-
1 Pachymeres, i., 207 ; the Chronicle, less likely to be well-informed,
represents him as one of the captives.
2 Her first husband had been the baron. Pachymeres, i., 180 ; Nike
phoros Gregoras, i., 92.

DEPOPULATION OF THE MOREA 125
sented to settle in the Morea. All who remained there
were baptised ; the prince knighted two of them, and gave
them fiefs and wives ; one of them seems to have married
a noble damsel, the lady of Pavlitsa (near Bassse); and,
when the Chronicle of the Morea was composed, their
posterity was still living at two places in the peninsula.
Thus a new element was added to the mixed population
of the Morea.1 The land, indeed, was in danger of becoming
desolate, owing to the loss of life in the war ; Urban IV.
received from the prince and the barons a gloomy picture of
its depopulation ; and one woman, so Sanudo informs us,
lost seven husbands, one after the other, all of whom died
in battle. Disappointed of winning the Morea by force, Michael
VIII. now proposed to William that his son and heir, the
future Emperor Andronikos II., should marry the prince's
elder daughter, Isabelle, and that Andronikos should succeed
as Prince of Achaia. This arrangement would have not only
re-united the Morea with the Greek Empire, and thus spared
it much bloodshed, but, by welding Moreot Greeks and
Franks closely together, might have so strengthened the
principality that it could have offered a better resistance to
the Turks later on. But the Frank barons, proud of their
nationality, were not willing to accept a Greek as their
future sovereign. In spite of the prince's marriage with a
Greek princess, the Frank nobles continued to select their
wives from the best families in France, and the difference
of religion combined with the pride of race to make them
disdainful of the connection with Byzantium. As the
historian Nikephoros Gregoras2 remarked, they despised
marriages with Greeks, even with those of imperial blood.
Isabelle was destined to make a marriage which united the
principality to the fortunes of the great house of Anjou.
Charles of Anjou, the most ambitious prince of his time,
had now appeared upon the stage of Italian politics. Sum
moned by Urban IV. to the throne of the Two Sicilies, he
routed Manfred at the historic battle of Benevento ; and,
1 X. r. M., 11. 4513-5921 ; L. d. C, 153-99 5 L- d. P., 69-84 ; Sanudo,
1 16-18, 135 ; Les Registres dUrbain IV., ii., 292-4 ; Pachymeres, i., 88,
205-9 ; Nikeph6ros Gregoras, i., 80. 2 Ibid., i., 237.

126 THE GREEK REVIVAL
not content with having seized the Italian possessions of the
Hohenstaufen, he considered himself the heir of those places
beyond the sea which Manfred had received as his wife's
dowry from the Despot of Epiros. Though the fair Helene
of Epiros was now languishing with her children in an
Italian dungeon, Filippo Chinardo continued to hold Corfu
and the Epirote fortresses, either for her or for himself, a
few months longer. But the treacherous Despot, who had
first tried to conciliate the bold Frank by giving him his
sister-in-law in marriage, together with Corfu, which he was
pleased to regard as once more his own to bestow, had him
assassinated in 1266, intending to seize Helene's former
dowry and re-unite it with his dominions. But Chinardo,
short as his rule in Corfu had been, had granted fiefs there
to brave knights, such as the brothers Thomas and Garnier
Aleman, members of a Provencal family, already settled at
Patras, and whose name is still borne by one of the Corfiote
deputies. Garnier Aleman undertook the defence of the
island against the Despot, till he was able to invoke the aid
of his countryman and co-religionist, Charles of Anjou, who,
as a reward for his services, named him his vicar and
captain-general. Thus, in 1267, the finest of the Ionian
islands became a possession of the Angevins of Naples,
under whom it remained for more than a century.1
Charles was anxious to make Corfu and Epiros a stepping-
stone to the conquest of the rest of Greece, and desired, like
most conquerors, to have some legal claim to his proposed
conquests. There was at that time in Italy the deposed
Latin Emperor of Romania, Baldwin II., who, after in vain
besieging the reluctant ears of western potentates, thought
that he had found in the victor of Benevento the man who
would assist him. The exiled emperor and the king of the
Two Sicilies met on May 27, 1267, in the presence of Pope
Clement IV., in a room of the papal residence at Viterbo—
a building recently restored — and there concluded a treaty,
which gave the house of Anjou the legal right to intervene
in the affairs of Greece. Baldwin II. ceded to Charles the
suzerainty held by himself and his predecessors over "the
1 Pachymeres, i., 508. Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 195-201 ;
II., i., 309-n ; Minieri Riccio, Alcuni fatti riguardanti Carlo /., 24.

TREATY OF VITERBO 127
principality of Achaia and Morea, and all the land which
William de Villehardouin holds by any title whatsoever
from the Latin Empire." William, who was represented by
his chancellor, Leonardo of Veroli, one of the witnesses to
the treaty, was pledged to recognise Charles and his heirs
as his lords, and the famous knights of Achaia were to form
part of the 2000 horsemen whom Charles promised to provide
for the recovery of the Latin Empire within the space of six,
or, at the most, seven years. Baldwin also considered himself
entitled to bestow upon Charles the lands which had formed
the dowry of Helene of Epiros, and " which had been held
by Manfred and Filippo Chinardo," and transferred to him,
on paper, all the islands which had belonged to the Latin
Empire, except the four most important. The alliance
between them was to be cemented by the marriage of
Charles's daughter Beatrice and Baldwin's son Philip, which
was celebrated six years later. The other provisions of the
treaty are of no importance, because the course of Italian
politics frustrated the hopes of the high contracting parties
that the Empire of Romania would be restored by the strong
arm of the Angevin.1
The Angevin connection could not fail to please the Prince
of Achaia. Charles of Anjou was a Frenchman, and Achaia
was practically a French colony ; he was the brother of the
saintly Louis IX., whom Villehardouin had met in Cyprus,
and to whose decision the punishment of Guy of Athens had
been deferred, and he was King of Naples, and therefore a
powerful neighbour, whose troops could reach Glarentza from
Brindisi in three days. Venice, too, ever an uncertain ally,
had recently, for selfish reasons, concluded an armistice with
the Greek emperor, who had thus a free hand against the
Franks of Achaia and the Lombards of Eubcea. The wily
Palaiologos swore to observe a " pure and guileless truce " 2
with the Venetians, to confirm them in their existing
possessions at Coron and Modon, in Crete and Eubcea,
while they promised not to help the Lombards of the latter
1 Ducange, Histoire de P Empire de Constantinople,'^, 455-63 ; Buchon,
Recherches, L, 30-7 ; Nikephoros Gregorys, i., 98, 123.
2 The word used, 6.y6Tri\, mediaeval Greek for a " truce," is still the
technical expression in Maina for the cessation of a blood-feud.

128 THE GREEK REVIVAL
island, but to remain neutral while the Greeks invaded it,
and to allow Michael to retain temporarily the Thessalian
port of Halmyros, so that he might prevent the export of
provisions for the use of the islanders. As a further reward
for this absolutely selfish policy, eminently characteristic of
Venetian statesmanship and worthy of modern German
diplomacy in the near East, the republic was to receive that
valuable Thessalian port and to keep her quarters in
Negroponte after the war was over, while the Genoese were to
be expelled the Greek Empire, which was to be thrown open
to Venetian trade. Those ^Egean islands which had
acknowledged the suzerainty of the Prince of Achaia during
the latter years of the Latin Empire, were now to be trans
ferred to Michael. The armistice, originally made in 1265,
was in 1 268 confirmed, with one or two modifications, for the
term of five years.1 Thus Venice, in order to checkmate her
Genoese rivals and recover her Levantine trade, calmly
sacrificed the French and the Lombards.
Before the Prince of Achaia had received assistance from
his new suzerain, the latter summoned him to his aid against
the luckless Conradin, who had crossed the Alps to claim the
heritage of the Hohenstaufen. In spite of the fact that
Manfred's widow was his wife's sister, William hastened in
response to the appeal of her gaoler. The feudal tie was
stronger for him than that of sentiment, and a prince so fond
of fighting for fighting's sake was probably not sorry to
exhibit his prowess before the most successful sovereign of
southern Europe. Together with his two nephews, the
redoubtable Geoffroy de Bruyeres and Jean de Chauderon,
grand constable of the principality, and other barons and
knights, 400 in number, the fine flower of the renowned
Achaian chivalry, William was present at the fatal battle of
Tagliacozzo " Ove senz' arme vinse il vecchio Alardo."
Indeed, the defeat of Conradin, which Dante ascribed to the
craft of Erard de Valeri, is by the author of the Chronide of
1 Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 66-89, 92-100. Dandolo and Navagero
apud Muratori, xii., 369 ; xxiii., 1000.

VILLEHARDOUIN AT TAGLIACOZZO 129
th ? Morea, attributed to the Prince of Achaia.1 According to
hi m, the prince advised Charles of Anjou to use cunning,
after the fashion of Greeks and Turks, against an enemy
numerically his superior. The King of Naples allowed
hi itiself to be guided by William's unrivalled experience of
Eastern warfare ; and the latter's plan of alluring Conradin's
prjedatory Germans into the king's richly furnished camp, and
the?n closing in upon them while they were intent on plunder,
proved to be completely successful. But an unprejudiced
authority, the Florentine historian Villani,2 records how
"William de Villehardouin, a knight of great importance,"
was with Charles and Erard on that memorable day, while
Clement IV. urged the appointment of so seasoned a soldier
as commander against the rebellious Saracens of Lucera.
After the battle, William accompanied his suzerain to
Naples, whence he returned, laden with gifts, to the Morea.
He had now been a quarter of a century on the throne ; and,
as he had no son, he was anxious that his elder daughter,
Isabelle, should marry Philip, the second son of Charles of
Anjou, and thus strengthen the connection which had existed
since the treaty of Viterbo between the Angevins of Naples
and the French principality of Achaia. The proposed
alliance met with the approval of both the Neopolitan court,
which saw that it might favour its designs upon Greece, and
the leading men of the Morea, who were glad that the
husband of the young princess should be of their own race
and speech. But the marriage-contract was extremely
favourable to the Angevins, for it stipulated that whether the
Prince of Achaia left heirs or not, the principality should
belong to the house of Anjou. William also undertook to
make all the barons and commanders swear to hand over
their castles peaceably to his successor, "and to obtain
from the Princess Agnes a ratification of these conventions.
Thus Charles had secured no mere phantom suzerainty, but
the real possession of Achaia after the prince's death, and
thereby a convenient basis for the prosecution of his schemes
1 X. ,. M., 6870-7072 ; L:d. C, 228-33 5 L. d. P., 88-9. He also con
fuses Tagliacozzo with Benevento.
2 Apud Muratori, op. eit., xiii., 249 ; Del Giudice, Codice Diplomatico,
ii., 140. I

id,

130 THE GREEK REVIVAL
against the Greek Empire. Isabelle was still a mere chil
but she was torn from her home, a sacrifice to the raisign
de'tat. Four noble ladies and the son of her old nurse, wr <o
had probably been her playmate in the castle of Kalamatia,
went with her ; and amidst the greater glories of Naple is,
they must often have talked of her native land of Achai (a.
In 1271 the wedding took place in the beautiful cathedral it
Trani, and Isabelle and her husband went to live in tme
Castel dell' Uovo at Naples, the selfsame spot where, six ty
years later, her daughter was destined to die a prisoner.1
Michael VIII. had meanwhile renewed his attempt jto
conquer the Morea. A fresh expedition, largely composed
of Turkish and Cuman mercenaries, under a commander
closely connected with the emperor, landed at Monemvasia,
and William was obliged to invoke the aid of his suzerain.
Charles sent him corn, money, and men, and appointed his
marshal, Dreux de Beaumont,2 to take command of them.
But the operations on both sides were unimportant. The
Greeks had learnt wisdom from their defeats at Prinitsa and
Makryplagi, and abstained from giving battle in the open,
while the Franks had not sufficient supplies for a prolonged
blockade of Mistra. Thus, after a punitive expedition
against the rebellious Tzakonians, the campaign closed, and
the emperor was in no hurry to renew it. The artful Michael,
alarmed at the marriage of Baldwin II.'s son with Charles's
daughter, was at this time endeavouring to gain the support
of the papacy and so avert the danger of a fresh attack upon
Constantinople by professing his willingness to accept the
union of the Eastern and Western Churches. The Prince of
Achaia was requested by Gregory X. to allow the imperial
delegates to pass through his dominions on their way to
attend the Council of Lyons ; but the plenipotentiaries, of
whom the historian Akropolita was one, were so rash as to
make the journey round, instead of across, the Peloponnese
1 Sanudo, 1 18-19; Minieri Riccio, Alcuni Fatti, 122, 140, 141 ; Della
Dominazione Angioina, 3 ; II Regno di Carlo I., 19, 20 ; L. d. P.,
91 ; Muntaner, ch cclxii. ; d'Esclot, Cronaca, ch. lxiv. ; C. d. M., 438.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 221-6 ; II., L, 326-7, 329. The
Chronicle ofthe Morea confuses De Beaumont with Galeran d'lvry, who
was sent after William's death,

DIVISION OF EPIROS 131
in the month of March. Off Cape Malea, one of the storms
so common at that place and season, a fortuna, as the sailors
call it, got up ; one of the two ships foundered with all hands,
and the other, which contained Akropolita, with difficulty
managed to put into the Venetian port of Modon. The
much-suffering historian thence continued his journey to
Lyons, and the services which he there rendered to the
cause of ecclesiastical union were rewarded, when fanaticism
gained the ascendency after the death of Michael VIII.,
with a second term of imprisonment, which must have
reminded him of his previous confinement in the dungeons of
Epiros.1 Nowhere did the cause of orthodoxy find warmer defenders
than in that rival Greek state. In 1271, the Despot of
Epiros,2 Michael II., had ended his long and stormy reign.
Amidst all the vicissitudes of fortune, he had contrived to
hold his heritage in the mountain fastnesses of his native
land against the Greek Empire of Constantinople. Despite
the vagaries of his married life, the builder of three
monasteries and churches was invested by monkish
chroniclers with the odour of sanctity, and the memory of his
pious wife, the Blessed Theodora, still lingers in Epiros,
where her religious foundations perhaps compensated for
some of the misery which her husband's restless ambition
had brought upon his country. After his death, she became
a nun, and her tomb, with her effigy and that of her husband,
is still shown in the monastery of St George, which she
founded at Arta, and which now bears her name. Many
were the miraculous cures ascribed to her relics, and it was
not unnatural that one who had healed a case of cancer
should be beatified by a grateful Church.3
The death of Michael led to a complete division of the
Despotat. His eldest son, Nikeph6ros I., succeeded to Old
Epiros and the island of Leukas. Corfu, as we saw, had
already passed into the hands of the house of Anjou, and its
1 Pachym6res, i., 396-7 ; Les Registres de Grdgoire X., 124.
2 Hopf (apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 298) fixes his death in 1271,
Finlay in 1267.
3 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 398; II., i., 405-6; AeXWox -rijs
Xpio-T. 'Ap%. 'Braipcios, III., 81.

132 THE GREEK REVIVAL
history is henceforth separate from that of the mainland.
In Epiros itself, the same strong house had acquired, by the
treaty of Viterbo, the former possessions of Manfred ; and,
though Charles had not yet had leisure to occupy all of them,
the Greeks had been unable to recover them from Chinardo's
sons, while Joannina was held by an imperial garrison.
Still, the sway of Nikephdros extended over the rest of
Epiros and over Akarnania and ^Etolia, while the bastard
John I., who had played so treacherous a part at the battle of
Pelagonia, was established at Neopatras, or La Patre as the
Franks called it, beneath the rocky walls of Mount Oeta, and
thence ruled over a mixed population of Wallachs and
Greeks, the successors of those Myrmidons, whom Achilles
had led to the siege of Troy. His boundaries were Olympos
on the north, and Parnassos on the south ; while to the east
of the latter mountain they ran down to the Gulf of Corinth,
at Galaxidi, and included much of the ancient Lokris Ozolis ;
from the emperor he received the title Sebastokrdtor : the
Franks, by a misunderstanding of his family name of Doukas,
styled him " Duke " of Neopatras ; and, in that splendid and
healthy spot where the moderns seek the baths in summer, he
had built a strong castle, the ruins of which still attest his
sovereignty.1 Married to a daughter of Taronas, a Wallach
chief, he had enlisted the sympathies of that race ; and his
opposition to the subjection of the Orthodox Church to the
pope, if it drew upon him and his feebler but no less
orthodox brother the anathemas of the time-serving
patriarch of Constantinople, made him the leading
representative of that fanatical Hellenism which arrogated
to itself, as it still does to-day, the sole right to the Christian
name. Beneath his standard, many rigidly orthodox
families of the imperial capital found shelter, some of whose
descendants are still living in his old dominions. Among
the fugitives there were sufficient ecclesiastics to hold a
council, which excommunicated the emperor, the pope, and
the oecumenical patriarch, with all the combined bitterness
of theologians and exiles. Two of the Thessalian bishops,
their Graces of Trikkala and Neopatras, did indeed venture
1 Nikeph6ros Gregoras, i., 109 sqq. ; Romands, Tpa.TLo.vbs Ztyfts, 153,
297 ; Sitthas, TA XpovLKbv tov Ta\a$eL8lov, 140 ; X. t. M., 1. 3098.

THE DUKE OF NEOPATRAS 133
to protest against this new schism ; but the one was put in
prison, and the other was stripped of all his garments except
his shirt, and then turned out of doors on a freezing
December night.1 After this there could be no doubt of the
bastard's orthodox zeal.
His restless character was well known at Constantinople ;
but the emperor's past experience of the difficulties which his
troops had met in their Epirote campaigns, and the state of
his Asiatic provinces, made it desirable that he should
pacify a rival whom he would find it hard to subdue.
Accordingly, he endeavoured to flatter the bastard's vanity
by arranging a marriage between his own nephew, Andronikos
Tarchaneiotes, and John's beautiful daughter, and by
conferring upon the Duke of Neopatras the high dignity of
Sebastokrdtor. But Tarchaneiotes, who had received an
important command in the Balkans, believing himself to have
been passed over in the bestowal of honours, threw up his
post and fled to the court of his father-in-law, who was not
sorry to have an excuse for war with the emperor. The
shelter given to his treacherous official, and the violation of
his territory by the bastard, forced the emperor to despatch
a large army, including both Turkish and Cuman auxiliaries,
against him under the command of his own brother John,
the victor of Pelagonia, a commander well acquainted with the
enemy and the enemy's country. Many places in Thessaly
submitted to the imperial commander, and the bastard
sought refuge behind the strong walls of Neopatras, which he
had recently fortified. The lofty position, and the artificial
defences of his capital, enabled him to defy the efforts of the
imperial engineers. But the size of the garrison led the
bastard to fear that his supplies would fall short, and he was
doubtless aware that the besiegers were using threats to
induce his followers to betray him. Accordingly, choosing a
dark night, he had himself lowered by a rope from the
ramparts, and, disguised as a groom, traversed the enemy's
camp, crying out in the Greek of the stables that he was
looking for a horse which he had lost. Once out of the
camp, he proceeded by way of Thermopylae to Thebes, the
1 Pachymeres, i., 83 ; Les Registres de Nicholas III., 134-7 ; Sathas,
op. eit., 144.

134 THE GREEK REVIVAL
court of his namesake, John, Duke of Athens, "Sir Yanni,"
as the Byzantine historian calls him, and implored his aid
against the emperor. As an inducement to the Duke, he
offered him the hand of his daughter Helene. John of
Athens declined the proposed match for himself, pleading
his delicate health and his gouty disposition, but suggested
his younger brother William as a husband for the lady. The
bastard consented, but it was agreed that the allies should
first attack the enemy. The Duke of Athens, at the head of
from 300 to 500 picked Athenian horsemen, accompanied the
fugitive back to some rising ground near Neopatras, from
which it was possible to see the imperial army, estimated at
30,000 cavalry. This huge disparity of numbers did not,
however, daunt the chivalrous duke. In Greek, and in a
phrase borrowed from Herodotos,1 which seems to have
become proverbial in Greece, he remarked to his companion
that they were " many people, but few men." He then
addressed his Athenian knights, and told them that if any
feared to face such enormous numerical odds, they were
free to go home. Two alone availed themselves of his
permission, and then the rest fell upon the imperial camp.
The besiegers were completely taken by surprise; their
great host, composed of incoherent elements and various
races, was thrown into confusion by the compact body of
Franks ; one of those panics, so common with Balkan armies,
seized them ; the cry was raised that the Duke of Athens, or
even the terrible Prince of Achaia was upon them, and they
fled in disorder, and the bastard re-entered his capital in
triumph. Byzantine piety ascribed the defeat to the
vengeance of Heaven upon the Cuman auxiliaries, who had
plundered Thessalian monasteries, and eaten their rations off
the holy eikons ; a modern historian may say that here, as in
so many battles between Greeks and Franks, Providence was
on the side of the small but homogeneous and well-horsed
battalions. For once, the bastard kept faith with his
Frankish ally. His daughter married William de la Roche,
and the important town of Lamia, together with Gardiki, the
ancient Larissa Kremaste, Gravia on the route from Lamia
to Salona, and Siderokastro, or Sideroporta, the ancient

BATTLE OF DEMETRIAS 135
Herakleia, not far from Thermopylae, were her dowry.1
Thus, the influence of the Athenian duchy extended as far
north as Thessaly.
The news of the victory at Neopatras soon spread to
Euboea, where the Lombard barons recognised in the bastard
a serviceable ally against the Greek emperor, who was his
and their enemy alike. Simultaneously with the despatch
of his army against the Duke of Neopatras, Michael VIII.
had sent a large fleet under his admiral, Philanthropenos, to
prevent the Franks of the islands from co-operating with the
bastard. This fleet was now stationed off Demetrias, in the
Gulf of Volo, and the Eubcean barons, excited by the success
of the Franks on land, resolved to repeat it at sea. They
manned a flotilla of Eubcean and Cretan vessels, armed with
wooden towers, which made them resemble floating towns,
and placed it under the command of the son of the late
Venetian bailie. The flower of the Lombard nobility took
part in an enterprise which, shortly before, would have
seemed as hopeless as " shooting arrows against the sky."
But for an accident, however, it would have proved successful.
The rival fleets joined battle in the beautiful gulf, where the
navies of the world could easily lie, and, despite the superior
numbers of the Greek ships, the besiegers, from their wooden
towers — for the conflict " resembled a siege rather than a
naval battle " — severely pressed their opponents. Philanthro
penos was seriously wounded, many of his vessels were driven
ashore, and his flagship was being towed off by the victors,
when John Palaiologos suddenly arrived with the remnant of
his defeated army on the scene. Manning the empty ships
with the best of his soldiers, he attacked the exhausted
Lombards with such vigour that all but |wo of their ships
fell into his hands, one of the triarchs, Guglielmo II. da
Verona, who was also in virtue of his wife, the Lady of
Passava, Marshal of Morea, was slain, and many of the
Eubcean nobles and their Venetian commander were taken
prisoners. Guglielmo's brother, Giberto, managed to escape
on a light armed vessel to Chalkis, which, thanks to the
energy of the Venetian bailie and colony, who abandoned
their neutrality at the alarm of an attack, and to the prompt
1 L. d. C, 408, 413 ; Sanudo, 136.

136 THE GREEK REVIVAL
despatch of reinforcements by the Duke of Athens, was
saved from the Greeks.1
The Emperor's brother did not, however, attempt to
follow up his victory, returning instead with his captives to
Constantinople, and then retiring from the public service in
disgust. But the Lombards of Eubcea had now to cope with
a more serious enemy, who had arisen in their midst, and
whom their overweening pride had converted into a valuable
tool of Michael VIII. Some time before the battle of
Demetrias, there was living in Eubcea a knight of Karystos,
named Licario, whose ancestors had come from Vicenza,
apparently soon after the Lombard settlement.2 Licario,
a penniless adventurer of great ambition, was, when we first
hear of him, attached to the court of Giberto II. da Verona,
who succeeded as triarch of central Eubcea after the death of
Guglielmo II. in the naval engagement. In Giberto's house
was also residing Dame Felisa, widow of the triarch Narzotto,
who acted as guardian for her infant son. Felisa was still
charming, Licario was ambitious ; he dared to avow his love,
was told that it was requited, and secretly married her. The
fury of her relatives at this misalliance knew no bounds;
Licario's endeavours to obtain the intervention of various
persons of influence in the Franco-Greek world on his behalf
failed ; so he returned to Karystos and established himself in
a rocky fastness of the island, called, from its exposed
position, Anemopylae, or, " the gates of the wind." Taking
unto him other adventurous spirits, in which feudal Eubcea
was not lacking, he created such a reign of terror by his
frequent descents upon the surrounding fields and villages,
that the peasants went to live within the walls of the nearest
town, and durst not resume their agricultural pursuits by day
without first stationing watchmen to tell them when Licario
was coming. But he soon grew tired of plundering peasants,
and still thirsted for revenge on the haughty barons who had
spurned him. He therefore entered into negotiations with
1 Pachymeres, i., 307-9, 322-36 ; Nikephdros Gregoras, i., 109-20 ;
Sanudo, 120-2 ; Les Registres de Nicholas 111., loc. eit; M. PalaioWgos, 8.
2 Sanudo, 119— a passage which effectually disproves the idea of
Finlay (iv., 141) that Licario was a Genoese of the famous Zaccaria
family. The Byzantine historians call him Ikarios.

CAREER OF LICARIO 13V
the emperor ; and, finding his overtures welcomed, proceeded
to Constantinople, where he placed his services at Michael's
disposal. He told the emperor that he would undertake to
subdue the whole of the island, if he were given sufficient
forces, and offered to hand over his own fortress, so that it
might serve as a basis of attack. His plan was accepted,
soldiers were put at his disposal, and he carried on a guerrilla
warfare against the Lombards, which inflicted great harm
on the island ; Oreos was taken, and he seized and fortified
the castle of La Cuppa. The triarchs received, however,
valuable assistance from their suzerain, the Prince of Achaia,
who availed himself of a lull in the war against the Greeks
in the Morea to come over to Negroponte with as many men
as he could collect, and wrested La Cuppa from its Greek
garrison. A more voluble but less useful ally was Dreux
de Beaumont, the marshal of Charles of Anjou, who accom
panied the prince with 700 men. To judge from his boasts,
he was going to drive the Greeks into the sea, but his
obstinacy brought upon him a signal rout under the walls of
Oreos. After the defeat of the Lombards' fleet off Demetrias,
Licario prosecuted his campaign in Eubcea with still greater
success. Many of the islanders had now flocked to his
standard, and he ventured to besiege the strong " red castle "
of Karystos, his own birthplace. Othon de Cicon, the
Burgundian baron of Castel Rosso, held out for long against
a combined attack by land and sea, but he was at last com
pelled to surrender, and Licario was richly rewarded by his
imperial master for his capture of this great prize.
Michael VIII., like the Comneni before him, had adopted
the principles of feudalism, and he, accordingly, invested his
faithful henchman with the whole island as a fief, on condition
that he kept 200 knights for the service of his liege lord.
He also bestowed on him the hand of a noble and rich
Greek lady, who took the place of the fair Felisa. These
marks of favour spurred Licario to further efforts ; the
important castles of La Cuppa, Larmena, and La Clisura
were all taken and re-fortified. Even beyond the shores of
Eubcea his hand was felt. The neighbouring island of
Skopelos was regarded as impregnable by its inhabitants ;

138 THE GREEK REVIVAL
even if all the realm of Romania were lost — so they boasted
— they would escape in safety, and Filippo Ghisi, the proud
island baron, was fond of applying to himself the line of Ovid,
" I am too big a man to be harmed by fortune." But Licario,
who knew that Skopelos lacked water, invested it during a
hot summer, forced it to capitulate, and sent its haughty
lord in chains to Constantinople. Far to the south we find
Licario in the Bay of Navarino, " the port of rushes," 1 as it
was called, and he drove the Venieri from their island of
Cerigo, the Viari from theirs of Cerigotto. Venice became
naturally alarmed at these successes ; she did not desire the
system of triple government in Eubcea to be superseded by
the establishment of a strong, centralised administration in the
hands of an able man, who might found a dynasty. So, when
she renewed her truce with the emperor in 1277, she expressly
stipulated that she should be allowed " to help and defend the
island of the Evripos and those in it against your majesty." 2
The emperor continued to make use of his corresponding
right to levy war against the island, and Licario, supported
by the Greek fleet at Oreos, and by a body of Catalan
mercenaries, who now make their first appearance in Greek
history, resolved upon nothing less than an attack upon its
capital. Knowing from bitter experience " the supercilious
ness of the Latins," who were sure to make the mistake of
despising, and rushing out to attack a foreign enemy, he laid
an ambuscade for the impetuous garrison, and then appeared
in sight of the town. Duke John of Athens, the hero of
Neopatras, was then in Negroponte, and, gouty as he was, he
mounted his horse and rode out of the gate with the triarch
Giberto da Verona and their followers along the road in the
direction of Oreos and the north. The rival forces came to
close quarters at Varonda, the modern village of Vathondas ;
the Catalan knife and the generalship of Licario were too
much for the impetuous Franks ; the Duke of Athens was
wounded, and, unable to keep his gouty feet in the stirrups,
fell to the ground and was taken prisoner with Giberto and
many others. The town of Negroponte now seemed to lie
1 Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 237.
2 Ibid., xiv., 133-49; Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 84-96; Dandolo apud
Muratori, xii., 393.

LICARIO'S TRIUMPH 139
at the mercy of Licario, but a crushing defeat of the imperial
forces on the mainland, and the energy of the Venetian
bailie, combined to save it. Simultaneously with the despatch
of the Greek fleet to Oreos, another army had been sent,
under the two imperial generals, Synadenos and Kavallarios,
to 'attack the redoubtable bastard of Neopatras. The bastard
met them on the historic plain of Pharsala, famous alike in
the struggles of Roman against Roman and of Greek against
Turk. His clever strategy, and the rush of his Italian
auxiliaries, decided the day ; one of the Greek commanders
was captured ; the other fled, only to die of his injuries.
Meanwhile, at Negroponte, Morosini Rosso, known as " the
good bailie " for his lavish expenditure on the improvement
of the town, had taken prompt measures for its defence, and
the news of its danger had at once been sent to Jacques de
la Roche, who governed Argos and Nauplia for his cousin,
the Duke of Athens. By forced marches, the governor reached
Negroponte in the incredibly short space of twenty-four
hours, and the city was saved. Licario contented himself
with occupying the fine castle of Filla, and then set out with
his prisoners in chains to Constantinople. His revenge was
complete ; his haughty brother-in-law, Giberto, in whose
train he had once been a humble knight, was now his prisoner,
while he stood high in the confidence of his sovereign, and
received the dignity of Great Constable of the Empire as a
further mark of imperial favour. A Byzantine historian has
depicted the final scene of Licario's triumph in dramatic
language, worthy of the best days of Hellenic literature. He
shows us Giberto waiting as a prisoner at the door of the
audience-chamber, while the emperor is seated on his throne,
surrounded by his councillors. Then Licario enters, but
yesterday Giberto's servant, now arrayed in all the splendour
of his official robes, and showing by his haughty manner
how great a man he had become. The prisoner's pulse beats
faster and faster, the fellow is actually whispering into the
imperial ear ! This was more than Lombard pride could
bear'; Giberto burst a blood-vessel, and fell dead upon the
floor. Michael VIII. might well be proud of his triumphs. He
had not only recovered the capital of the empire, but had

140 THE GREEK REVIVAL
had the rulers of the two strongest Frankish states in Greece
in his power. He did not, however, avail himself of Duke
John's captivity to extort territory from the Franks of
Athens as he had done in the similar case of Villehardouin.
It might have been expected that he would have rounded
off the Byzantine province in the Morea by insisting on the
cession of the Athenian fief of Argos and Nauplia as the
price of the duke's freedom. On the contrary, he did not
ask for a single stone of the Athenian fortresses. He even
thought of giving his prisoner his daughter in marriage and
so converting him into an ally. John's state of health,
however, was such that a marriage was inadvisable, and the
emperor accordingly released him on payment of 30,000 gold
solidi (^'i3,44o).1 We may be sure that it was policy and
not generosity which prompted this act of forbearance.
Michael VIII. knew that at that moment Charles of Anjou,
a man whose ambitious designs he dreaded, was at last
preparing his long-expected expedition against the Greek
Empire. Nearer home he had a restless and victorious rival
in the person of the Duke of Neopatras, who was bound by
ties of marriage to the ducal house of Athens, by ties of
friendship and commerce to the royal house of Naples.2
Finally, in the midst of his own capital, there was a body of
discontented ecclesiastics, who regarded as a schismatic the
man who had sent envoys to the pope and had endeavoured
to prevent the dismemberment of his empire by uniting
the churches. Michael was a cautious statesman, and he
saw that the policy adopted in 1262 would not answer
in 1279. Duke John of Athens did not long survive his
release from captivity; in 1280 he died, and his brother
William, baron of Livadia, reigned in his stead.3
Licario returned to his native island after his signal
triumph over his own and the emperor's enemies at Con
stantinople, and took up his abode in the great castle of
Filla, whose imposing ruins still look down upon the
' Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 95-7 ; Pachymeres, i., 205, 410-13 ; Sanudo,
119-20, 122-7, 136; Magno, 1 8 1-2.
2 Del Giudice, La Famiglia di Re Manfredi, 393-7 ; Arch. Star. I tal.,
Ser. III., xxii., 16, 19 ; xxiii., 237.
1 Arch. Stor. I tal., Ser. IV., iii., 162.

LICARIO'S FURTHER SUCCESSES 141
Lelantian plain. Outside the walls of Chalkis he was now
master of the island, and he maintained such a reign of
terror that no one could go in safety to attend to the vine
yards in the plain, nor could the priests " bless the waters "
of the classic fountain of Arethusa at Epiphany.1 Beyond
Eubcea, he continued to make the Franks rue the day when
he had gone over to the enemy. Ere long, he succeeded
Philanthropenos as Byzantine admiral, with the usual style
of " Grand Duke," attached to that high official, and in that
capacity ravaged the islands of Seriphos and Siphnos, which
he captured from their Latin lords, took many castles on the
mainland, and made an annual raid with the fleet upon the
dominions of Duke William of Athens. Then his name
disappears from history ; we know not how he ended, nor
what became of the children whom his rich Greek wife had
borne him. His strange and romantic career strikes the
imagination, and even in that age of adventurers he stands
out above his fellows. No renegade Latin had inflicted so
much injury on his fellow-countrymen. He had wrested
almost all Eubcea from the Lombards ; he and his Byzantine
allies had captured almost all the ^Egean islands from their
Italian lords, and some of them remained henceforth part of
the imperial dominions. Even as far east as Paphlagonia,
he had won laurels by defeating the Turks.2 Another Latin
succeeded him in the post of Lord High Admiral, the pirate
captain John de lo Cavo of Anaphe, who continued, though
in less dramatic fashion, the destruction wrought by the
low-born knight of Karystos.
Meanwhile, the long reign of William de Villehardouin in
the Morea had drawn to a close. After 1272 the war
between Franks and Greeks in the peninsula languished,
owing to the negotiations between Michael VIII. and the
papacy, and William and Dreux de Beaumont were able, as
we saw, to go over to help the Lombards of Negroponte
against Licario. Three years later, however, the Greeks
1 I take this to be the meaning of Sanudo's phrase, batizar la Croce al
Ponte — a ceremony I have myself seen in Greece. The Fonte is, of
course, the famous Arethusa, which one passes in going from Chalkis to
Filla and the Lelantian plain.
2 Pachymeres, i., 413 ; Sanudo, 127, 144 ; Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 98.

142 THE GREEK REVIVAL
renewed hostilities, and the prince ordered his nephew,
Geoffroy de Bruyeres, to take the Angevin auxiliaries, whom
Charles had placed at his disposal as his captain-general, and
garrison the southern frontier of Skortd. Geoffroy accordingly
proceeded with his men to a place to which the Slavs of
Skorta had given, from its numerous walnut-trees, the name
of Great Arachova, and which, still known under that
Slavonic designation, may be found to the left of the road
between Tripolitza and Sparta.1 There the French soldiers
contracted a fatal gastric fever from rash indulgence in the
cold water, with which the place abounded, and, though
their leader pluckily led the remnant of them against the
Greeks, he succumbed himself to the disease, thus ingloriously
closing his varied career. In the Greek Chronicle of the
Morea he has found his funeral epitaph : " All, great and
small, mourned his loss, even the very birds, which have no
speech ; for he was the father of the orphan, the husband of
the widow, the lord and defender of the poor." But his
Greek foes could not refrain from rejoicing at the death of
" the best knight of all Romania." 2
The rest of Prince William's reign was mainly occupied
by feudal disputes, which do not always reflect very highly on
the character of that warrior, who is a finer figure leading his
knights to battle than when relying on technicalities in the
High Court. The double desertion by Geoffroy of his liege
lord had been punished, as we saw, by the restriction of his
barony of Skorta to himself and the heirs of his body, so
that, as he left no children, it escheated, on his death, to the
prince, who allowed Geoffroy's widow, Isabelle de la Roche,
to retain one-half of it as her portion, according to the usual
custom of the country. Against this a certain knight, named
Pestel, protested as next-of-kin, and appealed from the prince
to Charles of Anjou, as suzerain of Achaia. Charles ordered
his vassal to invest Pestel with the barony ; but William
1 The " cold fountain " near this spot, and two other passages of the
Chronicle (L. d. C, 379, 385) favour this identification, though this
Arachova is rather far to the south to be included in Skortsi. Buchon
hence put it near Demetsana. (La Grice Continentale, 492). The name
is very common.
2 X. t. M., 11. 7177-232 ; L. d. C, 236 ; L d. P., 92.

THE FAMILY OF BRIENNE 143
disregarded his orders, and there for the present the matter
rested. Isabelle, on her part, did not long remain a widow.
Two years after her late husband's death, she married Hugh,
Count of Brienne and Lecce, an old friend of her father,
Duke Guy I. of Athens, and member of a family destined to
be even more celebrated in the history of Greece, than it had
been in that of France, Italy, and the Holy Land. The
family came, like that of Champlitte, from Champagne, where
it first appears in the reign of Hugh Capet. In the early
part of the thirteenth century two brothers of this adven
turous house had won fame, the one in Italy, the other in the
East. Walter, the elder, was invested by Innocent III. with
the dignity of Count of Lecce, near Brindisi, while John, the
younger, became King of Jerusalem and Emperor of Con
stantinople. Walter's son, fourth of the name, was created
Count of Jaffa by the King of Cyprus, and died, after
excruciating tortures, in the prisons of the paynim. His son,
Hugh, who now became connected with the affairs of Athens
and Achaia, was already well known to the prince and the
barons of the Morea. An hereditary enemy of the Hohen-
staufen in Southern Italy, he had fought against Manfred at
Behevento, and had stood by the side of Prince William and
Charles of Anjou at Tagliacozzo. The reward of his services
was the restoration to him of his forfeited possessions at
Lecce. In 1277 his marriage with Isabelle was celebrated at
Andravida, in the presence of the bride's brother, Duke John
of Athens. Hugh received his wife's half of the great barony
of Skortd, and, after arranging its affairs and appointing
bailies to look after his interests, he sailed with her to
Apulia. Not long afterwards, Isabelle died, leaving a son,
who was destined to be the last French Duke of Athens.1
Another feudal case caused the prince considerably more
trouble than that of the barony of Skorta. It will be
remembered that, when he had been released from imprison
ment at Constantinople in 1262, one of the hostages sent
there on his behalf was the Lady Marguerite, daughter of
Jean II. de Neuilly, baron of Passava, and hereditary
Marshal of Achaia. While Marguerite was still a hostage at
1 X. t. M., 11. 7240-60, 237-9 ; L. d. C, 237-9 ; L. d. P., 92 ; Sanudo,
i- 1 7 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 231-3.

144 THE GREEK REVIVAL
Constantinople, her uncle Gautier II. de Rozieres, baron of
Akova or Matagrifon, as the Franks called it, died without
heirs of his body. As the Salic law did not prevail in
Frankish Greece, Marguerite was entitled to the barony as
the next-of-kin ; but her compulsory absence from the Morea
prevented her from making her claim within the term of two
years and two days, provided by feudal law for claimants
abroad. The prince thereupon declared the barony forfeited
to the crown, and, when Marguerite was at last released and
claimed her inheritance, he ungenerously raised the technical
plea that the time for making such a claim had expired — a
piece of chicanery similar to that by which his father had
won the principality. In vain the lady pleaded that she had
been absent on his service, William ungallantly stuck to the
letter of the law. Unprotected and helpless, for both her
husbands had been killed in battle— Guibert de Cors at
Karydi, and Guglielmo II. da Verona in the sea-fight off
Demetrias — she was advised by her friends to marry some
influential man, who would espouse her cause. The idea met
with her approval, and her choice lighted upon Jean de St
Omer, brother of Nicholas II., who was hereditary lord of
half Thebes, where he built the magnificent castle, of which
the Santameri tower is the sole surviving fragment By
this marriage Jean became hereditary Marshal of Achaia,
and his family thus extended its authority south of the
Gulf of Corinth. Jean de St Omer did not allow his wife's
claim to be neglected, and demanded to be heard before the
court of the principality. The prince convened the court in
the church of the Divine Wisdom at Andravida, and Jean, his
wife, and his two brothers, Nicholas and Othon, appeared
before it. Then the lord of Thebes arose, proud of his
lineage — for his grandmother had been widow of Boniface
of Salonika, and daughter of the King of Hungary, while the
Duke of Athens was his first cousin — and stated his sister-in-
law's case. The prince, nettled at his arrogant demeanour,
asked him whether he demanded the barony of Akova for
her as a right or begged it as a favour, and when the Theban
baron replied that he asked no favour, but only what was
justly due, William summoned all the barons, prelates, and
vassals of the principality to consider the question thoroughly.

DEATH OF PRINCE WILLIAM 145
This second parliament was held in the Minorite church of
St Francis at Glarentza, and the prince, handing his sceptre
to the chancellor, Leonardo of Veroli, descended himself into
the arena to plead the cause of the crown in person. In
lawyer-like fashion he called for the Book of Customs, and
cited the chapter relating to the obligation of a vassal to
become a hostage for his lord. The Court seemed at first
decidedly in favour of the claimant, but when the prince
again called its attention to the letter of the law, it gave its
judgment against her. William thanked the Court for its
decision, but Jean de St Omer was so much offended that he
refused even to go through that usual form.
Having thus obtained a confirmation of his legal position,
William could afford to be generous. He called for the
chancellor, told him that he had been irritated by the
arrogance of the barons of St Omer, but that, now that he
had gained the case, he wished to give one-third of the
barony as a favour to the Lady Marguerite. Accordingly
Colinet, the Lord Chamberlain of the principality, and the
elders of the barony, who knew its boundaries and history,
were ordered to come with the minutes of the baronial
court, and eight of the twenty-four fiefs of Akova were
selected for her. A deed was at once drawn up and sealed
by the chancellor ; it was placed under the coverlet of the
prince's bed, and Marguerite was summoned to the presence
of her lord. Then the chancellor drew back the coverlet,
and disclosed the document. The prince handed it to her,
and invested her with his glove, while the remaining two-
thirds of the barony were bestowed upon her namesake,
the prince's younger daughter, Marguerite.1
Not long after this William died. Whern he felt his end
approaching, he retired to his beloved castle of Kalamata,
the family fief of the Villehardouins, where he had been born.
To his bedside he summoned the nobles of the principality,
and asked their counsel in making his will. His wife, his
two daughters, and his subjects, great and small, he com-
i X. t. M., 11. 7301-752 ; L. d. C, 240-54 ; L. d. P., 85-7 ; Liber
Consuetudinum, apud Canciani, op. eit, III., 505 ; Les Registres de
Nicholas III., 26. Both he and Clement IV. (Registres, i., 10 1) call her
Catharina. K

146 THE GREEK REVIVAL
mended to the care of King Charles I. of Naples, and
appointed Jean de Chauderon, the Great Constable, Arch
bishop Benedict of Patras, and the Bishop of Modon, as his
executors. The first of them was to administer the affairs of
the principality, until Charles had had time to appoint a
bailie. He begged that all his gifts, whether to Latin and
Greek monasteries, or to private individuals, should be
respected, and directed that his body should be buried in the
memorial church of St James at Andravida, which he had
built and presented to the Templars, beside those of his
father and brother. Then on ist May 1278 he died. The
last of the Villehardouin princes was laid to rest as he had
ordered, and four chaplains were appointed, in accordance
with his wishes, to pray for the souls of the three departed in
the church of St James. The outline of the church can still
be traced, but no archaeologist has disturbed the long repose
of the French rulers of the Morea. Requiescant in pace ! 1
It was a great misfortune for the principality that
William left no son to inherit it. With him the male stock
of the Villehardouins came to an end, for the " Prince of the
Morea," mentioned by the Byzantine historian Pachymeres2
as having become patriarch of Antioch, and being at one time
a likely candidate for the oecumenical throne, cannot be
proved to have been a brother of Prince William. Nor was
the latter's son-in-law, Philip of Anjou, alive at the time of
his death. The young prince had overstrained himself in
bending a crossbow, and never got over the effects of the
injury. A year before his father-in-law he died, and in the
beautiful cathedral at Trani, where, six years earlier, his
marriage had been celebrated, he found a grave.3 Thus the
Villehardouin family was now reduced to William's two
daughters, of whom Isabelle, according to the Catalan

1 X. r. M., 11. 7757-810 ; L. d. C, 254-6 ; L. d. P., 92 ; Buchon, La
Grke Continentale, 509-10; Arch. Stor. Hal., Ser. IV., i., 436, which
fixes the true date to 1278.
2 i., pp. 402, 437. The story may have arisen from the fact that there
was a Giufridus, clericus, consanguineus principis Acfutia, who had a
cure of souls at Olena, and whom Gregory IX. ordered to be presented
to a better living. (Registres, ii., 851.)
3 Sanudo, 119 ; Arch. Stor. Hal., Ser. III., xxvi., 11, 211.

CHANGE IN FEUDAL ACHAIA 147
chronicler Muntaner,1 was only fourteen years old, though
already a widow, and Marguerite was two years younger.
Their Greek mother, Anna of Epiros, or Agnes as the Franks
called her, who received the castles of Kalamata and
Chloumoutsi for her life, soon afterwards married Nicholas II.
of St Omer, the proud baron who had treated her first
husband with such arrogance. Henceforth, in the hands of
women, the principality naturally declined. There was no
strong man to keep the unruly barons in check ; the bailies
whom the kings of Naples appointed were sometimes
foreigners, ignorant of the country and its conditions, and
after the time of Villehardouin only four princes of Achaia
ever resided in the land, whence they took their title. More
over, by this time a change had come over the feudal society
of the Morea. Of the twelve original baronies, two alone —
Vostitza and Chalandritza — remained in the families of the
old barons. Two — Kalavryta and probably Geraki — had
been lost to the Greeks since the fatal re-establishment of the
imperial power in the peninsula ; Patras had early passed
from the Aleman family to the archbishop ; and, though it
seems to have returned to its secular lords, William Aleman
had more recently pledged it to the primate for 16,000
hyperperi (£7168), and had left the country;2 the baron of
Gritzena has never been mentioned again, and had, therefore,
probably died without heirs ; the families of Karytaina,
Akova, Veligosti, Passava, and Nikli were all extinct in the
male line, and those great baronies passed by marriage either
altogether or in part to the houses of Brienne, St Omer, De
la Roche, and De Viiliers. Of the two Villehardouin family
fiefs, Arkadia had been bestowed by the late prince upon
Vilain d'Aunoy, Marshal of Romania, one of the French
nobles who had emigrated from Constantinople to the Morea
after the fall of the Latin Empire ; 3 while Kalamata was
temporarily in the hands of the Princess Agnes, not only a
woman but a Greek, and was soon exchanged, together with
Clermont, the rest of her widow's portion, for other lands in
less important strategic positions4 Nothing is more remark
able in the history of Frankish Greece than the rapidity, with
1 Ch. cclxii. 2 L. d. P., 88. 3 X. r. M., 11. 1325-7.
4 Arch. Stor. Ital., Ser. IV., iv., 176-7.

148 THE GREEK REVIVAL
which the race of the conquerors died out. Only two
generations had passed since they first set foot in the
Peloponnese, yet already many of their families were
extinct The almost ceaseless wars of Prince William, and
the racial suicide which the Franks committed by keeping
themselves as far as possible a caste apart from the Greeks,
had had the natural results, and where they intermarried
with the natives, the children were almost always more Greek
than French, serving on the emperor's ships and fighting the
emperor's battles. One of the few exceptions to this
tendency was where, for reasons of state, a French prince
married a Greek princess, as in the case of William of
Achaia and his namesake of Athens. But in mediaeval
Greece, as in modern Europe, mixed marriages between
sovereigns bear no resemblance to those between private
individuals ; in almost every instance, the offspring of a royal
union sympathises with the nationality with which his
interests are identified ; whereas, the Gasmolilos, despised by
the haughty Franks, found a welcome and a career in the
service ofthe Greek Empire.
No contemporary authority informs us what became of
the Franks who had lands in that part of the Morea which
was reconquered by the Greeks after 1262. We know,
indeed, that one prominent man, Jean de Nivelet, baron of
Geraki, settled down at a place near Vostitza, to which he
gave his family name.1 No doubt some others followed his
example, and it is probable that several of the smaller
persons found a new home within the Venetian colonies of
Modon and Coron. But those twin trading settlements were
circumscribed, the conditions of life there would scarcely
appeal to the fighting chivalry of France, and, as the Frank
principality grew less, it must have become harder for them
to find even small estates, where they could live the life to
which they had been accustomed down in the south. To
return to France was difficult; for two whole generations
spent in the East must have unfitted them for the West, just
as to-day, the Levantine who is happy at Smyrna is miser
able in London or Berlin. The only course open to many of
them was to remain in the Byzantine province, where fusion
1 L. d. P., 137 ; Schmitt, The Chronicle of Morea, liv.

ABSORPTION OF THE FRANKS 149
with the Greek race awaited them, and, as its natural
corollary, the adoption of the orthodox religion by themselves
or their children — a phenomenon which meets us in the case
of the Franks of Arkadia sixty years later. Where the
Italian element in Greece has been strong and compact, and
where Latin rule has endured, as in the Ionian and ^Egean
islands, for many centuries, it has been possible for the
descendants of the Venetians to keep their own religion, and
even their own speech. But that has not been the case in
the Peloponnese, in continental Greece, or in Eubcea. On
the other hand, the Moreot Franks were never fanatical
Catholics ; Prince William endowed Greek monasteries ; his
brother appropriated Catholic revenues ; the rank-and-file
may therefore have thought that the omission of the filioque
clause from the creed was a small price to pay for their
undisturbed residence among the Greeks of the Byzantine
province, where, as time went on, they became merged in
that extraordinary nationality which has assimilated one
race after another upon the soil of Hellas.
All over Frankish Greece an era seemed to have closed
with the death of the foremost Frank ruler of his time.
Across the Gulf of Corinth, Thomas II. of Salona, who had
married one of William's nieces, and had stood by his side
on the stricken field of Pelagonia, had lately died, and his
son William held the noble castle in his stead.1 His fellow-
warden of the marches, Ubertino, Marquis of Boudonitza,
another of the combatants of Pelagonia, had been succeeded
by his sister Isabella.2 In Thessaly, on the ruins of the
baronies which Boniface had distributed among his German
and Lombard followers,3 and of which that of Larissa was
now the sole, and perhaps merely nominal, survivor, there
had arisen, under the vigorous Despots of Epiros, a Greek
1 We know of the existence of this man from the notice in the Angevin
archives of the marriage of his daughter Agnes to Dreux de Beaumont,
Charles of Anjou's marshal, in 1275. (Hopf apud'Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv.,
292). The bride's father is there described as "Guglelmo domino de
Salona." Sdthas, T!b XpovLKbv toO Ta.\a&L6lov, 337).
3 Riccio, Nuovi Studii, n.
3 A baroness, Beatrice de Larissa, is mentioned as late as 1280 (ibid.,
5) ; but she had probably lost her estates, while retaining her ancestors'
title, and doing homage for her phantom barony to Princess Isabelle.

150 THE GREEK REVIVAL
feudal system, which closely imitated that of the Franks.
At this time the most important of these Greek feudal lords
was the great family of Melissen6s, which we found connected
by marriage with the Epirote dynasty at the time of the
Frankish Conquest The Melissenoi received from Michael II.
monastic lands in the district of Halmyros, recovered from
" the Greek-eating Latins." They were a family of conspicu
ous piety ; they founded the monastery of Our Lady at the
picturesque village of Makrinitza, which peeps out of one of
the folds of Pelion, "the mountain of the defile,"1 as it is
called in the Greek of the period, and endowed that of St
John Baptist at Nea Petra, near Demetrias— institutions which
both received charters from the Emperor Michael VIII.;
while two of the Melissenoi renounced the pomps of the
world, left behind them their splendid coat-of-arms, the
double-eagle,2 the bees, and the bells, and retired into
monastic cells. Another local magnate, Michael Gabriel-
opoulos, styled himself in 1 295 " lord of Thessaly," and made
Phanari, near Trikkala, his headquarters, promising the
citizens that he would never introduce Albanian colonists
or a Frankish garrison there. Thus, Thessaly was already
being prepared, under Greek auspices, for the introduction
of the timariot, or Turkish feudal system, a little more than
a century later — a system of which we may still see the
traces in the large estates which characterise that latest
addition to the modern Greek kingdom. There, under
mediaeval Greek rule, the system of cultivation by serfs
prevailed, as in Corfu and the Morea, and a golden bull of
the Emperor Michael enumerates the villains of the monastery
of Makrinitza in the same category as its mills, both equally
its property. Thessaly, like Thebes, was at this time celebrated
for its silk, and many thousand pounds of that commodity were
exported thence to Apulia by the Duke of Neopatras.
Of the internal condition of the Athenian Duchy at this
period we can glean but little. From the fact, however, that
Duke John was able to lend money for the pay of the
Angevin troops in the Morea, we may assume that his
finances were satisfactory, and a Venetian document of 1278
1 T6 ipos tov Apbyyov. Miklosich und Miiller, iv., 331-6, 345-9 ; v., 260.
2 Buchon, Atlas, plate xli., 20.

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CONDITION OF ATHENS 15 1
mentions subjects of the republic who were settled as
merchants at Satines, as Athens now began to be called in
the vernacular from an amalgamation of the preposition with
the accusative (ej? ra? 'AOr/vai).1 From a notice two years
earlier we learn that at that time the beautiful abbey of
Daphni was the sole surviving possession of the Cistercians
on Greek soil. The ecclesiastical establishment of Athens
had, indeed, become a comfortable home for those members
of the ducal family who had entered the Church. We hear
of two De la Roche who were canons of Athens at this
period ; one of them, Nicholas, has left his name as " founder "
of some mediaeval building on one of the pillars of the Stoa
of Hadrian ; the other, William, was made " procurator of
the Athenian Church " ; but, despite the prayers of the
chapter, Clement IV. declined to appoint as Archbishop of
Athens one who had " a grave defect in the matter of litera
ture."2 Obviously the influential canon was not a reading
man. Great changes had occurred in the Ionian islands during
the period covered by this chapter. While Leukas still
remained united to the Despotat of Epiros, whose ruler was
now the feeble Nikephoros I., Corfu had become a possession
of the house of Anjou, and Cerigo had passed into the hands
of the great Monemvasiote family of Daimonoyannes, with
whom it remained for forty years. Over the three central
islands of Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithaka, there now ruled " the
most high and mighty palatine count, Richard Orsini," like
his father Matthew, a vassal of the Prince of Achaia, and
consequently bound by the same feudal tie to King Charles
of Naples. In the next chapter we shall have occasion to
mention this remarkable man, who was destined to play a
conspicuous part in the history of both Corfu and Achaia.
During the present period we find him confirming, in 1264,
the possessions of the Catholic bishopric of Cephalonia, which,
as we saw, was united with that of Zante, in a voluminous
document of much value for the contemporary geography of
1 Archivio Storico Italiano, Ser. III., vol. xxii., 16, 19 ; IV., i., 9 ;
Font. Rer. Austr., xiv., ,178, 186.
2 Les Registres d'Urbain IV., iii., 426 ; AcXriov, ii., 28 ; Les Registres de
CUment IV., i., 214, 245 ; Martene et Durand, Thesaurus, iv., 1453.

152 THE GREEK REVIVAL
the diocese. The numerous Italian names which it contains
point to the existence of a large Italian colony, the descend
ants of Margaritone's men. It specially mentions the island
of Ithaka as part of his dominions, and calls the ancient
home of Odysseus by its classic name, which also occurs in
a Venetian document of some years later, where it is
mentioned as the scene of piracies. Horses and mules seem
to have been as scarce in his islands as in the time of Homer,
for he had to ask permission of King Charles to import
those animals from the rolling plains of Apulia to his rocky
domain.1 The three Venetian colonies now left in Greece proper —
at the town of Negroponte and the two Messenian stations of
Coron and Modon — had naturally been affected by the
disturbed state of the Levant during the hostilities between
the Franks and the Emperor Michael VIII. Since the loss
of Constantinople, Negroponte had become far more impor
tant to the republic, the salary of the Venetian bailie had
been raised, and money had been spent freely on the town, so
much so, indeed, that the Venetian Sanudo comments on the
great expenses incurred by his fellow-countrymen in the Near
East, " and especially for the preservation of Negroponte." 2
An inscription of 1273 tells how the then bailie built a chapel
of St Mark — a proof of piety, or more probably of the increase
of the Venetian colony.3 The occupation of the whole island
outside the walls of the capital must have greatly damaged
the traffic in corn, oil, and wine, wax and honey, raw and
worked silk, which are mentioned as the products of Eubcea
in the thirteenth century,4 and the same was the case with
the wine and oil trade of the two Messenian stations, to
which, however, on other grounds, Venice naturally attached
great value. Scarcely a man-of-war, scarcely a trading ship
on her way to the Archipelago, the Black Sea, or the Sea of
Azov, failed to be sighted by the Venetian watchmen at
Coron and Modon, so appropriately called "the chief eyes
of the republic," and there was money, too, to be made by
1 Miklosich und Miiller, v., 16-67; Font Rer. Austr., Abt. II., xiv.,
215 ; Sanudo, 116 ; Arch. Stor. Hal., Ser. IV., i., 13.
3 P. 174- 3 Spon, Voyage, ii., 247.
* Pontes Rer. Austr., xiii., 93, 95, 176, 177, 179, 181, 183 ; xiv., 15.

TRADE OF THE MOREA 153
the Jewish, and not less by the Christian, tradesmen of the
two ports, out of the pilgrims, who put in there on their way
to the Holy Sepulchre. Whenever, too, the Franks were
besieging a castle, it was here that they went for the makers
of siege-engines. Coron was the more important of the two :
its cochineal was celebrated, and when, about this time, the
number of the captains of these stations was increased from
two to three, two of the trio resided there, while in critical
times a bailie was sent as a consul.
In the other parts of the Morea, there was a trade done
in raisins and figs, oil, honey, wax, and cochineal, sufficient
to attract the merchants of Florence and Pisa, while silk and
sugar, small in quantity and poor in quality, were also pro
duced ; but the famous vineyards of Monemvasia, whence our
ancestors got their Malmsey, had passed into the hands of
the Greeks. During the intermittent war with the latter,
the principality constantly suffered from lack of corn, which
had to be imported, like horses, from Apulia. In 1268 the
prince asked his new suzerain for the loan of 2000 ounces of
gold (£4800), in order " to repair the ravages made by war
on his land," and at the same time his private affairs were so
unsatisfactory that he was forced to pledge valuables to the
amount of 127 ounces (or a little over £300) at the pawn
shops of Barletta, in order to pay his way. But at the time
of his death, he was able to charge the annuity of .£1054,
which he left to one of his executors, upon the customs-dues
of Glarentza, the chief port of Achaia, and the seat of a bank
which used to lend money to the Angevin bailies, while, two
years later, the revenues of the principality were required to
furnish an annual salary of £1200 to one of those officials.
A shrewd man and a court favourite, like Lepnardo of Veroli,
the Chancellor of Achaia, was able to amass a large fortune,
and left behind him houses and lands scattered over the
principality from Corinth to Kalamata. What is still more
interesting is the fact that he had collected a small library.1
From the inventory of his books we gather that his taste
1 X. t. M., 1. 8430 ; L. d. C, 378, 383 ; Heyd, Geschichte des Levante-
handels, i., 300 ; Les Registres de Nicholas III., 24 ; Arch. Stor. Hal.,
Ser. III., xxii., 238 ; IV., iv., 16, 178, 182. Minieri Riccio, Alcuni fatti,
35, 49, 82 ; Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, Ixxxv., 307, 316, 317, 319.

154 THE GREEK REVIVAL
lay chiefly in the direction of novels and medicine, for the
list contains fourteen romances and two medical works.
But our curiosity is aroused when we hear that he also
possessed "a Greek book and a 'chronicle,'" and that he
had a work in which he was interested copied for him by
two copyists in the royal library at Naples, and carefully
corrected by a French priest and two Italians. Obviously
then, Franks of position sometimes spent the long winter
evenings in the Achaian castles with books of history and
romance, and some of them were able to read the language
of their subjects. One Archbishop even translated Aristotle.
There was, however, another industry more lucrative than
law or agriculture, which was then thriving in most parts of
the Levant. Piracy has, in almost every age, been the curse
of the Greek seas, and it flourished luxuriantly at this period.1
A document of the year 1278, which contains the detailed
report of three Venetian judges, appointed to estimate the
damages sustained by subjects of the republic in Greek
waters during recent years, throws a lurid light on the state
of public security in the realm of Romania. We read of
corsairs of many nationalities — Genoese (whose depredations
were so numerous as to merit a special list all to themselves),
Venetians, Lombards, Pisans, Sicilians, Provencals, Catalans,
Spaniards, Greeks, Slavs, and half-castes. But Genoa had
the distinction of furnishing most of the captains, and Venice
that of supplying most of the crews. Perhaps the most
famous of these pirates was John de lo Cavo (or de Capite), a
native, and subsequently lord, of the island of Anaphe, whose
professional headquarters were at Ansea, on the coast of
Asia Minor opposite Samos, whose favourite haunt was the
sea round Eubcea, and who succeeded Licario as imperial
admiral. Among the many sufferers from his depredations
was the father of the historian Sanudo,2 who lost valuable
merchandise on two Venetian vessels which fell into this
corsair's clutches, and for which £10,752, or one-third of the
value, was afterwards paid as compensation by the emperor.
Another pirate, whose name became a household word in
Greece, was Andrea Gaffore, a Genoese, whom Sanudo knew
1 Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 159-281.
2 Ibid, 337, 351 ; Sanudo, 132, 134, 146.

PIRACY 155
personally, and who, after a long career of plunder, settled
down with his pile as a peaceful citizen at Athens, where we
find him in the early part of the next century. Scarcely less
successful a sea-robber was Roland, knight of Salonika,
whose operations extended as far west as Zante. The pro
fession was so lucrative, and was considered so respectable,
that it became hereditary. The son of John de lo Cavo
assisted his father ; Gaffore had a brother in the business ;
the knightly Roland took his son-in-law, Pardo, presumably
a Spaniard, into partnership. Men of distinguished lineage,
Greeks and Franks alike, became corsairs. The great
archontic families of Monemvasia, the Daimonoyannai
and the Mamonades, figure conspicuously in the report of
the Venetian judges, and one of the former, Paul Mono-
yannes (as his name was written for short) became the first
Greek lord of Cerigo, after the expulsion of the Venier
dynasty by Licario. Sanudo specially speaks of the piracies
committed by the Lombard barons of Negroponte, who found
the harvests of the sea far more fruitful than those of their
great island. Every year they used to send a fleet of ioo
sail to pillage the coast of Asia Minor, and on one occasion
they took booty to the value of 50,000 hyperperi {£22,406)
at Anaea.1 It was therefore no wonder that old Guglielmo
da Verona could afford to maintain 400 knights, that the
island was famous for its fine cavalry, which greatly injured
the Greeks on land, or that Negroponte could boast of a rich
Venetian banking-house, that of Andrea Ferro, which was
able to finance the Franks of the Morea in their war against
Michael VIII.2 The other island barons followed the
example of the Dalle Carceri clan in Eubcea, plundering
Greeks and anyone whom they met, not sparing even the
pious pilgrim on his way to the Holy Sepulchre. Even the
ducal family of De la Roche gave shelter to corsairs in the
beautiful Gulf of Nauplia, and thus brought down upon
themselves, according to the devout Sanudo (mindful of his
father's stolen cargo) the special displeasure of Providence,
which had similarly punished the Venieri of Cerigo and the
Viari of Cerigotto. Besides Anaea and Nauplia, Monemvasia
1 Sanudo, 120, 127.
2 Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 293.

156 THE GREEK REVIVAL
and the islands of Skopelos, Keos, and Samothrace, were
favourite lairs of the pirates. On one occasion, the Monem-
vasiotes looked calmly on, while a flagrant act of piracy was
being committed in their harbour, which, as the port of
shipment for Malmsey wine, attracted corsairs who were
also connoisseurs. After the capture of Skopelos and
Lemnos by Licario, the inhabitants of those islands emi
grated to Eubcea, and turned pirates, so that it became the
principal rendezvous of the fraternity and a nest of sea-
robbers. During a war against the Emperor Andr6nikos 1 1.,
300 privateers were sent out from Negroponte alone, and
Sanudo had the honour of knowing a Cretan pirate, who used
to boast that with his one ship he had done 400,000 hyperperi
worth of damage (£179,200) to the Greek Empire. These
privateers had, indeed, a regular fixed tariff, which was
recognised as a custom of the trade. The captain was
entitled to three denarii of spoil for every two which he had
spent on fitting out his vessel ; but, if he attacked the lair of
a fellow-pirate, his gains, in consideration of the extra risk,
or perhaps by way of salve to his professional conscience,
were assessed at twice the amount of his outlay. Within the
realm of Romania the privateer captain had also one-fifth
of the takings, and enjoyed besides certain perquisites as
dragoman and pilot.1 But great as were the gains of the
pirates, they represented only a part of the damage done.
The misery and desolation which they caused defy calcula
tion, and were by no means confined to one race, or creed.
Neutrals, no less than open enemies, were considered as fair
game by these gentry, and the losses of which the Venetians
complained had all been sustained during the period when
Michael VIII., whose flag these privateers usually flaunted,
was supposed to be cherishing a "pure and guileless truce"
with the republic.
Private commerce was, under these circumstances,
attended with enormous risks, especially among the Greek
islands. Traffic between Andros and Eubcea was specially
dangerous, for to the normal perils of that mill-race, the
Doro channel, was added the probability that John de lo
Cavo or Daimonoyannes would be lurking behind the
1 Sanudo, 146.

PIRACY 157
Eubcean headland of Cape Mantello, as it was then named.
We hear of a Venetian merchant of Athens plundered as
he was sailing past Marathon ; and often a well-filled
merchantman got no farther than "the Columns" of
Sunium ; a ship was seized even in the port of Chalkis
under the eyes of the bailie. The passage from Eubcea
across to Atalante was infested by pirate brigs, and cargoes
of beans and other articles of food, intended for the consump
tion ofthe Marquis of Boudonitza and his men, were taken
at the landing-place. A harmless trader might easily find
himself stripped of all but his shirt, or even deprived of that
garment, and carried off to work in the prisons of Rhodes.
Wherever there was a good harbour — in the Pagasaean Gulf,
in the island of los, in Suda bay, in the extinct crater of
Santorin, in the noble bay of Navarino, "the port of
rushes," as the Franks called it — there was also a good place
for the pirate captain and his crew. Maina had a peculiarly
bad name for piracy even then, and ships anchoring in Porto
Quaglio or off CEtylos often did so at the risk of their
cargoes. The Gulf of Corinth was another risky place, and far
up the west coast of Greece, the narrow channel of Corfu was
still a resort of corsairs, who carried off their prisoners to the
classic Butrinto — the " tall city of Buthrotum " of the ALneid
— which had been taken by the Greeks from its Angevin
commander. The point of Ithaka was another dangerous
spot, the bishop of Cephalonia was plundered by Dalmatian
pirates, and " Ambracia's Gulf" with its narrow entrance
seemed to have been specially constructed for the purpose of
incercepting Corfiote vessels on their way to the skdla of
Arta. But there were land-rats no less than water-rats which
disturbed the path of the merchant and the priest. The
more or less intermittent Franco-Greek war which had gone
on in the Morea since the fatal cession of the three castles
had completely changed the conditions of life there. The
profound security which we found existing in the early days
of Prince William's reign had disappeared. The Venetians
of Coron and Modon, though those places were specially
guaranteed against attack in the arrangements made by the
republic with Michael VIII., found that their neutrality

158 THE GREEK REVIVAL
availed them nothing when they met a Greek captain — half
officer, half bandit— outside the narrow boundaries of the
two Messenian colonies. On one occasion, the archdeacon
of Modon, while travelling in the company of his bishop to
Glarentza, was stopped at Krestena, near Olympia, and
dragged before the emperor's brother, Constantine, then
commanding in the Byzantine province. In vain the
archdeacon protested that he was " a Venetian citizen " ; his
nationality was disregarded, and he was murdered by the
soldiery. It is interesting to note that the Venetian judges
assessed the value of a colonial archdeacon at 450 hyperperi
(£201, 12s). Nor was Constantine Palaiol6gos's army less
scornful when the local authorities of Coron sent him in
a bill of damages for the loss of a cargo of Cretan
cheese and wine. Venetian subjects languished in the
dungeons of Kalavryta since the Greeks had dispossessed
Geoffroy de Tournay of that fine castle, where an imperial
commandant now flew the double-headed eagle from the
keep. Three-quarters of a century of Frankish rule had
endowed Greece with a strange, yet often picturesque,
geographical nomenclature. There can be no doubt that the
Franks, not being Englishmen, had by this time learnt
at least sufficient Greek for all ordinary colloquial purposes,
though later than this, French, and excellent French too,
was spoken at the court of Thebes. We are expressly told
that Prince William of Achaia and Duke John of Athens
spoke in Greek to the Greek commanders, the latter even
using, perhaps unconsciously, an epigrammatic phrase of
Herodotos, while Ancelin de Toucy, the Constable Chauderon,
and Geoffroy d'Aunoy all spoke Greek, and Leonardo of Veroli
read it1 But, all the same, the Franks, assisted by ignorant
natives, had corrupted Greek proper names in a way often
unrecognisable to those who have not read the French and
Italian documents of the period. We have already mentioned
how "Athens" had become "Satines," "Lemnos" " Stal-
imene," "Neopatras" "La Patre," "Lacedaemonia" "La
Cremonie," and " Euripos " " Negroponte." But all over the
Franco-Greek world the same process had been going on.
1 L. d. C, 338.

FRANKISH NOMENCLATURE 159
The island of Samothrace meets us frequently as " Sanctus
Mandrachi"1 (a saint invented to account for the name) ; " los "
and " Anaphe," by the usual process of adding the final letter
of the accusative of the article to the following noun, now
figure as " Nio " and " Nanfio" ; " Zetounion " (the Byzantine
name for "Lamia") is, in Frankish parlance, "Giton" or
" Gipton" ; and Thebes had become " Estives " or " Stivas " 2
as early as the beginning of the twelfth century ; Salona is,
in French, " La Sole," or in Italian, " La Sola," which is the
official designation on the coins of its French lords.
"Naupaktos," corrupted into " Nepantum " as early as 1210,
has by 1 278 assumed the more modern form of " Lepanto,"
though the other corruption long survived in popular and
official use, for example, on the coins of Philip of Taranto.
The former obviously arose out of the Greek accusative
(ei? tov "E7ra/cToi/), the latter from the favourite Frankish
method of placing the French definite article before a Greek
word 3 (" Le Pakto "). Of this practice " L' Arte " (" Arta "), and
" La Prevasse " (" Preveza ") are other examples. Conversely,
" Larissa " becomes " L'Arse." " Monemvasia " is gallicised
into " Malevasie," and Italianised into " Malvasia," from which
the transition is easy to the English form " Malmsey."
" Livadostro," the port of Athens on the Corinthian Gulf,
meets us as " Rive d' Ostre," and " Sunium " is already
described as " the pillars " (" Colonne "), from its noble temple,
and is yet further concealed under the guise of " Pellestello " 4
(" many columns," woXvcrrvKov), while in the French version of
the Chronicle ofthe Morea, " Kalavryta " is " La Grite." Several
well-known classical names had now vanished : thus Ossa
had already received its modern name of Kissavos, and
Taygetos that of Pentedaktylon.5 Ithaka, in common
parlance, no less than in learned Byzantine writers, maintained
1 E.g., Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 205, 207, 212, 222.
2 Saewulf calls it " Stivas " in 1 102 (Recueil de Voyages, iv., 384).
3 Sathas, Tb XpovLKbv tou Ta\a.£eL5lov, 16. Both 6 "E-raKTOi and 6 H&ktos
occur in the Chronicle ofthe Morea, II. 3489, 3627. The earliest instance
ofthe form "Lepanto" seems to be that in a document of 1278 (Pontes
Rer. Austr., xiv., 175)- 4 Ibid-> I92-
5 Documents of 1276 and 1293 apud Miklosich und Miiller, iv., 427 ;
v., 155-61.

160 THE GREEK REVIVAL
the name which had descended from the days of Homer,
though it was also called Val di Compare.
Thus, if the Franks by the end of two generations had
acquired the language, and made their mark upon the map
of Greece, the Greeks had re-asserted themselves, alike in
the south-east and in the north. Already the Frankish
territories had greatly contracted, already the heroic age of
Frankish Hellas was over. A new period was about to
begin, when the fortunes of the country, hitherto directed by
vigorous resident princes, were to depend on the Eastern
policy of an Italian court and its ambitious monarch.

CHAPTER VI
THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE (1278-1307)
With the death of Prince William of Achaia, the house
of Anjou became the dominant factor in Greek politics.
Charles I., King of Naples and Sicily, was now, by virtue of
the marriage-contract made between his late son Philip and
Isabelle de Villehardouin, Prince, as well as suzerain of
Achaia, and soon the mint of Glarentza issued coins with his
name, followed by the princely title which he now assumed,
upon them. The treaty of Viterbo, which had given him the
suzerainty over Achaia, had made no mention of Athens ;
but though there is no direct authority for assuming that
Duke John of Athens acknowledged Charles as his overlord,
the King of Naples addressed him as a feudatory of Achaia,
and John's successor, Duke William, recognised the King of
Naples as his suzerain, only begging to be excused from
doing homage in person at Naples. Charles was suzerain,
too, of " the most high and mighty Count Palatine," Richard
of Cephalonia, and in Corfu his captain and vicar-general
governed the islanders for the Neapolitan crown. Finally, in
Epiros, he considered himself, in virtue of the treaty of
Viterbo, the successor of Manfred and Chinardo, though he
had as yet made small progress towards the realisation of
his claims in that difficult country — the despair of regular
armies. Thus, in almost every part of the Greek world the
restless Angevin had a base for his long-projected attack
upon Constantinople, which the armistice between Venice
and the Greek Emperor, the cunning intrigues and diplomatic
reconciliation of the latter with the papacy, and his own
preoccupations in Italy, had hitherto prevented.
Charles lost no time in assuming the government of the
.161 L

162 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
principality of Achaia, and sent thither, as his bailie and
vicar-general, Galeran d'lvry, Seneschal of Sicily, who
remained in his new post for two years. His appointment
was notified to all the great feudatories of Achaia — to John,
Duke of Athens, and his brother, William of Livadia; to
Count Richard of Cephalonia ; to the triarchs of Eubcea ; to
Isabella, Marchioness of Boudonitza; to Chauderon, the
Constable, and St Omer, the Marshal of Achaia ; and to the
Achaian barons, Guy de la TremouiUe of Chalandritza,
Geoffroy de Tournay, Guy de Charpigny of Vostitza, and
Jacques de la Roche of Veligosti. The captains of Corinth,
Chloumoutsi, Beauvoir, and Kalamata were ordered to hand
over those important castles to him, and he was authorised to
receive the homage of all the barons, knights, and other
feudatories, " both men and women, both Latin and Greek." x
Accordingly, upon his arrival at Glarentza, he summoned
the prelates, barons, and knights of the principality, to hear
the commands of his master. The assembly listened to the
royal message, which bade them do homage to the bailie as
the king's representative, and then Archbishop Benedict of
Patras, whom the other barons had put forward as their
spokesman, rose to reply. The primate pointed out that
such a demand was an infringement of the customs of the
country, which had been drawn up in writing and sworn to
by their forefathers, the conquerors of the Morea. The
feudal constitution provided, he said, that a new prince should
appear in person, and swear before God and the people with
his hand upon the gospels, to rule them according to their
customs, and to respect their franchises, and then all the
lieges were bound to do him homage, sealing the compact
of mutual loyalty with a kiss on the mouth. " We would
rather die and lose our heritage," added the bold ecclesiastic,
" than be ousted from our customs." The primate's speech
was not likely to please the bailie, but the assembly was
• unanimous in support of its leader, and it was obvious that
the proud barons, jealous of their rights, were not going to
1 Arch. Stor. Hal., Ser. IV., i., 433 ; ii., 203 ; iv., 11 ; Riccio, Nuovi
Studii, n ; Schlumberger, Numismatique, 315 ; Buchon, Atlas, pi. xxiv.,
5. There is one ofthe coins of Charles I. as "Prince of Achaia" in the
Doge's Palace at Venice, and the title occurs in the treaty of Orvieto.

THE ANGEVIN BAILIES 163
do homage to a stranger who belonged to their own class.
But, in the true spirit of constitutional monarchy, they were
ready to make some compromise, so that his majesty's
government might be carried on. The question of homage
was put aside, and the bailie and the assembled vassals
swore on the gospels — he to respect their customs, they to
be loyal to Charles I. and his heirs.
Galeran d'lvry does not seem to have kept his oath, and
his administration was unpopular. He began by removing
all the officials whom he had found in authority, just like a
modern Greek prime minister, and thus created a host of
enemies.1 He was unsuccessful in a campaign which he
undertook against the Greeks, who routed his troops in the
defiles of Skorta and took many prisoners. The barons com
plained that the Angevin soldiers, instead of defeating their
foes, plundered friendly villages, and that the lands which
had been taken from them, and the late prince had bestowed
upon his Turkish auxiliaries, should be restored. In 1280,
two of their number, Jean de Chauderon and Narjaud de
Remy, went as a deputation to Naples, to complain of the
bailie's unconstitutional acts. Charles issued orders that the
old usages of Achaia should be respected, recalled Galeran
d'lvry, and appointed in his place Filippo de Lagonessa,
Marshal of Sicily and ex-Seneschal of Lombardy.2 But the
experiment of sending bailies from Italy proved to be
unsuccessful ; accordingly, two years later, the King of Naples
adopted the plan of choosing his vicar-general from the ranks
of the Achaian barons. His choice fell upon Guy de la
TremouiUe, lord of Chalandritza, and head of one of the two
families which still remained in undisturbed possession of the
original baronies. But the baron of Chalandritza, though his
family had come over at the Conquest, was not a sufficiently
important person to impose his will upon his peers. His
1 X. t. M., 11. 7819-939; L. d. C, 256-60; Angevin documents at
Naples, quoted by Buchon (Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 230-1) and Hopf
(apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 316-17). The Greek, French, and Italian
Chronicle of the Morea, make Hugues de Sully, who was never in Achaia,
the first bailie after 1278, but mention Galeran d'lvry as bailie in
William's later years.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 223 ; II., L, 327-8 ; Arch. Stor.
Ital., Ser. IV., iii., 12, 164.

164 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
barony consisted of no more than four knights' fees, and the
ruined castle of Tremoula, near Kalavryta, which still pre
serves his name, is but small. Although the chivalry of
Achaia was still so famous, that three of the Moreot barons —
Jean de Chauderon, Geoffroy de Tournay, and Jacques de la
Roche of Veligosti and Damala — were included by King
Charles among the hundred combatants whom he took with
him to Bordeaux in 1283, when it was proposed to decide
the fate of Sicily by a duel between the two sovereigns of
Naples and Aragon, yet the bailie found it necessary to
employ Turkish, and even Bulgarian, mercenaries against the
Greeks.1 Such was the disaffection in the principality, that
he received orders not to allow a single inhabitant to serve
on garrison duty.
It is no wonder that after three years of office, Guy de la
TremouiUe shared the fate of his two predecessors. Charles
I. of Naples had died in 1285 ; and, as his son and successor,
Charles II. was at the time a prisoner of the house of
Aragon, the affairs of Naples and of Achaia were conducted
by the late king's nephew, Count Robert of Artois, as regent.
One of his first acts was to remove the bailie of Achaia,
appointing in his place a much more important personage —
William, Duke of Athens, at that time the leading man in
Frankish Greece. Connected through his wife with the
energetic Duke of Neopatras, lord of Lamia in the north,
directly interested, as baron of Nauplia and Argos, in the
welfare of the Morea, he was the best possible selection, for
in him the barons recognised the first among their equals.
The Duke of Athens, whose coins may still be seen in the
Archaeological Museum at Venice, was also possessed of
ample means, which he spent liberally for the defence of
Greece. Thus, in 1282, in spite of the annual attacks of
Licario on his coast, he had fitted out nine ships in Eubcea
to co-operate with the Angevin fleet against the imperial
navy ; and, when bailie of the Morea, he built the castle of
Dematra,2 in the ever-unruly Skorta, a fortress which had
1 Arch. Stor. I tal., Ser. IV., iv., 354 ; v., 182-3 ; x- T- M., 11.
8100-4, putting him, however, in the wrong place, after Duke William of
Athens ; Sanudo, 152 ; L. d. C, 289, 367.
2 Riccio, Della Dominazione Angioina, I ; X. ,. M., 11. 7990-8016;

THE CASTLE OF ST OMER 165
been destroyed by the Greeks, and the site of which was
perhaps at Kastri, to the left of the road between Tripolitza
and Sparta. With the Venetian republic, which had trade
interests at Athens, he was on such good terms, that when,
in 1284, it was negotiating an armistice with the Emperor
Andronikos II., it expressly stipulated that the Duke of
Athens should be included in it — a stipulation not, however,
insisted upon in the actual treaty of the following year.1
William was, however, well able to defend his land, and great
was the regret when his valiant career was cut short in 1287,
after only two years' office in Achaia.
In the Athenian duchy, he was succeeded by his only
son, Guy II., who was still a minor, and for whom his Greek
mother, Helene, daughter of the Duke of Neopatras, acted
as regent — the first Greek ruler of Athens for over eighty
years. In the administration of the Morea, he was followed
by the great Theban magnate, Nicholas II. de St Omer,
whom we have already seen defending the claim of his
sister-in-law to the barony of Akova. The lord of half
Thebes, like his father before him, he had built out of the
vast wealth of his first wife, Princess Marie of Antioch, the
noble castle of St Omer on the Kadmeia, of which only one
tower now remains, but which was "the finest baronial
mansion in all Romania." It contained sufficient rooms for
an emperor and his court, and the walls were decorated with
frescoes, illustrating the conquest of the Holy Land by the
Franks, in which the ancestors of the Theban baron had
played a prominent part. As his second wife he had married
the widowed Princess of Achaia, and had thus come into
possession of the lands in the Morea which she received in
lieu of her widow's portion of Clermont ancj Kalamata, while
his brother Jean had already established himself and founded
a family in the peninsula. Nicholas had won the esteem of
Charles I., who had sent him on a mission to the Armenian
court, and he was thus well known to the Angevins. Like
his immediate predecessor, he spent money in fortifications,
L. d. C, 385 ; C. d. M., 461 ; Pachymeres, i., 413 ; Buchon, Atlas, pi.
xxv., 5 ; Schlumberger, Numismatique, 338 ; Paparreg6poulos (v. 153),
identifies it with Karytaina.
1 Luna, fol. 100.

166 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
building a small fortress to protect his wife's village of
Maniatochorion against attack from the two neighbouring
Venetian colonies of Messenia, and the strong castle of
Avarino on the promontory at the north end of the famous
bay of Navarino, upon the site where once had stood the
palace of Nestor, where in classic days the Athenians had
entrenched themselves at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
war. But Nicholas de St Omer was not attracted to the
spot by reminiscences of Homer or Thucydides. He was
anxious to erect a mansion for his nephew Nicholas, and he
chose the classic Pylos, with the noble bay at its foot, as a
commanding position. We often find the place mentioned
in the thirteenth century. The Franks called it "port de
Junch " — the " harbour of rushes " — or " Zonklon," by a
corruption of that word ; but the Greeks described it already
as " Avarinos " — a name which occurs not only in the Greek
Chronicle of the Morea}- but in the earlier golden bull of
Andr6nikos II., dated 1293. The theory, therefore, so con
fidently put forward by Hopf,2 that the modern name of
Navarino is derived from the Navarrese company which
occupied Zonklon a century later, falls to the ground. In
all probability, Avarinos is a reminiscence, as Fallmerayer3
long ago suggested, of the barbarous tribe of Avars, who,
according to a Byzantine historian of that period, " conquered
all Greece " in 589, and who, if we may believe a correspondent
of the Emperor Alexios I., " held possession of the Pelopon-
nesos for 218 years." Thus, the name "Navarino" would
arise, in accordance with the usual Greek practice, of which
we had several examples in the last chapter, out of the final
letter of the accusative of the article, els t6v 'Afiaptvov, or
else, the name of the new settlement there, " Neo-Avarino,"
so called to distinguish it from St Omer's castle of " Palaio-
1 X. -,. M., 11. 8056-99, 8105-9 ! L- d. C, 273-6; Buchon, Recherches
historiques, ii., 498, 501 ; Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 227 ; II., i. 331 ;
La Grece Continental, 460.
2 Apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 212, 321 ; lxxxvi., p. 24.
3 Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea, i., 188 ; Evagrios, Hist. Eccles., vi.,
10 ; Leunclavius, fus Graco-Romanum, i., 278 ; Leake, Travels in the
Morea, I., 411 ; Andr6nikos writes f's rjjn IliiXov, t6>- Ka\obp*vov 'Afiapivov.
Cf. the author's article in the English Hist. Review, xx., 307 ; xxi., 106 ;
and Prof. Bury in Hermathena, xiii., 430.

ST OMERS ADMINISTRATION 167
Avarino," would easily be contracted into the form which
the great battle which secured the independence of modern
Greece has made known to every lover of Hellas.
The administration of the great Theban baron was
disturbed by another of those feudal claims, which had now
become common since the almost complete disappearance
of the families of the original conquerors. It will be
remembered that on the death of Geoffroy de Bruyeres,
his barony of Skorta had been divided into two halves, one
escheating to the crown, the other being left in the hands of
the widow. We saw how a certain knight, named Pestel, had
claimed the barony, and how Prince William had ignored
his claim. A new claimant now appeared in the person of
another Geoffroy de Bruyeres, a cousin of the late baron,
who arrived from Champagne with elaborate proofs of his
relationship and a recommendation from the Regent of
Naples to the bailie that the High Court should decide the
question. The Court met at Glarentza, and the bishop of
Olena gave judgment in its name against young Geoffroy,
on the ground that Skorta would only have descended to
him, if he had been a direct heir of its late lord, according to
the decision of Prince William. Ashamed to return to France
empty-handed, the claimant resorted to craft to obtain the
coveted barony. He pretended to be suffering from colic,
which could be best cured by drinking rain water, such as
was to *be found in the cistern of the small but strong castle
of Bucelet, or Araklovon, which commanded the defile of
Skorta, and which had been held at the time of the Conquest
by the heroic Doxapatres. He first sent a trusty esquire
to beg water from the benevolent governor, and then obtained
leave to occupy a room in the tower, so that he might be
able to drink the astringent water at his convenience. Soon
he seemed to grow worse, and the unsuspecting governor
permitted him to call his esquires to his bedside, so that they
might hear his last dying depositions. Geoffroy then con
fided to them his plan. They were to induce the bibulous
governor and his men to drink deep with them at a favourite
tavern outside the castle gate, and then, when their guests
had well drunk, they should seize the keys from the porter
and bar out the intoxicated governor and garrison. The plan

168 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
succeeded, and Geoffroy, now master of Bucelet, released some
Greeks who were in the castle dungeon and despatched two
of them by night to the imperial commander, offering to sell
him the castle, of whose strategic value Geoffroy was well
aware. He knew that Bucelet was the key of Skorta, and
he surmised that the bailie would give him Karytaina, rather
than that Bucelet, and with it, the whole of Arkadia, should
fall into the hands of the Greeks. This surmise proved to
be not far wrong. The Greek commander, overjoyed at the
offer, hastened towards Bucelet with all his troops. Before,
however, he had time to reach the castle, it had been closely
invested by the Frankish soldiers, hastily summoned by the
governor from their garrison duty at Great Arachova. Such
was the alarm caused in the principality, that the bailie
himself marched at the head of all his available forces to
Bucelet. Ordering Simon de Vidoigne, the captain of
Skorta, to prevent the Greek army from crossing the
Alpheios by the ford at Isova, he sent envoys to Geoffroy,
offering him a free pardon if he would surrender the castle
to him as King Charles II.'s vicar-general, but, in the event
of refusal, threatening to pull it down about his ears.
" Indeed," the messengers added, " Venetian carpenters have
already been summoned from Coron to construct the necessary
engines of war." The prudent Geoffroy now saw that the time
had come for a compromise ; he offered to give up the castle
to the bailie, if the latter would promise him some fief upon
which he could settle ; the bailie consented, and this audacious
piece of feudal blackmail was rewarded by the hand of a
wealthy widow, Marguerite de Cors, who brought him her
father's fief of Lisarea near Chalandritza, and her husband's
fief of Moraina in Skorta.1 As for the castle of Bucelet, it
was shortly afterwards bestowed upon Isabelle de Villehardouin
by King Charles II.
That monarch had been released from prison in 1 289, and
one of his first acts was to appoint a fresh bailie of the Morea.
His nominee was Guy de Charpigny, Lord of Vostitza, head
of the sole surviving great baronial family of the Conquest —
for Guy de la TremouiUe had now died without male heirs—
' X. r. M., U. 8110-458 ; L. d. C, 276-87 ; L. d. P., 94-8 (with con
siderable variations in detail from the other versions) ; C. d. M., 462-5.

FLORENT D'AVESNES 169
and a man known personally to the Neapolitan court.1 But
the Moreot barons were tired of this system of government
by deputies. They had had in eleven years, six bailies
— two foreigners, two of their own order, and two great
magnates from the duchy of Athens. The foreigners had
trampled on their privileges, their fellow-barons were not
sufficiently far above them to secure their respect, and the
duchy of Athens was now itself in the hands of a child and
his mother. Meanwhile, the war against the imperial com
manders at Mistra had gone on more or less continually ever
since the death of William, for the Morea had been involved
in the general Angevin plan of campaign against the
Byzantine Empire. These facts had convinced the barons
that their country could only be saved by a prince who
would reside among them. Two of their number, Jean de
Chauderon, the late prince's nephew and grand constable of
the principality, and Geoffroy de Tournay, formerly baron of
Kalavryta, were frequent visitors at the Neapolitan court,
where they enjoyed greater esteem than any other nobles of
the Morea. They had both fought for Charles I. at Taglia-
cozzo, they had both been chosen to fight for him at
Bordeaux ; and Chauderon held the post of admiral of the
kingdom of Naples. Their advice was, therefore, likely to
be accepted by the king. During their visits to Naples they
had made the acquaintance of a young noble from Flanders,
Florent d'Avesnes, brother of the Count of Hainault, and
scion of a family which had greatly distinguished itself in the
stormy history of the near East. His great-grandfather had
stood by the side of Cceur-de-Lion at the siege of Acre ; his
grandfather had married the daughter of the first Latin
emperor of Constantinople ; his great-uncle had been the
Jacques d'Avesnes, who had conquered Eubcea and been
wounded at the siege of Corinth. Florent's father had been
noted for his reckless extravagance and his amorous
adventures, and, as he left seven children, there was not
much prospect for a younger son of the family in the old
home. Energetic and ambitious, the young noble was not
content to live on the small appanage of Braine-le-Comte and
Hal, which his eldest brother had given him ; so, about two
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 223.

170 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
years before this date, he had gone to seek his fortune at the
Neapolitan court, where he had received the post of grand
constable of the kingdom of Sicily, and the captaincy of
Corfu. But he was not satisfied with these dignities ; he had,
no doubt, heard of the discontent in the Morea with the
existing method of government, and he saw therein a means
of furthering his own ambition. Accordingly, he approached
the two Achaian barons on the subject, and suggested that
they should ask the king to give him in marriage the hand of
the widowed Isabelle de Villehardouin, who was still living
in the Castel dell' Uovo, at Naples, like a prisoner of state,
and to appoint him Prince of Achaia. At the same time, he
pointed out, that if he became prince, they would remain the
masters. The scheme met with their approval ; they chose
a favourable moment for addressing the lame monarch, and
then frankly laid before him the dangers of the present
situation. " Your bailie and your soldiers," they said,
"tyrannise over the poor, wrong the rich, seek their own
advantage and neglect the country. Unless you send a
man," they added, " who will always stay there, and who, as
heir of the Villehardouins, will make it his object to advance
the country's interests, you will — mark our words — lose the
principality altogether." They then reminded King Charles
that his sister-in-law, the late Prince William's daughter,
" the Lady of the Morea," as she was called, was living in
widowhood, and prayed him to marry her to some great
nobleman, who would govern Achaia to his Majesty's benefit
Charles II. listened to their advice, realising that hitherto
Achaia had been a source of expense to the crown of Naples
and was being rapidly ruined. He gave his consent to the
marriage, but only on condition that, if Isabelle survived
Florent, neither she nor her daughter nor any other female
descendant of hers, should marry without the king's consent.
If this condition were not observed, the possession of the
principality was at once to revert to the crown of Naples.
This stipulation, against which the author of The Chronicle
of the Morea strongly protests, was, twelve years afterwards,
enforced against Isabelle herself, and, a generation later,
against her ill-fated daughter Matilda.
Meanwhile, all parties were delighted at the marriage.

ISABELLAS MARRIAGE 171
The Lady of the Morea, still only twenty-five years old, must
have rejoiced at the prospect of leaving her gilded cage and
returning to her native land, which she had left as a child
eighteen years before. The wedding ceremony was performed
with much state by the Archbishop of Naples, in September
1289, and the king invested Isabelle and her husband
with the principality of Achaia. Then the young couple set
out for their principality ; on their arrival at Glarentza, the
bailie hastened to meet them, and summoned the prelates,
barons, knights, esquires, and burgesses to hear the orders of
the king. In the Minorite church there, the king's letters
were read aloud, both in Latin and in the vulgar tongue, after
which, the new prince took the customary oath to observe
the customs of the country and the franchises of his vassals,
and then he received their homage and the possession of the
principality from the hands of the bailie.1 In the following
spring, Charles II. ordered the title of " Prince of Achaia,"
which he and his father had used from the death of Prince
William down to 1289,2 to be removed from the Great Seal
of the kingdom of Naples ; henceforth it figures in the docu
ments of Isabelle and Florent, and on the coins which they
struck at Glarentza to replace the Achaian currency of
Charles II. and his father.3
While the war against the Greeks had been going on all
these years in the Morea, the house of Anjou had also
pressed its claims in Epiros. So long as the Despot
Michael II. lived, Charles I. had, indeed, been unable to
make progress in the Highland country beyond the Adriatic.
He had merely sent Jean de Clery to take possession of the
Epirote possessions, which the treaty of Viterbo had conferred
upon him, and his envoy had occupied the excellent harbour
of Valona, upon which modern Italy casts longing glances.
1 X. t. M., 11. 8476-8652 ; L. d. C, 288-97 ; Buchon, Recherches histo-
riques, ii., 498-9 ; Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., pp. 338-42 ; C. d. M.,
465-6 ; it is not necessary to assume, with Buchon, that " the vulgar
tongue" was Greek; for Charles II. wrote, as usual, in Latin; hence
" the vulgar tongue " would be French.
2 He is so described in a letter of that year apud Muratori, op. eit,
xiv., 955.
3 Coins of Charles IL, Isabelle and Florent in Buchon, Atlas, xxiv.,
6, 7, 8 ; and in Schlumberger, Numismatique, 315.

172 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
But, not many months after the death of Michael II., the
Albanian chiefs, by reason of their " devotion to the holy
Roman Church," recognised Charles of Anjou, the champion
of the papacy, as their king, did homage to his repre
sentatives, and received from him a renewal of the privileges
granted to their forefathers by the Byzantine emperors.
Chinardo's brother was then made Viceroy of Albania,
Chinardo's children were put safely under lock and key in
the prison of Trani, the treaty of Viterbo was ratified by
Charles's son-in-law, Philip I. of Courtenay, now titular
emperor, at Foggia in 1274,. and the feeble Despot of Epiros,
Nikephoros I., unable to protect himself against the emperor
Michael VIII., recognised Charles as his suzerain, sent his
son as a hostage to Glarentza, and handed over to the
Angevins the castle of Butrinto, the classic Buthrotum, and
other places once held by Chinardo. A vigorous attempt
was now at last made to attack the emperor by land and
sea. A force of 3000 men was sent over to Epiros, and
placed under the command of Hugues de Sully, nicknamed
Le Rousseau from his red hair, a native of Burgundy, who
had accompanied Charles to Naples, and had been appointed
in 1278 Captain-General and Vicar of Albania and Corfu.
Ros Solumas or Rosonsoules, as the Byzantine historians
call him, was a big, handsome man, but a most unfortunate
commander, proud, headstrong, and passionate. His men,
among whom were many Saracens, shared his over-con
fidence, and were already partitioning in their own minds
the dominions of the emperor, as the Frank Crusaders had
really done three-quarters of a century earlier. But the
Angevin expedition, which was to have conquered the
empire, got no farther than Berat, the picturesque Albanian
stronghold defended by its river and its rocky fortress.
The emperor despatched a force to relieve the place, the
red-haired giant fell from his horse, and, lying helpless in his
heavy armour, was captured by the Greeks, or their Turkish
auxiliaries.1 On the news of his capture, his men fled in
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 206, 231-2 ; II., i., 314, 316-19 ;
L. d. C, 257-8 ; Pachymeres, i., 508-19 ; Nikeph6ros Gregoras, i., 146-8 ;
Sanudo, 129-30 ; Ducange, op. eit, ii., 324 ; Arch. Stor. Hal., Ser. IV, ii.,
199, 355 ; >v., 17.

TREATY OF ORVIETO 173
panic, and the captives were led, like prisoners in a Roman
triumph, through the streets of Constantinople, where Sully
languished for years in the imperial dungeons. Such was
the joy of the emperor, that he commissioned an artist to
depict the victory of Berat upon the walls of his palace.
The reacquisition of Durazzo completed the success of his
arms, and the harbour of Valona and the castle of Butrinto
alone remained to the Angevins in Epiros. At sea, the
Angevin fleet, manned by Franks from the Morea and partly
led by Marco II. Sanudo, Duke of Naxos, did more harm
than good to the Latin cause in the Levant, as the duke's
relative confesses, so that the double attack upon the empire
had failed. Nor was the treaty for the recovery of the realm
of Romania, which was concluded at Orvieto in 1281, thanks
to the efforts of Leonardo of Veroli, the ever-useful chancellor
of Achaia, between Charles, " Prince of Achaia," his son-in-law,
Philip I. of Courtenay, titular emperor of Romania, and the
Venetian republic, any more productive of results. The
treaty seemed on paper to be a masterpiece of statecraft, for
it brought Venice, so long neutral, into line against the
Greeks. Charles and Philip were to provide some 8000
horses and sufficient men to ride them ; Venice was to equip
forty galleys or more, in order to secure the command of the
sea; the year 1283 was fixed for the expedition, in which all
the three high contracting parties were to take part in
person ; finally, there was to be neither peace nor truce with
Michael VIII. or his heirs. But nothing practical ever
came of the treaty of Orvieto. History can only say of it,
that it was one more of the many diplomatic failures to solve
the Eastern question. Charles did, indeed, collect another
small fleet, of which nine vessels were provided by Duke
William of Athens, and six by the bailie of the Morea,
Lagonessa, and the Venetians began to make preparations.
But the French squadron fell foul of the Venetians, and the
Greek admiral, John de lo Cavo, the terrible ex-pirate,
captured two rich Venetian merchantmen.1 Then, sud
denly the Angevin power in Sicily received a blow, which
in a single night destroyed all the ambitious plans of
1 Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 287-308, 337, 351 ; Laurentius de Monacis,
151 ; Sanudo, 130, 132, 173.

174 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
Charles against the East. In 1282 took place the Sicilian
vespers. Greek diplomacy had not been altogether unconnected
with that ghastly tragedy. Excommunicated by the new
pope, Martin IV., a Frenchman and a creature of Charles,
Michael VIII. saw that the farce of uniting the Eastern and
Western churches was played out. He accordingly entered
into negotiations with the deadly enemy of the house of
Anjou, Peter III. of Aragon, employing as his inter
mediaries his brother-in-law, Benedetto Zaccaria, member of
a rich Genoese family which had been entrusted by the
emperor with the administration of the rich alum mines of
Phokaia in Asia Minor ; a Lombard, named Accardo, from
Lodi ; and the celebrated Giovanni di Procida, who visited
Constantinople in the guise of a Franciscan monk. The
emperor was to pay the King of Aragon an annual subsidy
of £26,880 so long as the war against the Angevins lasted,
and some portion of this sum was provided by the clan of
Zaccaria.1 Michael VIII. received full value for his money;
for the fall of the Angevin power in Sicily not only freed him
from a dangerous enemy, but also deprived the Frank states
in Greece of valuable support. Not without reason has it
been said that the Sicilian vespers sounded the knell of
French rule in Hellas.2 Their immediate result was to stop
any attempt to carry out the programme laid down at
Orvieto. In Epiros the Angevin commanders contented
themselves with holding the pitiful remnant of the Neapolitan
possessions — a task rendered less difficult owing to the
feeble character of the Despot Nikeph6ros I., the attacks made
upon him and upon the emperor by the ever-restless bastard of
Neopatras, and by the death, in the very year of the Sicilian
vespers, of the emperor himself. The last act of Michael
VIII. was to let loose the Tartars against the crafty rival at
1 Sanudo, 132, 147, 173 ; Ptolemasus Lucensis apud Muratori, op. eit.,
xi., 1 186; Hopf, Les Giustiniani, 9 ; Conspiration de fean Prochyta (ed.
Buchon), pp. 1-6, 17-18; Nikeph6ros Gregoras (toe. eit.) evidently alludes
to this when he says that Michael sent money to " Frederick (sic), King
of Sicily," to stop Charles's fleet, confusing King Peter of Aragon with his
son Frederick, who became King of Sicily fourteen years later.
2 Pouqueville, Voyage dans la Grtee, iv., 90.

COLLAPSE OF THE LATIN LEAGUE 175
Neopatras, who had so often been a thorn in his side. The
death of the titular emperor of Romania in the following
year removed one of the signatories of the treaty of Orvieto ;
another, the great Charles of Anjou, died in 1285, leaving his
successor a prisoner of the Aragonese, and in the same year,
Venice, the third member of that Triple Alliance, concluded
an armistice for ten years with the new Emperor Andronikos
II. Both parties were given a free hand in Negroponte ; but
the emperor promised to respect the Venetian colonies of
Crete, Coron, and Modon, and to include the Duke of Naxos
and the lord of Tenos in the treaty, provided that they swore
not to give refuge to corsairs. A year earlier Andrdnikos
had gained recognition in the west, and practically
extinguished the claims of the house of Montferrat to the
phantom kingdom of Salonika by his second marriage with
Irene, daughter of the Marquis William VII. and of
Beatrice of Castile, who brought it to him as her dowry.1
Thus collapsed the coalition for the restoration of the
Latin Empire.
Freed from the danger of attack from the Franks,
Andronikos II. resolved to secure himself against the
intrigues of his hereditary rival, the Duke of Neopatras.
The restless bastard had not been sobered by advancing
years, and his eldest son, Michael, had begun to display all
the ambitious activity which had characterised his father in
his prime. The emperor thought it wise to take measures
in time against a repetition of those movements in Thessaly
which had given so much trouble to his father. In order to
be quite sure' of success, he tried both force and craft, sending
an army and a fleet of about eighty ships under Tarchaneiotes
and Alexios Raoul, an official of French descent, from whose
family, according to some authorities, the great clan of
Ralles derives its origin and name; at the same time,' he
entered into negotiations with his cousin Anna, the masculine
wife of Nikeph6ros I., Despot of Epiros, for entrapping
young Michael by some feminine stratagem. Anna's skill
proved superior to that of the imperial commanders. While
1 Pachymeres, i., 524-5, ii., 87 ; Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 149, 167,
168 ; Pontes Rer. Austr., xiv., 322-53 ; Memoriale Potestatum Regien-
sium, apud Muratori, op. eit, viii., 1 164-5.

176 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
they wasted time in restoring the fortifications of Demetrias,
near the modern Volo, until pestilence slew Tarchanei6tes
and dispersed his followers, the cunning Princess of Epiros
obtained possession of her nephew under the pretext of
marrying him to one of her daughters, and then sent him in
chains to Constantinople, where he languished in prison for
the rest of his life. Once, indeed, he managed to escape,
thanks to the aid of Henry, an Englishman, presumably a
member of the Varangian guard, who had been appointed
his chief gaoler. Hiring a fishing-smack, they set sail in the
night for Eubcea, hoping to make their way thence to
Athens, where Michael's sister, Helene, was then duchess
and regent1 But one of those sudden storms so common in
the Levant arose in the Marmara; their vessel was driven
ashore at Rodosto, and they were there recaptured by the
imperial authorities. Many efforts were made to induce
Andr6nikos to release his prisoner, but in vain. Years rolled
on, and at last Michael, grown desperate, resolved to kill the
emperor, even if he perished himself. His prison was near
the imperial apartments, and he therefore determined to set
fire to his cell, in hope that the flames would reach the
emperor's bedchamber. Unluckily for the success of his
plan, Andr6nikos was still awake when the fire broke out ;
orders were at once given to extinguish the conflagration,
and Michael, fighting like a tiger, was felled at the door
of his cell by one of the axes of the bodyguard.
His father had avenged him upon the treacherous Anna
by ravaging the Despotat of Epiros ; and it was to
save himself from these attacks that the unwarlike Nike-
ph6ros consented to become tributary to the King of
Naples.2 The founder of a dynasty is always able, and his son
almost as invariably feeble. So it was with Andronikos II.
Nature had intended him for a professor of theology, to
which engrossing subject he devoted what time he could
spare from the neglect of his civil and military duties. In
order to obtain money for the Orthodox Church and the
imperial court, he allowed the navy to rot in the Golden
1 Pachymeres, by a confusion, makes her ruler of Eubcea.
2 Pachymeres, ii., 67-77, 201-

FLORENT'S ADMINISTRATION 177
Horn, after the fashion of the present sultan ; his courtiers
told him that there was nothing more to fear from the Latins
after the death of Charles of Anjou, so that an efficient fleet
was a sheer extravagance. He dismissed the half-breeds,
who were his best sailors, allowing some of them to enter
the service of the Franks, and thus permitted the pirates
to scour the seas unchecked.1 Meanwhile, the handwrit
ing was on the wall ; the Turks were advancing in
Asia Minor, yet the pedant on the throne of the Caesars
seemed to regard their intrusion as of less moment to
the empire than that of the filioque clause into the
creed. Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that
Andronikos was glad to suspend, by agreement with the
new Prince of Achaia, the attempts which his father had
made for the reconquest of the Morea. The first act of
Florent was to replace all the existing civil and military
authorities by his own men, and to redress the grievances
of the principality, which he found utterly exhausted by the
exactions of the Angevin officials and mercenaries. He
endeavoured to make the foreign blood-suckers atone for
their maladministration by compelling them to disgorge
their ill-gotten gains, and such was his severity towards
them that he received a significant hint from King Charles
to temper justice with mercy. As for the future, he wisely
adopted the advice of such experienced men as old Nicholas
de St Omer, Geoffroy de Tournay, and Jean de Chauderon,
who urged him, in accordance with the general opinion, to
make a durable truce with the Greek Emperor as the only
way of preventing the further decline of the principality.
He accordingly sent two envoys to the Byzantine governor
(or Ke<j>a\ri) at Mistra, suggesting that an armistice should
be concluded. The governors of the Byzantine province
were, however, at that period, appointed for no longer than
a year, and the then governor's term of office had almost
expired. He; however, at the advice of the local Greek
magnates, referred the proposal to the emperor, who joyfully
accepted it, all the more so because he was at the moment
harassed by the Turks in Asia, by the Despot of Epiros,
1 Pachymeres, ii., 69-71 ; Nikeph6ros Gregoras, i., 174-6. M

178 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
and by the Bulgarian Tsar.1 Andr6nikos sent to the Morea
a great magnate, Philanthropen6s, who belonged to one of
the twelve ancient Byzantine families, and was apparently
the same person as the Alexios Philanthropenos who was
grandson of the former Byzantine admiral, and a few years
later rebelled and proclaimed himself emperor.2 The new
governor met Florent at Andravida, where the heads of a
treaty were drawn up in writing between them. But the
cautious Fleming was still not content with the signature of
an annual official, of however high rank. He pointed out
that, as he was a prince, the emperor's autograph should
accompany his own. Philanthropenos agreed ; two Greek
archons and two Greek-speaking French barons, Jean de
Chauderon and Geoffroy d'Aunoy, baron of Kyparissia,
accompanied him to Constantinople, and Andronikos, glad to
be relieved of the expense caused by the warfare in the
Morea, signed the treaty with the purple ink, and sealed it
with the golden seal in their presence. For full seven years
the principality enjoyed repose, which was welcome to both
Greeks and Franks alike. The ravages of the Angevin
officials and their mercenaries were repaired ; " all grew rich,"
says the chronicler, " Franks and Greeks, and the land waxed
so fat and plenteous in all things, that the people knew not
the half of what they possessed." 3
Unfortunately, by a custom of international law which
then prevailed, a truce between two rulers was considered no
bar to the offer of assistance by one of them to the enemy of
the other. One of the reasons which had induced Andronikos
to make peace in the Morea was, as we saw, his difficult
position in Epiros. The Despot Nikephoros, or rather his
wife Anna, who really inspired his policy, was 'at this moment
smarting under that spretce injuria formce, which had caused
so many woes to the ancient Greek world. She had
rendered a great service to the emperor by betraying
1 " L'Empereur de Jaguora " (L. d. C, 300). " Jaguora " is Zagora, not
Angora, as Buchon supposes.
2 Pachymeres, ii., 210-29; Krit<5boulos, the historian of Mohammed
II., seems to allude to his appointment (Miiller, Fragmenta historicorum
Gracorum, v., 104).
3 X. t. M., 8653-8781 ; L. d. C, 297-300, 472.

WAR IN EPIROS 179
Michael of Neopatras into his hands, and she claimed her
reward, which was to consist of a marriage between her very
beautiful daughter, Thamar, and the emperor's eldest son.
She added as an inducement, that after her husband's death
she would transfer the Despotat to the emperor, regardless of
the claims of her son Thomas, a child of feeble character,
whom she judged incapable of governing in troublous times.
The offer was a good one, for it would have ended the long
rivalry between Epiros and Constantinople and have reunited
a large part of the Byzantine Empire. But the patriarch
opposed a marriage between second cousins ; as a theologian,
Andronikos agreed with the patriarch, as a politician of
short views, he fancied that he had found a better match for
his son in the person of Catherine of Courtenay, grand
daughter of Baldwin II., whose claims as titular empress of
Constantinople would be extinguished by her marriage with
the real heir.1 As a matter of fact, this alternative alliance
came to nothing, while the rejection of the beauteous Thamar
determined her father to wipe out this insult. The bastard
of Neopatras also, if we may believe the much later Chronicle
of Galaxidi? seized this opportunity of avenging the emperor's
treatment of his eldest son, who was at that time a prisoner
in Constantinople; "with tears in his eyes," he appealed to
the mountaineers of Loidoriki and the sailors of Galaxidi to
come to his aid. Two hundred chosen men came from either
place with the intention to do or die ; but in a battle near
Lamia, they were basely deserted by their comrades ; the
Galaxidiotes perished to a man, boldly fighting sword in
hand; a quarter of the contingent from Loidoriki was left
on the field ; and the bastard, who had witnessed so many
fights, only escaped capture by flight. Nikephoros was now
exposed to the full force of the imperial army, which, 44,000
strong, crossed over from Thessaly by way of Metzovo to
Joannina, the second most important city of the Despotat,
which had been recovered from its former imperial garrison.
Meanwhile, the emperor had chartered sixty Genoese galleys
with orders to enter the Ambrakian Gulf.
Thus menaced by land and sea, Nikephoros sought the
advice of his chief men, who recommended him to seek the aid
1 Pachymeres, ii., 153, 200-2. 2 Pp. 203-4.

180 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
of Florent, who had married his niece and whose Frankish
chivalry was famous in the whole Greek world. Envoys
were accordingly sent in 1292 to the Achaian capital of
Andravida, where the matter was discussed in the church
of the Divine Wisdom ; the older men, who remembered
the mishaps which had accrued to the Morea from the
Epirote campaign of Prince William, thirty-three years
before, were opposed to a repetition of that adventure ; but
dynastic reasons and the national love of glory prevailed,
and it was agreed, that Florent should join his wife's uncle
with 500 picked warriors, on condition that the Despot gave
them their pay and sent his only surviving son Thomas as a
hostage to the Morea. At the same time, and on the same
terms, Nikephoros secured the aid of Count Richard of
Cephalonia and 100 of his islanders, sending him, as a pledge
of his good faith, his daughter Maria.
The three allies met at Arta, and resolved on a march
upon Joannina ; but, before they had reached that place, the
imperial army had fled in panic, nor could their chivalrous
appeals to the honour of the Greek commander, whose
Turkish and Cuman auxiliaries would only obey their own
chiefs, prevail upon him to give them battle. After a brief
raid into the emperor's territory, they were hastily recalled
by the news that the Genoese galleys had arrived at the
mouth of the Ambrakian Gulf, that the sailors had landed at
Preveza, and that they were marching straight for Arta.1 The
Despot feared for his capital, for the Genoese were noted for
their skill in sieges, and 1000 horsemen were despatched in
hot haste to stop them. But the flight of the imperial army,
which was to have co-operated with them by land, had dis
couraged the Genoese ; some of their comrades were cut off
by the cavalry; and, when Florent arrived and pitched his
camp at Salagora, where the galleys were lying at anchor,
so as to prevent them from landing, they sailed away to
Vonitza on the south of the gulf,2 whence they ravaged the
Despotat unchecked as far as the island of Santa Mavra,
which then formed part of it Then they returned to
Constantinople ; the allies of the Despot dispersed ; and his
1 Here ends the Italian version ofthe Chronicle.
2 Here ends the Greek version.

THE NAME OF SANTA MAVRA 181
son was released from his detention at Chloumoutsi. Count
Richard of Cephalonia did not, however, send back his
hostage, but married her to his eldest son John, a fine,
strapping man, for whom no lady of Romania was good
enough. Great was the indignation of Nikeph6ros, who
had looked higher than the heir of the county palatine ;
but Epiros had no navy, and the count, safe in his island
domain, could smile at his late ally's impotent wrath,1 which
was increased by the count's refusal to carry out his promise
of bestowing the famous "island of Ithaka, or the fort of
Koronos," in Cephalonia, upon his son.2 Nikeph6ros had
acted more generously, for he had grown fond of his hand
some son-in-law, to whom he seems to have given the island
of Leukas, or Santa Mavra, as it now began to be called.3
The history of Santa Mavra, and the origin of its name, are
somewhat obscure ; but it appears to have belonged to the
despots of Epiros, in connection with whom we have more
than once had occasion to allude to it, down to a little before
the year 1300, when it is mentioned, under the names of
" Luccate " and " Lettorna," in two Angevin documents, as
belonging to John of Cephalonia. In one of these documents,
Charles II. of Naples gives John permission to build a fort in
" Lettorna," and from this fort, which is known to have been
subsequently called " Santa Mavra," some scholars derive the
common name of the island, while others think that it had
the name even before the erection of the fort4 Santa Mavra
is a popular saint, alike in Greece and Italy, so that her name
1 X. t. M., 11. 8782 to end; L. d. C, 302-20; L. d. P., 100-3; Con-
tinuator Caffari apud Pertz, Monumenta German. Hist, xviii., 338 ;
Buchon, Recherches historiques, ii., 482.
2 Riccio, Saggio di Codice Diplomatico, Supp., part I., 87. The south
east corner of Cephalonia is still called Koronoi. h
3 This is an inference from the two facts that Leukas is not mentioned
among the dominions of Richard in the above-mentioned inventory of
the bishopric of Cephalonia in 1264, and that it is mentioned as belong
ing to his son John in 1300 ; Romands, Tpo.Tia.vbs Ziipfa, 166, 297.
4 The Livre de la Conqueste, probably composed between 1333 and
1341, mentions "Saincte Maure" (p. 317) in describing the events of
1292 ; the fort is so described in an Angevin document of I343> in Walter
of Brienne's will in 1347, and in a Venetian document of 1355, where the
island is still called "Lucate"— an indication that the fort was called
Santa Mavra before the island. Romanos, op. eit, 301-2 ; BlantSs,

182 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
would appeal alike to the Italian Orsini and to the native
Greeks. The Despot was able to console himself for this mesalliance
by a splendid match for his other daughter, the beautiful
Thamar, whose slighted charms had been the cause of the
late war. In 1294 the Epirote damsel was married at Naples
to Philip, second son of King Charles 1 1., who was thus able
to recover by a dynastic alliance the ground which his house
had lost by the sword beyond the Adriatic. The King of
Naples laid his plans with much cunning. Before the
marriage took place, he conferred upon his son the princi
pality of Taranto, as being nearest to the coveted land of
Epiros ; his next step was to make his niece, Catherine of
Courtenay, titular empress of Constantinople, ratify the
treaty of Viterbo, and pledge herself never to marry without
the consent of the crown of Naples — a piece of diplomacy
which he attempted to justify by the most sickening and
transparent excuses. He thus had in his own hands all the
claims to the Latin Empire of Romania, which still counted
for something in diplomatic circles. He then transferred all
these claims, and the suzerainty over the principality of
Achaia, the duchy of Athens, the kingdom of Albania, and
the province of Wallachia (or Thessaly) to his son, on whom
he also bestowed the island of Corfu with the castle of
Butrinto on the opposite coast of Epiros and its dependencies
— the remnant, in fact, of the Angevin possessions on the
Greek mainland. Thus, in 1294, Philip of Taranto became
suzerain of all the Frankish states in Greece, which the King
of Aragon, the great rival of the house of Anjou, promised
to respect, and actual owner of the Angevin dominion in
Corfu and on the Epirote litoral, over which his father
retained the overlordship. A prince so richly endowed with
dignities and estates was a desirable son-in-law ; nor was the
Despot moved to reject such a marriage for his daughter on
the ground that the King of Naples was still keeping his
nephews, the sons of Helene and Manfred, in the dungeons
of Santa Maria del Monte, the fine castle which still stands
near Andria. He promised to give Philip, in addition to
'H AevK&s fori roils QpiyKovs, p. 25. Cf. the author's note in the English
Historical Review, xviii., 513.

PHILIP OF TARANTO IN EPIROS 183
Thamar's dowry of £44,800 a year, the four fortresses of
Lepanto, Vonitza, Angelokastro and Vrachori (the modern
Agrinion); if his son Thomas died, Philip was to become
Despot of all Epiros ; if he lived to attain his majority, he was
to hold the heritage of his ancestors as Philip's vassal, and
cede the latter another castle or a maritime province.1 On the
other hand, Philip pledged himself to respect the religion of his
wife and his future subjects ; the first of these pledges he vio
lated ; the confidence of the Greeks in the second must have
been shaken by the creation of a Catholic archbishopric in " the
royal castle " of Lepanto, whose Greek metropolitan, hitherto
the chief ecclesiastic of the Despotat, transferred his see to
Joannina, out of the reach of " the boastful, haughty, and
rapacious Italians."2 Philip of Taranto was now, by this
extraordinary arrangement, master of the best positions in
^Etolia, and had a prospect of obtaining the whole of Epiros.
The other branch of the Angeli, which ruled in Thessaly, was,
indeed, naturally alarmed at this extension of Angevin sway
in Western Greece, and the two younger sons of the old
Duke of Neopatras made an attack upon Arta and captured
Lepanto. The King of Naples in alarm bade Florent of
Achaia and Hugues de Brienne, who was now guardian of
the young Duke of Athens, defend Epiros. But this was a
merely temporary acquisition, almost immediately relin
quished ; in fact, the chief result of these feuds between the
two branches of the Angeli was to weaken both and so
benefit the Angevins. Moreover, the Serbs had now occupied
the north of the Despotat, so that the Albanian Catholic
population naturally preferred the rule of a prince of their
own faith to that of a sovereign who was a member of the
Orthodox Church. Philip himself was able to pay but little
attention to his transmarine possessions, for, like his father
before him, he was taken prisoner by the Aragonese, at the
1 Ducange, op. eit, ii., 326-32 ; Buchon, Recherches historiques, i., 320-4,
455 ; Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 306-8, 315-16, 407-9; I., i., 198-9 ; Hopf
apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 338 ; Buchon identifies " le Blecola "
with Vrachori ; Pachymeres, ii., 202 ; Minieri Riccio, Della Dominazione
Angioina, 7, 8 ; Saggio, Supp., part i., 56.
2 Miklosich und Miiller, i., 94, 470, where the date is erroneously given
as "about 1284." It should be 1307. Cf. Regestum Clementis V, ii., 89.

184 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
battle of Falconaria in 1299, and was not released till the
peace of Caltabellotta in 1 302. But during his captivity his
interests were well looked after, and his father spared no
pains to conciliate the Epirotes. Two years later, Charles II.
renewed the settlement of 1294, and his son was henceforth
styled " Despot of Romania and Lord of the Kingdom of
Albania" — the former of which titles may be read on the
coins which he struck at his mint of " Nepant," or Lepanto.1
The seven years' peace which the Morea enjoyed during
the reign of Florent was disturbed by several violent
incidents. Soon after the return of the prince from Epiros
he had to pay a visit to his suzerain, the King of Naples, and
during his absence in 1292 a piratical squadron under the
command of Roger de Lluria, the famous admiral of King
James of Aragon, made its appearance in Greek waters.
Lluria's brother-in-law, Berenguer d'Entenca, had already
ravaged Corfu and the coast of the Despotat of Epiros, but
this fresh expedition was much more destructive. Lluria
himself afterwards told Sanudo, that he had plundered the
emperor's dominions, because the latter had failed to pay the
subsidy promised to King Peter of Aragon by Michael VIII.,
and, as the truce of Gaeta, between the houses of Anjou and
Aragon, had barely expired, he did not attack the Franks of
Achaia till he was attacked by them ; but he damaged both
Latin and Greek islands with piratical impartiality. Chios,
then a Byzantine possession, yielded him sufficient mastic to
fill two galleys ; the Latin duchy of Naxos afforded him
further booty, and then he steered his course for Monemvasia.
Since the re-establishment of Byzantine rule in the south of
the Morea, thirty years before, Monemvasia had greatly
increased in importance. Michael VIII. had granted its
citizens valuable fiscal exemptions ; his pious son had con
firmed their privileges and possessions, and in 1293 gave the
metropolitan the title of " Exarch of all the Peloponnesos,"
with jurisdiction over eight bishoprics, some, it is true, still
in partibus infidelium, and confirmed all the rights and
property of his diocese, which was raised to be the tenth of
the empire and extended, at any rate on paper, right across
1 Sithas, To XpoviKbv tov VaXa^eLdiov, 16 ; Schlumberger, Numismatique,
388 ; Riccio, Saggio, Supp., part i., 96.

LLURIA RAVAGES GREECE 185
the peninsula to " Pylos, which is called Avarinos." The
emperor lauds, in this interesting and beautifully illuminated
document, still preserved in the National Library and (in a
copy) in the Christian Archaeological Museum at Athens, the
convenience and safe situation of the town, the number of its
inhabitants, their affluence and their technical skill, their sea
faring qualities, and their devotion to his throne and person.1
Lluria doubtless found abundant booty in such a place ; and
he was able to sack the lower town without slaughter, for the
archons and the people took refuge in the impregnable citadel
which has defied so many armies, leaving their property and
their metropolitan in his power. By the device of hoisting
the Venetian flag and pretending to be a Venetian merchant,
he managed to decoy a number of Mainates down to his
ships, whom he carried off as slaves. Hitherto, he had not
molested the Frankish part of the Morea, knowing it to be
under the suzerainty of Anjou ; but while he was watering
and reposing at Navarino, a body of Greeks and Frankish
knights under Giorgio Ghisi, the captain of Kalamata, and
Jean de Tournay, " the finest and bravest gentleman in all
Morea," fell upon his men. A hand-to-hand fight ensued ;
Lluria and Jean de Tournay charged one another with such
force that their lances were shivered to splinters, and the
French knight fell with all his weight over the body of his
adversary. Lluria's men would have slain him, had not their
leader bade them spare so gallant a warrior, in whom he
recognised the son of an old acquaintance and whom he
would fain have had for his own son-in-law. Most of the
Franks and Greeks were soon either dead or prisoners, and it
only remained for Lluria to assess and collect the ransom.
For this purpose it was necessary to sail to Glarentza, the
chief commercial place in Achaia, where the Princess Isabelle
was then residing. When the red galley of the Aragonese
commander with Jean de Tournay on board hove in sight,
the Achaian admiral saluted him in her name, and beneath
the shade of a tower by the sea-shore, at a place called
Kalopotami, " the fair river," Isabelle and her visitor met. The
good burgesses of Glarentza were requested to advance the
1 Miklosich und Miiller, v., 154-61 ; Phrantzes, 399 ; Dor6theos of
Monemvasia, 400 ; AeXriov ttjs Xpwr. 'Apx- 'Eraip., vi., iii-iq.

186 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
ransom of the captives — £3584 for Ghisi, whose father, the
lord of Tenos, was a wealthy man, as Lluria knew full well,
for he had lately visited his island, and half that sum for
Tournay. The Aragonese admiral was loud in his praise of
the man who had unhorsed him ; he gave him a fine horse and
a suit of mail, as a remembrance, and released all the other
prisoners to please him. Then he set sail for Sicily, laden
with treasure " enough to satisfy five armies," not forgetting
to plunder Patras, Cephalonia, and Corfu on the way. From
this expedition Muntaner dates the lack of good men able to
defend the Morea.1
Not long after Lluria's expedition the Slavs of Gianitza,
near Kalamata, surprised, in a period of profound peace, the
ancestral castle of the Villehardouins, where Prince William
had been born and died, and absolutely refused to give it up
to Florent. The latter appealed to the Byzantine governor
at Mistra, but his reply was that the Slavs had neither acted
by his advice, nor recognised his authority ; " they are
people," he said, " who do as they like, and only obey their
own chiefs," a fairly accurate definition of the manner in
which the Melings of Taygetos had always lived. Failing to
obtain satisfaction from the emperor's representative, Florent
sent two envoys to the emperor, Jean de Chauderon, the
grand constable, and Geoffroy d'Aunoy, baron of Arkadia,
who had both learnt the Greek language and Greek ways at
Constantinople, where they had already been on an embassy,
while the latter had married a relative of the emperor.
At first Andronikos II. refused to see them, for he was by
no means anxious to order the restoration of Kalamata
But they chanced to meet Pierre de Surie, whom Charles II.
had sent as an emissary to Naples to discuss the proposed
marriage of the titular empress Catherine of Courtenay with
the son of Andr6nikos. To him they disclosed their business,
and he contrived that the emperor should not only grant them
an audience, but give them a favourable response. The
delighted envoys were, however, informed by the marshal of
1 Le Livre de la Conqueste, pp. 359-77, which, however, confuses the
dates ; Muntaner, chs. cxvi., cxvii., clix. ; Libro de los Fechos, pp. 107-10.
Bartholomaeus de Neocastro and Nicolaus Specialis apud Muratori, op.
eit, xiii., 1 185 ; x., 959 ; Sanudo, p. 133.

RESTITUTION OF KALAMATA 187
the Byzantine province of Mistra, who was then in Con
stantinople, that the emperor had none the less given secret
orders, of which he would probably be the bearer, that the
castle should not be given up. This man, Sgouro-mailly by
name, was a half-caste from Messenia, a descendant of the
Greek family of Sgourds and the French family of Mailly,
and, unlike most of the GasmoMoi, had a marked predilection
for the Franks, though well aware that the half-castes of the
Morea had a factitious importance at Constantinople which
led to valuable posts. He therefore suggested that the
envoys should return with him on his swift galley, and
should at once obtain in writing the imperial order for the
surrender of Kalamata. They acted on his advice ; the half-
caste was as good as his word ; the castle was occupied by
his followers, and at once restored to the Franks, to the great
joy of Florent. Sgouro-mailly, however, paid dearly for his
Francophil feelings. When he returned to his post at
Mistra, he found a secret order from the emperor, bidding
him on no account surrender Kalamata. Regarded as a
traitor by the Greeks, he had to flee to Tzakonia ; his office
was taken from him, and he died in a humble straw-loft, a
fugitive and an outlaw. A century and a half later we find
his family still mentioned among the Moreot archons, and
the name exists in the Peloponnese to-day.1
Another incident served to disturb the relations between
Franks and Greeks, and illustrates the insolence of the
Flemings, who had followed their countryman into the
Morea, and had there received baronial lands, often at the
cost of the old Frankish nobility. Among these newcomers
were two near relatives of Florent,2 Engelbert and Walter
de Liedekerke, of whom the former succeeded old Jean de
Chauderon, as grand constable, while the latter was appointed
governor of the castle of Corinth. Walter was an extravagant
man, who found his emoluments quite inadequate to his
expenditure, and resorted to extortion in order to maintain
1 L. d. C, 335-59 ; Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 290 ; Adamantiou (in
AeXrfox, vi., 596) considers the name simply means " curly locks.''
2 They are described in the French and Spanish Chronicles as his
nephews ; but we are not told in the genealogy of Florent (Buchon,
Recherches historiques, i., 499) that he had any sisters.

188 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
his establishment. So profound was the peace between Greeks
and Franks at this time, that many of the emperor's subjects
from the Byzantine province had settled on the fertile lands
near the Corinthian Gulf, which they shared in common
with the Frankish vassals of the prince. Among these
settlers was a certain Ph6tios, cousin of Jacques le Chasy,
or Zasses,1 " the most gallant soldier that the emperor had
in all Morea," who at that time held the old domain of the
Tournay family at Kalavryta, and whose clan, perhaps of
Slavonic origin, ruled over a part of Tzakonia. The serfs,
who cultivated these lands, disliked Photios's presence there,
and complained to Corinth that they could not support the
burdens of two lords. Their complaint was carried to Walter,
who at once ordered the arrest of Photios, on the ground
that neither Franks nor Greeks had the right of settling on
the common lands. When he saw that his prisoner was a
rich man, he resolved to make him pay a heavy blackmail.
He thrust him into the castle keep, and told him that unless
he paid the damages for his trespass, assessed at more than
£4480, he would hang him. Photios at first refused to pay,
but the governor ordered two of his teeth to be extracted —
a form of argument so convincing that he was glad to
compound with his gaoler for a tenth of the original sum.
As soon as he was free, he appealed to the commander of
the Byzantine province for retribution, and the latter laid
the matter before Florent, who, however, supported his
relative, adding that Photios had got less than his deserts.
Finding justice thus denied to him, Photios resolved to
take the law into his own hands. Accordingly he lay in
wait for Liedekerke at the little harbour of St Nicholas of
the Fig-tree (the modern Xylokastro), on the southern
shore of the Corinthian Gulf, thinking that the governor
would probably land there to take his mid-day meal by the
edge of an abundant spring. Presently, sure enough, a
Frankish galley hove in sight, and from it there stepped
ashore a noble baron with fair complexion and blond hair,
the very image of Walter. Phdtios, certain of his man,
waited till the baron was seated at his repast, and then struck
1 The name Chflses was that of the Byzantine official who was stoned
by the Athenians in 915.

END OF THE SEVEN YEARS1 PEACE 189
him again and again with his sword, crying aloud with
revengeful joy, " There, my lord Walter, take your money ! "
The wounded man's attendants shouted aloud, " Ha ! Photi,
Photi, what are you doing? You are killing the baron of
Vostitza, by mistake for the governor of Corinth ! " Horror-
stricken at his mistake, for Guy de Charpigny, the late bailie
of the Morea, was beloved by all, Photios threw away his
sword, lifted the wounded man tenderly in his arms, and
begged his forgiveness. But it was too late ; his innocent
victim died of his wounds, nor did Florent, who realised
that the fault lay with his own relative, venture to seek
reparation by force from the Byzantine governor.1
At last the seven years' peace, which had so greatly
benefited the Morea, came to an end. At Vervaina, between
Tripolitza and Sparta, there was a beautiful meadow, on
which an annual fair was held in the middle of June ; it was
a central position, so that Greeks and Franks alike flocked
thither to buy and sell ; such festivals were common in
Frankish times as in classic days, and one of the privileges
which Andronikos III. gave to the Monemvasiotes was his
special protection at all the Peloponnesian fairs.2 Now it
chanced on this occasion, that a French knight, who lived
hard by, came to words with a Greek silk-merchant, and from
words the arrogant Frank proceeded to blows. The silk-
merchant returned to his home muttering vengeance, and
conceived the design of capturing the castle of St George,
which, from its commanding situation in front of Skorta,
would be a peculiarly acceptable prize to the emperor.
Having gained two traitors within the castle walls, he
confided his plan to a fellow-countryman from Skorta, who
commanded a body of Turkish mercenaries in the imperial
service ; a moonlight night was chosen for the venture, the
traitors did their work, and next morning the Byzantine
double-eagle flew from the castle keep, and the Turkish
garrison mounted guard on the ramparts. When Florent
heard the news at his favourite residence of Andravida, he
1 L. d. C, 325-35, which, however, inverts the chronological order of
the last two incidents. The second has been made the subject of a
modern tragedy, Q&tlos Zdo-o-ris, -fjroL to. KaX&Ppvra iiri <frpayKOKpa.Tias.
2 Bull of 1332, Phrantzes, 400.

190 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
marched at once to besiege the stolen fortress. But, though
he swore that he would stay there till he retook it, though
he summoned an experienced Venetian engineer from Coron
who did some harm to the tower, though he fortified one
strong position after another and built another castle which
he called Beaufort, perhaps identical with " the Fair Castle "
(Oraiokastro) in the mountains behind Astros, to command
the pass to Skorta, and though he sent for soldiers from
Apulia and obtained archers and spearmen from a powerful
Slav chieftain who ruled in Maina, the fine castle held out.
At last, when winter came, Florent withdrew. Before the
following spring of 1297, he was dead. The French chronicler
mourns his loss, " for he was upright and wise, and knew well
how to govern his land and his people."1 If he had the
faults of a foreigner, he was a brave man who was yet a
lover of peace. Unfortunately, like Prince William before
him, he left no son, only one daughter, Mahaut or Matilda,
who was a child of three years of age at her father's death
It seemed as if the destinies of Achaia were ever to depend
on women. Her mother, Isabelle, continued to reign as
Princess of Achaia, whose coinage bore her name, but she
soon retired to her favourite castle of Nesi or L'llle, as the
Franks translated it, situated in the delightful climate of her
own Kalamata. The administration of the principality she
entrusted to a bailie, Count Richard of Cephalonia, who not
long after married her widowed sister, Marguerite, and was
connected with all the leaders of the Frankish world.2 A
new chancellor was appointed in the person of Benjamin
of Kalamata, and a Greek named Basilopoulos became
1 L. d. C, 377-86, 472 ; Buchon, X. r. M. (ed. 1825), p. xlvi. ; La
Grke Continentale, 399 sqq. The Aragonese version of the Chronicle
(pp. 103-6) narrates these last events quite differently. It says that
the Byzantine governor ordered the purchase of as many horses as
possible from the Franks at the most liberal rates, that he then sought
an excuse for hostilities, took Nikli and the castle of Chalandritza,
entirely destroyed the former town, and built the castles of Palaio-
Mouchli (near the present railway between Argos and Tripolitza) and
Cepiana (the ancient Nestdne, a little to the north of Mouchli) to
command the plain.
2 Les Registres de Boniface VII L, ii., 523. His first wife had been a
sister of Thomas III. of Salona.

GUY II. OF ATHENS 191
chamberlain — a sign of the prominent position now occupied
by the natives.
Florent had left his people at war with the Byzantine
province, and it was therefore the first care of his widow to
protect her frontier. This she did by building a new castle,
Chastel-neuf as it was called, in the vale of Kalamata,
through which the present railway travels. By this means
the people of western Messenia were freed from the necessity
of paying dues to the governors of the two nearest Greek
castles, Mistra and Gardiki — the fortress which the emperor
had built in the pass of Makryplagi, above the cave where the
Greek commanders had taken refuge after that memorable
battle.1 But the barons thought that a politic marriage would
be an even better protection for their country than strong
walls. There was some talk of a union between the widowed
princess and John, the son of the emperor. Andronikos had
himself been suggested as a husband for Isabelle more than
thirty years earlier, so that there would have been some
disproportion between the mature charms of the Achaian
princess and the extreme youth of his son. This alliance fell
through; but it was agreed, on the proposal of Nicholas III.
de St Omer, the Grand Marshal of Achaia, that a marriage
should be arranged between the little princess Matilda and
his young cousin, Guy II., Duke of Athens, who had now
come of age, and was regarded as " the best match in all
Romania." 2
The seven years' minority of the young Duke had been
an uneventful period in the history of Athens. His Greek
mother, Helene Angela, had provided him with a powerful
guardian by her second marriage with her late husband's
brother-in-law, Hugues de Brienne, who was now a widower,
and who brought her half the great barony of Karytaina,
which figures on her coins — almost the sole instance of a
baronial currency in the Morea.3 A delicate feudal question,
i X. t. M., 1. 5429 ; L. d. C, 387.
2 Ibid, 388-90 ; Pachymeres, II., p. 290.
3 Schlumberger, op. eit, 325. The only other instance is that of a
baron of Damala. But Neroutsos (AeSrtov, iv., 1 14, n. 2) takes the inscrip
tion on this coin to mean " Lady of Gravia," the place which was part
of her dowry.

192 THE ANGEVINS IN' GREECE
the same which had led to war between Athens and Achaia
a generation earlier, alone disturbed the repose of the ducal
court, and threatened to renew that fratricidal strife. The
Duchess of Athens had done homage to the Neapolitan court,
but both she and her husband Hugues flatly refused to
recognise themselves as the vassals of Prince Florent of
Achaia, on the ground that there was no feudal nexus
between the two Frankish states. Both parties appealed to
their common suzerain, Charles II. of Naples, who, after a
futile attempt to settle the matter by arbitration, finally
wrote, in 1294, that when he had conferred Achaia upon
Florent he had intended the gift to include the overlordship
of Athens. Accordingly, he expressly renewed that grant,
and peremptorily ordered Guy II., who had by that time
come of age, and his vassals, among whom Thomas III. of
Salona, Othon of St Omer, and Francesco da Verona are speci
ally mentioned, to do homage to the Prince of Achaia. At last,
after two years' further delay, the Duke of Athens obeyed.1
The coming of age of the last De la Roche Duke of
Athens has been described by the quaint Catalan chronicler,
Ramon Muntaner.2 The ceremony took place on St John
Baptist's day, 1294, at Thebes, whither the young duke had
invited all the great men of ¦ his duchy ; he had let it be
known, too, throughout the Greek Empire and the Despotat
of Epiros and his mother's home of Thessaly, that whosoever
came should receive gifts and favours from his hand — " for
he was one of the noblest men in all Romania who was not
a king, and eke one of the richest." When all the guests
had assembled, mass was celebrated in the cathedral by
Nicholas, Archbishop of Thebes, and then all eyes were fixed
upon the duke, to see whom he would ask to confer upon
him the order of knighthood — a duty which the King of
France or the emperor himself would have thought it a
pleasure and an honour to perform. What was the surprise
of the brilliant throng when Guy, instead of calling upon one
of his great nobles, Thomas III. of Salona or Othon of St
Omer, fellow-owner with the duke himself of the barony of
1 L. d. C, 269-71 ; X. t. M., 7979-81, 8018-46; Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, I., i., 233-5 ; II., i., 334-8 ; jRiccio, Saggio, Supp., pt. i., 90;
Sdthas, To XpovLicbv roD TaXafeiSiou, 238. - Ch. ccxliv.

COMING OF AGE OF GUY II. 193
Thebes, summoned to his side a young knight of Eubcea,
Bonifacio da Verona, grandson of that Guglielmo I. who had
styled himself King of Salonika and had played so large a
part in the events^ of his time. Bonifacio was, however, a
poor man, the youngest of three brothers, whose sole posses
sion was a single castle, which he had sold the better to
equip himself and his retinue. Yet no one made a braver
show than he at the Athenian court, whither he had gone to
seek his fortune ; he always wore the richest clothes, and on
the day of the great ceremony none was more elegantly
dressed than he and his company, though everyone equipped
himself and the jongleurs in the fairest apparel. He had
fully a hundred wax tapers ornamented with his arms, yet
he had borrowed the money for all this outlay, trusting to
the future to pay it back. This was the man whom the
duke now bade approach. " Come here," quoth he, " Master
Boniface, close to my lord archbishop, for our will is that
thou shalt dub us a knight." " Ah, my lord," replied Boniface,
" what sayest thou ! thou dost surely mock me." " No, by our
troth," quoth the duke, " so do we wish it to be." Then
Boniface, seeing that the duke spake from his heart, came
and stood near the archbishop at the altar, whereon lay the
arms of the duke, and dubbed him a knight. Then the duke
said aloud, before all the company, " Master Boniface, custom
it is, that those who make men knights should make them
presents too. Howsobeit, it is our will to do the contrary.
Thou hast made us a knight, wherefore we give thee from
this moment 50,000 sols of revenue for thee and thine for
ever, in castles and in goodly places and in freehold, to do
therewith as thou wilt. We give thee also to wife the
daughter of a certain barori whose hand is ours to bestow,
and who is lady of part of the island and city of Negroponte." x
The duke was true to his word; he gave him his own
mother's dowry of Gardiki in Thessaly with the classic
island of Salamis,2 thirteen castles in all on the mainland of
1 Muntaner says " a third part " ; but Agnes was not one of the terzieri.
2 So Hopf (apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 377) interprets " Selizirij,"
which occurs in the Venetian list of Greek rulers, drawn up in 13 j1"^
where Boniface figures as dominator Caristi et Gardichie, Selizirij ei
Egue (Hopf, Chroniques grko-romanes, 177) ; Muntaner (ch. ccxliii.)
mentions the thirteen castles ; L. d. C„ 408, 415, N

194 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
the duchy, and the hand of his cousin, Agnes de Cicon, lady
of ^Egina and Karystos. It was true that the latter castle
was still in the hands of the Greeks, but not long afterwards
Boniface showed that he had deserved his good fortune by
wresting it from them. The Catalan chronicler, who had
stayed in Boniface's house at Negroponte and had there
heard the story of his sudden rise, might well say that this
was the noblest gift that any prince made in a single day for
a long time. The episode gives us, indeed, some idea
of the wealth and splendour of the Burgundian dukes of
Athens. Such was the man whom Nicholas de St Omer pro
posed as a husband for Princess Isabellas little daughter.
Guy, on his part, gladly accepted the idea of an alliance,
which, if he could obtain the sanction of the King of
Naples, might one day, in due course of nature, make
him Prince of Achaia, and thus end for ever the vexa-
' tious question of homage. So, when the Achaian envoys
arrived, he at once agreed to their suggestion that he
should pay a visit to their mistress and his suzerain.
He sent for Thomas III. of Salona, his chief vassal and
the most honourable man in all Romania, and for his
other barons and knights, and set out in 1299 with his
accustomed splendour for Vlisiri (or La Glisiere, as the
Franks called it) in Elis, a land of goodly mansions, where
there was ample accommodation for the princess and all her
retinue. There the marriage was arranged ; Kalamata, the
family fief of the Villehardouins, became the dowry of the
bride ; the bishop of Olena performed the ceremony ; and,
after some twenty days of feasting and rejoicings, the duke
departed for Thebes with his five-year-old wife. The King
of Naples, who at first protested against a marriage with this
mere child, contracted without his previous consent, subse
quently gave his approval; the qualms of Pope Boniface
VIII. at the union of rather distant cousins, were pacified by
the gift of twenty silken garments from the manufactories
of Thebes. Such dispensations were commonly granted
to the Frankish lords of Greece at this period, for, as
the pope said in a similar case, their numbers had been
so reduced by war, that they could scarcely find wives

PHILIP OF SAVOY 195
of their own social rank who were not related to
them.1 Isabelle herself did not long remain a widow after her
daughter's marriage. In 1300, Boniface VIII. held the first
jubilee, or anno santo, of the Roman Church, and among the
thousands who flocked to Rome on that great occasion was
the Princess of Achaia. Before she sailed from Glarentza,
she appointed Nicholas de St Omer bailie during her absence,
as it was considered that Count Richard of Cephalonia, who
was now her brother-in-law — for he had recently married her
sister Marguerite, the Lady of Akova — had grown too old to
govern the country in time of war. Isabelle met in Rome,
not by accident — for negotiations had been going on for
some time about the matter — Philip of Savoy, son of the late
Count Thomas III. A child at the time of his father's death,
he had been superseded in Savoy by his uncle, Amedeo V.,
but had received Piedmont as his share, and had fixed his
sub-Alpine capital at Pinerolo, where his remains still lie.
Philip was a valiant knight, not much over twenty, who
could help her to defend her land against the Greeks and
might even recover what her father had lost ; the pope was
in favour ofthe union, and the protest of King Charles II. of
Naples, who appealed to the conditions laid down at the
time of Isabelle's second marriage, was induced, on the papal
intervention, to give his consent. At the palace where he was
then staying, near the Lateran, he invested Philip of Savoy
with the principality of Achaia, in the name of his own
imprisoned son, Philip of Taranto, to whom, as we saw, he
had transferred the suzerainty seven years before, and one of
the witnesses of the deed was that same Roger de Lluria,
now in the Angevin service, who had .met Isabelle at
Glarentza under such very different circumstances. The
marriage, which took place in Rome in 1301, was a grand
affair ; the bill for the wedding breakfast — a very extensive
one — has been preserved, and the frugal Greeks would have
been surprised at the quantity of food provided for their new
prince and his guests. A few days before the wedding,
' L. d. C, 390-3 ; Sanudo, 136 ; X. t. M., 11. 7982-4 ; Les Registres
de Boniface Vill., i., 485 ; »¦> 4&5 ; Ldmpros,"E77pa0a, 44 ; Grazie (1298-
1304), fol. 16.

196 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
Isabelle bestowed the castle and town of Corinth upon her
future husband, who, in his turn, promised to bring a certain
number of soldiers with him to Greece for the defence of the
land and the prosecution of the war. The honeymoon was
spent in Piedmont, where the prince had to put his affairs in
order. Indeed, it was not till the end of 1302 that the
princess returned with him and a body of Savoyards and
Piedmontese to her native land.1
Philip of Savoy swore, like his predecessor, to observe the
usages of the land, and was greeted, in the name of the
assembled vassals, by the Archbishop of Patras, who had
played the most prominent part, alike when Charles I. had
sent his first bailie and when Florent had been appointed
prince. But the new prince soon tried to disregard the
customs of the country. He knew that the King of Naples
really disliked his marriage, and the knowledge that Charles
II. might at any time depose him, and would probably do so
in the event of his surviving Isabelle, increased his natural
desire to make up for his heavy expenditure in coming, and
to lay by for a rainy day. "He had learned money-making
at home from the tyrants of Lombardy," it was whispered,
when he began to practise a system of regular extortion.
As soon as he had put his Piedmontese and Savoyard officers
and soldiers into the castles of the Morea, he summoned his
chief confidant, Guillaume de Monbel, whom he had brought
with him from Italy, and took counsel how he could best fill
his coffers. In this enterprise he received assistance from
one of his predecessor's advisers, Vincent de Marays, a sly
old knight from Picardy and a protege1 of Count Richard of
Cephalonia, who had a grudge against the chancellor,
Benjamin of Kalamata, for having secured his patron's
dismissal from the post of bailie. Benjamin was a rich man,
who was a larger landowner than even Leonardo of Veroli
had been, and therefore well able to pay blackmail. An
excuse for extortion was found in the chancellor's omission
1 L. d. C, 393-8, 404, 434, 472; X. r. M., 11. 8588-90; Guichenon,
Histoire g/ntfalogique de . . . Savoye, 1 1., Preuves, pp. 102-4 ; Buchon,
Recherches hisloriques, ii., 379; Nouvelles Recherches, 1 1., i., 339-43;
Datta, Storia dei Principi di Savoia, i., pp. xv., 33-5 ; Hopf, Chroniques
greco-romanes, 231-5.

PHILIP'S EXTORTION 197
to send in his accounts of public monies received by him
during several years ; and he was forthwith arrested on a
charge of malversation. Benjamin appealed in his trouble to
his powerful friend, Nicholas III. de St Omer, whose
appointment as bailie he had obtained, and who was at once
the most beloved and the most dreaded man in Achaia.
The haughty marshal marched straight into the chamber
where the prince was sitting with the princess and his
Piedmontese friends, and asked him point-blank, why he had
ordered the chancellor's arrest. When Philip replied, that
Benjamin owed him an account of the revenues which had
passed through his hands, St Omer rejoined that the
imprisonment of a liege for debt was against the customs of
the country. " Hah ! cousin," quoth the prince, " where did
you find these customs of yours?" At that the marshal
drew a huge knife, and, holding it straight before him,
cried : " Behold our customs ! by this sword our forefathers
conquered this land, and by this sword we will defend our
franchises and usages against those who would break or
restrict them." The princess, fearing for her husband's life,
exclaimed aloud ; but St Omer reassured her by saying that
it was not the prince but his evil counsellors whom he
accused. The irate marshal was finally appeased by a soft
answer ; the chancellor procured his release from prison by
a payment of 20,000 hyperperi of Glarentza (£8960) to the
prince. From that moment the wily Benjamin ingratiated
himself with his avaricious master, whose passion for money
he well knew how to gratify at the same time as his own
desire for revenge. At his suggestion, his enemy Count
Richard of Cephalonia was compelled to lend Philip 20,000
hyperperi, for which he received almost pothing in return.
But this was not all that the prince managed to squeeze out
of the wealthy family of the Cephalonian Orsini. When, a
little later, old Count Richard was killed by one of his own
knights, whom he had struck on the head with a stick while
sitting on the Bench at Glarentza, his son John I. had to
purchase his investiture with his islands from his suzerain,
the Prince of Achaia, by a large present of money. Not
long afterwards he gave Philip a heavy bribe to decide
in his favour an action brought against him in the High

198 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
Court of Achaia by his stepmother, the Lady of Akova, for
restitution of her late husband's personal property, valued at
£44,800. The proud Nicholas de St Omer, however, espoused
the cause of the lady, more from contempt and dislike for
the venal prince than from a desire to punish the violence of
his brother-in-law, the new Count of Cephalonia. Again,
Philip had to suppress his indignation at the insolence of the
greatest baron in the land, who boasted that he had royal
blood in his veins, who was cousin of the Duke of Athens,
and connected by feudal ties with the leading Achaian
nobles; a compromise was made, by which the Lady of
Akova was to receive one-fifth of the amount claimed. From
other quarters, too, the Piedmontese prince extorted various
sums. Basilopoulos, the Greek who had been appointed
chamberlain, made him a compulsory present of £1344;
the people of Karytaina contributed £1792 ; the citizens of
Andravida, his favourite residence, £224; the burgesses of
Glarentza, £268, 16s. ; while the tolls of that port were
charged with an annuity of £134, 8s. to one of his Piedmontese
favourites. These transactions give us some idea of the
wealth of Greece at this period.
Yet, in spite of all these " benevolences," the prince had
to raise a loan from the Glarentza branch of the Florentine
banking-house of Peruzzi, which financed our own sovereigns.
At last his exactions led to a serious rising. The people of
Skorta had always been the most turbulent element of the
population, and their mountainous country — the Switzerland
of the Morea — the most jealously guarded by the Franks.
Yet, in spite of the well-known characteristics of these
Arkadian mountaineers, and of the natural fortress which
they inhabited, Philip, instigated by his evil genius, the old
knight from Picardy, must needs impose an extraordinary
tax upon the Arkadian archons. He was told that they
were rich, and the large sum which he had already received
from the Arkadian town of Karytaina doubtless made him
think that they could well afford to pay more. But the
natives of Gortys, from the Frankish times to those of M.
Delyannes, have been sticklers for their constitutional rights,
guaranteed to them at the time of the Conquest. Their
chief men met in the house of the two brothers Mikronas, at

REVOLT OF ARKADIA 199
the foot of the mountain, on which stand the lonely ruins
of the noble temple of Bassse, and swore, in a spirit worthy of
the ancient Greeks, that they would rather die than pay a
single farthing of the tax. The only man who might have
prevented their rising was Nicholas de St Omer ; but they
knew that he was going to Thessaly; and, the moment
that he had gone, they sent two spokesmen to Mistra to
invite the Byzantine governor's aid and offer their land to
the emperor. Their mission aroused no suspicion, for it
was a common thing for pilgrims to visit the shrine of
St Nikon at Lacedaemonia — the Armenian monk, who, after
converting the Cretan apostates back to Christianity, had
established himself in the latter part of the tenth century at
Sparta, where his memory is still green. The governor
received their offer with gladness ; he assembled his troops
on the famous plain of Nikli, whence the traitors guided them
by a sure road into Skorta. Soon two Frankish castles,
St Helena and Creve-Cceur, on either side of Andritsaina,
were smoking ruins. But the Greeks, as the chronicler
remarks, were better at a first assault than at a prolonged
siege. Florent's newly-built castle of Beaufort resisted their
attack, and when Philip approached, they speedily fled in
disorder. The prince wisely abstained from carrying the
war into the Byzantine province. He bade the terrified
serfs, who had fled from Greeks and Franks alike, return to
their homes ; enquired from them the cause of the rebellion ;
and, when he was told that it was the work of a family party
of archons, contented himself with confiscating the lands and
goods of the latter.1
We saw that the rising would not have happened but for
the absence of the marshal Nicholas de St Omer in Thessaly,
and it is now necessary to describe the important events
which had necessitated his presence there. In 1296, both
Nikephoros, Despot of Epiros, and the bastard John I., Duke
of Neopatras, had died ; and, seven years later, the latter's
son and successor, Constantine, had followed his father to
the grave, leaving an only son, John II., who was still a
1 L. d. C, 398-405, 306, 413, 422-54, 472 ; L. d. P., m-13 ; Ducange,
op. eit, ii., 341-2 ; Gerland, Neue Quellen, 245 ; Riccio, Studii Storici,
30 ; Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 352 ; Datta, op. eit, ii., 30-1.

200 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
minor at the time of his death. In his last will and testa
ment Constantine had appointed his nephew Guy II., Duke
of Athens, guardian of the child and regent of his dominions,
not only because Guy was his nearest surviving male relative,
but because the Athenian duchy, then the strongest of all
the Frankish states, could alone protect Thessaly against the
designs of the Emperor Andr6nikos II. on the one side, and
of the able and ambitious Lady Anna, of Epiros, who was
regent in the name of the young Despot Thomas, on the
other. Guy, who had already interests on the Thessalian
frontier, joyfully accepted the honourable office, which
flattered his ambition. He summoned Thomas of Salona,
his chief vassal, Boniface of Verona, his favourite, and others
from Eubcea, and at Zetouni, the modern Lamia, which his
mother had brought as part of her dowry to the duchy of
Athens, received the homage of the Thessalian baronage.
There he arranged for the future government of his ward's
estates. The Greek nobles were to guard the Thessalian
castles, while he was to have the revenues, and provide out
of them for the administration, of the country ; as marshal of
Thessaly, Guy appointed a nobleman who was viscount, or
president of the Court of the Burgesses at Athens ; as his
bailie and representative in the government of the land the
duke chose Antoine le Flamenc, a Fleming who had become
lord of Karditza, on the margin of the Copaic lake, where a
Greek inscription on the church of St George still com
memorates him as its " most pious " founder, and who is
described by the chronicler as "the wisest man in all the
duchy." Feudalism, as we saw, had already permeated
Thessaly under the rule of the Angeli ; it was further
strengthened by the Frankish regency; the Greek nobles
learnt the French language, and coins with Latin inscrip
tions were issued in the name of the young Despot from the
mint of Neopatras.1
The fears of the late Despot were speedily fulfilled.
Scarcely had Guy returned to his favourite residence of
1 Buchon, Atlas, plate xxxix., 5, who ascribes this coin erroneously to
Aimone of Savoy. The inscription "Angelus Sab.' C. ( = Sebastocrator,
or Sebastocrator Comnenos) Della Patra," refers to John II. of Neo
patras ; Schlumberger, op. eit, 382.

GUY II. IN THESSALY 201
Thebes, when the ambitious Lady Anna of Epiros seized
his ward's Thessalian Castle of Phanari— a place which still
rises like a " watch-tower " above the great plain. The Duke
of Athens, furious at this audacious act of a mere woman,
summoned his vassals and friends, among them his cousin
Nicholas de St Omer, to join him in the campaign against
the Epirotes. Philip of Savoy, though on good terms with
the Duke of Athens, who had done him personal homage
for the duchy, the baronies of Argos and Nauplia and his
wife's dowry of Kalamata, refused to give St Omer permis
sion to leave the Morea. But the marshal departed, without
his prince's consent, at the head of 89 horsemen, of whom
no less than 13 were belted knights, and joined the duke
not far from the field of Domoko, so memorable in the
history of modern Greece. When he saw the assembled
host, of which the duke begged him to assume the command,
he was bound to confess that never in all Romania had he
seen a braver show. There were more than 900 Frankish
horsemen, all picked men ; more than 6000 Thessalian and
Bulgarian cavalry, commanded by 18 Greek barons, and
fully 30,000 foot-soldiers. Against such a force the Lady
Anna felt that she could do nothing ; so, before it had
advanced far beyond Kalabaka, on the way to Joannina,
she offered to restore the stolen castle, and pay a war
indemnity of £4480. Her offer was accepted ; but, as it
seemed desirable to find work for so fine an army, an
excuse was made for an attack upon the Greek Empire,
with which Athens was then at peace. The troops were
already well on the way to Salonika, when the Empress
Irene, who was living there separated from her husband,
appealed to the chivalry of the Franks not to make war against
a weak woman. Guy and his barons were moved by this
appeal ; they returned to Thessaly, and disbanded their forces.1
The crafty Lady of Epiros had succeeded in disarming
one enemy ; but she soon found herself attacked by another.
Philip of Taranto had now been liberated from prison, so
that his father thought that the moment had come to
demand the performance of those exorbitant conditions, to
which the late Despot of Epiros had consented at the time
1 L. d. C, 405-22 ; Nikephdros Gregoras, i., 233 sqq.

202 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
of his daughter's marriage with the Angevin prince. Philip
had not kept his part of the bond ; for he had made the
beautiful Thamar change her religion and her name; but
his father, none the less, expected the precise fulfilment of
the marriage-contract by the other side. He now requested
the Lady Anna to hand over Epiros to Philip, or else to
make her son Thomas do homage to the Prince of Taranto,
on which condition he might hold the Despotat as the
latter's vassal. Anna was a woman of spirit and resource ;
she never forgot that she belonged by birth to the imperial
house, and, as a patriotic Greek, she preferred that her son's
dominions, as it seemed difficult to maintain their indepen
dence, should belong to the Palaiologoi rather than to the
Angevins. She accordingly made overtures to Andronikos
II. for the marriage of her son with his granddaughter, and
replied to the King of Naples that Thomas was the vassal of
the emperor alone. She added that the late Despot had no
power to violate the laws of nature by disinheriting his son
in favour of one of his daughters ; she must therefore decline,
so long as her son lived, to surrender to Philip anything
beyond what he already held. Charles II. thought that it
would be easy to conquer a woman and a boy ; so, on receipt
of this answer, he summoned his son's vassals, Philip of
Savoy and Count John I. of Cephalonia, to his aid against
the Despoina. But the strong walls of Arta, and the natural
difficulties of the country, proved too much for the invaders,
who soon abandoned their inglorious campaign. Anna
prevented the co-operation of Philip of Savoy in a second
attack upon her by a judicious bribe of £2688, while Philip,
in order to have a plausible excuse for declining his suzerain's
summons, issued invitations to all the vassals of Achaia to
attend a general parliament on the isthmus of Corinth in the
following spring of 1305.
On that famous neck of land where in classic days the
Isthmian games had been held, the mediaeval chivalry of
Greece now assembled for a splendid tournament. All the
noblest men in the land came in answer to the summons of
the Prince of Achaia. There were Guy II. of Athens with a
brave body of knights, the Marquis of Boudonitza, and the
three barons of Eubcea, the Duke of the Archipelago and the

TOURNAMENT AT CORINTH 203
Count Palatine John I. of Cephalonia — the last anxious for
judgment of his peers betwixt his jealous sister and her
irascible husband, the Marshal Nicholas de St Omer, who
summoned his Theban vassals to his side. Messengers were
sent throughout the highlands and islands of Frankish Greece
to proclaim to all and sundry how seven champions had
come from beyond the seas and did challenge the chivalry of
Romania to joust with them. Never had the fair land of
Hellas seen a braver sight than that presented by the lists
at Corinth in the lovely month of May, when the sky and
the twin seas are at their fairest. More than a thousand
knights and barons took part in the tournament, which lasted
for twenty days, while all the fair ladies of Achaia " rained
influence" on the combatants. There were the seven
champions, clad in their armour of green taffetas covered
with scales of gold ; there was the Prince of Achaia, who
acquitted himself right nobly in the lists, with all his household.
Most impetuous of all was the young Duke of Athens, eager
to match his skill in horsemanship and with the lance against
Master William Bouchart, justly accounted one of the best
jousters of the West. The chivalrous Bouchart would fain
have spared his less experienced antagonist. But the duke,
who had cunningly padded himself beneath his plate armour,
was determined to meet him front to front; their horses
collided with such force that the iron spike of Bouchart's
charger pierced Guy's steed between the shoulders, so that
horse and rider rolled in the dust. St Omer would have
given much to meet Count John in the lists ; but the latter,
fearing the marshal's doughty arm, pretended that his horse
could not bear him into the ring, nor could he be shamed
into the combat even when Bouchart rode round and round
the lists on the animal, crying aloud as ha rode, " This is the
horse which could not go to the jousts I"1 So they kept high
revel on the isthmus ; alas ! it was the last great display of
the chivalry of " New France " ; six years later many a
knight who had ridden proudly past the fair dames of the
Morea lay a mangled corpse on the swampy plain of Bceotia.
The tournament at Corinth was Philip's final appearance
on the stage of Greek public life. Charles II. had consented
1 L. d. C, 454-62, 464-7°, 472 ; Pachymeres, II., 45°-

204 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
with reluctance to his marriage ; he was now resolved that
the house of Anjou should have the real possession, as well
as the shadowy suzerainty, of Achaia. Although Philip had
responded to his previous summons to aid him in Epiros,
towards the end of 1 304 he had renewed his original declara
tion that Isabelle, by marrying without his consent, had
forfeited the principality of Achaia, in accordance with the
terms laid down at the time of her former marriage with
Florent. Philip's refusal to assist his suzerain in a second
Epirote campaign gave the King of Naples a further excuse
for deposing the princess and her husband ; such a refusal
constituted a gross breach of the feudal code, which justified
Charles in releasing the Achaian barons from their allegiance
to their prince. The latter did not await that final blow;
before it was delivered, he had quitted the Morea for his
Italian dominions, against which the house of Anjou was
also plotting, leaving his old enemy, Nicholas de St Omer,
as bailie. If we may believe the Aragonese Chronicle of the
Morea} Isabelle's elder daughter, Matilda of Athens, claimed
Achaia as her heritage from the bailie, who refused to hand it
to her without orders from Naples. Her husband retaliated
by seizing St Omer's half of Thebes, including the castle
which bore his name. Charles II., however, bestowed
the forfeited principality of Achaia upon his favourite
son, Philip of Taranto, who soon afterwards arrived there
on his way to attack the Lady of Epiros, and received
the homage of the Achaian barons. Thus, both the actual
possession and the suzerainty of the principality were once
more in the hands of the same person. Any claims that
Philip of Savoy and Isabelle might still entertain were
bought by the King of Naples and his son, who, in exchange
for their Greek dominions, promised to give them, upon the
death of the existing countess, the county of Alba, on the
shores of the Fucine lake, worth 600 gold ounces (£1440) a
year, and to pay them, during the remainder of her life, an
annuity of that amount. To the one child of their marriage,
little Marguerite of Savoy, Charles II. promised sufficient
land near Alba to yield a dowry of 200 gold ounces, or
£480 a year, on condition that she ceded the two castles of
1 Pp. 113, 114, where the chronology is obviously confused.

DEATH OF PRINCESS ISABELLE 205
Karytaina and Bucelet, which her parents had bestowed
upon her. By way of enhancing the importance of his gift,
the king raised Alba to the rank of a principality ; but he
neither put Philip of Savoy into actual possession of it, nor
paid him the promised annuity. Isabelle did not long
survive the loss of her inheritance. In 1 3 1 1 , disregarding
these arrangements with the King of Naples, she made a will,
leaving her elder daughter, Matilda, heiress of all Achaia,
with the exception of the three castles of Karytaina,
Beauvoir (above Katakolo), and Beauregard (also in Elis),
which were to form the dowry of her younger daughter,
Marguerite. In the same year, Isabelle died in Holland —
the country of her second husband. Philip of Savoy almost
immediately remarried ; and though his and Isabelle's
daughter, Marguerite, renounced all her claims to Greece on
her marriage in 1324, his descendants by his second marriage
continued to style themselves " Princes of Achaia " till the
extinction of their line a century later, and, like their
ancestor, issued coins with that title engraved upon them.
One of these Piedmontese princes even endeavoured to make
good his pretensions, and down to the last century illegitimate
descendants of Philip of Savoy usurped the name of Achaia.1
Princess Isabelle of Achaia is one of the most striking
figures in the portrait-gallery of the ladies of the Latin
Orient. Affianced when a mere child to a foreign prince
whom she had never seen ; torn from her home and sent to
live in an Italian castle, which was to be almost a prison ;
widowed at an age when most women are not yet wed ;
separated for long years from her fatherland, till at last she
was allowed to return as the wife of a gallant Flemish
adventurer ; widowed again, and then re-married, midst the
pomp and ceremony of the papal court, to a third husband,
only to die, after all these vicissitudes, still in middle age, an
exile in a distant northern land — she was throughout her life
1 X. r. M., 11. 8588-90; L. d. C, 473 (which gives the wrong date,
however), 474 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 339-43 ; I., i., 237 ;
Atlas, xxiv., 9, 12-15; Guichenon, Histoire gMalogique, I., 318; II.,
Preuves, pp. 104, 1 10, 1 1 1 ; Datta, op. eit, i., 49-50, 56, 67, 89 ; ii., 45-5°,
114; Ptolemasus Lucensis apud Muratori, op. eit, xi., 1227, 1232; Mun
taner, ch. eclxii ; St Genois, Droits primiHfs, i., 338.

206 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
the victim of dynastic politics. A brave woman, every inch a
Villehardouin, she did not flinch from meeting the boldest
corsair of that age on the sea shore ; deeply imbued with
piety, she founded the monastery of Sta. Chiara, near Olena.
We can see her still, as she rode through the streets of Naples
on her "sombre brown pillion of Douai cloth," which the
careful Angevin provided for his prisoner of state — a cheap
price to pay for keeping in his clutches the " Lady of the
Morea." 1
Philip of Taranto did not remain long in his Peloponnesian
principality. As soon as he had received the homage of the
barons, who were not sorry to be rid of his extortionate
namesake, he set out for Epiros, to substantiate his claims
there. But, woman as she was, the Lady Anna was too much
for the Neapolitan prince ; an epidemic came to her aid, and
he returned unsuccessful to Naples. As his bailie in Achaia
he appointed Guy 1 1., Duke of Athens, the most important
of all the contemporary Frankish rulers of Greece, whose wife,
Matilda, as the elder daughter of Isabelle, would naturally
represent in the eyes of the Moreot barons the princely house
of Villehardouin.2 In this way, perhaps, he hoped to satisfy
her claims. Two years earlier, when still only twelve, she
had attained her majority, and the festival had been cele
brated at Thebes with all the customary splendour of the
Athenian court, in the presence of her widowed aunt, the
Lady of Akova, Nicholas de St Omer, the two archbishops
of Athens and Thebes, and other high ecclesiastical and civic
dignitaries. It was, indeed, a time of great prosperity for the Athenian
duchy, whose ruler was at once Duke of Athens, regent of
Thessaly, and bailie of Achaia. We have already seen how
great were the riches and position of the duke, who delighted
in splendid apparel, and whose frescoed Theban castle rang
with the songs of minstrels. Nor was this prosperity merely
superficial. Now, for the first time, we find Attica supplying
Venice with corn, which usually had to be imported into the
duchy from the south of Italy ; while the gift of silken
1 Arch. Stor. Hal., Ser. IV., iv., 176 ; Les Registres de Boniface VIII.,
ii., 845 ; Regestum dementis V, i., 283.
2 L.d. P., 117.

FLOURISHING CONDITION OF ATHENS 207
garments to Boniface VIII. is a proof of the continued
manufacture of silk at Thebes. No less than three series of
coins were required for the commercial needs of the duchy in
his reign. Athens, too, was a religious centre. We find
Pope Nicholas IV.1 granting indulgences to all who visited
" Santa Maria di Atene " on the festivals of the Virgin, of St
James the Apostle, and St Eligius, and on the anniversary of
its dedication as a Christian church. It was now, too, that
the canon Nicholas de la Roche founded an ecclesiastical
building, perhaps the belfry of the ancient church of Great
St Mary's, which stood till a few years ago, in the Stoa of
Hadrian, while the great Byzantine monastery of Hosios
Loukas, near Delphi, received fresh lustre from the presence
of the dowager duchess within its walls. Not far away, on
an islet in the Gulf of Corinth, the persecuted Eremites from
Italy begged Thomas of Salona to give them a refuge, only
to find that even there the long arm of the mundane pope
could reach them. Prosperous, indeed, must have been the
region round Parnassos, for " the hero " Thomas had his
private mint, which his jealous lord, the duke, tried to
prohibit.2 But the days of the ducal family were drawing to
a close. The splendid magnificence of the duke could not
conceal the incurable malady which was undermining his
health ; he had no heirs of his body ; and, to the north, there
lay that company of wandering Catalan warriors, which was
already a menace to his dominions.
A hundred years had passed away since the Conquest,
and Greece, in this first decade of the fourteenth century,
was practically divided between the Duke of Athens, the
Angevins, the Orsini, the Greeks, and the Venetians. The
house of Anjou had obtained possession of Achaia from the
family of the conqueror, had established* itself in the finest
of the Ionian islands, and had gained a footing here and
there on the coast of Epiros. The Orsini had tightened
their hold over their county palatine in the Ionian Sea, but
neither Angevins nor Orsini had absorbed the Greeks, who
1 Registres, 610 ; Schlumberger, Numismatique, 339 ; Melanges his-
toriques, iii., 27 ; St Genois, i., 336 ; Capricornus, fol. 337.
2 Wadding, Annates Minorum, v., 324; vi., 1, n; S£thas, Td
XpovLKbv tov Ta\a%eidLov, 239.

208 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
were their neighbours. If Frankish influence, personified
by the Duke of Athens and his viceroy, was predominant in
Thessaly, an able and unscrupulous woman still held Epiros
for the national cause, while the pope plaintively wrote that
" much of Achaia was in Greek hands," and in vain ordered
a tithe to be levied and paid to its prince for the recovery of
what had been lost.1 Venice, however, had maintained and
strengthened her three colonies of Modon, Coron, and
Negroponte. Lluria had spared the two Messenian stations
on his cruise round the Morea, because their Venetian
masters were at peace with the house of Aragon ; but the
republic, none the less, constructed an arsenal at Coron, and
restored the walls of Modon. Their trade naturally suffered
when the dominions of the republic were laid under an
interdict by the pope, and after the great earthquake of
1304; but such was their prosperity in 1291, that it was
ordered that 2000 ounces should be sent to Venice every
year out of their surplus revenues, and a little later the
salaries of their officials were raised. Finding that the wives
of the governors interfered in the colonial administration,
and that their sons engaged in commerce, the Home Govern
ment made a rule, that they must leave their female belong
ings and their grown-up sons behind them in Venice.
Stringent regulations were also issued for the protection of
the peasants' property, and it was the policy of the republican
authorities to keep on good terms with both their Greek and
Frankish neighbours ; to the latter, however, they did not
hesitate to lend the services of the famous engineers of
Coron whenever there was a castle to besiege.2
We last saw the island of Eubcea almost entirely in the
hands of the Greeks, thanks to the energy of Licario ; but
before the close of the century, the imperial garrisons had
all been driven out of the island. The first step was the
recovery of the two castles of La Clisura and Argalia, by
treachery; as the island was specially excepted from the
truce of 1285 between Venice and Andr6nikos II., the
process of reconquest could go on more or less uninter-
1 Regestum dementis V., ii., 17, 19 ; iii., 84.
2 L. d. C, 472 ; Sanudo, Vite de' Duchi, apud Muratori, xxii., 580 ;
Pachymeres, ii., 393 ; Pilosus, fol. 466.

THE VENETIANS IN EUB(EA 209
ruptedly; till, finally, the quarrels between the Venetians
and their Genoese rivals at Constantinople led, in 1296, to
the renewal of hostilities between the former and the Greek
Empire, and so afforded an excellent opportunity for recaptur
ing the last remaining Byzantine fortresses of Karystos,
Larmena, and Metropyle. The credit for this final blow
belonged to Bonifacio da Verona, who thus obtained posses
sion of the noble castle of southern Eubcea, which had been
part of his wife's dowry ; henceforth, in fact, as well as in
name, the prime favourite of Duke Guy of Athens was baron
of Karystos, and the most important of all the Lombard
lords in the island. But the real influence over Eubcea was
gradually passing into the hands of the Venetians. Not
only did the latter buy more land round about Chalkis, but
by the usual ill-luck which attended Frankish marriages in
the Levant, the three great baronies of Negroponte were at
this time almost entirely in the possession of women, so that
the Venetian bailie acquired a predominant position, which
was further enhanced by the popularity of several of those
officials. The elder Sanudo,1 however, a Venetian himself,
noticed that the Greek peasants preferred the Genoese to the
Venetians, hastening down to the shore with provisions as
soon as a Genoese galley hove in sight, but by no means
displaying the like alacrity when they descried the Venetian
flag. And, as the same author shrewdly observed, " in
Candia, Negroponte, and other islands, and in the princi
pality of the Morea, although those places are subject to the
Frankish sway and obedient to the Roman Church, yet
almost all the inhabitants are Greeks, and inclined to that
sect, and their hearts are turned towards things Greek ; and,
if they had a chance of displaying their preference freely,
they would do so." A bigoted French bishop, like Gautier
de Ray of Negroponte, cousin of the Duke of Athens, could
still further estrange the " schismatic " Greeks from the
Catholic fold. One other section of the community in that
city — the Jews — had no special reason for loving the Venetian
administration, for it was upon them that the burden of
taxation was more especially laid. Thus, when the salaries
1 Istoria del Regno, 125, 130, 131, 134, 143; and Secreta Fidelium
Crucis, 299-300. O

210 THE ANGEVINS IN GREECE
of the two Venetian councillors were increased, as compensa
tion for their exclusion from trade, the difference was ordered
to be defrayed by the Jews, who had also, in 1 304, to pay the
cost of fortifying with strong walls and gates the hitherto
open Venetian quarter of the city of Negroponte. This
precaution, followed by an order that henceforth the bailie
and one of the two councillors must always reside within the
walls, was due to an attempt by the Lombards to levy taxes
on a Venetian citizen ; it was then that Chalkis assumed the
picturesque appearance of a walled city, which, in spite of
modern acts of Vandalism, it still preserves. Occasionally,
however, a Jewish family was specially exempted from
taxation, as a reward for its loyalty to the republic. Thus,
at the beginning of the fourteenth century, Eubcea possessed
for Venice an importance second to that of Crete alone. It
became the station of a Venetian fleet, and during the
maritime war against Andronikos II., which was concluded
by the ten years' truce of 1303, it was a convenient basis
whence privateers and armatores could swoop down upon
those islands of the Archipelago which Licario had wrested
from their Latin lords.1
Such was the condition of Greece, when a new race of
conquerors from the West suddenly appeared there, and
destroyed in a single day the most magnificent fabric which
the Franks had raised in " New France."
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, i., 4, 10, 35 ; Les Registres de Boniface
VIII., i., 408, 763 ; Archivio Veneto, xx., 81.

CHAPTER VII
THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY (1302-I3II)
The history of Greece in the last quarter of the thirteenth
century was more influenced by the long duel between the
rival houses of Anjou and Aragon for the beautiful island of
Sicily than by any other cause. It was the Sicilian vespers
and their consequences which paralysed the schemes of the
Angevins for the reconquest of the Latin Empire of the
East ; it was the restoration of peace in Sicily, after a twenty
years' struggle, by the peace of Caltabellotta in 1302, which
let loose upon the Greeks and the Frankish rulers of the
Levant the terrible Catalan auxiliaries of the Aragonese
party, and thus vitally affected for nearly a hundred years the
fortunes of Hellas. What the Fourth Crusade was to the
thirteenth century, the Catalan expedition was to the
fourteenth, only that the rough mercenaries from Barcelona
showed less regard for the Greeks than the motley band of
younger sons and noble adventurers and astute Venetians,
who had divided among themselves the fragments of the
Byzantine Empire a hundred years before. The Catalans,
like the Crusaders, have been very differently judged by
Eastern and Western writers. Of the four contemporaries,
who have left us accounts of their doings, the three Greeks
— Pachymeres, Nikephoros Gregoras, and the rhetorician
Theodoulos — depict them as savages, whose sole idea was
plunder; while their comrade and compatriot, Ramon
Muntaner, is rather proud than otherwise of their exploits,
and heaps upon the Greeks the same terms of opprobrium
which we find applied to them a century earlier by the
apologists of the Fourth Crusade. Modern writers have
taken sides, according to their nationalities. To Stamatiades

212 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
the Catalans are the oppressors of the Greeks, to Moncada
and Rubi6 y Lluch they are heroes worthy to be descendants
of the Crusaders. If their career has been very variously
judged, it has, at least, inspired two masterpieces of literature
— the delightful Chronicle of Muntaner and the majestic
prose of Moncada, a work justly esteemed worthy of a place
in the library of Spanish classics.1
During the long struggle against the Angevins in Sicily,
King Frederick II., who now ruled that debatable island,
had thankfully availed himself of the stout hearts and stalwart
arms of the Catalans. Their principal chief was one Roger
de Flor, whose father, a German, had been falconer of the
Emperor Frederick II., and whose mother was daughter of a
prominent citizen of Brindisi, where Roger, like Margaritone
a century earlier, was born. His father lost both life and
property, fighting against Charles of Anjou at the battle of
Tagliacozzo, so that the lad was early thrown on his own
resources. But Brindisi was, in that age, one of the most
important ports in the Mediterranean, whence there was
constant communication with Greece and Syria — just the
place, in fact, where an adventurous boy would find an
opening for a career. One winter, when Roger was eight
years old, the vessel of a Knight Templar lay in the harbour,
close to his mother's abode ; the nimble youth was soon
free of the ship, running about the deck as if he had been
bred to the sea. The captain took a fancy to him, offered to
make a man of him, and when the ship at last sailed, Roger
sailed with it. He soon became an experienced seaman, and,
in due course was admitted a brother of the Temple, being
ultimately entrusted with the command of the largest vessel
belonging to the Order. He was present with this ship at
1 The contemporary authorities for the Catalan expedition are
Pachymeres, ii., 393-400, 415-42, 480-518, 521-58, 562 sqq. ; Nike-
phdros Gregoras, i., 218-33, 244-54 ; Theodoulos, npe^evriKbs -rrpbs rbv
paffLKia, ' AvbpbvLKOv and Hepl tuv iv rrj 'IraXuii/ ko! IlepoHiv etp6Scp yeyevrip^vwv
apud Boissonade, Anecdota Graca, ii., 188-228 ; Muntaner, ch. cxciv.
sqq., and Nicolaus Specialis apud Muratori, x., 1050. Of the moderns
the best are Moncada (died 1635), Expedicion de los Catalanes; Rubio y
Lluch, La expedicion y dominacion de los Catalanes en Oriente; Stama-
ti^des, Oi KaraXdroi iv rrj 'AvaroXfj; and Schlumberger, Expedition des
" Almugavares " ou routiers Catalans en Orient.

ROGER DE FLOR 213
the capture of Acre by the Egyptians, and was the means of
conveying many of the fugitives and much treasure to a place
of safety. But his large profits by this voyage aroused envy
and suspicion ; the Grand Master of the Order laid hands
upon what property of Roger's he could find, and tried to
arrest him ; but the latter managed to escape to Genoa,
where he equipped a galley of his own. Renouncing his
allegiance to the Temple, he now offered his services to the
Angevins, and, when his offer was coldly received, to King
Frederick II., who graciously accepted them. Honours and
wealth were bestowed upon him ; he became Vice- Admiral
of Sicily, and the most terrible corsair of the age.
The peace of Caltabellotta closed the active career of
Roger and his band of Catalans in Sicily. Their present
employer could no longer support them from the revenues of
an island exhausted by twenty years of civil war ; they
could not return to Spain, because they had espoused the
cause of King Frederick of Sicily against his brother, King
James II. of Aragon, nor had these homeless wanderers any
strong ties to bind them to their native land ; moreover, the
pope either had demanded, or seemed likely to demand, the
surrender of their chief, the scourge of the Angevins, the
renegade brother of the Temple. Frederick II. was, on his
part, naturally desirous, like governments in our own time,
to rid himself of such dangerous allies, now that he had no
further use for their services. He had already offered them
to Charles of Valois, husband of Catherine of Courtenay,
titular Empress of Constantinople, whose claims to the
Byzantine throne he had pledged himself to support1 As
this venture against Andr6nikos II. was not carried out,
Roger bethought himself of offering his band of followers to
the same emperor whom he had been "expected to attack.
Andronikos, then hard pressed by the growing power of the
Turks, welcomed Roger's proposal as a godsend. He
accepted the latter's terms, which had been drawn up by
Muntaner himself ; Roger was to obtain the title of " Grand
Duke," which was equivalent to Lord High Admiral in the
Byzantine hierarchy, with the hand of the emperor's niece,
Maria ; his men were to receive pay at double the usual
1 Ducange, op. eit, ii., 335-6; Sanudo, 173.

214 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
rate, and four months were to be paid in advance, the first
instalment being paid at Monemvasia. On these conditions,
Roger sailed for Constantinople with thirty-six ships and
6500 men.1 Of these, 4000 were the so-called almugavart, or
" skirmishers," the most formidable infantry of the time,
whose exploits led the terrified Pachymeres, by a false, but
pardonable etymology, to connect them with the barbarous
Avars. " Would that Constantinople," cried the historian,
" had never beheld the Latin Roger ! "
The name and fame of the Catalans were already known
in the harbours of the Levant. As early as 1268, King
James I. of Aragon, of whose dominions Cataluna formed a
part, had allowed the merchants of Barcelona to establish
consuls in the Byzantine Empire ; and, about 1 290, one of
those officials is mentioned in a golden bull of Andr6nikos
1 1., which granted special privileges to merchants from Spain.
Catalan trade had naturally followed the Byzantine flag at a
time when the Greek emperors were instigating the house of
Aragon against the hated Angevins in Sicily, and the East
had had a taste of the Catalans' quality as fighting men.
Michael VIII. had on one occasion employed a Catalan
vessel to tackle a Genoese corsair, and we saw Catalan
mercenaries assisting Licario against the Lombards of Eubcea
and ravaging the Morea under Roger de Lluria. Thus the
new Roger represented a force whose value the emperor was
well able to estimate.
On their way to Constantinople, the Catalans plundered
Corfu, then a possession of the Angevins, and put into
Monemvasia, where the imperial authorities received them
well. When they reached the capital, the emperor was as
good as his word : the soldiers were given four months' pay
in advance, and Roger received the hand of the fair Maria.
When, somewhat later, another Catalan leader, Berenguer de
Entenca, Lluria's brother-in-law and " one of the noblest men
of Spain," arrived with a fresh contingent, Roger relin
quished to him the title of Grand Duke, and was yet further
honoured by that of "Caesar," one of the great Byzantine
dignities, whose latest holders had been Alexios Strateg6-
1 Muntaner, the best authority, gives 6500 ; Pachymeres, 8000 ; Nike-
phdros, 2000,

THE CATALANS AT GALLIPOLI 215
poulos, the conqueror of Constantinople from the Latins,
and John and Constantine Palai61ogos, the uncles of the
emperor. The Catalan commander was the last person who
ever bore the title.
The newcomers soon proved to be a curse to the empire
which they had been summoned to defend. If they defeated
the Turks in Asia, they quarrelled with the Genoese in the
capital and plundered the Greeks everywhere. When they
had desolated Asia, they crossed over into Europe, and
encamped at Gallipoli on the Dardanelles, where Alfonso
Fadrique, a natural son of King Frederick of Sicily, joined
them. Roger was now killed at Adrianople by orders of
Michael, the emperor's son and colleague ; but the deed only
made the Catalans more desperate, and therefore more danger
ous. Under Entenca, Roger's successor, they entrenched
themselves at Gallipoli, and defied the emperor ; when
Entenca was captured by a Genoese fleet, they made
Berenguer de Rocafort, a resolute soldier of humble origin,
their leader, routed the imperial troops and wounded the
emperor's son. Twelve councillors were appointed to assist
Rocafort ; a great seal was made bearing the image of St
George and the proud superscription "the army of the
Franks who reign over the kingdom of Macedbnia," and was
entrusted to the charge of Muntaner; three banners, those of
Aragon, of Sicily, and of St George, accompanied the host to
battle ; a fourth, that of St Peter, waved on the topmost
tower of Gallipoli. Their victories soon attracted a body of
loyal and valuable allies — 3800 Turks and Turkish renegades ;
ere long there was scarcely a town in Thrace and Macedonia
which they had not sacked. But dissensions broke out
among the Catalan leaders. Entenca, who had secured his
release, was murdered on his return by Rocafort's relatives,
and that crafty chief persuaded his men to refuse to recognise
the authority of King Frederick of Sicily, who was desirous
to exploit for his own ends the triumphs of his former
mercenaries, and had accordingly sent his cousin, the Infant
Ferdinand, son of King James I. of Majorca, to take
command of the company in his name.1 Unable to assert his
powers as King Frederick's delegate, the Infant resolved to
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 385-90.

216 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
return to Sicily ; with him went the faithful Muntaner, while
the main body, under Rocafort, having exhausted Thrace and
plundered the monasteries of Mount Athos, moved to
Kassandreia, the ancient Potidaia, a deserted city on the
narrow isthmus which connects the peninsula of Kassandra
with the rest of Macedonia.
It is at this point that the Catalan expedition begins to
affect the history of Frankish Greece. On their way home,
the Infant and Muntaner put into the Thessalian port of
Halmyros, at that time under the regency of the Duke of
Athens, and set fire to all that they could find, in revenge
for the disappearance of some of their men and stores.
After ravaging the island of Skopelos, still a Greek possession,
they steered for Negroponte, where the Infant had been
hospitably treated on his outward voyage. But at this
moment there chanced to be in the harbour eleven Venetian
vessels with Thibaut de Cepoy on board — a French nobleman,
agent of Charles of Valois, who, in 1306, had renewed
between his master and Venice the old arrangement made
twenty-five years before at Orvieto for the recovery of the
Latin Empire,1 and who was now manoeuvring to win over
Rocafort and his Catalans to the service of the titular
empress and her husband. Cepoy feared that Ferdinand, as
the representative of the King of Sicily, might thwart his
plan ; his Venetian escort had heard that Muntaner's galley
contained a goodly quantity of spoil ; accordingly, they
attacked the little flotilla, seized the chronicler's property and
arrested the Infant, in spite of the safe conduct, which the
barons of Negroponte had given him. Ferdinand and his
faithful retainer were lodged in the house of Bonifacio da
Verona, whence the Infant was handed over to Jean de
Maisy, a well-connected Frenchman, who had recently
become, by marriage with one of the Lombard heiresses, the
next most important baron of the island. He was then
escorted to Thebes, where Duke Guy of Athens, annoyed
at the destruction of Halmyros, and already won over by
Cepoy, shut him up in the castle of St Omer. Muntaner was
sent back to Rocafort at Kassandreia, where he received an
enthusiastic reception, and whence he shortly returned to
1 Thomas, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levaniinum, I,, 48-53.

MUNTANER AT THEBES 217
Negroponte, in quest of his stolen property. All efforts to
recover it failed; but half a. century later Venice paid back
to the chronicler's granddaughter a tenth part of what he
had lost at Negroponte.1 A poorer and a wiser man — for he
had learnt that it was dangerous to travel with young
princes — Muntaner proceeded to Thebes, where Guy II.,
then already a prey to the malady which carried him off a
year later, received him with courtesy. He was not the
first Catalan whom the duke had met ; for, three years
earlier, Ferdinand Ximenes, the most respectable of all the
Catalan leaders, had left Roger de Flor in disgust at his
cruelty, and had spent some time at the Theban court, where
he had been entertained with those honours which the
lavish duke knew so well how to bestow. Muntaner, in
response to Guy's polite attentions, asked for one favour
only — that the Infant might be well treated and that he
might be permitted to see him. The request was granted ; the
warm-hearted Catalan passed two days in the society of his
young master, and when he departed, almost broken-hearted,
for Sicily, he left behind him part of his scanty funds for
the Infant's use, and made the cook swear on the gospels
that he would not put poison into the royal prisoner's food.
The Infant was subsequently released and sent to the King
of Naples, at the request of Charles of Valois ; after more than
a year's honourable imprisonment at Naples, he was allowed
to return to Majorca. We shall find him later on intervening,
with fatal results to himself, in the affairs of Greece.
Meanwhile, the main body of the Catalans, in their camp
at Kassandreia, were treating Macedonia as they had treated
Thrace. Rocafort, hopelessly compromised with both the
King of Sicily and the house of Aragon by his refusal to
accept the authority of the Infant Ferdinand, had thought
it prudent to take an oath of fealty to Thibaut de Cepoy as
the representative of Charles of Valois, but, in spite of
Cepoy's nominal leadership, he continued to be the guiding
spirit of the Company. His ambition aimed at nothing less
than a royal crown, and he dreamed of reviving for himself
that kingdom of Salonika which Boniface of Montferrat had
founded a century before, and which still lingered on as a
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, i., 87 ; ii., 186, 190, 250.

218 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
titular dignity of the ducal house of Burgundy.1 He had a
seal executed, bearing the figure of St Demetrios and a
golden crown, while he excited his men by promising them
the plunder of Salonika, a rich and populous city, at that
moment a particularly splendid prize, because its walls
contained the two empresses, Irene, wife of Andronikos II.,
and Maria, consort of his son and colleague, Michael. Just
as Boniface's conquests had included Attica, so Rocafort, too,
was plotting the ultimate dominion of the Athenian duchy.
With this object he sought the hand of Jeannette de Brienne,
half-sister of the childless Guy II., which the Empress Irene
had already asked for her son Theodore. Guy had been too
honest to accept her offer, which had been coupled with the
proposal that he and she should simultaneously attack his
ward, young John 1 1, of Thessaly and Neopatras, and that
the latter's dominions should be given to her son.2 Negotia
tions went on, however, for some time between him and
Rocafort ; two of his minstrels were sent as his envoys to
Kassandreia,3 and- he seems to have entertained the idea of
using the Catalans to conquer the Morea in the name of his
wife, the natural heiress of the Villehardouins,4 who, as we
saw, had in vain demanded it as her birthright from Nicholas
de St Omer, when he had been left as bailie after the
departure of Philip of Savoy. But Venice, alarmed for her
colony at Negroponte, worked against a plan which would
have exposed that station to a Catalan attack, and Rocafort,
whose arbitrary acts had made him unpopular with his men,
was arrested by the council of the Catalan Company, and
handed over to Cepoy. The latter was by this time weary
of his life with the wild Catalans, while his mission had no
further object since the death of Catherine of Courtenay, the
titular empress of Constantinople, at the beginning of 1308,
and the consequent transference of her claims to her daughter,
Catherine of Valois. He therefore determined to quit the
Catalan camp with his prisoner. One night, without saying
1 Buchon, Recherches et MatMaux, i., 68.
2 Nikephdros Gregoras, i., 237 (who, however, calls her, by a con
fusion, the duke's " daughter ") ; Lettere di Collegio, fol. 6.
3 As we see from Cepoy's accounts ; Ducange, op. eit, ii., 355.
* X. t. M., 11. 7275-81 ; C. d. M., 456.

DEATH OF GUY II. 219
good-bye to a single soul, he embarked on some galleys
which his son had brought from Venice, and next morning
when the Company awoke, he was well out at sea, on the
way to Naples. There he surrendered Rocafort to the tender
mercies of that amiable sovereign, King Robert, who paid off
an old grudge which he had against the bold Catalan by
throwing him into the dungeons of Aversa, where he died of
hunger.1 Meanwhile, the Catalans, furious at the departure
of their leader, repented of what they had done. In their
rage they slew fourteen captains who had been the ringleaders
in the revolt against Rocafort — a proceeding which still
further diminished the number of prominent men among
them. Until they could find a new chief, they elected a
committee of four, chosen in equal numbers from the cavalry
and infantry, besides the original Council of Twelve.
Such was the situation of the Catalan Company, when
the last of the De la Roche dukes of Athens lay a-dying.
Muntaner, as we saw, had found him very ill, when he
visited Thebes, nor could the medical skill of the patriarch of
Alexandria, who chanced to be in Eubcea and prescribed for
the ailing duke, avail to save him. On 5th October 1308,
"the good duke," Guy II., died. On the following day, he
was laid to rest in " the mausoleum of his ancestors '' at the
famous Cistercian Abbey of Daphni on the Sacred Way,
where a sarcophagus with a cross, two snakes, and two
lilies carved upon it, which was perhaps his tomb, may still
be seen lying outside in the courtyard. A certificate of his
death and burial was drawn up by Archbishop Henry of
Athens, the Abbot of Daphni, the ex-pirate Gaffore, now a
peaceful Athenian citizen, and others, who implored, in the
name of the widowed duchess, now left alone in the world
1 Hopf and Gregorovius rejected the statement of Muntaner (ch.
ccxxxix.), that Cepoy fled with Rocafort on the ground that the last
section of his financial accounts, which have been preserved and pub
lished by Ducange (op. eit, ii., 352-6), begins with 9th September 1309,
which they therefore assumed, without evidence, to be the date of his
departure from Greece. But Cepoy was always accustomed to divide his
accounts at that date, because it completed the period of twelve months
from the time of his departure from Paris in 1306. The mention of that
date therefore merely means that the fourth year of his mission began
then. According to Lettere di Collegio, f. 63, he was in Thessaly in 1309.

220 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
at the age of fifteen, the protection of her cousin, Count
William of Hainault. Her husband had not, however, been
dead four months, when she was affianced in the Theban
minster, the scene of so many gorgeous ceremonies, to the
eldest son of Philip of Taranto. Thither, for the last time,
gathered the noble chivalry of Athens, to witness this latest
sacrifice to the insatiable ambition of the Angevins.1
Guy II. had left no children, but fortunately the succession
to his delectable duchy, of which he had appointed his
bosom friend, Bonifacio da Verona, as temporary adminis
trator, was not seriously disputed. Neither the French nor
the Argive branch of the De la Roche family (the barons of
Veligosti and Damala) made any claim to his inheritance ; the
husband of his aunt Catherine, Carlo de Lagonessa, seneschal
of Sicily and son of the former bailie of Achaia, who had
regarded himself a few years before as his heir, and
Lagonessa's son, Giovanni, had both predeceased him,2 so that
there only remained his two first cousins, Eschive, Lady of
Beyrout, daughter of his aunt Alice, and Walter, son of his
aunt Isabelle and Hugues de Brienne, his stepfather.
Hugues de Brienne had left Greece for Apulia after his
stepson had come of age, and had been killed in battle in
1296. His son, Walter, Count of Lecce, accordingly came
forward as Guy's successor. Dame Eschive of Beyrout
asserted, however, that she had a prior claim, because her
mother was the elder sister of Walter's mother. As the
duchy of Athens was in the Angevin times a vassal state of
the principality of Achaia, King Robert of Naples, the head
of the Angevins, and Philip of Taranto, as Prince of Achaia
and suzerain of Athens, referred the question in the middle
of 1309 to the Achaian High Court, of which Philip's new
bailie, Bertino Visconte, was the president. The High
Court decided in favour of Walter, on the ground that he
1 Pachymeres, II., 450, 595 ; Sanudo, 136 ; Muntaner, chs. ccxxxvii.,
ccxl., ccxliv.; X. t. M., 11. 7263-9, 8046-55 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, I.,
89 ; St Genois, i., 215, 338 ; Buchon, Recherches historiques, i., 473 ; La
Grke Continental, 131-3. M. Millet, however, in his monograph on
Daphni (p. 39), doubts whether the sarcophagus is the tomb of Guy, as
the arms upon it were not those of his family.
2 Riccio, Studii storici sopra 84 Registri, 54.

WALTER OF BRIENNE, DUKE OF ATHENS 221
was a powerful and gallant man, while the Lady of Beyrout
was not only a woman but a widow. When Eschive heard
the sentence of the Court, she knelt down at the altar of the
church of St Francis at Glarentza, where the barons had met,
and prayed the Virgin that if her judges and her opponent
had wrought injustice, they might die without heirs of their
bodies. Then she departed to her own home, and Walter of
Brienne entered into the peaceable possession of his cousin's
duchy, which Bonifacio da Verona, who had acted as bailie
during the interregnum, handed over to him.1
The new Duke of Athens was a true scion of the
adventurous house of Brienne, who in his thirty years of life
had seen much of the world. As a boy he must have spent
some time at the Theban court, when his father was guardian
of Guy II. When barely of age, he had been one of the
" knights of death," who had gone to Sicily to support the
cause of Anjou, and he had fought like the lion on his
banner at Gagliano, when he and his comrades were
treacherously led into an ambuscade. Like his suzerain,
Philip of Taranto, he had been the prisoner of the
Aragonese, but prison had not made him cautious, nor had
defeat taught him the folly of despising the infantry of Spain.
Thus the succession of this brave but headstrong soldier
destroyed, instead of preserving, " the pleasaunce of the
Latins" in Frankish Athens. Yet it is impossible not to
admire the reckless courage of this most unstatesmanlike
ruler. Those who have seen the knightly figure of the last
French Duke of Athens step on to the stage in M. Rhangabes's
gorgeously mounted play, " The Duchess of Athens " — a
drama which, in spite of some glaring anachronisms, has given
us a living picture of the brilliant French court of Thebes
on the eve of the catastrophe — can feet all the pathos and
all the pity of so promising a career so wantonly sacrificed.
Meanwhile, the Catalans were drawing nearer to the
Athenian frontier. The position of the Company in the
camp at Kassandreia had grown more and more precarious.
In Macedonia they were threatened with starvation and
the combined attack of all the neighbouring peoples. The
emperor had cut off their retreat into Thrace by building a
1 L.d.F., 1 18-19.

222 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
long wall across the pass of Christopolis ; while in the
imperial general Chandrenos, if we may believe the eulogy
of his relative, the rhetorician Theodoulos, they had found
a foeman worthy of their steel, who pressed them hard in
their station on the peninsula. Accordingly, they resolved
to make a bold dash for Thessaly, " a land of plenty," or find
an abiding settlement in one of the Greek countries to the
south of it. The company now numbered not less than
8000 men, of whom some 5000 were Catalans, and the rest
Turks, 1 100 of the latter being converts to Christianity. On
the borders of Thessaly, a portion of the Turks left them,1
and the rest of the company, after wintering at tbe foot of
Olympos, traversed the lovely vale of Tempe, the route of
so many an army, and in the spring of 1309 debouched into
the great Thessalian plain. The granary of Greece lay at
their mercy, for John II. of Neopatras, its ruler, who had
been emancipated from his Athenian guardian by the death
of Guy II., was young in years and weak in health; fearing
a usurpation on the part of one of the feudal barons of
Thessaly, he had recently married, or at least betrothed
himself to, Irene, natural daughter of the Emperor
Andronikos II.2 But, as he had no heir, either annexa
tion or anarchy seemed likely to follow the demise of the
moribund duke, the last of his race.
The rest of the year was spent by the Catalans in ravaging
Thessaly, till the inhabitants invoked the aid of the emperor,
who not only ordered the redoubtable Chandrenos to pursue
the Catalans, but summoned the people of Loidoriki and
Galaxidi, districts which were included, as we saw, in the
Wallachian principality of the Angeli, to join his standard
against " the men of Aragon." Dissensions hindered the
success of the Greeks till the arrival of Chandrenos gave
unity of direction to their forces, and in two battles, in which
the stalwart men of Galaxidi took a notable part, the Catalans
1 Nikephoros (i., 248) makes all the Turks leave them ; but Muntaner,
the Aragonese Chronicle, and Theodoulos (ii., 201) state that the Turks
were present at the battle of the Kephissos.
2 Nikeph6ros in one place says that in 1309 he had been "lately
married" ; in another, that when he died in 1318, he had been "married
three years " (i., 249, 278).

WALTER EMPLOYS THE CATALANS 223
were defeated with much loss.1 The Company was glad to
make peace with the Thessalians ; Chandren6s, having done
his work, returned into Macedonia ; and the Catalan leaders
accepted the bribes and offers of the leading men of Thessaly
to give them guides, who would conduct them into Bceotia
and Achaia, " a luxurious and fertile land, endued with many
graces, and of all lands the best to dwell in." Accordingly,
in the spring of 1 310, they crossed the Phourka Pass, suffering
not a little from the nomad Wallachs who frequented that
difficult country, and descended to Lamia.
An energetic soldier like the new Duke of Athens, whose
name was famous in the kingdoms of the West, could
scarcely be expected to acquiesce in the practical establish
ment of a Byzantine protectorate over the dominions of his
predecessor's ward, John II. of Neopatras. From the brief
account of Muntaner, it would appear that at this moment
a species of triple alliance between the Greek rulers of
Constantinople, Neopatras, and Arta, had been formed for
the purpose of preventing the moribund principality of the
Angeli from being annexed by the duchy of Athens.
Against the allies Duke Walter bethought him of employing
the venal arms of the wandering Catalans. The late Duke
of Athens had already negotiated with them when they
were still at Kassandreia ; his successor was, moreover, per
sonally popular with them ; he had gained their respect
fighting against them in the Sicilian war, and he spoke their
language, which he had learnt when a child during his im
prisonment as hostage for his father in the Castle of Augusta,
near Syracuse. By means of the good services of Roger
Deslaur, a knight of Roussillon, who was in his employ, he
engaged them for six months at the high rate of 4 ounces
(£9, 12s.) for every heavily-armed horseman, 2 ounces
{£4, 1 6s.) for every light-armed horseman, and 1 ounce
{£2, 8s.) for every foot-soldier — the same high scale of pay
for which Roger de Flor had stipulated with Andronikos
II. eight years earlier. As soon as he met them — probably
1 I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of the Chronicle of Galaxidi
(p. 205) here, because it is exactly confirmed by the contemporary account
of Theddoulos. As Sathas points out (p. 225), the "Andreas" or
" Andrikos " of the Chronicle is Chandrenos.

224 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
at Lamia 1 — he gave them two months' pay in advance. The
Catalans lost no time in giving him value for his money.
Turning back by the way they had come, they took Domoko.
At the end of a six months' campaign they had captured
more than thirty castles for their employer, and had once
more ravaged the fertile plain of Thessaly so effectually,
that its exports of corn and other products diminished after
this raid. His three adversaries were glad to make peace
with him on his own terms, and the news of his triumph
penetrated to the papal court at Avignon, whence Clement
V. wrote ordering the Athenian revenues of the suppressed
Order of the Templars to be lent to so " faithful a champion "
of the true Church against the " schismatic Greeks." 2
Having used the Company to serve his purpose, the duke
now desired, like all its previous employers, to get rid of it.
He picked out 200 of the best horsemen and 300 foot
soldiers from its ranks, gave them their pay and lands, on
which to settle, and then abruptly told the others to be gone,
first giving up to him the castles which they had captured in
his name and the booty which they had taken. They
declined to obey his orders, reminded him that he owed them
four months' pay, but offered to do him homage for the
conquered castles, if he would allow them to remain, as they
had nowhere else to go.3 Walter haughtily replied that he
would drive them out by force, and made preparations during
the autumn and winter to carry out his threat His
messengers went forth to all parts of the Frankish world in
quest of aid against the common enemy. All the great
feudatories of Greece rallied to his call. There came Alberto
PaUavicini, Marquis of Boudonitza, and by his marriage
with an heiress of the Dalle Carceri, hexarch of Eubcea ;
Thomas III. of Salona, that trusty vassal of the dukes of
1 We know from a document quoted by Lunzi (Delia Condizione
politica delle hole lonie, 125) that Walter was before "la Gyrona"
( = Gytona, the Frankish form for Zetouni, or Lamia) on June 6, 1310,
and that is by far the most likely place for the meeting, being at the end
of the pass from Thessaly.
2 Sanudo, Secreta Fidelium Crucis, apud Bongars, ii., 68 ; Regestum
Clementis V, v., 235.
3 X. r. M., 11. 7282-92 ; L. d. P., 117 (where Walter is confused with
Guy II.), 119, 120.

WALTER ARMS AGAINST THE CATALANS 225
Athens, who had lately become marshal of Achaia ; Boniface
of Verona, the powerful Eubcean baron, who owed everything
to the favour of Walter's predecessor ; and two other Eubcean
lords, George Ghisi, owner of one of the three baronies of
that island and master of Tenos and Mykonos, who had been
captured by Roger de Lluria nearly twenty years before, and
Jean de Maisy, who had received the custody of the Infant
Ferdinand. The friendly Angevins, for whose cause Walter
had fought in Sicily, willingly allowed their vassals in the
Morea and their subjects in the kingdom of Naples to hasten
to the Athenian banner, while the Duke of Naxos seems to
have sent an island contingent.1 Never had such a brave
host marched under the leadership of a Duke of Athens.
According to a Byzantine estimate, Walter's army numbered
6400 horsemen and more than 8000 foot soldiers ; according
to the Catalan Muntaner, it consisted of 700 Frankish
knights and of 24,000 Greek infantry from his own duchy ;
while the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea
assesses the numbers of the assembled force at more than
2000 horse and 4000 foot. With such an army, the con
temptuous duke hoped not only to annihilate the Catalans at
one blow, but to extend his frontiers to the gates of
Constantinople. The situation of the Catalan Company, now composed of
3500 horsemen and 4000 foot soldiers, including many of
their prisoners, enlisted because of their skill as archers, was
now desperate. Retreat would have exposed them to a
fresh attack by the victorious Chandrenos ; allies they had
none, for Venice had returned an evasive answer to their
pacific overtures to her bailie at Chalkis, and had just
renewed for twelve years her truce with the emperor, which
contained a special stipulation, that no* Venetian subject,
under pain of losing all his goods, should visit any place
where the Catalan Company chanced to be.2 Nothing
therefore lay before them but the alternative of a glorious
death, or a still more glorious victory. Like seasoned
warriors, they chose their battlefield well. When spring
came, they crossed the Boeotian Kephiss6s, and encamped
1 L. d. P., 120, confirming Sauger, Histoire twuvelle, p. 130.
2 Thomas, Diplomalarium Veneto-I^eyantinum, i., 82-5. P

226 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
not far from the right bank of that sluggish stream, which
ambles under the willows, like the Avon at Rugby. They
then proceeded to prepare the ground, which was to be the
scene of their final struggle for existence. Nature seems to
have intended the great plain of Bceotia for a battlefield.
A few miles from where the Catalans had taken their stand,
Philip of Macedon, more than sixteen centuries before, had
won "that dishonest victory at Chaironeia, fatal to liberty,"
which destroyed the freedom of classic Greece ; in the time
of Sulla, the plain had thrice witnessed the clash of arms
between the Roman masters of Greece and the Pontic troops
of Mithridates. Now, after the lapse of 1400 years, it was to
be the spot where the fate of Athens was to be decided.
But the crafty Catalans did not put their trust in those arts
by which the soldiers of Macedon and Rome had routed
Greeks and Asiatics. They knew that they would have to
face the most renowned chivalry of that day, knights who
had made the names of Athens and Achaia famous all over
the Eastern world, descendants of those tall horsemen, before
whose coats of mail Sgour6s had fled from Thermopylae a
century before. The marshy soil of the Copaic basin was an
excellent defence against a cavalry charge, and the Catalans
made this natural advantage more efficacious still by
ploughing up the ground in front of them, digging a trench
round it, and then irrigating the whole area by means of
canals from the river. The moisture aided the germs of
vegetation, and by the middle of March, when the Frankish
army faced the Catalans, the quagmire was concealed by an
ample covering of green grass.
On Wednesday, 10th March 131 1, the Duke of Athens
had assembled his forces at Lamia, where, as if by a fore
boding of his approaching death, he solemnly made his last
will and testament. The document, witnessed by Gilles de la
Planche, bailie of Achaia, and by the two great Eubcean
barons, Jean de Maisy, the duke's kinsman, and Bonifacio da
Verona, provided for all the outstanding claims of his
predecessor's widow on his estate, bequeathed the sum of
200 hyperperi {£89, 12s.) each to the cathedrals of Our Lady
of Athens, Our Lady of Thebes, and Our Lady of Negroponte,
to the great churches at Argos and Corinth, and to the

BATTLE OF THE KEPHISSOS 227
church at Daulia, a similar sum to the Athenian and Theban
Minorites, and to the Theban Freres Precheurs, and half that
amount to the church of St George at Livadia, and to the
church at Boudonitza. The duke appointed his wife, Jeanne
de Chatillon, guardian of his two children, Walter and Isabelle,
charged her to build a church to St Leonard in his Italian
county of Lecce for the repose of his own and his parents'
souls, but expressed the desire to be buried by the side of the
last Duke of Athens in the abbey of Daphni, to which he left
ioo hyperperi in land, or iooo in cash, for celebrating his
anniversary. His wife, the bishop of Daulia, and others, were
to carry out these dispositions. Having thus made his will,
Walter set out to attack his enemies.1
Following the present route from Lamia to Livadia by
way of Dadi, Walter halted, after passing Chaironeia, near
the spot where the present road to Skripou, the ancient
Orchomenos, turns off". On the hill called the Thourion,
which is still surmounted by a mediaeval tower, he probably
took up his stand on that fatal 15 th of March to survey the
field. But, before the battle began, the 500 favoured
Catalans, whom he had picked out from the rest, came to him
and told him that they would rather die with their brothers
than fight against them. The duke told them that they had
his permission to die with the others, so they departed and
added a welcome and experienced contingent to the enemies'
forces. When they had gone, Walter, impatient for the fray,
placed himself at the head of 200 French knights with golden
spurs and many other knights of the country and the
infantry, and charged, with a shout, across the plain towards
the grassy expanse, behind which the Catalans lay. Seldom
had even Frankish Greece seen a braver sight than that of
the martial duke and his mailed warriors, the flower of
Western chivalry, with the lion banner of Brienne waving
above them. But before the horses had reached the centre
of the plain, they plunged all unsuspecting into the morass.
Their heavy burdens and the impetus of their charge made
their feet sink deeper into the yielding quagmire ; the shouts of
" Aragon ! Aragon ! " from the Catalans added to their alarm.
1 D'Arbois de Jubainville, Voyage paUographique dans le de"parte-
ment de I'Aube, 332-340.

228 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
Some rolled over with their armoured riders in the mud ;
others, stuck fast in the stiff" bog, stood still, like equestrian
statues, powerless to move. The Catalans plied the helpless
horsemen with showers of missiles ; the Turks, who had
hitherto held aloof from the combat, for fear lest the Catalans
and the French should join in attacking them, seeing that
the battle was no mere feint, rushed forward and completed
the deadly work. Still, despite their desperate situation, the
French fought bravely, and the struggle was keen to the
last. So great was the slaughter, that, if we may believe the
Catalan chronicler, more than 20,000 foot-soldiers and all the
700 Frankish knights save two perished that day. Those two
survivors were Bonifacio da Verona, who had always been a
good friend of the Company, and Roger Deslaur, who had
been the intermediary between it and the Duke of Athens.
We know, however, from other sources, that at least two
other knights, Jean de Maisy of Eubcea and the eldest son of
the Duke of Naxos, who was wounded there, both survived,
while the latter lived to marry Walter's half-sister Jeannette
and to fight the Catalans again.1 Two other great nobles,
Nicholas III. of St Omer and Antoine le Flamenc, lord of
Karditza, are known to have been alive after the battle, at
which the former was apparently not present, while we may
perhaps assume that the church of St George, which the
Flemish knight erected in this very year at his Copaic village,
was in pursuance of a vow made to the saint before he went
into action.2 But the fatal day of the Kephiss6s destroyed
at one blow the noble chivalry of Frankish Greece. Almost
all the leaders of the land, almost all the representatives of
the old conquering families, were left dead in the Boeotian
swamp. The Duke of Athens fell, and his head, severed from
his body by a Catalan knife, was borne, many years afterwards,
on a funereal galley to Brindisi, and thence escorted to
Lecce, where it was buried beneath a marble monument, in
the church of Sta. Croce, which his ill-fated son erected in
1 Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., in ; Predelli, Commetnoriali, i., 133,
134, 198, 204.
2 Mr D. Steel, manager ofthe Lake Copais Company, has kindly had
a fresh copy of this inscription made for me by his Greek draughtsman.
The date is "6819, ninth indiction," i.e., 131 1, a very significant one,

THE CARNAGE OF THE KEPHISSOS 229
his Italian residence, but which was destroyed, and with it the
monument, when Lecce was fortified in the time of Charles V.1
There fell, too, the Marquis of Boudonitza and the lord of
Salona, those twin guardians of the Greek marches, whose
dignities dated from the Conquest ; and brave George Ghisi,
and many another noble gentleman. It was scarcely a
rhetorical exaggeration, when Theodoulos the rhetorician
wrote, that not so much as an army chaplain 2 was left to tell
the tale. To him and to the Greeks it seemed a glorious
victory, which rid them of the masters who had ruled Greece
for three generations, and whose pride had been the cause of
their fall ; even the Francophil Chronicle of the Morea admits
that Walter's death was his own fault3
After the battle, the victors occupied the French camp,
and then marched to the neighbouring town of Livadia, one
1 Galateus, De Situ Iapygia, 92 ; Della Monaca, Memoria historica
della Citta di Brindisi, 470 ; Summonte, Storia della Cittct e del Regno
di Napoli, ii., 248.
2 M.i)8£ -jrvptpbpov, a classical tag, "the priest who carried the sacrificial
fire." 3 There are two difficulties about the battle — its date and place. The
Greek Chronicle (11. 7295-300) gives "Monday, March 15, a.m., 68171
Indict, vii. " (or viii., another MS.) = A.D., 1309 ; the French version gives
the same day and month of 1310 (p. 240), but alters the year to 1307 else
where (p. 474). But in 1311 the 15th March was » Monday, and that
date is absolutely fixed by Walter's will and by the " Necrologium
Monasterii S. Nicolai et Cataldi " of Lecce, which I have examined at
Naples, and which says "15 Martii obiit Gualterius, dux Athenarum,
Brennse et Lisii Comes, 131 1, lnd. viiii." The four versions ofthe Chronicle
and Sanudo all say that the place was Halmyros ; but the well-known
Thessalian town cannot be meant, as Neroutsos (Aekriov, iv., 130) and
Gianndpoulos (-n-apvao-obs, viii., 76) believed, because nothing but the
Boeotian plain suits the precise descriptions of Muntaner and Nikephoros.
Halmyros ("the salt place") is, however, a common name in Greece,
and there may well have been a spot so called in the Copaic district.
The contemporary authorities for the battle are : — Nikeph6ros
Gregoras, i., 251-4; Muntaner, ch. ccxl. ; Theodoulos, ii., 200-1. To
it refer X. r. JJ., 11. 7272-300, 8010 ; L. d. C, 239-40, 268, 474 ; C. d. M.,
456 ; L. d. P., 120 ; Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, p. 265 ;
Villani apud Muratori, xiii., 379-80; Sanudo, Istoria del Regno, 125;
Chalkokond^les, 19. A poem by Pucci, published in Arch. Stor. Hal.,
Ser. III., xvi., 52, alludes to the fact of Walter's head being "cut off by
the Company." A contemporary table of the rulers of Greece (Hopf,
Chroniques, 177-8) marks the names of those who died.

230 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
of the strongest positions in the duchy, which had been a
special appanage of the ducal family. But the Greek inhabi
tants opened the gates to " the Fortunate Company of the
Catalans," receiving as their reward the full rights and
privileges of Franks under the Great Seal of St George.1
When the news of the French defeat reached Thebes, the
citizens fled with all that they could carry to Negroponte —
the general refuge of the Latin inhabitants of the duchy,
where a Venetian fleet was at that moment watching events.
But the abandoned city, the richest in all the duchy, was
ruthlessly plundered by the rough soldiers of fortune, who
then hastened to Athens. We would fain believe the story
of the Aragonese Chronicle, that the heroic widow of the
fallen duke, a daughter of a constable of France, defended
the Akropolis, in which she had taken refuge with her little
son, until she saw that there was no hope of succour, and
then fled with young Walter to Naples, and thence to her
old home in France.2 But Nikephoros expressly says that
the invaders surprised Athens and took it most easily,
together with the possessions, wives, and children of the
vanquished ; a very late authority of more than doubtful
value3 adds that they burnt the grove of the nymphs at
Kolonos, thus giving to the home of Sophokles the desolate
appearance which it still preserves. As no French leaders
were left to lead a resistance against them, and the Greeks
remained spectators of this change of masters, they were able
to parcel out among themselves all the towns and castles of
the duchy, except its Argive appurtenances beyond the
isthmus, which the faithful family of Foucherolles still held
for the exiled dynasty.4 The widows of the slain became
the wives of the slayers ; each soldier received a consort
according to his services, and thus many a rough warrior
found himself the husband of some noble dame, in whose
veins flowed the bluest blood of France, and " whose wash-
hand basin," in the phrase of Muntaner, " he was not worthy
1 Larnpros, "EYypa,0a, 337. 2 p. I3j.
3 The Chronicle of Anthimos (now ascribed to J. Benizelos), quoted
by Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea, ii., 182.
* These are doubtless the places to which Clement V. alludes as still
holding out in 1314. (Regestum, viii., 14 ; ix., 46.)

THE CATALANS CHOOSE A LEADER 231
ta bear." No wonder that these vagabonds decided to end
their nine years' wandering and settle in this delectable
duchy, which a kindly providence had bestowed upon them.
Their Turkish allies, however, pined to return to their homes
in Asia, although the Catalans offered to give them three or
four places in the duchy in which to settle, and begged
them to stay. They received as their share the horses,
arms,1 and military equipment of the fallen Franks, and
departed on the best of terms with their Catalan comrades.
Both parties promised to assist one another in case of need ;
but, before the Catalans had had time to perform their
promise, their Turkish friends had succumbed to the craft
of the emperor and his Genoese allies at the Dardanelles.
Those who escaped the Byzantine sword, ended their days
in the Genoese galleys.
The battle of the Kephissos, assuredly one of the
strangest in history, had left both victors and vanquished
without leaders. The Catalans had lost all their chiefs long
before the fight, the French chivalry lay in the Boeotian
swamp. But the Company felt that in its new situation it
must have a commander of acknowledged rank and position.
As they had no such man among them, the Catalans offered
the command of the Company to one of their two noble
prisoners, Bonifacio da Verona. The famous Euboean
baron was the most important Frank in the whole of
Northern Greece ; he was of high lineage, wealthy, able,
and popular with the Catalans ; Muntaner, as we saw, had
lodged in his house at Chalkis, and describes him in
enthusiastic terms as "the wisest and most courteous
nobleman that was ever born." Wisdom and nobility alike
disposed him to decline an offer which would have embroiled
him with Venice and have rendered him an object of loath
ing to the whole Frankish world. He accordingly absolutely
refused. The Catalans then turned to his fellow-captive,
Roger Deslaur, the knight of Roussillon, who had neither
1 Theddoulos (ii., 201), thus disposing of Buchon's ingenious theory
that the armour, found at Chalkis in 1840 and now in the collection of
tbe Historical and Ethnological Society at Athens, belonged to the fallen
of the. Kephissds and had been transported by Bonifacio to Chalkisi
(La Grlce Conlinentale, 134 sqq.).

232 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
the territorial position, the family ties, nor the scruples of
Bonifacio. He accepted ; the Catalans made him their
leader, and gave him the splendid castle of Salona, together
with the widow of its fallen lord, Thomas III., the last De
Stromoncourt. Thus, after a duration of over a hundred years, fell at a
single blow the French duchy of Athens. An artificial
creation, imposed upon a foreign soil, it collapsed as suddenly
as it had arisen, and it left few traces behind it. We have
seen that under the dominion of the dukes of the house
of De la Roche, trade prospered, manufactures flourished, and
the splendours of the Theban court impressed foreigners
accustomed to the pomps and pageants of much greater
states. Never before, and never again, did the ancient city
of the seven gates witness such a brilliant throng as that
which made the frescoed walls of the great castle of St Omer
ring with song and revelry ; never before, and never again,
did the violet crown of Athens encircle so romantic a scene,
as when armoured knights and fair Burgundian damsels rode
up to attend mass in St Mary's minster on the Akropolis.
But the French society, which had made Attica the cynosure
of the Levant, never took firm root in the land. The Greeks
and the Franks seem to have amalgamated even less in
Burgundian Athens than elsewhere ; the French were, after
three generations, still a foreign garrison, nor did they, as
was the case in Norman England, form a powerful blend
with the conquered race. Fascinating as is the spectacle
of chivalry enthroned in the home of classical literature, it
was an unnatural union, and, as such, doomed from the
outset. But in the long history of Athens, not the least
gorgeous page is that written by the dukes from beyond
the sea.
If it made small mark on the character of the people, the
French dynasty has, at least, bequeathed to us some visible
memorials of its rule. All these rulers, except Othon and
John, have left coins, which may be found in the doge's
palace and elsewhere ; while, by way of compensation, as we
saw, a pious donation to the abbey of Bellevaux has
preserved the seal of the first French ruler of Athens. If
there be one building more than another where we should

MEMORIALS OF THE FRENCH DUKES 233
expect to discover traces of French influence, it is the famous
monastery of Daphni, which Othon had granted to the
Cistercians, and where his successors chose their graves.
But, if we except the so-called tomb of Guy II., two rows
of Gothic arcades alone recall this, the most brilliant period
in the life of the abbey. Under the auspices of the dukes
from Franche-Comte, the abbots of Daphni had played a
considerable part in the ecclesiastical history of Greece.
Popes had used them as intermediaries, and their quinquen
nial visits to the mother-abbey of Citeaux must have helped
'to maintain the connection between France and Athens.
But after the fall of the French duchy, the monastery
declined; it is but little mentioned in the two succeeding
centuries ; it ceased to be the ducal burial-place, and was
eclipsed by the greater glories of St Mary's minster, on
one of whose columns the last known of its abbots has
obtained such immortality as a meagre Latin inscription
can confer.1 Another inscription on the Stoa of Hadrian
commemorates, as we saw, an Athenian canon of the ducal
family ; while Walter of Ray, who was bishop of Negroponte
at the time of the catastrophe, found a sumptuous monument
in the French abbey of Beze.2 To this period, too, has
been ascribed the " Frankish monastery," the remains of
which long stood at the foot of Pentelikon, and which was
probably the Minorite establishment mentioned in the will
of the last duke.3 A much more striking foundation — the
Gorgoepekoos church — was attributed by the enthusiastic
Buchon to the French ; but the general opinion is that it is a
Byzantine structure. An imaginative Greek, going one step
further, maintained that this beautiful little building was the
chapel of the ducal palace, which he supposed to have stood
on the site of the present cathedral.4 But the residence of
the French dynasty was at Thebes, and the commander of
the Akropolis, who represented it at Athens, doubtless lived
within the castle. Accordingly, it is in Bceotia rather than
1 Millet, Le Monaslire de Daphni, 40, 42, 57 ; Martene et Durand,
Thesaurus, iv., 1320, 1422.
2 Acadimie de Besancon (1880), i49"53> P1- v-
3 AcXtIov, iv., 82, 136.
4 Sourmel£s, Kcn-dorao-is o-vvo-n-TLK-q, 36, n.

234 THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY
in Attica that we should expect to find buildings of this first
Frankish epoch. The stumpy Santameri tower at Thebes
still preserves the name of its founder; a bridge, formerly
of five, but now of three, arches, which crosses the Melas some
two miles below the village of Topolia, testifies to the
activity of the French in that same Copaic district which
witnessed their fall — a disaster perhaps commemorated by
the little church at Karditza. Frankish coats of arms may
be seen on the walls of the older church at Hosios Loukas,
one of which, two snakes supporting two crosses, bears some
resemblance to the device on the tomb at Daphni. It is,
indeed, not surprising that a monastery which was the abode
of the prior and chapter of the Holy Sepulchre, and later on
the residence of the dowager duchess of Athens, should
contain Frankish memorials.1
Like the French dukes, their most important vassals, the
lords of Salona, have perpetuated their names by a separate
coinage, of which specimens minted by Thomas II. and
Thomas III. from their own mint have been preserved.2
But the splendid castle of Salona, which Honorius III. had
helped to fortify, is the best memorial of that once powerful
French family, although it is not easy to determine how
much of the present structure is due to them, and how
much to their successors. On the other hand, neither the
PaUavicini of Boudonitza nor the branch of the ducal race
which was established at Damalain Argolis seem to have
left memories that can be identified save the ancient castle
of the marquises. Both now lingered on in the female line
alone — the usual lot of the Frankish nobles in Greece. Such
was the end of that strange venture which had made Attica
and Bceotia a " new France " ; a few coins, a few arches, a
casual inscription, are all that they have retained of their
brilliant Burgundian dukes.
1 Buchon, La Grece Continental, 246 ; Atlas, pi. xli., 7, 8, 16 ; Schultz
and Barnsley, The Monastery of St Luke, pi. 14, d.
2 Schlumberger, Numismatique, 349 ; Sathas, To XpovLKbv tov Ya.Xa%ualov,
239.

CHAPTER VIII
THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS (i 31 I-I333)
The meteoric career of the Catalan Grand Company had
placed it in the possession of the Athenian duchy, but had
at the same time won for it a host of suspicious or vindictive
enemies. The house of Anjou, as represented by Philip of
Taranto, Prince of Achaia and suzerain of the Frankish
states of Greece, naturally resented the capture of Athens
by the enemies of his dynasty ; the Venetians of Negroponte
were justly alarmed for the safety of that important colony ;
the widow of the fallen duke was seeking to recover the
duchy for her son ; the two Greek states of Neopatras and
Arta were ill-disposed to the appearance of these fresh
intruders; the Emperor though not sorry that the Franks
had received such a fatal blow, had not forgotten the destruc
tion wrought by the Catalans upon his armies and his
lands. Well aware of their critical position in a foreign land,
surrounded by enemies, the victors of the Kephissos re
luctantly came to the conclusion, that, if they wished to
maintain their acquisitions, they must place themselves
under the protection of some powerful sovereign. Their
choice naturally fell upon King Frederick II. of Sicily, the
master whom they had served before they left that island
for the East ten years before, and who, by sending the
Infant of Majorca to command them in his name while they
were still in the Greek Empire, had shown that he had
not relinquished the idea of profiting by their successes.
Accordingly, in 1312, they invited the King of Sicily to

236 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
send them one of his children, to whom they promised to
take the oath of fealty as their lord and to hand over the
command over all their forces. Frederick II. was only too
pleased to accept an offer, which would add fresh lustre to
his house. He told the Catalan envoys, that he would give
them as their duke his second son Manfred; but, as the
latter was at present too young to take personal charge of
the duchy, he would send them a trusty knight, who would
receive their homage and govern them in Manfred's name.
For this important post he selected Berenguer Estanol, a
knight of Ampurias, who set out with five galleys to take
possession of his command. The Catalans received him
well, Deslaur retired from his provisional leadership to his
lordship of Salona on the arrival of the ducal governor,
and we hear of him no more.1
The archives of Palermo unfortunately contain no
documents relating to the early administration of Attica
under the Catalan rule. But from the fairly frequent
allusions to Athens in the last two decades of the Sicilian
suzerainty we can form a tolerably complete idea of the
system of government — a system which, with some modifica
tions, may be assumed to have existed from the commence
ment. The two chief officials were the vicar-general and
the marshal, both appointed by the duke, the former of
whom exercised supreme political power as his deputy,
while the latter was the military head of the state. The
vicar-general was appointed during good pleasure, and took
the oath of fidelity on the gospels to the duke or his
representative, repeating it before the assembled sindici —
a sort of parliament— of all the towns and cities of the
duchy. From his residence at Thebes, the capital of the
Catalan state, he could issue pardons in the duke's name to
those accused of felony or treason ; it was he who exercised
judicial authority, administered the finances, provided for
the defence of the land, inspected the fortresses, and often
appointed their commanders. The position of vicar-general
was one of considerable splendour ; a major-domo presided
over his household ; a procureur giniral was attached to his
1 Muntaner, ch. ccxlii. ; Libro de los Fechos, 121 ; Sanudo, Epistola,
apud Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, II., 305.

ORGANISATION OF CATALAN ATHENS 237
court. Later on, under the Aragonese supremacy, his
powers were practically those of the duke himself.1
The marshal was always chosen from the ranks of the
Company, and the dignity became hereditary in the family
of De Novelles till a little before the year 1363, when the
hereditary marshal had apparently been deprived of his
dignity for rebellion against his sovereign. Roger de
Lluria succeeded him as marshal, and, three years later,
combined the two great offices in his own person, holding
them both till his death, after which we hear of no more
marshals. The probable explanation of this is not far to
seek. There had probably been, as we shall see, a conflict
between the vicar and the marshal, which proved that there
was no room in the narrow court of Thebes for two such
exalted officials; and, as Lluria, when he became vicar-
general, was already marshal, such a combination may have
seemed a happy solution of the difficulty.2
Greece has ever been the land of local government, and
under the Sicilian domination each city and district had its
own local governor, called veguer, castellano, or capitdn —
designations sometimes applied to the same person, some
times distinct, as it was considered to be an abuse when
more than one of these offices were concentrated in the
same hands. We are expressly told that the " capitulations "
agreed upon between the Catalans and their duke limited
the duration of a veguefs office to three years, and on one
occasion a "capitdn, veguer, and castellano" of Athens was
removed because his three years' term was up.3 But there
are examples of the appointment of these officials for life
or during good pleasure.4 They were sometimes nominated
by the vicar-general, sometimes by the duke, and sometimes
by the local representatives, for example, by the community
of Athens, from among the citizens, subject to confirma
tion by the duke, and they had power to appoint a substitute
1 Lampros, "Eyypa^a, 247, 286; Melanges historiques, III., 53, 54;
Rosario Gregorio, Considerazioni, II., 574.
2 Ldmpros, "Eyypa<pa, 240, 279, 282, 330, 350 ; Rubio y Lluch, Los
Navarros en Grecia, 476; Rosario Gregorio, Considerazioni, 1 1., 572,
575. Cf. the author's article in the English Hist. Review, xxii., 520.
3 Lampros, "E77pa0a, 249, 318. 4 Ibid., 276, 278, 280, 309.

238 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
in case of absence on public business. They were required,
before entering upon their duties, to take an oath on the
gospels before the vicar-general and the local community.
These duties included the military command of the town
and the hearing of criminal causes,1 but a final appeal from
their decisions, as from the civil and criminal jurisdiction of
the vicar-general, lay to the ducal tribunal in Sicily, just as
our Colonial and Indian Appeals go to the Privy Council in
London. On one occasion, however, we find a lord justice
appointed during good pleasure to try appeals on the spot —
a system which must have saved much time and expense to
the appellants.2 We hear also of notaries, not infrequently
Greeks, appointed by the duke for life, or even as hereditary
officials, of a constable of the city of Thebes, and of a bailie
of the city of Athens, apparently a municipal officer.3
The Catalan state enjoyed a considerable measure of
representative institutions, such as the Catalans had for
some time obtained' in their native land. The principal
towns and villages were represented by sindici, and pos
sessed municipalities with councils and officials of their own.
These municipalities occasionally combined to petition the
duke for the redress of their grievances ; their petitions were
then sealed by the " Chancellor of the Society of Franks "
with the seal of St George, which had been that of the
Company in its wandering days. On one occasion the
communities elected the vicar-general, and the dukes
frequently wrote to them about affairs of state. They did
not hesitate to send envoys requesting the recall of an
obnoxious vicar-general, they spoke perfectly plainly to
their sovereign, who on one occasion complained of their
" morose answers," and their petitions usually, for obvious
reasons, received a favourable reply. Later on, one of their
principal demands was that official posts should be bestowed
on residents, not on Sicilians. Attica for the Catalans was, in
fact, their watchword. They were stubborn folk, perfectly con
tented to maintain the Sicilian connection, so long as they
could manage their own affairs in their own way ; in that, as
in much else, they resembled our own self-governing colonies.
1 Lampros, "E77pa<pa, 266, 277, 309.
2 Ibid.. 239, 247, 295. .' ibid., 270, 312.

THE CHURCH 239
The feudal system continued, but with far less brilliancy
than in the time of the French. The Catalan con
querors were of common origin ; when they had been
settled some years, we find very few knights among them,
and even after seventy years of residence, the roll of noble
families in the whole state contained only some sixteen
names. The Company particularly objected to the feudal
practice of bestowing important places, such as Livadia,
upon private individuals, preferring that they should be
administered by the government officials. As a code of
justice, the " Customs of Barcelona " supplanted the " Assizes
of Romania," and Catalan became the official, as well as the
ordinary language. The dukes wrote in the language of
Muntaner, not merely to their Catalan, but also to their
Greek subjects, and we are specially told that the employ
ment of " the vulgar Catalan dialect " was " according to the
custom and usage of the city of Athens."
The ecclesiastical organisation remained much the same
as in the Burgundian times. After the annexation of
Neopatras, the two duchies contained three archbishoprics —
Athens, Thebes, and Neopatras — the first of which had
thirteen suffragan bishoprics, and the last one, that of Lamia
or Zetouni. Thus Athens had gained two, and Thebes had
lost two, suffragans since the early Frankish days; but of the
Athenian bishoprics only four — Megara, Daulia, Salona, and
Boudonitza — were actually within the confines of the duchy.
The church of St Mary at Athens, as the Parthenon was
called, had twelve canons, appointed by the duke, whom we
find confirming a Catalan as dean of the Athenian chapter,
nominating the Theban archbishop, and bestowing vacant
livings upon priests. Although in the last years of Catalan
rule the clergy acquired great influente, and were selected
as envoys to the ducal court, the law strictly forbade them to
hold fiefs — a very necessary provision in a land won, and
held, by the sword.1 The Knights of St John, however, had
property in the Catalan state, and the castle of Sykaminon,
near Oropos, was theirs.2
1 Rubio y Lluch, 472, 481 ; Curita, Anales, IL, 377 ; LamprOs,
"E77/>a0a, 27 1, 285, 306-7.
2 Ibid., 233 ; AeXrlov, v., 827 ; Revue de I' Orient latin, iii., 653.

240 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
Like the Franks, the Catalans treated the Greeks as an
inferior race. They excluded them, as a general rule, from
all civic right&r— the exclusive privilege of the Conquistadors,
as the Catalans styled themselves — and thus an unhappy
Hellene was legally debarred from acquiring, selling, or
disposing of his property as he chose. Even after his death,
someone else might step in and take his possessions from his
son, and we hear of slavery existing at Athens. As a
general rule, too, intermarriage of the two races was
forbidden, but to these enactments there were not a few
exceptions. Greeks, who had deserved well of the Company
in times of difficulty, like the people of Livadia, received the
full franchise, and might even hold serfs, besides being
permitted to marry their children to members of the
dominant race. In the later Catalan period, we find Greeks
occupying posts of importance, such as that of castellano
of Salona, chancellor of Athens, and notary of Livadia.
Once, at the very close of Catalan rule, Greeks are mentioned
as sitting on the municipal council of Neopatras. Persons of
such standing as a count of Salona and a marshal of the
duchies married Greek ladies, and it was provided in such
cases that the Greek might keep the orthodox faith ; only, if
the wife became a Catholic and then reverted, she paid for
her double apostacy by the loss of her property. A similar
penalty awaited any Catalan who was converted to the
orthodox faith.1 As for the Greek Church, it continued to
occupy the inferior position which it had filled under the
Franks. Of the former Frankish nobility we naturally hear
nothing, as it had been annihilated at the battle of the
Kephissds. The Burgundian burgesses are never mentioned.
On the other hand, we find Armenians residing at Thebes
and proving a source of revenue to the ducal exchequer.
The duke would naturally assume the crown lands of his
French predecessors, and this ducal domain included lands
and house property at Athens and Thebes. These houses
at the capital were let, and the rent was paid in wax every
year; occasionally, the crown was pleased to grant an
annuity out of the proceeds of the " Theban wax tax " to
1 Lampros, op. eit, 238, 272, 331, 337-8, 342; Rubid, Catalunya a
Grecia, 46.

CATALAN AGGRESSIONS 241
some deserving Catalan. We hear, too, of a land-tax
(Jus terragii) payable to the ducal court, to which also
escheated the real and personal property of converts to the
Greek faith.1 But, as in the case of the British Empire and
its colonies, the Sicilian Dukes of Athens did not estimate
the value of the connection by the methods of an accountant
Upon them it conferred the prestige which has in all ages
attached to the great name of Athens, while it also gave
them an excuse for intervention in Eastern politics. To the
Catalans, on the other hand, the protection of the Sicilian
crown was of great practical value. Having no diplomatic
service oftheir own, they looked to the ducal diplomatists to
explain away any more than usually outrageous act of piracy
which they had committed upon some Venetian subject ;
to say soft things on their behalf at the Vatican ; to give
them, in short, a status in the community of nations. They
had all the advantages of independence, without its drawbacks ;
they lost nothing by having acknowledged the sovereignty
of Sicily; and both they and their Sicilian dukes seem
thoroughly to have understood their mutual relations.
For four years, till his death in 1316, Estafiol governed the
Catalan duchy wisely and well. Under his guidance, the
Company maintained its martial spirit, which was the very
essence of its existence, by expeditions in all directions —
against the imperial fortresses on the borders of Thessaly,
against the Angeli of Neopatras and of Arta, against the
island of Eubcea, and in support of the claims of their old
comrade, the Infant Ferdinand of Majorca, to the principality
of Achaia. We may judge of the devastation wrought on
these forays from the fact that Archbishop Bartholomew of
Corinth was at this time allowed by Clement V. to defer
payment of his predecessor's debts for three years, because his
diocese " had been desolated and the city of Corinth destroyed
by the Catalan Company," while the Archbishop of Thebes
and Walter of Ray, Bishop of Negroponte, could not reach
their sees. But Estafiol was a diplomatist as well as a
soldier. He managed to attack his enemies one at a time ;
and, as soon as his soldiers had exhausted the resources of
1 Lampros, op. eit. 234, 272, 291, 292, 299, 313, 350 ; Rubio y Lluch,
Los Navarros, 465. Q

242 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
the country which they had invaded, they moved on, like
locusts, to another. In vain the pope ordered the Latin
patriarch of Constantinople to argue with the Catalan leaders
on the error of their ways, and to excommunicate these
spoilers of churches and slayers of churchmen in case of
their continued disobedience to his voice ; in vain he bade
the Grand Master of the Knights of St John, but recently
established in the island of Rhodes, to send four galleys to
the aid of Walter of Foucherolles, who held the Argive
fortresses with the title of " Captain of the Duchy " for the
little duke's grandfather and guardian, the Constable of
France; in vain he appealed to King James II. of Aragon
to drive the Catalans out of Attica, and depicted the cruelties,
robberies, and murders which they had perpetrated on the
faithful children of the Church in those parts. The Catalans
heeded not the patriarchal admonitions ; the grand-master
was occupied with the affairs of his new domain ; while the
politic sovereign, who had no desire to intervene in the affairs
of his brother's duchy, replied that that "true athlete of
Christ and faithful boxer of the Church," as the pope had
called the late Duke Walter, had met with his deserts, and
that the Catalans, if they were cruel, were still Catholics, who
would prove a valuable bulwark of Romanism against the
schismatic Greeks of Byzantium.1
Upon Estaflol's death, the Company elected one of its
own members, a knight, William Thomas, a man of higher
rank than his fellows, as its temporary captain, until King
Frederick had had time to send someone else to rule over
them.2 The king appointed his own natural son, Don
Alfonso Fadrique, or Frederick, a man of much energy and
force of character, whom we saw ravaging the coasts and
islands of Greece some twelve years earlier. The " President
of the fortunate army of Franks in the duchy of Athens,"
as the new vicar-general officially described himself, retained
the leadership of the company for thirteen years — a position
1 Muntaner, ch. ccxlii. ; Curita, Anales, bk. vi., ch. xii. ; Raynaldus,
op. eit, v., 22-3; Regestum dementis V., vii., 72-3, 125, 238; viii., 14,
131-2 ; ix., 44-7.
3 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 394-6; Ldmpros, "E77pai/>a,
354-6.

THE CATALANS AND EUBCEA 243
of practical independence, as the nominal duke, Manfred,
died in the year of Fadrique's appointment, and was suc
ceeded in the title by his younger brother, William, likewise
a minor. Moreover, he strengthened his hold upon Attica,
and at the same time obtained a pretext for intervening in
the affairs of ¦ Eubcea by his marriage with Marulla, the
daughter and heiress of Bonifacio da Verona, " one of the
fairest Christians in the world, the best woman and the
wisest that ever was in that land," as Muntaner, who had
seen her as a child in her father's house at Negroponte,
enthusiastically describes her. Although the fair Lombard
had a brother, the thirteen castles in the Athenian duchy
and the other places which Guy II. of Athens had once
bestowed upon her father, fell to her share.1
The Venetians had been alarmed for the safety of Eubcea
from the moment when the Catalans had arrived in Greece.
After the battle of the Kephissos, they increased the salaries
of their officials in the island, and organised a fleet for its
defence. To this fleet the Lombard lords were invited to
contribute, and, with the exception of Bonifacio, they agreed
to do so. That powerful and ambitious baron, who was on
the best terms with the Catalans, refused, intending, no doubt
with their aid, to make himself master of the island. The
marriage of his daughter with their chief seemed to favour
this plan.
Hitherto, the Catalans had contented themselves with
preventing the Catholic bishop of Negroponte from returning
to his see — which can scarcely surprise us, as he was a cousin
of the French dukes of Athens — and with frequent plundering
raids across the narrow sound, which separated them from
the great island. A more serious campaign began, however,
when Fadrique and more than 2000 men — among them
Turkish mercenaries — marched across "the black bridge."
In Negroponte these seasoned soldiers of fortune found little
opposition. The baronage of the island, like the Frankish
aristocracy in other parts of Greece, had suffered severely
at the battle of the Kephissosf where two of the Eubcean
lords, George Ghisi and Alberto PaUavicini, had fallen.
Pallavicini's successor, Andrea Cornaro, a member of that
1 Muntaner, ch. ccxliii., his last notice of the Catalans in Attica.

244 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
famous Venetian family, hastened to make his peace with
the invaders, who entered Chalkis and forced the Venetian
bailie to do likewise. Thus abandoned by their allies, the
other triarchs appealed to Matilda of Hainault, at that time
Princess of Achaia, as their suzerain ; but she was alone and
powerless to help ; she had already contemplated ceding her
phantom suzerainty over the island to Venice ; and she now
contented herself with pointing out to the doge the extreme
danger which the island ran of falling into the hands of the
Catalans. At this moment, Bonifacio da Verona died — the
last survivor of the ancien rigime of Frankish Greece — where
upon his son-in-law at once occupied the two important
castles of Karystos and Larmena as part of Marulla's dowry.
But the successes of the Company had so greatly alarmed
Europe that a coalition of the European powers seemed likely
to be formed against it ; the pope complained bitterly
that the Catalans, " the offscourings of humanity," employed
infidel Turks against Christians, and urged Venice to drive
them out ; the exiled family of Brienne was plotting to
regain its heritage ; the Angevins protested against Fadrique's
intervention in Eubcea. Under these circumstances, King
Frederick of Sicily thought it prudent to order his daring
son to desist from further conquests in that island, and
Fadrique obediently retired from Eubcea, retaining, however,
the two castles of Karystos and Larmena. But the Catalans
had no real reason for fearing the active hostility of Venice,
their nearest and most serious rival. The republic was
informed by her agents that the very subjects of the young
Duke Walter at Argos and Nauplia were in league with the
Company — a proof that the Catalan usurpation was not
unpopular in Greece. Her statesmen, always cautious, were,
therefore, still less inclined to provide the money and the
vessels for the restoration of the Brienne dynasty, even
though the Duchess of Athens, after the fashion of kings in
exile, made liberal promises of commercial concessions which
it was not in her power to bestow. On the other hand,
negotiations began between King Frederick and Venice,
which ended in 1319 in a formal truce, renewed two years
later, in which the triarchs were included. This remarkable
agreement provided, under a penalty of £2240, that the

PORTO LEONE 245
Company should fit out no fresh ships in the Saronic Gulf
(" the sea of Athens ") or in Eubcean waters ; a plank was to
be taken out of the hull of each of the vessels then lying in
those stations, and their tackle was to be carried up to the
Akropolis ("the castle of Athens") and there deposited.
The Catalan ships in the Corinthian Gulf (" the sea of
Rivadostria," or Livadostro) might, however, remain as they
were. These stringent provisions were intended to check the
growth of a Catalan navy, which had already become a
menace to Venetian interests in the Levant. It is significant
of the revived importance of the Piraeus, that in a Genoese
map of this period that harbour, usually called by the
Venetians " the port of Sithines " (or Athens), figures for
the first time by the name of " Lion," the later Porto Leone,
derived from the colossal lion, now in front of the Arsenal at
Venice, which then stood there. It was from there that Fad-
rique had been able to send two galleys to his Turkish allies ;
it was from there that his corsairs had preyed on Venetian
commerce, and had wreaked their vengeance on the island
of Melos, which belonged to the duchy of Naxos, for the
part which the duke's son Nicholas had taken against the
Catalans in the marshes of the Kephiss6s and in the plain
of Elis. Even as far as Chios the Catalan galleys had
penetrated, and had carried off from that fertile island the
son of Martino Zaccaria, its Genoese lord, whose name had
long been a terror to Latin pirates.
Venice profited by the war in Eubcea to extend her
influence in that island. When she had got rid of the
Catalan danger, she informed the triarchs of her intention
of occupying the towns and fortresses as a reward for her
trouble and expense. She was, indeed, the only power
which could defend Negroponte from (the ever-increasing
Turkish peril, which menaced all the islands and coasts of
Greece. Since 1314 the titular dignity of Latin Patriarch of
Constantinople had been united with the see of Negroponte ;
but the patriarchal admonitions had no effect upon the
adventurous infidels. The Archbishop of Thebes, who went
on a mission to Venice to seek aid against the Turks, wrote
to Sanudo that they had thrice invaded Eubcea in one year ;
the Venetian bailie feared that, if help were not forthcoming,

246 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
that island would be ruined ; one of his successors was com'
pelled to pay blackmail to these marauders. There was
always a danger of the Catalans and Turks uniting against
Eubcea, for the former retained a fellow-feeling for their
old comrades, and when Fadrique, a few years later, again
intervened in the affairs of the island on behalf of his wife,
who had latterly allowed her brother to enjoy the castle of
Larmena, but claimed it again on his demise, the Turks were
very active there. It is no wonder, therefore, that when the
two former truces between Venice and the Company were
renewed at Thebes in 1331, the Catalans had to promise
to receive no Turks into their land or service, and to make
no fresh treaties with those common enemies of the Latin
race. A recent Turkish raid into Attica, in the course of
which many of its inhabitants had been killed and others
sold into slavery in Turkey, may have predisposed the
Catalans to accept these terms. Alfonso pledged himself
to allow no castles to be built within his territory of Karystos
which he declined to sell to the republic, and from that time
he molested the Venetians of Eubcea no more.1
Meanwhile, Fadrique had found leisure, while he was at
peace with Venice, to extend the Company's authority over
a large part of Northern Greece, where the dynasty of the
Angeli had now become extinct. After the death of the
last French Duke of Athens in the battle of the Kephiss6s,
the feeble ruler of Thessaly had adopted the style of" Lord
of the lands of Athens and Neopatras " {Signore de le terre de
Thenes e Patras), in virtue of his kinship with the house of
De la Roche. But John II., the last of the Thessalian
Angeli, had none of the energy of his predecessors. His
health had never been robust, and in 1318 he died without
issue, leaving his rich dominions to be dismembered. So
great was the confusion which at once ensued, that the
metropolitan of Larissa could no longer exercise his sacred
functions in that city. Feudalism, as we saw, had been
1 Regestum dementis V, ix., 82 ; Raynaldi, toe. eit. ; Melanges his-
loriques, III., 32-54 ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., 1 10-17, 120-2, 314-19 ;
Predelli, Commemoriali, I., 163, 176, 189, 191, 195; II., 13; Sanudo,
Epistola, apud Bongars, II., 298, 313-15 ; Giornale Ligustico (1888), p.
236 ; Atti della Societa Ligure di Storia Patria, V., Tavole, iv., vi., vii.

CATALAN DUCHY OF NEOPATRAS 247
readily developed on the congenial soil of Thessaly, where
the Greek archons had copied, and copied for the worse, as
is always the case when the East borrows the manners of the
West, the institutions of the Franks. One petty tyrant now
established himself at Trikkala ; another, a member of the
great family of the Melissenoi, held sway over the ruins of
Delphi, then already known by its modern name of Kastri,
keeping on good terms with his Catalan neighbours at
Salona by means of a matrimonial alliance between his
sister and the marshal of the Company. Several towns were
annexed by the emperor, who had long coveted the lands of
his son-in-law, and the Holy Synod threatened fearful pains
and penalties upon the heads of those Thessalians,, who
declined to submit to the rule of Byzantium. Venice
obtained a share of the spoil in the shape of the port of
Pteleon at the entrance of the Pagasaean Gulf, which the
emperor voluntarily allowed her to take, rather than it
should fall into the hands of the Catalans, who subsequently
agreed not to molest it. A Venetian from Eubcea was
appointed rector of this station — the sole point, except
Modon and Coron, which the republic possessed on the
mainland of Greece — and it remained in the occupation
of Venice down to the capture of Euboea by the Turks.
But the best part of the country fell to the share of the
Catalan Company. Sanudo tells us how Fadrique made
himself master of one place after another, of Loidoriki and
Siderokastro, of Gardiki and Lamia, of Domok6 and Pharsala
— names so well known in the annals of modern Greece. At
Neopatras, the seat of the extinct dynasty, he made his
second capital, styling himself Vicar-General of the duchies
of Athens and Neopatras. Henceforth the Sicilian dukes of
Athens assumed the double title, which may be seen on their
coins and in their documents, and, long after the Catalan
duchy had passed away, the kings of Aragon continued to
bear it. Besides these various competitors for the heritage
of the Angeli, there now appeared for the first time in the
plain of Thessaly great masses of Albanian immigrants, who
formed a new and vigorous element in the population. They
ravaged all the open country; and, as they brought their
wives with them, their numbers soon, increased, and they

248 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
began to take the place of the Wallachs, who had hitherto
formed the bulk of the Thessalian population, and had given
the country its name of Great Wallachia. The Venetians
thought that this Albanian immigration had the great
advantage of keeping the Catalans employed, so that they
had less leisure to attack their neighbours. It was from
these Albanians that the gaps in the population of Attica
and the Morea were subsequently replenished.1
Thessaly was now in great part Catalan ; Salona was the
fief of the Company's former chief, Roger Deslaur ; so that
these soldiers of fortune were masters of practically all
continental Greece, except the historic marquisate of
Boudonitza and the Despotat of Epiros. After the death of
the last of the PaUavicini marquises in the swamps of
the Kephiss6s, his widow had married that same Andrea
Cornaro, baron of Eubcea, whom we have seen contending in
vain against the claims of Fadrique in that island. Fadrique
punished him by ravaging the marquisate, without, however,
annexing it to Athens. Indeed, on Cornaro's death, it
passed, by the marriage of his stepdaughter, into the hands
of a bitter enemy and former prisoner of the Catalans, the
son of Martino Zaccaria, the Genoese lord of Chios. At his
demise, his widow married in 1335 one ofthe noble Venetian
family of Giorgi, or Zorzi, as it was called in the soft dialect
of the lagoons, with which the marquisate remained till the
Turkish Conquest. The marquises had long been peers and
vassals of the principality of Achaia, and as such they
continued to be reckoned during the whole of the fourteenth
century. No proof exists that they ever depended upon the
French duchy of Athens ; but though their sympathies were
now with Venice, they paid an annual tribute of four horses
to the Catalan vicar-general.2
The same year which witnessed the extinction of the
Angeli in Thessaly saw, too, the close of their dynasty in
1 Nikephdros Gregoras, i., 279, 318 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, I., 177 ;
Sanudo, Epistola, apud Bongars, II., 293; Miklosich und Miiller, I.,
79 ; Curita, bk. vi., ch. xii.; Schlumberger, Numismatique de f Orient latin,
346 ; Archivio Veneto, xx., 84-5.
2 Canciani, III., 507 ; Rubid y Lluch, 482 ; Curita, bk. x., ch. xxx. ;
Hopf, Chroniques, 125, 230, and apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv., 425, 436.

THE ORSINI IN EPIROS 249
Epiros. In 1318, the feeble Despot Thomas, the last of his
race, was murdered by his nephew, Count Nicholas of Cepha
lonia, who married his widow, Anna Palaiologina, a grand
daughter of the Emperor Andr6nikos II. Thus connected
with the imperial house, the Italian count sought to establish
his authority over the Despotat of Epiros by drawing closer
to the Greeks, whose religion he adopted, and in whose
language his seal was engraved. By this means he hoped to
checkmate the plans of Philip of Taranto, who was still
meditating the conquest of the mainland, and to whom
he boldly refused the homage due for his island domain.
But the people of Joannina, at that time a populous
and wealthy city, where Jews could make money, and where
Hellenic sentiments were fostered by the fact that it was
the seat of the metropolitan, preferred the rule of the
Greek Emperor, from whom their Church received repeated
favours, to that of the Latin apostate. For a time the
latter thought it worth while to purchase the friendship
of Byzantium and the title of Despot by keeping his oaths
not to molest the Greeks of that city. But the death of his wife
and the growing weakness of the empire convinced him that
he had nothing to hope or fear from that quarter. The " Count
Palatine, by the grace of God Despot of Romania," as he
styled himself, accordingly invited Venice to assist him in
driving the imperial troops out of Epiros, offering in return
to hoist the lion banner on all his castles, to do homage to
the republic for all his dominions, and to cede to it either
the valuable fisheries in the lake of Butrinto opposite Corfu,
or the sugar plantations of Parga — the town which, five
centuries later, was destined to obtain such romantic notoriety,
and of which this is perhaps the earliest mention. But the
cautious Venetians were anxious not to tendanger their com
mercial interests in the Greek Empire, with which they
continued to be at peace, and they calmly reminded the
count that there was no great novelty in his offer to become
" their man," seeing that his ancestor Maio had more than a
century earlier recognised their suzerainty over the three
islands of Cephalonia, Zante, and Val di Compare (or Ithaka).
Nothing daunted by this politic answer, and encouraged by
the utter confusion at Constantinople caused by the quarrels

250 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
of the elder and the younger Andrfjnikos, he openly attacked
the strong city of Joannina. But at this point, in 1323, his
career of crime was cut short by the hand of his brother,
Count John II., who assassinated the assassin and received,
in his turn, the title of Despot from Constantinople, on
condition that he swore to govern Epiros, " not as its sove
reign, but as the servant of the emperor." None the less,
from his "castle of Arta," he issued coins, still preserved,
modelled on those of the princes of Achaia, to facilitate trade
with Latin countries. Even in the motley history of
Frankish Greece we are struck by the incongruity of an
Italian adventurer minting French pieces on "Ambracia's
Gulf." But this vigorous scion of the Roman Orsini
embodied in his person the strangest anomalies. Like his
brother, the new Despot married another Anna Palaiologina
and embraced the orthodox faith, while he sought, after the
usual manner of usurpers, to connect himself with the native
dynasty by assuming the three great names of Angelos,
Comnenos, and Doiikas. As a proof of his ostentatious
piety, he restored the famous church of Our Lady of Consola
tion at Arta, where an inscription preserving his name and
that of Anna may still be seen. He was also one of the few
examples in the history of Frankish Greece of a Latin ruler
who patronised Greek literature. By his command, Con
stantine Hermoniakos composed a paraphrase of Homer in
octosyllabic verse. The poem, if such we can call it, has no
literary merit, but is an incontestable sign of an interest in
culture even at the court of wild Epiros. Indeed, the
courtly poet would have us believe that his master was
"a hero and a scholar," and that the Lady Anna "ex
celled all women that ever lived in beauty, wisdom, and
learning." 1
South of the isthmus of Corinth, French influence was
still predominant despite Catalan raids and intrigues. The
1 Nikephdros Gregoras, I., 283, 536, 544; Cantacuzene, I., 13;
L. d. P., 138 ; Raynaldus, v., 95 ; Miklosich und Miiller, I., 171 ; v., 77-
84, 86 ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, 146, 161, 168-70, Archivio Veneto, xx.,
93 ; Lettres secrites de fean XXII., i., 670 ; Romands, op. eit, 232-4 ;
Schlumberger, Numismatique, 374, Les PrincipauUs franques, 80;
AeXrlov ttjs Xpior. 'Apx- "EToipefas, iii., 76,

LOUIS OF BURGUNDY, PRINCE OF ACHAIA 251
faithful family of FoucheroUes,1 whom the last Duke of
Athens had invested with lands at Nauplia and Argos, still
held that sole surviving fragment of the French duchy for
the exiled house of Brienne, while the principality of Achaia,
though sorely tried, remained, amid many vicissitudes, under
the authority of the Angevins. At the time of the Catalan
Conquest of Athens, as we saw, it was in the hands of Philip
of Taranto, who had left it to be administered by means of
bailies. But two years after the fatal battle of the Kephiss6s,
the possession of it was transferred to another by means of
one of those diplomatic family compacts, so dear to the
intriguing house of Anjou. At that moment, one of the
most eligible heiresses of the Frankish world was the titular
Empress of Constantinople, Catherine of Valois, a child
barely twelve years old, and to obtain her hand was now the
main object of Philip of Taranto's policy. On his side, there
was no obstacle to the match, for his first wife, Thamar of
Epiros, with whom his relations had become more and more
strained after his unsuccessful expedition against that
country, had been accused of adultery a few years earlier and
was now dead. The young empress had, however, been
betrothed already to Hugues V., Duke of Burgundy and
titular King of Salonika, and it was therefore necessary to
break off this engagement before Philip's plan could be
realised. The French king, uncle of the girl, had no difficulty
in making the French pope, Clement V., the subservient tool
of his designs, for the papacy was now established at
Avignon, and, as a preliminary move, the child-empress was
made to express doubts as to the capacity of her almost
equally childish fiance to recover her lost empire. In order
to compensate the house of Burgundy for the breach of the
engagement, it was next arranged that Matilda, the young
widow of Duke Guy II. of Athens, should marry the Duke of
Burgundy's younger brother Louis. Matilda had already
been betrothed, soon after her first husband's death, to the
eldest son of Philip of Taranto ; but, of course, that engage
ment was not allowed to stand in the way of the new family
1 Raynaldus, v., 116 ; Hopf, Chroniques, 241 ; L. d. P., 31 (which,
by a characteristic anachronism, places them there in the time of
Geoffrey I.),

252 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
compact. Philip of Taranto then conveyed to Matilda all
his rights to the possession of Achaia, on condition that she
should transfer them before her marriage to her future
husband Louis ; it was further provided, that, if he died
without heirs, she should have nothing more than the life-
ownership of the principality, which, after her death was to
revert to the house of Burgundy in any event. At the same
time, Louis received from his brother the barren title of King
of Salonika, did homage to the Prince of Taranto for Achaia,
of which the latter expressly retained the suzerainty, and
promised to assist him in any attempt to recover the Latin
Empire. The two marriages then took place, in 1313 ; Philip
thus became titular Emperor of Constantinople, Louis of
Burgundy Prince of Achaia and titular King of Salonika, and
a coin and a magnificent seal still preserve the memory of his
Achaian dignity.1 The person who bore the loss of the
whole transaction was the unhappy Matilda, who thus
became merely life-owner of a principality, which she, as the
eldest grandchild of Guillaume de Villehardouin, had not
unnaturally considered as her birthright, and which her
mother had bequeathed to her, all arrangements with the
Angevins notwithstanding.
Unfortunately, Louis of Burgundy delayed his departure
for Greece, and in his prolonged absence a claimant arose to
dispute his title. Hitherto, amid all its trials under the
government of women, foreigners, and absentees, Achaia had
been spared the horrors of a contested succession; but that
misfortune was now added to the other miseries of the land.
Guillaume de Villehardouin's second daughter, Marguerite,
Lady of Akova and widow of Count Richard of Cephalonia,
was still alive, and, on the death of her elder sister in 13 11,
had laid claim to the principality on the ground of an alleged
will made by her father. According to the provisions of this
document, mentioned only by those authorities who have a
natural bias for the Spanish side, the last Villehardouin
prince had bequeathed Achaia to his elder daughter, with the
provision that, if she died without children, it would pass to
1 Buchon, Recherches et MaUriaux, i., 54-5, 238-48 ; Atlas, xxiv., 10,
ir ; xxvi., 2; Ptolemseus Lucensis apud Muratori, xi., 1232 ; L. d, C,
29,474; L.d.F., 124-7.

THE LADY OF AKOVA 253
her younger sister. According to the marriagercontract of
Isabelle in 1271 it was not in the power of her father to
make any such disposition ; and, even if he had, his younger
daughter would still have had no claim, because her elder sister's
daughter, Matilda, would have been the rightful princess.
It was no wonder, then, that both the court of Naples and
the leading Moreot barons — the small remnant of the Achaian
chivalry which remained after the battle of the Kephissos —
both rejected this unsubstantial pretext. So long, however,
as her chivalrous protector, Nicholas III. de St Omer, lived,
Marguerite was, at any rate, safe in the possession of her own
barony. But, after his death in 131 3, she found herself
surrounded by personal enemies, such as her stepson, Count
John I. of Cephalonia, and by Burgundian partisans, like
Nicholas Mavro, or Le Noir, baron of St Sauveur, who had
been appointed by the new prince as his bailie, and who was
supported by the bishop of Olena. In this dilemma, she hit
upon the idea of seeking an alliance with those Catalans
whose exploits had amazed the whole Greek world. Before
her marriage to the late Count of Cephalonia, she had been
the wife of Isnard de Sabran, son of the Count of Ariano, in
Apulia, by whom she had a daughter, Isabelle. This
daughter she now married to the Infant Ferdinand of
Majorca, who had played such an adventurous part in the
history of the Catalan Company, whose name was well known
in Greece, and who was now at the Sicilian court The
marriage was one of affection as well as of convenience.
The susceptible Ferdinand fell in love at first sight of a
damsel who, in the words of his faithful henchman Muntaner,
was " the most beautiful creature of fourteen that one could
see, the fairest, the rosiest, the best, and the wisest, too, for
her age." Nor was the King of Sicily averse from a proposal
which would make the house of Aragon supreme in the
Morea as well as at Athens. Accordingly, the wedding was
hurried on ; by way of dowry for her daughter, Marguerite
ceded to Ferdinand the barony of Akova and all her claims
to Achaia, now more modestly assessed at " the fifth part of
the principality," and the ceremony took place with great
rejoicings at Messina. It was not, however, to be expected
that the Burgundian party in the Morea would acquiesce in

254 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
this arrangement. No sooner had Marguerite returned,
leaving the newly married couple at Catania, than Nicholas
Mavro and his confederates threw her into the castle of
Chloumoutsi. "Thou hast given thy daughter to the
Catalans," they scornfully told her ; " ill fortune shall attend
thee, for thou shalt lose all thine own." Robbed of her
baronial lands, the last child of the great Villehardouin died
not long afterwards, in 1315, the prisoner of the unruly
nobles. Two months later, her daughter followed her to the
grave.1 Before her death, however, Ferdinand's young wife had
given birth to a son, the future James II., last King of Majorca,
and to this child she bequeathed her claims to Achaia.
Assigning to his old comrade Muntaner the delicate task of
conveying the baby to his mother, the Queen-Dowager of
Majorca, at Perpignan, Ferdinand started with a body of
soldiers to endeavour to make good these claims. Landing
near Glarentza in the summer of 131 5, he routed the small
force which had sallied out to attack him, entered the town,
and received the homage of the frightened citizens. He
followed up this success by capturing the castle of Beauvoir,
or Pontikokastro, the ruins of which still command the
peninsula above Katakolo, and which Muntaner calls, not
without reason, " one of the most beautiful sites in the world."
All the plain of Elis was his, and his rapid triumph induced
the three leaders of the Burgundian party — Mavro, Count
John, and the bishop of Olena, to recognise his authority,
which he endeavoured to justify by the publication of
the testaments of Prince William, the Lady of Akova,
and his own wife, as well as by that of his marriage-
contract. He now styled himself " Lord of the Morea,"
and sought to consolidate his position by a second mar
riage with Isabelle d'lbelin, cousin of the King of Cyprus.
He even found time to mint money with his name at
Glarentza. But Ferdinand's usurpation was of brief duration. Louis
of Burgundy and his wife now at last appeared to take
possession of their principality. The Princess Matilda would
1 Muntaner, chs. cclxi.-lxv.; Buchon, Recherches Mstoriques, i., 439-42,
452,475; L.d.P, 121-2.

BATTLE OF MANOLADA 255
seem to have arrived first with a force of Burgundians, at
the harbour of Navarino,1 where Mavro hastened to meet her
and assure her of his devotion to her cause. Adherents
rapidly joined the French side; the Archbishop of Patras
successfully held that city for her ; a contingent was sent by
her vassal, the Duke of Naxos, to assist her. But the Catalan
soldiers of Ferdinand inflicted a severe defeat upon the
Franks and their Burgundian comrades near the site of the
ancient city of Elis, and the princess was obliged to send in
hot haste to summon her husband. Almost immediately,
Louis landed with his Burgundian troops from his Venetian
ships with the Count of Cephalonia by his side, and soon the
fortune of war turned. In vain the usurper sent to the
Catalans of Athens and to his brother the King of Majorca
for reinforcements ; before they had had time to arrive, his
cause was lost. On the advice of the Archbishop of Patras,
Louis entered into negotiations with the Greek governor of
Mistra ; and, with a large contingent of Greek troops which
made his forces three times more numerous than those of his
rival, set out to attack him. On 5th July 13 16, the two
armies met at Manolada, the beautiful estate in the plain of
Elis, which now belongs to the Greek crown prince.
Ferdinand took up his position in a forest of pines, but his
enemy set fire to the resinous trees, which nowhere burn so
easily as in Greece, and thus drove the Infant out into the
open. The impetuous Spaniard made straight for the
division commanded by his mortal foe, Count John of
Cephalonia, and broke through his line ; the son of the Duke
of Naxos was actually taken prisoner ; but the Burgundians
came to the Count's rescue ; in the milee, the Infant's standard-
bearer fell, whereupon his followers, all save some seven, fled,
leaving their master almost alone. *His few remaining
companions urged him in vain to flee to Chloumoutsi ; while
they were arguing with him, the Burgundians fell upon the
little band, the Infant was surrounded, and, in spite of the
orders of Prince Louis that his life should be spared, was
decapitated on the field. His head, gashed with many
1 L. d. P., 128-32, which seems to me a trustworthy account, except
for a few errors in the proper names ; Schlumberger, Numismatique,
318.

256 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
wounds, was handed over to his implacable enemy, Count
John, who next day caused it to be displayed before the gate
of Glarentza. Still the sturdy infantry of Catalufia were for
holding out ; but their captain pretended that he had neither
provisions nor pay to give them, and counselled surrender.
A commission of twelve was elected to arrange affairs;
bribery was freely employed ; the Archbishop of Lepanto,
naturally a warm partisan of the French party, disseminated
the false news that the kings of Majorca, Aragon, and Sicily
were dead ; and when the long-expected reinforcements arrived
from Majorca, they were told that peace had been already
made. An honest Catalan, however, shouted out to them
not to believe the traitors, but to land and avenge the
Infant's death. At this, they disembarked and hastened up
to Glarentza, where their comrades insisted on the gates
being opened to admit them. Then the commander of the
place called in the Count of Cephalonia, whose threats of
starvation gradually cooled the enthusiasm of the garrison.
The severed remains of the ill-fated _ Ferdinand were trans
ported back on the Catalan galleys, and laid to rest at
Perpignan. His best epitaph is that which his faithful old
follower Muntaner has enshrined in his delightful Chronicle: —
" He was the best knight and the bravest among all the
king's sons of that day, and the most upright, and the wisest
in all his acts." Thus ended one of the most romantic
careers that even the mediaeval romance of Greece can
show. Louis of Burgundy had nothing more to fear from his
open enemies. The Catalans of Athens had turned back
when they learnt at Vostitza, on the Gulf of Corinth, the
news of the Infant's defeat and death ; all the castles held
for his rival had been handed over to him, except Glarentza,
which was still occupied by the Catalans pending the
settlement of their affairs. But the victor did not long
survive the fall of his opponent. Barely a month after the
battle of Manolada, before Glarentza had been evacuated,
Prince Louis died, poisoned, as it was suspected, by the
Count of Cephalonia, one of the darkest characters of that
age. The Burgundians talked of avenging his murder with
the aid of some of the Infant's followers; but a natural

PRINCESS MATILDAS TRAGIC END 257
death a few months later removed the arch-criminal from
the scene of his crimes.1
Matilda, barely twenty-three years old, yet already twice
a widow, was now left alone to govern a country just
recovering from civil war, where each unruly baron was
minded to do what was right in his own eyes, and where
anarchy was only tempered by Angevin intrigues. King
Robert of Naples, whom historians have called "the wise,"
was an unscrupulous diplomatist, who saw in this state of
things an opportunity for once more securing the possession
of Achaia for a member of his house. Besides Philip of
Taranto, he had another brother, John, Count of Gravina,
in Apulia, and he accordingly resolved that the young
widow should marry this man. Matilda, who had inherited
the spirit of her race, refused to take the king's brother as
her husband, whereupon Robert sent a trusty emissary, one
of the Spinola of Genoa, to the Morea, to bring her to
Naples by force. There she was compelled, in 1318, to go
through the form of marriage with John of Gravina, who at
once took the coveted title of Prince of Achaia. Even the
king could not, however, compel her to recognise his brother
as her husband, though he induced her to sign away her
birthright in case she refused to do so. She appealed to
Venice for aid, while her brother-in-law, Eudes IV., Duke of
Burgundy, who had inherited claims on the principality
under his brother's will, also protested against this arbitrary
interference with his rights. But Venice did nothing on her
behalf ; and Eudes was effectually silenced by the purchase
of his claims by Philip of Taranto. Matilda, now absolutely
helpless but still defiant, was dragged before Pope John
XXII. at Avignon, and ordered to obey. She replied that
she was already another's, having secrtetly married Hugues
de la Palisse,2 a Burgundian knight to whom she was much
attached. This confession was her ruin, for it gave the
King of Naples an excuse for depriving her of her inherit-
1 Buchon, Recherches hisloriques, i., 442-50, 475-6, ii., 455-9 ; Mun
taner, chs. cclxvii.-lxx., cclxxx. ; L. d. P., 122-4, l27~37 i Thomas,
Diplomatarium, i., 112.
2 Buchon thinks that he had long been settled in Greece. Perhaps
La Palessien (L. d. C, 466), in Cephalonia, was his family estate.

253 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
ance. He appealed to the clause in her mother's marriage
contract, made thirty-three years before, which provided that
if a daughter of Isabelle married without her suzerain's
consent, the possession of Achaia should revert to the
crown of Naples. Not content with this, Robert got up a
story that Palisse had conspired against his life, and arrested
the unhappy princess as his accomplice. For nine long
years, in spite of appeals on her behalf by her cousin, the
Count of Hainault, backed up by pecuniary arguments,
she languished as a prisoner of state in the island fortress of
Castel dell' Uovo at Naples, where, in happier days, her
mother Isabelle had spent the early years of her married
life. Her royal gaoler allowed her the sum of three ounces
a month {£y, 4s.) for her maintenance, and when, at last, in
1 33 1, death released her from his clutches, he paid her funeral
expenses, and gave her, the lost scion of a noble line, royal
burial in his family vault in the cathedral. No traces now
remain of the marble monument which he erected over his
unhappy victim, the last human sacrifice to Angevin intrigues.
Thus closed the career of the Villehardouin family in the
Morea ; thus was the deceit of Geoffrey I. visited upon the
head of his unfortunate descendant in the third generation.1
The Princess of Achaia had left neither children nor
testament ; but when her end was near, she declared verbally,
before a number of witnesses, that she bequeathed all she had
to her cousin, King James II. of Majorca, the son of her old
rival Ferdinand, and the child whom Muntaner had prayed
that he might live to serve in his old age. Meanwhile, however,
her hated consort, John of Gravina, governed his principality
by means of bailies, who held office for a year or two at the
most, and were therefore unable to restore order and
prosperity to the land.
The emperor, on the other hand, had recently adopted
the sensible plan of appointing the imperial governor of
Mistra, the "captain of the land and castles in the
1 Buchon, Recherches historiques, l, 450-1 ; Ducange, op. eit, ii., 380-
2; L. d. P., 137-9 ; Villani apud Muratori, xiii., 489, 523 ; Riccio, Studii
storici sopra 84 Registri Angioini, 3, 29, 30 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, i.,
189; Sir R. Rodd, The Princes of Achaia, ii., 282-7; Lettres secrites de
Jean XXII., i., 862, 898 ; Arch. Veneto, xx., 93-4 ; St Genois, i., 360.

GROWTH OF GREEK INFLUENCE 259
Peloponnese," as he was officially styled,1 for an indefinite
period, so that that official was able to gain a real acquaint
ance with local conditions and requirements. Thus,
Cantacuzene, son of the man who was killed in the war
of 1264, and father of the future emperor, governed the
Byzantine province for eight years, till he was killed in
1 3 16, and his successor, a very able general, Andr6nikos
Palaiologos Asan, nephew of the emperor and son of the
Bulgarian tsar, remained in office for full six more. In his
time the feeble Frankish principality, which had lost its
ancient defenders, was still further curtailed by the loss of
most of Arkadia, the strongest strategic position in the
peninsula. The treacherous and venal commanders of the
famous castles of St George, Akova, and Karytaina, sold
them to Asan, who routed the bailie by means of an
ambuscade, and captured the bishop of Olena and the
grand constable, Bartolomeo Ghisi, who was at this time
the leading man in Achaia. The result of this campaign
was not only the loss of two more out of the twelve original
baronies, of which only four — Patras, Veligosti, Vostitza, and
Chalandritza — now remained in the hands of the Franks,
but the conversion of the Franks of Arkadia to the Church
of their conquerors — an inevitable movement, which the
pope in vain urged the Archbishop of Patras to check. We
can trace the growing importance of the Byzantine province
and of the Greek Church in the inscriptions of Mistra, which
begin at this period. In the early years of the fourteenth
century the builders were hard at work there, restoring the
church of the Forty Martyrs, and making a well ; in 1 3 1 2
the metropolitan church of St Demetrios was founded; it
was then, too, that the interesting Afentikd church was built,
while it was in these years that the emperor showered
privileges and immunities from taxation upon the monastery
of Our Lady of Brontochion, whose widely-scattered posses
sions, ranging from Karytaina to Passava, form a measure of
Byzantine influence. Even in the still remaining "Latin
part " of Arkadia the abbey was promised lands, whenever
1 Golden bull of Andrdnikos 1 1., published by M. Millet in Bidletin
de Correspondance helUnique, xxiii., 115. Cf. X. t. M., 8694, 8708,
8716.

.260 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
Providence should be pleased to restore that region to its
lawful lord, the emperor.
Thus reduced in numbers and crippled in resources,
menaced by the imperial troops in the interior, and harassed
by Catalan and Turkish corsairs on the coast, the leading
men of the principality decided between the painful
alternatives of offering their country to Venice, or to the
Catalans of Attica, the former for preference, so that at least
they might find a protection which their absentee prince
could not give them. They communicated their decision to
the Venetian government, which was too cautious, however,
to accept their offer, and continued to content itself with the
two colonies in Messenia. At last, however, in 1324, John of
Gravina set out for the Morea, and after stopping at
Cephalonia and Zante, restoring his authority as suzerain
over those rebellious islands, and deposing the Orsini
dynasty, received the homage of the Achaian barons in the
customary manner at Glarentza. But his sojourn in his
principality was short and useless. An attempt, which he
and his vassal, Duke Nicholas I. of Naxos, made to recover
Karytaina failed, and the Greeks continued to make progress,
in spite of a defeat inflicted on them by the duke in the
plain of Elis below the castle of St Omer. The only lasting
result of his expedition was the establishment in Greece of
the great Florentine banking family of the Acciajuoli, which
was destined to wear the ducal coronet of Athens. From
them John of Gravina had borrowed considerable funds for
his expenses in the Morea, and from him they received in
return the fiefs of La Mandria and La Lichina, which we
may identify with Lechaina, near Andravida. Numerous
Neapolitans, who had followed him, also expected to be
rewarded with lands which had fallen vacant owing to the
almost complete disappearance of the old Frankish nobility,
and thus there arose a new race of barons, who were
ignorant of the language and customs of the people, while
they lacked also the energy and courage of the original
conquerors.1 It is significant of this new order of things,
1 L. d. C, lxxviii., 476-7 ; L. d. P., 140-7 ; Millet in op. at, xix., 269 ;
xxiii., 1 13-18, 122 ; Bceckh, Corp. lnscrip., 8762-4 ; Raynaldus, v., 200-1 ;
Predelli, Commemoriali, i., 231 ; Melanges historiques, iii., 54-7 ; Canta-

JOHN OF GRAVINA 261
that one of the bailies of this period, Nicholas de Joinville,
a noble and upright man, who did his best for the land
entrusted to his charge, thought it necessary to add eight
fresh articles, regulating the pay of soldiers, questions of
succession, and the system of legal procedure, to the Book
of the Customs of the Empire of Romania}
John of Gravina soon grew tired of his Greek
principality. In 1326 we find him in Florence, four years
later he was senator of Rome, while a distinguished Roman,
Guglielmo Frangipani, for many years Archbishop of Patras,
acted as his bailie in Achaia — a post never before entrusted
to a churchman, and a sure sign of the increasing power of
the Achaian primates. Occupied exclusively with furthering
Angevin interests in Italy, John never set foot in Greece
again, and in 1333 severed all connection with it. Two
years earlier, his brother and suzerain, Philip of Taranto, had
died, and he refused to do homage to his nephew Robert.
Thanks, however, to the mediation of Niccolo Acciajuoli,
the representative of the great Florentine Bank at Naples,
and chamberlain, some say lover, of the widowed Empress
Catherine of Valois, the dispute between the uncle and the
nephew was arranged. John of Gravina transferred to the
empress, for her son Robert, the principality of Achaia, with
its dependencies, in exchange for the Angevin possessions in
Epiros, the kingdom of Albania, and the duchy of Durazzo,
as well as the sum of 5000 ounces (£12,500) in cash,
advanced by the serviceable Acciajuoli. Thus, once again,
the suzerainty and the actual possession of Achaia were
concentrated in the same hands, those of the claimant to the
long defunct Latin Empire.2
Meanwhile, young Walter of Brienne, heir of the last
cuzene, i., 85 ; Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 362 ; Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, II., i., 33. That the Orsini dynasty was deposed in the Ionian
islands by John of Gravina in 1324 is expressly stated by both Villani
and the Aragonese Chronicle, and an Angevin bailie figures there in
1337 and 1356.
1 Canciani, op. eit., iii., 530; Itinerarium Symonis Simeonis, 15.
2 Ducange, op. eit, II., 214-15, 376 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I.,
i., 54 ; Riccio, Studii storici, 17, 28. The tombs of the two princes of
Achaia — Philip of Taranto and his brother John of Gravina — may still be
seen in the church of S. Domenico at Naples.

262 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
Duke of Athens, had grown up to manhood, and thought
that the time had come to attempt the recovery of his
heritage from the Catalans. As a French noble, as Count of
Lecce, and as son-in-law of Philip of Taranto, the titular
emperor of Constantinople, he had every reason to expect
the warm support of the house of Anjou in its interest, as
well as his own. Philip saw that Walter's plans might be
made to coincide with his own schemes for the reconquest of
the Latin Empire, which he had never abandoned, and
conferred upon him the title of his Vicar-General in Romania.
Pope John XXII., like his predecessor, Clement V., was an
ardent worker in his cause, writing to Venice on his behalf
and bidding the Archbishop of Patras and Corinth preach a
crusade against the " schismatics, sons of perdition, and pupils
of iniquity," who had occupied the ancient patrimony of the
lawful Duke of Athens and afflicted with heavy oppression
the ecclesiastics and faithful inhabitants of Attica. But the
Venetians, who could have contributed more to the success of
the expedition than all the ecclesiastical thunders of Rome,
just at this moment renewed their truce with the Catalans at
Thebes. From that instant the attempt was bound to fail.
Walter was, like his father, a rash general, though he had
already won the reputation of a wise administrator during
a brief term of office as Angevin vicar at Florence. When
he started for Epiros in 133 1, a brilliant company of 800
French knights, 500 picked Tuscan men-at-arms, and a body
of soldiers from his domain at Lecce accompanied him. At
first success smiled upon his plans. He captured the island
of Santa Mavra, which had belonged to the counts of
Cephalonia since about the year 1300, and which had
consequently formed part of the Despotat of Epiros since
their usurpation of that state. On the mainland, the fortress
of Vonitza, one portion of the quadrilateral which the
unhappy Thamar had brought as her dowry to Philip of
Taranto, but which had relapsed from the Angevin rule, and
the city of Arta, fell into his hands. But when he proceeded
to attack the Catalans, he found that he had to deal with
cautious strategists, who never gave his fine cavalry a chance
of displaying its mettle in a pitched battle. Their plan of
campaign was to remain in their fortresses, allowing his

DESTRUCTION OF ST OMER 263
impetuous followers to expend their energies on the open
country. His father and mother had incurred heavy debts
on behalf of their Greek dominions, and Walter had sold his
property and pawned his wife's dowry to raise funds for the
recovery of his duchy ; but he had not calculated the cost of a
protracted expedition, so that, ere long, he found it impossible
to support the expense of so large a body of men, especially
as the French contingent expected high pay and generous
rations. A smaller force, particularly if aided by the Greeks,
would have had more chance of success ; but the native
Athenians and Boeotians showed as little desire to fight for
their lawful duke as they had shown to avenge his father's
death. A correspondent of the contemporary historian,
Nikephoros Gregoras, wrote, indeed, that they were " suffering
extreme slavery," and had "exchanged their ancient
happiness for boorish ways." But either their sufferings
were not sufficient to make them desire a change of masters,
or their boorishness was such that they did not appreciate
the advantages of French culture ; in any case, they looked
on impassively, while Walter's hopes daily dwindled away.
Early in 1332, he retired to the Morea, whence, after a
futile attempt to coerce the Catalans by the comminations
of the great Archbishop Frangipani of Patras, he took ship
for Italy never to return.1 One irreparable loss, indeed, was
inflicted upon Greece in consequence of his expedition. In
order to prevent the castle of St Omer at Thebes from
falling into his hands, and thus becoming a valuable base for
the recovery of the duchy, the Catalans destroyed that noble
monument of Frankish rule. Three years after their
conquest of Athens, they had bestowed this splendid
residence, together with the phantom kingdom of Salonika,
upon Guy de la Tour, a noble French adventurer from
Dauphine, who had placed his sword at their disposal. More
recently, Fadrique had granted the castle to Bartolomeo
II. Ghisi, one of the chief magnates of Greece, who was at
once triarch of Eubcea, great constable of Achaia, and lord
of the islands of Tenos and Mykonos, and whose son had
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 30-3 ; Raynaldus, v., 495, 517 ;
Villani apud Muratori, xiii., 717; Nikephdros Gregoras, i., p. xciv. ;
Ldmpros, "E77paoia, 55.

264 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
married the daughter of the Catalan captain. Ghisi seems
to have been a man of some literary and historic tastes,
for the original of which the French version of the Chronicle
of the Morea is an abridgment was found in his Theban castle.
The abridgment has fortunately been preserved ; but the
castle with its historic frescoes and its memories of gorgeous
ceremonies, when the song ofthe minstrel resounded through
its vast halls and all the chivalry of Frankish Greece was
gathered there, has perished, all save one short square tower,
which still bears the once great name of St Omer.1
The only other results of Walter's expedition were the
recognition of the shadowy Angevin suzerainty over Epiros
by the despot John II., who, however, retained the substance
of power, and struck coins at Arta bearing his name; and
the retention of Vonitza and the island of Sta. Mavra by the
titular duke of Athens. Later on, in 1355, the latter con
ferred Vonitza, " our castle of Sta. Mavra and our island of
Lucate " upon Graziano Zorzi, an old comrade-in-arms, and a
member of the great Venetian family which we have already
seen established in the marquisate of Boudonitza.2 Walter
himself still occasionally dreamed of his restoration to
Athens, but soon found a sphere for his activity in Italy.
Summoned by the Florentines to command their forces, he
became tyrant of their city, whence he was expelled amidst
universal rejoicings in 1 343, and where the traveller may now
see his arms restored by the modern Italian authorities in
the audience chamber of the Bargello. Thence he returned
to his county of Lecce, and fell, thirteen years later, fighting
as constable of France against the English at the battle of
Poitiers. Before he left Lecce, he made his will, in which he
mentioned all his possessions in Greece — his city of Argos,
with its noble castle, the Larissa ; the castles of Nauplia,
Kiveri and Thermisi, Vonitza, and Sta. Mavra, with their
constables and men-at-arms. Something was left to the
religious orders of Patras and Glarentza, and to the churches
' X. r. M., 11. 8086-92 ; L. d. C, 1, 274 ; Histoire de Dauphine; II.,
151; Bibliotheque de I' Ecole des Charles, xxxiii., 183; Melanges his-
toriques, III., 27.
3 Lunzi, Della Condizione politica, 121 ; Lampros, "E77pa0n, 67;
Romanos, op. eit., 302.

THE FAMILY OF FADRIQUE 265
and chapels of Nauplia and Argos, while part of the customs
dues of this last city was set aside to endow a perpetual
chaplaincy, whose holder was to say a daily mass for the
soul of the pious founder. As Walter left no children, his
sister Isabelle, wife of Gautier d'Enghien, succeeded to his
estates and claims, and of her sons, one styled himself Duke
of Athens, and another was lord of Argos and Nauplia.
More fortunate in one respect than his predecessors who had
reigned in Greece, Walter has left us a portrait of himself.
Every visitor to the lower church of St Francis at Assisi — a
church traditionally associated with the family of Brienne,
who were terciers of the Order — has seen in the foreground
of Lorenzetti's " Crucifixion " the knightly figure of the
titular duke of Athens.1
Thus, during the twenty years which followed its conquest
of Athens, the Catalan Company had strengthened its position
and extended its possessions. To Attica and Bceotia it had
annexed the duchy of Neopatras, including part of Thessaly,
while Catalan lords held the castles of Salona and Karystos,
and the island of ^Egina. It had made terms with Venice,
and so could 'afford to despise the schemes of the dethroned
dynasty of Brienne and the ecclesiastical weapons of the
papacy. In the bastard son of Frederick II. of Sicily it had
found a leader, resolute in action, and skilful in taking
advantage of his opportunities. All the more remarkable
is the sudden and premature retirement of this successful
chief from the leadership of the Company. At the time of
Walter of Brienne's invasion, he was no longer vicar-general
— a post occupied by Nicholas Lancia — and in the treaty of
Thebes between the Company and Venice; he figures as
merely " Count of Malta and Gozzo." Probably, had he
been at the head of affairs at that moment, he would have
saved his kinsman's castle of St Omer from destruction. We
are not told the reason of his retirement ; but, from the fact that
he paid a visit to Sicily in the following year, we may perhaps
infer that his too successful career in Greece had gained him
1 D'Arbois de Jubainville, Voyage paliographique, 341-2 ; Arch.
Stor. Hal., Ser. III., xvi., 48; Galateus, De Situ lapygia, 92; Hopf,
Chroniques, xxix.-xxx., who rightly identifies "Chamires" with Kiveri
opposite Nauplia and " Le Tremis " with Thermisi.

266 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
enemies at the Sicilian court, who may have accused him of
aiming at independent sovereignty, and whose charges he
may have thought it desirable to answer in person. Though
he did not resume the leadership of the Company, he passed
the rest of his life in Greece, where we hear of him among
the principal Catalans in 1335, and where he died in 1338,
leaving a numerous progeny. His eldest son, Don Pedro, was
already lord of Loidoriki and Count of Salona, which had
come into the hands of his father, presumably on the death
of Roger Deslaur without heirs. His second son, Don
Jaime, succeeded his elder brother in his estates, held for a
time the island of ^Egina, and became, later on, vicar-
general of the Company ; yet another son, Bonifacio, inherited
Karystos and Lamia, and received from Don Jaime, with
certain reservations, the island of ^Egina, thereby reuniting the
old possessions of his namesake and grandfather, Bonifacio da
Verona. One interesting part of them, however, the sister-
island of Salamis, seems to have been subdued by the Greeks,
for we hear of it as paying taxes to the Byzantine governor of
Monemvasia.1 Thus, the fortunes of the family continued to
be interwoven with those of the Catalan duchy till its falL
All over Greece, these twenty years had wrought great
changes. Alike in Thessaly and Epiros, the Greek dynasty
of the Angeli had come to an end ; and, while Byzantine
officials, local magnates, Albanian colonists, and the Catalan
Company had divided the former country between them, the
latter was occupied by the palatine counts of Cephalonia,
who had now been driven by the Angevins from their
islands. The Angevins were, therefore, now both possessors
and suzerains of most of the Ionian islands and of the
principality of Achaia, much reduced, however, by the
encroachments of the Greek governors, and still held the
strong fortress of Lepanto, on the opposite shore of the
Corinthian Gulf. The island of Sta. Mavra, the castle of
Vonitza, on the Gulf of Arta, and the towns of Nauplia and
Argos, owned the sway of Walter of Brienne, who appointed
1 Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., 127, 214 ; Bozzo, Notizie Storiche
Sieiliane del Secolo XIV., 607; Ducange, op. eit, II., 204; Rosario
Gregorio, II., 582-3 ; Rubid y Lluch, Los Navarros, 477 ; Hopf, Karystos,
588.

TRADE OF ACHAIA 267
a "bailie and captain-general," assisted by a council.
Venice, by her usual statecraft, had increased her hold upon
Eubcea, had gained a footing at Pteleon in Thessaly, and
had preserved her original colonies of Modon and Coron,
in spite of inroads by the Greeks of Mistra, and troubles
with those haughty neighbours, the Teutonic Knights of
Mostenitsa. The republic felt strong enough, however, to
allow a Greek bishop to reside there, although those patriotic
and intriguing ecclesiastics were apt to foster the national
instincts of their fellow-countrymen.1 The lot of the latter
was at this time lighter in the Frankish principality than
under the Venetian flag ; for, in spite of the strict orders
issued to the colonial governors to treat the Greeks well, they
emigrated in large numbers to Achaia, where taxation
was less oppressive. Piracy was still, however, the great
curse of the dwellers on the coasts of the Morea and in the
Greek islands. On one raid the corsairs carried off, and sold
as slaves, no less than 500 persons from the island of Culuris,
or Salamis, while the Turks were an annual, and a growing
menace. Yet these depredations had not yet destroyed the
Greek forests. Those who know how bare most of Greece is
to-day, will learn with surprise that Sanudo 2 thought that
the timber required for his cherished crusade against the
infidels could be obtained from Attica, the Morea, and the
island of Eubcea.
Nor was trade lacking. Monemvasia, whence our ancestors
got their Malmsey wine, under Byzantine rule, continued to
be a flourishing port, whose merchants enjoyed special
privileges and exemptions, confirmed by Andronikos II.
and 1 1 1., and including protection at all the fairs and festivals
of the peninsula. Glarentza, the seat of a Venetian consul,
and Patras, that of a Venetian podesta? uhder the enlightened
administration of its great archbishop, Guglielmo Frangipani,
were the chief commercial centres of the Frankish principality.
The former was a very important mart for silk, raisins, and
1 Archivio Veneto, xix., 115-16 ; Thomas, op. eit, i., 105-7.
2 Secreta Fidelium Crucis, 68 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, ii., 26.
3 Phrantzes, 400; Gerland, op. eit, 150; Pegalotti, Della Decima,
III., 51, 60, 106-9, 145, 202; Schlumberger, Numismatique, 471, 476;
Archivio Veneto, xiii., 152.

268 THE CATALANS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
valonia, which had commercial relations with Apulia,
Ancona, Florence, and Venice, as well as with Durazzo, Acre,
and Alexandria; which, like Thebes, Corinth, and Negro
ponte, had its own weights and measures, and still possessed
its own mint, whose masters were paid salaries of 300
hyperperi a year. But it had been already remarked at
Venice, that the Achaian currency had depreciated by nearly
a third since the days of Prince William, so that the
Venetians had talked of establishing a mint at Coron and
Modon. They never, however, carried out that project, and
the mint at Glarentza continued to produce coins till about
the year 1364, after which we have no more Achaian
currency. In its place, the Venetians began to issue from
the mint at Venice, about the middle of the fourteenth
century, the so-called tornesi piccioli or torneselli, which
henceforth served as the currency of their Greek colonies,
and which were modelled on the old tornesi of the Achaian
mint. In fact, classic Hellas was at this period a place where
money was to be made, an undeveloped territory to be
exploited by shrewd men of affairs. In that golden age
of Italian banking, such men were not lacking. Now, for
the first time, a new influence, that of high finance, had made
its appearance in Frankish Greece in the person of Niccolo
Acciajuoli, whose house was destined in another half century
to put an end to Catalan rule in Athens and assume the
ducal coronet on the Akropolis.

CHAPTER IX
THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI (1333-1373)
The arrangement between John of Gravina and the titular
empress, Catherine of Valois, had had the advantage of
uniting all the Angevin dominions in Greece — the principality
of Achaia, the county of Cephalonia, the castle of Lepanto,
and the island of Corfu — in a single hand, and henceforth the
jurisdiction of the Angevin bailie and the other chief
functionaries of the Morea extended to the adjacent island of
Cephalonia and to the " royal fortress " on the opposite coast
of the Corinthian Gulf. Fortunately, too, although Robert,
the young Prince of Achaia, for whom the empress had
purchased the principality, was still a minor, his mother, who
exercised supreme authority in his name, and even occasion
ally used the style of Princess,1 was endowed with very
masculine- qualities, which she soon began to display in the
management of this substantial fragment of her shadowy
empire. A strong ruler was, indeed, much needed in the
Morea, where the lax control of the late prince and the
confusion of the last twenty years had increased the spirit of
independence among the great barons, never at any time
very tolerant of dictation. »
Among these feudal lords, the most important were the
Archbishop of Patras and the Genoese family of Zaccaria,
whom we have already seen ruling the island of Chios, and
who had lately acquired a footing in the Morea, to which
they were destined, later on, to give its last Frankish prince.
Both of these great personages considered themselves
practically independent. Martino Zaccaria had succeeded
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 62 ; II., i., 103, 108.

270 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
the extinct family of De la Roche as baron of Damala in
Argolis, where he actually dared to issue coins of his own.
He had succeeded, too, the house of TremouiUe at
Chalandritza, and though the Greek Emperor had lately
captured both him and his rich island, his son Centurione
was in possession of both his Peloponnesian baronies. The
Empress Catherine was specially warned of the designs which
this crafty Levantine nourished against her authority by
Niccolo di Bojano, a Neapolitan treasury official who drew up
a report upon the state of her son's principality. Centurione,
he told her, must be put in his proper place, or else neither
she nor her son would ever obtain theirs in the Morea.1
Patras, too, under its great archbishop, Guglielmo Frangipani,
was practically autonomous, and Bertrand de Baux, the
bailie whom the empress sent to govern Achaia, took the
opportunity of his death to occupy the town and to besiege the
castle. Pope Benedict XII.2 entered a vigorous protest
against this proceeding, claiming that Patras was under the
direct jurisdiction of the archbishop, as the representative of
the Holy See to which it belonged. He therefore ordered the
bishops of Olena and Coron to lay the peninsula under an
interdict. These difficulties convinced the empress that her
presence was needed in the Morea; so, in 1338, she set out
for Patras, accompanied by her trusted adviser, Niccolo
Acciajuoli. We have already had occasion to mention this remarkable
man, whose house was destined, in characteristically modern
fashion, to supplant the noble chivalry of Frankish Greece.
The history of the Acciajuoli bears a striking resemblance to
that of the great financiers of our own time. After they had
become famous, courtly biographers provided them with a
pedigree stretching back as far as the sixth century, accord-
1 Schlumberger, Numismatique, 326 ; Ducange, ii., 265. This un
dated report refers to Catherine, not, as Ducange imagined, to Marie de
Bourbon, because Bojano was dead in 1342. (Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, II., i., in). The allusions to "the Count of Cephalonia"
and his war with " the Despot," which Hopf found it hard to explain, are
easily explicable. The " Count" is John II. of Epiros, the " Despot" is
Stephen Gabrieldpoulos, a Thessalian magnate, to whom Cantacuzene
(i.( 473) expressly applies that title ; the date must be 1333.
2 Lettres Communes, i., 479 ; Raynaldus, vi., 11 5-16.

CAREER OF NICCOLO 271
ing to which the founder of the family was Angelo, brother
of the Emperor Justin II., and one of its members was
created a baron of the holy Roman Empire by Frederick
Barbarossa.1 As a matter of fact, the Acciajuoli owed their
origin to an enterprising citizen of Brescia, the Sheffield of
Italy, who moved to Florence about 1 160 and there established
a steel-manufactory, which gave them their name. The
" steel-workers " made money, lent it out at interest, and in
due course became bankers, who played their part in the
municipal life of their adopted city. They were also
politicians of a practical sort, whose devotion to the Guelph
cause brought them into relation with the Neapolitan
Angevins, when the Florentines solicited the protection of
King Robert of Naples against their Ghibelline enemies.
That sagacious monarch rewarded one of the firm for his skill
in transacting the royal business with the dignity of chamber
lain and privy councillor, and the latter naturally thought
that in the management of the Naples branch his son would
find an excellent opening. In 1 331, when barely of age,
young Niccohb Acciajuoli arrived there accompanied by a
single servant But his skill in business, combined with an
agreeable presence and chivalrous manners, won him the
favour, perhaps the affection, of the titular empress, Catherine
of Valois, who was left a widow in that year with three sons
to bring up. He assisted her with their education, and it was
he who arranged, as we saw, the exchange of the duchy of
Durazzo for the principality of Achaia. The bank, of which
he was the representative, was already interested in Greece,
which the Italian financiers of that age regarded much as
their modern representatives in London regard the colonies.
Having succeeded in making his pupil Robert Prince of
Achaia, the astute Niccolo resolved to acquire lands in the
principality on his own account. He accordingly persuaded
the bank to transfer to him the two estates, which it had
received from John of Gravina, rounded them off by purchas
ing adjacent land, and further increased his holding by other
properties at Andravida, Prinitza, Kalamata, and in the island
of Cephalonia, which the empress bestowed upon him as the
reward of his services. He thus became a vassal of the
1 Fanelli, Ate7ie Attica, 290.

272 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
principality, taking care, however, to obtain from his
patroness the reduction of the feudal burdens attaching to
his lands and the permission to dispose of them to any
person capable of rendering the requisite military service.
Before his departure for Greece, he provided that, in the
event of his death, the revenues of these estates should be
devoted to building that splendid Certosa near Florence,
which is still his chief monument1
The empress and her astute adviser must soon have seen
for themselves the dangers to which Achaia was exposed.
The Catalans of Attica were awkward neighbours, who
required all the vigilance of the Knights of the Teutonic order ;
the Greeks had encroached on the principality from without,
while within they now held many important offices ; worst of
all, the Turks, who had made enormous progress in Asia,
now ravaged the Greek coast-line. The soundest and best
managed portion of the principality was Patras, and the
empress, who resided there, accordingly came to the con
clusion that her wisest course, especially as she needed papal
aid against the Turks, was to disavow her too officious bailie,
and recognise the authority of the Holy See over that
temporal barony. Henceforth, the archbishop could truly
say that he held the town direct from the pope.2
Catherine remained two years in Greece, during which
time Acciajuoli spared neither his purse nor his personal
comfort in the cause of the principality. At his own expense
he built a fort to defend the once fair vale of Kalamata, the
garden of Greece, which was then lying a desolate waste, and
his services were further rewarded by the gift of that barony,
the fortress of Piada, near Epidauros, and other lands. Thus,
as a large Peloponnesian landowner and the representative
of his firm at the Glarentza branch, which then ranked in
their books as of equal importance with their London office,
the Florentine banker had a stake in the country which gave
him a direct interest in its preservation, and induced him, even
after the departure of his mistress, to act for a time as her
bailie in Greece. He calculated, indeed, that, from first to
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II, i., 31-114, 117; G. Villani, M.
Villani, and Palmerius, De vitd et gestis N. Acciajoli, apud Muratori, xiii.,
958, 1205-6 ; xiv., 166-7. 2 Gerland, op. eit, 159.

BYZANTINE RECONQUEST OF EPIROS 273
last, his bank had sunk 40,000 ounces (£96,000) in the Morea.
When he returned to Italy in 1341, Boccaccio, afterwards his
bitter enemy, addressed him an enthusiastic letter of welcome,
in which he compared him to a second Ulysses.1
During her stay at Patras, the empress had also
endeavoured to restore her influence in the Despotat of
Epiros, where Lepanto alone remained of the former
Angevin possessions. In 1335, the Italian Despot, John II. ,
had met with the reward of his crimes at the hand of his
" wise and learned " wife, who had poisoned him from fear
of suffering a similar fate herself. She then assumed the
regency for her youthful son, Nikephoros II., with the
acquiescence of some, at least, of her unruly subjects. But
the Emperor Andronikos III. thought that the moment had
now come for reuniting Epiros with the Byzantine Empire,
especially as he had lately been forced to expel the Epirote
garrisons from Kalabaka, Trikkala, and other places in
Thessaly, which they had occupied on the death of Gabrielo-
poulos, the local magnate who had ruled there. At the news
of his approach, the regent herself advised submission, as
resistance seemed hopeless, so that Andronikos was able to
accomplish without bloodshed what his predecessors had in
vain struggled to obtain. No Greek emperor had visited
Epiros since the time of Manuel I., nearly two centuries
earlier ; but the tour which Andronikos made through the
cities of the Despotat was not so much due to curiosity as
to the desire to let his new subjects see that he wished to
understand their requirements. Judicious grants of titles and
annuities to leading men were intended to console the
Epirotes for the loss of their independence, while the
regent was prudently ordered to leave the country. But
the love of freedom had become ingrained in the breasts
of others of the natives by the experience of more than a
century ; with their connivance and the aid of his Frankish
tutor, young Nikeph6ros, a boy with ambitions far above his
years, fled across to the Empress Catherine at Patras, and
asked her to restore him to his throne. The empress saw
that he might be made the tool of Angevin interests in
Epiros, and ordered one of her Neapolitan suite to conduct
1 Buchon, op. eit, I., i., 46 ; II., i., 114. S

274 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
the lad back to his faithful subjects, who had meanwhile
expelled the Byzantine viceroy and were clamouring for
him. Andr6nikos, accompanied by the future emperor,
John Cantacuzene, now returned to Akarnania, where the
latter's diplomacy was more successful than the former's
strategy. The most obstinate resistance was offered by
"Thomas's Castle," whither Nikephoros had fled, a strong
fortress on the Adriatic, christened after the last Greek Despot,
which could be easily provisioned from the sea. But,
although the Empress Catherine sent a small fleet and
troops from the Morea to assist her protege", the arguments
of Cantacuzene at last induced the garrison to surrender.
He told them that the Angevins, in spite of their frequent
efforts to conquer their country, had never succeeded in
holding more than a few isolated positions, like Lepanto,
Vonitza, and Butrinto, and those only with the consent of
the Despot. Allies so weak, he said, would be of no avail
against the imperial forces ; while, even if they were, they
would conquer Epiros for themselves and not for the Epirotes,
in which case the natives would be the slaves of the Latins.
"If you surrender," he concluded, " I will give my own
daughter to Nikephoros, and will treat him as a son ; my
master will load him with honours, of which you too shall
have your share." At this, the garrison opened the gates ;
the whole country once more recognised the authority of
the emperor, and Nikephoros, scarcely compensated by a
high-sounding Byzantine title, was led away to Salonika.
The specious arguments of Cantacuzene at Thomokastron
had had their effect upon the Moreot troops, whom the
empress had sent to aid in defending that castle. When
they returned home, and found Catherine and her skilful
minister gone, and the Turks ravaging their coasts unchecked,
they reflected that in the Morea, too, the Angevins were
powerless to aid. Impressed with the tact of Cantacuzene,
whose father had been governor of Mistra, and who had
himself been offered that post twenty years earlier, they
entered into negotiations with him in 1341 for the cession
of the principality of Achaia. Their envoys, the Bishop of
Coron, and a half-caste, near Sideros, told the great man that
he had won their hearts by his conduct in Epiros, and begged

THE KING OF MAJORCA 275
him to come in person and take over their country. All they
asked was to keep their fiefs, and to pay the same taxes to the
emperor as they now paid to their prince ; on these terms
they were ready to do homage and receive an imperial
viceroy. Cantacuzene was naturally flattered by this request,
not, as he told them, the first of the kind ; he promised to
visit the Morea in the following spring, sending meanwhile
a confidential agent to win over dissentients and to show
that he was in earnest. But the grandiose scheme which he
had formed of thus reuniting the Byzantine Empire from
Tainaron to Constantinople was never accomplished. The
great Servian tsar, Stephen Dushan, had now begun his
meteoric • career of conquest at the expense of the Greek
Empire, while the latter was soon distracted by the
intrigues of the rival emperors, John Cantacuzene and John
Palaioldgos.1 Besides the party of Cantacuzene, there was still a section
of the Franks which regarded King James II. of Majorca,
the grandson of the Lady of Akova, as the lawful Prince of
Achaia. The King of Majorca, whom we last saw carried in
Muntaner's arms as a baby of a few weeks, had now grown
up to manhood, and accordingly the cause for which his
father, Ferdinand of Majorca, had fallen more than twenty
years before was revived, though the old Catalan chronicler
was no longer there to fight for it. A formal memoir was
drawn up and sent to him, setting forth his rights, based
upon the alleged will of his great-grandfather, Guillaume de
Villehardouin, to the effect that if one of his two daughters
died childless, the principality should go to the other or her
heirs. Even so, James II. would have had no claim, for
Isabelle de Villehardouin's daughter by her third marriage,
Marguerite of Savoy, was still living ; but the barons did not
consider her existence as an obstacle to their plans. Their
memorial informed the King of Majorca that the island of
Negroponte with its two great barons, Pietro dalle Carceri
and Bartolomeo Ghisi, who then held all the three divisions
of the island between them ; the duchy of Naxos, then
1 Nikephoros Gregoras, i., 536, 538-9, 544-6, 550-4, ii., 596; Canta
cuzene, i., 77, 85-6, 473. 495, 499"5°4, 5°9"34, "¦, 74-7, 80, 82, 83 ; Mik-
losich und Miiller, i., 172-4 ; Arch. Stor. per le Prov. Napol., viii., 225.

276 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
governed by Nicholas Sanudo ; and the duchy of Athens,
were all vassal states of the principality, though in the case
of the last the feudal tie was ignored by the Catalans, "our
bitterest foes." The whole peninsula, they told him, was
divided between Prince Robert of Taranto, a minor and an
absentee, for whom Bertrand de Baux, now restored to
favour, was again acting as vicar ; the titular duke of
Athens, Walter of Brienne, who held Argos and Nauplia
from Robert ; the Venetians, independent masters of Modon
and Coron ; and the Greek Emperor. The whole principality
contained more than iooo baronies and knights' fees, each
worth on an average 300 pounds of Barcelona a year ; after
deducting all expenses for garrisoning the castles, this would
leave the prince with a nett revenue of 100,000 florins. This
document, which gives a clear account of the Morea as it was
in 1 344, was signed by Roger, Archbishop of Patras ; Philippe
de Joinville, baron of Vostitza ; Erard le Noir of St Sauveur,
grandson of the man who had deserted the Infant of Majorca ;
Alibert de Luc, perhaps a descendant of one of the original
barons of the Conquest, and many others. James II. adopted
the title of " Prince of Achaia " — a style assumed with about
equal reason by another James, son of Philip of Savoy by his
second marriage, and by Omarbeg of Aidin, who had at least
plundered his "principality." But his only act in that
capacity was to confer upon Erard le Noir the hereditary
dignity of Marshal of Achaia — an honour which was perhaps
deserved, if we may believe the high praise bestowed by the
anonymous chronicler of the Morea upon the benevolence of
that baron, " a true friend to the poor man and the orphan."
In 1349 James II. fell, like his father, in battle, fighting
against the Aragonese, who had dispossessed him of his
kingdom.1 Meanwhile, the growing Turkish peril had convinced the
popes that it was wise to recognise the Catalan occupation
of Athens as an accomplished fact. Three years after
Walter of Brienne's unsuccessful expedition, Benedict XII.
had ordered the Archbishop of Patras to excommunicate
once more the leaders of the Company— William, Duke of
; Buchon, Recherches historiques, i., 452-3 ; Ducange, op. eit., ii.,
224-6 ; Datta, op. eit, ii., 166 ; X. ,. 11., 11. 8468-73.

THE PAPACY RECOGNISES THE CATALANS 277
Athens ; Nicholas Lancia, his vicar-general ; Alfonso
Fadrique and his two sons, Peter of Salona and James ;
and many more. But Archbishop Isnard of Thebes, who
was better acquainted with the local needs than the pope,
and who saw the growing tendency of his flock to join the
Orthodox Church, not only annulled this sentence of
excommunication on his own authority, but also celebrated
mass before the Company in the Theban minster ; and,
though Benedict at first disapproved of this arbitrary act
and ordered the renewal of the excommunication, he came
to see that the Catalans might be useful as a buffer state
between the Turks and the West, and disregarded the
ineffectual protest of the exiled Duke of Athens. The
Latin Patriarch of Constantinople acted as intermediary ;
on his way to his residence at Negroponte, he stopped in
Attica, where he found the Catalans willing to return to the
bosom of the Church. He communicated their prayer to
Benedict, who replied that he would hear it, if they would
send envoys to Rome. His successor, Clement VI., anxious
to form a coalition against the Turks, charged the patriarch
with the task of making peace between the Catalans and
Walter of Brienne, gave them absolution for three years,
and invited Prince Robert of Achaia and his mother, the
Empress Catherine, to contribute galleys to the allied fleet.
The crusade had small results, but the reconciliation between
the Catalans and the papacy was complete. Henceforth,
those " sons of perdition " were regarded as respectable
members of Christendom. Unfortunately, soon after they
became respectable, they ceased to be formidable. Occa
sionally, the old Adam broke out, as when Peter Fadrique
of Salona is found plying the trade of a pirate with the aid
of the unspeakable Turk. But their Thessalian conquests
were slipping away from the luxurious and drunken progeny
of the hardy warriors who had smitten the Franks at the
Kephissos, while the Venetians of Negroponte had no
longer cause to fear their once dreaded neighbours. When
the bailie wanted money for public purposes he borrowed it
from a Catalan knight of Athens ; when a Catholic Bishop
of Andros had to be consecrated, the Athenian Archbishop
came to perform the ceremony of laying hands on his

278 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
suffragan in the church of the Eubcean capital — an arrange
ment which shows that the ecclesiastical organisation of
Athens had not been disturbed by the Catalan conquest.1
And in the war against Genoa, the Catalans rendered
yeoman's service to the Venetians at Oreos.
Meanwhile, in distant Sicily, the shadowy Dukes of
Athens and Neopatras came and went without ever seeing
their Greek duchies. Duke William died in 1338, and his
successors in the title, John and Frederick of Randazzo, the
picturesque town built on the lava of Etna, both succumbed
to the plague ten and seventeen years later — mere names in
the history of Athens, where almost their only known acts
are in connexion with the castle of Athens and the church
of St Michael at Livadia. Soon, however, after the death of
the latter, in 1355, his namesake and successor became also
King of Sicily under the title of Frederick III. Thus, the
two Greek duchies, which had hitherto been the appanage
of younger members of the royal family, were now united
with the Sicilian crown. For a moment, indeed, in 1357,
the new King of Sicily, hard pressed by enemies in his own
island, actually proposed to purchase the aid of Pedro IV.
of Aragon by bestowing Athens and Neopatras upon that
sovereign's consort and his own sister, Eleonora. But as no
help was forthcoming from his brother-in-law, the proposal
fell through.2
The new duke found himself at once called upon to
answer two petitions from his distant subjects. Shortly
before the death of his namesake and predecessor, a
deputation had arrived from Athens and Neopatras, begging
for the removal of Ram6n Bernardi, the then vicar-general
of the duchies, which were declared by the petitioners to be
in danger, owing to the lack of proper authority. They
suggested as suitable candidates for the post, Orlando de
Aragona, a bastard of the house of Sicily, or one of Alfonso
1 Ducange, ii., 204-5, 221 ; Raynaldus, vi., 286, 311 ; M. Villani apud
Muratori, xiv., 371 ; Hopf, Die lnsel Andros, 51 ; Ldmpros, "Eyypa<t>a,
55-82 ; Lettres Closes de Benoit Xli., 515 ; de Ch'ment VI., i., 162, 204.
2 Curita, IL, 17, !29, 287 ; Archiv. Stor. Siciliano, vii., 196 ; John and
Frederick of Randazzo are mentioned as dukes in two documents ;
L^mpros, "B77pa0a, 255, 304.

FREDERICK III, DUKE OF ATHENS 279
Fadrique's sons, James and John. Frederick III. granted
the prayer of the petitioners, and appointed James Fadrique
vicar-general ; a second petition prayed the duke to reward
his strenuous labours in defence of the duchies. What those
labours were the document does not specify; but we learn
from another source that one of his services to his sovereign
was to crush a revolt of Ermengol de Novelles, the hereditary
marshal. We may surmise that the dualism between that
powerful noble and the vicar-general had now developed
into open rebellion ; we know that the marshal lost his
strong fortress of Siderokastron, which James Fadrique
added to his own lands, and which his royal master
confirmed to him ; and we may assume that the De Novelles
family was further punished by the loss of the marshal's
bdton, which is known to have been held by Roger de Lluria
during the rest of Ermengol's lifetime. On the present
occasion the petitioners begged that the loyal James might
have assigned to him as his reward the castles of Salona and
Loidoriki with their appurtenances, which were his by law.
They had belonged to his father, and had descended from
him to his eldest son Peter, on whose demise without
children, they should have come to James as next-of-kin.
Owing, however, as it would appear, to the disturbed state
of the duchy, those great possessions had been withheld from
him.1 All these facts point to the mutual jealousy of the
great Catalan feudatories of each other, a jealousy which was
sure to break out in civil war, whenever the vicar-general
was weak. Naturally, an hereditary office-holder like the
marshal, with a large stake in the country and a powerful
Greek connection, would be a dangerous rival to a foreigner
from Sicily, the creature of a distant so^reign.
James Fadrique did not long retain the office which the
envoys of the duchies had begged the King of Sicily to
bestow upon him. Possibly, like his father, he had enemies
at court, who represented to his suspicious master that he
was too powerful and too independent; at any rate, in 1359,
Gonsalvo Ximenes de Arenos had succeeded him as vicar-
1 This disproves Hopfs theory that Salona came into the Fadrique
family by the marriage of Peter with an imaginary daughter of Roger
Deslaur. Rosario Gregorio, II., 570-1, 582-3 ; Rubid, Los Navarros, 476.

280 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
general.1 In that year, however, the post was conferred upon
a great Sicilian noble, Matteo Moncada, or Montecateno,
whose family had come- from Catalufla to Sicily after the
Vespers. Frederick added to his vicar's dignity by conferring
upon him the lordships of Argos and Corinth and the
marquisate of Boudonitza — dignities which were not his to
bestow. For Argos still belonged to Guy d'Enghien ;
Corinth had lately been bestowed upon Niccol6 Acciajuoli ;
while Boudonitza, though threatened by the Catalan Company,
was in the possession of the Zorzi — an outpost against
attacks from the north, where a new power was now
established.2 The five years' civil war between John Cantacuzene and
John Palaioldgos and the Napoleonic career of Stephen
Dushan, the great Servian tsar, who for a few years made
the Serbs the dominant race of the Balkan peninsula, had
profoundly affected Northern Greece. Cantacuzene's popu
larity was not confined to the Morea ; from Thessaly, where
the Byzantine Empire had latterly recovered much lost
ground, but where the Albanians had seized the moment of
the late emperor's death to plunder the towns, and from
Akarnania, where his recent exploits were remembered, and
whither the widow of the late Despot had escaped, came
invitations to assume the government of those provinces.
Cantacuzene was unable to go there in person at so critical
a moment in his career; but he appointed as life governor
of Thessaly his nephew John Angelos, an experienced soldier
and a man of affairs, who assisted him with the famed
Thessalian cavalry, completed the downfall of Catalan rule
in that region, and made himself master of ^Etolia and
Akarnania, taking the ambitious Anna prisoner. He died,
however, in 1349, and the great Servian tsar, who had
already extended his sway as far as Joannina, then annexed
the rest of north-west Greece and Thessaly to his vast
empire, which extended from Belgrade to Arta. Besides
styling himself "Tsar and Autocrat of the Serbs and Greeks,
the Bulgarians and Albanians," Dushan now assumed the
1 Lampros, "Eyypa.<pa, 239, 332, 334.
2 Predelli, Commemoriali, II., 308; Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber,
Ixxxv., 438-9,

THE CANTACUZENES AT MISTRA 281
titles of "Despot of Arta and Count of Wallachia." He
assigned Akarnania and ^Etolia to his brother, Simeon
Urosh, who endeavoured to conciliate native sympathies by
marrying Thomais, the sister of the deposed Despot Nike
phoros II., while a Serb magnate, named Preliub, received
Joannina and Thessaly, with the title of Caesar, and made
even the Venetians tremble in their settlement at Pteleon.1
While Thessaly and north-west Greece had thus passed
in the middle of the fourteenth century under Servian rule,
there had been, by way of compensation, a Greek revival in
the Morea. In 1348, the Emperor John Cantacuzene,
remembering the long connection of his family with a country
in which both his father and grandfather had died, and of
which he had been himself offered the governorship, sent his
second son Manuel as governor to Mistra, not merely for a
term of years, but for life. Manuel remained Despot of the
Byzantine province till his death in 1380, and his long rule of
thirty-two years contributed greatly to the prosperity of the
Greek portion of the peninsula. Henceforth, Mistra assumed
more and more importance as the seat of a younger member
of the imperial family ; and, as the Turks drew closer to
Constantinople, more and more value was set on the strongly
fortified hill near Sparta, whose fine Byzantine buildings still
testify to the piety and the splendour of the Despots, and
still bear their quaint monograms. The early years of the
century, as we saw, had witnessed great ecclesiastical
activity at Mistra. Manuel continued in the footsteps of
Andronikos II. ; he erected a church of the Saviour; and a
poem addressed by him to his father long adorned the
church of the Divine Wisdom.2 As is usual where there are
Greeks, there was a desire for books at the new Sparta, and
we are therefore not surprised to find men engaged in
copying manuscripts there. Later on, when the Emperor
John Cantacuzene had abandoned the throne for the garb
of a monk, he spent a year with his son at Mistra, and
1 Cantacuzene, i., 495; ii., 15, 239, 309-22, 355; iii., 147, 150,
155, 3'4; Nikephdrps Gregoras, ii., 596, 644, 656-8, 663; Epirotica,
210-11. Predelli, op. eit, II., 181.
2 Bulletin de Corr. helldnique, xxiii., 144 ; Miklosich und Miiller, i.,
472-4.

282 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
there, in 1383, he died and was buried.1 He has given us in
his history a graphic picture of the state of the peninsula at
the moment of his son's appointment. Turkish raids, the
rule of the Franks, and, worst of all, the constant internecine
quarrels of the Greeks had brought the country to the verge
of ruin. The towns had been divided by the party strife of
their citizens, the villages had been devastated by foreign
foes ; agriculture was neglected, so that the Morea was
" worse than the proverbial Scythian desert." The imperial
historian, no mean judge of men, gives the Moreot archons
much the same character as Niketas Choniates had given
them more than a century and a half earlier : " Neither good
nor evil fortune, nor time, that universal solvent, can dissolve
their mutual enmity, which not only endures during their
lifetime, but descends as a heritage to their children. These
modern Spartans neglect all the laws of Lycurgus, but obey
one of Solon — that which punishes those citizens who remain
neutral in party strife ! " Men of this kind, like the Albanians
of to-day, had no appreciation for firm government, which
interfered with their time-honoured custom of cutting one
another's throats in some faction fight. They soon found a
leader in a certain Lampoudios, the cleverest scoundrel of
them all, who had already rebelled against the Despot, but
had been pardoned and provided with opportunities of
rehabilitating his ruined fortunes. One of Manuel's wise
measures was the creation of a navy for coast defence against
the small bands of Turks from Asia Minor, which constantly
molested the Peloponnesian coasts. For this purpose, he
proposed to levy ship-money on the inhabitants, and the
crafty Lampoudios begged, and obtained, permission to
collect it. He went all over the country, like a born
demagogue, reproaching the people with being "voluntary
slaves " of the Despot, creatures unworthy of their ancestors,
the heroes who had fought — against each other — while the
Franks were conquering Greece. The taunt and the
threatened tax had their effect ; the people rose at a given
signal, seized the chief officials of the towns and villages, and
1 So Hopf and Krumbacher, rejecting the version of Doukas, that he
died on Mt. Athos, and following the Chronicle published by Miiller in
Sikimgsbcrichte der Wiener Akademie, ix., 393.

GREEK REVIVAL IN THE MOREA 283
marched on Mistra. But the news that the Despot was
preparing to attack them with the 300 men of his Byzantine
bodyguard, and a few Albanian mercenaries, who now for the
first time appear in the history of the Morea, sufficed to
cause a general panic. Manuel with his usual clemency
pardoned the rebels, who for a long time kept the peace.
But that their behaviour was due to fear rather than
gratitude was demonstrated when his father fell and the
Emperor John PalaiokSgos sent Michael and Andrew Asan
as governors to the Morea. The whole province, with the
exception of one faithful city, went over to the newcomers,
but Manuel stood firm, drove out the Asans and secured his
recognition by the imperial government. Henceforth, the
Greeks acquiesced in his mild but firm rule; the local
magnates abandoned politics for the less exciting pursuit of
agriculture, and it became the fashion to acquire large estates
and to develop the country. Those who know the Greek
distaste for rural life will realise how marvellous the influence
of Manuel must have been. The Cantacuzenes wisely based
their national policy upon the support of the national Church ;
thus the emperor in 1348 confirmed by a golden bull the
possessions of the great monastery of Megaspelaion, a direct
dependency, or stavropegion, of the Patriarchate, which his
predecessors had favoured, and the monks continued to
dispose of their serfs as they chose ; six years later, the
monastery was assigned by the patriarch as residence for life
to the Greek metropolitan of Patras, " Exarch of all Achaia,"
who since the Latin Conquest had been, of course, unable to
occupy his titular see. All these things testified to the great
Greek revival in the Morea. With his Frankish neighbours,
however, Manuel was usually on excellent terms ; they, too,
learnt to respect his truthfulness, for his*word was as good as
his oath, and he never broke his engagements with them.
Having been defeated by him at the outset, they became his
allies, and agreed to assist him both within and without the
peninsula at their own expense. This alliance proved most
successful in repelling the Turks, who were now a serious
danger to Franks and Greeks alike.
The Ottomans have always made and retained their
conquests in the Near East, thanks to the quarrels of the

284 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
Christians, and it was the internal disputes of the Catalan
state which now introduced them into Greece. In 1361,
Moncada had been succeeded as vicar-general of the duchies
by Roger de Lluria, a relative and namesake of the great
Aragonese admiral, who had ravaged the Morea seventy
years earlier. The Lluria family had gained influence at
Thebes, of which city Roger's brother had recently been
governor, while Roger himself had received grants from John
and Frederick of Randazzo, and held the great office of
marshal. There was, however, a party at the capital opposed
to this now predominant family, while the new vicar found
himself simultaneously involved in a quarrel with the
Venetians of Eubcea arising out of a number of petty
grievances on both sides. Thus pressed, Lluria resorted to
the traditional policy of the Catalan Company and called in
the Turks to his aid. They had not far to come, for
Murad I. had now transferred the Turkish capital from
Brusa to Adrianople, and they were already casting longing
eyes on Greece. They readily responded to his summons,
and in 1 363 Thebes, the capital of the Catalan duchy, was
occupied by these dangerous allies. The archbishop and an
influential deputation from various communities in the duchies
hastened to Sicily to lay their grievances before their duke.
Frederick III. listened to the tale of their sufferings, re
appointed Moncada vicar-general, and ordered Lluria to obey
the latter's orders. Pope Urban V, too, appealed to the
religious sentiments of Lluria and his brother, and urged the
Lombards and Venetians of Eubcea and the primate of
Achaia to prevent the " profane multitude of infidel Turks "
from entering the Morea, as was their intention. The
common danger, even more than the papal admonitions,
aroused all those interested in the peninsula to combine in its
defence. The united efforts of Gautier de Lor, the bailie of
Achaia, the Frankish barons, the Despot Manuel, the Knights
of St John, and a Venetian fleet succeeded in burning
thirty-five Turkish galleys which were lying off* Megara.
At this the Turks perforce abandoned their projected
invasion, and retreated to their ally's capital of Thebes.
The loyal union of Greeks and Latins had saved the
Morea. This alone would entitle Manuel Cantacuzene to the

FURTHER ACQUISITIONS OF NICCOLO 285
eulogies which his father and his father's devoted friend, the
litterateur Demetrios Kydones, bestowed upon his wise
administration.1 The distracted Frankish principality, nominally subject to
an alien and absent prince, offered a sad contrast to the
Byzantine province under a resident native governor.
Prince Robert, who assumed the title of Emperor of
Constantinople on the death of the Empress Catherine in
1 346, from that moment never set foot in Achaia ; indeed, he
was for several years a prisoner in Hungary ; and his main
interest in his Greek dominions was that they enabled him to
present large estates to his wife. He had married in 1347
Marie de Bourbon, widow of Hugues IV, King of Cyprus, and
to her he assigned lands in Corfu and Cephalonia, the old
Villehardouin family fief of Kalamata, and other places in
Achaia, to which she added by purchase the baronies of
Vostitza and Nivelet The frequent changes of the Angevin
bailies, which are recorded in the Aragonese Chronicle of the
Morea at this period, naturally weakened still further the
authority of the absent prince, while real power fell more and
more into the hands of the Archbishop of Patras and the
family of the Acciajuoli, who at last became identical. After
his departure from Greece, Niccolo Acciajuoli had not
forgotten to look after his great interests in that country.
We may dismiss the story of a much later Neapolitan
historian, that he was sent by Queen Joanna I. of Naples to
receive the homage of the Athenians, whom the writer
imagines to have been brought under her authority by two
enterprising men from Lecce2 — an obvious mistake, due to
the subsequent rule of his family there. But he added to his
already large possessions in Achaia the fortress of Vourkano,
at the foot of classic Ithome, the picturesque site of the
present monastery, and in 1358 received from Prince Robert
the town and castle of Corinth, which was part of the
1 Cantacuzene, iii., 85-90, 358-60 ; Nikephoros Gregoras, iii., 248,
Chronicon Breve, 515 ; Kydones apud Boissonade, Anecdoia Nova, 294 ;
Miklosich und Miiller, i., 326-30 ; v., 191-3 ; Raynaldus, vii., 108 ; Lettres
secrltes dUrbain V, 163; L. d. P., 151 ; Rosario Gregorio, II., 572-5 ;
Predelli, Commemoriali, II., 304.
2 Summonte, Hist, di Napoli, 1 1., 601.

286 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
princely domain ; two years afterwards, one of his family
became through his influence Archbishop of Patras, a
dignity subsequently held by two others of this clan, and
estimated to be worth more than 16,000 florins a year.
The bestowal of the great fortress of Corinth upon the
shrewd Florentine banker was a marked tribute to his ability.
The dwellers on the shores of the gulf were now a prey to
the Turkish corsairs, against whom Robert in vain asked the
pope and the Venetians for aid. The pope was, indeed,
fully alive to the Turkish peril, and suggested to the
Knights of St John the acquisition of the defenceless
principality ; when this project failed, he begged Niccolo
Acciajuoli to impress upon Robert the necessity of doing
something to save Achaia from the infidels. The citizens of
Corinth united their petitions to these admonitions of the
pope ; they told Robert that he had left them to the tender
mercies of the Turks, who daily afflicted them, that their
fortresses had lost many of their defenders by captivity and
famine, that their land was a desert, and that unless he could
provide some remedy, they must either go into exile or pay
tribute to the enemy. Robert accordingly bestowed the
town and castle, with all their appurtenances, including
eight smaller castles, upon Niccolo Acciajuoli, who had mean
while been created grand seneschal of Sicily and Count of
Malta, as the most likely man to defend them. Niccolo
spent large sums in repairing the fortifications of Akrocorinth,
and obtained for his vassals from Robert the remission of all
arrears due to the princely treasury, an order compelling all
his serfs who had emigrated owing to the unsettled state of
the district to return, and permission to render all the feudal
service, for which he was liable on account of his other
Peloponnesian possessions, exclusively in the frontier district
of Corinth, more exposed than the rest of the peninsula to
attacks from Catalans and Turks. Unable to return to
Greece himself, he appointed his cousin Donato his repre
sentative at Corinth and in the rest of his Achaian fiefs,
charging him to further the welfare of his dependants, to
administer even-handed justice, to protect the Church — an
injunction sometimes neglected — and to pay special regard to
the fortifications. A swarm of Greeks — " Greeklings," the

THE PRINCE OF GALILEE 287
scornful Boccaccio calls them — crowded the almost regal
audiences which he gave in his Italian palaces, and his will
reads like an inventory of a large part of the Morea. He
died in 1365, and lies in the noble Certosa which he had
built near Florence to be his mausoleum.1 Few who visit
it reflect that it was erected out of the spoils of Greece.
Upon the death of the titular emperor Robert in 1364,
the principality of Achaia was for the second time exposed
to the evils of a disputed succession. Robert had left no
children ; but his stepson, Hugues de Lusignan, Prince of
Galilee, who by the law of primogeniture should have been
King of Cyprus, finding himself deprived of the Cypriote
throne by his uncle, conceived the idea of seeking compensa
tion in Achaia, which was claimed by the late prince's
brother Philip, now titular emperor of Constantinople, who
accordingly styled himself also " Prince of Achaia." Robert's
widow, Marie de Bourbon, favoured her son's enterprise, and
her territorial influence in the country, owing to purchase and
her late husband's gifts, was greater even than that of Niccolo
Acciajuoli himself. We learn from a list of the Achaian baronies
in 1364, preserved by a lucky accident, that no less than
sixteen castles were her property, including such strongholds
as the great fortress of Chloumoutsi, the old family "castle of
the Villehardouins at Kalamata, the two fortresses which the
famous house of St Omer had built on the bay of Navarino
and in the Santameri mountains above the plain of Elis, and
Beauvoir, or " Mouse Castle," whose ruins still command the
harbour of Katakolo. But the barons had appointed the
lord of Chalandritza, Centurione Zaccaria, bailie of the
principality on the death of Robert, and had sent him to
receive Philip's oath as their new prince at Taranto. Thus,
when Marie de Bourbon and her son arrived in Greece in
1366 with more than 12,000 troops from Cyprus and
Provence, they found that Philip's bailie held all the
fortresses for his master, except that of Navarino, while
Angelo Acciajuoli, Archbishop of Patras and an adopted
1 Ducange, ii., 233, 263-4 ; L. d. P., 149-52 ; Buchon, Nouvelles
Rechcrehes, I., i., 90, 98-100, 113; II., i., 143-204; M. Villani apud
Muratori, xiv., 608; Raynaldus, vi., 515 ; Lettres secretes dUrbain V.,
55, 76 ; Lampros, "E77pa0a, 106-7, 120-8.

288 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
son of the great Niccolo, had declared for Philip as lawful
Prince of Achaia. Confident in their superior numbers,
Marie and the Prince of Galilee besieged the castle of
Patras. But the archbishop, though he had only 700 horse
men, possessed among the canons of his cathedral one of the
greatest commanders of that age. Some years before, a
young Venetian, Carlo Zeno, had received, as a mere boy, a
canon's stall at Patras, then already regarded as the property
of the Holy See. It was part of the canons' duty to guard
the castle, or donjon, as it was called, of Patras, and this
uncanonical work exactly suited Zeno. The lad cared more
for fighting than for theology, and the almost constant
warfare with Turkish pirates at the mouth of the Corinthian
Gulf gave him ample outlet for his energies. Wounded in
one of these skirmishes, the young canon had only recently
returned to his stall, whence the archbishop summoned him
to assume the command of the garrison. Zeno had learnt
all the devices of Greek warfare ; he waited till the besiegers
were scattered about the country, plundering the rich
environs of Patras, fell upon them with signal success, and
not only defended Patras for six months, but carried the
war to the walls of Navarino, where Marie and her son had
taken refuge, and where the Emperor Philip's bailie lay a
prisoner. The commander of Navarino now summoned the
Despot of Mistra and Guy d'Enghien, the lord of Argos, to his
aid, the civil war spread, and the Byzantine and Argive
forces ravaged the plain of Elis. Fortunately, at this moment,
a peacemaker appeared upon the scene, in the person of the
chivalrous Conte Verde, Amadeo VI. of Savoy, who chanced
to put in at Coron on his expedition to the East. He there
received news of the siege of Navarino, and hastened to the
aid of Marie de Bourbon, who was his wife's cousin ; at the
sight of his galleys, the archbishop's troops withdrew from
the attack, whereon Amadeo offered his services as an
arbitrator to the two parties. Both Marie and the archbishop
accepted his offer ; they met on neutral ground at Modon ;
Marie relinquished all claims to Patras, and recognised the
independence of the archbishop, who, in return, agreed to
make her a money payment. The collection of this money
was entrusted to the ever-useful Zeno, who adopted the usual

CAREER OF CARLO ZENO 289
plan of inviting the citizens of Glarentza to subscribe it.
Glarentza was then not only " the chief city of Achaia," but
an important trade centre, though its mint had now ceased to
issue the familiar Achaian coinage, the last specimens of which,
bearing Robert's name, may still be seen in the Museo Correr
at Naples. Boccaccio, who laid a scene of his novel Alatiel
there, represents Genoese merchants as trading with Glarentza,
and we know that it levied a duty of from two to three per cent.
on all merchandise. It could therefore have well afforded to pay
the indemnity. But a certain knight of Glarentza denounced
Zeno as a traitor for having made peace on what he
considered such unfavourable terms ; Zeno challenged his
accuser to a duel, was deprived of his canonry in consequence,
and resigned the other ecclesiastical benefices which he held
in Greece. The point of honour was referred to Queen
Joanna I. of Naples, who decided in Zeno's favour ; the
latter, as the reward for his services, received from the
Emperor Philip the post of bailie of Achaia, where for the
next three years he remained to assist his old patron, the
archbishop, and his successor, " with both hand and counsel."
No further hostilities took place between the see of Patras
and the Prince of Galilee, who continued to occupy the
south-west of the peninsula, whence his followers were a
menace to the neighbouring Venetian colonies. But the
murder of his uncle, the King of Cyprus, in 1 369, led him to
leave Greece in order to push his pretensions to the throne of
that island; and, in the following year, he and his mother
signed an agreement with the Emperor Philip, by which they
relinquished Achaia, except her widow's portion of Kalamata,
in return for an annuity of 6,000 gulden. From that time
till his death, nine years later, the Prince of Galilee troubled
Greece no more ; but we shall hear of his mother again in
the tangled history of the principality, while an Isabelle de
Lusignan, probably his daughter, married one of the Despots
of Mistra, where her monogram has lately been found. The
Emperor Philip, for his part, did not long enjoy the
undisputed right to bear the title of " Prince of Achaia." He
died in 1373, without having visited his Greek dominions;
but in that short time, his bailie, a Genoese, had so harassed
the Archbishop of Patras, that the latter, a Venetian citizen,
T

290 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
actually offered his town and its territory to the republic of
St Mark. The offer was not accepted then, but there was
talk of removing all the Venetian trade from Glarentza to
Patras, and thirty-five years later the administration of the
town passed into the hands of Venice.1
While the Acciajuoli family had played so important a
part in asserting the independence of the archbishopric of
Patras, its members had continued to extend their territorial
influence in other parts of the peninsula. By his will,
Niccolo Acciajuoli had divided his Greek possessions between
his eldest living son, Angelo, and his cousin and adopted son,
also called Angelo, and afterwards Archbishop of Patras,
whom we have just seen at war. To the former he had
bequeathed " the most noble city of Corinth," with all the
nine castles dependent upon it, as well as all the other lands
and castles of which he was possessed in Greece, except
those which he left to the latter. His adopted son's share
was the castle of Vourkano in Messenia, and all his farms,
rights, and vassals in the barony of Kalamata. The two
Angelos were to share the expense of endowing a Benedictine
monastery in the tenement of Pethone in the said barony.
Anxious for the further welfare of his house in Greece, the
astute testator left still more property — " the lands which had
formerly belonged to Niccolo Ghisi, the great constable of
the principality of Achaia " — to his adopted son, on condition
that the latter married Fiorenza Sanudo, the much-sought
heiress of the duchy of the Archipelago. After the death
of Niccol6, the Emperor Philip, as Prince of Achaia, duly
conferred the castle and town of Corinth afresh upon his son
Angelo, and a little later, as a reward for his trouble and
expense in accompanying him to Hungary, raised him to the
dignity of a palatine. But this Angelo was too much
occupied with affairs in Italy, where he had inherited large
1 Hopf, Chroniques, 227; L. d. P., 152-5; lac. Zeno, Vita Caroli
Zeni, apud Muratori, xix., 212-14; Datta, Spedizione in Oriente di
Amadeo VI., 89-93, 186-9, 205-6; Guichenon, op. eit, I., 416; Servion,
Gestez et Chroniques de la May son de Savoy e, 1 1., 130-2; Boccaccio,
Decamerone, Novel 7, Day II. ; Pegalotti, Della Decima, III., .107 ;
Gerland, Neue Quellen, 41 -2 ; Millet in Bulletin de Corr. helUnique (1906),
453-9.

NERIO ACCIAJUOLI 291
possessions from his father ; he had received from Philip
express permission to nominate a deputy-captain of Corinth
in his place, and as such he selected Rainerio, or Nerio,
Acciajuoli, another cousin and adopted son of Niccolo.
Young Nerio Acciajuoli, who was destined to make
himself master of Athens and rule over the most famous city
in the world, had already begun his extraordinary career in
Greece. He, too, sought the hand of the fair Fiorenza
Sanudo — the Penelope of Frankish Greece — who was now
Duchess of the Archipelago, and his brother John, then Arch
bishop of Patras, aided him in this plan for bringing that
delectable duchy into the family. But Venice was resolved
that so great a prize should fall to the lot of none but a
Venetian nominee, and she succeeded in frustrating Nerio's
intended marriage. Baffled in the JEgean, he next turned
his attention to the Peloponnese, where he purchased from
Marie de Bourbon the baronies of Vostitza and Nivelet.
Thus, when he became deputy-captain of Corinth with its
dependency of Basilicata, the ancient Sikyon, his authority
stretched along a large part of the southern shore of the
Corinthian Gulf, as well as over the isthmus. Soon he
became real owner of the Corinthian group of castles, which
Angelo was glad to pawn to him for a sum of money paid
down. The loan was never repaid ; so, while Angelo and his
offspring kept the empty title of Palatine of Corinth, Nerio
remained in possession of this valuable position, which served
him as a base for attacking the Catalans of Attica. Naturally,
numbers of relatives and hangers-on of the Acciajuoli followed
their fortunate kinsmen to Greece, so that a Florentine
colonisation somewhat replenished the diminished ranks ofthe
French settlers and the Neapolitan adventurers. The baron
age of Achaia was, indeed, by this time a mixture of races ;
of those who figure in the feudal roll of 1 364, the Acciajuoli
hailed from Florence, the Zaccaria from Genoa, Marehesano
from Nice ; Janni Misito was apparently a Greek ; in fact,
EXrd le Noir was almost the only Frenchman left among the
great barons, and even his ancestors had not come over at the
Conquest1 The old conquering families were extinct.
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 164, 175, 189-90, 204-14;
Palmerius apud Muratori, xiii., 1228, 1230 ; Gerland, Neue Quellen, 141-5.

292 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
The Acciajuoli were not the only new Italian family which
at this period laid the foundations of a dynasty in Greece.
Among the favourites of the Angevins were the Tocchi, who
had originally come from Benevento, and who were leading
personages at the Neapolitan court. Flattering genealogists
derived their name and lineage from the Gothic tribe of
Tauci, which had followed Totila into Italy; but the first
historic member of the clan was Ugolino, the grand seneschal.
A Guglielmo Tocco had held the post of governor of Corfu
for Philip I. of Taranto and his son, and became connected
with one of the reigning families of Greece by marrying the
sister of John II. of Epiros. His son Leonardo continued to
enjoy the favour of Robert ; he was one of the witnesses
of his marriage-contract, he worked hard to secure his libera
tion from imprisonment in Hungary, and, by marrying the
niece of Niccolo Acciajuoli, secured the influence of that
powerful statesman. Accordingly, in 1357, Prince Robert
bestowed upon him the county of Cephalonia, to which
Leonardo might perhaps lay some claim as first-cousin of the
last of the Orsini. To the islands of Cephalonia, Zante, and
Ithaka, he added in 1 362 that of Santa Mavra and the fort of
Vonitza, whose inhabitants had grown tired of the Zorzi
family, and summoned him to their aid — an episode which
forms the subject of an unfinished drama by the modern poet
Valaorites. If we may believe another modern writer, he
promised to give them a share in the local administration, to
respect their property, and to tolerate their religion. We
know, however, from a contemporary document, that he
showed his toleration by driving out the orthodox arch
bishop from the island. He thus reunited the old
dominions of the Orsini, and he and his heirs, under the
style of " Duke of Leucadia, Count of Cephalonia, and Lord
of Vonitza," not only held their possessions for over a
century, but, almost alone of the Frankish rulers of
Greece, left representatives down to the present generation.1
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 307, 410; L. d. P., 151;
Remondini, De Zacynthi Antiquitatibus, 139, 142-3 ; Hopf, Chroniques,
182 ; Ducange,^. eit, ii., 264, and Predelli, Commemoriali, ii., 263, give
the date 1357 and his title ; Mazella, Descrittione del Regno di Napoli,
643-5 5 Petritzdpoulos, Saggio, 45 ; Miklosich und Miiller, i., 493.

END OF THE ORSINI IN EPIROS 293
It is only in our own time that the family has become
extinct. It was not to be wondered that the Angevins should
desire to see the Ionian islands in the hands of a strong man
whom they could trust, at a moment when the adjacent
continent, where they still held Lepanto, was in flames. On
the death ofthe great Servian tsar, Dushan, in 1355, anarchy
broke out in his rapidly formed empire, and every petty
Servian satrap declared his independence. At the same
moment, the death of Preliub, the Servian ruler of Thessaly,
and the fall of John Cantacuzene from the Byzantine throne,
completed the confusion. Such an opportunity seemed to
the dethroned Despot of Epiros, Nikephoros II., favourable
for the recovery of his inheritance. Since his surrender, he
had been living as governor of the Thracian cities on the
Dardanelles in the enjoyment of his imperial father-in-law's
favour and confidence. He now marched into Thessaly,
whose inhabitants received him gladly, and then crossed
Pindos into Akarnania, whence he drove out the Servian
prince, Simeon Urosh, thus reviving in his own person the
ancient glories of the Greek Despotat of Epiros. But, from a
desire to conciliate Servian sympathies, he was so foolish as
to desert his devoted wife, in order to contract a marriage
with the sister-in-law of the late Servian tsar. This act both
offended and alarmed his Albanian subjects, particularly
devoted to the Cantacuzene family, and then, as now,
suspicious of Servian influence. The injured wife took refuge
with her brother Manuel at Mistra, while the Albanians rose
against her husband. Nikephoros summoned to bis aid a
body of Turkish mercenaries, who were ravaging Thessaly,
and confidently attacked his rebellious subjects. Rashness
had always been his chief characteristic, and in the battle
which ensued, near the town of Acheloos in 1358, it cost him
his life. Thus ended the Despotat of Epiros, and the lands
which had owned the sway of the -Greek Angeli and the
Roman Orsini, now fell into Servian and Albanian hands.
Simeon Urosh, who now styled himself " Emperor of the
Greeks and Serbs," established his court, with all the high-
sounding titles of Byzantium, at Trikkala, where an
inscription still preserves his name, and obtained recog-

294 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
nition of his authority, at least in name, over Epiros, as
well as Thessaly. Henceforth, however, he' devoted his
personal attention exclusively to the latter, assigning
Joannina to his son-in-law, Thomas Preliubovich, in 1367, and
^Etolia and Akarnania to two Albanian chiefs, belonging to
the clans of Boua and Liosa — a name still to be found in the
plain of Attica. Thus, about 1 362, all north-west Greece was
Albanian, except where the Angevin flag still floated over
the triple walls of Lepanto, and that of the Tocchi over
Vonitza.1 The brief Servian domination over Thessaly was destined
soon to yield before the advance of the all-conquering Turks.
But the reigns of Simeon Urosh and his son John, who
sought to live as men of peace in their Thessalian capital of
Trikkala, have bequeathed to modern Greece the strangest
of all her mediaeval monuments. No one who has visited
the famous monasteries " in air," the weirdly fantastic
Meteora, which crown the needle-like crags of the grim
valley of Kalabaka, has satisfactorily answered the question,
how the first monk ever ascended the sheer rocks on which
they are built, rocks to which the traveller must scale by
swinging ladders, unless he prefers to be hauled up, fish-like,
in a net. According to the late Abbot of Meteoron, who
published a history of the twenty-four monasteries,2 the
origin of this aerial monastic community may be traced to
the end of the tenth century, when a monk Andronikos, or
Athanasios, established himself there at the time when the
great Bulgarian tsar Samuel was ravaging Thessaly. The
same authority ascribes the foundation of the most accessible
ofthe five still inhabited monasteries, that of St Stephen,
to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the monks
there related to the present author how the pious emperor,
Andr6nikos the elder, when forced to abdicate, had come
and settled for a little time there, under the name of
Antonios, giving at his departure a considerable sum for
the extension of the buildings. According, however, to a
fifteenth century manuscript, preserved in a late copy at
1 Cantacuzene, iii., 211, 310, 315-19; Epirotica, 211-16; Nikephdros
Gregorys, III., 249, 557 ; Tlapvaoabi, v., 191.
2 'S6. MfT<!wpa.

THE MONASTERIES OF METEORA 295
Meteora,1 and to a monkish biography recently published by
Professor Lampros, it was the Abbot Neilos of Doupiane, near
the picturesque village of Kastrdki, who, in 1367, first built
four churches in the caverns, which we see in the rocks of that
wild and savage valley of isolated crags, while the Athanasios
who "first mounted to the flat top" of Meteoron was a
contemporary of Simeon Urosh, who had been taken prisoner
by the Catalans when a lad at Neopatras. In any case, the
monasteries attained their zenith under the Servian rulers of
Thessaly. John Urosh, who had been on Mount Athos as
a youth, retired from the world to the pinnacle of Meteoron,
as the largest of the monasteries is pre-eminently called,
leaving two deputies to govern his dominions. The humble
fathers received him with gladness ; we can easily imagine
the delight with which they listened to his tales of the
career of politics which he had left, just as their modern
successors love no talk so much as that of the stranger newly
arrived from a ministerial crisis at Athens. By his energy
and influence he was able to increase the importance of the
monastery; in 1388, he founded the present church of the
Transfiguration, as an inscription still preserved there states ;
while his genius for organisation was displayed in a larger
sphere on behalf of his sister, the widowed Lady of Joannina,
and in the less exalted task of managing the lands which
she bestowed on the monastery, which still reverences his
portrait with that of Athanasios, its pious founder. After
presiding for seventeen years over the community as " father
of Meteoron," he finally became Abbot — a title hitherto
borne by no head of the Meteora monasteries, which had
remained under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Doupiane —
and was consecrated a bishop by the metropolitan of Larissa,
when, in 1 393, the Turkish Conquest of* Thessaly put an end
to his temporal power. The Abbot of Meteoron became
1 Translated in Revue Archdologique (1864), 157 sqq., N<?os 'B%o-
p.vfiiu>>v, ii., 61 sqq. There is no authority for the legend that a much
greater man, the emperor John Cantacuzene, was " King Joseph," and
arrived at Meteora in 1368. Not only the MS. but the Epirotica mention
John Urosh by that title. Col. Leake (Travels in Northern Greece, iv.,
539) heard the same tradition from the monks, and the note to Codinus,
p. 286, cannot refer to Cantacuzene, who died long before 141 1, but to
him. A MS. now in the National Library at Athens bears his autograph.

296 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
the president of a monastic federation, of which the other
monasteries were members, retaining the management of
their internal affairs — a form of government which has now
ceased. But his admirers still called him " King Joseph " —
the monastic name which he had assumed — from the re
membrance of his former dignity, and he died in 141 1 in
his lonely cell far above the intrigues and controversies of
his time. Such was the euthanasia of the last Christian
ruler of Thessaly.
Meanwhile, the Catalan duchy of Athens, like the
principality of Achaia, had experienced the evils of a weak
and absent sovereign, and of the consequent anarchy which
ensued. We saw that, in 1363, in response to the Theban
envoys, Frederick III. of Sicily had re-appointed Moncada
as vicar-general for life, and had sent letters to the community
of Thebes and to Roger de Lluria, bidding them obey this
tried representative of the duke. But, although entrusted
by his sovereign with very wide powers, Moncada does not
seem to have occupied himself very much with the affairs of
the duchy, nor even to have revisited it. At any rate, early
in 1365, he was still only preparing to sail for Greece, where
one great Catalan magnate after another acted as his deputy.
First it seems to have been James Fadrique, Count of
Salona, the former vicar-general, who governed in his stead ;
then, after Fadrique's death in 1365, we find Roger de Lluria
once more rehabilitated and negotiating as " marshal and
vicar-general" with the Venetians for the renewal of the
treaty of peace between them and the Company. It is
characteristic of Venetian policy towards the Latin states of
Greece, that the republic emphatically rejected Lluria's
request that the Company might be allowed to fit out a fleet
at its own expense against its enemies. He was reminded
that the old clause prohibiting the growth of an Athenian
navy was still in force ; thus did Venice crush the efforts of
this mediaeval Themistokles, as in our own time the Powers
have sealed up the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
A letter of the governor of Livadia to Frederick III. depicts
in dark colours the condition of the duchies at this period.
Menaced from without by the Venetians of Eubcea and the
Turkish peril, the Catalans were divided among themselves

DISSENSIONS IN THE DUCHIES 29?
by party strife, which paralysed the central authority, and
caused a general feeling of insecurity. One party wished to
place the duchies under the aegis of Genoa, the natural
enemy of Venice, while a rival to Lluria had arisen in the
person of Pedro de Pou (the Catalan equivalent of de Puteo),
who held the strong castle of Lamia. This man had long
exercised the chief judicial authority in the duchies, and acted
at this time as their vicar during the absence of Moncada.
We may infer that the absent vicar-general had not forgotten
Lluria's treasonable alliance with the Turks, which his
master had not dared to punish, and may have found Pou
a more loyal, or, at ariy rate, a more supple representative.
Pou was, however, a grasping and ambitious official, as well
as an unjust judge. While he allowed cases to be protracted
for years, while he seized a Greek serf, the property of
another Catalan, and sold him as a slave to Majorca, his
advice to Moncada was most injurious to Lluria and his
friends, whose castles he seized during an Albanian raid
and then retained. The discontent culminated in a rising
against the tyrant in the summer of 1366. Pou, his wife,
and his chief followers were slain ; Moncada's men who came
to avenge them were killed ; and Lluria once more acted as
vicar-general. The victors sent an envoy to Sicily to justify
their conduct to their duke, who wisely granted them an
amnesty, which he had no power to refuse, and ordered all
confiscated property to be restored. The experiment of
allowing the vicar-general, as well as the duke, to remain in
Sicily, while the duchies were administered by the vicar-
general's vicars, had proved to be a failure ; as a strong man
on the spot, Lluria, now the enemy of the Turks, was the
best selection ; after some hesitation, due to the difficulty of
solving the delicate situation created by Moncada's absence
in Sicily, the natural desire not to offend that powerful noble,
and an equally natural distrust of Lluria, King Frederick
came to a decision, which was perhaps inevitable under the
circumstances. Moncada was removed, and in May 1367,
Lluria was formally re-appointed vicar-general during his
sovereign's good pleasure, in consideration of his " strenuous
defence of the duchies against the Parthians (or Turks),"
when he had "shirked neither danger to his person nor

298 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
expense to his pocket." The Thebans must have smiled
when this diplomatic phrase of the ducal chancery was
read to them ; but it was the age and country of rapid changes
of policy, and Roger de Lluria now found it worth while to
be loyal. Honours were heaped upon him by his grateful, or
nervous, master, the privileges granted to him by the last
two Dukes of Athens were confirmed, and thenceforth to
his death he combined the double qualities of marshal and
vicar-general of the duchies.1
The declining power of the Catalan duchies inspired the
heirs of Walter of Brienne with the idea of renewing the
attempt which he had made so unsuccessfully nearly forty
years before. His nephew, Sohier d'Enghien, who had
borne the title of Duke of Athens, had perished on the
scaffold at the hands ofthe regent of Hainault in 1366; but
his brothers, Guy of Argos, and the Counts of Lecce and
Conversano, asked the Venetian republic, of which they
were honorary citizens, to aid them in the recovery of Athens
by permitting them to use Negroponte as their base. The
republic coldly replied that she was at peace with the
Catalans, and must therefore decline. If we may trust a
notice in the Aragonese Chronicle? the Count of Conversano,
at that time bailie of Achaia, none the less attacked Athens
with an army from Achaia, and temporarily occupied the
whole city except the Akropolis. But, in any case, through
the good offices of the bailie of Negroponte, a treaty was
made between the vicar-general and the lord of Argos, by
which the latter's only daughter was to marry Lluria's son
John, and Venice was to receive Megara as a pledge of good
faith. The marriage did not take place, and ten years later
we find John de Lluria a prisoner of the Count of Conver
sano.3 From some mysterious documents preserved in the
1 Rosario Gregorio, II., 57-78; Guardione, Sui Dominio dei Ducati
di Atene e Neopatria 22-4 ; Ldmpros, *E77pa0a, 234-8, 254-61, 283,
302, 328, 343 (whence it is clear that Pou was slain before August 3,
1366, when Lluria first re-appears as acting vicar-general). Cf. the
author's article in the Eng. Hist. Review, xxii., 519.
2 P. 155-
3 Rubid y Lluch, Los Navarros, 437, 440 ; Predelli, Comme moriali,
III., 96 ; St Genois, i., 41.

COLONIAL SPIRIT OF INDEPENDENCE 299
Vatican archives, it would appear that another and much
more elaborate matrimonial alliance was being projected at
this time for the purpose of reconciling the claims of the
house of Enghien to Athens with the ducal dominion
exercised over it by the King of Sicily. The idea was to
marry Gautier d'Enghien, now titular Duke of Athens, to
Constance, daughter of John of Randazzo and first cousin
of King Frederick. This intrigue occupied a number of
celestial minds, but without result. It proves, at least, the
tenacity of the claims put forward even at this late date by
the heirs of the last French Duke of Athens.1
The domestic quarrels of the Catalans broke out again
on the death of Roger de Lluria in 1370, and the mutual
jealousies of the leading men were increased by the practice
of sending strangers from Sicily to fill the most important
posts in the duchies for life, or during good pleasure. Thus
at this time, both the vicar-general and the captain of " the
castle of Athens," belonged to the great Sicilian family of
Peralta, connected by marriage with the royal house, but
newcomers to Greece.2 The Catalans had now been estab
lished for two generations at Athens, and they felt, like most
colonies after that period, that the mother country should
intervene as little as possible in their affairs, and that the
best places should be held by the colonists. Being not only
a colony, but a military commonwealth, they preferred that
tenure of office should be short, so that those places should
go round. Frederick III., docile as usual, granted both their
requests ; the captain of the Akropolis was removed because
he had been three years — the old constitutional period — in
office ; henceforth the community of Athens was to elect its
own captain from among the body of Athenian citizens,
merely subject to the duke's confirmation. A similar
arrangement was made at Livadia, whose governor had
received and held all the three offices of castellano, veguer,
and captain, as the reward for his services as a peacemaker
during the barons' war, which had; begun after Lluria's
demise. These offices were now separated, as the Catalans
1 Ldmpros, "Eyypa<pa, 82-8, and Eng. Hist. Review, toe. eit.
2 Matteo de Peralta was appointed March 31, i37o(Lcimpros, "Eyypafia,
314. Cf. Ibid, 273, 317).

300 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
desired ; but so morose was the reply of the people of
Livadia, when asked to submit the names of their new
officials, that the king took the matter into his own hands.1
A few lines about the Venetian colonies will complete
this sketch of Greece in the second half of the fourteenth
century. The importance which the republic attached to
Modon and Coron may be inferred from the minute regula
tions for their government, the so-called "Statutes and
Capitulations," which begin with this period. The two
Messenian stations suffered, like the rest of the world, from
the Black Death, so that it was necessary to send a fresh
batch of colonists from home, and the franchise was extended
to all the inhabitants, except the Jews. A curious regulation
forbade the Venetian garrison to wear beards, so as to
distinguish them from the Greeks. We still hear complaints
of the maltreatment of the Greek peasants there, and their
consequent emigration into the Frankish territory ; but they
now had influential spokesmen in the Greek bishops, who
were permitted to reside in their ancient sees by the side of
their Catholic colleagues. One of the latter, however, St
Peter Thomas, effected many conversions, and even in that
age, when the ecclesiastics wielded the greatest influence in
Frankish Greece, his authority with the great nobles of
Achaia was exceptional. Though usually more peaceful than
the neighbouring states, the Venetian colonies were affected
by the war between the republic and Genoa, which lasted
from 1350 to 1355. In 1347 the Genoese had recovered from
the Byzantines the rich mastic island of Chios, and entrusted
its administration to a chartered company, or maona, which
continued to manage it for more than 200 years. This step,
and the exclusion of their commerce from the Black Sea,
irritated the Venetians, who sent a fleet to the Levant, which
made Negroponte the base of its operations. The large
harbour between the classic bay of Aulis, where the Greek
fleet had assembled before sailing for Troy, and the Skdla
of Oropos, was the scene of a Genoese defeat ; but the
vanquished retaliated by burning the Venetian and Jewish
quarters of Negroponte and hanging up the keys of the town
before the gates of Chios. The Venetians now induced both
1 Lampi'OS, "Eyypaipa, 249-52, 319-21.

WAR BETWEEN GENOA AND VENICE 301
John Cantacuzene and Pedro IV. of Aragon, whose rule over
Sardinia had been undermined by Genoese intrigues, to join
them in crushing the common enemy. The King of Aragon's
action naturally predisposed the Catalans of Attica to take
the same side as their fellow-countrymen ; but Pedro declined
to assist until Venice had paid to Muntaner's heirs the
compensation due for the loss sustained by the Catalan
chronicler at Negroponte half a century earlier. The aid of a
Catalan force from Athens and Thebes enabled the Venetians
to repel a Genoese attack on the fortress of Oreos, then a
strong place, though now a mere ruin ; but Pteleon, the
importance of which had much increased of late, was exposed
to the forays of the invaders, who also landed in the famous
harbour of Navarino, and plundered the Venetians. Now
that the Genoese family of Zaccaria had become barons in
the Morea, it was inevitable that a war between the two rival
republics should involve hostilities between it and the
garrisons of the two Messenian colonies.1 So risky had
official posts in Greece become, that Venice found it neces
sary to raise the salaries of her governors of Modon and
Coron, and of her councillors at Negroponte, in order to
attract good men.
The damage done to Negroponte was soon repaired, and
the war served to strengthen the growing power of Venice
over the island. Indeed, Nikeph6ros Gregoras, who himself
visited the island during the war, remarks that " Eubcea has
now been subject to the Venetians for many years." The
population had been increased by many fugitives from
Thessaly after the Catalan conquest of Athens, and there,
too, all the natives of the city, except the Jews, now
received the Venetian franchise after ten years' residence.
Even the Jews, who had had to pay for fortifying the town of
Negroponte more securely against the Turks, preferred to
1 Miklosich und Miiller, i., 333 ; Nikephdros Gregoras, ii., 878 ; iii.,
42-4, 46-51 ; Cantacuzene, iii., 209 ; Cortusii and M. Villani, apud
Muratori, xii., 935-6 ; xiv., 82 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, ii., 204, 206,
215, 231, 248 ; Sdthas, Uv-npteia, iv., 6. Nikephdros Gregoras in the first
passage quoted gives "Oreos" as the scene of the naval battle instead
of " Oropos,'' which appears in the second. But " Oropos " is obviously
correct, as " Oreos " is far too much to the north.

302 THE RISE OF THE ACCIAJUOLI
be under the direct authority of the bailie, to whom they
now paid nearly £90, in taxes, instead of remaining " Jews
of the Lombards," to whom they had paid only half that
sum. The triarchs, now reduced to two — one a Ghisi, the
other a Dalle Carceri — no longer opposed the republic,
though they occasionally complained that the bailie inter
fered with them and even quashed the decisions of their
judge ; but feudal disputes were referred by common consent
to the Latin patriarch of Constantinople, who, as we saw,
now, ex-o^icio, held the see of Negroponte, and must, by that
fact, have conferred dignity upon the island. Upon the
triarchs was shifted the cost of fitting out the Euboean galleys
— a burden subsequently shared between them and Venice —
while the bailie appointed the collectors of customs. Two
of the chief fortresses of the island passed, too, into Venetian
hands — Larmena and the " red castle " of Karystos. Venice
had long striven to obtain the latter coveted position, even
to-day a noble ruin, and then so strong that it could be
defended by some thirty men-at-arms ; at last, in 1365, after
many attempts, she bought the whole barony, serfs and all,
from Bonifacio Fadrique, for 6000 ducats.1
Thus, the chief results of the forty years which have
been described in this chapter, were the revival of Greek
influence in the Peloponnese, thanks to the statesmanship of
the Cantacuzenes ; and the rise of the Acciajuoli as a force
in Greece, thanks to the shrewdness of a Florentine banker.
At Athens, the ultimate goal of the latter's family, the
Catalans have grown feeble and disunited ; in Epiros and
Thessaly, Serb and Albanian have displaced alike Frank
and Hellene ; while the Turk is waiting his time to supplant
all four Christian races. In the Ionian islands a new and
virile Italian dynasty has been founded ; while Venice has
tightened her hold on her Greek colonies. Such is the
picture which Greece presents to us in 1373.
1 Hopf, Karystos, 602-6 ; Arch. Veneto, xx., 90.

CHAPTER X
THE NAVARRESE COMPANY ( 1 373- 1 388)
The fast approaching Turkish danger ought to have aroused
all the Latins of the Levant to present a united front
against the common foe, whom concerted action might have
kept at a distance. But the motley population of the
Balkan peninsula had then, as now, no common bond
which would prevent them from sacrificing the general
welfare to some temporary advantage. Thus the Byzantine
emperor, John V. Palaiol6gos, instead of joining the Serbs
and Bulgarians in a league against Murad I., had contracted
a selfish alliance with the Sultan, which had not even the
merit of saving him from the ignominy of sacrificing his
honour in Venice and the religion of his ancestors in Rome
for the vain hope of aid from the West. The new pope,
Gregory XI., was, however, so much moved by "the tearful
exposition " of the Archbishop of Neopatras, who told him
how the Turks had subdued and held enslaved the Greek
Christians almost up to the frontiers of the principality of
Achaia and the duchy of Athens, and threatened the very
existence of those states, that he summoned the Christian
rulers of the East to a congress to be held at Thebes on
ist October 1373. The papal invitation was addressed to
the real emperor, John V, and to the titular emperor, Philip
III. ; to the republics of Venice and Genoa; to the Knights
of St John ; to the kings of Cyprus, Hungary, and Sicily ;
to the last named's vicar-general of the duchies of Athens and
Neopatras; Niccold III. dalle Carceri, Duke of the Archi
pelago ; Leonardo Tocco, Duke of Leucadia ; Nerio Accia
juoli, " Prince of Corinth ; " Francesco Giorgio, Marquis of
Boudonitza ; Francesco Gattalusio, " Prince of Mytilene " ;
and Ermolao Minotto, lord of little Seriphos. We can well
303

304 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
imagine how the ancient city of Thebes was enlivened by
the arrival of these more or less eminent persons, or their
plenipotentiaries, how union against the infidel was preached
by the Archbishops of Neopatras and Naxos, how their
excellent advice was loudly applauded, and how personal
jealousies conspired to render abortive the resolutions of the
congress, just as they have marred those of every subsequent
congress on the Eastern question. Scarcely had the delegates
separated, when Nerio Acciajuoli, the boldest and astutest
of them all, disregarding the pope's appeal to him as a
champion of Christendom, seized the excuse afforded by
the Company's refusal to hand over some of his fugitive
vassals, to attack Megara and to make himself master of
that important position on the way to Athens. It is
remarkable as a proof that Catalan rule was not altogether
unpopular in Greece, that one of its warmest defenders was
a Greek notary, Demetrios Rendi, who a few years before
had received the Catalan franchise and a grant of lands
from Frederick III., and afterwards rose to wealth and
importance at Athens. But, in all countries governed by
foreigners, there are always natives bound by ties of interest
to the governing class. Nerio returned with some distin-
quished captives to Corinth ; Megara remained in his
power, and its bishop was glad to find a living as priest of
the chapel of St Bartholomew, which was in the governor's
palace on the Akropolis. So weak was the once famous
Company that it could not protect its own territory from the
upstart Florentine. Disturbances, which broke out on the
death of Matteo de Peralta, the vicar-general, in the following
year, prevented reprisals ; in his place, the various communi
ties of the duchies, without waiting for orders from Sicily,
unanimously elected Louis Fadrique, Count of Salona and
grandson of the famous Alfonso, an excellent appointment —
for Fadrique was now the most important member of the
old colonial families — which Frederick III. did not fail to
ratify.1 He was wise to waive the irregularity of the
1 Raynaldus, vii., 224 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II. , i., 218-20 ;
Jauna, Histoire gdnirale des royaumes de Chypre, etc., ii., 882 ; Rubid y
Lluch, Los Navarros, 464, 465, 474 ; Lrtmpros "E77pci<pa, 286, 289-90, 298,
300, 323, 342,

DISPUTED SUCCESSION AT ATHENS 305
election, for Fadrique had restored order to his Greek
states. The death of that weak monarch, in 1377, led to a
complete change in the ducal dynasty. Frederick III.,
dying without legitimate sons, bequeathed the duchies to
his young daughter Maria ; but the succession was disputed
by his brother-in-law, King Pedro IV. of Aragon, who
appealed to the principal of the Salic law as laid down by
Frederick II. The prospect of having a girl at their head
was naturally displeasing to the Catalans of Athens at a
moment when the Turkish danger was imminent. It was
no wonder, then, that all the three archbishops — Ballester of
Athens, Simon of Thebes, and Matthew of Neopatras — and
the principal barons and knights at once declared for Pedro
IV. Among them were, first and foremost, the vicar-general,
Louis Fadrique, Count of Salona and lord of Lamia, with
his cousin, Don John of Aragon ; the Count of Mitre, or
Demetrias, on the Gulf of Volo, who kept 1500 Albanian
horsemen in his pay, and enjoyed the privilege of bearing the
royal standard ; the governors of the four important military
positions of Athens, Livadia, Salona, and Neopatras ; the
two brothers Puigpardines, lords of Karditza and Atalante ;
Pedro de Ballester, who held the sordid village of Kapraina,
which has grown up on the site of Chaironeia; and
Melisseno Novelles, half-Greek, half-Catalan, whose castle
bore the name of Estafiol. There was, however, a minority
in favour of Maria of Sicily, the leader of which was
Francesco Giorgio, Marquis of Boudonitza, who was
naturally eager to shake off his vassalage to the vicar-general,
and who, as a Venetian, had no sympathy with the Catalans.
With him were Don Pedro Fadrique, lord of ^Egina, whose
rebellion caused him to forfeit his island to his cousin, the
vicar-general ; and Thomas de Pou, a son-in-law of Roger
de Lluria. The burgesses, anxious for security, supported
the King of Aragon.1
1 Curita, Anales, II., 377 ; Indices, 350-1 ; Rubio y Lluch, Los
Navarros, 265, 266, 436, 440-2, 447-9, 477, 482. The latter shows from
the Aragonese documents, that " Don Louis de Aragon, Count of Malta,"
whom C, urita quotes as a separate person, is none other than Don Louis
Fadrique. U

306 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
The Aragonese party, represented by the vicar-general
and the governor of Athens, sent two envoys to Pedro IV.'s
court, informing him that the people of the duchies awaited
his commands, and craving him to appoint someone as his
representative there. The king replied, thanking the vicar-
general and the governor for their faithful services, and
requesting them to remain in office until the arrival of the
new vicar-general. For that post he selected, in 1379,
Philip Dalmau, Viscount of Rocaberti, whose appointment he
notified to the authorities and communities of Thebes,
Athens, Livadia, Neopatras, and Siderokastron. At the
same time, he sent Berenguer Ballester of Thebes, one
of the envoys, back to the duchies, requesting that he
might return, together with some other suitable person,
authorised to offer their homage to the new " Duke of Athens
and Neopatras."1
At this moment, however, another competitor appeared
in the Catalan duchies. The origin of the Navarrese
Company, which now attempted to repeat the exploits of the
Catalan Company seventy years earlier, is still obscure. But
it seems probable that it resembled that of its more famous
predecessor. Employed by King Charles II. of Navarre in
his struggle with Charles V. of France, the Navarrese
Company found no further occupation at home when the two
enemies made peace in 1366, just as the Catalans were no
longer able to practise their profession in Sicily after the
peace between the houses of Anjou and Aragon in 1302.
But Don Louis, the adventurous brother of the King of
Navarre, had just married the Duchess of Durazzo, who had
inherited the claims of her grandfather, John of Gravina, to
Albania, and when, in 1368, the Albanians captured Durazzo,
and with it the last vestige of Angevin rule over their country,
the chivalrous Louis naturally set about making preparations
to recover his wife's lost dominions. A body of 800
Navarrese and Gascons, mostly men of good family, had
accompanied him to Naples, where his wife resided ; more
followed, and a further force of 400 was furnished him by the
King of Navarre, by the latter's chamberlain, Mahiot de
Coquerel, whom we shall later on find as bailie of Achaia,
1 Rubio y Lluch, Los Navarros, 444-51.

JACQUES DE BAUX 307
and others. But the death of Don Louis in 1376 put an end
to his plans for the reconquest of Durazzo,1 and we hear no
more of the Navarrese Company till 1380. In that year,
Jacques de Baux, titular emperor of Constantinople and
Prince of Achaia, thought that the moment had come to
occupy the Greek dominions, which should have been his,
and that the Navarrese Company would be the best
instrument for his purpose.
Philip III. had died, like his brother, without children,
in 1373, so that his title of Emperor of Constantinople and
his principality of Achaia should have passed to his nephew,
Jacques de Baux, son of his sister, the widow of King
Edward Baliol of Scotland, who had subsequently married
Francois de Baux, Duke of Andria, in Apulia, a member of a
distinguished Provencal family, which had followed the
fortunes of Charles I. of Anjou to Naples, and had attained
to high dignities under the Angevin rule. The Baux were
already connected with Achaia, where Jacques's grandfather
had been twice bailie for the Empress Catherine of Valois,
and at first the barons recognised his mother as their lawful
princess. Indeed, during the civil war between the Baux
and Queen Joanna I. of Naples, who twice drove Jacques's
rebellious father from her kingdom, the son found a
temporary refuge, and perhaps recognition, in Greece. But
as one of her numerous husbands had been the son of King
James II. of Majorca, and therefore a direct descendant ofthe
Villehardouins, Joanna might advance some sort of claim to
the principality, to which he had already been a pretender.
It seems probable that there had always been a party favour
able to his pretensions, for it is remarkable that among the
envoys whom the barons sent in 1374 to, offer the princely
dignity to Queen Joanna, was the same Erard le Noir, who
had signed the similar document to the King of Majorca
thirty years earlier. The embassy, which was very repre
sentative — for it included Leonardo Tocco, Count of
Cephalonia, and, as such, one of the peers of the principality,
and the two great barons, Centurione Zaccaria and Janni
Misito — informed the queen that they would accept her as
their princess on condition that she promised to maintain
1 Rubio y Lluch, Los Navarros, 251, 254, 428, 430-5 ; Curita, IL, 377.

308 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
their old constitution, or, in other words, leave them alone.
The queen naturally agreed to such easy terms, took the
oath and the title of princess, and sent a bailie to govern in
her name. This official was, however, a restless man, who
not only broke the long peace between the principality and
the Despot Manuel of Mistra, by besieging the oft-mentioned
castle of Gardiki in the pass of Makryplagi, but also irritated
the Venetians by raising a question as to the boundaries of
their Messenian colonies. The queen was willing to refer
this dispute to a joint commission, and told her bailie to
treat the Venetians properly ; but she had already grown
tired of what had turned out to be a troublesome possession ;
so, when she had taken a fourth husband, Otto of Brunswick,
in 1376, she conferred the principality upon him, and, in the
following year, they pawned it to the Knights of the Hospital
of St John of Jerusalem for five years, in consideration of an
annual payment of 4000 ducats.1
The Knights of St John were no strangers in the Morea.
Like the Templars and the Teutonic Knights, they had
received four fiefs there at the time of the Conquest, and the
possessions of the Templars had passed to them on the
dissolution of that order in 1312. On the roll of 1364, we
find two castles belonging to them ; a little earlier,
Innocent VI. had suggested that they should move from
Rhodes, which had been their headquarters since 1309, to
the Peloponnese, and defend it against the Turks. Their
grand-master at this time was Juan Fernandez de Heredia,
a noble and adventurous Spaniard, who had won the favour
of Innocent VI., had become " the right arm of the Avignon
papacy," had fought against the Black Prince at Poitiers,
and had lately escorted Gregory XI. to Rome, when that
pontiff, in obedience to St Catherine of Siena, ended the
" Babylonish captivity " and returned to the widowed city.
The barons, notably the Venetian Archbishop of Patras,
welcomed the advent of so distinguished a soldier, who
seemed a heaven-sent defender of their threatened land. A
new and vigorous race of invaders had now appeared to
contest the country with the remnant of the Franks. Since
1 Ducange, II., 292-4; L. d. P., 155-9 (which ends here); Predelli,
Commemoriali, 111., 129-31 ; Costanzo, Storia del Regno di Napoli, II., 21.

HEREDIA IN GREECE 309
the collapse of the Despotat of Epiros, and the establishment
of two Albanian chieftains on its ruins, the north of Achaia
had been menaced by an Albanian immigration, as well as
by Turkish raids. The very year after the Knights had
acquired the principality, one of those chieftains, Ghin (or
John) Boua Spata, who had already seized the possessions
of the rival clan of Liosa at Arta upon the death of its chief
by the plague, and had thus united ^Etolia and Akarnania
in his own person, captured Lepanto, and thus destroyed the
last vestige of Angevin rule on the continent of Greece.
For over eighty years the French lilies had waved over the
triple fortifications of that celebrated castle ; it had been part
of the dowry which Philip of Taranto had received in 1 294
with the unhappy Thamar ; now it had gone, and an
Albanian chieftain held one of the keys of the Corinthian
Gulf. Heredia judged that this insult must be avenged ; he
crossed the gulf, and recaptured Lepanto, But his imprison
ment by the Black Prince after the battle of Poitiers had not
taught him prudence ; he marched rashly into the heart of
the enemy's country, intending to take Arta, was defeated
by the Albanians, and brought as a prisoner to Spata. The
chieftain was "a man of thought and action, in all things
distinguished, and of striking beauty " ; but, with all these
qualities, he lacked generosity, and, without hesitation, he
sold his noble captive to the Turks. In spite of the efforts
of the Knights, assisted by the money of the Archbishop of
Patras, to retain the important position of Lepanto, it fell
again into the possession of the redoubtable Spata.1 Heredia,
after languishing for two years in prison, was ransomed in
1 381, and returned to the Morea.
Meanwhile, the lawful heir of that principality thought
1 Epirotica, 221, 223; Gerland, Neue Quellen, 43; Miklosich und
Miiller, ii., n ; Bosio (DelV Istoria della Sacra Religione . . . di S. Gio.
Gierosolno., 1 1., 126-9) gives a very picturesque, but mostly inaccurate,
account of Heredia's campaign in Greece, making him scale the walls of
Patras and slay the Turkish (!) commander with his own hand. Heredia
then proceeds against Corinth, but is captured by the Turks, who obtain
back Patras as part of his ransom. It need scarcely be said, that in 1378
Patras was not Turkish, nor had the Turks " lately taken the Morea."
Bosio tells us, however, on the authority of the documents of the Order,
of Heredia's captivity in Albania, and of his release in 1381.

310 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
that his hour of triumph had come. His rival, Queen Joanna
of Naples, had recently been deposed by Pope Urban VI.,
and in Greece circumstances seemed peculiarly favourable
to the claimant's plans ; in Achaia, the Knights of St John
were growing tired of their lease; in Attica there was a
disputed succession. As instruments of his policy, Jacques de
Baux naturally chose the men of the disoccupied Navarrese
Company, who probably regarded him with favour as the
husband of their late leader's sister-in-law. For him, they
took Corfu from Queen Joanna's officials ; and then directed
their steps, early in 1380, towards Attica. There were special
reasons for attacking the Catalan duchy. The Navarrese had
an old grudge against Pedro IV, who had imprisoned their
late beloved leader ; Baux, as the uncle of Maria of Sicily,
regarded Pedro as an usurper ; while he was also connected
with the family of Enghien, who were claimants to the duchy ;
moreover, as Prince of Achaia, he might claim suzerainty
over Attica, as some of his predecessors had done, while, as
titular emperor, he could cast the shadow of his authority
over the whole Latin Orient.
The Navarrese Company was under the command of
Mahiot de Coquerel and Pedro de S. Superan, surnamed
Bordo, either because he had received the freedom of
Bordeaux from our Black Prince, or, as is more probable,
because he was a " bastard " (port), like so many other famous
commanders ofthe Middle Ages.1 These experienced person
ages found valuable auxiliaries in the leaders of the Sicilian
party. The Marquis of Boudonitza, whose castle com
manded the defile of Thermopylae, allowed them to pass
beneath his walls and assisted their enterprise ; Niccolo III.
dalle Carceri, Duke of the Archipelago and lord of two out
of the three great baronies of Eubcea, was their ally, hoping
by means of their swords to make himself master of the
city of Negroponte. From the Morea, the Knights of St
John came to pillage the distracted duchy of Athens, where
they possessed a stronghold, in the castle of Sykaminon ; and
it seems probable that the Count of Conversano had made a
second attack upon the lawful heritage of his house, for at
the time ofthe Navarrese invasion, John de Lluria of Thebes
1 Ducange's note to Cinnamus 392 ; Rubid, ov. eit, 309, n. 2.

NAVARRESE CONQUESTS IN BCEOTIA 311
had been already two years his prisoner. Added to these
misfortunes were the mutual jealousies of that city and
Athens, which had recently aimed at some form of autonomy,
and had chafed at being regarded as inferior to the capital in
Bceotia. Finally, among the Greeks not a few were dis
affected to the Catalan rule. It is no wonder, then, that
one place after another fell rapidly into the hands of these
fresh adventurers from the West, fresh in both senses of the
word, if we contrast them with the degenerate grandsons of
the Catalans who had conquered Attica. The fine castle,
which still stands on the hill above Livadia, a noble monu
ment of Catalan rule in Greece, was, indeed, bravely defended
by its veteran governor William de Almenara and James
Ferrer, a Catalan from Salona. The citizens were mostly
loyal, for the Greeks of Livadia had received special privileges
at the Catalan Conquest, and their town had attained great
prominence under Catalan rule. But the treachery of a
Greek from Durazzo opened the gates to the enemy, and
Almenara lost his life in the vain effort to save the betrayed
citadel. On the other hand, two Greeks, Dimitre and Mitro,
gallantly defended Thebes, in the absence of John de Lluria,
and of the three traitors who surrendered it to the Navarrese,
two bore Spanish names. Rather than remain under these
new masters, many of the terrified inhabitants of both these
cities, Greeks as well as Catalans, fled for safety to the
Venetian colony of Negroponte, where they remained for
months, wandering about the island with their flocks and
herds. Dimitre and Mitro were rewarded for their fidelity
with the governorship of Salona, and that castle, as well
as Lamia and Siderokastron, defied the assaults of the
Navarrese, thanks to the efforts of the vicar-general on
behalf of his own possessions, and the invaluable aid of the
Count of Demetrias and his Albanians — not by any means
the last service rendered by that sturdy race to Greece.
Like Salona, the Akropolis of Athens offered a resolute
resistance to the enemy. Galceran de Peralta, the governor
of the city, was unfortunately taken prisoner in' a sortie,
together with many others ; but Romeo de Bellarbe, the
commander of the castle, assisted by the faithful Greek
notary, Demetrios Rendi, whom we saw fighting manfully

312 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
at Megara six years earlier, baffled the machinations of
a little knot of traitors and defied the soldiers of Navarre.
The garrison had good reason to remember with gratitude
the wise policy of their late duke, who had ordered that the
revenues of certain lands, originally intended for the defence
of the castle, but bestowed by his predecessors on a Catalan
favourite, should again be devoted to that object. By the
20th May the Athenians could meet in security under the
presidency of Romeo de Bellarbe for the purpose of drawing
up a petition to King Pedro embodying their requests. As
a similar assembly was held at Salona on the last day of the
month, the invaders had by that time withdrawn to Bceotia,
which was still in their power.1
These capitulations, drawn up in the Catalan language
and still preserved in the archives of Barcelona, throw a
flood of light upon the condition of the duchy in this, the
last decade of its existence. They show us, too, that the
leaders of the Aragonese party, scarcely emerged from a
desperate struggle for the existence of the country, were
fully conscious of the value of their services, and desired to
have them amply rewarded. As is the case with most
practical as distinct from philosophical politicians, the
Athenian Parliament of 1380 mainly occupied itself with
personal questions. The community of Athens prayed King
Pedro to send them a vicar-general who would restore the
country from the power of the invaders, or, failing that, to
appoint Romeo de Bellarbe their governor for life, on the
ground of his intimate personal acquaintance with their
affairs and the poverty and distress of the people. They
begged him to bestow upon Romeo all the Athenian
property of three of his majesty's enemies, and to grant
to his mistress, a Greek slave from Megara, the full rights
and franchises of a Catalan. Large favours were asked for
another Greek, the notary Demetrios Rendi, who had
already received lands at Athens and the franchise from
Frederick III., and whose loyalty to Pedro IV. had caused
him pecuniary damage. The petitioners craved for him, for
1 Rubid, op. eit, 436-40, 443. 45S, 463-8, 473. 474, 483. 485 ; Curita,
loc. eit; Stefano Magni apud Hopf, Chroniques, 183 ; Lampros, "E^pa^a,
267-8.

THE CAPITULATIONS OF ATHENS 313
his relative, Joannes Rendi, and for their descendants, all the
rights and privileges enjoyed by the Conquistadors of the
duchies, and that their property might be free from every
kind of tax ; furthermore, they asked his majesty to bestow
upon him and his heirs for ever the office of Chancellor of
the city of Athens, with an annual stipend of 40 gold dinars,
payable out of the customs and dues thereof. They
requested that Guerau de Rodonella, one of their envoys,
Francisco Pons, and Berenguer Oroniola, might be rewarded
with grants of traitors' or criminals' lands and possessions ;
that his majesty would be pleased to provide for the libera
tion from captivity of his loyal subject Galceran de Peralta,
for whom the Navarrese demanded a higher ransom than the
Athenians could raise ; and that he would confer upon Pedro
Valter, who had been captured with Galceran, all the notarial
offices of both duchies for life. The king granted all these
petitions, except the last, remarking that one clerkship would
suffice to keep the worthy Valter in decent affluence ; later
on, he showered yet further benefits — lands, goods, and serfs,
in both Athens and Thebes — upon the ever-useful Demetrios
Rendi. From the time of the Frankish Conquest of Attica
no Greek had ever risen to such distinction as this
serviceable notary, whose good fortune was not even yet
exhausted. Of the sixteen clauses which compose the Athenian
petition, four alone deal with questions of general policy.
The first of these reflects that municipal jealousy, or spirit of
local patriotism — the terms are synonymous — which has in
all ages been characteristic of Greece. It consisted of a
prayer that Athens might retain under the new regime that
measure of autonomy which she had recently obtained from
the central authorities at Thebes. This K!ng Pedro absolutely
refused, asserting his intention of treating the two duchies as
an indivisible whole, governed by his vicar-general, without
regard for any special aspirations for home rule which Athens
might cherish. The second clause met with an equally
decisive negative. The king declined to grant the request of
the pious Athenians, prompted no doubt by the powerful
ecclesiastics who had supported the Aragonese cause, that they
might henceforth be permitted to bequeath their property and

314 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
serfs to the Catholic Church for the good of their souls, and to
emancipate their villains whenever they chose. According to
the existing constitution of the duchies, this had been strongly
forbidden, and a special proviso had nullified any such
bequest, and ordered that all goods or serfs bequeathed to
the Church should be forfeited to the use of the castle of
Athens. The king, as a practical statesman, pointed out
that the Catalans were only a small garrison in Greece, and
that if Holy Church became possessed of their property,
there would be no one left to defend the country, for the
clergy were neither liable to bear arms nor dependent upon
the royal jurisdiction. Besides, the existing law of Athens
was also that of his kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia.
Finally, the petitioners begged that they might continue to
be governed by the customs of Barcelona, and that they
might be joined for ever to the crown of Aragon — requests
which his majesty naturally granted. These capitulations,
laid before him at Lerida by the two Athenian envoys,
Boyl, Bishop of Megara, and Rodonella, were solemnly signed
by the king on ist September, whereupon the envoys did
homage to him as their lawful duke.
On the same day, Pedro IV. confirmed the capitulations
drawn up at Salona, and laid before him by Bernard
Ballester, who also represented the two important com
munities of Thebes and Livadia, which were still in the
hands of the Navarrese. The petition of Salona is even more
personal and egotistical than that of Athens, for it relates
entirely to Don Louis Fadrique. It begged the king to
bestow upon him and his heirs the dignity of Counts of
Malta, to confirm to him the castle of Siderokastron, captured
by his father from the rebellious Marshal Ermengol de
Novelles, the island of ^Egina, and any castles which he might
be able to recover from the Navarrese and their allies before
the arrival of the new vicar-general. The king, conscious of
the Count of Salona's services, granted all these requests, and
received the envoy's homage. Then he again notified his
faithful subjects of his intention to send Rocaberti to govern
them ; ordered the new governor to allow the clergy of the
duchies and their Latin and Greek dependants the privileges
enjoyed by the Church in Aragon and Catalufla, and to see

PEDRO IV/S PRAISE OF THE AKROPOLIS 315
that their stolen property was restored; and granted the
bishop of Megara twelve men-at-arms, with four months' pay,
for the defence of " the Castle of Athens." Of that noble
rock the poetic monarch — himself a troubadour and a
chronicler — wrote to his treasurer in eloquent language as
" the most precious jewel that exists in the world, and such
that all the kings of Christendom together could in vain
imitate." Thus, from the pen of a King of Aragon, we have
the first allusion in the whole range of the history of Frankish
Athens to the classic beauties of the Akropolis. The king
had doubtless heard from the lips of the bishop, who was
chaplain in the governor's palace, an enthusiastic description
ofthe ancient buildings, then almost uninjured, which the latter
knew so well. While Pedro IV. waxed enthusiastic over the
classical glories of the Parthenon, his pious queen, Sybilla,
was keen to possess the relics of the Virgin and other saints,
which it then contained, and begged the archbishop to send
them to her. Yet this rare "jewel," so dear at once to the
man of taste and the devotee, could be defended in that age
by a mere handful of men.1 When, more than four centuries
later, the Akropolis sustained its last siege, its garrison
consisted of a thousand.
Their mission satisfactorily accomplished, the envoys
departed, laden with marks of royal esteem ; the Bishop of
Megara was specially favoured, for the king not only granted
him the goods of one of the Theban traitors, and ordered the
payment to him of an annual stipend on account of "the
Chapel of St Bartholomew in the palace of the Castle of
Athens," but begged the pope to appoint him Archbishop of
Thebes. Rocaberti, however, in consequence of important
political events in Cataluna and Sicily, delayed his departure,
so that he did not arrive in the Piraeus, *with his fleet of four
galleys till the autumn of 1381, whereupon Louis Fadrique
and Galceran de Peralta, who had escaped from captivity,
handed over their offices to him. His instructions were to
establish friendly relations with all the neighbouring poten
tates, to grant a general amnesty in his master's name to
all' the inhabitants of the duchies, and to reward those who
1 Rubio, op. eit, 451-7, 461-71, 474, 476-9, 49°; AeXTfov, v.,
824-7.

316 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
had been conspicuous for their loyalty to the Jong. Royal
letters had already been sent to "the Emperor" Matthew
Cantacuzene, who, in 1380, had succeeded his brother Manuel
as Despot of Mistra, commending the king's Athenian
subjects to hjs good offices ; the Venetian bailie of Negro
ponte had been requested to render aid against the Navarrese
Company, and to prevent the Duke of the Archipelago and
the Marquis of Boudonitza from molesting the king's Greek
dominions ; and similar appeals were made to Nerio
Acciajuoli, the lord of Corinth ; to Maddalena Buondelmonti,
widow of the Count of Cephalonia and regent for her infant
son ; to the powerful Archbishop of Patras ; and to the
Grand-master Heredia, now liberated from his captivity, whose
Knights had hitherto joined in pillaging the duchies. All
these persons regarded the Navarrese as their common foe ;
of Heredia we are specially told that he and his Knights were
Rocaberti's most valuable support, while Queen Sybilla of
Aragon did not hesitate to ask him to bestow the Athenian
castle of Sykaminon upon one of her protege's. The Navarrese
Company, faced by this coalition, withdrew from Bceotia to
the Morea, leaving, however, garrisons behind them in
Livadia and Thebes, the former of which soon fell, while the
latter was still in their possession two years later, and never
appears again in the Aragonese archives. As a reward for
what the good people of Livadia had undergone, they received
from the king a formal confirmation of all the privileges con
ferred upon them by his predecessors, including the right to
be governed by the usages of Barcelona. At their own
request, he established in their town, where the head of St
George was preserved, a branch of the order of that saint,
the insignia of which he conferred upon the late vicar-general
and other prominent men. But he privately ordered Roca
berti to bring with him, when he returned to Spain, the relic
of the popular Greek saint1 — an order, however, never
executed. He also requested the vicar-general to restore to
the rebel branch of the Fadrique clan all the castles and
goods which they had forfeited. Among these was the
classic island of ^Egina, which thus came into the hands of
1 Rubid, op. eit., 330, 436, 453, 459, 472, 473, 482, 486-90, and
Catalunya a Grecia, 57 ; Curita, Anales, II., 378 ; Indices, 355.

ALBANIANS IN ATTICA 317
Boniface's seGond son, John.1 Finally, in order to fill up the
gaps in the population of the duchy, caused by the Navarrese
invasion, Pedro told his vicar-general to grant exemption
from taxes for two years to all Greeks and Albanians who
would come and settle there. This was the beginning of that
Albanian colonisation of Attica and Bceotia, of which so
many traces remain, both in the population and in the
geographical nomenclature, to the present day.2 Numbers
of villages round Athens are still inhabited by Albanians,
who speak Albanian as well as Greek, and such names as
Spata, Liosia, and Liopesi are of Albanian origin.
While the Catalans were thus replenishing their Athenian
duchy, their rivals and imitators, the Navarrese, had carved
out for themselves a state in the Morea. Marching in 1381
along the south shore of the Corinthian Gulf, they found no
one to contest their claims, for the Knights of St John, weary
of their profitless lease of the principality, were ready to
make terms with the new arrivals, and soon afterwards
abandoned the country altogether. Their five years were
not yet up ; but, though the land tax of Achaia yielded them
9000 ducats, their expenses had been so heavy that they
asked the Queen of Naples to relieve them of their bargain.
But as she was murdered, and her husband captured by
Charles of Durazzo in the following year, the Navarrese
remained masters of the principality. Their commander
Mahiot de Coquerel condescended, indeed, to call himself
bailie for the titular emperor and Prince of Achaia, Jacques
de Baux, so long as the latter lived. But when, in 1383, the
last Latin Emperor of Constantinople died at Taranto without
children, the Navarrese became absolutely independent. They
and not he — as the pompous inscription on his tomb in the
church of St Cataldo states — had " subjeated by war the cities
of Greece," 3 and they remained the real masters of Achaia,
although his heir, Louis of Anjou, the still living empress
and former princess, Marie de Bourbon, and Charles of
Durazzo, the new King of Naples, might each claim to be the
rightful sovereign. The first two thought it worth while to
transmit their unreal rights to their heirs — Louis of Anjou to
1 In spite of the capitulations of Salona in the previous year.
3 Rubio, Los Navarros, 460. 3 Ducange, op. eit, ii., 296.

318 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
his widow, Marie of Brittany ; the empress to her nephew,
Louis de Bourbon ; and a further pretender arose in the
person of Amadeo, grandson of Philip of Savoy, the former
prince. Amid these conflicting claims, Mahiot de Coquerel
was willing to keep up the fiction that he was the representa
tive of Charles III. of Naples, the strongest and nearest of
the claimants ; but both he and Pedro, the famous bastard
of S. Superan, who succeeded him as vicar in 1386, were, to
all practical purposes, independent of foreign suzerainty.
The Navarrese treated the country as a conquered land, just
as the French had done, dividing the old fiefs, including most
of the Acciajuoli estates, among themselves, except in one or
two cases, where the barons came to terms with them. The
Greek archons of Mistra, where Theodore Palaiologos, son of
the Emperor John V, was now Despot, sided with them, and
seized the opportunity to rebel against the imperial repre
sentative.1 As for the Venetian governors of Modon and
Coron, they were glad to make peace with these uncomfortable
neighbours, who drew nearer and nearer to their two valued
Messenian colonies. When the Navarrese occupied Navarino
— a place already long known by that name — and the then
important town of Androusa, which became their headquarters,
it was felt that an arrangement must be made. The republic
was particularly nervous about the fine bay of Navarino,
which she feared might be purchased by her hated rival
Genoa ; she accordingly offered to buy it from the Navarrese.
Her offer was declined, but she obtained the right of pre
emption to the place. Thus, this company of adventurers
from Navarre had established itself as a recognised power in
the Peloponnese by the side of the Greeks of Mistra and the
two ancient colonies of Venice.
All efforts to oust the interlopers failed. Heredia, who
had never abandoned the idea, which appealed to his
romantic mind, of regaining the principality for the Knights of
St John, did, indeed, succeed in purchasing Marie of
Brittany's claim. But the rival claimant, Amadeo of Savoy,
protested against this sale, and induced the anti-pope
Clement VII. to annul it. Even then Heredia was not
discouraged; as late as 1389 we find him endeavouring to
1 Miiller, Byzantinische Analekien, ix., 393 ; Chalkokond>'les, 52.

THE CLAIMANTS TO ACHAIA 319
organise an expedition to his beloved Morea. But that was
his last effort; he spent the rest of his life at Avignon,
surrounded by men of letters, and devouring in his library
the romantic biographies of the great conquerors of olden
times. To the last he kept up his interest in Greece ; and
it was by his command that in 1393 was compiled the
Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea, which, in
spite of some glaring anachronisms, contains much valuable
information about the later period of Latin rule. Louis de
Bourbon seemed at one time a more formidable competitor ;
he entered into negotiations with discontented survivors of
the old feudal nobility, like Erard le Noir, the baron of
Arkadia, and we have it on the authority of his secretary,
that " the Moreots were only waiting to receive him as their
lord." But they waited in vain, for the Bourbon claimant
never came, but remained till his death merely titular prince
of Achaia — the last of that historic race which ever set up
its title to rule over Greece. As for Amadeo of Savoy, he
corresponded with the cautious Despot Theodore, and
endeavoured to win over Venice to his side. Finally, as
if there were not claimants enough, Pope Urban VI., " in the
interests of peace and justice," appointed the Archbishop of
Patras, whose see was now independent, as vicar-general of
the principality.1
Besides the Navarrese, the Greeks, and the Venetian
colonies, there were two other important factors in the
politics of the Peloponnese — Nerio Acciajuoli, who held
Corinth and its appurtenances ; and the last fragment of the
old Athenian duchy, the castles of Nauplia and Argos. There
a woman, Marie d'Enghien, the last of her race, held nominal
sway. But, on her father's death, Venice had convinced the
two leading archons of Nauplia, Kamat^ros and Kaloethes,
by judicious bribery, that it was for the good of the place
that she should marry a Cornaro. Thus, the republic was
already practically mistress of those coveted fortresses.2
By this time, in Eubcea, too, Venice had become absolute
mistress, except in name. In 1383, the assassination of the
1 Buchon, Recherches et Materiaux, i., 258; Miklosich. und Miiller,
iii., 249 ; Gerland, 133.
2 Predelli, Commemoriali, hi., 157 ; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, 471.

320 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
powerful triarch, Nicolo III. dalle Carceri, who not only held
two-thirds of the island but was also Duke of Naxos, removed
her last rival — for he left no legitimate heirs. Seven years
later, the holder of the other third, Giorgio Ghisi, bequeathed
his share to the republic, which could thus have easily
annexed the whole island, had she pleased. But, with its
usual shrewdness, the Venetian Government saw that it
would be more advantageous to retain the substance of
power, while allowing petty lords to have the empty
honour and large expense of maintaining the castles of the
island. The example of Karystos had served as a warning ;
that coveted barony yielded to the Venetians less than one-
third of what Bonifacio had obtained from it ; many of the
inhabitants had emigrated to Attica, and an attempt to
colonise it with people from Tenedos failed. Accordingly,
it was decided to let it to three Venetians, the brothers
Giustiniani, at a very low rent1 The Greeks were among
the first to benefit by this complete supremacy of Venice,
for the Government, never unduly tender to the Catholic
Church, abolished the tax which the Orthodox clergy had
been accustomed to pay to the titular patriarch of Constanti
nople, who resided in Eubcea.
Freed from the horrors of civil war and foreign invasion,
the Catalans of Attica had no reason to suspect that their
doom was impending, and that in a few years their dominion
would for ever pass away from Greek lands. Their absent
sovereign with his rhapsodies over the Akropolis, and his
vicar-general at Athens, both acted as if they regarded the
duchies as now firmly assured to the crown of Aragon. To
Rocaberti the connection seemed so durable that he was
anxious to establish his family in Greece, and to secure for
his son the famous fief of Salona. Louis Fadrique, the last
count, died in 1382, after affiancing his sole heiress, Maria,
to young Rocaberti, and the King of Aragon wrote urging
her mother to hasten on the marriage, of which the castle of
Siderokastron, granted to her father for his life, should be
the reward. It was naturally to his interest that Salona,
and Lamia, which went with it, should be in strong hands.
The county had a large population of both Franks and
1 Hopf, Karystos (tr. Sardagna), 90.

DON PEDRO DE PAU AT ATHENS 321
Greeks, and its geographical position made it a valuable
bulwark against the Turks, now only a single day's journey
from Neopatras. But before the wedding had been cele
brated, Rocaberti had left Greece. In the late summer
of 1382 we find him in Sicily, occupied in obtaining posses
sion of the young Queen Maria, who, as the heiress of
Frederick III., should have been Duchess of Athens, and
whom Pedro IV. was anxious to have in his clutches. As
his deputy at Athens, Rocaberti left behind him Ramon de
Vilanova, a man of great valour and prudence, who governed
the duchies well. During his time the last of the Navarrese
must have left Bceotia, and the relations between the King
of Aragon and his old enemies, now established in the Morea,
became so good, that they assisted in repelling the frequent
attacks made by the Greeks and Turks upon the duchy of
Athens. We are told that Vilanova was preparing to
recover what was in the power of these enemies, when the
domestic quarrels between Pedro and his son John compelled
him, too, to return to Spain, leaving the military command in
the hands of Roger and Antonio de Lluria, sons of the former
vicar-general, and entrusting the command of the castle and
city of Athens and the other places in the duchies to a gallant
soldier, Don Pedro de Pau. Rocaberti, who had espoused
the cause of the king's son, consequently fell into disfavour
with Pedro, who insisted upon his releasing his lieutenant
Vilanova from the oath of fealty which the latter had taken
to him, dismissed him from his post as vicar-general, and
prevented the projected marriage between Rocaberti's son
and the Countess of Salona. After a long delay, caused by
important affairs of state at home, the king appointed, in
June 1386, Bernardo de Cornelia as his vicar-general. The
appointment was notified to all the friendly potentates of
Greece, among whom the leaders of the Navarrese Company
were now reckoned. The King of Aragon told them that his
representative would co-operate with them, and would leave
for Greece with a large force in the following spring. But
before that date the ceremonious sovereign was dead, and most
of the Athenian duchy no longer owned the sway of Aragon.1,
1 Rubid, Los Navarros, 460, 479-80 ; Catalunya a Grecia, 44-7 ;
Curita, Anales, ii., 387 ; Indices, 360,

322 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
Nerio Acciajuoli had long been watching attentively
from the rock of Corinth, and from the twin hills of Megara,
the rapid dissolution of the Catalan rule. He saw a land
weakened by civil war and foreign invasion ; he knew that
the titular duke was an absentee, engrossed with more
important affairs ; he found the ducal viceroys summoned
away to Spain or Sicily, while the old families of the duchy
were almost extinct He was a man of action, and he saw
that the moment had come to strike. Like the clever
diplomatist that he was, he had prepared the ground well,
and had established friendly relations with most of his
neighbours, Greeks and Latins alike. He had married his
elder daughter, the beautiful Bartolomea, said to be the
fairest woman of her time, to Theodore I. Palaiol6gos, the
Despot of Mistra, to whom he promised as her dowry the
future possession of Corinth, and this alliance secured for
his schemes the approval of both the Despot and his brother
Manuel, at that time Imperial Viceroy at Salonika Through
his trusty agent, the Bishop of Argos, he had gained the
acquiescence, of Pietro Cornaro, the Venetian consort of the
Lady of Argos, and had conveyed some inkling of his
schemes to his relatives in Italy. His own marriage with a
Saraceno of Eubcea had connected him with one of the
most influential families of that important island. The
disturbed state of the Morea, where the Navarrese were
threatening his son-in-law, the Despot, provided him with an
excellent excuse for collecting an army, nominally for the
aid of Theodore, really for the conquest of Athens. A letter
ofthe Bishop of Argos, written early in 1385, informs us that
Nerio was "gathering men-at-arms from every possible
quarter," and that he could put into the field " full 70 lances,
800 Albanian horsemen, and a very large number of foot
soldiers." 1 It only remained to provide for an attack by sea
as well as by land. This was a more difficult matter, for it
was against the policy of Venice to allow the Latin lords of
the Levant to maintain navies. But Nerio had hired a
galley from the Venetian arsenal at Candia, under the
.plausible pretext of keeping the twin seas on either side of
1 Gregorovius, Briefe aus der " Corrispondenza Acciajoli," 298-9 ;
Chalkokondyles, 398,

THE FLORENTINE CONQUEST 323
the isthmus free from Turkish corsairs, whereas, as a matter
of fact, he was giving them shelter at Megara. When all
was ready, he easily found a casus belli.
The pride of a noble dame was the occasion of the fall
of Catalan Athens, just as, two generations later, the passion
of a beautiful woman led to the Turkish Conquest. Again
and again the fair sex had played a leading part in the
fortunes of Frankish Greece, owing to the absence of that
Salic law which might have saved the country many disasters,
but which would have robbed mediaeval Greek history of
half its romance. The county of Salona was the most
important fief of the Catalan duchy, and at this time there
dwelt in the old castle of the Stromoncourts and the
Fadriques, the widowed Countess Helene and her only
daughter Maria, to whom Rocaberti's son had been in vain
affianced. Nerio now made an offer for the hand of the
young countess, the greatest heiress of Catalan Athens, on
behalf of his brother-in-law, Pietro Saraceno of Eubcea.
The dowager countess, in whose veins was the blood of the
Cantacuzenes — she was a direct descendant of the famous
emperor and a cousin of the Despot of Mistra — scornfully
rejected the proposal of the Florentine tradesman, and
affianced her daughter to Stephen Doukas, a Servian
princeling of Thessaly. This alliance with a Slav naturally
aroused the indignation of both Greeks and Franks at
Salona. At this critical moment, Nerio's horsemen invaded
Salona and the rest of the Catalan duchy, while his galley
made straight for the Piraeus. The details and precise date
of this Florentine Conquest are unknown, but in July 1385
Nerio was already able to style himself " Lord of Corinth
and the duchy,"1 and in January 1387 he was signing a
patent in that capacity in the city of Athens.2 We now
know, however, that the Akropolis held out for sixteen
months longer. That noblest of all fortresses was com
manded by Don Pedro de Pau, the gallant officer whom
Vilanova had left behind him, and whose name deserves to
be included in the long roll of heroes associated with the
sacred rock. Down to almost the close of 1387 he managed
1 Dominator Choranti et Ducaminis ; Misti, xxxix., fol. no, v.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 1 1., i., 221.

324 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
to keep up communications with the Home Government. In
March of that year, his envoy, Rodonella, the same man who
had laid the Athenian capitulations before Pedro IV. seven
years before, appeared before Pedro's son and successor,
John I., at Barcelona, to hear his majesty's pleasure concerning
the duchies, and to do him homage. The new duke had
already reappointed his friend Rocaberti vicar-general, and
announced his intention of sending him with a fleet to " con
found his enemies." This announcement was made to the
Captain of the Navarrese Company, to the Archbishop of
Neopatras, and to the Dowager Countess of Salona. From
the phraseology of the royal letter to the archbishop, it is
clear that much of that duchy was no longer in the possession
of the Catalans, though the castle had not been taken ; from
the document addressed to the countess, we see that Salona
was still hers, and that the king was anxious to secure the
hand of her much-wooed daughter for the son of his favourite
Rocaberti, although that damsel, the Helen of mediaeval
Greece, was already affianced to another. At the same time,
his majesty assured the sindici of Athens that he would
never " forget so famous a portion of our realm," which he
hoped by God's grace to visit in person. Affairs of State at
home prevented, however, this projected journey, while
Rocaberti's promised fleet seems never to have arrived at
the Piraeus. On the contrary, in November 1387 we find
him still lingering in Spain. Such was the practical
sympathy shown by the effusive kings of Aragon for their
distant dominions.
Meanwhile, abandoned by his Government at home, Don
Pedro de Pau still held out — a lonely and pathetic figure on
the Akropolis. Circumstances in Greece favoured his
defence, for the attention of the besiegers had been distracted
by a raid of Turkish pirates, which they joined the Venetian
bailie of Negroponte in repulsing. On 5th November 1387,
a rumour of the brave commander's death reached Cataluna,
and a successor was appointed in the person of P. de Vilalba,
who was to hold the two still unconquered castles of Athens
and Neopatras. Eleven days later, however, a second
messenger arrived with the news that Don Pedro was alive,
and Vilalba's warrant was cancelled. From that moment the

FALL OF THE AKROPOLIS 325
Aragonese archives are silent as to the fate of Athens.1 But a
letter, preserved in the Laurenziana library at Florence,
laconically informs us that on 2nd May 1388, "Messer Neri
had the castle of Serines." The victor was unable at once
to establish himself on the Akropolis, for plague had "broken
out at Athens, many had died, and among the victims had
been his own valet. Nerio and all his family accordingly
withdrew to Thebes to reflect in safety over his new position.
His triumph was, indeed, complete; not only was he
master of Athens, but a fortnight before the Akropolis fell he
had yet further strengthened his position in Greece by
bestowing the hand of his second and favourite daughter,
Francesca, upon Carlo Tocco, the young Duke of Leucadia
and Palatine Count of Cephalonia, the most powerful Latin
ruler of the Levant2
The Catalan rule over the duchies had thus ended for
ever. The sovereigns of Aragon and Sicily might continue
to style themselves Dukes of Athens and Neopatras — a title
also borne by Queen Maria of Sicily and her husband,3 and
which was included among the dignities of the Spanish crown
down to the end ofthe seventeenth century. Courtly Spanish
poets might enumerate " thy great Athens, thy Neopatria,"
among the " good lands " of a dead Aragonese monarch, and
the rulers of Sicily might gratify their vanity by appointing
a titular vicar-general with a pompous patent to rid the
land of the " tyrants " who had occupied it.4 Alfonso V.
even went so far as to create one of his subjects Duke of
Athens, and in 1444 actually demanded the restitution of his
two duchies.5 But, since that memorable 2nd May 1388, the
flag of Aragon has never waved again from the castle of
Athens. The Catalan Grand Company disappeared from the face
of Attica as rapidly as rain from its light soil. Like their
1 Rubid, Catalunya a Grecia, 42-53,91, n. ; Los Navarros, 491 ; Curita,
Anales, ii., 391 ; Indices, 360, 363, 367 ; Chalkokondyles, 69, 213 ; Hopf,
Chroniques, 183 ; Misti, xxxviii., fol. 10 ; xl., fol. 17.
2 L dm pros, "Eyypa.(t>a, 119.
11 La Lumia, Storie Siciliane, III., 339, «. 1.
4 L&mpros, "E77po,0a, 324-7.
5 Arch. Stor. per le Prov. Napoletane, xxvii., 430.

326 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
Burgundian predecessors, these soldiers of fortune came,
conquered, and disappeared, without taking root in the land.
Only two generations had elapsed since the battle of the
Kephiss6s, and already one family after another had died out,
while now and again an old Catalan had returned to spend
the evening of his life in his old home, so that King Pedro
could point to the smallness of the Catalan garrison in
Greece. After the fall of Athens, some, like the brothers
Lluria, took ship for Sicily ; others, like Ballester, the last
Catalan Archbishop of Athens, returned to Barcelona, while
others again lingered on for a time, among them the two
branches of the Fadrique family, the former represented by
the Countess of Salona and her daughter, the latter by John,
the baron of ^Egina. The masterful countess, either by her
courageous defence or her patrician airs, sure to impress the
Florentine upstart whom she had affronted, held her own for
nearly six years longer. In 1390 we find King John of
Aragon again asking the hand of her much-disputed
daughter for a noble scion of the Moncada family.1 The
final disappearance ofthe county of Salona we shall see in
the next chapter. The famous island of ./Egina remained
still longer in Catalan hands. From John Fadrique it passed,
presumably by the marriage of his daughter, to the family of
Caopena, then settled at Nauplia, whose name undoubtedly
points to a Catalan origin, though Venetian genealogists
make them come from the Dalmatian island of Lesina — a
name easily confused with " Legena," the Venetian form of
Mg'ma. — and others suppose Cyprus to have been their
home.2 At ^Egina the Caopena held sway till 145 1, and this
explains the boast of a much later Catalan writer, that his
countrymen maintained their " ancient splendour " in Greece
till the middle of the fifteenth century. It seems probable
that, soon after the Florentine Conquest, the Catalan
lord of ^Egina conveyed thither the head of St George,
which King Pedro had wished to have removed from
Livadia to Spain, but which was still preserved there in 1393,
1 Rubid, Catalunya a Grecia, 54, 61, 63-5 ; Monumenta Ord Prat
Pradicatorum, vii., 71.
2 Hopf, Karystos (tr. Sardagna), 67, 73. The name of Cao-Pinna
is still common in Sardinia, where there are many Catalan families.

MEMORIALS OF CATALAN RULE 327
for the Venetians found it at iEgina when they became
possessed of the island, and transported it thence to Venice
in 1462.1 We hear of a Catalan living at Modon in 141 8,
and of a Catalan corsair at Monemvasia in 1460, and in 1609
a Catalan was Bishop of Cerigo. There is still a noble
family in Zante called Katalianos, and persons of the same
name have been found at Patras, Kalamata, and Aigion
within recent years. The island of Santorin possesses three
families of Spanish origin — those of Da Corogna2, De
Cigalla, and Delenda, the latter a name common in Sardinia
in the form Deledda. Thus, it happens that the present
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Athens, Mgr. Delenda, is a
descendant of its Catalan conquerors.
Memorials of the Catalan domination may still be seen
in Greece. The fine castles of Salona, Livadia, and Lamia —
all important places at that epoch, contain Catalan work,
and the three ruined churches still to be seen within the
precincts of the first of those fortresses were certainly used,
if not built, by the devout soldiers of Spain who resided
there. We know, too, that in their time there were churches
of St George, St Mary, and St Michael at Livadia, but we
are not told that they were of Catalan origin. Probably the
row of towers between Thebes and Livadia dates from this
period, as it was naturally most important to keep up
communication between the capital and the chief fortress of
the duchies. We are expressly told that they fortified the
Akropolis, and that the governor had his residence and a
chapel dedicated to St Bartholomew there. But of this
nothing now remains. The Christian Archaeological Museum
at Athens contains, however, one very curious memorial of
Catalan rule — a fresco of the Virgin and Child, with two
armorial shields hanging from trees, arid some mysterious
letters in Gothic character, which came from the church of
the Prophet Elias, near the gate of the Agora.3 The Gothic
inscription on the west front of the Parthenon does not,
1 Hopf, Chroniques, 202.
2 Hopf (tr. Sardagna), in Archivio Veneto, xxxi., 163, says, on the
strength of a genealogical tree at Santorin, that they came from Corufia.
But they are heard of in the Archipelago in 1307, before the Catalan
conquest of Athens.
3 AeXrlov rijs XpKmaniojs 'Apxa'oXo7t/o;s 'Eraipetas, i., 65,

328 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
however, appear to be Catalan. It is no wonder that the
Catalans left few great buildings behind them, when it is
remembered that they lacked the stimulus of a ducal court,
such as had existed in the time of the Burgundians, and that
they were not, for the most part, the younger sons of noble
houses, but a band of soldiers of fortune, who, by the strangest
of accidents, had become the heirs of Perikles and Phidias.
Being merely the representatives of the absent dukes, the
Catalan vicars-general coined no money, but the kings of
Sicily and Aragon bore the title of " Duke of Athens and
Neopatras " on their coins.1
Such a society as this was not likely to encourage culture,
and it is significant that the Catalan dialect has left no mark
on the Greek language ; yet even in Catalan Athens we find
an Athenian priest copying medical works, while we know
that the Catholic bishops of Salona and Megara had
libraries.2 But professional men seem to have been scarce in
the country, if we may judge from the fact that on one
occasion a doctor had to be sent from Sicily to Thebes.3
Trade, on the other hand, naturally flourished between
Barcelona and her Greek colony. The Venetian archives
contain several allusions to the commercial relations between
Thebes and both Barcelona and Majorca ; Thebes, " the head,
as it were, and mistress " ofthe cities ofthe duchies, had its own
measures, and levied an octroi of 2 per cent, on all merchandise
that went in or out of its gates ; the contemporary geographer
Abulfeda, mentions its gold and silver embroideries, but a
Catalan traveller tells us that it suffered severely from earth
quakes. Although Venice bound down the Company to keep
no galleys in the Piraeus, and prohibited the Catalans of
Mgina from all traffic by sea, the "port of Athens" had
recovered some of its importance, for we hear of a harbour
master being appointed, and of ships from Spain being
anchored there.4 From the beginning of the fourteenth century
1 Schlumberger, Numismatique de POrient latin, 345.
2 Montfaucon, Pal. Graca, 70 ; Rubid, Los Navarros, 458, 475.
3 Lampros, "Eyypa^a, 303.
4 Predelli, Commemoriali, IL, 22, 139, 141,310, 325, 331; III., 69;
Pegalotti, Della Decima, III., 51, 108, 109; Friar Jordanus, Mirabilia
Descripta (tr. Yule), 2, 3.

THE CHIEF CATALAN TOWNS 329
it had borne the name of Lion, or Porto Leone, by which it
was known down to late Turkish times, from the great stone
lion which then stood there, and which was removed by
Morosini to Venice, where it still guards the entrance to the
arsenal, waiting for the day when all her stolen treasures shall
be restored to free Greece. Athens, on the other hand, had
sunk into insignificance, as compared with Thebes. The
Westphalian priest, Ludolph, who travelled in Greece between
1336 and 1 34 1 , describes it as " almost deserted," and he adds the
curious remark, which perhaps must not be taken too literally,
that " there is not a marble column nor any good work of cut
stone in the city of Genoa which has not been brought thither
from Athens, so that the city has been wholly built out of
Athens." x Forty years later the Catalans of Athens lamented
to Pedro IV. their "poverty and distress." Livadia under
the Catalans obtained an importance, which it retained in
Turkish times ; the county of Salona was the largest fief in the
country; and the fortress of Siderokastron is described as
"the key of the duchy of Athens."2 Boudonitza, whose
Venetian marquis was a Catalan vassal ; Demetrias, " the
boundary of Hellas," the last fragment of the Catalan posses
sions in Thessaly ; Lamia, under its name of Citon ; the
Boeotian Karditza ; Atalante, or La Calandri ; Kapraina, the
ancient Chaironeia ; Stiris, or Estir, near the monastery of
the Blessed Luke ; and Vitrinitza, or La Veternica, on the
Gulf of Corinth, all figure in the history of the Catalan
duchies ; while their second capital, Neopatras, or La Patria,
by furnishing one half of the ducal title, became a household
word all over the Spanish world, and a Spanish poet com
memorated it long after the last Catalan governor had left
its walls. The Greeks long remembered with »terror the Catalan
domination ; a Greek girl in a mediaeval song, prayed that her
seducer might "fall into a Catalan's hands," and even a
generation ago in Attica, in Eubcea, in Akarnania, Messenia,
Lakonia, and at Tripolitza, the name of " Catalan " was used
as a term of reproach ; but the present author's enquiries in
Greece have riot succeeded in tracing this curious survival to
1 De Itinere Terra Sancta, 23 ; Rubid, Catalunya, 98.
2 Guardione, op. eit, 22.

330 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
the present day. Professor PoHtes, the leading authority on
Greek folklore, states, however, that in Mane a child is some
times christened " Catalan," as an omen of his future strength
and courage, and that there the name is held in high esteem.1
The distinguished Greek historian, Professor Lampros, in his
juvenile drama, " The last Count of Salona," and Koutoubales
in " John the Catalan, Archon of Olympos," have embodied
in literature the Greek conception of the Catalans as monsters,
but there is more of rhetoric than of history in those produc
tions. That the Catalans were harder masters than the
French is very probable ; yet it is remarkable that the Greeks
did not stir a finger to assist in a French restoration, when
they had the chance. The probability is, that the Catalans
have obtained their bad name from their cruelties before they
settled down in Attica, and that they became staider and
more tolerant as they became respectable ; towards the close,
as we have seen, King Pedro was not only liberal towards the
Greeks, but waxed as enthusiastic as any philhellene over
the splendours of the Parthenon. If, in spite of his liberality,
they assisted Nerio, as has been plausibly argued, to conquer
Athens, that merely proves that they recognised in him a
strong man on the spot, connected by marriage with the chief
representative of Hellenism in Greece, who would perhaps
give them that peace which their absent duke could not
ensure. But if the modern Greeks do not view the Catalans with
favour, the modern Catalans look back with justifiable pride
on the connection between their countrymen and Athens.
Catalan divines have truly boasted that their tongue was once
spoken in the precincts of the Parthenon ; Catalan poets and
dramatists have chosen the Catalan Grand Company for their
theme ; to the labours of a brilliant Catalan scholar we owe
the documents which have thrown so much light on this
period ; and in the history of Athens, where nothing can
lack interest, these rough soldiers from the West are also
entitled to a place.
About the same time that Nerio Acciajuoli obtained
1 Stamatiddes, 01 KaToMvoL, 223 ; PoHtes, quoted by Rubid, La
Espediciin, 15-17; Legrand, Recueil de Chansons populaires grecques,
p. xx.

SERVIAN TYRANNY IN EPIROS 331
possession of Attica, a relative of his completed the phe
nomenal good fortune of the family by becoming Despot of
Epiros. We last saw all Akarnania and ^Etolia in the
possession of an Albanian chieftain, Ghin (or John) Boua
Spata, while a Serb, Thomas Preliubovich, ruled at Joannina.
" At first," says the Chronicle of Epiros, " he wore a fox's
skin ; but he soon threw it off, and put on that of a lion."
Every class and race suffered from the persecutions of this
petty tyrant; he first attacked the Greek Church, ex
pelling the metropolitan, and distributing the ecclesiastical
property among his Servian followers ; then it was the
turn of the native magnates, whom he either banished, or
imprisoned, then that of the common people, whose food he
taxed and whose savings he extorted. Wine, corn, meat,
and cheese, the fish of the lake, the fruit of the orchards, all
became monopolies of the tyrant, who compelled the peasants
to work for him without pay. The Albanians do not usually
turn the left cheek to the smiter ; they called in the aid of
their countryman, Boua Spata, who more than once besieged
Joannina, but in vain. The Archangel Michael — so ran the
story — saved the threatened city, and its tyrant, imitating
Basil " the Bulgar-Slayer," was able to style himself with
pride Thomas "the slayer of the Albanians," from the
number of his victims. " All wickedness is small compared
with the wickedness of Thomas" — such is the constant
refrain of the tearful chronicler. Even his Serbs fled from
before his face ; and thus, having forfeited the sympathies of
all, he completed his enormities by calling in the Turks. In
1385, for the first time, a Turkish force marched on Arta,
under the command of Timourtash, carrying away a number
of prisoners. Boua Spata, at this crisis, in vain proposed to
Preliubovich an alliance against the cctamon enemy ; but
vengeance was at hand, and before the year was out, the
tyrant fell by the hands of his own bodyguard. The people
of Joannina joyfully proclaimed his widow, who called her
brother, the famous Abbot of Meteora, " King Joseph," to
her councils, and, on his advice and that of the leading
magnates, resolved to marry a strong man who could help
her to reorganise her distracted country and protect it from
the renewed attacks of the ambitious Spata. Such a consort

332 THE NAVARRESE COMPANY
4
was found in the person of Esau Buondelmonti, a Florentine
of noble family, connected with the Acciajuoli and brother
of the Duchess of Leucadia, in whose island dominions he
was then residing. The elegant and quiet Florentine pleased
the Servian widow all the more by contrast with her first
husband's barbarous ways ; indeed, according to one account,
Esau had already been her paramour, having been captured
in battle by Preliubovich, pardoned at the instance of his
wife, and then having helped her to get rid of the tyrant
The people received him with intense relief; he restored
their confiscated property, recalled the banished metropolitan,
re-endowed the Church, opened the doors of the prisons,
summoned back the exiled magnates, and abolished the
hateful corvees. Like his predecessor, he strove to legitimise
his rule with the Greeks by accepting the title of Despot from
the imperial court at Constantinople ; but he needed more
efficient aid against Spata and his Albanians, and had to
ask the Sultan Mur&d I. in person for his protection — to
such a state of weakness were the Christian states of the
East now reduced. A Turkish force appeared at Joannina ;
Spata, who was besieging the town by both land and water,
was forced to withdraw, and sorely-tried Epiros enjoyed for
a few years the blessings of peace.1
Thus, in the year 1388, by an extraordinary coincidence,
Florentines held sway alike at Athens, at Corinth, in Epiros,
and in the island county of Cephalonia, where Esau's sister,
the Duchess Maddalena, widow of Leonardo Tocco, was
regent for her son Carlo,2 himself affianced to an Acciajuoli.
Another daughter of that dominant house charmed with
her beauty the ceremonious Byzantine court of Mistra. If
Florence was thus the leading Latin power in Greece, Venice
came near her ; for she was firmly settled in Crete, and was
practically mistress of Eubcea and of Argolis, where a noble
French dame still maintained the appearance of power in
the last fragment of the old French duchy of Athens.
Venice held, too, her Messenian colonies ; the possession of
1 Epirotica, 216-35; Chalkokond^les, 211-12 ; Gregorovius, Briefe,
304 ; Verino, De Illustrations Urbis Florentia, i., 120 ; ii., 22.
2 Leonardo I. had died between 1374 and 1377 ; Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, I., L, 309 ; Hopf, Chroniques, 183.

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GREECE IN 1388 333
Pteleon gave her a post of observation in Thessaly ; she had
just acquired the island of Corfu, the key of the Adriatic ;
and in the Cyclades the new Italian dynasty was more sus
ceptible to her influence than the previous dukes of the
Archipelago had been. The Navarrese in the principality of
Achaia, and the Catalans at Salona, completed the Latin
element. While the Albanian chieftains still held Arta and
Lepanto, and the Servian dominion was fast waning in
Thessaly, the Turk was surely approaching. Already his
aid is invoked in Greek affairs ; already his shadow is over
the vale of Tempe and the great Thessalian plain. Too
late the Greek people, so long inarticulate, was growing
conscious of its nationality and of its power. The last
period of Latin rule at Athens witnessed, on the eve of the
Turkish Conquest, the revival of the Greek Church and the
national aristocracy.

CHAPTER XI
FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS (1388-I4I5)
THE history of mediaeval Athens is full of surprises. A
Burgundian nobleman founding a dynasty in the ancient
home of heroes and philosophers ; a roving band of
mercenaries from the westernmost peninsula of Europe
destroying in a single day the brilliant French civilisation
of a century ; a Florentine upstart, armed with the modern
weapons of finance, receiving the keys of the Akropolis from
a gallant and chivalrous soldier of Spain — such are the
tableaux which inaugurate the three epochs of her Frankish
annals. But the merchant prince, whom a successful policy
of enlightened selfishness had made the founder of the
third and last Latin dynasty of Athens, was in a much
more difficult position than either of his predecessors. It
was true that his dominions, on paper at any rate, were
almost as extended as ever had been those of the Bur
gundians and Catalans in their palmiest days. If, unlike
the former, he did not own the Argolid, he held the stately
castle of Corinth, the key of the Morea, with its ring of
dependent fortresses. Chalkokondyles tells us that he
possessed most of Phokis, the outlying parts, no doubt, of
the Catalan county of Salona, and that his northern frontier
marched with the confines of Thessaly. The three most
prosperous cities of ancient Hellas — Athens, Thebes, Corinth
— were all his. But the handwriting was on the wall : the
Turk was hovering on the Macedonian border. Under these
circumstances the keynote of the new ruler's policy was
naturally conciliation of the Greeks. Now, for the first time
since the day when Michael Akomindtos had fled from his
cathedral on the Akropolis before the Burgundian con-
384

THE GREEK METROPOLITAN RESTORED 335
querors, a Greek metropolitan was allowed to reside at
Athens.1 He did not, indeed, recover the time-honoured
church of Our Lady on that sacred rock — for the Parthenon
continued, as before, to be the Catholic minster of the city —
but conducted his services in what is now the military
bakery, but which was in Turkish times "the mosque of
the conqueror." This venerable edifice, now put to such
base uses, was the metropolitan church of Athens during
the rest of the Frankish period. Opinions differ as to the
residence of the metropolitan ; one archaeologist thought
that he had discovered fragments of the building in the
Stoa of Attalos ; the more probable view is that it was near
the church of Dionysios the Areopagite under the shadow
of the Areopagos, where travellers visited the metropolitan
in the seventeenth century, until a fragment of the rock,
loosened by an earthquake, fell and destroyed his abode.2
Great was the surprise of the Holy Synod at Constantinople
when the news arrived that, after nearly two centuries, an
Athenian metropolitan could live in his see, instead of
remaining, as most of his predecessors had done, merely
a titular dignitary, who found occupation in attending the
meetings of that august body. In the ecclesiastical docu
ments3 of the Catalan period we find frequent allusions to
the metropolitans of Athens as members of the Holy Synod ;
and one of the exiled hierarchs died in Crete a martyr for
his Church ; but the local business had always been carried
on in their absence by deputies, whose title was the more
modest one of " first priest " {trpuiroTrairo.'!) 4 or " Exarch." s
The degradation of the Athenian see to a lower place in
the ecclesiastical hierarchy by Andronikos II. was therefore
justified. Throughout the Frankish period the Greek ecclesiastical
organisation had subsisted, with a few changes ; but its
existence had been merely on paper, so far as most of the
1 Miklosich und Miiller, ii., 165.
2 Kampouroglos, 'ItrToplaTwv'Ae-nvatav, ii., 37, 170,304; Spon, Voyage,
ii., 200; Philadelpheus, 'lo-ropla, tSsv 'kd-r\vG>v, i.; 178, 273, 278, 279, 312;
ii., 91. 3 Miklosich und Miiller, i., 453, 456, 459, 467, 471, 476, 477, 488, 498,
558, 564.
4 Ibid., ii., 259. ° Lampros, Tlapvaoabt, vi., 172.

336 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
Latin states of the Levant were concerned. The twelve
metropolitan sees, which we found at the time of the Latin
Conquest, had been increased to fifteen or sixteen in the
time of Andr6nikos II. ; but it is significant that he awarded
all the sees of Greece a lower place in the hierarchical scale,
with the notable exception of Monemvasia — a natural tribute
to the great importance of that city to the empire after its
recovery in 1262. The Venetians, always more indifferent
to religious fervour than other Catholics, had allowed the
Greek bishops to reside in their colonies of Coron and
Modon. But there was no room found for a Catholic
archbishop and a Greek metropolitan in the same town.
Hence the custom had arisen at the oecumenical patriarchate
of tacking suffragan bishoprics, which had from time im
memorial belonged to the " enslaved " metropolitan sees, on to
other sees which had been so fortunate as to escape from the
clutches of the Franks. It had become the practice, too,
for the bishop of a "free" diocese to lay hands on those
persons of an " enslaved " diocese who desired to enter the
ministry.1 But, as the Greeks had gradually recovered a
large part of the Morea, two out of its five metropolitans —
those of Monemvasia and Lacedaemonia — had been able to
reside in their respective sees ; while a third, his grace of
Patras, though, of course, excluded from what was pre
eminently the Catholic city of the peninsula, had latterly
resided, after a long homeless existence, in the splendid
monastery of " the Great Cave," still the richest institution
of the kind in Greece, which was a special dependency (or
{crravpotrriyiov) of the patriarchate. North of the isthmus
the occupation of Thessaly by the orthodox Serbs, after a
temporary attempt to form a separate Servian church, had
naturally involved the return of the metropolitan of Larissa,
" Exarch of Second Thessaly and all Hellas," to that ancient
city, and the capture of Lepanto from the Angevins by the
Albanians had restored the metropolitan of Naupaktos,
"Exarch of all /Etolia," to his old see in 1380, after
long exile at Arta.2 At Salona, thanks, no doubt, to the
1 Miklosich und Miiller, ii., 139.
2 Dordtheos of Monemvasia, op. eit, 397 ; Miklosich und Miiller, i.,
413,493. 5H, 587; "¦, 11,23,270.

RESULT OF R.ELIGTOUS TOLERATION 331?
influence of its Greek countess, we now hear for the first
time of a Greek bishop, whose example, like those of the
restored metropolitans of Athens, inspires doubts as to the
wisdom of 'this tolerant policy, from the Frankish point of
view. The conquerors had now, however, to face this
dilemma: either they must continue to exclude the higher
Greek clergy, in which case they would lose the sympathies
of their numerous and more and more indispensable Greek
subjects, or they must permit them to return, in which
case the patriotic aspirations of the orthodox hierarchy,
combined with its intensely political character, would
certainly lead to conspiracies against the temporal authori
ties, who were at once aliens and — worse still — schismatics.
This was exactly what happened. The Greek bishop at
Athens or Salona, became a political agent of Hellenism,
a leader, or at least a representative, of the national party,
just as he is to-day in Macedonia; unable to secure the
triumph of Greek independence, he was ready, as is his
fellow in Macedonia, to seek the aid of the Turk, as a
preferable alternative to the rule of a Christian of another
Church. Thus, the restoration of the Greek metropolitan
see of Athens was an event of the first importance to
Hellenism, and the Holy Synod was able to report with
pride that under the tactful administration of Dor6theos,
" Exarch of All Hellas, and president of Thebes and
Neopatras," the Athenian Church, which had preserved the
orthodox faith even without its hierarch, " seemed to have
recovered its ancient happiness, such as it had enjoyed before
the barbarian conquest." 1 As for the Catholic hierarchy, it
continued as before, only that, instead of a Catalan, a
Tuscan was archbishop at both Athens and Corinth.
But it was not the Greek Church alone, which profited by
the change of dynasty. Nerio's philhellenic policy — and it
was policy, not sentiment, which made this hard-headed
Florentine favour the Greeks — was also extended to the
laity. Greek for the first time became the official language
of the Government at Athens ; thirty years before, it had been
employed by the bailie of the titular duke at Nauplia.
Nerio and his accomplished daughter, the Countess of
1 Miklosich und Miiller, ii., 165. Y

338 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
Cephalonia, used it in their public documents ; the countess,
the most masterful woman of the Latin Orient, proudly
signed herself, in the cinnabar ink of Byzantium, " Empress
of the Romans." This practice naturally necessitated the
engagement of Greeks as secretaries and clerks. Nerio's
secretary was a certain Phiomachos, the ever-useful
Demetrios Rendi continued to be notary of the city, and as
his colleague we find another Greek, Nikolaos Makri. There
is some evidence that Greek " elders '' were allowed a share
in the municipal government, as was the case under the
Turks.1 Even Florentines settled at Athens assumed the
Greek translations of their surnames. A member of the
famous Medici family had emigrated to Athens in the
Catalan days ; possibly he was one of the Tuscan men-at-
arms who took part in Walter of Brienne's futile expedition ;
at any rate, a certain Pierre de Medicis " of Athens " held
the office of bailie and captain-general of Argos and Nauplia
for Walter, when the latter was tyrant of Florence, and we
may conjecture that the titular duke was glad to employ as
his deputy a Florentine and an old follower who had
remained in Greece. This man's son had now settled in
Athens, doubtless attracted by the success of his eminent
fellow-Florentine. The Medici had intermarried with Greeks,
and had now become so Hellenised as to call themselves
Iatr6s, instead of Medici. A century and a half later, their
descendants still flourished at Athens and at Nauplia, and
the family of Iatrdpoulos claims them as its ancestors.2
Hitherto the career of Nerio Acciajuoli had been one of
unbroken success. His star had guided him from Florence
to Akrocorinth, and from Akrocorinth to the Akropolis ; his
two daughters, one famed as the most beautiful, the other as
the most talented woman of her time, were married to the
chief Greek and to the leading Latin potentate of Greece.
These two alliances seemed to afford him protection against
the only serious foe whom he had to fear, the vigorous and
1 If, with Philadelpheiis (i., 135), we accept the G/jtJi/os, or " Lament for
the Capture of Athens," as referring to this period.
2 Ibid., III., 248, 253 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I.,i., 131 ; II., i.,
220 ; Gregorovius, op. eit, ii., 227 ; Lampros, "Erypa.<pa, 407 ; Sdthas,
Uvrip-ela, viii., 370, 451.

VENICE BUYS ARGOS • 339
unscrupulous leader of the Navarrese Company. The King
of Aragon, in his palace at Barcelona, was far away ; but the
Navarrese were near at hand. They had never shown much
love for Nerio, even when he was only lord of Corinth ; they
had seized many of his family estates ; they would be only
too glad, as his confidant, the worldly Bishop of Argos, had
complained, " to do him some great harm." They had not
forgotten their temporary occupation of the Athenian duchy,
and they were now on excellent terms with the new King of
Aragon, who still regarded himself as its lawful duke, and
might at any moment employ their swords and their local
knowledge against the usurper.1 The most elementary
common-sense suggested that he should not place himself in
the power of these astute enemies. But success had
apparently blinded the wily Florentine to the obvious dictates
of prudence. He was now destined, thanks to his ambition
and his rashness, to experience one of those sudden turns of
fortune so peculiarly characteristic of Frankish Greece.
Nerio was naturally desirous of rounding off his dominions
by the acquisition of the castles of Nauplia and Argos, which
had been appendages of the French duchy of Athens, but
which, during the Catalan period, had remained loyal to the
family of Brienne and to its heirs, the house of Enghien.
It chanced that in the very same year, 1388, which witnessed
the fall of the Akropolis, Marie d'Enghien, the Lady of
Argos, lost her Venetian husband, Pietro Cornaro. Thus
left a young and helpless widow, and fearing an attack upon
her possessions by her two ambitious neighbours, Nerio and
his son-in-law, the Despot Theodore of Mistra, whose
dominions came up as far as Astros, on the Gulf of Nauplia,
the Lady of Argos transferred her Argive estates to Venice,
in return for a perpetual annuity of 50CV gold ducats to
herself and her heirs, and a further life annuity to herself of
200 ducats. In the event of her death without heirs, she
was allowed to bequeath the sum of 2000 ducats, payable out
ofthe Venetian treasury, to whomsoever she pleased. She was,
however, to forfeit all claim to the above annuities, if she
married anyone except a Venetian noble. The ancient
Larissa of Argos, the twin castles of Nauplia, " the Frank "
1 Rubio, Los Navarros, 480, 492.

340 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
and " the Greek," as they were still called, and the noble gulf
whose waves then washed their base, were cheap at the
price.1 Thus, Venice acquired the sole remaining dependency
of the old French duchy of Athens, which remained in her
hands for over one hundred and fifty years. Thus, the most
shrewdly practical and least romantic of mediaeval republics
began her long domination over the ancient kingdom of
Agamemnon. Thus, in the selfsame year, a Florentine
banker became the heir of Theseus, a Venetian magistrate
the heir of Atrides.
Before, however, the Venetian commissioner, Malipiero,
had had time to take over the Argolid, the Despot Theodore,
instigated by his father-in-law, Nerio, had seized Argos by a
coup de main. Nerio regarded himself, and not Venice, as the
successor of the De la Roche and the Brienne in places
which had once been theirs, and in which he himself had
property. His plan was, however, only half successful, for
Malipiero persuaded the people of Nauplia to admit him as
the representative of the most serene republic. Already
incensed with Nerio, whom she accused of still harbouring
Turkish corsairs at Megara to the detriment of her colonies,
Venice retorted by breaking off all commercial relations
between them and the subjects of Nerio and his son-in-law.
The Athenians were no longer allowed to export their figs
and raisins to Negroponte, nor to import their iron and
ploughshares from Modon and Coron. At the same time,
Venetian diplomacy made use of the Navarrese Company to
punish the chief culprit. San Superan was on good terms
with Venice ; he had promised to compensate her subjects
for the damage done by his men at the time of their
invasion, to favour her commerce, and to dispose of no
portion of the principality to her foes. He now willingly
offered his services ; the Venetian Archbishop of Patras did
the same. The shrewd Florentine showed on this occasion
a childlike simplicity, remarkable in one who had lived so
many years in the Levant. He accepted the invitation of
the Navarrese commander to a personal interview on the
1 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., .211-15; Caresinus,
Sanudo, and Navagero apud Muratori, xii., 482 ; xxii., 760, 777 ; xxiii.
1072 ; Gerland, 159 ; Chronicon Breve, 516.

NERIO PRISONER OF THE NAVARRESE 341
question of Argos, relying on a safe-conduct which he had
received. To the men of Navarre the law of nations was
mere waste-paper ; the opportunity of securing their enemy
was too good to be lost. San Superan bade Asan Zaccaria,
the great constable of the Morea, arrest him, and on ioth
September 1389, the order was executed.1 At once the
whole Acciajuoli clan set to work to obtain the release of
their distinguished relative. His wife offered Theodore a
large sum to surrender Argos. One of his brothers, Angelo,
Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, sent a trusty emissary to
the Despot, and implored the intervention of the pope ;
another, Donato, a Florentine Gonfaloniere, to whom Nerio's
wife specially appealed for aid, persuaded his Government to
despatch envoys to Venice, offering the most liberal terms,
if the republic would secure Nerio's release. Donato was
ready to place the cities of Athens and Thebes and part
of the barony of Corinth in the hands of a Venetian com
missioner as a pledge of his brother's sincerity, together with
Nerio's merchandise in the city of Corinth to the value of
from 12,000 to 15,000 ducats, so as to defray any expenses
incurred by the republic in obtaining his release. He offered
to go in person to Greece and see that Argos was handed
over to Venice before his brother was set free, and appealed
for mercy to one who was an honorary citizen of the republic.
On the same ground, he applied for aid to Genoa, which had
lately conferred the freedom of the city upon Nerio's
daughter, the Countess of Cephalonia, and invoked the
assistance of Amadeo of Savoy. The fear of Genoese
intervention, and the news that the Despot was preparing to
release his father-in-law by force, decided Venice to give
way. After nearly a year's imprisonment near Vostitza and
in the inland castle of Listrina (near Patras), Nerio obtained
his release in the latter half of 1 390 by sending his favourite
daughter, the Countess of Cephalonia, as a hostage to
Negroponte, and by consigning the city and castle of Megara
and the value of his merchandise at Corinth to the Venetians,
until they had obtained possession of Argos, which he
promised to assist in securing for them, by force if
necessary. If the Navarrese had hoped to annex his
1 Gregorovius, Briefe aus der " Corrispondensa Acciajoli," 305-6.

342 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
dominions during his captivity, they were mistaken, for his
wife could point with pride to the loyalty of both his old
subjects at Corinth and his new subjects at Athens to their
imprisoned lord — a fact which shows that his philhellenic
policy had borne fruit. But the men of Navarre, as was
well known, were fond of money, and they, too, were deter
mined to make their captive pay dearly for his liberty. In
order to raise the money for his ransom, he stripped the
silver plates off the doors of the Parthenon, seized the gold,
silver, and precious stones which the piety of many genera
tions had given to the ancient minster and to the cathedral
of Corinth, and acquired, by lease or other means, various
churches, including the Parthenon. The Despot was, however,
in no hurry to surrender Argos. It was not till 1394 that
Venice at last obtained possession of that coveted city,
together with the castles of Thermisi and Kiveri. Then, at
last, internal dissensions in his own dominions, where one
of the hereditary archons of Monemvasia, a descendant of
the Mamonas who had parleyed with William de Ville
hardouin one hundred and fifty years before, aimed at
practical independence with Turkish aid or under Venetian
suzerainty, forced him to yield. Venice thereupon restored
Megara to Nerio, together with a large sum of his money
which she had still in hand. The administration of the
Argolid was then settled ; in the days of the titular dukes of
Athens, Nauplia and Argos had been governed by a bailie or
captain-general, assisted by a council ; each of the two cities
now received ^.podesta, or '' captain," with a couple of governors
under him, but the two administrations were to work in
common, as at Modon and Coron ; a deputation of Argives
presented the capitulations of the towns at Venice, and
received the ratification of their fiscal and feudal privileges.
One of the first acts of the Venetian authorities was to erect
a third fortress at Nauplia, on the north-west slope of Itsh-
Kaleh, to which they gave the name of the Torrione. As at
that time the site of the present lower town was covered by
the sea, the place was extremely strong.
1 Predelli, Comtnemoriali, III., 206, 208, 223, 231 ; Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, 1 1., i., 238-53, 254-6; Ldmpros, "Eyypa^a, 114; Chronicon
Breve, 516 ; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, 472.

STATE OF ACHAIA IN 1391 343
Nerio was not the man to forgive the Navarrese the trick
which they had played upon him, especially as they had
seized most of his family estates in the Morea and insisted in
maintaining the old fiction, that the duchy of Athens was a
fief of Achaia, and its master merely " lord of Corinth." He
accordingly entered into relations with the pretender Amadeo
of Savoy, who had been greatly moved at the news of his
imprisonment, and was at this moment extremely active.
Venice thought that the Savoyard might assist in capturing
Argos for her, and undertook to transport him and his men
to the Morea, and to make terms between him and the
Navarrese when he arrived there. The Navarrese, on their
part, alarmed by the approaching Turkish peril, offered to
recognise his claims, provided that he would confirm them
in the possession of the fiefs which they had won by their
swords, with full right of sale if any of them wished to return
to Navarre, would permit them to make certain gifts or
bequests to the famous Minorite church at Glarentza, and
would pay 20,000 gold ducats to San Superan. For Amadeo's
guidance, they sent him a list of the fiefs which existed in the
Morea in 1391. From this list we see that the twelve peers
now consisted of the three dukes of Athens, the Archipelago,
and Leucadia ; the Marquis of Boudonitza, the Count of
Cephalonia, and the Countess of Salona ; the three triarchs
of Negroponte ; the barons of Arkadia and Chalandritza ;
and the Archbishop of Patras. Three other ecclesiastical
barons are enumerated — the bishops of Olena, Modon, and
Coron ; and the two military orders of the Teutonic Knights
and those of Rhodes.1 Great, indeed, had been the changes
since the Achaian peerage was founded nearly two centuries
before. Arkadia, Chalandritza, and Patras were the only
original baronies left, and they had al^ passed away from
their original holders, for the two former now both belonged
to the Genoese Asan Zaccaria, great constable of the princi
pality, while Patras was practically an independent fief, held
by the archbishop, who acknowledged no overlord but the
pope. Moreover, nine of the peers resided out of the
peninsula, whereas, even in the list preserved in the Book
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, iii., 203, 209 ; Gregorovius, Briefe, 306 ;
Buchon, Recherches et MatMaux, i., 288-99 '> Hopf, Chroniques, 229-30.

344 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
of the Customs of the Empire of Romania and composed
somewhat earlier in this same century, there were only seven
absentees. It is especially noticeable that the Ionian islands
furnish two baronies, though Carlo I. Tocco was both Count
of Cephalonia and Duke of Leucadia ; but this is doubtless
to be explained by the fact that on paper Amadeo had
recently bestowed the former island, together with little
Ithaka, upon a Greek supporter, one Laskaris Kalopheros,
who had thus succeeded in theory to the realm of Odysseus.1
We notice, too, that the vicar-general had managed to secure
for himself the best of both the domanial and the baronial
lands. Thus he held such celebrated places as Vostitza,
captured from the Acciajuoli ; Glarentza ; Belveder, above
Katakolo ; the castle of St Omer, whose name is still
preserved by the Santameri mountains ; Androusa, or
" Druse," in Messenia, now the capital of the principality ;
Kalamata, the old fief of the Villehardouins, and many
smaller castles — comprising altogether about 2770 hearths
out of more than 4050. Next to him in importance came
Asan Zaccaria ; but most of the old castles were now in the
hands of soldiers of the Company; the strong position of
Navarino, " Port Jonc " as it is still called in the document,
was entrusted to two of those adventurers. Another person
age, who figures largely in the transactions of this period, was
Rudolph Schoppe, great preceptor of the Teutonic Knights,
who resided at Mostenitsa. A century later, "the German
house" at Modon was the usual stopping-place of German
pilgrims to the Holy Land.2
These negotiations with the Navarrese did not prevent
Amadeo from adopting a policy dear to diplomatists in our
own day — that of insuring his position by making terms with
the adversary of his allies. He sent envoys to Athens, and
there " in the chapel of the palace " on the Akropolis, now
the residence of " the lord of Corinth, of the duchy of Athens
and of Neopatras," as Nerio styled himself, the latter pledged
himself to aid Amadeo in taking the Morea from the
Navarrese, and to induce his son-in-law, the Despot, to join
1 Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxvi., 48.
2 Faber, Evagatorium, i., 39, 165 ; iii., 331 ; Archives de fOrient
latin, JL, documents, 354,

THE TURKS RAID GREECE 345
in the attack upon them. As his reward, he claimed the
restitution of his family property.1 Thus, insured against all
competitors, Amadeo might have been expected to act. But
the death of his relative, the Count of Savoy, made his
presence necessary at home ; he wisely preferred to preserve
what he possessed in Italy rather than make fresh acquisitions
in Greece, and neither he, nor his brother and heir, Louis,
did more than call themselves by the barren title of " Prince
of Achaia," which appears on their coins.2 With the death
of Louis in 141 8, the legitimate race of the Savoyard
pretenders ceased, but as late as the last century a bastard
of Savoy still styled himself " of the Morea."
While the Latin rulers of Greece were thus intriguing
against each other, the Turks were threatening the existence
of them all. The overthrow of the Servian empire on the
fatal field of Kossovo in 1389 had removed the last barrier
between Hellas and her future masters, and then, as now, the
dissensions of Greeks and Slavs had made them unable to
combine against the Moslem. In 1387 and the following
year Turkish bands had appeared in the Morea, and in 1391
the redoubtable Evrenosbeg, " Brenezes," as the Byzantine
historians call him, had been invited by the Navarrese into
the Morea, to assist them in attacking the Despot of Mistra,
and had occupied his capital, the new Greek town of Leondari,
and the old Frankish castle of Akova.3 Next year it was the
turn of Thessaly, Bceotia, and Attica. Nerio thought that he
had found a traitor in the newly restored Greek metropolitan,
Dor6theos, whose theological rancour against the Latin Church
was a sufficient reason to make him welcome the Turkish
commander. The accused fled, for his life was in danger,
protesting his innocence and maintaining an active corre
spondence with his flock. Nerio thereupon complained of
his conduct to the oecumenical patriarch, alleging that he
had repaired to the Turkish camp, and had promised the
infidels, in return for their aid against the Latins, the
treasures of the Athenian Church. The Holy Synod,
however, pronounced the metropolitan to be innocent, on
the excellent canonical ground, that the statements of
1 Lampros, "Erw>~0-, 405-7. 2 Buchon, Atlas, xxiv., 14, 15.
3 Hopf, Chroniques, 185 ; Doiikas, 47, 50; Chronicon Breve, 516.

346 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
heretics and schismatics were not evidence against bishops
of the true Church, and allowed him to retain his three
dioceses of Athens, Thebes, and Neopatras. But a century
later, when the Latins no longer ruled over Athens, we find
another oecumenical patriarch accusing the worthy Dor6theos
of corruption for having divided in two the hitherto united
sees of Daulia and Atalante. Nerio, however, cared nothing
for the decision ofthe Synod ; he refused to permit Dor6theos
to return to Athens, and strongly expressed his preference —
on the principle of divide et impera — for having two Greek
metropolitans instead of one — namely, one for Athens, and
the other for Thebes and Neopatras.1
The Boeotian raid of Evrenosbeg led to nothing more
serious than the temporary loss of Livadia, which was
recovered early in 1393 by Bertranet Mota, who is described
as " one of the chief captains of the duchy of Athens," 2 and
who played an important part in the politics of those years —
now acting as Nerio's gaoler in the castle of Listrina, now
fighting for him against the Turks in Bceotia. But in 1393
Bajazet I., " the Thunderbolt," resolved to annex permanently
a large part of northern Greece. He was now arbiter of its
fate, and to his camp came trembling magnates to hear his
decisions. With the contemptible Despot Theodore in his
train, he took Pharsala and Domoko, whence the Servian
governor, Stephen Doukas Chlapen, viceroy for " King
Joseph" of Meteora, fled to Nauplia, and then proceeded
southward to Lamia. The Greek bishop betrayed that
strong fortress, Neopatras fell, and many other castles sur
rendered on terms. Ecclesiastical treachery and corruption
sealed the fate of Salona amid tragic surroundings, which a
modern Greek drama has endeavoured to depict.3 The
dowager-countess had allowed her paramour, a priest, to
govern in her name, and this petty tyrant had abused his
power to wring money from the shepherds of Parnassos and to
debauch the damsels of Delphi by his demoniacal incantations
1 Miklosich und Miiller, IL, 165 ; Kampouroglos, IL, 135-6.
2 Arch. Cor. Arag., Reg. 1964, fol. 72, v., 2243, fol. 123 (kindly com
municated to me by D. Antonio Rubid y Lluch) ; Chalkokond^les, 145,
213 ; Epirotica, 242.
3 Lfimpros, '0 rf?veuraios irti/iijj rwv 2)aXiixw!\

FALL OF SALONA 347
in the classic home of the supernatural. At last he cast his
eyes on the fair daughter and full money-bags of the Greek
bishop Serapheim ; deprived of his child and fearing for his
gold, the bishop roused his flock against the monster, and
begged the sultan to occupy a land so well adapted for his
majesty's favourite pastimes of hunting and riding as is the
plain at the foot of Parnassos. The Turks accepted the
invitation ; the priest shut himself up in the noble castle,
slew the bishop's daughter, and prepared to fight. But there
was treachery among the garrison ; a man of Salona murdered
the tyrant and offered his head to the sultan ; and the
dowager-countess and her daughter in vain endeavoured
to appease the conqueror with gifts. Bajazet sent the young
countess to his harem ; her mother he handed over to the
insults of his soldiery ; her land he assigned to one of his
lieutenants, Murad Beg. When the latter showed signs of
independence, he was deposed and beheaded by his autocratic
sovereign. Ere long, another act of blood completed the
grim tragedy. The story reached the people of Salona
that the sultan had murdered their fair young countess,
considering a descendant of Aragon and Byzantium unworthy
of his embraces. Such was the end of the famous fief of the
Stromoncourts, the Deslaurs, and the Fadriques. Thus, in
the early weeks of 1 394 a Turkish governor was, for the first
time, established on the northern shore of the Corinthian
Gulf.1 1 Nerio's letter of 20th February 1394 (Gregorovius, Brief e, 307) fixes
the capture of Salona before that date. Thus the much criticised
chronology of Chalkokondyles (67-9) is quite correct. N. de Martoni
{Revue de POrient latin, III., 660) also alludes to it. Cf. also Xpovucbv
tov Ta\a%eL5iov, 206 ; Manuel Palaioldgos, Oratio Funebris, apud
Migne, Patrologia, clvi., 223, 228, 232 ; Phrantzes, 57 ; Miklosich und
Miiller, 1 1., 270; Lampros, "Eyypatpa, 89. The*name of the governor of
Domokd, 'Hhrucipvews, has puzzled readers of Chalkokondyles. Some have
thought it a corruption of irL-ynipva, but a Greek historian would not
corrupt a well-known Byzantine title ; Neroutsos asserted that his family
came from Cernagora (Montenegro) ; others have imagined a French
family of Charny, whereas the Franks had long been extinct in Thessaly.
I believe it to be a corruption of Chlapen, as we know that Stephen
Doukas Chlapen (Orbini, Regno degli Slavi, 271) was one of John
Urosh's viceroys. It was he who was engaged to the Countess of Salona.
The Chronicon Breve (517) mentions him at Nauplia.

348 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
The blow had fallen very near Athens, and Nerio wrote
to his brother on the fall of Salona, that the Great Turk was
expected to advance, and that war was imminent. The
Turkish troops, however, once more evacuated his dominions ;
Thessaly became a timar, or hereditary fief of the redoubt
able Evrenosbeg, but the hour of Athens was not yet come.
The statesmanlike Florentine now reaped the reward of his
politic treatment of the Greeks. When he had heard that
the Turks were advancing, he had seized a number of women
and children as hostages for the loyalty of the leading men
in the small places, and had sent these hostages to Bceotia.
When, none the less, the Greeks of those villages
welcomedl the Turks, he abstained from visiting their dis
loyalty upon the hostages. He felt sure that when the
Turks retired, the Greeks, if not driven to desperation,
would return to their allegiance, and his surmise proved
correct. Again he had found that humanity was the best
policy.1 Nerio had escaped for the moment by consenting to pay
tribute to the sultan ; but he hastened to implore the aid of
the pope and of King Ladislaus of Naples against the
infidels, who killed and tortured the Christians of Achaia
and Attica. At the same time, like all usurpers, he desired
to legitimise his position at Athens by obtaining formal
recognition from an established authority. His family's
fortunes had originated at the Neapolitan court ; the king
still pretended that he was the overlord of Achaia, of which,
according to the old legal fiction, Athens was a dependency,
and he had already given Nerio a mark of his favour by
creating him bailie of Achaia. He now rewarded the
services of the faithful Florentine in having recovered the
duchy of Athens " from certain of the king's rivals," by
conferring upon him and his posterity in January 1394 the
title of duke, so long borne by its former rulers. As Nerio
had no legitimate sons, the king consented that the title
should descend to his brother Donato and the latter's heirs.
Another of his brothers, Cardinal Angelo Acciajuoli, was
entrusted with the duty of investing the new Duke of Athens
with a golden ring, and was appointed in his stead bailie of
1 Ldmpros, "J&yypaipa, 114 ; Raspe, v., fol. 16,

NERIO'S WILL 349
Achaia. But it was expressly stated that the duke should
have no other overlord than the King of Naples. Thus, the
old theory that Athens was a vassal state of Achaia received
its deathblow. The pope completed the fortunes of the
Acciajuoli by nominating the Cardinal Archbishop of Patras.
The news that one of their clan had obtained the glorious
title of Duke of Athens filled the Acciajuoli with pride, such
was the fascination which the name of that city exercised
in Italy.1 Boccaccio, half a century before, had familiarised
his countrymen with a title, which Walter of Brienne, the
tyrant of Florence, had borne as of right, and which, as
applied to Nerio Acciajuoli, was no empty flourish of the
heralds' college.
The first Florentine Duke of Athens did not, however,
long survive the realisation of his ambition. On 25th
September of the same year he died, laden with honours,
the ideal of a successful statesman. But, as he lay on his
sick-bed at Corinth, the dying man seems to have perceived
that he had founded his fortunes on the sand. Pope and
king might give him honours and promises ; they could not
render effective aid against the Turks. The first Florentine
Duke of Athens was also her first ruler who paid tribute to
the sultan. It was under the fear of this coming danger
that Nerio drew up his remarkable will.2
In making his final dispositions, the dying duke's first
care was for the Parthenon, " St Mary of Athens," in which
he directed that his body should be laid to rest. He ordered
that its doors should once more be plated with silver ; that
all the treasures of the cathedral, which he had seized in his
hour of need, should be bought up and restored to it ; that
besides the canons, who, as we saw, were twelve, there should
always be twenty priests serving in the great minster day
and night, and saying masses for the repose of his soul. For
the maintenance of these priests and of the fabric of the
church, he bequeathed to it the city of Athens with all its
dependencies, and all the brood-mares of his valuable stud —
1 Raynaldus, vii., 585 ; Gerland, 134 ; Fanelli, Atene Attica, 290-1 ;
Gregorovius, Briefe, 309-10; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i.,
223-36. 2 Ibid., 254-62 ; Chalkokondyles, 213 ; Gregorovius, Briefe, 308.

350 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
for the Acciajuoli were good judges of horse-flesh.1 Seldom
has a church received such a remarkable endowment ; the
cathedral of Monaco, built out of the earnings of a gaming
table, is perhaps the closest parallel to the Parthenon,
maintained by the profits of a stud-farm. He also restored
two sums of money owing to it, ordered the restitution of the
treasures which he had taken from the church of Corinth,
bequeathed a splendid cross to the cathedral of Argos and
a sum of money for a weekly mass there, and directed that
all cathedrals and other churches which had come into his
hands by lease or other means should return to their prelates
and patrons at the end of the lease. He bequeathed his
Argive property to build a hospital for the poor at
Nauplia, which, restored by Capo dTstria, is still in use,
and placed both that and the nunnery which he had
built there under the administration of his faithful
councillor, the .Bishop of Argos.2 Nerio had treated the
Latin Church with scant respect in his lifetime ; he
had seized its treasures, and had reinstated its hated
rival ; but he certainly made ample reparation on his
deathbed. Nerio's wife had died only three months before, so that he
had not to provide for her ; but made his favourite daughter,
the Duchess of Leucadia, his principal heiress. While he
left his other child nothing more than 9,700 ducats owed him
by her husband the Despot, he bequeathed to her sister the
castles of Megara and Sikyon (or Basilicata), all his other
lands not specially left to others, and a large sum of money.
She was to have Corinth also, despite the fact that it was to
have belonged to the Despot after Nerio's death, so long as
the children of Angelo Acciajuoli, who were its legal owners,
did not repay the sum which their father had borrowed from
Nerio. Besides these two daughters, Nerio had an
illegitimate son, Antonio, by Maria Rendi, daughter of the
ever-handy Greek notary. To this son he bequeathed the
government of Thebes, the castle of Livadia, and all that lay
beyond it, for Livadia, as we saw, though it had been annexed
by the Sultan Bajazet, had been recovered by the Gascon
1 Sdthas, Mviftuna, i., 178.
- Lamprinfdes, 'H NouirXia, 109.

NERIO'S WILL DISPUTED 351
free-lance Bertranet for the duchy in 1393. As for his
mistress, Nerio directed that she should have her freedom
and retain all her property, including perhaps the spot
between Athens and the Piraeus which still preserves the
name of her family — a provision all the more curious
because Pedro IV. had, as we saw, conferred the full
franchises and privileges of the conquerors upon her father
and his family. To his brother Donato, who should have
succeeded him in the title, the duke left his Florentine
property and 250 ducats ; he gave small legacies to his
servants, and ordered that his cattle should be sold and
the proceeds invested in Florence for religious and charit
able purposes. As his executors he appointed the Duchess
of Leucadia, his sister Gismonda (so long as she was
in Greece), the Bishop of Argos, the governor of the
Akropolis, and three other persons, two of them members
of the Acciajuoli clan. Finally, he recommended his
land to the care of the Venetian republic, to which
his executors were to have recourse in any difficulty.
He specially begged the republic to protect his heiress,
the Duchess Francesca, and to see that his dispositions
concerning the cathedral of Athens were carried out.
Donato Acciajuoli, Gonfalionere of Florence and Senator
of Rome, made no claim to succeed his brother in the duchy
of Athens, in spite of the natural desire of the family that
one of their name should continue to take his title from that
celebrated city. He had already had some experience of
Greece, where he had acted as Niccolo's representative thirty
years before, and he preferred his safe and dignified positions
in Italy to the glamour of a ducal coronet in the East.
But it was obvious that a conflict would arise between
the sons-in-law of the late duke, for Nerio had practi
cally disinherited his elder daughter "in favour of her
younger but abler sister. Theodore Palaiol6gos, who con
tended that Corinth had always tbeen intended to be
his after Nerio's death, besieged it with a large force,
and took all the smaller castles of the Corinthian barony.
Nerio's bastard, Antonio, and Bertranet Mota, the victor
of Livadia, who had also profited under Nerio's will,
threw their powerful aid on Theodore's side. On the other

352 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
hand, Carlo Tocco, Duke of Leucadia, demanded from the
executors the places bequeathed to his wife, and invited the
Turks to assist him. Some 40,000 of those fatal auxiliaries
obeyed his call ; a sudden night attack upon the Despot's
camp proved completely successful ; 3000 of Theodore's '
cavalry were captured, and Theodore himself only just
escaped. Carlo then signed a document, promising, on
receipt of Corinth, to carry out all the testamentary dispositions
of his late father-in-law. The executors, who had no option
in the matter, thereupon handed over the great fortress to
him. Leaving his brother Leonardo in charge of Corinth,
and another official in command of Megara, he inveigled two
of the Florentine executors into visiting him in his island of
Cephalonia on their way home. As soon as he had them
safe in the castle of St George, he told them that they should
never leave the island alive, unless they restored him the
compromising document. They replied that they had already
sent it to Donato, whereupon he compelled them to sign
another, stating that he had carried out the terms of Nerio's
will. Against this act of violence they protested at both
Florence and Venice, whose citizenship and protection against
his obligations to Genoa he had recently asked. Well might
that tried friend of the Acciajuoli family, the Bishop of
Argos, urge the Archbishop of Patras to mediate between
the rival kinsmen. For some months longer the civil war
between them rendered the isthmus unsafe to travellers.
An Italian notary has left us a graphic picture of the perils of
a journey at this critical time from Athens to Corinth, how
the Turks infested the Sacred Way, how all admission to the
town of Megara was refused, for fear of the Despot's men, and
how Nerio's elder daughter lay in wait to intercept her
younger sister on her way to take ship at the port of Corinth
for Cephalonia. The man of law was not sorry to find himself
in the castle of Corinth under Carlo Tocco's protection,
though the houses in that city were few and mean, and the
total population did not exceed fifty families, or thirty fewer
than that of Megara. The place did not boast a single inn,
there was no bread to be had for love or money, but the
excellent figs of the place and the hospitality of the Arch
bishop of Athens, an Italian, like himself, consoled the

CORINTH RESTORED TO THE GREEKS 353
notary for his hardships. Such was life in the duchy of
Athens in 139s.1
Not long afterwards the two sons-in-law of Nerio,
frightened perhaps at the increasing audacity of the Turks,
came to terms, and Tocco handed over the great fortress of
Akrocorinth to the Despot Theodore. Its walls had struck
the Italian notary as poor, and the donjon as insignificant ;
but the natural position of the citadel made it almost
impregnable, and its acquisition by a Byzantine prince was
regarded as a national triumph, commemorated by the
erection of his statue over the gate.2 Theodore hastened to
ask the co-operation of Venice in repairing the Hexamilion,
or six-mile rampart of Justinian across the isthmus, a part of
which was still standing, while the rest was in ruins. Thus,
after the lapse of nearly two centuries, the isthmus once
more acknowledged the Greek sway. The metropolitan of
Corinth, so long an exile, at once returned to his see ; one of
his first acts was to demand, and obtain, the restitution by
his brother of Monemvasia of the two suffragan bishoprics of
Maina and Zemeno, which had been given to the latter's
predecessor after the Latin Conquest of Corinth.3 Such ire
was common in celestial minds at this critical period, when all
Greeks should have been united. Unhappily, the ecclesias
tical literature of the fourteenth century shows us metro
politan arrayed against metropolitan, bishops persecuted by
their superiors, and the Despot of Mistra, who should have
been the recognised leader of Hellenism, thwarted by the
Greek hierarchy.4
While Nerio's children had thus been quarrelling over
Corinth, the Greeks of Athens had not been idle. It was not
to be expected that the race, which had latterly recovered its
national consciousness, and which had ever remained deeply
attached to its religion, would quietly acquiesce in the
extraordinary arrangement by which the city of Athens was
to be the property of the Catholic cathedral. Sanudo, an
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 1 1., i., 262-69 ; Gregorovius, Briefe,
309-10; N. de Martoni in Revue de I'Orient latin, III., 652-3, 656-9;
Predelli, Commemoriali, III., 218, 236, 238.
3 N<*os "EW-nvo/iviiniav, II., 443-4. 3 Miklosich und Miiller, ii., 287-91.
4 Ibid., i., 216-21 ; ii., 9-1 1, 23-5, 135-7, 249-55. Z

354 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
excellent judge of Eastern politics, had truly said that no
power on earth could make the Orthodox Greeks love the
Roman Church, and at Athens the professional jealousy of
two great ecclesiastics embittered the natives against the
alien establishment. Despite the warning which he had
received from the treachery of Dor6theos, Nerio had felt
obliged to permit another Greek metropolitan, Makarios, to
reside at Athens. This divine, thinking that the rule of a
Mussulman pasha would be preferable to that of a Catholic
archbishop, summoned Timourtash, the redoubtable Turkish
commander, to rid Athens of the filioque clause, and his
strange ally occupied the lower town. The Akropolis, how
ever, held out under its brave governor, Matteo de Montona,
one of the late duke's executors, who sent a messenger to
the Venetian bailie of Negroponte asking for his aid, and
offering to hand over Athens to the republic, if the bailie would
promise that she would respect the ancient franchises,
privileges, and customs of the Athenians. The bailie gave
the required promise, subject to the approval of his Govern
ment ; he sent a force which dispersed the Turks, and before
the end of 1394, for the first but not the last time in history,
the lion-banner of the Evangelist waved from the ancient
castle of Athens.
The republic decided, after mature consideration, to
accept the offer of the Athenian commander. No sentimental
argument, no classical memories, weighed with the sternly
practical statesmen of the lagoons. The romantic King of
Aragon had waxed enthusiastic over the past glories of the
Akropolis, and sixty years hence the greatest of Turkish
sultans contemplated his conquest with admiration. But
the sole reason which decided the Venetian Government to
annex Athens was its proximity to the Venetian colonies
and the consequent danger which might ensue to them if it
fell into Turkish or other hands. 1 Thus, Venice took over
the Akropolis in 1395, not because it was a priceless monu-
1 Navagero apud Muratori, xxiii., 1075 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, III.,
238. The text of the Venetian decision is printed in the Sitzungsberichte
der K. Bayerischen Akademie, 1888, i., 152-8 ; Niccol6 de Martoni, who
visited Athens on 24th February 1395, says that the Venetians had
"lately taken it," — Revue de V Orient latin, iii., 647.

VENICE ACCEPTS ATHENS 355
ment, but because it was a strong fortress ; she saved the
Athenians, not, as Caesar had done, for the sake of their
ancestors, but for that of her own colonies, "the pupil of
her eye." From the financial standpoint, indeed, Athens
could not have been a valuable asset. A city which had
complained of its poverty to the King of Aragon, and whose
revenues Nerio had assigned to support the cathedral chapter,
could not have been great or rich, nor can we well believe the
statement of a much later Venetian historian that in his short
reign he had found time to build " sumptuous edifices " and
" spacious streets." 1 The Venetians confessed that they did
not know what its revenues and expenses were ; on this
point their governor was to send them information as soon
as possible ; meanwhile, as the times were risky and the city
would consequently require additional protection, involving
extra expenditure, whereas some of Nerio's famous brood
mares had been stolen and the available revenues conse
quently diminished, it was directed that only eight priests
should for the present serve " in the church of St Mary of
Athens." Upon such accidents did the maintenance of the
Parthenon depend in the Middle Ages ! The Government
informed Montona's envoy, Leonardo of Bologna, that its
officials would be instructed to preserve all the ancient rights,
liberties, and customs of "our faithful Athenians," whose
capitulations he had presented, as they had been presented
fifteen years before to Pedro IV. Montona was to have 400
hyperperi a year, and his envoy 200, out of the city revenues,
as their reward, but five years later we find the former
complaining that this annuity had not been paid.2 That
official Greeks were favourable to Venice is shown by the
fact that the city notary, Makri, was also awarded a sum
of money. The Venetian Government next arranged for the future
administration of its new colony. The governor was styled
podesta and captain, and was appointed for two years at an
annual salary of £70, out of which he had to keep a notary,
a Venetian assistant, four servants, two grooms, and four
horses. Four months elapsed before a noble was found, in
the person of Albano Contarini, ambitious of residing in
1 Fanelli, 293. 2 Sdthas, Mvq/ieia, 1 1., 6.

356 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
Athens on these terms. Two artillery officers, or castellani,
were appointed at 6 ducats a month each to guard the castle,
where one was always to be in the daytime and both were to
sleep at night. Twenty men were to be engaged at 12
hyperperi a month each, for the garrison ; if more men or
money were wanted, Contarini was to ask the bailie of
Negroponte or the castellani of the two Messenian colonies.
Together with two ecclesiastical commissioners, he was to
receive the revenues of the Church, so that the republic might
not be out of pocket ; later on he also had the appointment
of the castellani}
We are fortunately in a better position than was the
Venetian Government to judge of the contemporary state
of Athens. At the very time when its fate was under
discussion, an Italian notary, Niccolo de Martoni, spent two
days in that city, and his diary is the first account which any
traveller has left us from personal observation of its condition
during the Frankish period.2 " The city," he says, " which
nestles at the foot of the castle hill, contains about a thousand
hearths," but not a single inn, so that, like the archaeologist
in some country towns of modern Greece, he had to seek
the hospitality of the clergy. He describes " the great hall "
of the castle (the Propylaea), with its thirteen columns, and
tells how the churchwardens personally conducted him over
" the church of St Mary," which had sixty columns without
and eighty within. On one of the latter he was shown the
cross, made by Dionysios the Areopagite at the moment of
the earthquake which attended our Lord's passion ; four
others, which surrounded the high altar, were of jasper, and
supported a dome, while the doors came — so he was told —
from Troy. The pious Capuan was then taken to see the
relics of the Athenian cathedral — the figure of the Virgin,
painted by St Luke, the head of St Maccarius, a bone of
St Denys of France, an arm of St Justin, and a copy of the
Gospels, written by the hand of St Elena— relics which
Queen Sybilla of Aragon had in vain begged the last
Catalan archbishop to send her fifteen years before.
1 Sathas, M^/ieia, II., 3.
2 The earlier fourteenth century traveller, Ludolf von Suchem, who
mentions Athens, did not actually visit it.

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT OF ATHENS 357
He saw, too, in a cleft of the wall, the light which never
fails, and outside, beyond the castle ramparts, the two pillars
of the choragic monument of Thrasyllos, between which there
used to be "a certain idol" in an iron-bound niche, gifted
with the strange power of drowning hostile ships as soon as
they appeared on the horizon — an allusion to the story of the
Gorgon's head, mentioned by Pausanias, which we find in
later mediaeval accounts of Athens. In the city below he
noticed numbers of fallen columns and fragments of marble ;
he alludes to the Stadion ; and he visited the " house of
Hadrian," as the temple of Olympian Zeus was popularly
called, from the many inscriptions in honour of that emperor
which were to be seen there. Twenty of its columns were
then standing. He completed his round by a pilgrimage to
the so-called " Study of Aristotle, whence scholars drank to
obtain wisdom " — the aqueduct, whose marble beams, com
memorating the completion of Hadrian's work by Antoninus
Pius, were then to be seen at the foot of Lykabettos, and,
after serving in Turkish times as the lintel of the Bouboun-
istra gate, now lie, half buried by vegetation, in the palace
garden. But the fear of the prowling Turks was a serious
obstacle to the researches of this amateur archaeologist. At
Port Raphti, where he landed, he had been able, indeed, to
admire the two marble statues, male and female, one of which
still remains and has given the place its name of " the tailor's
harbour." The more picturesque mediaeval legend was that
the woman, hotly pursued by the man, had prayed that they
might be both turned into stone. At Eleusis, already called
Levsina, he could see in the gloaming the marble columns
and the arches of the aqueduct. But he tells us that both
these places were infested by Turks, so that it was necessary
to travel by night. On his way to Negrqponte, he was only
saved from falling into their hands by the characteristic
unpunctuality of his muleteers — not a horse was to be had in
Athens, and mules then, as now, were the sole means of
conveyance in the country districts. Even so, he narrowly
escaped being attacked by the Knights of St John, who
held the castle of Sykaminon and who saw a Turk in
every traveller, while the Albanians of Oropos were even
worse marauders than the Turks. Yet our traveller notes

358 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
that these gentry had spared the fair olive-grove of
Athens.1 Such was the state of affairs which confronted the first
Venetian governor of Athens. He had, indeed, no easy task
before him. He found Turkish pirates infesting the coast of
Attica, and the land so poor that he had to ask his Govern
ment for a loan of 3000 ducats. The Metropolitan Makarios,
a born intriguer, who had been plotting against the Despot in
the Morea, as well as the Latins at Athens, was now in
prison at Venice, but found means to continue his schemes in
favour of the Turks.2 The Athenian duchy was now terribly
exposed to their attacks. By the fall of Salona she had lost
her western bulwark : the warden of her northern marches,
the Marquis of Boudonitza, had managed to retain his castle
at Thermopylae by payment of a tribute and by virtue of his
Venetian citizenship.3 But, in 1395, his marquisate and the
Venetian station of Pteleon, in Thessaly, were the sole re
maining Christian states of north-eastern Greece. All else
was Turkish, as far south as Thebes, as far west as Lepanto.
Even the Northern Sporades temporarily succumbed.
The Ottoman advance was fortunately, however, checked
for a moment by the news that Sigismund, King of Hungary,
had responded to the appeal of the Emperor Manuel II., and
was marching on the Danube with the chivalry of the West to
save the Byzantine Empire. Bajazet hastily retired from
Greece to meet this new foe, whom he utterly routed in the
great battle of Nikopolis. The defeat of this fresh crusade
left Greece at the mercy of the conqueror. Marching himself
against Constantinople, he despatched two trusty lieutenants,
Jakub Pasha and Evrenosbeg, with an army of 50,000 men
to continue his interrupted Greek campaign. On crossing
the isthmus, the forces divided : Jakub marched upon Argos,
Venice's recent acquisition, which surrendered, in 1397,
without a blow, burnt the castle, and carried off 14,000 (some
say, even more than 30,000) Argives into slavery — a number
considerably superior to the present population of the town —
1 Revue de V Orient latin, III., 647-56.
2 Miklosich und Miiller, ii., 250, 256, 259 ; Predelli, Commcmoriali,
III., 238.
3 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., 292.

TURKISH INVASION OF 1397 359
while Evrenos harassed the Venetian colonies in Messenia.
After an attack on Leondari, the Turks recrossed the
isthmus,1 and would appear to have made themselves
masters of the lower city of Athens. Neither Venetian
documents nor Byzantine historians tell us of this capture of
" the city of the sages " in 1 397, of which Turkish writers
boast.2 But the Turkish account receives confirmation from
a document of 1405, discovered at Zante and recently
published,3 which describes how Athenian families fled to
that island before the Turks, and from a passage in the
Chronicle of Epiros, which states that Bajazet subdued
Athens. It is possible, too, that the above mentioned
" Lament for the taking and captivity of Athens " * — a
prosaic poem in sixty-nine verses of the '' political " metre —
also refers to this capture, though some critics have supposed
the "captivity " to be that which the city suffered from Omar
in 1456, or that the allusion is to the visit of Mohammed II.
two years later. The writer, a priest, tells us how " the
Persians," as he calls them, " first enslaved the region of
Ligourio " — between Epidauros and Nauplia — " the feet of
Athens " 5 — an allusion to the days when Argolis was a
dependency of the duchy — and then came to Athens and
" slew the priests, the elders, the wise, and all their council."
Above all, he makes Athens mourn the enslavement of
the husbandmen of the suburb of Sepolia, who will no
longer be able to till the fields of Patesia.
Another enemy was ever on the watch for an opportunity
to make himself master of Athens. The bastard Antonio
Acciajuoli was not content with the cities of Thebes and
Livadia, which his father had left him, but soon began to
harry Attica with his horsemen, and to hound on the Turks,
who readily responded to his exhortations. Successive
Venetian governors depicted the pitiful state of the country
1 Chalkokondyles, 97; Chronicon Breve, 516; Phrantzes, 62, 83;
Revue de VOrient latin, viii., 79.
2 Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiehs, i., 252, 613.
3 By Philadelpheus, i., 139, and Kampouroglos, My-n/ie'ia, ii., 153. Cf.
Epirotica, 242.
4 Ibid./loTopta,, i., 117-24; Philadelpheus, i., 134-9.
5 Professor Lampros (N6>s 'EXXijpo/u^/icw, ii., 236) now suggests that
'\aiovpyeta (" olive-yards ") should be read.

360 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
and asked for reinforcements ; the Home Government re
sponded by raising the garrison to fifty-six men and the
cavalry to fifty-five, and by authorising Vitturi, who was
podesta in 140 1, to spend 200 hyperperi on restoring the walls
of the Akropolis. In order to pacify those Athenians who
were discontented with the Venetian rule, he was ordered to
issue a proclamation bidding them lay their complaints before
the commissioners at Negroponte or Nauplia. But these
measures were inadequate to save Athens. In the middle of
1402, the bad news reached Venice that the lower city, thanks
to the treachery of its inhabitants, naturally favourable to one
who was half a Greek, was in the hands of the bastard, but
that the Akropolis still held out. The Senate ordered the
bailie of Negroponte to proclaim Antonio an " enemy of the
Christian faith," and to offer a reward of 8000 hyperperi to
whosoever should deliver him up alive, or of 5000 to whoso
ever could prove that he had killed him. It also commanded
him to relieve the Akropolis, and, if possible, lay Thebes,
the lair of the enemy, in ashes. At the head of 6000 men,
the bailie set out to perform the second of these injunctions.
The bastard had only a tenth of that number at his disposal,
but he placed them in ambush, we may assume in the
Pass of Anephorites, which the Venetians were bound to
traverse, took the enemy at the same moment in front and
rear, and made the bailie his prisoner. Having nothing
more to fear from Venice, he returned to the siege of the
Akropolis.1 The republic received the news of his victory with alarm,
not so much at what might befall Athens, as at the possible
loss of her far more important colony of Negroponte. Com
missioners were hastily despatched to make peace with
Antonio; but the bastard, sure of being undisturbed by
the Turks, calmly continued the siege of the small Venetian
garrison of the Akropolis. Vitturi and Montona held out
for seventeen months altogether, until they had eaten the
last horse and had been reduced to devour the plants which
grew on the castle rock. Then they surrendered and were
allowed to retire penniless to Negroponte, which the
Venetian councillors had put into a state of defence.
1 Sdthas, Mvij/*oa, IL, 7, 45, 60, 75, 91, 92 ; Chalkokondj'les, 213-14.

ANTONIO ACCIAJUOLI AT ATHENS 361
Antonio was master of Athens ; the half-caste adventurer
had beaten the proud republic.1
Venice attempted to recover by diplomacy what she had
lost by arms. She possessed in the person of Pietro Zeno,
lord of Andros, a diplomatist of unrivalled experience in the
tortuous politics of the Levant. Zeno's skill had contributed
to the cession of Argos ; it was now hoped that he might be
equally successful with Athens. In spite of the capture of
Bajazet by Timur at the battle of Angora in 1402, and
the divided state of the Turkish Empire, both he and
Antonio knew that the fate of Athens depended upon
Suleyman, the new ruler of Turkey in Europe, and to his
court they both repaired, armed with those pecuniary
arguments which are usually found most convincing in all
dealings with Turkish ministers. The diplomatic duel was
lengthy ; Antonio was already favourably known as a
suppliant of the late sultan, while Zeno worked upon the
Turkish fears of the Mongol peril, and pointed out that the
Christian league, which had been formed by the two
republics of Venice and Genoa, the Greek Emperor, the
Knights of St John, and the Duke of Naxos, was not to be
despised. He also spent his employers' money to good
purpose, and finally gained one of those paper victories, so
dear to ambassadors and so worthless to men of action.
The sultan promised to Venice the restitution of Athens
and the grant of a strip of territory five miles wide on the
coast opposite the whole length of the island of Eubcea ; he
ceded the Northern Sporades to the emperor, ratified the
recent transfer of Salona by Theodore Palaiologos to the
Knights of St John, and consented not to increase the tribute
paid by the Marquis of Boudonitza, although the latter had
been caught conspiring against his Thessalian governor.2
But Suleyman took no steps to make Antonio carry out his
1 Sdthas, op. eit, I.,. 4, 5 ; IL, 95-io3 5 J°rga, "Notes et Extraits," in
Revue de POrient latin, iv., 303.
2 Jorga, iv., 259-62 ; Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, 1 1., 290-3 ;
Lampros, "K-rtpa<pa, 392. This treaty bears no date ; it must have
been not earlier than 1404, the date of Theodore's grant of Salona to the
Knights of St John. According to Chalkokondyles ( 1 74) and Doukas (79)
the sultan also ceded Thessaly as far as Zetouni. Cf. Bessarion (Migne,
clxi., 618).

362 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
part of the treaty, while the latter had powerful friends in
Italy — Pope Innocent VII., Ladislaus of Naples, and Cardinal
Angelo Acciajuoli — working on his behalf. Accordingly,
Venice, nothing if not practical, reconciled herself to the
loss of a place which it would have been expensive to
recover. To save appearances, Antonio, in 1405, was per
suaded to become her vassal, holding " the land, castle, and
place of Athens, in modern times called Sythines," on con
dition that he sent every year a silk pallium worth 100
ducats to the church of St Mark. He was to make peace
or war at the bidding of his suzerain, to give no shelter to
her foes, to join in repelling attacks on adjacent Venetian
colonies. He undertook to compensate Venetian subjects
for their possessions seized during the war, to pay the value
of the munitions which he found in the Akropolis, and to
restore the goods of the late governor of Athens to his heirs.
He was also to banish for ever the mischievous Greek
metropolitan Makarios, who had apparently escaped from
his Venetian dungeon. On these terms the republic agreed
to pardon the erring Antonio for all the harm which he had
done her, and to receive him under her protection. He was,
however, in no hurry to carry out his promises. He had to
be sharply reminded that he had not sent the pallia, and
had not evacuated the strip of territory opposite Eubcea,
which the sultan had ceded to Venice, " the continent," or
" Staria " (l,Tepea), as the Venetians called it. Unless he
mended his ways, the republic warned him that she would
retract her promise to let him retain Athens. A compromise
was made, by which he was allowed to keep the fortresses in
the coveted piece of land, such as Sykaminon and Oropos, pro
vided that he built no more. Nine years later, he was still trying
in vain to obtain further concessions from the Venetians.1
The latter consoled themselves for the loss of Athens by
two fresh acquisitions in Greece. The fortress of Lepanto —
one of the most famous names in the history of Christendom —
was still in the possession of the Albanian family of Boua
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, III., 309; Sathas, op. eit., I., 52; IL, 135,
184, 183 ; Jorga, iv., 284. The "Staria" was not five miles of territory,
as has been supposed, but tantum infra terram quantum capiunt miliaria
v., tantum quantum est longa insula (Jorga, loc. eit).

VENICE OBTAINS LEPANTO 363
Spata, but seemed likely to fall ere long into the hands of
the Turks, with whom its lord was in agreement. Ever since
the Turkish Conquest of Salona with its admirable harbour
of Galaxidi, corsairs had preyed upon Venetian commerce in
the Gulf of Corinth, and it was feared that the Venetian
island of Corfu would be damaged, if the Turks were able to
convert Lepanto into what it became in the seventeenth
century — a "little Algiers." Rather than that this should
happen, Venice resolved to acquire the place. As far back
as 1390, a daring Venetian captain had hoisted the lion-
banner on its walls ; but he had not been supported by the
Venetian admiral, and had paid for his premature act by the
loss of his eyes. Four years later, the inhabitants, alarmed
by the Turks, had offered their town to the republic, but the
offer was cautiously declined. At last, in 1407, Venice made
up her mind that the psychological moment had arrived.
Two versions exist of the way in which she attained her
object. According to the official story, the then lord of
Lepanto, Paul Boua Spata, sold it for the sum of 1500
ducats ; but a more probable account informs us that a
Venetian detachment suddenly landed, and that its com
mander inveigled the ingenuous Albanian under promise of a
safe-conduct to his camp, and then threatened to cut off his
head, unless he gave up the town. A capitano or rettore was
appointed, who was dependent on the governor of Corfu,
except during the temporary occupation of the much nearer
town of Patras. The cost of keeping up the fortifications,
which are still one of the most picturesque sights of the
beautiful gulf, was defrayed out of the valuable fisheries of
Anatolik6. For ninety-two years Lepanto remained in
Venetian hands, and its " triple tiara " of walls was called by
a Venetian historian " the strongest bulwark of the Christian
peoples." 1 But Venice was wise enough to supplement this
defence by an annual tribute of 100 ducats to successive
sultans.2 A year later, in 1408, the republic rented Patras for five
1 S&has, op. eit, I., 1, 2 ; IL, 64, 70, 172, 180, 187-9, 23i 5 HI-, 75 ;
Nuovo Archivio Veneto, xv., 284-5 ; Sanudo, apud Muratori, xxii., 837 ;
Jorga, iv., 295.
2 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, 1 1., 303, 318, 345, 368.

364 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
years from its archbishop, Stephen Zaccaria, at an annual
rent of iooo ducats. The archbishop was harassed by the
Turks, and wanted to spend three years in study at Padua,
while the Venetians were glad to acquire a place where they
had so much trade. He retained his spiritual jurisdiction, while
they appointed their own podestH, who decided all temporal
matters in the archbishop's name, and was assisted, according
to the custom of the place, by a certain number of citizens.
The Venetians took over the serfs, received the revenues of
the Archbishopric — the duties on wine, corn, oil, silk, and
cotton, which, though much diminished, still amounted to
some 15,000 ducats, and raised the tribute of 500 ducats,
which the city had already been compelled to pay to the
Turks, and which was remitted to the sultan by the Prince
of Achaia together with his own contribution. Both Patras
and Venice benefited by these arrangements. The latter now
held the two keys of the gulf in her hands ; the former experi
enced the good effects of a practical administration, which
spent the balance of the revenues on the defences, repaired
the walls and the palace, whose noble hall was adorned with
frescoes of the destruction of Troy, and stationed an
" admiral " at the mouth of the gulf to keep off corsairs. The
numerous Venetian mercantile colony naturally felt safer
under the flag of the republic than under the crozier of a
spiritual prince. Unfortunately, the archbishop desired to
return, and at the end of the five years' lease, he received
back his dominions. But the fear of a new foe, the Greeks of
Mistra, soon drove him to place Patras, with the seven
fortresses dependent on it, once more in the power of the
republic, and in 1417 a Venetian governor again took up his
abode in the old castle of the Franks. The pope, however,
objected to this alienation of ecclesiastical property ; Venice
had to restore it two years later to the feeble rule of the
archbishop, with the natural result that, a few years after
wards, the Roman Church lost Patras for ever. By clutching
at the shadow, she had lost the substance.1
1 Gerland, 162-71; Predelli, Comme moriali, iii., 335 ; Diplomatarium,
IL, 303 ; Sathas, op. eit, I., 2, 15, 21-30, 34, 41, 51, 68, 76-89, 91-6, loi,
106; II., 216, 260; Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 839, 917; N. de
Martoni, op. eit, III,, 661.

FURTHER VENETIAN ACQUISITIONS 365
Further Venetian attempts at territorial expansion in the
Morea were not successful, the offer of Megara had no attrac
tions, as the place was too remote, but in Epiros the famous
rock of Parga had, in 1401, become a dependency of
Corfu,1 with which it remained connected till the memorable
cession by the British in 18 19 ; while in 1390 the two islands of
Mykonos and Tenos had been bequeathed to the republic.
The islanders petitioned the Venetian Government not to
dispose of them, " seeing that no lordship under Heaven is so
just and good as that of Venice," whereupon the latter farmed
them out, after a public auction, to a Venetian citizen, who
agreed to pay an annual rent of 1500 hyperperi out of the 1800
which represented the insular revenues, and who was
dependent on the bailie of Negroponte. With them went the
classic island of Delos, "le Sdiles," then a favourite lair of
Turkish pirates, who drew their water from the sacred lake,
of which Callimachus had sung.2 Of all the Venetian
acquisitions in the ^Egean, this was the most durable.
Thus, in the first decade of the fifteenth century, the
Venetian dominions in the Levant were increasingly impor
tant — a fact fully recognised by the Home Government. The
documents of the period are full of provisions for the colonies,
inspired by the Turkish peril, and of concessions to the
natives. Commissioners are sent to enquire into their con
dition, with power to examine Greeks as well as Latins ; in
Negroponte, all the inhabitants, except the Jews, whose taxes
are doubled, are to have privileges, the oppressive hearth-tax
is temporarily removed, and the barons are ordered to arm
their serfs with bows and arrows, and see that they practice
them. The Home Government grants a humble petition of
the islanders, praying that their good old customs may be
observed, pluralities prevented, local offices made annual, and
limited to those who have lived five years in the island, and
the serfs exempted from the duty of acting as beaters at
the bailie's hunting-parties. Still, the island was not prosper
ous ; there was a large deficit in the annual budget of the
colony; the vassals complained of their poverty, their
ineptitude for trade, and their struggle to live on their rents.
1 Sathas, 1 1., 29, 35, 46.
3 Predelli, Commemoriali, iii., 278, 354 ; Sathas, II., 163, 168, 178.

366 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
About this time the total population consisted of 14,000
families, and the city of Negroponte, though much smaller
than it once had been, could boast of a fine church, a rich
Franciscan monastery, and a nunnery. But what most struck
travellers was the picturesque castle — now alas ! no more —
in mid-stream, approached by a wooden draw-bridge on
either side. The local legend made it the abode of fairies,
the enchanted fortress where the Lady of the Lake had held
Gauvain captive. The beauty of the Lombard and
Venetian damsels of Negroponte, who dressed in Italian
fashion, seemed to be due to their descent from these fairy
mothers. In order to prevent the growing danger of the acquisition
of landed property in the island by the Jews, the latter were
forbidden to purchase real estate beyond the Ghetto, and the
Cretan system of letting land on long leases of twenty-nine
years was introduced so as to give the tenants more interest
in the soil ; finally, any " Albanians or other equestrian
people," who would emigrate to Eubcea, were given full
freedom and grants of uncultivated land, provided that they
brought, and kept, horses for the defence of the island.
Albanians, too, were induced to settle at Argos, Astros on
the Gulf of Nauplia was occupied, and the fortifications of
Nauplia were ordered to be repaired. So greatly did that
colony prosper under its new rulers, that soon a considerable
annual surplus was remitted out of its revenues to the Cretan
administration. In view of the increasing peril of invasion,
the cautious republic was ready to give favourable con
sideration to the Despot Theodore's plan of rebuilding the
'¦ six-mile '' rampart across the isthmus, while by treaties
with successive sultans in 1406 and 141 1 she secured that
her Greek colonies should not be molested.1
During the brief Venetian occupation of Athens, the
Peloponnese had been a prey to those jealousies which had
distracted it at the time of the Frankish Conquest. The
Despot, though he was the brother of the reigning Emperor
Manuel II., had never succeeded in imposing his authority
1 Sathas, II., 27, 30, 56-9, 60-2, 79, 83, 122-4, 224 ; III., 1, 2, 74, 95 ;
Jorga, iv., 291, 296 ; N. de Martoni, loc. eit; Thomas and Predelli, Diplo-
matarium, ii., 299, 303.

ALBANIANS IN THE MOREA 367
upon the proud and stubborn archons, whose ancestry was
as ancient as his own. If we may believe the iambic poem
inscribed on the door of the former church at Parori, near
Mistra, during the first five years of his reign they had
thwarted him in every way, striving either to drive him out
of the country or to murder him, the veritable " gift of God."
One of these local magnates, a Mamonis of Monemvasia, a
descendant of the man who had handed over that great
fortress to Villehardouin, held the office of " Grand Duke,"
or Lord High Admiral, and comported himself as an inde
pendent princelet. When Theodore had asserted himself
and expelled him, Mamonis had not hesitated to submit
his hereditary right to tyrannise over his native city to the
arbitrament of the sultan, who ordered his restoration.
Whenever the Despot tried to make his authority respected,
his rebellious Greek subjects found allies in the Navarrese,
and Theodore was thus forced in self-defence to look else
where for support. At this time some 10,000 Albanians had
emigrated from their homes in Thessaly and Akarnania
before the invading Turks, and had encamped with their
wives and children on the isthmus. Thence they sent
spokesmen to the Despot, asking permission to settle in his
dominions. Most of his advisers opposed the idea, on the
ground that the manners and customs of these strangers were
not those of the Greeks. Theodore saw, however, as his
predecessor Manuel Cantacuzene had done, that these
highlanders should furnish him with splendid fighting
material, with which he might keep his archons in order.
He admitted the Albanians to the peninsula ; they occupied
uninhabited spots, planted trees in places whence brigandage
had driven the pacific natives ; while, when it came to fight
ing against the rebels and their Navarrese allies, they and
their leader, Demetrios Rai, or Raoul, an ancestor of the
great family of Ralles, undaunted by San Superan's mail-
clad horsemen, succeeded in capturing that proud warrior
and his brother-in-law, the Constable Zaccaria, the former
captor of Nerio. Nothing but the fear of the Turks and
the good offices of Venice secured their release.1 Imitating
1 Manuel Palaioldgos, op. eit, 211-15, 228-9; Chronicon Breve, 516;
Phrantzes, 57 ; Bulletin de Corr. hellen., xxiii., 15 1-4.

368 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
the example of Nerio, San Superan obtained in 1396 from
Ladislaus of Naples the title of hereditary Prince of Achaia,
to which Pope Boniface IX., without encroaching on the
rights of the Neapolitan king, added that of " standard-
bearer" of the Church.1 Soon afterwards, in 1402, he died,
the type of a successful adventurer, who had never scrupled
to use the Turks when it suited his purpose. His widow
Maria succeeded him as Princess of Achaia and regent
for his eldest child ; but the real power was vested in
her nephew, Centurione Zaccaria, the ambitious baron of
Kyparissia.2 The Despot Theodore had soon convinced himself that
the Albanians alone would not suffice to save his land from
the Turks. He could not appeal for aid to his brother, the
Emperor Manuel 1 1., for the latter had gone to London to
crave the help of Henry IV, leaving his wife and children
in charge of the Venetians at Modon. Indeed, it seemed
as if Theodore himself might have to seek a refuge in some
Venetian colony.3 In this dilemma, he bethought him of the
Knights of St John, who had previously held Achaia, and
were known to be bold and experienced soldiers. He
accordingly went to Rhodes in 1400 and sold Mistra,
Kalavryta, and Corinth, to the Knights. When the news
reached Greece, great was the indignation of the natives ;
even the laboured funeral oration, which the Emperor Manuel
subsequently delivered over his brother, fails to justify this
craven act. The panegyrist strove, indeed, to show that his
brother had conferred a greater benefit upon Hellenism by
ceding Akrocorinth than by regaining it five years before;
in vain, he quoted Solomon in proof of his brother's wisdom,
and pronounced the admirable maxim — utterly disregarded
by the Greeks in practice — that, after all, it was better to give
Corinth to one's fellow-Christians than to let it fall into the
hands of the infidels. This was not the opinion of the people.
The Knights, indeed, occupied Corinth, where the Greek
party had not had time to take firm root, and where they
strove to make their rule popular by all manner of con-
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, III., 240; Raynaldi, viii., 72; Riccio,
Notizie Storiche, 67.
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 273. 3 Jorga, iv., 228.

THE KNIGHTS OF ST JOHN 369
cessions; but at Mistri, the capital and the seat of the
metropolitan of Lacedaemonia, the Greeks rushed with sticks
and stones to slay the envoys of the Order. The metro
politan intervened to save their lives, and gave them three
days to quit the district, whereupon the fanatical people
entrusted him with the supreme temporal power, and refused
to receive back the Despot, until he had repaid the purchase-
money to the Knights and vowed never to dream of such a
monstrous transaction again. He saw that what he had
regarded as a masterpiece of diplomacy had well-nigh cost
him his dominions. Moreover, the defeat and capture of the
dreaded Sultan Bajazet removed for a time the prospects of a
fresh Turkish invasion. Theodore thought that the Knights,
having served their turn, were no longer needed ; and
successfully applied his diplomatic talents to the task of
ejecting them with the least possible amount of friction.
A money payment, and the cession of the old county of
Salona, with the barony of Lamia, which Theodore, as the
representative of the last countess, had occupied on the news
of the Turkish defeat at Angora, but which he was too weak
to hold, settled the claims of the Knights, and both parties
separated on the best of terms. In 1404, Theodore re-entered
Corinth, and the Knights crossed the gulf to take possession
of Salona. But there, too, they found the Greeks fanatically
opposed to " the French priests." When they tried to bribe
the mountain folk to rise against the Turks, who had re-
occupied the country, the crafty Greeks took their money
and then laughed at them, and the monkish chronicler
naively justifies his countrymen's conduct towards the
Frankish "Antichrists," who got no more than they
deserved. All that they accomplished was the building
of a church at Galaxidi, the ruins of which still disguise, in
a corrupted form, the name of St John of Jerusalem. Even
the formal acquiescence of the new sultan in their occupation
of Salona availed them nothing in the face of this Greek
opposition, and the old Frankish barony was soon all
Turkish again.1
1 Phrantzes, 63 ; Chalkokondyles, 97, 206 ; Manuel Palaioldgos, op.
eit, 1!lW1 ; Chronicon Breve, 517 ; Xpovucbv too Ta\a£eL5lov, 207-9 ! Bosio,
IL, 117 ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, 1 1., 290-3.
2 A

370 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
Theodore did not long survive his diplomatic triumph.
In 1407 he died, and, as he left no heirs, the Emperor
Manuel II. appointed his own second son, Theodore 1 1.,
who was still a minor, as his brother's successor. Over the
remains of the late Despot the emperor delivered, a few years
later, a pompous funeral oration, still preserved, in which he
lauded his brother to the skies in faultless Greek and with
great wealth of classical allusion, attributed to his wise policy
in calling in the Knights the revival of prosperity in the
peninsula, and exclaimed that the Peloponnese was his
brother's monument — "a monument, too, not dead, but
alive ! "
The Despot's last act before his death had been to
attempt what his predecessors had been compassing for a
century and a half — the conquest of the Frankish principality,
now in the hands of a new and energetic ruler. Centurione
Zaccaria, son of the former constable and nephew of the last
prince, was not the man to be content with governing in the
name of his aunt and her infant children. He had the
effrontery to ask Venide, to whose care San Superan had
committed his heirs, for assistance in his ambitious design of
setting them aside, just as, two centuries before, the first
Villehardouin, with Venetian aid, had deprived Champlitte's
successor of his heritage. Then he applied to King Ladislaus
of Naples, who still posed as overlord of Achaia, and
obtained from him, in 1404, the coveted title of Prince of
Achaia. The Neapolitan monarch salved his conscience for
thus depriving San Superan's children of their birthright by
pretending that they had not notified their father's death
within the time prescribed by the feudal law. Thus, the
great Genoese family from which Centurione sprang had
reached the summit of its ambitions by a quibble similar to
that by which the first Villehardouin had won Achaia But
the handwriting was on the wall. He was the last of the long
series of Frankish Princes of Achaia ; weakened by internal
dissensions, the diminished state was destined to succumb
ere long to the brief revival of Hellenism at Mistri. Mean
while, Centurione's most pressing foes were those of his own
race. One of his most important peers, Carlo Tocco, Count
of Cephalonia, at once obtained from the King of Naples

FEMALE RULE IN CEPHALONIA 371
the abolition of the feudal tie, which had united his
island county to Achaia for 170 years — an event com
memorated on the only coin of his dynasty, now in the
British Museum. Not content with that, he and his brother,
Leonardo of Zante, seized Glarentza, from which they were
finally dislodged by the united efforts of the Zaccaria clan
and the Albanian troops of the prince. The latter, feeling
himself insecure, begged his ancestral city of Genoa to look
upon him as her son and citizen.1
The Tocchi were at this time among the most ambitious
and able of the Latin dynasties in the Levant. We have
seen how Carlo I., Duke of Leucadia and Palatine Count of
Cephalonia and Zante, had married the favourite daughter
of Nerio Acciajuoli, and had played an active, if devious, part
in the execution of his father-in-law's will. His wife, the
Duchess Francesca, one of the ablest and most masterful
women of the Latin Levant, in which her sex had played so
prominent a part, was the ruling spirit in his councils. To
her influence was due the restoration of the Greek arch
bishopric of Leukas ; she was sufficiently Greek and sufficiently
proud to sign her letters in Greek, and with the cinnabar ink
of Byzantium : " Empress ofthe Romans " ; and she possessed
all her father's brains, and inherited his political ideas. In
her castle of Santa Mavra — the irregular, hexagonal building
which is still preserved — and in her court at the castle of St
George in Cephalonia, which served as barracks during the
British occupation, but which now remains a deserted land
mark of foreign rule, she presided over a bevy of fair ladies.
Old Froissart tells us, how the Comte de Nevers and the
other French nobles, whom the sultan had taken prisoners
at the battle of Nikopolis, were received there by her with
splendid hospitality on their way home. The ladies were
exceeding glad, he says, to have such noble society, for
Venetian and Genoese merchants were, as a rule, the only
strangers who came to their delightful island. He describes
Cephalonia as ruled by women, who scorned not, however,
to make silken coverings so fine that there were none like
them. Fairies and nymphs inhabited this ancient realm of
1 Sdthas, op. eit, IL, 30, 109, 155, 165, 168, 194; Schlumberger,
Numismatique, 391 ; Riccio, Notizie Storiche, 67.

372 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
Odysseus, where a mediaeval Penelope governed in the absence
of her lord. Events were soon to extend his rule over the
neighbouring continent, where we last saw his uncle, Esau
Buondelmonti, holding sway.1
The Florentine ruler of Joannina was anxious to secure
immunity for his people from the attacks of the great
Albanian clan of Spata, which had its capital at Arta.
Accordingly, on the death of his beloved wife, he had
contracted a second marriage with a daughter of old Ghin
(or John) Boua Spata, its chieftain. But this act of policy
had the very opposite effect of what had been expected, for
it brought Evrenosbeg and a Turkish army upon Epiros,
and made the Albanians more jealous than ever of the
Italian interloper. Buondelmonti proved a match for the
Turks in that difficult country ; but in his new brother-in-law,
Ghin Zenevisi, Lord of Argyrokastron, he found a more
dangerous antagonist. During an expedition to punish this
treacherous chieftain, he was taken prisoner, and only released,
thanks to the good offices of his influential Florentine relatives,
and of the Venetian governor of Corfu, on payment of a large
ransom. We last hear of him in 1408, when he died with
out offspring, and, in the ordinary course, his nephew, Carlo
Tocco, should have succeeded him.2 But, no sooner was
Esau dead, than another Albanian chief, Maurice Boua
Sgour6s, who had seized the succession of his brother Ghin
at Arta, made himself also master of Joannina, whence Tocco
was unable to dislodge him. Both parties appealed for aid
to Venice, which, after her acquisition of Lepanto, was not
at all desirous to see a vigorous Italian princelet establish
himself on the mainland. Sgour6s, when hard pressed, called
in the Turks, which had the effect of frightening all parties
into peace. But, though Tocco temporarily relinquished the
places which he had taken on the mainland, he did not
abandon his claim to the old Despotat of Epiros. The
1 Miklosich und Miiller, II., 139; III., 253; Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, II., i., 254, 283, 286; Froissart (ed. Buchon), xiv., 57, 58;
Meliarikes, Feoiypa(pla tov N0/10C KetpaXK-nvlas, 34 ; Blantgs, 'H Aewds, 58.
2 A golden bull of his, dated 1408, and published by Romands
(Ilepi tov Aeo-n-oT&Tov, 168), disproves the statement of the Epirotica, that he
died in 1400.

CARLO TOCCO IN EPIROS 373
various races of Epiros seem to have grown weary of the
Albanian ascendancy ; already another rival had endeavoured
to obtain as many diverse racial sympathies as possible by
describing himself as a " Serbo-Albano-Boulgaro-Wallach " —
a name worthy of Aristophanes himself. Tocco and his
consort were doubtless popular with the Greek element ;
supported by them and with his own right arm, he would
appear to have at last vanquished his enemy in a battle,
which was fatal to the latter ; early in 141 7, he had already
made himself master of "the land of Arta," and in 14 18 he
was able to style himself " Despot of the Romans." His
dominions embraced, besides his islands, Epiros, ^Etolia,
and Akarnania; he resided now at Arta, now at Joannina,
and now in his insular castles, while the relatives of his fallen
rival emigrated to the Morea, where they and their descend
ants, later on, played a prominent part. Thus he and his
masterful wife had established in North-west Greece, a com
pact dominion, broken only by the Venetian castle of Lepanto.
That, too, he offered to buy ; but he received the haughty
answer, that the republic had " never been accustomed to
sell her fortresses, and is quite capable, even if they were not
remunerative, of supporting their cost." 1
The ten years' fratricidal struggle between the four sons
of Bajazet I. had given Greece as a whole a welcome respite
from Turkish invasions, and a Byzantine governor actually
ruled, for the first time for generations, in Lamia. But the
' two surviving fragments of Latin rule in North-east Greece —
the Venetian marquisate of Boudonitza and the Venetian
station of Pteleon — were, from their isolated position,
peculiarly exposed to attack. Suleyman, as we saw, had
guaranteed the independence of the Marquis Giacomo on
continued payment of a tribute, which was also claimed from
Pteleon ; but the Turks none the less became so threatening
that he removed his vassals and cattle to the safer castle of
Karystos in Eubcea, which his brother now held from the
Venetians. The danger increased when Suleyman's brother,
Musa, seized the Turkish throne in 1410. The new sultan's
1 Epirotica, 235-8; Sdthas, i., 34; ii., 114, 234; iii., 64, 174; Hopf,
Chroidques, 195, 301, 342, 368 ; Lami, Delicia Eruditorum, v., p. cxx. ;
Jorga, iv., 581.

374 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
victorious troops marched straight, like a new army of
Xerxes, against the historic fortress which, for two centuries,
had guarded the Pass of Thermopylae. The marquis
defended it, like a second Leonidas, but he was assassi
nated by a traitor within the walls. Even then, his sons,
aided by their uncle, the baron of Karystos, held the
castle for some months longer, in the hope that Venice would
send aid to her children in distress. Aid was, indeed,
ordered to be sent ; but, before it arrived, Boudonitza had
fallen — surrendered at last by its gallant defenders on
condition that their lives and property were spared. The
Turks violated their promise, robbed their prisoners of all
that they possessed, and incorporated the marquisate with
the Pashalik of Thessaly. Young Niccolo Zorzi, the late
marquis's heir, and his uncle, Niccolo of Karystos, were
dragged off as captives to the sultan's court at Adrianople,
where Venice did not forget them. In the treaty of 141 1,
between Musa and the republic, the sultan promised to
release the young marquis, for love of Venice, seeing that
he was a Venetian, to vex him no more, if he paid the
tribute agreed upon, and to allow his ships and merchandise
to enter the Turkish Empire on payment of a fixed duty.
But young Niccolo, after what had occurred, felt insecure in
his ancestral castle at the northern gates of Greece. In 1412
we find him sending the Bishop of Thermopylae to ask for
archers from Negroponte and the protection of the Venetian
admiral, in case the Turks, or their vassal, Antonio of Athens,
should attack him.1 His request was granted; but his
marquisate was doomed.
Mohammed I. had indeed promised on his accession in
1 41 3, to be a son to the Greek Emperor Manuel, who had
helped him to the throne ; and he had told the envoys of
the Despot Theodore, the Prince of Achaia, and the Despot of
Joannina, that he wished to be at peace with their masters.'-
But he did not spare the Venetian Lord of Boudonitza. His
fleet sailed to Eubcea, and, after ravaging the island, crossed
over to the mainland. On 20th June 1414 the castle fell,
1 Hopf, Karystos (tr. Sardagna), 55-8, 90 ; Thomas and Predelli,
Diplomatarium, ii., 203 ; Sathas, II., 155, 210, 270 ; Jorga, vi., 119.
2 Doukas, 97.

FALL OF BOUDONITZA 375
its fortifications were destroyed, numbers of the marquis's
subjects were dragged off as slaves, and the historic mar
quisate which had lasted over two hundred years, disappeared
from the face of Greece. Young Niccol6 fled to Venice,
which afforded him shelter and endeavoured to recover for
him his lost dominions. When the republic, after a brilliant
victory over the Turkish fleet, forced upon Mohammed the
treaty of 1416, one of the conditions was that the marquis
should be restored, if he did homage and paid tribute to the
sultan. But his castle was now in ruins, and he was glad
to cede the vain honour of bearing the title to his uncle, the
baron of Karystos, receiving for himself the rectorship of
Pteleon, as the reward of the services of his father, " killed by
the Turks in the cause of Venice." From that time we hear
of him no more ; but his uncle, Niccol6 of Karystos, was
prominent in the diplomatic negotiations of the period. He
went as Venetian ambassador to both the Emperor Sigismund
and Pope Martin V, and it was on an embassy to Murid II.
at Adrianople that he died, it was said, of poison administered
by the sultan's orders. The title of Marquis of Boudonitza
and the barony of Karystos lingered on for two generations
in his family, and at the present day his descendants, the
Zorzi of S. Giustina still exist in Venice. Such was the
tragic end of the marquisate, which Boniface of Montferrat
had conferred upon the PaUavicini, and which had passed
from them to the family of Zorzi.1 A picturesque ruin still
marks the spot where the Italian marquises held their court.
With the fall of Boudonitza, the brief restoration of
Byzantine rule in Lamia passed away, and the whole of
continental Greece, from Olympos to Bceotia, was Turkish,
except where the Euboean governor of Pteleon kept the
Venetian flag still flying. Despite the late sultan's promise
not to molest the Venetian colonies, every year the Turks
1 Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 890, 911, 1043 ; Navagero, ibid., xxiii.,
1080-1 ; Cronaca di Amadeo Valier, fol. 259 (Cod. Cicogna, No. 297) in
Museo Correr ; Sathas, iii., 429-31 ; Jorga, iv., 561 ; v., 196. Much con
fusion has been caused by the fact that both uncle and nephew had the
same name. I have followed the account given by Hopf in his Karystos
(tr. Sardagna), rather than that in his history (lxxxvi., 73-6), because we
know (Jorga, iv., 546) that the uncle was five years in prison.

376 FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS
descended in smaller or larger numbers upon Eubcea, and on
one of these raids some 1 500 of the islanders were carried off
into captivity, and the town of Lepso, the modern ^Edepsos,
where the Greeks go to take the hot baths, was destroyed.
So wretched was existence in the island at this time, that the
inhabitants petitioned Venice for permission to become
tributaries of the Turks. This request the proud republic
refused ; but it was obvious, as the petitioners pointed out,
that Negroponte was now, like Lepanto, " on the frontier of
all her Levantine possessions," and had therefore to bear the
brunt of every Turkish invasion. Attica was still more
exposed to these dreaded enemies, and in 141 5 Antonio
Acciajuoli applied to Venice for munitions from Negroponte
and leave to deposit his animals and property there in case
of attack. A year later the Turks ravaged his duchy and
forced him to pay tribute. Happily the great Venetian
naval victory over the Turks in 14 16 checked for a time the
Ottoman advance, and the subsequent treaty, which the
sultan made with the victors three years later, procured a
breathing space for the Latins of the Levant. Mohammed I.
even went so far as to threaten with condign punishment,
Antonio Acciajuoli, who had maltreated some Venetian sub
jects, or anyone else who should dare to lay a finger on any
Venetian colony.1 Thus, Greece enjoyed a welcome respite
from the Turkish peril. Had her rulers been wise, they
would have availed themselves of it to consolidate their
forces against the common enemy, who was so soon to
destroy their dominions. But when have the Eastern
Christians been united against the Crescent? Yet few
moments were more favourable than this, when the Turkish
ruler was pacific, when his Empire was just emerging from
a long civil war, and when, by a curious irony of fate,
Hellenism was displaying a consciousness of its past and a
concern for its future such as it had not shown since the
Frankish Conquest. It was, alas! the last flicker of light
before the long centuries of Turkish darkness.
1 Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 896; Sathas, III., 100-2, 125-7,
129-31, 190 ; Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., 318-20.

CHAPTER XII
THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA (1415-1441)
Early in the year 141 5, the Emperor Manuel II. paid a
memorable visit to the Peloponnese. His object was to
establish his son Theodore, now of age, in the governorship of
Mistri, to do what was practicable for the defence of a province
which had attracted greater attention at the Byzantine court
since the rest of the empire had been so woefully curtailed by
the Turkish Conquests, and to pronounce a funeral oration
over his late brother. The Venetians gave him a state
reception when he stopped at Negroponte on his way. But
they were so much alarmed at the arrival of a ruler, who
naturally personified the reviving idea of Hellenism, that
they at once dismissed the Greek mercenaries of their
Peloponnesian colonies. From Eubcea the emperor sailed to
Kenchreai, the port of Corinth, where he received the
homage of the Prince of Achaia, and where he assembled the
people of the peninsula. He then set them to work to
rebuild the great rampart across the isthmus which his
brother had proposed. Under the imperial eye the workmen
laboured so fast, that in twenty-five days a wall 42 stades in
length, strengthened by 153 towers and a ditch, and terminated
by a castle at either end, stretched from sea to sea. The
emperor built on the site of the rampart which the Pelopon-
nesians had raised on the approach of Xerxes, which Valerian
had restored when he fortified Greece against the Goths,
which Justinian had again constructed when Greece was
threatened by the Huns and Slavs. An inscription in
honour of Justinian came to light in the course of the work,
and it was hoped that the wall of Manuel would prove as
377

378 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
durable as his. Remains of the Hexamilion may still be
seen between the modern town of Corinth and the Canal,
while its name is preserved by a hamlet on the line to
Argos. But the restoration of the wall availed little against
the bravery of the Turks ; for, as Thucydides had observed
centuries before, it is men and not walls that make a city.
If we may believe a Byzantine satirist — and his statement is
in keeping with their character — the Peloponnesian archons
showed so little patriotism and so much jealousy of the
emperor, that they rose and threatened to destroy the ram
part when it was barely finished. Such was their insubordin
ation, that, when he returned to Constantinople, Manuel
thought it prudent to take them with him. Before he left, he
announced the completion of the work to the doge, who sent
his congratulations, and authorised the governors of the
Venetian colonies in the Morea to assist in its defence. But,
when asked to contribute to the cost of maintaining it, the
Venetians excused themselves, on the plea that they were
incurring heavy expenses for defending other parts of Greece
against the Turks. So unpopular was the tax imposed upon
the Greeks for the support of the Hexamilion, that many
serfs fled into the Venetian colonies to escape it, and a few
years later the Despot Theodore II. actually offered to
transfer the custody of the great wall to the republic. But the
selfish Venetians would only consent to this, if they also
received a mile or two of land inside it, and if Theodore
would pay half the cost of defence. Such was the attitude of
the two powers most vitally interested in the preservation of
the peninsula at a time when union alone could have saved it
from the Turks.1
There was at least one man then living in the Pelopon
nese who was well aware that more than ramparts of stone
was needed to secure the independence of the peninsula.
The Platonic philosopher, George Gemistos, or Plethon, as he
afterwards called himself, had been engaged for the last
twenty years in teaching the doctrines of his master in the
1 Phrantzes, 96, 107, 108; Chalkokondyles, 183,216; Doukas, 102;
Mi.za.ris apud Boissonade, Anecdota Graca, III., 177; Chronicon Breve,
517; Sathas, i., 115; iii., no, 113, 116, 126, 177, 179; Jorga, iv., 547,
554-5, 558> N<?os 'EXXi)»o/*!'i)/uoii, ii., 451-4, 461-6.

PLETHON AT MISTRA 379
picturesque Byzantine capital of Mistri. Even to-day, when
the Mistri of the Palaiol6goi is a deserted town, the traveller,
wandering among the ruins of the palace, visiting the beautiful
Byzantine churches, and climbing up to the castle hill, may form
some idea of the civilisation of the mediaeval Sparta. Mistri
was at this time more than 1 50 years old ; and, as the Byzantine
empire had shrunk to a few islands and a small tract of land
near Constantinople, the Greek province of the Peloponnese
and its capital had assumed an importance which they had
not before possessed. The second son of the emperor now
regularly resided there, and already there lay buried at Mistri
the ex-Emperor John Cantacuzene, his sons Matthew and
Manuel, and the Despot Theodore I. To this beautiful spot,
within sight of the ancient Sparta but in a far finer situation,
Gemistos had moved from the Turkish capital of Adrianople.
If we may assume that " the philosopher George," to whom
the litterateur Demetrios Kyd6nes addresses three or four
playful letters, is none other than he, his choice of abode seems
to have surprised the elegant Byzantine world, which, like
modern French novelists, could conceive of no life as worth
living except that of the metropolis. " You thought," writes
Kydones, " that this mere shadow of the Peloponnese was the
Islands of the Blessed ; to your wild philhellenism it seemed
as if the soil of Sparta were enough to show you Lycurgus, and
that you would be his companion." J There was not a little
truth in the remark, for the economic schemes of Gemistos
were better fitted for Plato's Republic than for the
Moreot society of the fifteenth century. But, in point of
culture, Mistri could have compared favourably with some
modern seats of learning. No less famous a man than
Bessarion came-from distant Trebizond to hear this disciple of
Plato expound the master's teaching, while in Hieronymos
Charitonomos, whose funeral oration over Plethon has been
preserved, Mistra produced one of the earliest teachers of
Greek in the University of Paris.2
1 Boissonade, Anecdota Nova, 303. There is no anachronism in the
assumption, for Kyddnes is known to have been alive as late as 1397,
about the time of Gemistds's removal to the Morea. The plague alluded
to in the letters may have been that of 1399.
2 Platina, Paneg. in laudem Bessarionis, 2.

380 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAlA
Gemistos was doubtless emboldened to address his scheme
for the regeneration of the Peloponnese to the emperor by
the favourable reception accorded to a previous letter, in
which he had urged Manuel to pay a personal visit to the
peninsula, if he cared anything for its safety.1 In that letter
and in an appeal to the Despot Theodore, he foreshadowed
the proposals which he embodied in a memorial to the
patient emperor, handed to him while he was still at the
isthmus. He began by proclaiming the Hellenism of
Greece, and, overlooking the existence of various other
races in the Peloponnese, he pointed to the speech and
education of the people as proofs of their Greek origin. But
all was not well in this citadel of the race, which neither its
strong natural defences nor the Isthmian wall could protect
without drastic reforms. According to the philosopher of
Mistri, the radical defect in the existing system of military
service was that the taxpayers were summoned away from
their agricultural pursuits to bear arms. So long as campaigns
were short this did not greatly matter ; but the continual and
lengthy calls upon the people in consequence of the frequent
domestic wars and Turkish invasions had made them less
and less inclined to respond. Hence few put in an appear
ance when war was proclaimed ; and even those few were
badly armed and anxious to quit the camp for their domestic
duties. As a consequence, it had been found necessary to
hire foreign mercenaries for the defence of the country — a
plan which increased the taxes, corrupted the natives, and
was quite inadequate in an emergency. To remedy this,
Gemist6s suggested that justice demanded a division of the
products of the country into three equal shares between the
three classes of producers, capitalists, and officials, the last of
which included the soldiers, the archons, and the court. The
first class, which was by far the most numerous, would keep
one-third of what it produced, would pay one-third to the
capitalists, and one-third in the form of a tax to the State for
the maintenance of the soldiers and officials. A peasant
proprietor who owned his own cattle and instruments of labour,
would, of course, retain two-thirds of his produce. In districts
1 Upbs Tbv BaaiXia, apud Miiller in Sitzungsberichte der Wiener
Akademie (1852), ix., 400-2.

PLETHONS PROPOSALS 381
where most of the peasants were fit for military service, they
should be grouped in pairs, each pair having property and
capital in common, so that one man would cultivate the soil
while the other was performing military service, and vice versd.
The official class should be excluded from trade (as was the case
in the Venetian colonies), and exempt from payment of taxes in
consideration of its public services. The peasants, who would
thus be the sole taxpayers, and whom Gemist6s calls in truly
Spartan phraseology " Helots," should no longer be expected to
undertake forced labour or to pay a number of small taxes at
frequent intervals to an army of tax-collectors. In place of
those irksome imposts, the new Lycurgus advocated, centuries
before Henry George, a single tax, payable, not in cash, but
in kind, and amounting to one-third of all crops and young
animals. The " Helots," no longer liable to military service,
would thus be able to support themselves and their families,
remunerate the capitalist, and also provide for the maintenance
of the official, non-producing class. Gemist6s would have
assigned one " Helot " for the support of each foot-soldier,
and two for that of each horseman, while he left it to the
discretion of the sovereign to select as many " Helots " as he
thought adequate for that of the officers and of the reigning
house, suggesting, however, three for the former. One section
of the unproductive class — the clergy — received scant favour
from this unorthodox philosopher, who drew his inspiration
from Plato rather than from the Fathers of the Church. He
was willing to concede three " Helots " apiece to the bishops,
as state officials, but to the monks, " who, under the pretence
of philosophic enquiry, claim the largest share of the public
revenues," he refused even the smallest aid from the funds of
the State. They were, he said, "a swarm of drones," who
deserved no other privilege than tha^t of enjoying their
possessions free of taxation. Or, at least, let them hold
public offices without salary, as the " ransom " which they
paid for the retention of their property. It is not surprising
that this attack on their order gained for Gemist6s the bitter
hatred of the clergy ; even after his death they refused him
burial in consecrated ground, and it is not at Mistri, but in
the cathedral of Rimini that we must seek his remains.
Not content with having thus excited one powerful interest

382 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
against him, the dauntless visionary attacked another — the
landed interest — by boldly proposing the nationalisation of the
land — a measure which, so he believed, would make the
Peloponnese blossom like the rose.
By these reforms Gemistds confidently hoped to support
in the least irksome manner a force lof some 6000 native
soldiers. But his reforming zeal was not confined to the
question of national defence. A strong patriot, he wished to
erect a high fiscal barrier, a tariff Hexamilion, against the
foreigner. A land such as ours, he told his distinguished
correspondents, is essentially agricultural ; that is our principal
occupation ; we can produce in the Peloponnese all that we
want, except iron and arms, and we should be much better
without foreign clothes, seeing that the peninsula yields wool,
flax, hemp, and cotton. Why then import wool from the
Atlantic Ocean, and have it woven into garments beyond the
Ionian Sea ? Accordingly, he advocated a high export duty
of fifty per cent, on the fruits of the earth and on other useful
products of the country, unless they were exchanged for iron
or arms, in which case they should be exported free of charge.
Taxes and salaries being paid in kind, and the export of
cotton being sufficient, in his opinion, to pay for the imports
of iron and arms, Gemistos saw no further need for money.
The Peloponnese was, at this time, flooded with bad foreign
coins — for the Despots of Mistri, so far as is known, never
issued any currency of their own, though Theodore I. pledged
himself in 1 394 not to imitate the Venetian coinage, while he
received permission to copy other currencies, which looks as
if he had contemplated the establishment of a mint.1 This
evil the philosopher accordingly desired to remove. Lastly,
he turned his attention to the reform of the penal code.
Capital punishment, formerly usual, had fallen into abeyance ;
while, in its place, the judges inflicted the barbarous penalty
of amputation, or in too many cases let the criminals off scot-
free. Gemist6s deplored both this excessive cruelty and this
excessive leniency; he thought it far better to chain the
criminals in gangs and set them to work at the repair of the
Isthmian wall.
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, III., 223; Schlumberger, Numismatique,
322.

THE SATIRE OF MAZARIS 383
He concluded his scheme of reforms, by modestly offering
his own services to carry them out. The offer was declined ;
the Emperor Manuel was a practical man, who knew that he
was living, not in Plato's republic, but in the dregs of
Lycurgus.1 The philosopher continued, however, to enjoy
the favour of the imperial family. When the Emperor John VI.
visited the Morea in 1428, he consulted him on the Union of
the Eastern and Western Churches, and confirmed the grant
of two manors, Phanarion and Vrysis, made to Gemistos and
his two sons by the Despot Theodore II. It is interesting to
note that one of the conditions was the payment by the lord
of the manor of Xhefloriatikon, or tax for the maintenance of
the Isthmian wall. Gemistos showed his gratitude by a
florid funeral oration, still preserved, over the Despot's Italian
wife, Cleopa Malatesta.2
About the same time that Gemistos drew up his scheme for
the regeneration of the Morea, a Byzantine satirist composed,
in the manner of Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, a bitter
pamphlet, in which he gives us his impressions of the Pelo
ponnese. The satire may be overdrawn, but it is nearer
to life than the idealism of the Platonist. In place of the
" purely hellenic " population of Gemist6s, Mazaris tells us that
there are in the peninsula seven races, " Lacedaemonians,
Italians, Peloponnesians, Slavonians, Illyrians, Egyptians,
and Jews, and among them are not a few half-castes." These
are precisely the races which we should have expected to find
there. The " Lacedaemonians," as Mazaris himself explains,
are the Tzakones, who had "become barbarians" in their
language, of which he gives some specimens. The " Italians "
are the Franks of all kinds — French, Italians, and Navarrese ;
the " Peloponnesians " are the native Greeks ; the " Slavonians "
are the tribes of Ezerits and Melings about Taygetos; the
" Illyrians " are the Albanians whom Theodore I. had
admitted to the peninsula ; the " Egyptians " are the gypsies,
whose name, like that of the Jews, is still preserved in the
1 Ilepl tuv iv He\owovv^o-<p irpay/iiTuiv. Abyoi, & nal /?', apudMigne, Patro-
logia Graca, clx., 821-64. Cf. Tozer in Journal of Hellenic Studies, vii.,
353- 2 Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 173-6 ; Sgurdpoulos, Vera Historia
Unionis, § 6, ch. x.

384 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
various " Gypht6kastra " and " Ebrai6kastra " of Greece.
Mdzaris goes on to make the shrewd remark, true to-day of
all Eastern countries where the Oriental assumes a veneer of
Western civilisation, that "each race imitates the worst
features of the others," the Greeks assimilating the turbulence
of the Franks, and the Franks the cunning of the Greeks.
So insecure were life and property, that arms were worn
night and day — a practice obsolete in the time of Thucydides.
Of the Moreot archons he gives much the same account as the
Emperor Cantacuzene ; they are " men who ever delight in
battles and disturbances, who are for ever breathing murder,
who are full of deceit and craft, barbarous and pig-headed,
unstable and perjured, faithless to both emperor and Despots."1
Such men were not likely to sink their private differences
and rally round their sovereign's representative in a firm and
united stand against the Turk.
Manuel's sojourn in the Peloponnese seems, at least, to
have had some effect in reducing to order and civilising the
lawless and savage population of Maina. Like the Bavarian
rulers of Greece in the nineteenth century, the Byzantine
sovereign destroyed numbers of the towers, which were the
refuge of the wild Mainate chieftains. It was he, too, as two
Greek panegyrists inform us, who stamped out their brutal
but very ancient custom, mentioned by the Greek tragedians,
of cutting off their enemies' fingers or toes, and dipping these
ghastly trophies in the festive bumper, with which they
drank to the health of their friends. In a land where stones
were so plentiful and imperial officials so rare, the towers
soon rose again, but this grim practice (nao-xaXia-fios, as it
was called by the ancients) is never mentioned again.2
After the departure of the emperor, the Morea enjoyed
relative repose, broken only by occasional conflicts between
the Greeks and Centurione, the Prince of Achaia, in the
course of which the Venetian colonies suffered from the un
controllable Albanians of the Despot, while the old Frankish
principality steadily dwindled away almost to nothing before
1 'JUTLS-q/xla. MAfopi if "AiSov, apud Boissonade, Anecdota Graca, iii., 164,
168, 174, 177-8.
2 Isidore of Monemvasia and Argyrdpoulos in NVos "&Xki\vop.v-l)p.oiv, ii.,
181-4.

VENICE OCCUPIES NAVARINO 385
the Greek attack. The imperial family continued to display
a strong personal interest in the peninsula ; John, the heir
and associate of Manuel II., spent a year there, during which
he captured Androusa, the capital of the principality ; and,
when he returned home, his youngest brother, Thomas, was
sent there, attended by the historian Phrantzes, a native of
Monemvasia, who was destined to play an active part in the
last act of Greek freedom, and to describe the events of his
time for the edification of posterity. Nor were the Greeks
the only enemies of Centurione ; an Italian adventurer, named
Oliverio, seized the important port of Glarentza, forced the
Prince of Achaia to bestow it upon him with the hand of his
daughter, and then sold it to Carlo Tocco, who had long
desired that foothold in the Morea. Feeling his position
daily more insecure, Centurione tried to dispose of the
principality. He first offered it to his ancestral city of
Genoa, much to the alarm of her rival, Venice, and then
to the Knights of St John, who declined, owing to the
Turkish danger in Asia Minor, to interfere again in
its administration ; he was even quite willing to make
a bargain with the republic of St Mark. The latter was
desirous of extending her possessions in the peninsula,
or of even acquiring the whole of it, not from ambitious
motives, as she truly said, but from fear lest it should
fall into the hands of an enemy who might injure her
trade and colonies. Indeed, the lack of settled govern
ment, and of any proper police, practically ruined her
traffic in the Malmsey wine, which it then produced.
In 1417 she had garrisoned Navarino, just in time
to prevent its occupation by the Genoese ; in 1423
she legalised her position there by purchase, and she
rounded off her Messenian colonies by the acquisition
of several other important castles. These greatly
strengthened her position in the south of Messenia ;
communication by land between Modon and Coron was
now secured by the fortress of Grisi, which was of
great value when the sea was beset by Turkish ships.
New regulations were drawn up for this enlarged strip
of Venetian territory. In 1439, we are told, it included
seven castles, three of which, including Navarino, were
2 B

386 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
placed under the jurisdiction of Modon, and the other
four under that of Coron ; in each of these seven strong
holds a Latin governor, chosen from among the Venetians
of the two colonial capitals, held office for two years,
and at the end of his term, a councillor of the colony
went and heard any charges which the people might have
against him.
Not satisfied with these piecemeal acquisitions, the
republic, in 1422, sent a commissioner to examine thoroughly
and report upon the defences, the revenues and expenditure
of the Morea, and to sound the Despot Theodore, the Prince
of Achaia, and Carlo Tocco, with a view to obtaining all, or
most, of the Greek Despotat ; the whole of the principality
of Achaia, either at once, or on the death of Centurione ; and
the valuable mart of Glarentza. The commissioner presented
a thorough and satisfactory report to his Government; the
Morea, he wrote, yields more than Crete ; it comprises more
than 1 50 castles, its circumference is 700 miles ; its soil
contains deposits of gold, silver, and lead, and it exports silk,
honey, wax, grain, poultry, and raisins. It is curious to
compare this statement with that of Gemist6s. The philo
sopher had made no mention of the silk industry, which still
flourished, while the commissioner omitted the cotton, which
figured so largely in the schemes of Plethon, and to which
there is frequent allusion in the Venetian documents. The
large amount of merchandise which Nerio Acciajuoli had
stored at Corinth, the great value of the Venetian wares
which we find at Patras, and the existence of a considerable
Jewish colony there, confirm the commercial importance of
the country. Even in the midst of war's alarms, a wealthy
Venetian merchant, settled at Patras, had customers on both
sides of the Corinthian Gulf, and that city was the home of
several well-to-do families, whose standard of living would
have incurred the censure of the philosopher. In spite, then,
of all it had undergone, the constant civil wars, the Turkish
depredations, the eight plagues of the last two generations,
and at least one great earthquake, the Peloponnese would
seem to have been well worth acquiring. Had Venice
annexed it, she might perhaps have saved it, or at least post
poned its fall. But the negotiations came to nothing, and

THE TURKS INVADE THE MOREA 387
the republic contented herself with urging united action
against the Turks.1
The warning was indeed needed. The warlike Murid II.
was now Sultan, and in 1423, when the negotiations were
barely over, the great Turkish commander, Turakhan, in
vaded the Morea with an army of 25,000 men. Accompanied
by the sultan's frightened vassal, Antonio Acciajuoli of
Athens, Turakhan made short work of the vaunted Hexa
milion, whose defenders fled as soon as they saw him approach,
and marched upon Mistri, Gardiki, in the pass of Makryplagi,
and the town of Leondari. In one difficult defile the Greeks
fell upon him, defeated him with much loss, and recovered
most of the rich booty which he had taken. But this check
proved to be only temporary. Tocco's representatives at
Glarentza purchased their own safety by betraying to the
Turks the pass of Kissamo, which exposed the Venetian
colonies to attack. A string of 1260 Venetian subjects and
some 6000 Greeks followed the homeward march of the
Turkish commander. But the Albanian colonists were
resolved that he should not leave the Morea without feeling
the weight of their arms. They gathered at Davia, near
Tripolitza, under a general of their own race, and prepared
to attack. They paid dearly for their daring, many were
slain, about 800 were captured and massacred, and towers of
Albanian skulls, such as that which still stands near Nish,
marked the site of the battle. The emperor was obliged to
purchase peace by promising that the Morea should pay an
annual tribute of 100,000 hyperperi, and that the walls of the
Hexamilion should be left in ruins. Even this sharp lesson
did not teach the princelings of the Morea wisdom ; scarcely
had the Turks withdrawn, than Theodore attacked Centurione
and made him his prisoner.2
A more attractive and more energetic figure now appeared
1 Phrantzes, 109, no, 138 ; Chalkokondyles, 241 ; Sanudo, in op. eit,
xxii., 916, 943 ; Sdthas, i., 52-60, 64, 65, 68-70, 74, 75, 92, 104, 106-8, 1 15-19 ;
iii., 185, 207, 449-50 ; Jorga, iv., 582, n. 3, 607, 615 ; Gerland, 171, 211-
16 ; Chronicon Breve, 518 ; Journal of Hellen. Studies, xxvii., 300-1.
2 Chalkokondyles, 238-9; Chronicon Breve, 518; Phrantzgs, 117;
Sanudo, in op. eit, xxii., 970, 975, 978 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II.,
i., 272 ; S_thas, iii., 268 ; Jorga, v., 136, 145.

388 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
among the Greeks of the Morea — that of the man who was
destined to die on the walls of Constantinople, the last Emperor
Constantine. The Despot Theodore was subject to fits
qf depression ; he did not get on with his Italian wife ; and
then the intrigues of Mistri seemed to him vanity, and the
life of a monk preferable to that of a ruler. In one of these
moods, he announced his intention of entering a monastery,
and of handing over the government to his active brother,
Constantine. The Emperor John VI., who now sat on the
throne, agreed to this plan, and, in 1427, set out for the Morea
with his brother Constantine and the faithful Phrantzes, in order
to install the new Despot. But, when the imperial party arrived,
they found that Theodore, like several other sovereigns in
love with the charms of private life in theory, but in practice
wedded to the delights of power, had changed his mind. The
local magnates, he told them, would not permit the abdication
of their beloved Despot. It therefore became necessary to
provide Constantine, who had hitherto been content with
some towns on the Black Sea, with an appanage somewhere
else, and this led to the reconquest of the Frankish Morea.
The plan of campaign was skilfully laid. First, an attack
was made upon Glarentza and the other possessions of Carlo
Tocco in the peninsula. Some of these surrendered, and a
politic marriage between Constantine and Carlo's niece
Theodora (daughter of Leonardo of Zante) brought him
Glarentza as her dowry. The historian Phrantzes took over
the town on his behalf, and Constantine fixed his residence
in the historic castle of Chloumoutsi, which Geoffroy II. de
Villehardouin had built two centuries before. Patras was
his next objective, and the papacy now realised too late its
folly in compelling the Venetians to restore it to the much
weaker government of the Church. On the death of the
late archbishop, Venice had in vain appealed to Martin V.
to appoint one of her citizens to the vacant see; but the
pope thought that he would better secure the town against
Greek attacks by sending as archbishop, Pandulph Mala-
testa of Pesaro, whose sister Cleopa was wife of the Despot
Theodore. But this connection failed to save the place.
The first attack of the three brothers was, indeed, only
partially successful, for their quarrels prevented united

CONSTANTINE AT PATRAS 389
action, and the citizens were thus able to purchase a brief
respite by an annual tribute of 500 pieces of gold to Con
stantine. In 1429, however, Constantine and the faithful
Phrantzes made a second attempt to obtain possession of
Patras. The offer of some of the local priests and leading
citizens to hand over the town was considered unpractical,
so, on Palm Sunday, the Greek forces, with myrtle boughs in
their hands, began the attack. On the Saturday before
Easter, a sudden sortie was made from the Jews' gate ; it
was repulsed, but as Phrantzes and his master ventured too
near the walls, Constantine's horse was shot under him by a
well-aimed arrow. The future emperor fell to the ground,
and would have been killed by the enemy, had it not been
for the devotion of his companion, who kept them at bay
until Constantine had had time to disentangle himself
from his charger and escape on foot. Phrantzes and his
favourite steed were both wounded, and the historian was
taken prisoner and chained in a disused granary, where for
forty days he had ample leisure for meditating, amidst ants,
weevils, and mice, on the rewards of loyalty. When his name-
day arrived, the pious Phrantzes prayed to his patron saint
St George to deliver him ; his prayer was heard, his chains
were removed, and he was able to correspond with Constantine.
At his suggestion, a conference was held between the besiegers
and the besieged, at which the latter consented, on condition
that Constantine would retire to Glarentza, to surrender the
town, if their archbishop, who had gone to seek aid of the
pope, did not return from Italy by the end of May. Phrantzes
was released more dead than alive, but his master's expres
sions of gratitude and a present of fine clothes and money
consoled him for his forty days' imprisonment. Constantine
had, however, almost immediate occasion to demand from
him a further proof of devotion. Scarcely had he reached
Glarentza than he received a haughty message from the
sultan, forbidding him to besiege Patras, as it paid tribute
to the Turks. Constantine was a man of action, and he at
once resolved to take the town first and then make diplomatic
excuses afterwards. Accordingly, as soon as the time agreed
upon had expired and there was no sign of the archbishop,
he returned to Patras, and there in the church of its patron

390 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
saint, St Andrew, received the keys of the town. His entry
was a veritable holiday; flowers rained on him from the
windows ; it was roses, roses all the way, when, for the first
time for 225 years a Greek conqueror trod the streets of the
archiepiscopal city. Only the old feudal castle and the
archbishop's palace near it held out, in the hope that
Pandulph would return. Next day the citizens swore fealty
to the Despot in the church of St Nicholas, an historic
building unhappily destroyed by an explosion less than a
century ago ; 1 and, at their request, Phrantzes, their late
prisoner, was appointed their governor.
Before, however, he took up his duties, he was sent to
explain away as best he could to the sultan the annexation
of Patras. At Lepanto, on the way, he fell in with two
Turkish envoys and the Archbishop of Patras, who had
heard of the loss of his see, and had put in with one of the
Catalan galleys furnished him by the pope, at the Venetian
station on the north coast of the gulf. Phrantzes and the
archbishop tried hard to pump one another without success ;
but in the evening the artful historian, at the imminent risk
of getting drunk himself, as he sadly confesses, made the
Turks intoxicated and then opened their letters. Arrived
at the sultan's court, he received peremptory orders to bid
his master restore Patras to its rightful lord ; but Phrantzes
knew his Turks ; he made friends with the sultan's Prime
Minister, pacified Turakhan on his way back, and was able
to assure his sovereign that the Turks would not molest him.
Pandulph in despair offered Patras to Venice ; but, as it was
no longer his to offer, the cautious republic declined. Still
the fine old castle held out, till, in May 1430, hunger forced
the garrison to yield. The Catalan galleys of the pope
proved useless to Pandulph, for, though they captured
Glarentza, their captain at once sold it back to Constantine.
The latter ordered the destruction of that famous town, from
fear lest it should be occupied again by an enemy. The
churches and monasteries, where once the High Court of
Achaia had met, were dismantled, the monks, the archons,
and the poor became homeless exiles, and from the ruin of
Glarentza a Greek poet traced the beginning of the future
1 Gerland, 117,/?. 1.

END OF FRANKISH ACHAIA 391
emperor's ill-fortune. Meanwhile, however, the goddess
smiled on him. The last Latin Archbishop of Patras,
baffled in his hopes, retired to his native Pesaro, where his
remains lie ; his name is, however, still preserved in two
inscriptions,' which now serve as doorposts of the inner
entrance of the castle which his men had so manfully
defended. But to the Greeks the capture of Patras will be
ever associated with the name of the last Emperor of
Constantinople, whose exploits in the Morea well deserved
the encomium composed by a Byzantine rhetorician of
that day.1
Nearly all the Peloponnese was now in the hands of the
three brothers, Theodore, Constantine, and Thomas. Besides
Glarentza and Patras, which he had won for himself, Con
stantine had received from Theodore the old barony of
Vostitza, which adjoined that of Patras, and in the far south
of the peninsula, on the west of Taygetos, the strong castle
of Leuktron, the creation of the last Villehardouin prince,
together with a large strip of Maina. Theodore had also
transferred to him the administration of the great possessions
of the Melissenos family during the minority of the present
representative, and these included the richest part of Messenia,
with such places as Androusa, Kalamata, Nesi, Ithome, and
the Lakonian Mantineia, the ancient Abia, where another
brother, Andronikos, had taken up his abode after he had
sold Salonika to the Venetians. Meanwhile, Thomas had
not been idle. He had obtained Kalavryta from his brother
Theodore, and at the time of the surrender of Patras was
besieging Centurione in the castle of Chalandritza. In
September 1429, the Prince of Achaia was reduced to make
terms with his assailant ; he gave his elder daughter Catarina
in marriage to Thomas ; and, passing over his bastard son,
conferred upon her the remains of the Frankish principality
as her dowry, reserving for himself nothing except the family
barony of Kyparissia and the title of prince. The wedding
took place at Mistri in January 1430, and Thomas received
1 Bceck, Corpus Inscriptionum Gracarum, No. 8776 ; AeXrtov, i., 523 ;
Phrantzes, 122-39, 144-58 ; Qpijvo; t»}s Kuvo-TavTLvov-n-6'\em, 11. 52-62 ; Chalko
kondyles, 206, 239-42 ; Sdthas, i., 160-2, 191 ; Chronicon Ariminense, apud
Muratori, xv., 939 ; Dokianos apud Hopf, Chroniques, 251.

392 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
from his imperial brother the title of Despot. Two years
later the last Prince of Achaia died, when Thomas, fearing
the intrigues of his widow, kept her in prison for the rest of
her life. Centurione's son, Giovanni Asan, seems to have
sought refuge in Venetian territory, where we shall find him
a quarter of a century later. At the same time, the
Greeks annexed the ancient fiefs of the Teutonic Knights
at Mostenitsa; and to complete the symmetry of the
peninsula, an exchange was effected between Thomas
and Constantine, the former, as the heir of Centurione,
taking Glarentza, and the latter Kalavryta. Thus, in
1432, after the lapse of two hundred and twenty-seven
years, the whole peninsula was Greek, save where the
Venetian flag waved over the colonies of Modon and Coron,
with their seven dependent castles, and the territory of
Nauplia and Argos. Never since the old Byzantine days
had there been such uniformity.
The rule of the Franks in Achaia had latterly been simply
an element of discord ; but in its earliest stage it had wrought
no little good to the land and people. A fair-minded modern
Greek historian has contended that his countrymen owe the
warlike spirit, which they showed after the Turkish Conquest
down to the time when they at last regained their freedom,
to the example of the splendid Frankish chivalry, which had
taught Greek fingers to war and Greek hands to fight.
Certainly, there is a great contrast between the feeble
resistance offered by the Peloponnesians to the Franks in the
thirteenth century and their constant insurrections against
the Turks. Only, we must not forget in this comparison the
fact that the Albanians — that nation of fighters — were not
represented in the Morea at the time when the Franks
arrived. But there can be no doubt that during a large
portion of the reigns of the Villehardouin princes, the penin
sula experienced all the advantages of strong and vigorous
personal rule. Trade flourished, the alien Church was kept
in its place, the Greeks had at least as much liberty as their
own emperors and their own local tyrants had allowed them.
We may, indeed, distinguish three periods in the history of
Frankish Achaia. The golden age terminated with the
cession of the four castles in 1262, which led to the

SUMMARY OF FRANKISH RULE 393
reintroduction of Byzantine influence and the consequent
duel between Hellenism and the Franks, of which the Morea
was the theatre for the next one hundred and seventy years.
The second period lasted down to the year 131 1, the fatal date
of the battle of the Kephissos, which profoundly affected the
fortunes of all Frankish Greece. During this half century
there were short periods of peace and plenty, as in the reign
of Florent of Hainault, but the country had become depopu
lated by the long wars of its soldierly Prince William, and
after his death without a male heir, the Angevin connection,
with its evils of absenteeism and dynastic intrigue, sorely tried
this fairest portion of " new France." The barons, always the
peers of the prince, aimed at being the masters ofthe Angevin
bailies, and would tolerate no interference with their right to
liberty, which was often merely a euphemism for liberty to riot.
Meanwhile, foreigners — Flemings, Neapolitans, and Savoy
ards — ignorant of the manners and language of the country,
took the place of the old French families, which by some
inscrutable law of population had become extinct, or else
survived in the female line alone after two or three genera
tions. During the third period these evils were aggravated,
and others were added. The disputed succession to the
throne more than once afflicted the land with the curse of
civil war, while the Byzantine governor first ceased to be a
merely annual official, and then became an important member
of the imperial family. Mistri waxed as Constantinople
waned, until at last, two centuries too late, the Morea once
again became a Greek state. We have compared the
Frankish Conquest of Achaia with the Norman Conquest of
England; but the similarity unfortunately ceased with the
conquest. The Morea had her Wars of the Roses before the
two races, the conquerors and the conquered, had been
thoroughly amalgamated ; she lacked the long line of able
sovereigns, and above all, the sturdy burghers, who contributed
so much to the stability of our national institutions, while in
Greece the Roman Church, except in Corfu and the Cyclades,
remained to the last that of a small minority, whereas in
England it was that of the people even before the conquest.
Where the two nationalities were united in marriage, the half-
castes who were the offspring of these unions, usually sided

394 the Greek reconquest of achaia
with the Greeks, manned the imperial ships, fought in the
imperial armies, and held office in the imperial administra
tion. Now and again self-interest led a Gasmule to identify
himself with tbe Franks ; but in most cases the legal maxim
held good— partus sequitur matrem.
For us, however, after the lapse of nearly five centuries,
the brilliant French chivalry of Achaia still lingers on in
many a ruined keep, in many a mouldering castle, in the
Norman arch of Andravida, in the great fortresses of
Karytaina and Chloumoutsi, in the splendid isolation of
Passavi. Elis still preserves in the names of her prosperous
little towns, and in the trappings of her horses, the memory
of the bright days when gentle knights pricked over the
plain that leads to Olympia or rested for shelter from the
noon-day sun beneath the oaks of Manolada ; when many a
pleasaunce studded the smiling country round Vlisiri ; when
monks from far-off Assisi chanted their vespers in the
Minorite church of rich Glarentza.
At the same time when the Frankish rule in Achaia
ended, the Turks made further conquests in Northern Greece.
In 1423, Andronikos Palaiologos, who governed Salonika,
afflicted by elephantiasis and harassed by the Turks, had
sold that great city, the second of the empire, to Venice,
which was also anxious to accept the offer of the Greek
captain of Lamia to transfer the port of Stylida and the
village of Avlaki, half-way between Stylida and Lamia, to
the strongest of the Christian powers interested in the
Levant, as the best means of saving the latter place,
temporarily regained from the sultan.1 The republic
thought sufficiently highly of her new purchase to bestow
the title of duke upon the chief official whom she sent
there, and to pay an annual tribute for it to Murid II.
But her occupation of Salonika was very short and by
no means beneficial either to Venice or to her colony in
Eubcea. Lamia and its territory soon fell again into
Turkish hands, and the unhappy Eubceans complained that
they were more harried than ever by those invaders,
who carried off so many captives that the island was in
1 Sathas, i., 140, 149 ; iii., 250, where "Zeffali Zitoni" is a corruption
of Kci/iaXi/ Tnyrovvlov.

DEATH OF CARLO TOCCO 395
danger of becoming depopulated. This so greatly alarmed
the Home Government, that the bailie received instructions to
inspect and repair, by means of the forced labour of the
serfs, all the fortresses of Eubcea, and to restrict the sale of
wine to those strongholds so as to induce people to inhabit
them. In consideration of the pressing danger, his salary
was increased, but all other expenses in the island were
reduced, and the Duke of the Archipelago was reminded
that it had always been the custom of his predecessors to
light signal fires, warning the colonists of Eubcea when a
Turkish fleet was approaching. In 1430, Salonika fell finally
before the Ottoman arms, and then the Venetians of Eubcea
feared that their turn would come. More than 5000 of the
islanders were in captivity, and stores and 200 men were
sorely needed to defend the eleven castles of the island.
Venice hastened to save her colony by concluding peace
with Murid II.1
On the opposite side of Greece, however, the Latins were
not so fortunate as to escape. In 1429, Carlo I. Tocco had
ended in his capital of Joannina his long and successful
reign. " In military and administrative ability he was," as
Chalkokondyles says, " inferior to none of his contemporaries,"
and under him the dynasty of the palatine Counts of
Cephalonia had reached its zenith. Having no legitimate
heirs, he left the island of Sta. Mavra and the strong fort of
Vonitza on the Ambrakian Gulf to his widow, the able and
masculine Duchess Francesca, divided Akarnania among his
five bastards, and bequeathed the rest of his continental and
insular dominions to his nephew, Carlo II. Such an arrange
ment was sure to lead to civil war; the Albanians hated
the Italian rule, which had weighed heavily upon them ; the
bastards, after the fashion of this degraded period, appealed
with their approval to the sultan, and Memnon, the ablest
and most unscrupulous of the five, was particularly impor
tunate in imploring Murid 1 1, to restore him to his heritage.
Carlo II. in vain invoked the good offices of his brother-in-
law, Constantine, and the latter despatched his handy man,
Phrantzes, whose decision all the parties swore to accept.
1 Sithas, iii., 306, 349, 372, 388-91 ; Thomas and Predelli, Diploma-
tarium, ii., 345.

396 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
Phrantzes met, however, with his usual ill-fortune. Off" the
small islands near Sta. Mavra, once the abode of the Homeric
Taphians, " lovers of the oar," a Catalan galley, in the pay of
the Duchess Francesca, captured the historian and sold him
and his suite at Glarentza for a ransom such as no archaeo
logist would now fetch. Meanwhile, the fall of Salonika had
left the sultan free to respond to the bastard's appeal. Two
previous attempts to enter Epiros had been checked by the
natives in the difficult passes of Pindos. But a Turkish
army under Sinan Pasha now appeared under the walls of
Joannina, preceded by a letter from the sultan, calling upon
the inhabitants to surrender, promising not to deprive them
of their city, and bidding them decide ere it was too late for
repentance. Sinan Pasha reiterated the orders and promises
of his master, who had sent him, he told them, " to take the
duke's lands and castles," and threatened to treat any place
which resisted as he had treated Salonika. " The Franks,"
he pointed out to the Greeks and Albanians, "are merely
seeking to ruin you, as they ruined the Thessalonians ;
whereas I will allow the metropolitan to have all his
ecclesiastical rights, and the archons to keep all their fiefs."
These arguments convinced the inhabitants that further
resistance was useless; Carlo II. was allowed to retain the
rest of Epiros, Akarnania, and his islands, on payment of an
annual tribute ; the archons purchased the continuance of
their privileges by the usual capitation-tax. On 9th October
1430, Joannina surrendered, and has ever since belonged to
the Turkish Empire. A small Turkish colony settled there,
and soon a new version of the Rape of the Sabine women
provided them with Christian wives. Carlo did not feel
secure against the invasion of his reduced dominions,
especially as his cousin, Memnon, continued to haunt the
sultan's court and grovel before his patron " like a respectful
servant." We accordingly find him asking Venice for
protection, as otherwise he "will be forced to come to some
arrangement with the Genoese, the Catalans, or the Turks."
A similar appeal was made by the dowager duchess, from
whose island the Turks carried off 500 souls. The Venetians
were anxious that the Ionian islands, which carried on a
large trade with their possessions, should not be lost ; they

PROSPERITY OF ATHENS 397
therefore urged the duchess to defend her own, as "so
masculine a lady " well could, and told Carlo that they would
treat him as a Venetian citizen, and elect him a noble of the
Grand Council. This did not, however, prevent Memnon
and his brother Ercole from conspiring with his continental
subjects against him, until he purchased peace by allowing
them to retain what they had occupied. The " Despot," or
" Lord of Arta," as he styled himself, thenceforward remained
for many years on good terms with both them and the sultan.1
Meanwhile, under the statesmanlike rule of Antonio
Acciajuoli, the duchy of Athens had been spared the
vicissitudes of the other Latin states in the Levant. While
all around him principalities and powers were shaken to
their foundations ; while that ancient warden of the northern
march of Athens, the marquisate of Boudonitza, was swept
away for ever; while Turkish armies invaded the Morea,
and annexed the Albanian capital to the sultan's empire ;
while the principality of Achaia disappeared from the map
in the throes of a tardy Greek revival ; the statesmanlike
ruler of Athens skilfully guided the policy of his duchy. At
times even his experienced diplomacy failed to avert the
horrors of a Turkish raid ; we saw how the Turks had
ravaged his land in 1416, how Mohammed I. had threatened
to chastise him for injuring some Venetian subjects, how, in
1423, Turakhan had forced him, as a vassal of the sultan, to
join in the invasion of the Morea. The historian Doukas 2
even represents him as helping the Turks against Salonika.
But, as a rule, the dreaded Mussulmans spared this half-
Oriental, who was a past-master in the art of managing the
sultan's ministers. From the former rulers of Athens, the
Catalans and the Venetians, he had nothing to fear. Once,
indeed, he received news that Alfonso V. of Aragon and
Sicily, who never forgot to sign himself* " Duke of Athens
1 Chalkokondyles, 236-8 ; Phrantzes, 154, 155, 157 ; Spandugino (ed.
1551), 25-8 ; Epirotica, 242-6, 254; Jorga, vi., 75, 82; Miklosich und
Miiller, i., 191 ; iii., 282 ; Sdthas, iii., 416 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches,
1 1., i., 350-2; Brocquiere, Voyage doutremer in Mdmoires de PInstitut,
v., 5«7. 2 P. 197, where he is called ApxTT^ 9^«". He styles himself either
"Duca" (Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II,, i., 273) or more usually
0,b6tvT-tps 'AB-qv&v QyfSGiv KaX t&v i£i}s (ibid., 289, 290, 296).

398 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
and Neopatras," had invested a Catalan named Thomas
Beraldo with the Athenian duchy, and intended to put him
in possession of it So great was Antonio's alarm that he
asked the Venetian Government to order its bailie in
Negroponte to protect him. But Venice reassured him
with the shrewd remark that thelCatalans usually made much
ado about nothing,1 and nothing further was heard about
the matter. On her part the republic was friendly to the
man who had supplanted her, when once she had come to
an understanding with him. She twice gave Antonio per
mission, in case of danger, to send the valuable Acciajuoli
stud — for, like his father, he was a good judge of horse-flesh
— to the island of Eubcea ; and she ordered her bailie to
" observe the ancient commercial treaties between the duchy
and the island, which he would find in writing in the
chancery of Negroponte." When he complained that a
number of Albanian families had emigrated from his duchy
to Eubcea, they were" sent back with all the more readiness
because they were useless. At his request the Eubcean
peasants were at last allowed to cultivate the five-mile territory
which the Venetians still held as a strategic position on the
mainland opposite the island. But when he asked permission
to construct two galleys, he received a flat negative, even
though he offered to join the republic against the Turks.
Nor was he more fortunate in his protest against the arrange
ment by which Venice secured to herself the future possession
of ^Egina. That classic island had passed, as we saw, about the
end of the fourteenth century, from the family of Fadrique to
that of Caopena. But, in 1425, Alioto Caopena, at that time
its ruler, placed himself under the protection of the republic
in order to escape the danger of a Turkish raid. The island
must then have been fruitful, for one of the conditions under
which Venice accorded him her protection was that he should
supply corn for her colonies. While he retained his
independence, he agreed to hoist the banner of the
Evangelist, whenever desired, and it was stipulated that,
if his family became extinct, jEgina should become Venetian.
Against this treaty Antonio of Athens, one of whose adopted
daughters had married the future lord of .-Egina, Antonello
1 Jorge, v., 122.

FLORENCE AND ATHENS 399
Caopena, in vain protested. To the Florentine Duke of
Athens, ^Egina, as a Venetian colony, might well seem, as
it had seemed to Aristotle, the " eyesore of the Piraeus." But
a quarter of a century later, a Venetian colony it was.1
With another Italian commonwealth, his family's old
home of Florence, Antonio maintained the closest relations.
In 1422, a Florentine ambassador arrived in Athens with
instructions to confer the freedom of his city upon the
Athenian ruler, and to inform him that Florence, having
now become a maritime power (by the destruction of Pisa
and the purchase of Leghorn), intended to embark in the
Levant trade, and asked from him as favourable treatment
as the Venetians and Genoese merchants received in his
dominions. The ambassador was directed to make a similar
request of Carlo I. Tocco, on the ground that his mother,
Maddalena Buondelmonti, was a Florentine. Antonio gladly
made all Florentine ships free of his harbours, and halved the
usual customs dues in favour of all Florentine merchants
throughout his dominions. Any rights which he might
thereafter grant to Venetians, Catalans, or Genoese, were
to be theirs also.2
Visitors from Tuscany, when they landed at Riva d'Ostia
on the Gulf of Corinth, must, indeed, have felt themselves in
the land of a friendly prince, though the court on* the'
Akropolis presented a curious mixture of the Greek and
the Florentine elements. Half a Greek himself, Antonio
chose both his wives from that race — the first the beautiful
daughter of a Greek priest, to whom he had lost his heart
in the mazes of a wedding-dance at Thebes, and whom,
though she had a husband already, he made his mistress, and
subsequently his wife; the second was Maria Melissene, a
daughter of the great Messenian family, who brought him
Astros, Leonidi, and other places in Kynouria, the land of
the Tzakones, as her dowry. As he had no children, he
adopted the two daughters of Protimo, a nobleman of Eubcea,
whom he married to Niccol6 Giorgio, the titular marquis
1 Sdthas, i., 178, 179 ; iii., 6, 225, 281, 287, 319, 420 ; Chalkokondyles,
215-16. The best account of the mediaeval history of ^Egina is in Baron
Sardagna's version of Hopf s Karystos, pp. 66-72.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 287-90.

400 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
of Boudonitza and baron of Karystos, and to Antonello
Caopena of ^Egina. The latter was a great favourite at the
Athenian court, as he was useful to his father-in-law.1 The
succession to the duchy being thus open, members of the
Acciajuoli clan, sons of Antonio's uncle Donato, whom King
Ladislaus of Naples had appointed Nerio's heir in 1394, and
who was now dead, came to Athens to pay their respects to
their prosperous relative. Of these cousins, Franco settled
in Greece at the castle of Sykaminon, near Oropos, which
had belonged to the Knights of St John, and acted as
Antonio's ambassador during negotiations with Venice;
Nerio twice visited the Athenian court, and was long the
guest of his cousin, the Duchess of Leucadia; Antonio was
made bishop of her other island of Cephalonia, and Giovanni
archbishop of Thebes, where another Acciajuoli had been his
predecessor. Towards the close of Antonio's long reign a
second generation of this family had grown up to manhood in
Greece. Foremost among these younger cousins were
Franco's sons, Nerio and Antonio, both destined to be dukes
of Athens ; their sister, Laudamia, Lady of Sykaminon, and
her husband, a member of the great Florentine family of
Pitti ; two other grandchildren of Donato, Niccolo Machiavelli
and Angelo Acciajuoli, both spent some time in Greece,
where the latter, a devoted adherent of Cosimo de' Medici,
was banished when his chief was exiled by Albizzi from
Florence. A branch of the Medici, as we saw, was already
established at Athens. Thus, with such names as Acciajuoli,
Medici, Pitti, and Machiavelli at the Athenian court, Attica
had, indeed, become a Florentine colony.2
Antonio and his Florentine relatives must have led a
merry life in their delectable duchy. In the family corre
spondence we find allusions to hawking and partridge
shooting, and the ducal stable provided good mounts for
the young Italians, who scoured the plains of Attica and
Bceotia in quest of game. The cultured Florentines were
delighted with Athens and the Akropolis. " You have never
seen," wrote Niccol6 Machiavelli to one of his cousins, "a
1 Chalkokondyles, loc. eit. ; PhrantzSs, 1 59.
2 Buchon, op. eit, 269-86, 294 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, iii., 309 ;
Mai, Spicilegium Romanum, i., 460; S;ithas, III., 100.

THE ACCIAJUOLI ON THE AKROPOLIS 401
fairer land nor yet a fairer fortress than this " — a sentiment
which recalls the rhapsody of Pedro IV. over the castle of
Athens. It was there, in the venerable Propylaea, that
Antonio fixed his ducal residence. In the closing years
of the Catalan rule there had been, as we saw, a palace
and an adjoining chapel of St Bartholomew on the Akropolis ;
but under both the Burgundians and the Catalans, Thebes had
been the usual residence of the head of the state. The
Acciajuoli, however, made Athens their capital and the
Propylaea their home. No great alterations were required
to convert the classic work of Mnesikles into a Florentine
palace. All that the Acciajuoli seem to have done was to
cut the two vestibules in two, so as to make four rooms, to
fill up the spaces between the pillars by walls (which were
seen by Dodwell, Leake, and other travellers of the early
part of the last century, and which were only removed in
1835), and to add a second story, of which the joist-sockets
are still visible, to both that building and to the Pinakotheke,
which either then, or in Turkish times, was crowned with
battlements.1 It has been conjectured from a passage in
an anonymous account of the antiquities of Athens,2 com
posed probably in 1458, that the ducal chancery, whence
the Acciajuoli issued their Greek documents, was in this
latter edifice. Here, too, was the chapel of St Bartholomew,
to which Pedro TV. alluded, and in which Nerio I. signed a
treaty with the envoys of Amadeo of Savoy. The vaulted
arches of this chapel and the central column which supported
them were still to be seen in 1837. To the Florentine
dukes, too, is usually ascribed the construction of the square
" Frankish tower," which was pulled down in 1874 by an act
of vandalism unworthy of any people imbued with a sense of
the continuity of history. This tower, 85 feet high, 28^
feet long by 25 £ feet broad, and 5f feet thick at the base,
was built of large stones from the quarries of Pentelikon
1 Burnouf, La ville et PAcropole dAthenes, 80. Cf. his plan of the
Akropolis under the Franks, pi. vi. ; Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of
Athens, IL, ch. v., pi. 1.
2 Ta Bta.Tpo, koX 5i5a<TKa\«a tuiv ' ' ABtpi&v, apud Laborde, Athines aux
xv., xvi., et xvii. Siecles, i., 20 ; Wachsmuth, Die Stadt Athen, i., 738.
But Professor Lampros, in a note to his translation of Gregorovius
(¦'¦> 359, n- 2), thinks that KayiceXkapla means a portico.
2 C

402 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
and the Piraeus, all taken by the mediaeval architects from
the classical buildings of the Akropolis. High up, on the
north side of the tower, was a little square turret projecting
from the wall, and on the top beacon-fires could be kindled
which would be visible from Akrocorinth. Placed opposite
the graceful temple of Nike Apteros, it commanded the
sea-coast and the plain and mountains of Attica, save where
the cathedral of Our Lady shut out a part of Hymettos. A
wooden staircase, fastened into the walls, such as one sees in
some of the Venetian campanili, enabled the Florentine
watchman to ascend to the top, and sweep land and sea
for Turkish horsemen or rakish-looking galleys. Such
towers may still be seen near Moulki in Bceotia and in
the island of Eubcea. In addition to these erections on the
Akropolis, some archaeologists have regarded the Acciajuoli
as the authors of the marble steps which lead up to the
Propylaea, more usually ascribed to the Romans,1 and others
have believed that it was they who first surrounded the
famous Klepsydra with bastions, so as to provide the
Akropolis with water ; 2 in that case, Odysseus was merely
following their example when he fortified the well in 1822.
Nor did they limit their activity as builders to the castle
rock alone. To the Florentine, if not to the Burgundian
period, is now assigned the so-called wall of Valerian,3 of
which the remains are still visible in an Athenian backyard,
with sheds and hutches under it. The anonymous writer
above mentioned alludes to "the splendid abode of the
polemarch " — a name supposed to be his way of expressing
the title of the Frankish governor of the town — in the Stoa
of Hadrian, where frescoes, still quite fresh, are even now
visible. The same author says that the dukes possessed a
beautiful villa at the spring of Kallirrhoe, where they used to
bathe, and that close by they were wont to pray in a church
1 Burnouf, 75, 76, 85, 87 ; Leake, Topography of Athens, i., 73 ; Finlay,
iv., 170 (who thought the tower earlier than the Acciajuoli) ; Buchon,
La Grice Continentale, 67, 127 (who considered it to have been the ducal
prison). 2 Pittakys, L'Ancienne Athines, 155 ; Curtius in Archaologischc
Zeitung for 1854, p. 203.
3 Wachsmuth, I., 724. Both Cyriacus of Ancona and the anonymous
visitor of 1466 speak ofthe "new walls " of Athens.

LITERATURE AT ATHENS 403
which had in pagan times been " a temple of Hera," or, more
correctly, of Triptolemos. In this church, called St Mary's
on the Rock, the Marquis de Nointel had mass recited when
he visited Athens in 1674. His companion, Cornelio Magni,
also alludes in his " Description of Athens," to a church on
the bridge over the Ilissos, then "all in ruins but still
displaying the traces ofthe Acciajuoli arms," while he found
the lion rampant of Brescia, the emblem of the ducal family,
which visitors to the famous Certosa know so well, still
guarding — auspicium melioris cevi — the entrance of the
Turkish bazaar.1 A few years later, a chapel called H agios
Frankos is mentioned by the Venetian writer, Coronelli,2 as
" having been built by the Acciajuoli " ; on the other hand,
the statement of the Florentine biographer, Ubaldini,8 that
Antonio erected the lion of the Pira_us, which gave the har
bour its mediaeval name of Porto Leone, is incorrect, for we saw
that it was already so called a century earlier. But enough has
been said to justify both his remark and that of the Athenian
historian, Chalkokondyles, that Antonio's long pacific and
economic administration enabled him to beautify the city.
Of literary culture there are some few traces in Florentine
Athens. It was in Antonio's reign that Athens gave birth
to her last historian, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, the Herodotos
of mediaeval Greece, who told the story of the new Persian
invasion, and to his brother Demetrios, who did so much to
diffuse Greek learning in Italy. Another of Antonio's
subjects, Antonios the Logothete, is known to scholars as a
copyist of manuscripts at Siena ; and it is obvious that the
two Italian courts of Athens and Joannina were regarded as
places where there was an opening for professional men,
for we find a young Italian writing from Arezzo to Nerio, in
order to obtain, through the latter's influence with Carlo I.
Tocco and Antonio, a chair of jurisprudence, logic, natural or
moral philosophy, or medicine^ at either of their courts — he
did not mind which.4 Even a Greekling of Juvenal's time
1 Laborde, i., 18, 19 ; Stuart (1., ch. ii., pi. 1) gives a picture of the
Ilaxa-yia o-rij>< 116-pa, which was destroyed by Hadji Ali in 1778; Magni,
Relazione, 14, 49, and Viaggi, 466, 491 ; it is marked in his plan.
2 Tavola, 36. 3 Origine della famiglia degli Acciajuoli, iy6.
4 Montfaucon, Palaographia Graca, 76, 79, 94 ; Buchon, Nouvelles
Recherches, II., i., 276.

404 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
could have scarcely offered to teach such a variety of subjects.
Unfortunately, we are not told whether the versatile candi
date's modest offer was accepted.
Thus, for a long period, the Athenian duchy enjoyed
peace and prosperity, broken only by the pestilence which
visited it in 1423, driving Antonio to seek safety at Megara.1
Yet, if we may judge from the complaints which he made
about the emigration of a few hundred Albanians from his
dominions, it would seem that the land had become depopu
lated, and that there was a lack of men to till the soil. A
similar phenomenon is observable in the Greece of to-day,
where even the most fertile districts are being rapidly
denuded of their male inhabitants. But the modern Greeks
have not the twin institutions on which mediaeval society
rested — serfdom and slavery. Both continued to exist under
the Acciajuoli. Antonio granted, and his successor con
firmed, the Frankish privileges to a Greek, from which we
learn that those who did not enjoy the franchise were still
liable to furnish baskets, new wine, oil, and other articles;
while the Duchess Francesca of Leucadia made a present of
a young female slave to her cousin Nerio, with full power to
sell or dispose of her as he pleased. Yet there continued to
be a growth of Greek influence at Athens, as was natural
under a dynasty which was now half hellenised. The notary
and chancellor of the city continued to be a Greek ; the
public documents were drawn up in the Pinakotheke in that
language ; and a Greek archon was now destined to play a
leading part in Athenian politics.2
When, in 1435, after a long reign of thirty-two years, the
longest of any Athenian ruler till the time of King George,
Antonio was one summer morning found dead in his bed,
the victim of an apoplectic stroke, two parties, an Italian and
a Greek, arose to dispute the succession. The Italian candi
date, young Nerio, eldest son of Franco Acciajuoli, baron of
Sykaminon, whom the late duke had adopted as his heir,
occupied the city. But the Duchess Maria Melissene and
her kinsman, Chalkokondyles, father of the historian and the
leading man of Athens, held the castle. Well aware, how-
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 272, 279, 280.
2 Ibid., 285, 290, 296-7.

THE NATIONAL PARTY AT ATHENS 405
ever, that the sultan was the real master of the situation, the
Greek archon set out for the Turkish court with a large sum
of money to obtain Murid II.'s consent to this act of usurpa
tion. The sultan scornfully rejected the 30,000 gold pieces
which the Athenian archoji offered him, cast him into prison,
and demanded the surrender of the duchy, at the same time
sending an army under the redoubtable Turakhan to occupy
Thebes. Chalkokondyles managed to escape to Con
stantinople, whence he took ship for the Morea ; but on the
way, falling in with some vessels belonging to the Frankish
party at Athens, he was seized and sent back as a prisoner to
the sultan, who pardoned him. This futile attempt was not,
however, the only effort of the Greeks to make themselves
masters of Athens. Even before the death of the duke,
Constantine Palaiologos had sent his trusty emissary
Phrantzes on a mission to the Athenian court, and the
duchess now requested him to return with a large force of
soldiers and a formal document setting out the agreement
made between her and his master. This arrangement was,
that Constantine should take the duchy of Athens, and that
she should receive in exchange lands in Lakonia near her
own family possessions. This diplomatic scheme, which
would have united nearly all Greece under the Palaiologoi,
was frustrated, as the other had been. Turakhan had
already invested, and soon took, Thebes, while the Frankish
party at Athens, which included the other leading Greeks
hostile to Chalkokondyles, had at once seized the opportunity
of his absence to decoy the duchess out of the Akropolis, and
to proclaim Nerio. Peace was secured by the marriage of
the new duke with the dowager duchess, and by the banish
ment of the family of Chalkokondyles. Venice, which might
have interposed as the late duke's suzerain, instructed her
bailie at Negroponte, whither many Athenian serfs had fled,
not to interfere with the occupation of Athens by either ofthe
two parties, or even by the Turks. At the same time, he was
to suggest diplomatically to Nerio that he should offer to
recognise the Venetian suzerainty.1 The only interest which
1 Chalkokondyles, 320-2 ; Phrantzgs, 158-60 ; Sdthas, i., 199 ; iii., 427
(which proves, by the phrase, ex matrimonio secuto, that Maria actually
married Nerio),

406 THE GREEK RECONQUEST OF ACHAIA
the republic had in endeavouring to recover the city was to
prevent its falling into, dangerous hands. As for the Turks,
although Phrantzes betook himself to Turakhan's head
quarters at Thebes, and was assured that the Turkish com
mander would have granted his request, had he known a
little earlier, they did not molest the new duke. The
Turkish policy has always been to govern by dividing the
Christian races of the Near East ; and the Sultan was well
content to allow a Florentine princeling to retain the
phantom of power so long as he paid his tribute with
regularity. The weak and effeminate Nerio II. was exactly suited for
the part of a Turkish puppet. But, like many feeble rulers,
the " Lord of Athens and Thebes," as he officially styled
himself, seems to have made himself unpopular by his
arrogance, and a few years after his accession he was
deprived of his throne by an intrigue of his brother, Antonio
II. He then retired to Florence, the home of his family,
where he had property, to play the part of a prince in exile,
if exile it could be called. There he must have been living
at the time of the famous council, an echo of whose decisions
we hear in distant Athens, where a Greek priest, of rather
more learning than most of his cloth, wrote to the oecu
menical patriarch on the proper form of public prayer for the
pope. A bailie — so we learn from one of his letters1 — was
then administering the duchy pending Nerio's return, for
Antonio had died in 1 441, his infant son, Franco, was absent
at the Turkish court, and his subjects had recalled their
former lord to the Akropolis, preferring the rule of a grown
up man, however feeble, to that of a child, who was enjoying
so dubious an education. Presenting his Florentine pro
perty to Tommaso Pitti, his man of business, to whom he
owed money, Nerio returned to his palace on the Akropolis,
where we shall presently find him entertaining the first
archaeologist who had visited Athens for centuries.
1 Chalkokondyles, 322; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherclies, 1 1., i., 298-
302 ; Ubaldini, op. eit, 177 ; Gaddi, Elogiographus, 90-4 ; and Corol-
larium Poeticum, 33 ; N<*os "BWtivoplv^ploiv, i., 43-56. #

CHAPTER XIII
THE TURKISH CONQUEST (1441-1460)
THE Frankish principality of Achaia being now extinct, it
might have been expected that common-sense and the
common danger from the Turks would have convinced the
Greeks that union and disinterested endeavours were needed
to consolidate and defend against the Turks what had been
so slowly and laboriously won back from the Latins. But
that nota inter fratres inimicitia, which Tacitus had remarked
as a characteristic of human nature in his time, was
intensified in the case of the four surviving brothers of the
Emperor John VI. — Theodore, Constantine, Thomas and
Demetrios. The Peloponnese, as we saw, was now divided
amongst the three former, while the fourth had not yet
obtained an appanage in the peninsula. Unhappily, the
prospect of the imperial succession was an apple of discord
among them, and the Byzantine court became a hot-bed of
fraternal intrigues, which were naturally continued in the
residences of the three Despots in the Morea. The emperor,
who wished Constantine to succeed him, was desirous of
keeping the trio in Greece ; while Constantine and Thomas
wanted to have the peninsula to themselves, and the former
did not hesitate to seek the consent of the sultan to this
scheme through the mediation of the ever-useful Phrantzes,
his unfailing emissary in all dubious, or diplomatic, trans
actions. Civil war accordingly broke out between Theodore
and his two brothers, which it required all the efforts of two
imperial embassies to assuage. It was agreed that Con
stantine should go to live in Constantinople, leaving the
Morea to Theodore and Thomas, and there he remained as
regent for the emperor, while the latter, accompanied by
407

408 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
Demetrios and the oecumenical patriarch, set out to achieve
the union of the Eastern and Western churches at the councils
of Ferrara and Florence. On his journey to Italy, the
emperor landed at Kenchreai, traversed Greece on horseback,
preached the blessings of brotherly love to the two Despots,
and ordered the philosopher Gemist6s to accompany him to
the council. Then he took ship at the Venetian harbour of
Navarino. The insecurity of the Greek seas at that period
may be judged from the fact that the emperor and his ship
load of learned theologians ran imminent risk of being
captured by a Catalan corsair who was lurking behind the
island of Gaidaronisi, near Sunium.1 Their sufferings and
labour were in vain ; and on their return journey, wherever
they stopped in Greece, at Corfu, Modon, and Chalkis, the
Greek clergy indignantly remonstrated with them on the
concessions which they had made. The Greeks of Corfu,
who had no bishop of their own, bitterly remarked that the
Latin archbishop would now press his claim to ordain their
priests ; those of Chalkis, where the returning theologians
took part in a service in a Catholic church, declared that
henceforth they could no longer exclude the Latin clergy
from performing mass in the Greek churches.
During the six years between 1437 and 1443, during
which Constantine was mainly absent at Constantinople,
the Morea enjoyed the blessing of having practically no
history. We find Thomas administering justice and confirm
ing sales of property at Patras, and Theodore ratifying the
ancient privileges of the inhabitants of Monemvasia. All the
Despot's subjects, whether freemen or serfs, were permitted to
enter or leave that important city without let or hindrance,
except only the dangerous denizens of Tzakonia and Vatika,
whose character had not altered in two hundred years. The
citizens, their beasts, and their ships, were exempt from
forced labour ; and, at their special request, the Despot con
firmed the local custom, by which all the property of a
Monemvasiote who died without relatives was devoted to the
repair of the castle ; while, if he had only distant relatives,
one-third of his estate was reserved for that purpose. This
1 Phrantz.s, 161-3 ; Doukas, 214 ; Jorga, vi., 389, 393 ; Sgurdpoulos,
Vera Historia Unionis, § 4, chs. iv., vi. ; § 11, chs. vi.-viii.

STATE OF THE MOREA 409
system of death-duties (to afiuoriKtov, as it was called) was
continued by Theodore's successor, Demetrios, by whom
Monemvasia was described as " one of the most useful cities
under my rule." The prosperity of Patras, on the other
hand, must have suffered by the transference of the Venetian
trade to Lepanto, previously only a cattle-market, which, in
consequence, began to pay its expenses.1 To the eye,
however, of a literary observer, the Humanist, Francescus
Philelphus,2 there was " nothing in the Peloponnese worthy
of praise except George Gemistos," or Plethon, as he now
called himself, who had returned from Florence, and was
holding a judicial post at Mistri. " The Palaiologoi princes
themselves," added the critic, " are oppressed by poverty, and
even their own subjects ridicule and plunder them. The
language is depraved, the customs are more barbarous than
the barbarians." Yet it is to these barbarians that we owe
those beautiful Byzantine churches, the Pantanassa and the
Peribleptos, at Mistri.
In 1443 a fresh distribution of the Moreot Governments
took place. In view of the succession to the throne of all the
Caesars, both Constantine and Theodore were anxious to
obtain the city of Selymbria, on trie Sea of Marmara, which
was close to the capital. Finally, an arrangement was made
by which Theodore received Selymbria, where he died of the
plague five years later, and ceded his province in the Morea
to Constantine. An inscription in the chapel of Our Lady
of Brontochion, at Mistri, still commemorates Theodore's
temporary aspirations for the peace of the cloister, and a
feeble monody has been preserved in remembrance of this
feeble ruler.3
Thus, Constantine now held the larger portion of the
peninsula, including Patras, Corinth, and Mistri, in each of
which he was represented by a governor, in the case of
Mistri the faithful Phrantzes, whose jurisdiction included not
only the capital, but the village of Jewish Trype, at the mouth
of the Langada Gorge, Sklavochorio (the ancient Amyklai),
and several other villages in the neighbourhood. Phrantzes
1 Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 258; v., 170-4: Gerland, 218, 222;
Sithas, -iii., 413, 458.
2 Epistola, bk. v., fol, lvii, 3 Byz. Zeitschrift, ix., 641,

410 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
received on his appointment strict injunctions to abolish a
number of offices and to establish one-man rule at Mistri, while
a single minister in attendance (called kciOoXikos fxecra^wv) was
attached to the person ofthe sovereign wherever hg went. Con
stantine's first act after his arrival was to rebuild the Isthmian
wall, which Turakhan had destroyed a second time during
a raid into the Peloponnese in 143 1 ; the next was to renew,
this time by force of arms, the attempt which he had made by
diplomacy nine years before, to recover the Athenian duchy
for himself and the cause of Hellenism, which he personified.
The moment seemed singularly favourable, for a weak man
held sway at Athens, and the Turks, hard pressed by the
Hungarians and Poles, whom Pope Eugenius IV had
marshalled against them, defied by Skanderbeg in Albania,
defeated by John Hunyady at Nish, threatened by the
appearance of a Venetian fleet in the ^Egean, were unable to
protect their Athenian vassal. He, therefore, cheerfully
responded to the appeal of the papal envoys, marched into
Bceotia early in 1444, occupied Thebes, ravaged the country
to the gates of Livadia and as far north as Lamia and
Agrapha, and compelled Nerio II. to pledge himself to pay
tribute. The Wallachs of Pindos now descended upon the
Turks of the great Thessalian plain, and received from the
victorious Constantine a governor whose seat was at
Phanari ; one of the Albanian clans in Phthiotis, to which
the sultan had granted autonomy, joined his standard;
300 Burgundian auxiliaries arrived to swell his forces,
and he was so flushed with success that he did not scruple to
arouse the wrath of Venice by seizing the port of Vitrinitza,
on the Gulf of Corinth, which had been ceded by the Turks
to the governor of Lepanto. Thus, for a moment, almost all
the Morea and the greater part of continental Greece
acknowledged the sway or the suzerainty of a Greek prince.
Never, since the time of the Frankish Conquest, had the
Hellenic cause been so successful. The news spread to
Italy; Cardinal Bessarion hastened to congratulate Con
stantine on the fortification of the isthmus, and urged him to
transfer his capital from Mistri to Corinth. At the same
time, he bade him become the Lycurgus of the new Sparta-
lightening taxation, checking extravagance in dress and

ALFONSO V. CLAIMS ATHENS 411
servants by stricb sumptuary laws, preventing the export of
corn, building a navy from the wood of the Peloponnesian
forests, and searching for iron in the folds of Taygetos. Above
all, the cardinal advised him to send a few young Spartans to
learn letters and arts in Italy and so qualify as literary and
technical instructors of their fellow-countrymen. While the
patriot churchman dreamed of a revival of ancient Hellas by
the genius of Constantine, the court of Naples heard that he
had actually occupied Athens ; and Alfonso V. of Aragon,
who had never forgotten that he was still titular duke of
Athens and Neopatras, wrote at once demanding the
restitution of the two duchies to himself, and sent the
Marquis of Gerace to receive them from the conqueror's
hands. But, before the letter was despatched, the fate of
Greece had been decided on the shores of the Black Sea.
The perjury of the Christians, who had broken their solemn
oaths to keep peace with the sultan, had been punished by
their crushing defeat at Varna in November 1444. Venice
made peace to save her colonies ; the rest of Greece lay at
the mercy of the victor.1
Nerio II. was the first sufferer for his compulsory alliance
with the Greek Despot. Omar, the son of Turakhan,
governor of Thessaly, ravaged Bceotia and Attica, as a
punishment for his weakness. Nerio now saw that his only
hope lay in obsequiousness to the Turks, whose star was
again in the ascendant, and sent an envoy to the sultan,
expressing his willingness to pay the same tribute as before.
On these conditions he purchased safety from the Turks, but
at the same time called down upon himself the vengeance of
Constantine, who marched against Athens, and endeavoured
to take it. Nerio now called upon the sultan to protect him ;
his appeal was supported by Turakhan, whose Thessalian
province had suffered from Constantine's recent successes ;
and Murid, true to the traditional Turkish policy of support-
1 Chalkokondyles, 283, 305, 306, 318, 319 (where for SavSplov I read
$o.va.plov); Phrantzes, 157, 193-6,200-1; Chronicon Breve, 518, 519; Doukas,
223 ; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 195 ; Sathas, i., 208 ; Jorga, viii., 6 ;
Alfonso V.'s letter in Archivio Storico per le Prov. Napoletane, xxvii.,
430-1 ; Cyriacus of Ancona in Fabricius, Biblioteca Latina media et
infima AStatis, vi., addenda, p. 12 ; N<?os ''EWiqvop.vfip.av, III., 15-27 ; iv., 23,

412 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
ing the weaker of two rival Christian nationalities, accord
ingly sent an ultimatum to Constantine, demanding the
evacuation of the Turkish territory which he had occupied.
As Constantine refused, the sultan resolved to chastise the
bold Greek who dared to disobey him.
In 1446 all Murid's preparations were made, and he set
out from Macedonia to invade Greece, with a commissariat
so splendidly organised as to call forth the enthusiastic
praise of the Athenian historian. North of the isthmus he
met with no opposition, for Constantine, with his brother
Thomas and the whole force of the Peloponnese, amounting
to 60,000 men, had retired behind the newly restored
walls of the Hexamilion. At Thebes an Athenian con
tingent joined the sultan under Nerio, who had thus the
petty satisfaction of assisting his present against his late
master. After encamping for a few days at a place called
Mingiai to prepare his cannon and fascines, Murad drew up
his forces in front of the Isthmian wall. A spy, who was
despatched from the Greek headquarters, came back with an
alarming report of the strength of the Turkish army, which
stretched from sea to sea, and implored the Despot to send
an embassy to the sultan with all speed, and so avert, if
possible, the evils which his rashness had brought upon the
Peloponnese. Constantine ordered the spy to be thrown
into prison for his frankness, and rejected his advice. He
had, indeed, sent Chalkokondyles, father of the historian,
as an envoy to the sultan, but his instructions were to claim
the isthmus and the Turkish possessions recently captured in
continental Greece — a claim which, as the historian admits,
was excessive, and so irritated Murid that he threw the
ambassador into prison. When, however, the sultan came
to examine the imposing walls of the Hexamilion, he
remonstrated with old Turakhan for having advised him to
attack such apparently impregnable lines so late in the season
— for it was now 27th November. But the veteran, who knew
his Greeks and had already twice taken the Isthmian wall,
maintained that its defenders would not resist an attack, but
would flee at the news of his arrival at the isthmus. In this
expectation the sultan waited several days before ordering
the attack ; but, as Constantine showed no sign of surrender,

MURAD II. STORMS THE ISTHMIAN WALL 413
he ordered his cannon to open fire on the wall. On the
evening of the fourth day, the fires in front of the Turkish
tents, and the strains of the martial hymns which rose from
the Turkish camp, warned the Greeks that, according to their
custom, the besiegers would begin the assault on the next
day but one. On the following evening the sutlers dragged
the siege engines into position, and at dawn next day, ioth
December, the band sounded the signal for the attack.
While some endeavoured to undermine the wall, and others
placed scaling ladders against it, the Turkish artillery
prevented the defenders from exposing themselves over the
battlements. The honours of the day rested with a young
Servian janissary, who was the first to scale the wall right in
the centre under the eyes of the sultan — a sad but characteristic
example of the manner in which the Turks in all ages have
used the Slavs against the Greeks and the Greeks against
the Slavs. Others followed him, the Greeks were driven
down from that point of the battlements, a panic seized them,
and they fled in disorder, followed by the troops near them.
The two Despots in vain endeavoured to rally their panic-
stricken men ; then, finding their efforts useless, and suspect
ing the Albanians of treachery, they fled also ; while the
Turkish soldiers poured over the fatal battlement, through a
breach in the wall, and finally through the gates. Some fell
upon the ample plunder which they found in the Greek camp,
others slew or captured the fleeing Greeks ; the whole
isthmus, laments a Greek poet, was strewn " with gold-winged
arrows, jewelled swords, and the heads and hands and bodies
of men." The sultan stained his laurels by two hideous acts
of cruelty. Three hundred Greeks, who had fled to Mount
Oneion, above Kenchreai, he induced to surrender, and then
butchered in cold blood ; six hundred of bis soldiers' captives
he purchased, in order to sacrifice them as an acceptable
offering to the Manes of his father.
The two Despots retreated into the far south of the
peninsula, for they knew that the citadel of Akrocorinth had
neither provisions nor munitions sufficient to resist a long
siege ; they had staked and lost their all at the isthmus,
and they had to face a revolt headed by a Greek archon, who
proclaimed Centurione's bastard son, Giovanni Asan, as

414 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
legitimate Prince of Achaia. If hard pressed by the Turks,
they were resolved to quit the country. Meanwhile, leaving old
Turakhan, who knew the Peloponnese well, to pursue them,
the sultan marched along the south shore of the Corinthian
Gulf with such rapidity that, on the same day on which he
captured the isthmus, he surprised Basilicata, the ancient
Sikyon, whose entire male population had gone to defend
the Hexamilion, with the exception of a few who had taken
refuge with the women and children in the Akropolis. This
small garrison soon surrendered ; the sultan set fire to the
town, and then continued his march to the wealthy city of
Vostitza, which met with a like fate at his hands. When he
reached Patras, he found that all the inhabitants, except
some 4000 who had occupied the castle and the palace, had fled
across the gulf to the Venetian colony of Lepanto, which had
secured immunity by continuing to pay him tribute. The
occupants of the palace surrendered, and were enslaved ; but
the people in the splendid old castle, even though a breach
was made in the walls, hurled blazing resin and pitch on
to the heads of the janissaries, and so maintained their
position. The sultan had to content himself with burning
and destroying the town, whose wealth had made it the
" purse " of Constantine, and with ravaging the country as far
as Glarentza. Meanwhile, Turakhan had returned from his
raid ; and, as the season was far advanced and the Despots
were willing to make peace on his terms, and pay him a
tribute, Murid withdrew to Thebes, leaving the Hexamilion a
heap of ruins, and taking more than 60,000 captives with
him. On his approach, the terrified Thebans abandoned
their homes, only to fall into the clutches of the Turkish army
at the isthmus. The news of the fall of the Hexamilion had
been at once followed by the submission of all Constantine's
recent conquests in continental Greece ; and the Bey of
Salona swore on the Koran that no harm should befall the
revolted people of Loidoriki and Galaxidi, if they would
return to their allegiance.1
On the death of his brother, the Emperor John, in 1448,
1 Chalkokondyles, 320, 322, 341-50, 408 ; Doukas, 223 ; Chromcon
Breve, 519, 520; Phrantzes, 202, 203; Magno and "At>0os apud Hopf,
Chroniques, 194, 267 ; Qpfjvos ttjs Kaworaxru'ovTriXews, 11. 67-90 ; Xpovinbv rod

CONSTANTINE CROWNED AT MISTRA 415
Constantine succeeded, in spite of the intrigues of his younger
brother Demetrios, to the imperial title. It is a picturesque
fact, which the Greeks should not forget when they raise
their contemplated monument to him, that the last emperor
of Constantinople was crowned at Mistri, where his first wife,
Theodora Tocco, like Cleopa Malatesta, the wife of his
brother Theodore, lay buried in the Zoodotou monastery.
After the coronation on 6th January 1449, the new emperor
sailed on board a Catalan ship for the imperial capital, where
he met his two surviving brothers. Thomas he confirmed in
the dignity of a Despot, upon Demetrios he bestowed his
previous government, with the exception of Patras, which
was added to that of Thomas. Before the two Despots left
for the Morea, they solemnly swore, in the presence of their
aged mother, their brother the emperor, and all the leading
members of the Senate, to live in unity and brotherly love.1
Shortly after the accession of Constantine to the imperial
throne, his great adversary, Murad II., rounded off his Greek
conquests by annexing practically all that remained of the
former Despotat of Epiros. For many years Carlo 1 1. Tocco
had remained at peace with his cousins and with the Turks.
When the antiquary, Cyriacus of Ancona, visited the " King
ofthe Epirotes," as he styles him, in 1435 and 1436, the latter
gave him a letter of introduction, which ensured him a
warm welcome at a marriage festivity in the family of the
Despot's cousin Turnus. In 1444, however, when the fortunes
of the sultan seemed to be waning, and his brother-in-law,
the Despot Constantine, made his brilliant but short-lived con
quests in nothern Greece, Carlo also threw off the Turkish
suzerainty. In this bold step he was advised and assisted by
his father-in-law, Giovanni, the above-mentioned Marquis
of Gerace, a member of the great Sicilian family of
Ventimiglia. Landing with a small body of cavalry,
the marquis routed with great loss a large army of
Turks which was besieging his son-in-law. On his return
home, however, shortly afterwards, Carlo was captured by
treachery or a Turkish stratagem, and reduced to his former
TaAa^eidlov, 209, 210 ; Jorga, viii., 33, 34 ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, ii.,
368 ; Cyriacus of Ancona apud Tozzetti, Relazioni di Alcnni Viaggi, v.,
442. 1 PhrarltzSs, 204-6.

416 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
state of vassalage. Unfortunately, he died on 30th September
1448, before his eldest son, Leonardo III., had reached man
hood, so that there was no one strong enough to protect his
continental dominions. The four governors, whom the late
Despot had appointed guardians of his children, thought that
the only way to save their threatened heritage was to invoke
the protection of Venice ; Zante hoisted the banner of St
Mark; the captain of Sta. Mavra offered his island to the
republic; while others of the islanders sent to Alfonso V.
of Naples, mindful of the connection between the ducal
family and the Neapolitan crown. But while Venice was
negotiating, the sultan acted. On 24th March 1449, the
Turks took Arta, and annexed all the continental dominions
of the house of Tocco, except the three points of Vonitza,
Varnazza, and Angelokastro, which thenceforth, under the
name of Karl-ili, or " Charles's country," formed a part of the
Turkish Empire, still preserving in its Turkish name the
memory of Carlo Tocco.
Venice was now more than ever anxious to prevent the
loss of the island county of Cephalonia or its occupation by
another Christian power, such as the King of Naples. She
really wanted absolute possession of the central Ionian group,
such as she had long enjoyed in Corfu, and she actually
ordered Vettore Cappello, her admiral, afterwards famous as
the captor of Athens, and whose effigy still adorns the portal
of Sant' Aponal at Venice, to take steps for the annexation
of Zante. Pensions, it was thought, would reconcile any of
the chief inhabitants who now enjoyed offices — and such
were numerous under the Tocchi — to the change of ruler.
But it soon became evident that neither the " Despot of
Arta," as Leonardo III. still styled himself, nor his brothers
wished to surrender their heritage. Another proposal, that
Venice should occupy the islands during his minority, was
rejected, and ultimately the negotiations terminated by the
republic, with the advice of " the Councils of Cephalonia and
Zante," taking him, his brothers, and successors under her
protection. Henceforth Leonardo III. was included in
Venetian treaties, though the kings of Naples continued
to regard him as their vassal.1
1 /Eneas Sylvius, Europa, 406 ; Mayno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 196 ;

CYRIACUS OF ANCONA 417
While the Italian rule in continental Greece was thus
drawing to a close, an antiquary, for the first time since the
Conquest, visited the country. This mediaeval Pausanias,
Cyriacus of Ancona, has left us, together with numerous
ancient inscriptions and not a few sketches of classical monu
ments, some brief notes on the distinguished personages
whom he met in the course of his extended travels. A
merchant by profession, like Schliemann, whom in some
respects he resembled, he taught himself Greek, and was
consumed by a burning enthusiasm for the memorials of
classic Hellas. As his notes often contain no indication of
the year in which they were written, an exact chronology of
his Greek journeyings is extremely difficult ; but he seems to
have first visited the Levant in 1412, and we find him reading
daily the Greek, Latin, and mediaeval historians to Mohammed
II. during, or immediately after, the siege of Constantinople,1
that is to say, in 1452 or 1453. His preserved fragments
refer, however, mainly to three Greek journeys, the first of
which extended from the end of 1435 to about the middle of
1436, the second took place in 1437, and the third and longest
lasted from 1443 to 1449, when the Genoese Government
describes him, in a letter of recommendation, as " now return
ing west," after " having visited Epiros, lEtolia, Akarnania,
the Morea, Achaia, Athens, Phokis, Bceotia, Crete, and the
Cyclades." 2
The worthy antiquary, on the first of these journeys,
arrived in Greek waters towards the end of December 1435.
The plague then raging at Corfu prevented him from touching
at that island, where, during one of his previous voyages,
he had acquired some Greek manuscripts.3 He accordingly
spent Christmas at the Corfiote dependency of Butrinto, on
the opposite coast, and thence proceeded^ to Arta, where
Carlo II. Tocco received him most hospitably. "The King
of the Epirotes," as Cyriacus calls him, gave the traveller every
Navagero apud Muratori, xxiii., 11 13; Epirotica, 254 ; Sansovino,
DelP Origine dei Turchi, 154 ; Jorga, vii., 424 ; viii., 45, 54, 55 ; Predelli,
Commemoriali, v., 37, 204 ; The Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph, 283.
1 Zorzi Dolfin, Cronaca delP Assedio di Constantinopoli, apud De
Rossi, Inscriptiones Christiana Urbis Roma, II., i., 374.
2 Jorga, viii., 55.
3 Kyriaci Anconitani Itinerarium (ed. Mehus), 29, 30.
2 D

418 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
facility for seeing the sights of his dominions. His majesty's
secretary, Giorgio Ragnarolo of Pesaro, assisted his fellow-
countryman ; and, thus supported, the antiquary was able
to visit Rogus, where he found "the head of the Virgin's
mother, the body of St Luke, and the foot of St John
Chrysostom " ; the ruins of the old Roman colony of Niko-
polis, founded to commemorate the victory of Actium ; and
the remains of Dodona. He then travelled southward through
Akarnania and ^Etolia, stopping at Vonitza, so important in
the mediaeval history of the country, gazing across at Ithaka
from the coast of the mainland, and finally arriving at the
ancient Kalydon, whence he set out for Patras. Before,
however, he had left " the Royal city of Akarnania," he had
prudently submitted, in a letter still preserved,1 the manuscript
account of his journey in Epiros to the " King of the Epirotes,"
in case any of his observations should fail to please the royal
eye ! From Patras he crossed over to the Venetian colony
of Lepanto, and ere long we find him at Kirrha, the ancient
port of Delphi, then called " Ancona " (from the " elbow " of
land on which it stood), or " the Five Saints " (from some
church of that name). At Salona he mentions the church of
the Transfiguration, but he has little or no regard for what is
post-classical. He scornfully remarks, in the narrow spirit of
the archaeologist for whom contemporary Greece has no
interest, that Delphi "is called Castri by the foolish Greek
populace, which is quite ignorant where it was " ; but he
inspected with keen interest the ruined walls, the remains of
the round temple of Apollo, the amphitheatre, and the
hippodrome, wandered among the broken statues which
covered the ground, and admired the large and richly orna
mented tombs. Thence he proceeded to Livadia by way of
the noble Byzantine monastery of Hosios Loukis, where the
monks showed him a very ancient collection of sacred books.
At Livadia he noted a large temple of Hera in the ruined
city; and, after a digression to Orchomenos, arrived at
Thebes, which, though no longer the capital of the duchy,
was still the occasional residence of the Duke of Athens, for
our traveller specially mentions the "royal court" there.
A brief visit to Chalkis and Eretria concluded this part of his
1 Published in Studi e documenti di Storia e di Diritto, xv., 337.

CYRIACUS AT ATHENS 419
tour, and on 7th April 1436 he reached Athens, where he
stayed for fifteen days, the guest of a certain Antonelli
Balduini. On this occasion he does not seem to have been
presented to Nerio II., nor does he tell us much about the con
temporary state of the city at the beginning of the new reign.
His days are entirely devoted to visiting the antiquities, to
making sketches, and to copying the inscriptions which he
finds on the monuments. Many of them relate to the
Emperor Hadrian — the great philhellene, who, as the inscrip
tion on his arch reminded the traveller, founded a new Athens,
which began where that of Theseus ended. He noted down
the emperor's celebrated edict at the gate of Athena
Archegetis regulating the oil-trade ; he transcribed the
inscription commemorating the completion by Antoninus
Pius of Hadrian's aqueduct,1 which, like the Capuan notary
forty years earlier, he was informed by the local ciceroni
to have been " Aristotle's Study " ; he, too, alludes to
the statue of the Gorgon on the south of the Akro
polis; he, too, describes the temple of Olympian Zeus,
of which he counted one more column than his prede
cessor had done, as the "house," or "palace of Hadrian."
Similarly, he mistook the choragic monument of Lysi
krates for the marble seats of a theatre. The perfect
" temple of Mars," as he calls the Theseion, " with its thirty
columns," and " the fifty-eight columns and noble sculptures
on the pediments, frieze, and metopes of the Parthenon"
naturally aroused his admiration. But, unlike the pious
notary, he tells us nothing of its condition as the cathedral
of Athens, beyond two casual allusions to the recent restora
tion of a pillar, and to an inscribed ancient marble urn inside,
which may perhaps have served either as a font or for holy
water. He alludes, however, to the church of St Dionysios
under the Areopagos. His general impression of Athens is
striking. "Everywhere," he writes, "I saw vast walls
decayed with age, and inside and outside the city in
credible marble buildings, houses, and temples, all kinds
of sculptures executed with marvellous skill, and huge
columns — but all these things a mass of great ruins."
1 Tozzetti, Relasioni di Alcuni Viaggi fatti in Toscana (2nd ed,), v.,
414-16.

420 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
Down at the Piraeus the antiquary could trace the huge
foundations of the ancient walls, part of two round towers
was still standing, and the entrance of the harbour was
guarded by the huge marble lion, now in front of the
arsenal at Venice. Phaleron, or Porto Vecchio, he ignores.
Of contemporary Athens he gives us the barest glimpses.
He tells us that it possessed a " north " and a " west gate," as
well as " the gate of the new city," and that of the castle —
the same number which the Jesuit Father Simon enumerates
more than two centuries later ; that it had " new walls " — a
statement, corroborated by that of another traveller thirty
years afterwards, which might indicate the so-called wall of
Valerian as the work of the Acciajuoli ; and that the Theseion
lay outside the town. Of the inhabitants he says nothing ;
as living Greeks, they had for him no interest ; was he not an
archaeologist ?
After a day at Eleusis, where, like the Capuan, he noted
the ruins of an aqueduct, Cyriacus journeyed by way of
Megara to the isthmus, still strewn with the walls erected by
Manuel II. and destroyed by the Turks five and thirteen years
earlier. Rapidly visiting Corinth and the amphitheatre and
brick baths of Sikyon, he made an excursion up to Kalavryta,
where he met a kindred soul, one George Cantacuzene, a
scholar learned in Greek literature who possessed a large
library, from which he lent the wandering archaeologist an
Herodotos and several other books — an interesting proof of
the existence of culture in the Morea at this period. On the
way down the valley, the traveller stopped to see the image
of the Virgin, attributed to St Luke and still preserved in the
monastery of Megaspelaion, and thence returned by way of
Patras, at the beginning of May, to the dominions of his
friend, the " King of the Epirotes," who gave him the above-
mentioned letter of introduction to his cousin Turnus. The
Tocchi were interested in literary matters; Orlando, the
brother of Turnus, is known to have employed a Greek priest
to copy manuscripts of Origen and Chrysostom for him, and
Turnus heartily welcomed Cyriacus at his daughter's wedding
at Orionatium in the middle of May. Two days later his
guest crossed over to Corfu, saw part of the old walls and the
remains of the ancient city of Palaiopolis, and then returned

CYRIACUS AT MISTRA 421
with his sketches and a goodly collection of inscriptions to
his native land.1
But the love of travel did not allow him much repose.
In July of the following year he is sketching the walls of
Kythera and admiring those of Epidauros Limera, near
Monemvasia. In August he is at Zante, "the island of
Epiros" as he calls it, in allusion to its union with the
continental dominions of the Tocchi, and it was probably
there that he received a letter of introduction to Carlo II.'s
ambitious cousin, the bastard Memnon, who seems at this
time to have been governor of Charpigny in the Morea, the
old feudal castle of Hugues de Lille. He gives us a pretty
picture of his meeting with Memnon " at the clear springs of
the Alpheios," where the bastard was surrounded by his
huntsmen, some bearing a straight-horned stag, others a huge
she-bear, and others again a haul of fish fresh from the river.
Memnon not only gave him a warm welcome, but presented
him with the skin of the bear, and escorted him to Mistri,
where he arrived a week later. There he visited Theodore
II., then the reigning Despot, examined the statues, the
columns, and the marble stage of the gymnasia on the site
of classic Sparta, and speculated on the origin of the name of
its mediaeval successor, which he believes to have been due to
the cheese-like shape of the hill of Mistri.2 Of the beautiful
Byzantine churches of the Moreot capital he is as silently
disdainful as any classical archaeologist of our own day. Yet
this very period was the golden age of architecture at Mistra.
The Florentine arcades (due, no doubt, to the influence of the
Despots' Italian wives) and the Peribleptos church belong to
the first half of the fifteenth century ; only a few'years before
Cyriacus's visit, Joannes Frangopoulos, the marshal of the
Morea, had presented the charming Pantanassa as " a small
thank-offering " to the Virgin.3
In 1443 Cyriacus returned once more to Greece with letters
for the two Despots of the Morea, and, apparently in February
1444, he revisited Athens.4 An extremely interesting letter,
1 Epigrammata reperta per lllyricum, iii.-v., ix.-xix., xxviii., xxxi.,
xxxii., xxxv. ; Itinerarium, 62, 64-70 ; Montfaucon, Palaographia, 79, 80.
2 Epigrammata, xxxvii., xl. ; Itinerarium, 72.
3 Bull. Corr. Hell., xxiii., 134-7.
4 The year of this visit to Athens must have been 1444, and not 1447,

422 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
which he wrote from Chios on 29th March of that year,
describes his second impressions of the place. After mention
ing the Tower of the Winds, the " Temple of .Eolus," as he
calls it, he goes on to say how, accompanied by the duke's
cousin and namesake, he went to pay his respects to " Nerio
Acciajuoli of Florence, then Prince of Athens," whom he
" found on the Akropolis, the lofty castle of the city." Again,
however, the archaeological overpowered the human interest ;
of the living ruler he tells us nothing ; his attention, as he
says, was rather attracted by the Propylaea, in which was the
ducal residence. He describes in enthusiastic language the
splendours of the architecture — the marvellous portico of
four polished marble columns, with ten marble slabs above,
and the court itself, where two rows of six huge columns
three feet in diameter supported the marble ceiling, and
where the walls on either side, composed of polished pieces
of marble all of equal size, were approached by a single large
and splendid entrance. After sketching the building, he
hastened on with even greater eagerness to reinspect the
Parthenon ; again he enumerates its fifty-eight columns,
twelve on each front and seventeen on each side ; he alludes
to the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae sculptured on
the metopes, to the sculptures of the pediments, and to the
frieze of the celia, which he supposed to represent the
victories of Athens in the time of Perikles. During the next
five years he continued his journey in the Levant; he had
an audience of Murid II. at Adrianople before the disastrous
battle of Varna, and describes a hunting party near Con
stantinople, at which the Emperor John VI. and the ex-
Despot Theodore 1 1., who had then left the Morea, were
present. At the Dardanelles he spoke with some of the
Greek captives, whom Murid II. had carried off from the
Peloponnese. In his repeated visits to the islands of the
Archipelago, he received assistance from the Latin rulers,
themselves in some cases men of culture, interested in the
as assumed by Gregorovius and others, because the letter from Chios
is dated : Kyriaceo die, iv. Kal. Ap. Now, 29th March fell on a Sunday in
1444, and we know from another letter of Cyriacus to the Emperor John
VI., written before June 1444, that he left Chalkis for Chios on v. Kal.
Mart, of that year (Fabricius, loc. eit), Mommsen is wrong in making
Kyriaceo die mean Wednesday, which will not fit other dates.

PROOFS OF LATIN CULTURE 423
classic treasures of their diminutive dominions. Thus,
Crusino I. Sommaripa of Paros took a pride in showing him
some marble statues, which he had had excavated, and
allowed him to send a marble head and leg to his friend,
Andriolo Giustiniani-Banca of Chios, a connoisseur of art and
a writer of Italian verse, to whom many of his letters are
addressed.1 So deeply was Cyriacus moved by Crusino's
culture and kindness, that he too burst out into an Italian
poem, of which happily only one line has been* published.
Dorino I. Gattilusio of Lesbos aided him in his investigation
of that island, nor was Francesco Nani, the Venetian governor
of Tenos and Mykonos, any more backward in paying him
attention, escorting him to Delos and back in his state galley
with fourteen rowers.2 In another Venetian island, that
of Crete, Cyriacus attended a shooting match, held at Canea,
in which the archers were dressed as heroes of different
nations and the winner received a eulogy from the pen of
the archaeologist. Early in 1448, he revisited Mistri; on the
road, the site of Sparta with its ruins inspired him with an
Italian sonnet, in which he contrasted the classic city of
heroes with the mediaeval capital over which Constantine
Palaiologos then ruled. At least, however, the Spartans of
the fifteenth century had not lost their physique, for a tall
youth of immense strength carried the worthy antiquary
across a stream under his arm, and then broke an iron rod to
show his power. The poem, too, though not flattering to
Mistri, was translated into Greek, and this rendering, still
extant, has been attributed 3 to Gemistos Plethon. There is
nothing improbable in this meeting of the archaeologist and
the philosopher, who may have already made one another's
acquaintance at Florence, for in 1450, just before his death,
the latter composed a complimentary letter to the Despot
Demetrios on his reconciliation with his brother,4 and wrote a
funeral oration on the death of their mother, the dowager
empress. While at Mistri, Cyriacus seems to have been
the guest of Constantine, for we find him writing, on 4th
1 Hopf, Les Giustiniani, 149.
2 Bulletino delP Istituto for 1861, pp. 183, 187.
3 By Professor Lampros, Ilapmaobs, vii.
4 Still in MS. Cf. Migne, Patrologia Graca, clx., 802.

424 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
February 1448, at the latter's court, an account ofthe Roman
calendar in Greek, which he dedicated to the Despot.1
From Mistra he made excursions to Coron, where the
Venetian officials, aided by a. Cretan scholar, one of the
Calergi, showed him the antiquities, and to Vitylo, where
Constantine's governor, John Palaiol6gos, entertained him
and showed him the ancient materials, of which the castle
was constructed. The last stage of this long journey was
another visit to Epiros, in October 1448. Cyriacus found
his old host, Carlo II., just dead, and Leonardo III. reigning
in his stead. Here the antiquary revisited his old haunts of
Dodona and Rogus, and composed three Italian sonnets for
the repose of Carlo's soul.2 The results of his long archaeo
logical investigations he embodied in three large volumes, of
which only fragments have come down to us. His original
drawing of the west front of the Parthenon 3 and those of
other Athenian monuments have been preserved in a
manuscript formerly belonging to the Duke of Hamilton,
but now in the Berlin Museum, and are the earliest extant
reproductions of those buildings. Sketches of the same front
of the Parthenon, of the Tower of the Winds, of the
Monument of Philopappos, showing the king in a four-horse
chariot, of " a round temple of Apollo at Athens " (perhaps
that of Augustus), and of the noble lion of "the port of
Athens" facing the two round towers, may be seen in the
Barberini manuscript of 1465, now at the Vatican,4 which
contains the diagrams of San Gallo. As that eminent
architect took the explanatory text almost verbatim from
Cyriacus, he has been assumed to have copied the latter's
drawings, and this is all the more probable because the
sketch of "the temple of Apollo" was drawn and given to
1 Printed in Revue des Etudes grecques for 1896, p. 228. The year is
fixed because it was written on Sunday, 4th February, and because we
know that Bollani, whom Cyriacus mentions as Castellan of Coron, had
been elected in April 1447.
2 Colucci, Delle Antichita Picene, xv., no ; Tozzetti, v., 66-9, 422-3,
437,439-42,449,460. 3 Reproduced in Jahrbuch der K. Preussischen Kunstsammlungen,
iv., 81.
4 No. 4424, folios 28, 29, 32 ; Laborde (i., 32) has reproduced folio 28.
Cf. De Rossi, op. eit, 1 1., i., 363.

QUARRELS OF THE DESPOTS 425
its owner, as is expressly stated, by " a Greek in Ancona," the
residence of the antiquary. Copies of the traveller's sketches
of the Cyclades exist in a manuscript at Munich,1 whereas
we have not a trace of his contemporary, Francesco Squarcione
of Padua, who is said to have " travelled all over Greece." 2
The fall of Greek rule in the Morea was now fast ap
proaching, hastened by the fraternal quarrels of the two
Despots, Thomas and Demetrios. Neither their solemn
oaths at Constantinople, nor the imminent Turkish peril
prevailed over their mutual selfishness and ambition. The
only point on which they were unanimous was their desire
to extend their dominions at the cost of the Venetian colonies,
especially Nauplia and Argos, which complained loudly to
the mother-country for protection, and demanded a copy of
the privileges granted it after its capture by the Turks in
1397.3 Thomas managed to obtain a start of his brother,
and, reaching the Morea first, seduced the subjects of
Demetrios from their allegiance. The latter, destitute of
national feeling, sent his brother-in-law, Matthew Asan, to
call in the aid of the Turks, and thus compelled Thomas to
come to terms and submit their dispute to the arbitration of
their brother, the emperor. As the two Despots, however,
still continued to quarrel, Mohammed II. ordered old
Turakhan to assist Demetrios, and -at the same time, in
view of the future conquest of the peninsula, to destroy all
that remained of the Hexamilion. Thomas then made peace
with his brother, surrendering to him Kalamata in exchange
for the Arkadian district of Skorta, which he had taken. So
great was the joy of the old philosopher and patriot Plethon,
that he took up his pen for the last time to congratulate
Demetrios on this reconciliation. Then he died, full of
years, fortunate in escaping the disgracf of seeing the
country a Turkish province. " Sparta," cried his friend Hier-
onymos Charitonymos in his funeral oration, " is no longer
famous ; we lovers of learning shall soon be scattered to the ends
of the world " — a prophecy only too true, and too soon fulfilled.4
1 Cod. Lat., 716 ; cf. Bulletino delP Istituto, toe. eit.
2 Scardeonius, De Antiquit. Urbis Patavii, 370.
3 Sathas, Mv-n/xcta, i., 212-13; Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium,
ii., 381 ; Jorga, viii., 69, 70, 79, 95. 4 Migne, Patrologia Graca, clx., 807.

426 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
In October 1452, when Mohammed II. was ready for the
attack on Constantinople, he sent Turakhan back to the
Morea to keep the two Despots busy there with their own
defence, so that they might not send assistance to their
imperial brother. Accompanied by his two sons, Achmet
and Omar (the future conqueror of Athens), and at the
head of the European army of the Turkish Empire, the old
commander again arrived at the isthmus. The walls had
been repaired, and the resistance offered by their defenders
was such that the capture of the rampart cost many lives.
When the Greeks fled, Turakhan marched through the centre
of the peninsula by way of Tegea and Mantineia as far as
Ithome and the Messenian Gulf, plundering and taking
prisoners as he went. Neokastron, presumably the " Chastel-
Neuf" mentioned in the feudal list of 1364, fell before him ;
but Siderokastron in Arkadia justified its name and defied all
his efforts. Nor was that the only Turkish reverse. As
Achmet was retiring through the Pass of Dervenaki, between
Mycenae and Corinth, that death-trap of Turkish armies, where
370 years later another Ottoman force met a similar fate, he
was surprised by Matthew Asan, brother-in-law of Demetrios,
defeated and taken as a captive to Mistri. The victory was
the last ray of dawn before the darkness of centuries. King
Alfonso of Naples, who had long been intriguing with Deme
trios, sent his congratulations, and talked of invading Turkey ;
but the Turks had achieved their object, and the besieged of
Constantinople applied in vain to the Despots for corn and
soldiers.1 The news that the city was taken, and the emperor slain,
fell like a thunderbolt upon his wretched brothers, who
naturally expected that they would be the next victims.
Their first impulse, and that of their leading archons, was
to rush down to the nearest port and take ship for Italy —
an act of cowardice which had the worst effect upon their
already discontented Albanian subjects. But as, one after
another, important Greeks arrived from Constantinople —
men like Cardinal Isidore, who had played a prominent
1 Chalkokondyles, 374, 375, 378, 381, 382; Phrantzes, 235, 236;
Kritdboulos, i., 19 ; Archivio Storico per le Prov. Napoletane, xxvii.,
612, 823.

ALBANIAN RISING IN THE MOREA 42?
part at the Council of Florence and had been taken prisoner
by the Turks, and Phrantzes, whose loyalty to his master had
exposed him to a similar fate — the two Despots plucked up
sufficient courage to remain, and sent envoys to the sultan's
court at Adrianople, in the hope that the conqueror would
leave them the shadow of sovereignty so long as they paid
the annual tribute of 10,000 or 12,000 ducats which he
imposed upon them.1 Some of the Greek nobles wished,
indeed, to proclaim Demetrios emperor, but this was too
much for the fraternal jealousy of Thomas, and the idea
was dropped. Meanwhile, the smouldering discontent of
the Albanians, ill-treated by the Greek officials and fired
by the great exploits of their countryman, Skanderbeg, in
Albania, had burst out into one of those rare efforts for
independence which that strange race has occasionally
shown. Some 30,000 of these nomads rose against the
Despots, at the instigation of one of their native chieftains,
Peter Boua, nicknamed " the lame," a member of the family
which had once held Arta and Lepanto. Various dissatisfied
Greek archons joined the movement, for the greedy Byzantine
officials who held the chief posts at the petty courts of Patras
and Mistri were extremely unpopular with the natives of the
peninsula. Among these Greek rebels the most prominent
was Manuel Cantacuzene, who was lord of all Braccio di
Maina, and could not forget that his ancestors were of
imperial lineage and had once ruled at Mistra. Thomas
had in vain tried to arrest him, as a dangerous pretender ;
he was now proclaimed Despot by the Albanians, whose
national vanity he flattered by taking the Albanian name
of " Ghin," and calling his wife " Cuchia."
In the pitiable condition of Greece at that time it was
obvious to both parties that they could only pbtain, or retain,
the government of the Morea by foreign aid. Accordingly,
they both applied to the only two foreign Powers which were
strong enough to assist them — Venice and the sultan. The
republic was at first not disinclined to listen to the proposals
1 Phrantzes, 309 ; Doukas, 314 (who puts the tribute at 10,000 ducats);
Chalkokondyles, 399, 400, 416 (who puts it at 12,000 gold pieces) ; Krito-
boulos (I., 74; III., 1) estimates it at 6000 gold pieces; Cambini,
Rabbi Joseph, and ^Eneas Sylvius (cf. infra) at 17,000.

428 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
of the Albanians to submit to Venetian rule. Venice had
been constantly harassed by the Despots, and on one occasion
had plainly told the Emperor Manuel II. that the members
of his family were " worse neighbours than the Turks " ; 1 in
this very year of the rebellion, Demetrios had been molesting
the Venetian colonies. The first impulse of the Venetian
Government was, therefore, to instruct its officials in the
Morea to encourage the insurgents until it had had time
to decide upon its policy. More cautious counsels, however,
prevailed — for Venice did not want to embroil herself with
the sultan — and it was proposed that Vettore Cappello should
proceed to the Morea, to urge the desirability of unity on
the contending parties, and to negotiate for the peaceful
acquisition of such maritime places as Glarentza, Patras,
Corinth, and Vostitza, but only in the event of a possible
Genoese or Catalan occupation of the peninsula. He was
to protest, and the protest was perfectly genuine, that the
republic did not seek these territorial acquisitions from
motives of ambition, but simply in order to save the country.
The news that a Genoese fleet was hovering off the Morea
and that the Albanians were negotiating with that rival
republic, naturally alarmed the statesmen of the lagoons.'
The sultan acted, however, while the Venetians debated.
He saw that a strong Albanian principality in the Morea
would be less to his interest than the maintenance of the two
weak Byzantine states of Patras and Mistri. He therefore
resolved to aid the Despots in suppressing the revolt, without,
however, utterly annihilating the revolted ; he chose, in other
words, that policy of making one Christian race balance
another, so skilfully followed by his successor in Macedonia
at the present day. Omar, son of old Turakhan, was de
spatched to carry out these instructions ; he inflicted a slight
defeat on the Albanians, and obtained from the grateful
Demetrios the release of his brother Achmet as his reward.
Another pretender, however, now appeared on the scene, in
the person of Centurione's son, Giovanni Asan. The so-
called "Prince of Achaia" had been imprisoned with his
eldest son since his ineffectual rising in 1446 in the castle of
' » Jorga, iv., 596.
2 Sfithas, i., 215-27 ; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 199.

CENTURIONE ESCAPES 429
Chloumoutsi, and it had been rumoured that Thomas had
allowed these dangerous representatives of the old dynasty
to die of hunger. They were, however, still alive, and had
eagerly listened to the plans of a fellow-prisoner, a Greek
agitator of obscure origin, named Loukanes, who had
received preferment from Theodore II., but had strongly
opposed the influence of Byzantine officialdom in his own,
and his countrymen's interest. These prisoners of state now
persuaded their gaoler to release them, whereupon they threw
the weight, Centurione of his name, Loukanes of his ability,
on the side of the insurgents. There must still have been
many Franks who regarded the only son of the last Frankish
ruler of Achaia as their legitimate sovereign, and even
Venice and Alfonso of Naples thought it desirable to con
gratulate " Prince Centurione " on his release, and to give
him and his wife their coveted title. Phrantzes, who knew
Peloponnesian politics well, and who had just entered the
service of the Despot Thomas, considered his escape so
serious that he interrupted a mission to the Servian court
as soon as he heard the news, and Matthew Asan, the
brother-in-law of Demetrios, was despatched to the sultan
to ask for further assistance. This time Mohammed II.
sent old Turakhan himself to the aid of the Despots, whose
two capitals of Mistri and Patras were besieged by the
insurgents. Turakhan, with his two sons and a large force,
arrived in October 1454, and told the two Despots, who had
in the meanwhile compelled the enemy to raise the siege of
those towns, that the presence of one or other of them with
his troops was essential to the success of his plans. First,
accompanied by Demetrios, he attacked the Albanians at a
place called Borbotia, which they strongly fortified, but from
which they fled by night, leaving about } 0,000 men and
women prisoners of the allies. Next it was the turn of
Thomas, who took part with the Turkish commander in the
capture of Ithome and Aetos — a place which had recently
hoisted the flag of Centurione, and which added another
1000 to the ranks of the captives. At this the rest of the
Albanians submitted, on condition that they should keep the
lands which they had taken and the cattle which they had
plundered — an arrangement which well suited the sultan's

430 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
policy of playing off the two races against one another. The
pseudo-despot, Cantacuzene, disappeared, till four years later
he returned as the decoy of the sultan, while Centurione
found a refuge among the Venetians at Modon, where he
remained for some two years. It was then thought desirable
to confirm his devotion to Venice by the grant of a small
pension, lest he should lend his name to some Turkish or other
enterprise for the conquest of the Morea ; especially as, early
in 1456, we find him a pensioner of King Alfonso at Naples;
accordingly, in 1457, the republic granted him an annuity, on
condition that he continued to reside at Modon, or " wherever
else he could be most useful " to her. Seven years later he
settled, like his enemy Thomas, in Rome, and thenceforth
drew a monthly pittance from Paul II. till 1469, when he died,
the last of his famous race to claim the title of " Prince of
Achaia." 1 As for the Albanian chief, Peter Boua, he was
confirmed by the Turks in his privileges, and, nine years later,
headed another rising of his countrymen. Having thus re
stored the authority of the two Despots, old Turakhan gave
them, before he departed, the excellent advice to live as
brothers, to reward their loyal subjects, and to repress at once the
germs of sedition. Needless to say, his advice was not taken.2
The sultan was now the real master of the Morea. The
two Despots were his tributaries, and the Greek archons,
degenerate scions of old Moreot families such as those of
Sophianos and Sgouromallaios, hesitated as little as Albanian
chiefs like Peter Boua or Manuel Raoul to acknowledge him
as their sovereign on condition that he took none of their
property and spared their children from the blood-tax. Two
of them even offered to hand over to Venice Mouchli,
between Argos and the modern Tripolitza, and the three
castles of Damala, Ligourio, and Phanari in Argolis — an offer
which the Venetian Government found very tempting, as
the three Argive castles were near the sea-coast Meanwhile
both Thomas and Demetrios went on intriguing as before.
1 Sdthas, i., 229 ; Secreta, xx., f. 133; Liber Depositarii S. Cruciate,
ff. 123-48, 81-87.
2 Chalkokondyles, 406-14 ; Phrantzds, 383-5 ; Cambini apud Sanso-
vino, op. eit, 152 ; Spandugino (ed. 1551), 41-2 ; ^Eneas Sylvius, Europa,
405 ; "AvBot apud Hopf, Chroniques, 267 ; Archivio Sforico per le Prov.
Napoletane, xxvii., 834-5 ; xxviii., 193, 203.

THE TURKISH TRIBUTE IN ARREARS 431
Both had tried to negotiate a matrimonial alliance between
their children and the family of Alfonso V. of Aragon and
Naples, who sent an envoy to examine the Isthmian wall,
and report on the defences of the country, while Thomas
invoked the aid of Venice to prevent his brother from
thus re-introducing Spanish influence into the Morea to the
detriment of both the republic and himself. While Demetrios
appointed the scholar Argyropoulos as his envoy, and told
him to seek the aid of the pope and of Charles VII. of
France, Thomas sent the serviceable Phrantzes to smooth
over his disputes with the Venetians, and obtained a safe
conduct for himself and his family for the Venetian colonies
and the loan of both a Venetian and a Neapolitan galley, on
which he could flee in case of need. Nevertheless, the two
brothers might, perhaps, have preserved the shadow of
authority for the rest of their lives, had they abstained from
any act which could offend their all-powerful suzerain, the
sultan. But the old intriguer Loukanes could not rest from
attempting to stir up Byzantine officials and native Pelopon
nesians alike to revolt; and, in spite of the wise refusal of
Matthew Asan, the governor of Corinth, who knew his Turks
only too well, to join in these schemes, the tribute to the
sultan was allowed to fall into arrears. So long as there was
any danger from the Albanians, the Despots had been willing
enough to pay what their deliverer asked as the price of his
assistance. But after the revolt had been suppressed, they
omitted to remit their annual ransom. Their excuse was that
neither their Albanian nor Greek subjects would pay their
respective quota unless the land of the peninsula were
divided in equal portions. The Turkish view, however, was
that the Despots received the amount regularly, but spent it
on themselves.1 The sultan sent frequent embassies to demand payment,
and at the same time to report on the state of the country
He was afraid that the constant quarrels of the Despots would
end in a Venetian or Aragonese occupation of the Morea,
which he thought would make a good base for his projected
1 Miklosich und Miiller, III., 290; Sathas, i., 230-32; Phrantzes,
385; Chalkokondyles, 413-14 ; Kritoboulos, III., 1; Archivio Storico
per le Prov. Napoletane, xxviii., 200.

432 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
attack upon Italy and which he had no wish to see in the
hands of a strong Western power. When, therefore, some three
years' tribute was in arrears, he despatched an ultimatum to the
Despots, giving them the alternative of peace with payment, or
the loss of their dominions. Emboldened by the appearance
of the fleet sent out by Pope Calixtus III. to the ^Egean,
Thomas, the more energetic of the two brothers, refused to
pay ; this refusal led to his own and his brother's ruin.
In the spring of 1458, at the head of an army of 80,000
cavalry and a large body of infantry, Mohammed II. arrived
in Thessaly, where he halted to rest his men and to give the
Despots a last chance of payment. It was currently reported
at the time, that had they done so, the sultan, who had other
pressing business on hand, would have abandoned his expedi
tion at that eleventh hour. But when no envoy arrived
from the Morea, he ordered his army to advance through
Thermopylae into Bceotia, and encamped on the classic field
of Plataea at the river Asopos, till his scouts had examined
the mountain passes leading to the isthmus. While he was
there, messengers arrived from Thomas, begging for peace
and bringing a part of the tribute, 4500 gold pieces. But it
was too late ; the sultan took the money, and told the
trembling emissaries that he would make peace when he was
in the Peloponnese. Then, as his scouts reported the passes to
be unoccupied, he proceeded to the isthmus, where he arrived
on 15th May. He met with no resistance at the Hexamilion ;
but a short experience of the natural and artificial fortifica
tions of Akrocorinth convinced him that it could only be
taken by surrender or starvation. There is only one approach
to the citadel, and the steepness of the ground would not
permit him to plant his batteries near enough to the walls to
have any effect upon them; while, even if he could have
succeeded in battering down the triple line of walls, an
assault would have been most difficult. Accordingly, he left
half his forces under the command of Mahmoud Pasha, a
Greek renegade and the first Christian who ever occupied the
post of Grand Vizier, to invest the place, and proceeded to
reduce the neighbouring fortresses by force or threats. He
then marched into the interior of the peninsula, devastating
and destroying as he went. At Nemea he turned westward,

MOHAMMED II. IN THE MOREA 433
and besieged Tarsos, a place to the north of Lake Pheneos,
which surrendered and furnished some 300 youths to the
janissaries. But Doxies, the Albanian chieftain of the
district, occupied a very strong position on a high hill with
a band of Greeks and Albanians, and prepared to defy the
great sultan. Unfortunately the besiegers cut off the water
supply, and thus compelled the heroic defenders, who had
been constrained to bake their bread with the blood of their
slaughtered cattle, to sue for peace. Mohammed treacher
ously seized this unguarded moment to attack the place,
which thus fell into his hands. The ancient feudal castle
of Akova was taken by storm ; the fortress of Roupele, in
which a number of Albanians and Greeks had taken refuge
with their families, after two days' desperate fighting, during
which the Turkish losses were such that the sultan ordered a
retreat, surrendered just as he was departing. Mohammed
sent the inhabitants to colonise Constantinople, with the
exception of some twenty Albanians who had surrendered at
Tarsos and had broken their parole not to fight against him
again. As an awful example he ordered their ankles and
wrists to be broken — an act of cruelty commemorated by
the Turkish name for the place — •" Tokmak Hissari," or " the
castle of ankles." Thence he marched into the territory of
Mantineia, accompanied by Ghin Cantacuzene, the leader
of the Albanian insurrection of 1453, whom he had summoned
to join him, thinking that his influence with the Albanians
would be useful. The ex-Despot was sent to try his persuasive
powers on the people of Pazanike ; but his mission only made
them more obstinate ; his Turkish companions accused him
of treachery, and he was driven from the sultan's camp.
Alarmed for his safety, he fled to Hungary, where he died.
Finding that the enemy had occupied a, strongly fortified
position, Mohammed encamped near Tegea, and held a
council of war. The two Despots had meanwhile fled to
the sea-coast — Thomas with his family to the Lakonian
Mantineia, Demetrios to Monemvasia. The sultan's ardent
desire was to see and capture that famous fortress, "the
strongest of all cities that we know," as Chalkokondyles
justly called it. But his advisers represented to him the
difficult nature of the country which he would have to
2 E

434 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
traverse, so he prudently decided instead to attack Demetrios
Asan in Palaio-Mouchli, then one of the most important
places in the peninsula. Here again, the sultan cut off the
water supply, and after three days, Asan surrendered on
favourable terms, receiving the town of Loidoriki as a fief for
his son. The sultan now marched across country by
a difficult route to Patras, the abandoned capital of Thomas,
whose citizens he found fled to Lepanto and other Venetian
colonies, except the garrison of the castle. The latter made
no resistance, their lives were spared, and the conqueror was
so struck with the fertility and situation of the town at the
mouth of the Corinthian Gulf, that he offered freedom,
immunity from taxation for several years, and the restitution
of their property to all the inhabitants who would come back.
After garrisoning the castle, he despatched a portion of his
forces to overrun Elis and Messenia, and then returned along
the coast of the gulf to Corinth, occupying Vostitza on the way.
Although it was now July, he found Akrocorinth still
untaken, for Matthew Asan, who had been absent at
Nauplia, had succeeded in entering the fortress by night
with seventy men and partially revictualling it. As Asan
boldly refused to surrender, and there was no longer pro
vender for the beasts of burden in the Turkish camp,
Mohammed resolved to bombard the entrance with stone
balls made from the ruins of the ancient city of Corinth.
At last a breach was made in the outermost of the three
walls ; but when, after a hand-to-hand fight, the Turks
assailed the second rampart, they were greeted with such
volleys of large stones that they had to retire with heavy
loss. So powerful, however, for that period was the Turkish
artillery, that a stone ball weighing nearly 900 lbs. and fired
at a range of about a mile and a half destroyed the bakery
of the citadel and the arsenal. At this juncture, the Turkish
detachment which had been sent to plunder Elis and
Messenia arrived at Corinth with some 15,000 head of
cattle, so that the besiegers had ample supplies for a long
blockade, while the small stock of provisions which Asan
had brought with him was now all but exhausted. The
Greeks complained to their metropolitan, who treacherously
informed Mohammed of the state of affairs. The sultan

OMAR GOVERNOR IN THE MOREA 435
then again called upon Asan to surrender, and the latter,
seeing that the majority was opposed to further resistance,
went forth under a flag of truce, together with Loukanes,
who had been in command during his absence, and made
terms with the sultan. On 6th August, Corinth, "the
star castle," as the Turks called it, surrendered ; the inhabitants
were left unmolested, but ordered to pay tribute ; while the
conqueror demanded from the Despots an annual tribute of
3000 gold pieces and the cession of the city and district of
Patras, Vostitza, Kalavryta, and all the country which he
had traversed with his army — about one-third of the whole
peninsula — and threatened a renewal of hostilities in case
of refusal. Asan proceeded to Trype at the mouth of the
Langada Gorge where the two Despots were waiting, and
laid these hard terms before them. But, hard as they were,
there seemed to be no option but to accept them. True,
the patriotic Phrantzes sneered at the men who had sur
rendered the key of the Morea and complained that Thomas
had given away valuable cities " as if they were of no more
account than the vegetables in his garden." Mohammed
left a garrison of 400 picked men of his own bodyguard in
Corinth, thoroughly provisioned all the fortresses which
seemed to be in good condition, destroyed the others and
sent their inhabitants to Constantinople, where he settled
the skilled workmen in the city and the peasants in the
surburban villages. Then, appointing Omar, son of Turak
han, governor of the new Turkish province in the Morea,
he set out in the beginning of the autumn of 1458 for
Athens, the city which that warrior had captured.1
The end of the Italian rule at Athens had been marked
by a domestic tragedy which might have attracted the
dramatic genius of her great classic writers. In 145 1 — the
same year that had witnessed the death of Murid 1 1. — died
Nerio II. We catch a last characteristic glimpse of him in
the middle of that year, when the Venetian envoy to the
1 Kritoboulos, III., 1-9; Doukas, 339-40; Historia Politica, 31;
Chronicon Breve, 520 ; Chalkokondyles, 442-52 ; Phrantzes, 387-8 ; "Avtios
apud Hopf, Chroniques, 267-8; Cambini, 152; ^Eneas Sylvius, Europa,
405 ; Magno apud Hopf, op. eit, 200. The amount of the tribute given by
Kritoboulos seems more probable than the 500 pieces of Chalkokondyles.

436 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
new sultan was directed to ask that potentate to urge upon
his vassal, " the lord of Sithines and Stives," the necessity of
settling the pecuniary claims of two Venetians.1 After the
death of his first wife, Maria Melissene, Nerio, like his brother
Antonio, had married one of the daughters of Niccolo Zorzi
or Giorgio of Karystos, titular marquis of Boudonitza
The Duchess Chiara — such was the name of this pas
sionate Venetian beauty — bore him a son, Francesco,
who was unfortunately still a minor at the time of his
father's death. The child's mother possessed herself of the
regency and persuaded the Porte, by the usual methods, to
sanction her usurpation. Soon afterwards, however, there
visited Athens on some commercial errand a young Vene
tian noble, Bartolomeo Contarini, whose father had been
governor of the Venetian colony of Nauplia. The duchess
fell in love with her charming visitor, and bade him aspire
to her hand and land. Contarini replied that, alas ! he had
left a wife behind him in his palace on the lagoons. To the
Lady of the Akropolis, a figure who might have stepped
from a play of ^Eschylus, the Venetian wife was no obstacle.
It was the age of great crimes. Contarini realised that Athens
was worth a murder, poisoned his spouse, and returned to
enjoy the embraces and the authority of the duchess.
But the Athenians soon grew tired of this Venetian
domination. They complained to Mohammed II. ; the
great sultan demanded explanations ; and Contarini was
forced to appear with his stepson, whose guardian he
pretended to be, at the Turkish court. There he found a
dangerous rival in the person of Franco Acciajuoli, only son
of the late Duke Antonio II. and cousin of Francesco, a
special favourite of Mohammed and a willing candidate for
the Athenian throne, who had only been awaiting a favour
able moment to return. When the sultan heard the tragic
story of Chiara's passion, he ordered the deposition of both
herself and her husband, and bade the willing Athenians
accept Franco as their lord. Young Francesco was never
heard of again ; but the tragedy was not yet over. Franco
had no sooner assumed the government of Athens, than he
ordered the arrest of his aunt Chiara, threw her into the
1 Jorga, viii., 78.

CAPTURE OF ATHENS 437
dungeons of Megara, and there had her mysteriously
murdered. A picturesque legend,1 current three centuries
later at Athens, makes Franco throttle her with his own
hands, in a still more romantic spot — the monastery of
Daphni, the mausoleum of the French dukes — as she knelt
invoking the aid of the Virgin, whereupon he cut off her
head with his sword. So deep was the impression which
her fate made upon the popular imagination.
The legend goes on to tell how her husband, "the
Admiral," had come with many ships to the Piraeus to
rescue her, but arrived too late. Unable to save, he resolved
to avenge her, and laid the grim facts before the sultan.
Mohammed II., indignant at the conduct of his protege, but
not sorry, perhaps, of a pretext for destroying the remnants
of Frankish rule at Athens, ordered Omar, son of Turakhan,
the governor of Thessaly, to march against the city. The
lower town offered no resistance, for its modern walls had
but a narrow circumference, and its population and resources
were scanty. Nature herself seemed to fight against the
Athenians. On 29th May, the third anniversary of the
capture of Constantinople, a comet appeared in the sky ;
a dire famine followed, so that the people were reduced to
eat roots and grass. On 4th June 1456, the town fell into
the hands of the Turks.2 But the Akropolis, which was
reputed impregnable, long held out. In vain the constable
of Athens and some of the citizens offered the castle to
Venice through one of the Zorzi family ; the republic
ordered the bailie of Negroponte to keep the offer open,
but took no steps to save the most famous fortress of
Christendom ; in vain he summoned one Latin prince after
another to his aid. From the presence of an Athenian ambas
sador at the Neapolitan court,3 we may infqr that Alfonso V.
of Aragon, the titular " Duke of Athens," was among their
1 Kampouroglos, Mxij/ifia, III., 141.
2 A contemporary note in MS., No. 103 of the Liturgical Section of
the National Library at Athens, quoted by Kampouroglos, M^A IL,
153, fixes the date at " May 4, 1456, Friday," but in that ytax June 4, not
May 4, was a Friday, which agrees with the date of June 1456 given by
Phrantzes, the Chronicon Breve, the Historia Patriarchica, and in Nerozzo
Pitti's petition of 1458 in the Florentine Archives (Balie, xxix., f. 67.)
3 Archivio Storico per le Provincie Napoletane^ xxviii., 203.

438 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
number. Demetrios Asan, lord of Palaio-Mouchli, who was
Franco's father-in-law, was also endeavouring to dispose of
his city to Venice at this time, so that he could not help
his kinsman ; and the papal fleet, which was despatched to
the JEgean, did not even put into the Piraeus. Meanwhile,
Omar, after a vain attempt to seduce the garrison from its
allegiance, reminded Franco that sooner or later he must
restore Athens to the sultan who gave it. " Now, there
fore," added the Turkish commander, " if thou wilt surrender
the Akropolis, His Majesty offers thee the land of Bceotia,
with the city of Thebes, and will allow thee to take away
the wealth of the Akropolis and thine own property."
Franco only waited till Mohammed had confirmed the offer
of his subordinate, and then quitted the castle of Athens,
with his wife and his three sons, for ever. At the same time,
his uncle, Nerozzo Pitti, was deprived by the Turks of his
Athenian property, his castle of Sykaminon, and his island of
Panaia, or Canaia, the ancient Pyrrha, opposite the mouth of
the Maliac Gulf, and retired penniless to a Theban castle,
with his wife and eleven children. As compensation for these
losses, the Florentine Government allowed him to sell his house
in Florence, which was all that he had left ; many others, like
him, were ruined and exiled. The last Latin Archbishop of
Athens, Niccolo Protimo of Eubcea, quitted the Akropolis with
the duke ; he was assigned the possessions of the Latin Patri
archate in his native island ; in 1461 he was consoled for the loss
of his see by the archbishopric of Lepanto, which he held to his
death in 1483, and even then the popes continued to confer the
phantom title of Archbishop of Athens on absentees.1 It was
not till 1875 that a Catholic archbishop again resided at Athens.
Such was the state of affairs when Mohammed II., having
punished the Despots of the Morea, arrived at Athens in the
early autumn of 1458. His biographer, the Greek Kritoboulos,
who became governor of his native island of Imbros under
the Turkish dispensation, tells us that this cultured sultan,
1 Chalkokondyles, 453-5 ; Phrantzes, 385 ; The Chronicles of Rabbi
foseph, 281 ; Historia Polilica, 25 ; Historia Patriarchica, 97, 124; Chronicon
Breve, 520; Sathas, i., 230 ; v., 6; vi., 165; Sansovino, 153; /Eneas Sylvius,
Europa, 405; Baphius, De Felicitate Urbis Florentia, 38; Pagnini, Della
Decima, ii., 251; Ubaldini, 177-8; Reg. Vat. 491, f. 304; Eubel, ii., 40.

MOHAMMED II. AT ATHENS 439
who knew Greek, and whom he audaciously describes as " a
philhellene," was filled with desire to behold " the mother of
the philosophers," as a Turkish historian calls Athens.
Mohammed had heard and read much about the wisdom and
marvellous works of the ancient Athenians ; we may surmise
that Cyriacus of Ancona had told him of the Athenian
monuments when he was employed as a reader to His
Majesty at the siege of Constantinople. He longed to visit
the places where the heroes and sages of classic Athens
had walked and talked, and at the same time to examine
with a statesman's eye the position of the city and the
condition of its harbours. When he arrived at the gates,
if we may believe a much later tradition, the abbot of
Kaisariane handed to him the keys of the city — in return
for which he ordered that the famous Byzantine monastery
at the foot of Hymettos, which had enjoyed complete fiscal
exemption under the Latins, should never pay more than one
sequin to the Turkish governor.1 There is nothing improbable
in the tradition, for the abbot was probably the most important
Greek ecclesiastic left at Athens, the Metropolitan Isidore, a
friend of Phrantzes, having fled to the Venetian island of Tenos,
where his tomb was discovered near the foundations of the
famous Evangelistria church some sixty years ago.2 The sultan
spent four days in admiring the monuments and in visiting the
harbours of this new possession, " of all the cities in his Empire
the dearest to him," as the Athenian Chalkokondyles proudly
says. But of all that he saw, he admired most the Akropolis,
whose ancient and recent buildings he examined " with the
eyes of a scholar, a philhellene, and a great sovereign." Like
Pedro IV. of Aragon before him, he was proud to possess such
a jewel, and in his enthusiasm he exclaimed : " How much,
indeed, do We not owe to Omar, the son of Turakhan ! "
The conquered Athenians once again were saved by
their ancestors. Like his Roman prototype, Mohammed II.
treated them humanely, though he carried off many of their
women and children to his seraglio, he granted all their
petitions, and gave them many and various privileges. The
contemporary historians do not tell us of what these privileges
1 Spon, Voyage, ii., 155, 172. Cf. Kampouroglos, 'loropia, IL, 21-3.
2 Idem.. Mv-qpieLa, II., 18 ; Phrantzes, 203.

440 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
consisted ; but there were Athenians in the seventeenth
century who could show patents of fiscal exemption, granted
to their ancestors by the conqueror. It is not improbable
that the local Greek authorities, the so-called Sij/xoyepovreo,
or " elders of the people," of whom we found a trace under
the rule of the Acciajuoli, and who are often mentioned in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were recognised by
Mohammed. It is probable, too, that the same statesmanlike
sovereign, who converted the oecumenical patriarch into a
useful instrument of his far-sighted policy, favoured the
re-establishment of the Orthodox Church in the position of
the leading Christian denomination at Athens. At any rate,
while the Uniate Archbishop shared the fate of his Catholic
colleague, we find a metropolitan of Athens resident there a
generation after the Turkish Conquest, and another is men
tioned 1 as taking part in ecclesiastical business at Constan
tinople in 1465. But, if the last Latin Archbishop of Athens
was turned out of his noble cathedral as soon as the Turks
became masters of the Akropolis, the Parthenon was not
for long restored to the Greek Church. It has, indeed, been
assumed from the practice of the Turks at Constantinople
and elsewhere, that the most important church of Athens
was immediately devoted to the worship of Allah. But two
writers subsequent to the capture of Athens, the anonymous
author of 1458 and the anonymous author of 1466, both
distinctly allude to the Parthenon as still a church.2 Possibly
it may have been part of the wise policy of Mohammed to
conciliate the Greeks and further estrange them from the
Latins by allowing them to resume, for a time at least, the
use of their noble cathedral. However that may be, ere long
it was converted into a mosque, called in the early part of
the seventeenth century, the Ismai'di, or " house of prayer,"
and soon from the tapering minaret, which rose above it,
the muezzin summoned the faithful to worship. A like fate
befell the church which had served as the orthodox cathedral
during the Frankish domination. This church, now the
1 Kampouroglos, MvTyieia, i., 358 ; ii., 226 ; 'loropla, ii., 147-8 ; Reg.
Vat., 469, f. 392 ; 479, f. 14.
2 " E nel detto castello una chiessia che gia fu tempio " ; Mitteilungen
des k. dcutsch. Arch, Instituts (Athen), xxiv,, 73.

ATHENS AT THE CONQUEST 441
military bakery, received in honour of the sultan's visit, the
name of Fethijeh Jamisi, or " mosque of the conqueror," and
still preserves the traces of the purpose to which it was put.
In its place the orthodox adopted as their " Katholik6n,"
or metropolitan church, that of St Panteleemon, which stood
in the square where the public auctions are now held.1 It
was a tradition in the seventeenth century that Mohammed II.
had also ordered, as a mark of his special favour for Athens,
that the city should not be made the capital of a sandjak,
or province, so as to spare it the usual exactions of the
provincial governor's retinue.2 But in 1462 there is mention
of a subassi of Athens,3 and it has therefore been assumed by
modern Greek historians, that from the time of the Conquest
down to about 1610 or 1621, the city was governed by that
official, who, after the capture of Negroponte in 1470, was
the subordinate of the pasha of that province. His konak was
at the Stoa of Hadrian, while the disdar-aga, or commander
of the garrison, occupied a part of the palace of the Acciajuoli
in the Propylaea, and the Erechtheion served as his harem.
The anonymous treatise on " The Theatres and Schools
of Athens," which was probably composed by some Greek
at this moment, perhaps to serve as a vade mecum for the
sultan, whose eager enquiries about the meaning and history
of the monuments it may have endeavoured to satisfy, gives
us an interesting, if unscientific, idea of Athens as she was
after two and a half centuries of Frankish rule.4 The visitor
could glean from this curious guide-book, apparently the
work of a local antiquary, the popular names bestowed by
the natives upon the classical monuments. Thus, the
choragic monument of Lysikrates was then, as in the time
of Michael Akominatos, " the lantern of Demosthenes," a
name still current in 1672 ; the Tower of the Winds was
1 Kampouroglos, 'loropla, ii., 37, 275, 304; Philadelpheus, i., 178, 273, 312.
2 La Guilletiere, Athines Ancienne et Nouvelle, 157, 160.
3 Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 11 72 ; Malipiero, Annali in Archivio
Storico Italiano, vii., 12 ; A aoifi.iro.aTp is also mentioned in 1506 ; Kampou
roglos (ii., 77-83), however, thinks that down to 1470 Athens was the seat
of a pasha, but he adduces no other authorities than modern historians,
such as Hammer and Daru. Cf. Philadelpheus, i., '287-8.
4 The date of 1458 or 1460 exactly fits the allusion to "the duke" in
the past tense, and to the Parthenon as a Christian church,

442 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
supposed to be " the school of Sokrates," just as the caverns
at the foot of the hill of Phildpappos are still known as the
philosopher's prison ; the gate of Athena Archegetis was
transformed in common parlance into "the palace of
Themistokles " ; the Odeion of Perikles, restored in Roman
times, was shown to visitors as " the school of Aristophanes,"
and that of Herodes Atticus as " the palaces of Kleonides
and Miltiades." Near "the lantern of Demosthenes" the
natives pointed out to the curious stranger the spots where
once had stood the houses of Thucydides, Solon, and
Alkmaion. "The school of Aristotle" was placed among
the ruins of the theatre of Dionysios, and above it our
author mentions the sun-dial and the two pillars of the
choragic monument of Thrasyllos, and repeats the story that
a Gorgon's head was formerly to be seen in an ironbound
niche between them — all of which statements are confirmed
by the similar " Description of Attica," probably composed
about the year 1628.1 Another " school," that of Sophokles,
was supposed to have occupied a site to the west of the
Akropolis, while outside the city the anonymous author
alludes to the Academy, which he supposes to have been at
Basilika, on the left as one goes down to Phaleron, and not
at Kathemia, near Kolokynthou ; to the Eleatic school at
Ambelokepoi; to the Platonic at Patesia (or " Paradeisia "),
and to those of a certain Polyzelos and Diodoros, on Hymettos,
whose name the Italians had corrupted to " Monte Matto," or
" the Mad Mountain." Wild as these statements are, they yet
contain important topographical facts. They prove that the
ancient deme of Alopeke had already received its modern
designation of Ambelokepoi ; that Patesia, whose name has
been erroneously derived from the fact of the " Pidishih "
having pitched his headquarters there, was still known by its
picturesque name of " Paradeisia " ; and that the old tradition
that two of the monasteries on Hymettos — probably Kaisari-
ane and Asteri — had once been schools of philosophers, which
seems to have actually been the case at the close of the fourth
century,2 was still preserved. For the anonymous writer, as
1 Ilepl r^f AttikjJs apud Philadelpheus, i., 189.
2 SourmelSs, KaT&o-TaaL? avvoirTLK-fi, 43 n., 46, 47 ; Synesiosa/WMigne,
lxvi., 1523.

THE LOCAL LEGENDS 443
for Cyriacus, the Olympieion was the ruins of a palace, and,
like the traveller from Ancona, he mentions three gates of
the city. On the Akropolis he mistook the temple of Nike
Apteros for " a small school of musicians, founded by
Pythagoras " ; he mentions the Propylaea as the ducal
palace, with the former chancery adjoining it ; and he
elaborately describes the " Church of the Mother of God,"
the foundation of which he attributes to Apollos and Eulogios,
both patriarchs of Alexandria in the sixth century. Allusion
has already been made to his mention of the ducal villa of
the Acciajuoli at the spring of Kallirrhoe, and to the neigh
bouring chapel, where they were wont to pray. This
chapel had now been converted by " the pious " Greeks into
an orthodox church of St Mary's on the Rock. Perhaps
the most curious tradition preserved in this pamphlet is the
incident taken from the apocryphal " Acts of St Philip."
The apostle — such was the legend — had spent two
years at Athens, whither the scribe of the Chief Priest 1 of
Jerusalem followed him to controvert what he said. At last,
the apostolic patience failed, and in the midst of the Athenian
Agora the saint caused the earth to open and swallow up
his irreverent adversary. A church of St Philip was
founded to commemorate the event, and this church,
completely restored in our own generation, still preserves,
together with the quarter to which it has given its
name, the quaint mediaeval legend of the apostle and the
scribe. Thus, at the close of the Frankish domination, the
ciceroni of Athens had identified their city with some of the
most famous names, alike of pagan and of Christian story.
On the fifth day after his arrival, the heir of these great
men left Athens for Bceotia, examining with his usual minute
care all the places of interest, and obtaining information about
them. From Thebes — the abode of his vassal Franco—he
sent a message to the terrified bailie of Negroponte that he
proposed to visit that city on the following day. When he
reached the summit of the Pass of Anephorites, he paused for
a quarter of an hour, as many a traveller has done since, to
admire the magnificent situation of the great island spread
1 Laborde, i., 17-20; Kampouroglos, 'loTopla, ii., 299; Neroutsos in
AeXrioi/, III., 75.

444 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
out like a map at his feet — the narrow channel of the Euripos,
with its oft-changing tide, more like a river than an arm of
the sea, the picturesque fortress, which then stood in mid
stream, and the bridge which connected the city of Negro
ponte with the continent. The islanders, alarmed at the
force of a thousand cavalry which accompanied him, thought
that their last hour had come; they picked up sufficient
courage, however, to go out to meet him with rich gifts in
their hands ; the sultan received them affably, rode across the
bridge, and spied out for himself the possibilities of capturing
the place. The information which he then gleaned was put
to good use when, twelve years later, he besieged the city.
Then, the same day, 2nd September, he returned to Thebes,
whence he departed on the morrow for Macedonia.1 His
trembling vassal must have heaved a sigh of relief when this
terrible visitor was gone.
Scarcely, however, had he left Greece than disturbances
again broke out in the Morea. In October, the sultan had
sent one of his officials to complete the formalities of the
recent peace, to receive the oaths of the two Despots, and to
demand from Demetrios the hand of his only child, Helene,
and from Thomas the cession of the castles which he had not
yet transferred to the sultan's commissioner. Thomas
complied with this demand ; Demetrios sent Matthew Asan
to ask Mohammed for the islands of Lemnos and Imbros in
return for his daughter and his principality. According to
another account, Asan was instructed to ask the sultan for
aid against Thomas, who seemed to be constitutionally
incapable of learning by experience, and who, early in 1459,
committed the double mistake of attacking his brother and
revolting against his suzerain.
The crafty and ambitious officials who infested the two
petty courts of the Morea, among them the veteran intriguer,
Loukanes, " the curse of the Peloponnesians," as Phrantzes
calls him, fanned the smouldering embers of fraternal hatred ;
some of the Albanian chiefs, impatient of Turkish rule and
anxious to imitate the deeds of their great countryman,
Skanderbeg, joined with these Greek counsellors in inciting
1 Kritoboulos, III., 9; Magno apud Hopf, Chronioues, 200; Chalko
kondyles, 547.

CIVIL WAR IN THE MOREA 445
Thomas to " eat his oaths, as if they were vegetables." The
connivance of Omar, the Turkish governor, was suspected,
and the sultan suspended him from both his Peloponnesian
and Thessalian commands, and despatched Hamsa Zenevisi,
" the carrier of falcons," a renegade Albanian, to succeed him
in the Mprea. Hamsa's first act was to arrest Omar and the
latter's father-in-law Ahmed ; his next to relieve the Turkish
garrison of Patras, which was besieged by Thomas's men.
The successes of the latter at the expense of the Turks were
confined to the capture of Kalavryta, for Corinth and the
other places which Loukanes had promised to win by treachery
remained true to the sultan. Demetrios, however, lost one
strong place after another — Karytaina and St George in
Arkadia, Bordonia and Kastritza, near Sparta, Kalamata,
Zarnata, Leuktron, and most of Maina ; but the commanders
of some of these castles, instead of taking the oath to his
rival, simply proclaimed their own independence, thus yet
further weakening the unhappy country, while the Albanians,
bent on plunder, increased the confusion by changing sides
" thrice a week," and deserting now Thomas, now Demetrios,
as it suited their purpose. Thomas, however, continued to
hold his own ; he forestalled his less active brother in an
attempt to capture the important town of Leondari, and the
latter withdrew to his capital of Mistri. But the Turkish
troops now arrived at Leondari from Patras, easily threw into
confusion the forces of Thomas, who was more skilled at
palace intrigues than at strategy, and blockaded the Despot
in the town, where fever and famine soon made their appear
ance. Hampered, however, by the number of his captives,
the Turkish commander raised the siege, and, leaving one of
his lieutenants to support his ally Demetrios at Mistra,
repaired to the sultan to ask for reinforcements. Thus,
Thomas was free to resume the offensive against the Turkish
garrisons. A gleam of common sense or a pang of conscience
prompted him to desist, at least for a little, from attacking
his brother ; in the church at Kastritza he met Demetrios ;
the Metropolitan of Lacedaemonia, clad in his episcopal cope,
the symbol of justice, celebrated the Holy Eucharist with all
the impressive rites of the Orthodox Church ; and when, in
the noble language of the liturgy of St Chrysostom, he bade

446 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
the people " draw nigh in the fear of God, and with faith and
love," the two brothers approached together, and swore on the
Holy Sacrament to keep the peace.
But even the most solemn oaths had long ceased to bind
the consciences of the two Palaiol6goi. They were soon
engaged in a fresh fratricidal war, the one relying on Turkish
aid, the other on a body of 300 Italian foot soldiers sent
by Bianca Visconti, Duchess of Milan, and by Pius II., who
wrote to the rulers of Europe that " almost all the Morea had
risen against the Turks," and pointed out that the peninsula
was the bulwark of Christendom against the infidels.1 The
sultan ordered Zagan Pasha, a Christian renegade of marked
ability, whom he had promoted to be governor ofthe provinces
of Thessaly and the Morea, to attack Thomas. Zagan entered
the peninsula in March 1460, raised the siege of Achaia, near
Patras, which the Despot was bombarding, and compelled him
to retreat to the south of Messenia. Finding his military
operations unsuccessful and his Italian mercenaries dispersed,
Thomas now begged for peace, which Mohammed, anxious
to chastise the Turkoman chief, Usun Hasin, in Asia, was
willing to grant, on condition that the Despot restored any
Turkish forts which he had taken, that he withdrew his
troops from any which they were besieging, that he
agreed to pay at once a tribute of 3000 gold pieces, and
promised to appear in person before the Turkish envoy at
Corinth within twenty days' time. Thomas was prepared to
accept these terms, but, as his subjects declined to contribute
the money, he was unable to pay. This final breach of his
engagements so infuriated Mohammed, that he postponed his
intended expedition into Asia, and set out in May 1460
to make short work with both Despots. He waited three
days at Corinth for the arrival of Demetrios ; but the latter,
who had been blockaded with his family by his brother in
Monemvasia, sent his brother-in-law, Matthew Asan, in his
stead with valuable presents to pacify the sultan, to whom
he had omitted to send his daughter Helene, as stipulated.
Mohammed, however, was not to be pacified ; he ordered
Asan under arrest, and, instead of entering the territory of
Thomas, his open enemy, he despatched Mahmoud Pasha
1 Raynaldus, x., 198 ; PU. II. Commentarii (ed. 1614), 61-2.

FALL OF MISTRA 447
with all speed to Mistri, whither Demetrios had gone in
consequence ofthe hostilities which, his brother was carrying
on from Kalamata. Demetrios, on finding his capital sur
rounded by the Turks, resolved to shut himself up in the
fine old castle ; but when he learnt that his brother-in-law
was a prisoner, he agreed to obey the summons to surrender,
if he received a written guarantee by the hand of the latter.
Mahmoud at once released Asan and sent him, as desired,
together with Hamsa Zenevisi, in whom the Despot had
confidence, to accept his surrender. One Greek historian
suggests that the whole affair was a comedy carefully
arranged beforehand, and that Demetrios was not sorry of an
excuse for getting rid of his irksome sovereignty in the
Morea in return for compensation elsewhere. But, however
that may be, Mohammed, who arrived on the morrow,
received him with the honour due to a descendant of emperors,
rose from his seat as the trembling Despot entered his tent,
offered him his right hand, gave him a place at his side, and
endeavoured to reassure his fears by splendid gifts and still
more splendid promises. But none the less he treated him
as a prisoner, he gave him clearly to understand that Greek
rule at Mistri was now at an end, and appointed Hamsa
Zenevisi governor of that famous city, which had for all but
two hundred years been the capital ofthe Byzantine province.
At the same time, the sultan reiterated his claim to the hand
of the Despot's daughter, who, with her mother, was still
sheltering at Monemvasia. Isi, son of the Pasha of Uskub,
and Matthew Asan, were accordingly sent to demand the
surrender of the city and of the two princesses. The
Monemvasiotes handed over the imperial ladies to the envoys
of the sultan and the Despot ; but, relying on their immense
natural defences, animated by the sturdy .spirit of indepen
dence which had so long distinguished them, and inspired by
the example of their governor, Manuel Palaiologos, they bade
them tell Mohammed not to lay sacrilegious hands on a city
which God had meant to be invincible. The sultan is
reported to have admired their courage and wisely refrained
from attacking the impregnable fastness of mediaeval Hellenism.
On 30th May, he placed the daughter of Demetrios in his
seraglio, and despatched her with her mother, under charge

448 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
of an eunuch, to Bceotia, whither Demetrios himself was
shortly sent to join them. Meanwhile he accompanied his
captor. At this the governor of Monemvasia transferred
his allegiance to Thomas ; but the latter, himself a fugitive
and soon an exile, was incapable of maintaining his sovereignty.
A passing Catalan corsair, one Lope de Baldaja, was then
invited to occupy the place ; but the liberty -loving inhabitants
soon drove out the petty tyrant whom they had summoned to
their aid ; and, with the consent- of Thomas, placed their city
under the protection of his patron, the pope. Pius 1 1, gladly
appointed both spiritual and temporal governors of the rock
which had so long been the stronghold of orthodoxy.1
Having thus wiped the province of Demetrios from the
map, the sultan turned his arms against Thomas. Bordonia
was abandoned at his approach by its cowardly archons ; but
the strong fortress of Kastritza, built on a sheer rock, and
approached by a single entrance, and that fortified by a
triple wall, for a time defied the assault of the janissaries.
Urged on by promises of plunder, they returned to the
attack, drove the garrison back into the Akropolis, and
forced them from sheer exhaustion and lack of water to
surrender on terms. In flagrant violation of this solemn
convention, Mohammed beheaded or impaled all the male
survivors, to the number of 300, ordered the local chief,
Proinokokkas, to be flayed alive, enslaved the women and
children, and levelled the castle with the ground. Leondari he
found deserted by its inhabitants, who had taken refuge in
the almost impregnable stronghold of Gardiki. After in vain
offering them terms, he ordered his men to attack the place,
which resisted for no more than a single day, for the heat
was intense and the crowd of fugitives was so great that both
water and provisions ran short. Here, again, Mohammed
violated his oath to spare the lives of those who surrendered ;
he collected the men, women, and children together in a
small plain to the number of 6000, bound them hand and
foot, and then ordered them to be massacred in cold blood.
The chief men of the place, who belonged to the family of
Bochales, escaped the general fate, thanks to the intercession
of the Beglerbeg Mahmoud, who was connected with them
1 PU. II. Commentarii, 103-4; Raynaldus, x., 241-2 ; Magno, op. eit, 203-4.

FLIGHT OF THOMAS 449
by marriage, and made their way to Naples. The surrender
of Gardiki was promptly followed by that of the castle of
St George, whose governor, Kork6deilos Kladis, lived to head
an insurrection against the Turks some years later. One
place after another now opened its gates to the invaders —
Kyparissia, till lately the residence of the Despot Thomas ;
Karytaina ; Androusa and Ithome ; from the first of these
cities and its fertile neighbourhood, the garden of Greece, no
less than 10,000 people were dragged off to Constantinople.
Meanwhile, Thomas had made no attempt to defend his
dominions. On the news of the sultan's advent at Mistri,
he had shut himself up in the sea-coast town of Mantineia
on the Messenian Gulf, whence he could easily escape in
case of need. Seeing that all was lost, and that Venetian
territory alone remained safe, he now set out for Navarino.
But Mohammed began to inspect the Messenian colonies of
Venice, as he had inspected Negroponte ; as he drew nearer,
the Venetian authorities urged Thomas not to involve them
in diplomatic difficulties by remaining defiantly in their
station of Navarino, and offered him two ships on which to
make his escape. The terrified Despot thereupon fled to
Marathos, and on the same day that the sultan came in
sight of Navarino, set sail with his wife and family and with
some of his nobles from the neighbouring harbour of Porto
Longo for Corfu. There he arrived on 28th July, where,
five days later, the faithful Phrantzes joined him. Neither
ever saw the Morea again.
The Venetians had good cause to fear that the anger of
the sultan would now fall upon their colony. They were, it
is true, at peace with Mohammed, but he had just shown
his disregard of international law by killing some of the
people of Modon who had come out to him with a flag of
truce, and by annexing some Venetian villages on the ground
that they had belonged to the Greeks and were therefore
his. The authorities of Navarino accordingly hastened to
renew the treaty with the conqueror and endeavoured to
mollify him by the offer of hospitality — an offer which did
not restrain his horsemen from making an incursion into the
town and slaying a number of Albanians from the surround
ing districts. Then the sultan marched away to the North,
2 F

450 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
accompanied by Matthew Asan, while Demetrios, for whom
Mohammed had no further use, was sent to join his family
in Bceotia. Meanwhile, Zagan Pasha had been busily
occupied in the west of the peninsula. Chloumoutsi fell ;
and Santameri, the famous castle of Nicholas III. de St
Omer, which was held by some Albanians, and in which
most of the neighbours had deposited all their valuables,
surrendered on terms. Next day, however, the Illyrian
apostate broke the convention, slew many of the inhabitants,
and enslaved the rest — an act of treachery which was also a
political blunder, for it inspired the other garrisons, which
still held out, with the courage of despair. Zagan might
plead that he was only imitating his master, for Mohammed
had ordered the flaying of his old Albanian opponent Doxas,
or Doxies, now captain of Kalavryta, who had played fast
and loose with both Greeks and Turks. But the sultan saw
his officer's mistake, and at once tried to undo it by
depriving Zagan of his command, and by ordering the
release of the captives of Santameri. This politic act had
the desired result ; most of the forts round Patras hastened
to surrender ; and when the sultan arrived there almost the
only place which still held out was Salmenikon, a very
strong mountain fortress between Patras and Vostitza
defended by Graitzas Palaiologos, who if not a genuine son
of the imperial race, proved himself far worthier of the name
than the two miserable Despots. This courageous soldier
paid no heed to the sultan's summons to capitulate ; in vain
the Turkish gunners bombarded the place, in vain the
janissaries marched to the assault. After a seven days'
siege, the enemy, however, cut off the water supply, and
the lower town, crowded with Greek and Albanian fugitives,
then surrendered ; some 6000 captives swelled the train of
the conqueror, who set aside the promising boys for his
corps of janissaries, and distributed the others among his
captains. Still Palaiol6gos held the Akropolis of the town,
and declined to yield unless the sultan would move a
stage away from it. Mohammed agreed, and marched
down to Vostitza, leaving Hamsa Zenevisi, whom he had
appointed in Zagan's room, to take over the place. But,
after the lesson of Santameri, the Greek commander had

ANNEXATION OF THE MOREA 451
little confidence in Turkish oaths ; he therefore resolved to
make a preliminary trial of Hamsa's sincerity, and sent out
a detachment of the garrison laden with baggage, to see
whether the Turks would allow them a free passage. The
temptation to attack and plunder them proved too strong
for the Pasha ; he broke his sovereign's pledge, with the
result that Palaiol6gos refused to surrender. The angry
sultan now re-appointed Zagan governor of Thessaly and
the Morea, but Salmenikon still held out. At last, in 1461,
after a year's siege, the gallant commander capitulated, and
made his way, with all the honours of war, into Venetian
territory at Lepanto. Such was the admiration which he
inspired in his opponents, that the Grand Vizier Mahmoud
was heard to exclaim : " I found many slaves in the Morea,
but this was the only man." The Venetian senate received
with gladness so courageous a soldier, and appointed him
commander of all the light horse of the republic. It is from
him that the Athenian Palaiologoi, of whom we hear a
century later, were perhaps descended.
From Vostitza the sultan set out to Corinth, by way of
Lake Pheneos and Phlious. Treacherous to the last, he
issued a proclamation granting a full pardon to all who
would lay down their arms and provide his soldiers with
provisions, and then seized those who trusted him. Phlious
he thought it necessary to overrun, because the Albanians
had collected all their belongings there, and had been
followed by many kindred spirits, who were ready to revolt at
a signal from them. Then, leaving Zagan behind him to
make a tour of the conquered Morea and to re-organise a
government, Mohammed recrossed the isthmus in the late
summer of 1460. His campaign had been a complete
success. He had finally destroyed the last vestiges of Greek
rule in the peninsula, and had annexed the whole of it to the
Turkish Empire, save where the Venetian banner still waved
over the colonies of Nauplia, Argos, and Thermisi, Coron,
Modon, and Navarino, and where Monemvasia acknowledged
the sway of the pope. His Greek biographer tells us that
nearly 250 forts had fallen before him, and he had carried off
thousands of the inhabitants, including many of the men of
wealth, to Constantinople — the adults to repopulate his capital,

452 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
the boys to serve in the corps of janissaries. The rest of the
leading men fled to the Venetian colonies, and thus the country,
deprived of its natural leaders, lay at the feet of the conqueror.1
The fate of the Palaiol6goi deserves the notice which
mankind usually bestows upon sovereigns in exile.
Demetrios received from Mohammed the islands of Imbros
and Lemnos, which his friend, the historian Kritoboulos, had
been the means of securing for the Turks, together with a
portion of Thasos and Samothrace, and the valuable mart
and salt-mines of .Enos. These possessions, which had
belonged to the great Genoese family of Gattilusio, brought
in 600,000 aspers a year, in addition to which Demetrios
received an annuity of 300,000 more from the mint at
Adrianople. He was thus able to spend his time in riotous
living and hunting till he was so unfortunate as to incur the
sultan's anger. If we may believe the story of Phrantzes,
a bitter enemy of Matthew Asan, that individual, who had
accompanied his brother-in-law to -E)nos, was accused of
embezzling money from the salt-works by the sultan, who
not only threatened him with impalement, but suspected
Demetrios of being his accomplice, and deprived him of all
his allowance, except just sufficient to keep body and soul
together. A later writer, however, considers Demetrios to
have been the culprit, and says that he was only saved from
execution by the intervention of Mahmoud Pasha. One day,
however, when Mohammed was hunting, he met the poor
exile on foot, and was so deeply moved at the sight that he
gave him a sum of 50,000 aspers from the proceeds of the corn-
tax, much less than what he had enjoyed, but still enough to
live on. In 1470 the Despot ended his pitiable career as a monk,
David by name, at Adrianople, and as his daughter never
married Mohammed after all — for the sultan feared that she
might poison him — this branch of the family became extinct2
1 Chalkokondyles, 455-9, 470-85 ; Phrantzes, 388-97, 405-9; Doukas,
340; Chronicon Breve, 521; Kritdboulos, iii., 14, 15, 19-24; Historia
Politica, 32-3 ; Magno, op. eit, 201, 203, 204 ; Sansovino, op. eit, 152,
156 ; Kritdboulos, the apologist of Mohammed, makes no mention ofthe
sultan's acts of perfidy. For the Athenian Palaioldgoi, cf. Kampou
roglos, Mvij/teia, i., 89 ; iii., 251-6.
2 Kritdboulos, iii., 14, 15, 24 ; Phrantzes, 413-14, 427-9, 447 ; Chalko
kondyles, 469, 483, 494 ; Spandugino, 43-4 ; Historia Politica, 35-6.

THOMAS IN ROME 453
The sultan was naturally anxious to get Thomas as well
as Demetrios into his clutches, in order to prevent him
intriguing with the Western Powers against the Turkish
Empire. He therefore sent an agent to Corfu with a request
that the Despot would depute one of his archons to treat of
peace and to arrange for an appanage, on which Thomas
could live. But when the Despot's emissary arrived at the
sultan's headquarters with a proposal to exchange Monem
vasia for another sea-coast place, the latter flung him into
prison, and only released him in order that he might convey
to his master Mohammed's command that either Thomas
or one of his sons should appear in person. Meanwhile,
Thomas had despatched George Raoul to seek the aid of
Pope Pius II., and on 16th November, 1460, set out for
Ancona, accompanied by most of his magnates, and bearing
the head of St Andrew, which had so long been preserved
at Patras. The relic was a valuable asset, for many princes
offered large sums for it, and its possessor had no difficulty
in disposing of it to the pope in return for an annuity. The
precious relic was deposited for safety in the castle of Narni,
while Thomas proceeded to Rome, where Pius II. bestowed
on him the Golden Rose, the symbol of virtue, a lodging in
the Santo Spirito Hospital, and an allowance of 300 gold
pieces a month, to which the cardinals added 200 more — a
sum which his followers considered barely enough for his
maintenance, and certainly not enough for theirs. Venice,
indeed, contributed a sum of 500 ducats to his treasury, and
concluded a treaty with him against the Turks, but there
were no practical results of this alliance. Meanwhile, on
1 2th April, 1462, the day after Palm Sunday, Pius II.
received the head of St Andrew at the Ponte Milvio, on the
spot where the little chapel of that Apostle with its com
memorative inscription now stands. Cardinal Bessarion
handed the case containing it to the pope, who bade the sacred
skull welcome among its relatives, the Romans, " the nephews
of St Peter" — a ceremony depicted on the tomb of the
Pontiff in Sant' Andrea della Valle. Shortly afterwards,
the Despot's wife, who had remained with her family at Corfu,
died and was buried in the church of SS. Jason and
Sosipater, whereupon Thomas summoned his two sons and

454 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
his daughter Zoe to join him. But before they arrived, he died,
on 1 2th May 1465, and was buried in the crypt of St Peter's;
but so completely has this scion of an imperial race been for
gotten that no one knows his grave ; yet every visitor to Rome
unconsciously gazes on his features, for on account of his tall
and handsome appearance he served as a model for the statue
of St Paul, which still stands at the steps of St Peter's.1
The family of Palaiologos was now represented by his
two sons and his two daughters. The elder daughter, Helene,
widow of the last Despot of Servia, resided at the court of her
son-in-law, Leonardo III., at Sta. Mavra, and a local legend,
devoid of historical accuracy, ascribes to her the erection of
the church whence the town received its name, in gratitude
for the deliverance of herself and her daughter from ship
wreck on 3rd May, the day of Sta. Mavra.2 There she died
as the nun Hypomone in 1474, leaving two other daughters,
one of whom died childless, while the third married the son
of the Albanian hero, Skanderbeg, in whose descendants, and
in those of the Tocchi, there thus flowed the blood of the
Palaioldgoi. Thomas's younger daughter, Zoe, or Sophia, was
married first to a Caracciolo, and then to the Grand Duke
Ivan III. of Russia, to whom she brought a dowry of 6000
gold pieces, provided by Pope Sixtus IV.: — an event com
memorated by one of the paintings in the Santo Spirito
Hospital. With her daughter, the wife of Alexander Jagellon
of Poland, the female line came to an end. The two sons
do not seem to have profited much by the strict injunctions
which Bessarion had laid down for their education. The
elder, Andrew, who bore the empty title of Despot, which we
find on his seals,3 and continued to draw his father's allowance
from the pope, fell into dissolute habits, and married a woman,
named Catherine, off the streets of Rome, by whom he had no
children. In such company, and with scarcely a rag to clothe
his limbs, he aroused the pity or contempt ofthe Romans. His
annuity was reduced ; he had to take a back place at papal
1 Phrantzes, 4°9"I3, 4'S ; Chalkokondyles, 485 ; Pit. II. Commentarii,
130, 192 sqq. ; Spandugino, 42-3 ; Eroli, Miscellanea Slorica Narnese, i.,
70 ; Ciacconius, Vita Pontificum, 1 1., 1076 ; Fortini, Solenne Ricevimento
della Testa di S'. Andrea Aposlolo. 2 Petritzdpoulos, op. eit, 48.
3 Ni?os "E\\T)vop.v-fip.wv, I., 426 ; Gottlob, Aus der Camera Apostolica, 292.

END OF THE PALAIOLOGOI 455
ceremonies. Once he was seized with the idea of recovering the
Morea with Neopolitan aid, and induced Sixtus IV. to give him
2000 gold pieces for the purpose ; but in 1494 he ceded all his
rights to Charles VIII. of France, and in his last will and
testament in 1 502, he left Ferdinand and Isabella of Castille his
heirs. In that year he died in Rome in such great misery that
his widow had to beg his funeral expenses from the pope.1 His
younger brother, Manuel, a man of more spirit, preferred the
risk of death at the hands of the sultan to the prospect of starv
ing at the papal court. But to his surprise Mohammed gave
him an establishment and a daily sum for its maintenance.2 He
remained a Christian, as did his elder son, who died young ;
but his second son, Andrew, became a Mussulman and is last
heard of as Mohammed Pasha in the reign of Suleyman the
Magnificent. Though the family of the Despots of the Morea
would thus appear to have been long extinct, a Cornish
antiquary announced in 181 5 that the church of Landulph
contained a monument to one of Thomas's descendants.
But this claim is genealogically unsound, for there is no
historical proof of the existence of the supposed third son of
the Despot, mentioned in the brass plate at Landulph.3 But
after all, the world has not lost much by the extinction of the
race, which, if it vainly tried to save Constantinople by an act
of heroism, foolishly lost the Morea by its dissensions.
The faithful retainers of the Palaiologoi, disgusted at the
prospects offered them in Rome, scattered all over Europe.
Many followed the Grand Duchess Sophia to Russia, where
they became absorbed in the Muscovite nobility ; some went
to France ; others to Venice or Palermo ; others again, like
Nicholas Melissenos, the fiance of Phrantzes's daughter, to
Crete. The historian had declined to accompany his master
to Rome ; he remained in Corfu, moving .from one village to
another, till he finally settled down in the monastery of SS.
Jason and Sosipater. A visit to the Despot Andrew in Rome
at the time of his sister's first engagement, and a summons
from the widowed Princess of Servia to the court of Leonardo
1 Phrantzes, 424-5, 450 ; J. Volaterranus, Diarium Romanum, apud
Muratori, xxiii., 1 57 ; Mdmoires de PAcaddmie des Inscriptions, xvii., 572 ;
Curita, Anales, v., 210. 2 Historia Politica, 34 ; Spandugino, 43.
3 Archaologia, xviii., 83 sqq.

456 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
Tocco at Sta. Mavra, broke the monotony of his life. At
last, the busy diplomatist, his career closed, became a monk,
under the name of Gregorios, and in his silent cell occupied
himself with composing, at the request of some noble
Corfiotes, the story of his troublous times,1 till at last he was
laid to rest by the side of his master's consort in the quiet
church at Kastrades. Phrantzes did not write without anger
or bias ; but he has given us a living picture of the leading
actors in the tragic drama in which he too had played a part
And to-day, beside the tomb of mediaeval Greece's last
contemporary historian, the friend of the young Greek
kingdom may meditate on the causes which for nearly four
centuries placed the Greeks beneath the sway of the Turks.
The fall of the two Greek principalities in the Morea
was closely followed by the destruction of the fragments that
remained of the duchy of Athens. On his way back from
the peninsula in 1460, Mohammed II. revisited Athens and
reinspected the old city and the harbours. Unfortunately,
the janissaries stationed on the Akropolis told him that some
Athenians had conspired to restore Franco. The sultan not
only arrested ten of the richest citizens and took them away
to Constantinople, but resolved to rid himself of his former
favourite. Franco, as the man of the Turk, was at the
moment serving with his Bceotian cavalry in Mohammed's
camp, and received orders from his suzerain to join in the
attack which was about to be made on Leonardo III. Tocco
in western Greece. The " Lord of Thebes " so strongly
objected to being compelled to fight against his fellow-
Christians, that, though he received as large revenues from
Thebes and Livadia as he had ever had from Athens, he had
written to Francesco Sforza of Milan offering his services as
a condottiere for the sum of 10,000 ducats a year.2 He was
forced, however, to obey the sultan's orders, and, after
defeating Tocco, repaired to the headquarters of Zagan, the
governor of the Morea. Zagan had meanwhile been told by
Mohammed to kill him. The Pasha invited him to his tent,
and detained him in conversation till nightfall ; then, as the
unsuspecting Franco was on his way back to his own tent,
* Phrantzes, 411, 424, 425, 429, 430, 453.
2 Ntfos 'E\\ip'o/u»i}iu_»', i., 216-1S,

END OF THE ACCIAJUOLI 457
the Pasha's guards strangled him. Such was the sorry
ending of the last " Lord of Thebes." Thereupon, Moham
med annexed Thebes and all Bceotia, and thus obliterated
the last trace of the Frankish duchy of Athens from the map.
Franco's three sons, Matteo, Jacopo, and Gabriele, with their
mother, were taken to Constantinople and enrolled in the
corps of janissaries, where one of them afterwards showed
military and administrative ability of so high an order as to
win the favour of his sovereign. Their mother, a daughter of
Demetrios Asan of Mouchli, and famed for her beauty,
became the cause of a terrible tragedy, which convulsed alike
court and church. George Amoiroiitses, the former minister
and betrayer of the last Emperor of Trebizond, fell desperately
in love with the fair widow, to whom he addressed impas
sioned verses, and swore, though he had a wife still living, to
marry her or die. The oecumenical patriarch forbade the
bans, and lost his beard and his office rather than yield to
the sultan. But swift retribution fell upon the bigamist, for
he dropped down dead, a dice-box in his hand.1
Though the Acciajuoli dynasty had thus fallen for ever,
members of that great family still remained in Greece. An
Acciajuoli was made civil governor of the old Venetian colony
of Coron, in Messenia, when the Spaniards captured it from
the Turks in 1532. When they abandoned it, he accom
panied them, but was captured by an Algerine pirate, who sold
him as a slave to a Greek. Eventually he was re-sold to a
Spaniard, only to die in poverty at Naples, where his race had
first risen to eminence, and where it became extinct.2 At the
beginning of the last century the French traveller, Pouque-
ville,3 was shown at Athens a donkey-driver named Neri,
in whose veins flowed the blood of the Florentine dukes ;
and the modern historian of Christian Athens, Neroutsos, used
to contend that his family was descended from Nerozzo Pitti,
lord of Sykaminon and uncle of the last duke of Athens.4 In
1 Chalkokondyles, 483- 4 ; Historia Patriarchica, 97-100 ; Spandugino,
44; Ubaldini, 178-9, AeXHov rijs 'E6vo\oyLKijs "EraLplas, II., 281-2 ; The
Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph, 281-2.
2 Lilta, viii., Tab. 4.
2 Voyage dans la Grice, iv., 90.
4 Kampouroglos, M^/ueia, i.; 289-92 ; 'laropia, ii., 4.5.

458 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
Florence the family became extinct only so recently as 1834;
and the Certosa and the Lung' Arno Acciajuoli still preserve
its memory there. In the Florence gallery, too, are two
coloured portraits of the dukes of Athens, which would seem
to be those of Nerio I. and the bastard Antonio I. In that
case, the Florentine dukes of Athens are the only Frankish
rulers of Greece, except the palatine counts of Cephalonia,
whose likeness has been preserved to posterity.
Thus ended the strange connection between Florence and
Athens. A titular duke of Athens had become tyrant of the
Florentines, a Florentine merchant had become Duke of
Athens ; but the age when French and Italian adventurers
could find an El Dorado on the poetic soil of Greece was
over. The Turkish conquest of continental Greece was com
pleted by the campaign against Leonardo III. Tocco, in which
the unhappy Franco had been forced to take part. For
several years, in spite of an occasional dispute with his
Venetian protectors, the Duke of Leucadia had enjoyed
peace in his islands, while the three points which he still held
on the mainland remained unmolested by his Turkish neigh
bours. But he was so patriotic or so impolitic as to second
Skanderbeg in his rising against the Turks, and this brought
down upon him the vengeance of the sultan. According to
one account, he was taken . prisoner at Corinth, whence he
escaped by the aid of a corsair to Sta. Mavra ; but he lost the
last of his continental possessions, except the strong fortress
of Vonitza on the Ambrakian Gulf. When, three years later,
he heard that Venice was preparing to recover the" Morea
from the Turks, he begged the aid of the republic, whose
honorary citizen he was, in reconquering the old Despotat of
Arta, where he still possessed many adherents. This scheme,
however, came to nothing.1
To complete the picture of continental Greece as she was
at the date of the Turkish Conquest, it remains to describe
the condition of the Venetian colonies. North of the
isthmus, Lepanto, for which the republic continued to pay an
annual tribute of 100 gold ducats to the sultan, had increased
1 Magno, 201 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, v., 131 ; Lunzi, Della Con-
disione, 178-81.

STATE OF EUBO_A 459
in population owing to the immigration of fugitives from the
Despotat of Arta and from the Morea. These immigrants,
mostly Albanians, had their own chief, and obtained exemp
tion from obnoxious corvees on their boats and beasts of
burden. But an earthquake and the cost of repairing the
fortifications unfortunately made it necessary to reduce the
garrison and thus diminished Venetian influence in Epiros.1
Both Lepanto and Pteleon, the Venetian station at the
entrance of the Gulf of Volo, were now surrounded by the
Turkish empire, so that their position was naturally precarious.
It had been decided that the garrison of Pteleon should be
Italian, and that a citizen of Eubcea who knew Greek and
was acquainted with Thessaly should be its rector, and, as
we saw, the post was held for seven years by Niccold Zorzi,
son of the last Marquis of Boudonitza ; but after his time, the
old system of appointing a governor direct from Venice was
adopted.2 The five-mile frontage on the mainland opposite
Eubcea is mentioned as still belonging to Venice in 1439,
but its cultivation was of doubtful advantage to the islanders,
because, though corn could now be exported in large quantities,
their peasants were constantly surprised while at work by
the Turks.
Of the great island itself the republic had been practically
absolute mistress ever since the disappearance of the Dalle
Carceri and Ghisi families towards the end of the last
century. When the three great baronies then became
vacant, the Venetian bailie disposed of them as seemed
most to the interest of his Government, bestowing the third
of the Ghisi upon a number of small holders, and the two-
thirds of the Dalle Carceri upon Januli d'Anoe, whose family
retained its share till the Turkish Conquest, and upon Maria
Sanudo, whose share descended to the Sommaripa of Paros.
But all these feudal lords, like the Zorzi of Karystos, were the
creatures of the republic, and the real governor of the island
was the Venetian bailie. All the fortresses in D'Anoe's
barony, for example, were garrisoned by Venetian troops ;
it was to Venice that his vassals appealed for justice, and
every four months the baron himself was bound to present
1 Sdthas, i., 213 ; v., 2-5 ; Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii.,
345, 383- ' Sathas, iii., 223, 430, 452, 455-

460 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
himself at Negroponte with two good horses and an esquire.1
Next to the republic, the most important person in the
colony was the titular patriarch of Constantinople — a dignity
still connected with the see of Negroponte. In 1426, we are
told that he owned a quarter of the island and that he had
many serfs, but that he shirked his share of the public
burdens.2 After the peace of 1430 between Venice and the
sultan, the island enjoyed a brief revival of prosperity, and
the lamentations of the colonists were less loud. A pro
tective measure to encourage the local wine trade proved
most beneficial, and the famous plain of Lilanto, which a
special official, the potamarch, was bound to keep irrigated,
was then called " the life of this island, the eye and garden
of Negroponte," as it still is.3 Care, too, was taken to
humour the Jews, who were the chief merchants and who
bore the chief burden of taxation, and their ghetto at the
capital was enlarged. Originally, they had lived outside
the city ; but they had entered the walls for greater security ;
in 1355 the ghetto had been assigned to them, and finally,
in 1440, their numbers had so much increased that its
boundaries were extended, with the proviso that if they
dwelt beyond a certain tower they would forfeit their houses
and be banished for ever. Orders, too, were given that the
ghettos at Karystos and Oreos were to be repaired, that the
law should be equal for them and the Christians, and that the
public hangman should no longer be chosen from among
them.4 But there were signs that the island was declining.
The harbours of Negroponte and Karystos became choked
with sand ; the walls needed repair ; the plague made such
havoc, that the vassals of Karystos were reduced to between
two and three thousand ; Catalan corsairs still infested the
coasts ; the Albanian immigrants were becoming restive ;
and the Turks, after a long interval, resumed their operations,
so that the captain of the bridge was ordered to pass the
night there. Then came the alarming news of the destruc
tion of Christian rule in Constantinople and on the mainland,
and the scare of Mohammed II.'s visit. Taxes were hastily
remitted to pacify the islanders, and the Home Government
1 Sathas, i., 197-8 ; iii., 316-18. - Ibid., iii., 312.
3 Ibid, iii., 361, 452-7. 1 Ibid., iii., 279, 464.

CODIFICATION OF THE LAW 40 1
became seriously alarmed about the island, " on the posses
sion of which depends the maintenance of our sea-power,"
as they wrote to the bailie.
It is to the closing years of Venetian rule in Negroponte
that we owe the copy of the Book of the Customs of the Empire
of Romania, to which allusion was made in the third chapter.
In 142 1 a commission of twelve citizens was ordered to be
elected for the purpose of drawing up in a single volume the
laws and customs prevalent in the Latin Orient. The work
was not finished till thirty years later, when the last Latin
Archbishop of Athens, Niccold Protimo, himself a native of
the island, was entrusted with the collation of the completed
copy sent from Negroponte with that preserved in the
chancery at Venice. It was then found that the Eubcean
code contained 147 more articles than the Venetian, and of
these only 37 were approved. The code, as we have it,
consists of 219 articles with 8 extra articles added by
Nicholas de Joinville, bailie of Achaia more than a century
earlier, and is written in the Venetian dialect.1
South of the isthmus, the two groups of Venetian colonies
in Argolis and in Messenia had suffered considerably, as we
saw, from the disturbed state of the peninsula, now from
the Despots and now from the Turks. The population of
Nauplia had been increased by a settlement of Albanians,
and a band of gypsies had been encamped there as far back
as the end of the fourteenth century under a chief, or
drungarius, to whom special privileges were granted. But
the local aristocracy claimed the exclusive right to hold
the various offices, as of yore, and complained of the
condition of the walls and the riotous behaviour of the
light horsemen in the suite of the governor.2 At Modon
and Coron the treatment of the serfs was the most important
question at this period ; they complained that they had to
provide straw and grass for the horses of the governor, and
to lend their own animals for his hunting-parties ; and they
were subject to a corvee, or parapiasmo, as it was called, of
two days a month ; but they seem to have prospered under
1 Sdthas, iii., 225 ; Magno, 198 ; Canciani, Leges Barbarorum, iii.,
497- 2 Safhas, iii., 192, 443 ; iv., 187-91 ; Hopf, Geschichte, lxxxvi., 113.

462 THE TURKISH CONQUEST
Venetian rule, for there were rich peasants among them who
were willing to pay a large sum for enfranchisement. The
Greek bishop was now allowed to live in the town of Coron,
instead of some miles outside, and twice a year the Greek
priests and monks paid a tax to the republic. Emigration,
however, was such an evil, that the taxes were lowered in
order to encourage people to live in the colony.1
While, all around, principalities were falling, Venice had,
at this eleventh hour, added to her Greek colonies. In 145 1,
the classic island of ^Egina, which she had long coveted,
became hers. It had been arranged, twenty -six years before,
as we saw, that, when the Caopena family became extinct,
the republic should take their inheritance. In 145 1,
Antonello Caopena, son-in-law of the Duke Antonio I. of
Athens, died without heirs, after having bequeathed the
island to Venice. The islanders welcomed Venetian rule ;
the claims of Antonello's uncle Arna, who had lands in
Argolis, where a mountain still bears his name, were satisfied
by a pension, and a Venetian governor, or rettore, was
appointed, who was dependent on the authorities of Nauplia.
After Arna's death, his son Alioto renewed his claim to the
island, but was told that the republic was firmly resolved to
keep it. He and his family were pensioned, and one of
them loyally aided in the defence of ^Egina against the
Turks in 1537, was captured with his family, and died in a
Turkish dungeon. Venice, however, ransomed his wife and
children, who came and settled as poor and simple citizens
on the lagoons. There they remained till, in 1648, the last
of the race died, as priest of S. Giovanni in Bragora. Such
was the end of the Catalan lords of ^Egina.2
Two years after the annexation of ^Egina, the Venetian
admiral occupied the Northern Sporades — Skyros, Skiathos,
and Skopelos — the original fief of the Ghisi, which had
belonged to the Byzantine Empire for nearly two centuries.
Now that that empire had fallen, the islanders were ab-.
solutely defenceless against the attacks of pirates. One
1 Sdthas, iii., 343, 421, 459 ; iv., 29 ; v., 94 ; Jorga, vi., 379 ; viii., 95.
2 Magno, 197 ; Mar, iv., f. 80, 83 ; Hopf, Karystos (tr. Sardagna), 71 sqq.
The mountain peak of Arna is near Epidauros, where Arna's lands lay
(Meliarikes, "Apyohn, 65).

VENICE ACQUIRES THE NORTHERN SPORADES 463
party preferred the mild rule of the Gattilusii of Lesbos,
another that of the maona, or Genoese Company, which ruled
over Chios, but the majority favoured a Venetian protectorate,
of which their neighbours in Eubcea had had so long an
experience. Accordingly, they offered their island home to
the Venetian admiral, on condition that he would confirm
their ancient privileges and preserve their episcopal see. At
first he hestitated, for three of the four castles of Skyros
were now in ruins, and such an acquisition seemed therefore
to be more of an expense than a profit to his Government.
An embassy sent by the natives to the Genoese forced him,
however, to consent, for he knew that Venice would not
tolerate her great rival so near her most important colony.
Two Venetian rectors, dependent on the bailie of Negroponte,
were sent to govern the islands, the republic granted their
privileges and heard their petitions, and they remained in
her possession till 1538.1
Finally, as we saw, two of the Cyclades, Tenos and
Mykonos, had been under Venetian authority since the
extinction of the Ghisi family in 1390, and had been farmed
out to a Venetian citizen, who was dependent- on Negroponte.
But the islands were so poor and so thinly inhabited, that
the rent was reduced. Turkish depredations were frequent,
and the islanders complained to the Senate, to which they
were faithful even when misgoverned. In 1430 a governor
was accordingly sent direct from Venice, the two islands
were declared independent of Eubcea, and the privileges of
the people were confirmed. Still, the most ample franchises
could not keep off Catalan and Turkish corsairs.2 Thus, in
1460, the dull uniformity of Turkish rule spread over the
land, save where the dukes of the Archipelago and the
Venetian colonies still remained the sole guardians of
Western culture, the only rays of light in the once brilliant
Latin Orient.
1 Magno, 198-9; Navagero apud Muratori, xxiii., 1 116; Chalko
kondyles, 431 ; Sdthas, v., 45.
2 Sdthas, iii., 144, 181, 414 ; iv., 236.

CHAPTER XIV
THE VENETIAN COLONIES (1462-1540)
AFTER the fall of the duchy of Athens and the principality
of Achaia, the only Latin possessions left on the mainland
of Greece were the papal city of Monemvasia, the fortress of
Vonitza on the Ambrakian Gulf, and the Venetian colonies,
composed of four distant and isolated groups — the Messenian
stations of Coron and Modon with its dependency, Navarino ;
the castles of Argos and Nauplia, to which the island of ^Egina
was subordinate, and the frontier fortresses of Lepanto and
Pteleon. It only remains, then, to complete the history of
Frankish rule on the Greek continent by describing the
fortunes of these lingering offshoots of Italy down to the
capture of the last of them by the Turks in 1540. With
them, for the sake of clearness, we may include the fate of
the Venetian island of Negroponte and that of the insular
domain of the Tocchi in the palatine county of Cephalonia.
However little the Venetians might desire it, a war
between the republic and the sultan was clearly inevitable;
they were convinced that the great conqueror intended to
round off his Greek territories by the acquisition of their
remaining colonies upon Greek soil, and they wisely availed
themselves of the short breathing-space afforded by the
sultan's attack upon the empire of Trebizond to put their
fortifications in order. An inscription on the ruins of Coron
still commemorates the repair of that outpost,1 while yEgina
obtained money for her defences by the unwilling sacrifice
of her cherished relic, the head of St George, which had
been carried thither from Livadia by the Catalans after their
1 Risposta di Jacopo Grandi, 144; Buchon, La Grece Continentale,
454 (the latter gives the date wrong) ; Sathas, i., 237-8.
464

CEPHALONIA.

GREECE in 1462

iBles

Turkish. Venetian Colonies (Modxni, Coron, ete.)
.Duchy of the Archipelago .
Gruntv Pabitine of Cephalonia .
Papal (Afonemvasia;)
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Sommaripa (Paras. Andros I
Khiefftts of Rhodes (She/ieia )
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The sOipes indicate' vassalage, the eoloio' beinq tJui£ of the suzerain state .

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under Turkish suzerainty.

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^ CEItlGOTTO

TURKISH WAR OF 1463 465
expulsion from the Athenian duchy. The kings of Aragon
had not abandoned the hope of obtaining possession of the
coveted head. Alfonso V. had sent an emissary to carry it
off; but a great storm prevented his design, and the relic
was restored to the church of St George, in the lofty town
of what is now Palaiochora. In 1462, however, the Venetian
Senate ordered the relic to be removed to S. Giorgio
Maggiore at Venice, and this time, to the dismay of the
Greeks, the saint wrought no miracle to prevent this act of
sacrilege. On 12th November, it was transported from
^Egina by Vettore Cappello, the famous Venetian commander,
and placed in S. Giorgio, and the monastery and the Senate
tried to soothe the feelings ofthe yEginetans by giving 100
ducats apiece towards fortifying the island.1
The Turks soon found an excuse for hostilities. An
Albanian slave, the property of the governor of Athens, had
run away with some of his master's property, and had sought
refuge in the house of Valaresso, one of the councillors of
Modon. The Venetian authorities of that colony refused to
give him up, whereupon, in November 1462, Omar, son of
Turakhan, the captor of Athens, marched upon Lepanto, and
almost took that important fortress ; while Isa, who had
succeeded Zagan in the governorship of the Morea, occupied
Argos without a blow, owing to the treachery of a Greek
priest, and Turkish bands ravaged the country round Modon.
The war-party in Venice then persuaded the Government to
fight, and in 1463 a war began, which lasted, more or less
continuously, till 1479. Bertoldo d'Este was appointed
commander-in-chief of the Venetian land forces, and ordered
to proceed to Nauplia and co-operate with the fleet under
Loredano; while the heroic Albanian leader, Skanderbeg,
was provided with subsidies, in order that he might create a
diversion among the mountains of his native land. D'Este
recruited his forces by opening the Cretan gaols and convert
ing the prisoners into soldiers. At the same time he issued
a proclamation, calling upon the Greeks to rise and regain
their freedom with his assistance. The long rule of the
Franks had had the effect of making them far more warlike
1 Magno, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 202; Cornelius, Ecclesice Veneta:, viii ,
173-93, 270-1 ; Malipiero, Annali, in Archivio Storico Italiano, vii., 12.
2 G

466 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
than they had been at the time of the Latin Conquest ; and,
provided that they were sure of foreign aid, they were ready
to rise against the Turks. The Spartans took up arms
under the leadership of Michael Ralles, a primate belonging
to a distinguished Lacedaemonian family of Norman or
Albanian origin. The Arkadians found a chief in Peter
Boua — the same Albanian who had headed a rising against
the Greeks nine years earlier, and the Mainates, as ever,
showed a spirit of independence. Monemvasia, weary, as was
to be expected, of papal rule, begged the protection of a
state which of all Catholic communities was notoriously the
least bigoted ; the pope was far off, the papal governor was
helpless ; and ere long a Venetian podesta, paid out of the
treasury of the Venetian islands of Lemnos or Crete, was
sent out to the great fortress.1
At first, fortune smiled on the Venetian arms. Argos
was speedily retaken ; its castle, the famous Larissa, soon
hoisted the lion-banner of St Mark ; another old Frankish
town, that of Vostitza, drove out the Turks ; and D'Este was
able to send home a long list of fortresses which had joyfully
opened their gates to his men. Among them it is interesting
to notice such familiar Frankish names as Karytaina,
Santameri, and Geraki, which now reappears after a long
silence. Several strong positions, however, remained in
Turkish hands, chief among them Akrocorinth, whose fate
was certain to determine that of the rest. Accordingly,
D'Este and Loredano set to work to besiege it. But first, in
order to encourage the Greeks, they rebuilt the famous wall
across the isthmus, which had been destroyed by Murad 1 1.
The two commanders put the first stone in its place, and their
example filled their men with such zeal that in fifteen days the
restored Hexamilion, 12 feet high and flanked with 136 towers,
stretched from sea to sea. A religious ceremony celebrated the
completion of the work ; an altar was erected in the middle of
the wall ; mass was performed ; and the flag of the Evangelist
was hoisted over the ramparts. Such an achievement was
1 The acquisition of Monemvasia was, according to Phrantzes and
Magno, in 1464 ; but Malatesta's secretary puts it in 1463. The Venetian
document (Regina, fol. 52) appointing its podesta is dated 17th Sep
tember 1464.

MALATESTA IN GREECE 467
thought worthy of a picture on the ceiling ofthe Doge's Palace.
Unfortunately the work had been too hastily done; the wall was
too low, and the stones had no mortar to keep them together.
The success of the Venetians was now checked. D'Este,
uncautiously removing his helmet in the heat of an attack on
Akrocorinth, was struck by a stone, and died of the wound.
The same day the news arrived that Mahmoud Pasha, the
grand vizier, with the victorious army which had just ended
for ever the ancient kingdom of Bosnia, was marching to the
assault of the Isthmian wall. Its defenders, without a general,
decimated by dysentery, and alarmed at the great numerical
superiority of the enemy, abandoned the Hexamilion without
striking a blow, and retreated to Nauplia. The Turks once
more destroyed the rampart across the isthmus, reoccupied
Argos, levelled that city with the ground, and sent its inhabi
tants to Constantinople, where they received lands and houses
from the sultan at the Peribleptos monastery. A much
worse fate was reserved for the loyal subjects of Venice in
Messenia, many of whom were sawn asunder by the orders of
Mohammed II. Finding that their Venetian allies were
unable to defend them, the Spartans retired to the fastnesses
of Taygetos, whence the Turks in vain endeavoured to lure
them by promises of amnesty.1
Venice was not, however, discouraged by the failure of
her arms. Sigismondo Malatesta, the husband of Isotta and
the builder of the cathedral in his native town of Rimini, was
appointed as D'Este's successor ; but that most famous scion
of his family gained little glory from his Peloponnesian
campaign. He succeeded, indeed, in taking two of the three
rings of walls which compose the old Byzantine capital of
Mistri ; but the splendid castle resisted his assaults, discord
broke out in his camp, and he hurriedly returned home to
defend his interests there against the pope, with no other
prize than the bones of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon,
1 Phrantzes, 414-15 ; Chalkokondyles, 545, 555-64 ; Chronicon breve,
521 ; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 202-3 i "-^xflos, ibid., 268 ; Sanudo
and Navagero apud Muratori, xxii., 1 172-3; xxiii., 1121-3; Lettera dun
Segretario, apud Sdthas, vi., 95-7 ; Daru, Histoire de Venise, ii., 443-6 ;
Kritdboulos, bk. iv., ch. 16 ; v., 1, 2 ; Ldmpros, "Eyypa.<pa., 134-5 ; Regina,
fol. 52, 56 (in/. H. S. xxvii., 241).

468 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
whose neo-Platonic doctrines he had embraced, and whose
remains he laid in the cathedral at Rimini, where the tombs
of the Spartan sage and the Italian lord may still be seen.1
Venice now sent one of her most distinguished sons to
the front. Vettore Cappello had had a large experience of
Greek affairs, and the news of his appointment to the
command of the fleet in the Levant inspired the troops with
fresh hopes. Nor did his first achievements belie their
expectations. Directing his course to the north of the
^Egean, he completed the conquest, begun by his prede
cessors, of the group of islands which had once belonged to
the Gattilusii, and then cast anchor at the Piraeus in the
summer of 1466. For a brief moment Athens figured again
in the pages of history. Cappello marched upon the city
before dawn on 12th July, and captured the whole of the
lower town. The sack yielded his men a large booty, but he
spared the lives of the Greek inhabitants, and contented
himself with firing the Turkish ships in the harbour. As the
Akropolis was strongly fortified and well provisioned, he
made no attempt to besiege it, and sailed away to Patras.
If this second Venetian capture of Athens had no practical
results, it has at least afforded us a last glimpse of the city,
for to this moment we may ascribe the anonymous descrip
tion, written by a Venetian, which was published a few years
ago.2 The author tells us that almost all the rock on which
the castle stood was then surrounded with houses ; he alludes
to the great strength of the Akropolis, and distinguishes
between the "modern walls" of the city and the ancient
circumvallation, which was " larger than that of Padua." The
west portal of the Stoa of Hadrian then served as the gate of
the town ; the Tower of the Winds, later on a tekkeh of
Dervishes, was then a Greek church ; and near the Stadion
there dwelt the fraticelli della mala opinione — an heretical
sect, which, rooted out of Western Europe, had thus found a
refuge under the tolerant rule of the Turks. Of the other
ancient monuments, the cultured visitor describes the Temple
of Olympian Zeus, which then had one column less than in
1 Sanudo and Navagero in op. eit, xxii., 1179-82 ; xxiii., 1123 ; Mali
piero, 32-6 ; Sathas, i., 242-57 ; vi., 87, 92-4, 98 ; Sansovino, f. 194.
2 Mitteilungen des K: deutschen Arch. Instituts (Athcri), xxiv., 72-S8.

ATHENS IN 1466 469
the time of his predecessor, Cyriacus ; the arch and aqueduct
of Hadrian, the latter still locally known as "Aristotle's
Study " ; the choragic monument of Lysikrates, the monu
ment of Philopappos, the west wing of which had partially
collapsed since the visit of the antiquary of Ancona ; the
Theseion, or " temple of the Gods " ; the Roman market-place
with the gate of Athena Archegetis and the pillar of Hadrian
inscribed with the regulations for the oil trade. He also
mentions a Roman tomb to the north of the Olympieion,
which has escaped the notice of other travellers. As the
Turks were in possession of the Akropolis, he was, as he
says,1 " unable to approach " sufficiently near to examine the
monument of Thrasyllos, and could only descry the west front
of the Parthenon, which was still a church. That, and the
" ancient palace " of the Acciajuoli in the Propylaea, are the
only buildings which he could see clearly from below, and
which he therefore mentions as standing there. Down at the
Piraeus he admired the famous lion, from whose mouth — so
he was told — water used to flow ; and on the Sacred Way, he
waxes enthusiastic over the marbles and mosaics of Daphni,
" the most beautiful I have ever seen." From this time
forth, Athens disappeared from the ken of Europe for more
than a century. A German traveller who passed by it in
1483 speaks ofthe faint and almost obliterated vestiges of
Athens," which he did not deem worthy of a visit ; and seven
severe plagues and the tribute of Christian children decimated
the scanty population.2
Disasters now again befell the Venetian arms. Barbarigo,
the governor of the Morea, weary of a year of inaction,
resolved, against the better advice of Ralles, to undertake
the siege of Patras, and allowed himself to be enticed into
an ambush by the Turks under the redoubtable Omar.
1 Mitteilungen des k. deutschen Arch. Instituis (A then), xxiv., 76.
This passage fixes the date at 1466, for the Akropolis was then inacces
sible. The only other historical indication in the narrative is the allusion
to D'Este's death before Corinth in 1463. The omission of all mention of
the Turks also points to a moment when the city was in Venetian hands.
2 The authorities for the capture of Athens are : — Sabellico, Dec. III.,
Lib. 8 ; Secreta, xxii., fol. 186 ; Magno, 204 ; Phrantzes, 425 ; Sanudo and
Navagero (xxii., 1183; xxiii., 1 125); Malatesta's secretary (Sathas, vi.,
99) ; Malipiero, 37.

470 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
Both the Venetian and the Moreot chieftains were impaled
by the brutal conqueror; Cappello's efforts to take Patras
failed ; the land forces retreated to Kalamata, where, beneath
the old castle of William de Villehardouin, they sustained a
fresh defeat ; and the admiral withdrew to Negroponte,
where he died of a broken heart. For five months he had
never been seen to smile. His kneeling figure, the hat,
— his coat-of-arms — and an inscription commemorating his
deeds at sea and his death in Eubcea, adorn the portal of
the church of S. Aponal in Venice.1
For the next three years a desultory struggle was waged
in the Morea, with results unfavourable to the republic.
The death of Pius II. at Ancona had prevented the crusade
which his zeal and the tireless eloquence of Bessarion had
organised ; his successor, Paul II., though a Venetian, lacked
enthusiasm ; and the selfish policy, for which Venice was
distinguished, had prevented the other Italian states from
rallying to her aid against the Turks. Skanderbeg alone of
her allies remained in arms, and with his death, in 1468, she
would gladly have come to terms with the sultan on the
basis of uti possidetis. Of the 122 castles of the Morea,
only 26 were now in Venetian hands ; more than 40 castles
lay in ruins ; over 50 flew the Turkish flag, among them
the old Frankish stronghold of Geraki. Still Venice retained
all her old colonies except Argos ; her rectors held sway
over Maina and Lemnos ; her podesta governed the sheer
rock of Monemvasia ; the Greeks of Mitylene had gone to
cultivate the waste lands of her cherished Negroponte.2
Mohammed II. had long coveted that splendid island,
and the moment had now arrived for the realisation of his
cherished plan. So well-informed a Government as that of
Venice could not be in any doubt of what was intended, nor
was it forgotten that the sultan had once already inspected
Negroponte. From all sides, from Cyprus, Rhodes, and
Cephalonia, from Naples and from Burgundy, the republic
sought aid in the defence of her prized possession ; but of
all these allies, one alone, the Count of Cephalonia, sent a
1 Foregoing authorities and Sansovino, f. 203 ; Sdthas, i., 258 ; vii.,
7, 8, 15, 26, 48 ; Kritdboulos, v., 13 ; Chalkokondyles, 558.
2 Magno, 205-6.

SIEGE OF NEGROPONTE 471
galley to join the Venetian fleet. " The princes of Christen
dom," it was said, " looked on as if in a theatre."
Early in June 1470, the Turkish fleet of 300 sail, with
60,000 or 70,000 men on board, issued from the Dardanelles ;
and, after taking Imbros, and making a futile attempt to
capture the strong castles of Lemnos and Skyros, traversed
the Doro channel at the south end of Eubcea, and proceeded
up to Negroponte. On the way, the Turkish admiral
occupied the castle of Styra and the great square tower,
which still stands in the village of Basiliko, near Chalkis, and
on 15 th June cast anchor in the bay of Burchio, the modern
Bourkos ; there his men disembarked and planted their
tents on the shore of Millemoza, as the inmost recess of
that bay was called, within a short distance of the land walls
of the city. The next two days were occupied in skirmishes,
but on the 18th the ardour of the garrison was checked by
the spectacle of a long line of Turkish troops descending
through the pass of Anephorites along the road from
Thebes,1 headed by the great sultan himself. For two
hours Mohammed II. stood at the head of the bridge over
the Euripos and carefully examined the enchanted castle,
which stood in the middle of the stream till a wanton and
useless act of Vandalism in our own time removed it. Then,
judging that mode of entry into the city impracticable — for
the stream is a mill-race and the drawbridge was up — he
moved to the Punta, or Bocca di S. Marco, as the narrow
entrance of the small bay to the south of the Euripos was
then called, and ordered a bridge of boats to be constructed
across to the island. Over this, at the. Ave Maria, a third
of the army passed ; next morning the sultan, his son, and
the bulk of the army followed. Mohammed established his
headquarters at Sta. Chiara, half a mile from the city, and
his lines extended past the Nun's Mountain, as the eminence
of Veli Baba behind Chalkis was then called from a convent
of the Virgin which stood there, past the suburb of S.
Francesco and as far as the fountain of Arethusa, on the
road to Eretria. On the mainland of Bceotia, at the Forks, as
the present fort of Kara Baba was then described, a battery
1 "Struez" is no doubt meant for "Stives," — the natural way for the
sultan to come..

472 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
was placed, so that the city was completely invested except
on the north. On that side, however, the sultan constructed
a second bridge of boats, which were dragged over land
from the bay of Burchio to the Atalante channel.
The condition of the place, as its defenders well knew,
was not satisfactory. The walls had been, indeed, repaired
forty years before ; and on every battlement of the sea-wall
the lion of the Evangelist bade defiance to the infidels ; a
moat washed the walls on the land side, so that it was com
pletely surrounded by water ; but the republic had strangely
omitted to fortify the two heights which commanded the
town, that of the Forks and that of the Nun's Mountain,
trusting to her fleet to save Negroponte in her hour of need.
Unfortunately, the fleet was under the command of Niccolo
da Canale, a better lawyer than seaman, who, instead of giving
battle to the Turkish armada, had dallied off the island of
Skiathos, and then sailed away to Candia, to the great
surprise of the Cretan authorities.
At the time of the siege, the bailie was Paolo Erizzo, who
had actually completed his two years' term of office, but who
had remained on at his post in the hope that his presence
might be of use. For a similar reason, Giovanni Bondumier,
the ex-provveditore — for in view of the Turkish peril, a prov-
veditore as well as a bailie had latterly been sent to Negroponte
— was still in the city, though his successor, Alvise Calbo, had
actually arrived. These men were the soul of the defence
of Negroponte, and were bravely supported by the numerous
Venetian colony. The city contained 2500 souls, besides
fugitives, and the garrison had recently been strengthened
by 700 men from Candia and a force of 500 foot soldiers
under the leadership of a Dalmatian named Tommaso, who
was in charge of all the engines of war. Against them was
the vast host of the Turks, variously estimated at 120,000
and 300,000 men, exclusive of the naval forces.
On 25th June, when he had made all his preparations,
the sultan, through an Italian interpreter, summoned the
bailie to surrender, saying that he was resolved to have the
city, but that, if the bailie would yield at once, he would
exempt the inhabitants from all taxes for ten years, would
give to every noble who had a house two, and would allow

SIEGE OF NEGROPONTE 473
the bailie and the provveditore to live in comfort at Negroponte,
or else would assign them a liberal allowance at Con
stantinople. To this the bailie ordered his aide-de-camp
to reply, that Venice had made Negroponte her own, that
ten or twelve days at the most would decide her fate, and
that, with God's help, he would burn the sultan's fleet and
root up his tents, so that he would not know where to hide
his diminished head. At this bold reply all the men on the
wall shouted aloud, and the interpreter was bidden go tell
his master to eat swine's flesh, and then try to storm the moat.
This insult was faithfully reported to Mohammed, who from
that moment resolved that the garrison should have no mercy.
The same evening the bombardment began. The
sultan had twenty-one (according to another account, forty-
two), powerful pieces of artillery, which he had placed in
commanding positions, both on the island and at Kara
Baba, and which kept up a continuous fire day and night.
None of the 120 huge stones which they fired failed to fall
into the doomed city, and to this day they may be seen piled
up in one of the squares of the town, a memento of the
great siege. Meanwhile, a first assault was made upon the
walls. The Turks threw fascines into the moat; but the
defenders succeeded in setting fire to them, and the besiegers
were forced to retreat with heavy loss. On 30th June a
second assault was made with still more disastrous results,
but the day witnessed two serious catastrophes for the
Christians. The Turkish cavalry scoured the island as far
north as Oreos, killing every one above the age of fifteen ;
the castle of La Cuppa was betrayed, and the 3000 Greeks,
who had fled there for safety, were butchered in cold blood
before the walls of Negroponte. The same fate overtook
the crew of a vessel, laden with troops and munitions of
war, which unwittingly fell into the midst of the Turkish
fleet in the bay of Burchio.
There was a traitor, however, in the capital as well as
at La Cuppa. A Dalmatian named Luca, from the island
of Curzola, was found missing, and the story of an old Greek
woman, who was intimate with the mistress of the Dalmatian
captain, Tommaso, aroused the suspicion of the bailie. The
missing man's brother was arrested, and, under threat of

474 TME VENETIAN COLONIES
torture, confessed that Luca had been sent by Tommaso's
orders. The latter's trumpeter, he added, could tell the
reason. The trumpeter, confronted with the bailie, at once
made a complete disclosure of the plot. "We are all foes of
Christendom," he said, and then went on to accuse a certain
Albanian, employed in the governor's palace, of having been
in Turkish pay for the last seven years. This man's house
was searched, and three arrows with compromising inscrip
tions were discovered there. The first, in Greek, ran as
follows : " I am thy servant ; what I have promised is ready " ;
the other two, in Turkish, came from the sultan's camp, and
bade the traitor perform his promise, for the sultan had
come at his words, and could tarry no longer. The news
that the plot was out soon reached the arch-traitor, Tommaso.
The Dalmatian resolved to brave it out ; he mounted his
horse, and, at the head of a hundred of his men, rode
towards the piazza, vowing that he would cut off the nose
of the fellow who had arrested his friends. But the bailie
had meanwhile made his preparations ; the square was lined
with troops, and in the centre Erizzo himself was walking
calmly up and down with a number of Venetian nobles, as
if nothing had happened. On seeing the traitor, the bailie
asked him why he had come with such a retinue, thus leaving
the walls unguarded. Disarmed by Erizzo's innocent air,
Tommaso dismissed his men, and followed the bailie into the
latter's palace, to discuss some question of repairs to the
ramparts. But scarcely had he crossed the threshold than
Alvise Dolfin stabbed him in the neck. Fifty swords flashed
through his body, as many of his company were put to death,
and their captain with his secretary and trumpeter hung by
one foot from the pillars of the bailie's palace. Their corpses
were then taken down, quartered, and fired from the guns
into the Turkish camp. So savage was the vengeance which
the Venetians took upon the Dalmatian's men, that the
bailie lamented the loss of so many marksmen.
The sultan, ignorant of the traitor's death, made a third
assault on the land walls at the Burchio ravelin, which
Tommaso had promised to surrender. To keep up the
deception, the Venetians hoisted the Turkish flag — the
signal agreed upon — over the tower of the Temple, and the.

SIEGE OF NEGROPONTE 475
Turks, rushing on " like pigs,'' went to the slaughter, instead
of to the sack of the city. Moreover, the able-bodied lads of
the town now took the place of the executed marksmen on
the walls, and they made such excellent practice that the
sultan sent to ask who they might be. He was told that
they were reinforcements from Nauplia, who had crossed
the Euripos despite the vigilance of his guards at the bridge,
a fable which cost those unhappy men their heads. For three
more days and nights the sultan continued to bombard and
demand the surrender of the city, and on the morning of
nth July prepared to make a more vigorous assault than
ever on the damaged line of wall between the tower of the
Temple and the Porta di Cristo, the chief land-gate, while
his fleet directed its attack against the ruined ramparts of
the ghetto. Suddenly, however, Canale's fleet of 71 sail
was seen coming down the Atalante channel. In a moment,
the situation was changed. The sultan expected the
Venetian admiral to break the northern bridge of boats, fire
the other and shut him up in the island. According to one
account, he shed tears of rage ; according to another, he
actually mounted his horse to recross the bridge, and was only
held back by his most trusted pasha. Modern expert opinion
agrees with the sultan ; had Canale done his duty, he could
have saved Negroponte and ruined the great conqueror.
But the legal mind, and perhaps the paternal affection,
of the Venetian admiral — for his son was on board —
hesitated till it was too late. In vain two Cretan gentlemen
begged permission to charge with their galley against the
bridge of boats. The commander replied that he must wait
till all his vessels had come up. Corruption was rife in the
fleet ; no one stirred ; the tide in the Euripos turned ; and,
Canale quietly cast anchor in the bay cjf Politika, six miles
up channel. Meanwhile, the great man of action who
commanded the besiegers acted. He lined both the Boeotian
and the Eubcean shore with soldiers to prevent Canale from
landing ; he posted marksmen on the northern bridge to
repulse an attack, and offered the whole booty of the city to
his men. Early on the morning of the next day, seeing that
Canale was still inactive, he made his final assault upon the
town. He had previously filled the moat with casks, dead

476 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
bodies and fascines, so that the heap of material thrown
into them overtopped the broken walls. Over this improvised
road, which emitted a fearful stench, the Turks rushed to the
attack. The garrison, weary and worn, raised black flags of
distress as a signal to Canale, but in vain; still, though
abandoned by the fleet, it gallantly held its ground till two
hours after daybreak, when the besiegers carried the Burchio
ravelin ; a few moments later all the walls were in the
possession of the enemy. Even then the fighting continued
in the narrow streets, which were barricaded with beams,
casks, and chains, while the women hurled boiling water,
quick-lime, and pitchers on the heads of the Turks. Forcing
their way, foot by foot, the invaders at last, at mid-day,
gained the square. There Calbo, the provveditore, fell, sword
in hand ; his predecessor, Bondumier, was butchered in the
house of Paolo Andreozzo, who himself survived to write the
story of the siege. The bailie and a number of gentle ladies
and children found refuge in the castle in the Euripos, and
pulled up the drawbridge, hoping that the fleet would even
now come to their rescue. Canale did, indeed, make a show
of attacking the bridge of boats, but when he saw the
Turkish flag waving over the city, he turned and left the
poor wretches in the castle of the Euripos to their fate.
That fate was, indeed, terrible. Mohammed had vowed
to avenge the insults levelled at him from the walls, and he
kept his vow. But the castle was strong, and his emissaries,
Mahmoud Pasha, the Turkish admiral, and the Italian
interpreter, found it necessary to promise the lives, but
not the liberty, of the inmates. The sultan was furious at
being thus baulked of his prey. 'He issued instant orders
that every living soul, down to the very children at the
breast, should be cut in pieces on the bridge. For Erizzo
he reserved an even worse fate. Sarcastically remarking
that he had promised to spare the bailie's neck, but not his
body, he ordered him to be placed on two planks and sawn
asunder — a fiendish act commemorated by one of the
paintings on the ceiling of the Doge's Palace.1 According
to one account, which has been eagerly accepted by a host
1 So Cicogna and Litta ; the present official view is that Alban d' Armer
(cf. in/r.) is the person represented.

CARNAGE AT NEGROPONTE 477
of Venetian dramatists, but for which there is little historical
evidence, Erizzo's only daughter, Anna, refusing to yield
to the desires of her father's murderer, was killed before
the sultan's eyes. In his thirst for blood, the conqueror
rode through the streets to see if the cupidity of his
janissaries had spared the lives of his victims, and massacred
all he could find before the church of the Holy Apostles, on
the shore of the bay of Burchio, at his own headquarters,
and at San Giovanni Bocca d'Oro ; to make assurance doubly
sure, he ordered his galleys to be searched, and issued a
proclamation that any of his men who was guilty of con
cealing a Frank should be beheaded. His special vengeance
fell upon the lads who had made such excellent practice from
the walls. One of the fairest cities in Greece was converted into
a charnel-house ; the heads of the slain were heaped up in the
Piazza di S. Francesco, in front of the official residence of the
Latin patriarch ; the Euripos ran red with the blood of the
corpses thrown into it. It was calculated that 77,000 (other
estimates give 25,000 or 30,000) Turks and 6,000 Christians
had perished in the siege. It was said that every male in
Negroponte over the age of eight years was cut in pieces.
The rest of the great island now surrendered. Historic
castles, like Karystos, the fief of the Zorzi ; ^Edepsos, the
property of the Sommaripa of Paros ; Oreos, the third of
the three original baronies, then a Venetian stronghold, all
yielded. Pteleon, with its dependency of Gardiki, succumbed
three days after the fall of Negroponte, despite the heroic
efforts of its rector to save the last outpost of Christendom
in northern Greece. Its site was left desolate; its inhabit
ants were sent to swell the Christian population of Con
stantinople. Thither the sultan himself set out, after
presenting the fallen city of Negroponte to his son and
leaving a garrison behind him, while his fleet, laden with
booty and captive women and children, set sail for the
Dardanelles. Once again, the irresolute Canale allowed
it to pursue its way unmolested, " courteously escorting it,"
as the Turkish admiral sarcastically said, " alike on its
outward and its homeward voyage."
When the news of the fall of Negroponte reached Venice,
great was the lamentation. Many nobles fell ill of grief and

478 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
shame — grief at the death of their relatives and friends who
had been engaged in trade there, shame at "the worst
tidings ever received by the State." Their indignation
demanded a scapegoat, and in the person of their incom
petent admiral one was ready to hand. Pietro Mocenigo
was appointed to take his place, with orders to send Canale
home in irons. That pitiful officer, conscious of his
approaching disgrace, made a half-hearted attempt to
recover the lost city. With 94 sail he cast anchor in
the bay of Aulis, where once the Greek fleet had
waited on the way to Troy. A blunder in strategy cost
him the lives of some of his most valuable men ; and,
before he had had time to repair it, Mocenigo arrived.
Canale hastened to meet him and to yield him the honour
of recapturing the city. Mocenigo sarcastically bade him
keep for himself the credit of the undertaking ; and, when
Canale declined, ordered his arrest. Placed on his trial at
Venice, the miserable man was banished to Porto Gruaro,
where he died ; his successor abandoned all hope of
regaining Negroponte, and since 1470 the island has owned
no master save the Turk and the Greek.1
The Lombard and Venetian families, so long settled
there, have left no descendants in Eubcea. One doctor in
the island still bears the name of Venezianos ; but of the
offspring of the three barons and of the Venetian merchants,
who had once enlivened the shores of the Euripos with their
festivities or enriched them with their trade, not a trace
remains there. Hard, indeed, was the lot of most survivors
of the siege. Many had lost all that they possessed, and
1 The authorities for the siege of Negroponte, which I have used are :
— Rizzardo, La Presa di Negroponte; Jacopo dalla Castellana, Perdita
di Negroponte (both eye-witnesses) ; the two poems, // Pianto di Negro
ponte, and La Persa di Nigroponte (the last three in Archivio Storico
Italiano, Appendice, ix., 403-40) ; Continuatio Chronici Bononiensis,
Sanudo, and Navagero (Muratori, xviii., 779-80; xxii., 1190-1 ; xxiii.,
1 128-9); Malipiero in Archivio Storico Italiano, vii., 48-55 ; the Latin
treatise De Nigroponti Captione in the Basle (1556) ed. of Chalkokondyles
(PP- 33°-3)> of which there is an Italian version in Sansovino (pp. 322-3) ;
Magno, 207; Sabellico, Dec. III., Lib. 8; Phrantzes, 448; Historia
Politica, 44; Chronicon breve, 521-2. The best modern account is
Admiral Fincati's able article in Archivio Veneto, xxxii., 267-307.

FATE OF THE SURVIVORS 479
noble ladies, who had lived as local magnates in Eubcea on
estates which had belonged to their ancestors for centuries,
were compelled to subsist on charity as pensioners of the
Venetian Government in the convent of St Philip and St
James. Twenty-seven of these ladies, " most unhappy of
mortal women," appeared before the doge and begged for
bread. Twenty years later they received the house of a
pious lady, which became the monastery of the Holy
Sepulchre, as their abode. One high-born dame of the
great family of Sommaripa was carried off into slavery with
her daughter, and recovered by the Venetians at Smyrna,
when they took that city. The Government, indeed, ordered
that Canale should be made to refund the amount of his
salary during the time that he had been admiral, and that
this sum should be devoted to ransoming the prisoners.
One of them used his eyes to such good purpose during
his imprisonment at the Dardanelles, that he set fire to the
naval arsenal of the Turks at Gallipoli. Special grants were
made to the children of Alvise Calbo and Bondumier, and
the last baron of Karystos was appointed governor of
Lepanto ; but most of the refugees ended their days in
poverty.1 The Latin patriarch of Constantinople, who for
more than a century and a half had held the see of Negro
ponte, and whose possessions in the island had been so great,
had already ceased to reside there ; but the Catholic bishoprics
of Eubcea now ended their career. For the second time,
Archbishop Protimo of Athens, who had been living in the
island, found himself an exile, and wrote pitifully to the pope
that he must either beg or starve.2 Thus closed the long Lom
bard and Venetian history of Negroponte — a history which is
still commemorated, despite modern Vandalism, by the winged
lions on the walls, which Erizzo so bravely defended, and by
the fine escutcheons in the little museum4 at Chalkis.
Despite the heavy blow which she had received, Venice
manfully continued the struggle against the great sultan.
Further losses were incurred in the Morea; Vostitza
1 Cornelius, Ecclesia Veneta, xi., 272-9, 293-6 ; Magno, 208 ; Nava-
gero, xxiii., 1 130, 1 146; Malipiero, 67; Cippico, P. Mocenigi Gesta
(ed. 1656), 350; Wadding, Annales,.xxv., 195.
3 Mas La.tr\e in Revue de I' Orient latin, III., 445; Reg. Lat., 722, f. 291'-

480 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
surrendered ; Belveder, or Pontikokastro, above the harbour
of Katakolo, followed its example, and the Turks set fire to
its deserted walls, and left it the ruin which it still remains.
The Venetians themselves burnt the old castle of Kalamata,
the birthplace of William of Achaia, rather than that it
should fall into Turkish hands ; thousands of Greeks from
the ancient episcopal see of Olena and two other places in
Elis, upon which the republic had bestowed special privileges,
emigrated to Zante, where the Tocchi were better able than
the republic to protect them. Nauplia was almost driven to
yield from lack of food, but was relieved in time. As the sea
still washed the base of the rock, and at that time not a single
house stood in what is now the lower town, it had nothing to
fear from an assault.1 The war dragged on for some nine
years more, despite efforts to make peace, which were bound
to fail, because the republic asked for the restitution of
Negroponte. The operations were, however, for the most
part outside of Greece. Pope Sixtus IV. succeeded in
inducing the kings of Naples and Cyprus and the grand
master of the Knights of Rhodes to join Venice in a holy
league ; the Shah of Persia was incited to attack the Turks in
Asia and claim the fallen empire of Trebizond ; the Grand
Duke Ivan III. of Russia offered to invade Constantinople,
as son-in-law of Thomas Palaioldgos, and therefore heir of
Byzantium. For a time the fortunes of war turned ;
Mocenigo bombarded Smyrna ; Loredano saved Lepanto.
The Turks were naturally eager to capture this last Venetian
fortress of northern Greece, and its neglected walls and
dwindling population seemed to favour the enterprise. But,
though in 1477 a large army besieged it for three months,
and the Turkish artillery battered down a large part of the
ramparts, the bravery of Antonio Zorzi, its rector, and the
prompt arrival of Loredano's fleet forced the Turks to retire
with no other success than the capture of the outlying forts
ofthe colony.2 But the republic had had enough of fighting.
1 Malipiero, 59, 65; Sanudo, xxii., 1192; Navagero, xxiii., 1129;
Magno, 203 ; Sathas, i., 269 ; v., 27-9; Dordtheos of Monemvasia, BijSMoi/
X\OT0pLK0V, 473.
2 Malipiero, 106, 114; Sanudo, 1207; Navagero, 1146-7; Sabellico,
Dec. III., bk. 10 ; "Axflos, 268 ; Sdthas, vii., 17.

PEACE OF 1479 481
The King of Naples, who had designs upon Cyprus which
clashed with her own, had not only broken up the league
against the sultan, but had even made an alliance with him —
the first instance of those unnatural, but by no means
uncommon, unions. The Turks were pressing hard the
Venetian possessions in Albania, and Skutari was doomed.
So, after sixteen years of warfare, peace was concluded in
1479. Venice restored to the sultan all the castles in the
Morea taken during the war and the island of Lemnos, on
condition that the garrisons were granted an amnesty and
allowed to depart if they so desired. Thus, after the peace
of 1479, Venice still retained the fortress and territory of
Lepanto north of the Corinthian Gulf, and the colonies of
Nauplia, Monemvasia, Coron, Modon, and Navarino in the
Morea. A boundary commission was appointed to delimitate
their frontiers ; after much discussion, the " impregnable "
fortress of Thermisi, on the coast opposite Hydra, with its
valuable salt-pans, the adjacent Kastri, and the ruined fortress
of Kiveri, opposite Nauplia, were included in the territory of
the latter, and Monemvasia was allowed to retain Vatika.
.Egina remained subject to the governor of Nauplia.
The Ionian islands of Corfu, Paxo, and Cerigo, with their
dependencies ; the northern Sporades ; two of the Cyclades —
Tenos and Mykonos ; and Crete, completed the diminished
dominions of the republic in the Levant.1
While Venice had thus lost Negroponte and Argos by
the war, the long struggle had been even more disastrous to
the Greeks. The Venetians, whose navy was far superior to
that of the Turks, gained most of their successes at the
expense, not of the sultan but of his Greek subjects, just as,
in the Greco-Turkish war of 1 897, a bombardment of Smyrna
or Salonika would have mainly injured the Hellenic popula
tion of those two great Turkish towns. The Turks, likewise,
carried off numbers of Greeks from the places which they
captured, and thus the unhappy natives were the chief
sufferers from the victories of their friends or the successes of
their enemies. Yet the war had shown that the Hellenic race
1 Miklosich und Miiller, Acta et Diplomata, III., 293-309; Predelli,
Commemoriali, v., 228-30, 238-9; Sdthas, vi., 121, 126, 142, 214, 219-20;
Navagero, 1 166.
2 H

482 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
could produce splendid fighters, and the name of Marotila,
the heroine of Lemnos, might well rank with the ancient
Spartans or the modern women of Souli. At a critical
moment during the siege of that island, the girl seized the
sword and shield of her dying father and charged the Turks
at the head of the wavering garrison. As a reward for her
services, she was allowed to choose a husband from among
the noblest officers of the Venetian army, while the republic
provided the marriage portion.1 It was then, too, that the
Venetians first employed the Greeks and Albanians of the
Morea as light horsemen against the Turks. Thus arose the
famous corps of stradioti, who in the sixteenth century
demonstrated all over Europe even as far as Scotland, that
Greek valour was not extinct. According to the learned
Greek historian, whose researches have thrown a flood of
light upon their organisation and exploits, their name is not
derived from the Greek word a-rpaTicorat ("soldiers"), but
from the Italian strada, because they were " always on the
road," and had no fixed abodes. They were mainly recruited
from Lakonia ; but the most valiant were the men of
Nauplia and Thermisi. Among their leaders we find many
historic names, such as those of Boua and Palaioldgos, whose
bearers were descendants or relatives of the men who had
fought the good fight for the liberty of the Peloponnese. But
they had their weaknesses as well as their good qualities, and
their inordinate vanity was the favourite theme of Venetian
comedians, just as Plautus had satirised the boastfulness of
the Miles Gloriosus for the amusement of the ancient Romans.
A Venetian historian said that they were " fonder of booty than
of battle," and Tasso has blamed their rapacity in the line :
" II leggier Greco alle rapine intento ;"
but other poets have sung of their triumphs. Indeed, there
were bards in the ranks of the " wanderers " themselves, and
a whole literature of their poems has been published, mostly
written in a peculiar dialect resembling that now spoken in
Calabria, where many Greek songs are still sung by the
descendants of the numerous Epirote families settled there
after the Turkish Conquest— the third time that Magna
Graecia had received a large Greek population. One of their
1 Sabellico, Dec. III., bk. 10.

THE STRADIOTI 483
number, Marullus, of whom it was said that he " first united
Apollo to Mars," wrote Latin alcaics and sapphics, which,
if not exactly Horatian, are, at any rate, as good as the
ordinary product of the sixth-form intellect. Another, Theo.
dore Spandounis, or Spandugino, more usefully employed his
pen in the composition of a work on the Origin of the
Ottomati Emperors, with the patriotic object of arousing the
sympathy of sixteenth century statesmen for the deliverance
of Greece. The stradioti, were, however, mightier with the
javelin and the mace— their characteristic weapons — than
with the pen. The long javelin, which they carried on
horseback, was a particularly formidable weapon. Shod at
both ends with a sharp iron point, it could be used either way
with equally deadly effect ; and if it failed, the agile horseman
could seize the mace which hung at his saddle bow, and
bring it down on the skull of an opponent.1 Unfortunately,
the blow was rarely struck for Greece, and the skull was
usually that of a Christian, against whom the stradioti had
no personal or national quarrel.
The base ingratitude of Venice sacrificed by the peace of
1479 one of the last independent Latin rulers of Greece.
Leonardo III. Tocco had still preserved his islands of
Cephalonia, Zante, Sta. Mavra, and Ithaka, with the solitary
fortress of Vonitza on the Ambrakian Gulf. During the war
he had acted as an intermediary between the two combatants,
had sent a galley under his brother to the relief of Negro
ponte, and had been included in the alliance between the
republic and the King of Naples against the Turks in 147 1.
During this sixteen years' struggle, his islands had been the
refuge of many thousands from the mainland. No less than
15,000 had fled to Sta. Mavra, and 10,000 Greeks and
Albanians had emigrated from the west of the Morea to
Zante, where they made unfruitful lands blossom like the rose,
and where they formed an almost independent community
under a Venetian official, called by the name of consul,
much as did the Albanian colonies of Sicily in later times.
1 The locus classicus for all that concerns them are volumes vii., viii.,
and ix. of S&has's tUmuuia. 'EXXijvi/rijs 'Ioropids, which contain documents
relating to them from 1464 to 1570, and some of their literary produc
tions. Cf. ibid., iv., pp. lix. and 417, and Cippico, P. Mocenigi Gesta, 343.

484 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
Thus, while the continent was being devastated with fire and
sword, the islands flourished. When Phrantzes visited the
court of Sta. Mavra, where the duke resided, he found all well
there and Leonardo his own master — for he had put to death
the four governors whom his predecessor had appointed over
him. Curita tells us that at the time of the Turkish Conquest
Cephalonia was most fertile : in its two large harbours big
vessels could lie ; and it contained more than 6000 houses,
with a population of 40,000 souls. Zante, at the same time,
had 25,000 inhabitants, and the Spanish historian remarks
that Leonardo's state brought him in more than 12,000 ducats a
year, and was large enough to entitle it to the rank of a
kingdom. The administration of the islands was well
organised ; in Zante and in Cephalonia there was a vice-
regent, or captain, who represented the duke, and who
exercised judicial powers, and we hear of financial officials of
the ducal court named fiaa-Tpofiacrcrdpoi, of procurators, and of
treasurers. The Catholics of Zante had their cathedral of
the Redeemer in the castle, not far from the Franciscan
monastery ; in the Catholic monastery of the Prophet Elias
were the tomb and escutcheon of Carlo I. It was at this
period that the church of St Nicholas on Mount Skopos was
founded, and that Leonardo made various grants to the
Latin bishopric of Cephalonia and Zante, and directed the
bishop to reside in the latter, and more Italian, island. But
he did not limit his favours to the Catholics ; he saw that the
Greeks, if harshly treated, might "prefer the mufti's turban
to the cardinal's hat," and he therefore revived in 1452, the
ancient orthodox bishopric of Cephalonia, which had been a
" widowed see " since the early days of the Orsini, and gave
the bishop jurisdiction over both Zante and Ithaka. He
was to be elected from each of the two larger islands in turn,
and was to be, as of old, a suffragan of the Metropolitan of
Corinth. With his sanction, too, a noble lady named Kleopa
endowed the convent of St John Baptist in Zante.1 But
though he made these concessions, and though he was
sufficiently Hellenised as to use Greek in his documents, he is
said to have been regarded by the islanders as a tyrant.
Their disaffection naturally facilitated the Turkish Conquest.
1 Chidtes, 'loropLKo 'AiropLv-np.ovctp.aTa, ii., 532-3, 628.

FLIGHT OF LEONARDO TOCCO 485
Leonardo III. had married, in 1463, Militza, the grand
daughter of Thomas Palaiologos; but, after her death, he
sought to contract a politic alliance which would ensure
him that protection which Venice seemed unable or unwilling
to afford him. In 1477 he therefore wedded a Neapolitan
lady of high degree, who was niece of King Ferdinand I.
But the effect of this stroke of policy was the very opposite
of what he had expected. Venice had no desire to see the
old Neapolitan influence re-established in the Ionian islands,
and had disregarded Ferdinand's protest that the Tocchi
were his vassals. Accordingly, she revenged herself for this
rapprochement with Naples by leaving Leonardo out of the
treaty of peace. This act of omission cost him his sceptre.
Leonardo was bound by treaty, not only to pay an annual
tribute of 4000 ducats to the sultan, but to make a present
of 500 more every time that a Turkish Sandjakbeg or
provincial governor came to Joannina or Arta. It chanced
at this moment that one of these personages arrived, who
was not yet sixteen years of age, and who had been degraded
from the superior rank of pasha. The Duke of Leucadia
treated this juvenile official, who chanced to be a relative of
his own, with scant consideration, sending him a gift of fruit,
instead of money. The young governor's pride was injured,
and he lodged a complaint at Constantinople, that during
the late war Leonardo had harboured Venetian light cavalry
in Zante, at the same time recalling the fact that he had not
been included in the recent peace. Mohammed was only
too glad of an opportunity to round off his conquests by
the annexation of almost the last Christian state in Greece,
which would serve as a base for his intended attack on Italy.
He therefore ordered Ahmed Pasha of Valona to attack
Leonardo with twenty-nine ships. The dtike did not await
the Turkish invasion. He knew that the Venetians would
not, and the Neapolitans could not, help him, and that his
own subjects detested him. So, long before the pasha
appeared, he collected all his portable valuables, hired a
Venetian merchantman, and fled from Sta. Mavra to the
strongest of his castles, Fort St George, in Cephalonia. But
he did not trust the garrison ; the Turks who were approach
ing got sight of his treasure-ship, so he hastily embarked on

486 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
board another Venetian vessel that lay in the harbour with
his wife, his son Carlo, and his two brothers for Taranto,
whence he proceeded to Naples. Ahmed, saluted by the
Venetian admiral as he sailed down the channel of Corfu,
easily captured Vonitza, the last vestige of the old Despotat
of Epiros, and the islands of Santa Mavra, Cephalonia, and
Ithaka, cutting to pieces all the ducal officials, burning the
castle of Cephalonia, and carrying off most of the peasants
to Constantinople ; there the sultan separated the husbands
from their wives, and mated both sexes with Ethiopians, in
order that they might produce a race of grey slaves. The
pasha then proceeded to attack Zante, but here he was met
by the Venetian admiral, who protested that the island was
inhabited by a colony of Venetian subjects from the Morea —
the recent immigrants — who had hoisted the lion-banner of
St Mark, and who were protected by 500 light horse under
the redoubtable Peter Boua. The matter was referred to
Constantinople — and, meanwhile, the Albanian condottiere
twice defeated the treacherous invaders — but with no other
result than that those islanders who chose were allowed to
leave — a permission of which some thousands availed them
selves. Then the pasha ravaged " the flower of the Levant "
with fire and sword, and destroyed most of its churches
and all its habitations. Thus, in 1479, after an existence of
well-nigh three centuries, the county palatine of Cephalonia,
the picturesque realm of many a mediaeval Odysseus, dis
appeared in the dull monotony of the Turkish Empire. In
Zante, in Ithaka, and in Cephalonia, the Turkish sway was
of very brief duration ; nor was it unpopular with the Greeks,
who seem to have preferred the Turkish officials to their own
bishop ; but in Sta. Mavra, with one scanty interval, it lasted
for over two centuries. The Turks converted the church of
the saint into a mosque ; the island was governed by a bey,
who, after the capture of Lepanto, in 1499, depended on the
pasha of that place; and Ottoman families immigrated to
take the place of those unhappy Leucadians, whom Ahmed
Pasha had sold as slaves for no more than ten soldi apiece.1
1 Miklosich und Miiller, v., 69-72, 260 ; Lunzi, 180-98 ; Remondini,
nf>. eit, 146 ; Serra, Storia di Zante, and Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques,
344-5, 208 ; Sansovino, 197 ; Sathas, i., 269-71 ; vi., 17, 21, 215, and in

RECOVERY OF CEPHALONIA 487
Leonardo III. and his family had meanwhile met with a
friendly reception from King Ferdinand I. of Naples, who
bestowed on him an annuity of 500 florins and the lands of
Briatico and Calimera in Calabria ; in 1480 he arrived with
his son and his brothers in Rome to beg an annuity from
Sixtus IV, who gave him 1000 gold pieces and promised
him 2000 a year — an event still commemorated by one of
the paintings in the Santo Spirito Hospital. After a short
stay in Rome, he returned to Naples and proceeded to plan
the recapture of his dominions. The Tocchi were an enter
prising family, not likely to abandon the idea of reigning in
Greece at the first rebuff. The Roman diarist Volaterranus
tells us that he once heard a bastard son of Leonardo, a
daring young fellow of two-and-twenty, say : " Though we
have lost our rings, we have still got our fingers entire," and
this youth is mentioned as being at Zante in 148 1. In the
same year his father Leonardo and a Neapolitan fleet in vain
summoned the Turkish subassi of Cephalonia and Zante to
surrender ; x but Leonardo's brother Antonio and a band of
Catalan mercenaries about the same time easily recovered
the two islands — for the garrison of the former was weak, and
that of the latter had fled in alarm at his approach. But
Antonio's success aroused the jealousy of Venice, which had
no desire to see the islands in the possession of the King of
Naples or his vassals. The governor of Modon in 1482
dislodged Antonio and his Catalans from Zante, but he
managed to retain Cephalonia till the following year. His
exactions, however, irritated the natives ; his connivance
with corsairs, who made the island their rendezvous, alarmed
the Venetians ; and, in 1483, after a futile attempt to buy
him out, the republic, aided by many of the islanders, pre
pared to attack him. Thereupon, the garrison of the castle
slew him, and opened their gates to the Venetian commander,
who then without opposition made himself master of the whole
island and appointed its first Venetian governor. But, while
'E<rrfd of 1885, No. 506 ; Qurita, vol. v., bk. iv., ch. xxx. ; Phrantzes, 429
(where the corrupt word p.aoTpaCSiaCiv refers to the pLaoTpopLaov&poL, officials
well known in the Ionian islands) ; Predelli, Commemoriali, v., 203, 212 ;
Sabellico, loc. eit. ; Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, ff. 351, 372.
1 Sathas, i., 279 ; vi., 228, 230 ; Faber, Evagatorium, iii., 345-6.

488 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
Leonardo III. asked for the restitution of the two islands from
the sultan, the latter demanded them for himself. Venice in
vain strove to retain Cephalonia, which in 1485 she had to
cede to Bajazet II., till it finally passed into her hands in 1500.
But she succeeded in keeping Zante, on condition of paying an
annual tribute of 500 ducats, and the "flower ofthe Levant"
thenceforth remained Venetian down to the fall ofthe republic.1
The Tocchi made no further efforts to recover their
island domain, for the kings of Naples were now threatened
by France, and had no wish to irritate the sultan into a
second attack upon Otranto. Leonardo III., after going as
Neapolitan ambassador to Spain, where he was welcomed
with royal honours, received the Apulian town of Monopoli,
the home of the first palatine count of Cephalonia, from
Charles VIII. of France in 1495, when the latter invaded
Naples, and perished beneath the ruins of his house in Rome,
under the pontificate of Alexander VI. His eldest son,
Carlo, whom Ferdinand I. had promised to treat as his own
child, and who received both Neapolitan and papal pensions,
after fighting in the armies of the Emperor Maximilian I.,
died at his house in the Via S. Marco, in Rome, under Leo
X. Leonardo's two sons by his second marriage naturally
received favours from the Spanish dynasty, alike at Naples
and in Spain itself. One of them, Ferdinand, or Don
Ferrante, obtained the Lombard castle of Refrancore from
Maximilian I., acted as Spanish ambassador to the court of
Henry VII. of England in 1506 in the affair of the Duke of
Suffolk, and tried to keep the peace between Francois I. and
the Emperor Charles V. in i535_an event commemorated
on his tomb in Madrid. Carlo's descendants claimed to be
treated as princes of the blood, on the ground that they
represented both the Byzantine and Servian dynasties.
They continued to style themselves Despots of Arta until,
in the seventeenth century, they substituted for this title
that of Prince of Achaia,2 perhaps on the ground that
1 J. Volaterranus and Navagero apud Muratori, xxiii., 102-3 (=part
III., 12-13, i" new edition), 1 180-1, 1189 ; Lunzi, 199-219 ; Sdthas, i., 315 ;
vl-> 334, 336; Predelli, Commemoriali, v., 248, 317; Miklosich und
Miiller, Acta et Diplomata, III., 332.
2 Curita, vol. iv., bk. xx., ch. lxxiii. ; vol. v., bk. v., ch. xxvi ; Sena

FATE OF THE TOCCHI 489
Thomas Palaiologos, whose representatives they were by the
female line, had married the heiress of the last Frankish
Prince of Achaia. At Naples they built a palace in the present
Corso Vittorio Emanuele, now known as the Palazzo Troise,
but formerly called by the people the Palazzo del Santo Piede,
from the foot of St Anna, which Leonardo III. had brought
with him from Greece, and which was there preserved. The
family has only recently become extinct, but a room of the
palace still contains a collection of the portraits of the former
palatine counts of Cephalonia, while the family titles and
the sacred foot have passed to Carlo Capece Galeotta, Duke
of Regina, the head of the Neapolitan Legitimists.2 But it
has never been suggested that the Albanian question should
be solved by the restoration of this estimable nobleman to
the seat once occupied by the family at Joannina.
In their islands the Tocchi have left but few memorials
behind them. Their arms, three blue waves on a silver shield,
surmounted by a head of Pegasus, can no longer be seen on
the castle walls and on the bells of the Panagia Anaphonetria
church at Zante,3 while one coin alone still commemorates
their sovereignty in the Ionian Sea.
The twenty years' peace between Venice and the Turks,
which followed the conclusion of this war, was by no means
a period of repose for the Greeks. Scarcely had the late
war ended than a national insurrection broke out in Maina
under the auspices of a guerilla leader, Korkodeilos Kladas,
the prototype of the chieftains who played so great a part
in the War of Independence more than three centuries later.
Kladas had been one of the last of the Peloponnesian
warriors to submit to Mohammed II. at the time of the
Conquest, and the conqueror had thought it politic to bestow
upon him the rich plain of Helos, near Sparta, as a military
fief.4 Helos, according to one theory, had in old times
given to the Helots their name ; but Kladas had more of
apud Hopf, Chroniques, 345 ; Mazzella, Descrittione del Regno di Napoli,
643-8 ; Sansovino, 197 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 325-35 ; II. ,
i., 354-6 ; Gottlob, op. eit, 293. The tomb was destroyed two centuries ago.
2 De la Ville, in Napoli Nobilissima for 1900, pp. 180-1.
3 K. Mazaralces of Zante has kindly examined for me both the bells
and the escutcheon on the castle. Both are Venetian, the latter that of
Donato da Leze, governor 1504-6. 4 Phrantzes, 407.

490 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
the Spartan than of the Helot in his composition. The
Venetians, recognising his abilities during the war, had
appointed him captain of the Greeks in their service, the
so-called stradioti} But the Venetian politicians soon
found, as many governments have discovered since, that
a dashing leader of irregulars, however useful in time of
war, is apt to be an embarrassment in time of peace. Kladas
did not acquiesce in the cession of the region known as
" the arm of Maina " (Brazzo di Maina) to the Turks. He
escaped from Coron to Maina and raised the standard
of revolt, round which several thousand outlaws and
irregulars speedily gathered. The Venetian authorities,
afraid lest Mohammed should suspect them of having
instigated the movement, at once arrested the family of
Kladas, and bade the Mainates hand over the rebel chief
to the Turkish governor of the Morea. In order to secure
the performance of this command, they put a heavy price
upon the head of their former captain. But the Mainates
showed no desire to sell their leader, who signally routed a
Turkish force which was despatched against him. Dis
sensions, however, broke out between him and another
insurgent captain of stradioti, Theodore Boua, and a fresh
Turkish army succeeded in penetrating into parts of Maina
which no Mussulman foot had as yet ever trodden. But
Kladis, though at bay, was not taken. Some Neapolitan
galleys chanced to be lying off the coast, and the outlawed
chieftain, after a last gallant and successful attack upon the
Turks, escaped on board and sailed to Naples, where he
received a warm welcome from the king, who was anxiously
expecting the descent of the Turkish fleet upon the Adriatic
coast of his kingdom. Kladas figures no more in the
history of Greece ; but we find him fighting by the side
of Skanderbeg's son for the Neapolitan cause in Epiros,
and King Ferdinand I. thought so highly of his services
that he granted him, and bade his son continue, a yearly
allowance out of the treasury.2
A fresh insurrection broke out in 1489 ; but a far more
1 Sathas, Mv^/iffa, vii., 20.
2 Ibid., i., 271, 273-9 I vi., 147-50, 154-6, 158, 168, 171, 180, 200,221,
222, 226-9 ! 'EXX^ira 'AvticSora, I., fij'-f*' ; lovpKOKpa.Tovp.iv-tt 'EXXds, 36-45.

SCHEMES OF CHARLES VIII 491
imposing movement now occupied the attention of Europe.
Andrew Palaiol6gos, the elder son of the last Despot of the
Morea, and nephew of the last Emperor of Constantinople,
after endeavouring to persuade the Neapolitan court to aid
him in the reconquest of his father's province, found a readier
hearing from the ambitious King of France, Charles VIII.
In 1494, a solemn meeting took place between him and the
king's representative, Cardinal York, in the church of San
Pietro in Montorio, at Rome, where the former transferred all
his imperial rights and claims to the most Christian king, on
consideration of an annual payment of 4300 gold ducats and
a grant of lands yielding a further annual income of 5000
gold ducats, the cardinal also pledging King Charles to
restore Palaiologos to the Despotat of the Morea, for which
the Despot should yield " a fair, white steed " on St Louis'
Day to the king, in token of homage.1 In the same year
Charles VIII. set out on his famous expedition to Naples,
preceded by a grandiose proclamation, announcing his
intentions against the Turks, and heralded by the verses
of a courtly poet who foretold that he would " pass beyond
the sea, then enter Greece, and by his prowess be acclaimed
King of the Greeks." The news of his plans spread across
the Adriatic, and Thessaly and Epiros awaited the advent of
the conqueror of Naples. The Turks quitted the coasts in
alarm, and the sultan prepared to retire bag and baggage
into Asia.2 In Monemvasia a plot was organised with the
connivance of Andrew Palaiologos, whose name was still
popular there, for delivering that strong Venetian fortress
to his French ally.3 But the triumphs of the French king
had excited the jealousy of Europe ; Venice arrested one of
his principal agents, and forbade all ships to sail from the
Venetian ports for Greece ; and Charles retreated to France,
leaving the unhappy Greeks to pay the penalty of their
credulity with their lives. Such has been the usual result
of foreign intervention in the affairs of Greece. Quicquid
delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.
1 Memoires de PAcademie des Inscriptions, xvii., 539.
2 " Pour se sauver dela en Asie avec tout son train " — the first use of
Mr Gladstone's classic phrase. Ibid., xvii., 567.
3 Sanudo, Diarii, i., 703.

492 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
These recent services of Venice to the sultan did not for
long retard his designs upon her possessions in the Levant.
Excited by her Italian enemies, of whom Lodovico il Moro
of Milan was the worst, he began a fresh Turco-Venetian
war in 1499. Lepanto, her last scrap of territory in
continental Greece, was the objective of both his land and
his sea forces. The population of the Venetian colony on
the Corinthian Gulf had considerably increased, owing to
the immigration of people from Zante, when the Turks had
taken that island ; and, though many had doubtless returned,
now that "the flower of the Levant" was in the hands of
Venice, there were nearly 7000 persons in the town shortly
before it fell. The Lepantines had, however, received little
attention from the Home Government, though their envoys
occasionally journeyed with petitions to the metropolis. For
thirty years no Venetian commissioner had been sent to hold
an enquiry into the administration of this outlandish place ;
and when, at the eleventh hour, in the very year of its
capture, one of those officials at last arrived, he found that
the poor had been much oppressed by the nobles and
citizens, who formed a class apart from the people, and
had established a council of thirty for the management of
public affairs. The colony, as delimitated after the last war,
contained, besides Lepanto itself, four other castles, all in bad
repair, and so carelessly guarded that the garrison of one of
them was represented by one old woman ! Something had,
however, been done for the fortifications of the town. The
late rector had died of his exertions on the defences, and
Sanudo has preserved a contemporary plan of the place, with
its triple ring of walls and the castle at the summit, which
gave it then, as now, the appearance of the papal tiara. Such
was the condition of the city, which a Venetian historian has
called " the strongest bulwark of the Christian peoples." x
The fate of Lepanto was decided, however, not by land,
but by sea. The Venetian fleet, which should have pre
vented the Turkish admiral from entering the Gulf of
Corinth, was commanded by Antonio Grimani, a man who
1 Sathas, Mvripeia, v., 7-12 ; vi., 21S-19 ; Sanudo, Diarii, ii., 165, 292-4,
534, 79° ; Cappelletti, Storia della R. di 1'enezia, vi., 365 ; Lamansky,
Secrets de VI. tat de Venise, 593.

LOSS OF LEPANTO 493
owed his position to his wealth and his connections rather
than to his skill as a seaman. He now repeated the
timorous tactics which, twenty-nine years before, had cost
the republic Negroponte. He allowed the Turkish fleet to
creep up the west coast of the Morea beneath the walls of
the Venetian castle of Navarino, or Zonchio, as the Venetians
still called it. When the Turkish admiral moved thence to
the islet of Prodano, a battle became inevitable. But in this
conflict, which has taken its name from Zonchio, the Venetian
commander, blinded by jealousy of his much abler colleague,
Loredano, took the part of a spectator. In vain Loredano
and Alban d'Armer, another Venetian captain, boarded the
biggest of the Turkish vessels. The intrepid Turk set fire to
his ship ; the flames spread to theirs also ; all three perished,
and the island of Sapienza long preserved the name of Borrak
Reis, the author of this heroic suicide. According to a less pro
bable story, Armer escaped the fire, only to be sawn asunder
by the Turks. At that time the French were the allies of
Venice ; but not even the arrival of a French fleet could stir
the dilatory Venetian admiral into activity. After three
futile engagements, the Turkish galleys entered the Gulf
of Corinth, and the fate of Lepanto was sealed. The
garrison had already repelled seven attacks, and when the
vessels were first sighted, the bells were rung in a joyful
peal, for they thought that it was Grimani, coming to their
relief. The fatal truth turned their rejoicing to despair ;
next day, the Albanians in the town sent seven envoys to
treat with the Turks. These emissaries returned, clad in
cloth of gold, and laden with promises of fiscal exemption
for ten years, and with the guarantee that the lives and
property of all the inhabitants should be spared. Thereupon
the city surrendered, and on the next day, 29th August, the
castle hauled down the lion-banner, which for ninety-two
years had floated over Lepanto. The Turkish soldiers were
forbidden to sack the town ; a careful inventory was made of
everything that it contained ; and the patriotic Archbishop
Saracco, who had stayed to comfort the besieged, was allowed
to go free and tell the sad tale at Venice.1 Great was the
1 Sanudo, Diarii, ii., 1235, 1290-4, 1323, 1339-40 ; iii., 11-14 ; Malipiero,
Annali, 174-80 ; Haji Kalifeh, The History of the Maritime Wars,

494 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
indignation of the Venetians when the news arrived. Public
opinion at once recognised that Grimani, and not Moro, the
governor of Lepanto, was responsible for its loss. Street-
boys went about singing doggerel verses against "Antonio
Grimani, the ruin of the Christians"; the Government
ordered his arrest ; his enemies demanded his head. Mean
while, the wretched man, after a feeble attempt to take
Cephalonia, had retired to Corfu, whence he was brought
as a prisoner to Venice and put upon his trial. Family
influence was used to the utmost to procure his acquittal;
the proceedings were protracted until public indignation
had somewhat cooled ; and in the end his punishment
was banishment to the island of Cherso in the Quarnaro.1
Twenty-one years later the man who had lost Lepanto
became Doge of Venice. A smaller culprit, the commander
of the castle, found to have taken a bribe, was hanged
between the red columns of the Doge's Palace — a striking
example of Juvenal's saying, that one scoundrel obtains the
gallows, another the diadem.2
The sultan now held the key of the Corinthian Gulf, and
he at once gave orders to secure the entrance by the erection
of two forts on either shore, at Rhion and Antirrhion, where
little more than a mile of sea, the so-called "little Dar
danelles," separates Roumeli from the Morea. In three
months' time these forts were finished, and, though damaged
by the fortunes of war, have ever since remained — a
picturesque memorial of Bajazet II.3 But he was not
satisfied with this conquest ; when Venice sued for peace,
he demanded nothing less than the cession of Nauplia and
her two Messenian colonies ; and when she refused, he resolved
to take them by force. In the following year, 1500, he
entered the Morea at the head of a large army, and ordered
19-21 ; Chronicon Venetum, apud Muratori, xxiv., 1 13-14, 117; Bembo,
Rerum Venetarum Historia (ed. 1 551), ff. 100-4; Sansovino, f. 200;
Historia Politica, 56. The best modern account is Admiral Fincati's
La deplorabile Battaglia Navale del Zonchio in the Rivista Marittima
for 1883, pp. 185-213.
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 5, 66, 172-4 ; Malipiero, Annali, 182.
2 Bembo, f. 153 ; Sanudo, Diarii, vi., 85.
3 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 30, 40, 54 ; Chronicon Venetum, xxiv., 128 ; Haji
Kalifeh, Cronologia historica, 1 37.

BAJAZET II. ATTACKS MODON 495
an attack upon Nauplia. Though Palamidi was still un
fortified, the place was defended by four castles — the two old
" fortresses of the Franks and the Greeks," as they were still
called, the Venetian Torrione, and the Castel dello Scoglio,
on the islet of St Theodore, the modern Bourtzi ; 1 the popula
tion of the colony had increased since the Turkish Conquest
of the Morea, for seven years' residence conferred local
citizenship ; and the stradioti, if at times a source of
anxiety to the governor and a cause of friction with the
Turks of Argos, were first-class fighting men. Accordingly,
the Turkish cavalry were defeated, nor was an attack on
the strong castle of Navarino more successful. Bajazet
therefore decided to concentrate his efforts on Modon, the
Port Said of Frankish Greece, the important half-way house
between Venice and the Holy Land, at which every traveller
stopped on his way to the East. A pilgrim who visited it
in 1484 was struck by its thick walls, its deep ditches, and
its strong towers ; ten years later it was being further fortified.
The cathedral of St John, though a mean structure, contained
the venerated remains of St Leo, and the head of St
Athanasius ; the " German House " of the Teutonic Knights
is mentioned by every visitor. The Venetian Government
found, indeed, that the budget of the colony always showed
a deficit ; but Modon was none the less a flourishing place,
where a number of Jewish silk-workers found employment.
It possessed a fine artificial harbour, and an enthusiastic
traveller of this period exclaims that you can find vessels
there " for every part of the world, for Modon is, as it were,
half way to every land and sea." It boasted a busy market
in the suburb, where a colony of gypsies had settled, and
where the Turks of the country made their fortunes by
selling pigs to the Giaours, whom it was worth their while,
therefore, not to harass. No less than 5000 of these animals
were exported to Venice, and much of the wine which passed
for Malmsey in the West really came from Crete or Modon
— for the Turks who now owned the vineyards round
Monemvasia had ceased to plant vines. " The mere thought
of the muscat of Modon delights me," writes worthy Father
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 838, 900 ; Dordtheos of Monemvasia, 472 ;
Lamprinides, 'H HavirMa, 131-2.

496 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
Faber, while as for oranges, they were dirt cheap. Such
was the condition of the ancient Venetian colony on the
eve of its capture.1
Cabriel, the governor, had made preparations for the
Turkish siege. Immediately after the fall of Lepanto, he
had written home for supplies, and the republic had at
once ordered the despatch of men, munitions, and money
for the defence of a place which was so very dear to her
heart. Many small houses outside the town were burned,
so as not to give cover to the enemy, and a dam was built
across the mouth of the harbour, so that only a single ship
could enter at a time. Most of the women were sent to
Crete, and the garrison of 7000 men was in excellent spirits.
For a month Bajazet in vain besieged the town by land
and sea, while 500 cannon played upon its walls. The
sultan was on the point of abandoning the siege, when an
unfortunate act on the part of the garrison delivered the
place into his hands. Four Venetian and Corfiote galleys
suddenly appeared with supplies at the mouth of the
harbour ; the delighted inhabitants rushed down to the
beach to greet their deliverers ; the walls were temporarily
deserted ; and the janissaries seized this opportunity of
entering at the tower of the governor's palace, where their
continuous cannonade had destroyed the fortifications. The
people rushed back to the defence of the town, but it was
too late : in despair, they set fire to their own homes, and
more than half the city was laid in ashes. The sultan
showed no mercy to those who had so bravely withstood
his armies for a month ; the Catholic bishop was slain as
he was addressing his flock ; all the males of twelve years
and upwards were beheaded ; but the governor was spared
to serve as a decoy-duck elsewhere. The rest of the women
and children fled in panic to the Turkish fleet, and were
sold as slaves to every quarter of the Mussulman world.
Thus, on Sunday, 9th August 1 500, Modon fell, after having
belonged to Venice for nearly 300 years. Delighted with his
prize, Bajazet promoted the janissary who had first mounted
1 Faber, Evagatorium, i., 39, 165; iii., 314, 331, 333, 337, 338, 343;
Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, ff. 37, 55, 125, 1S2-3, 351 ; Casola, Viaggio, 37-8;
SiJthas, i., 295.

LOSS OF MODON AND CORON 497
the walls to be a sandjak, or provincial governor, and on
the first Friday after the capture, when the fire was at last
spent, rode to the desecrated cathedral, there to offer up
his thanksgivings to the God of battles, to whom, as he
confessed when he gazed at the deep moat, he owed the
conquest of this strong city. No time was lost in repairing
the walls, and every village in the Morea was ordered to
send five families to repopulate Modon.1
The fall of Modon brought with it the loss of Navarino
and Coron. Contarini, the commander of Navarino, as soon
as he was convinced that Modon had really been taken, sur
rendered that strong fortress — an act of cowardice which
cost him his head. The punishment was not undeserved,
for the place had provisions for three years, and 3000 men
to defend it. The authorities of Coron wished to hold out ;
but they were overruled by the terrified inhabitants, who
were promised favourable conditions if they yielded, and
death if they resisted. Their lives were indeed spared, but
they were driven into exile, and the revenues of both Coron
and Modon were thenceforth dedicated to Mecca. At Coron,
too, the sultan prayed in what had so long been the Catholic
church to Allah, and then set out to besiege Nauplia, taking
with him the governor of Modon as a proof that that colony
had succumbed. Cabriel, however, escaped, and another
Venetian from Coron, who had held office at Nauplia, fled
on horseback into that city and urged the citizens, whom
he had been sent to convince of the folly of resistance, to
resist to the last. A brave messenger from Monemvasia, at
the risk of impalement, which had befallen two of his com
rades, stripped off his clothes and swam across the harbour
with letters announcing the speedy arrival of the Venetian
fleet. The mettle of the garrison and the strength of the forti
fications caused Bajazet to desist from the difficult enterprise
and retire, content with the capture of Vatika, to Adrianople.
The Venetian colony in the Argolid was saved, but
great was the grief of the metropolis when the news of
Modon's loss arrived. The Council of Ten burst into tears
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 574, 602, 620, 637, 688-94, 717-18, 733 ; Sdthas,
i., 316-18 ; Sansovino, f. 201 ; Bembo, ff. 1 10-14 ; Historia Politica, 56-8 ;
Chronicon breve, 522 ; Haji Kalifeh, The Maritime Wars, 21-3. 2 I

498 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
when the sad tidings were announced to them, and the
whole city was overcome with sorrow. Nor was this
remarkable; for Modon, as the republic informed the
Princes of Europe, had been "the receptacle and special
nest of all our galleys, ships, and vessels on their way to the
Levant." Together with Coron, it had been the earliest
acquisition of the republic on the mainland of Greece, and
the Venetian archives contain a whole literature concerning
the administration of these two Messenian colonies. The
dependent castle of Navarino was, indeed, almost immedi
ately recaptured by a clever ruse, but retaken by Kemal
Reis in the following year ; and both Modon and Coron,
thirty years later, succumbed for an instant to Christian
fleets. But the flag of the Evangelist never waved again
from their towers till the day when Morosini, imitating
Bajazet II., went in state to attend a thanksgiving service
in the consecrated mosque of Modon. Zante took its place
as a port of call, while the survivors found a home in the
newly-won Venetian island of Cephalonia.1
The republic had several times attempted to recover that
island, which she had been forced to surrender in 1485.
Thanks to the efforts of Pope Alexander VI, King Ferdinand
of Spain was induced to send his famous captain, Gonzalo
de Cordoba, to her aid. The Spanish and Venetian fleets,
the latter under Pesaro, were designed for the recovery of
Modon ; but, as timber was required for the necessary siege
engines, they sailed to Cephalonia, an island now singularly
barren but then covered with forests, which have given its
name to the Black Mountain. To provide useful employment
for the soldiers while the timber was being cut, the two
commanders resolved to attack the fortress of St George,
which had been the favourite residence of the Tocchi, and
was still the capital of the island. The castle stands upon a
steep and high mountain, and was defended by 300 men.
But the besiegers erected a rampart high enough to enable
them to command the position ; a friendly Greek kept them
supplied with provisions, and on 24th December 1500 the
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 688, 719, 771, 811, 833, 901-2 ; iv., 328 ; Bembo,
ff. 115, 117, 123 ; Sansovino, f. 201 ; Sathas, i., 318 ; vii., 67 ; Dordtheos
of Monemvasia, toe. eit.

CEPHALONIA AND STA. MAVRA 499
capital of Cephalonia fell. An inscription was immured over
the main entrance to commemorate an event which placed
the island for well-nigh three centuries under Venetian rule,1
and the loyal Cephalonian and his descendants were rewarded
with perpetual exemption from all dues.
Another of the Ionian islands, that of Sta. Mavra, now
passed, but only temporarily, into the possession of the
republic. The Spanish captain had sailed back to Sicily
after the capture of Cephalonia, and Pesaro had contented
himself for the moment with burning the Turkish arsenal at
Preveza ; but in the following summer, aided by a papal
fleet under the command of his namesake, the Bishop of
Paphos, he attacked the sole Ionian island which was still
Turkish. Sta. Mavra had recently received a considerable
number of Jewish refugees from Spain, who were always
welcomed by the Turks,2 and it was a lair of corsairs who
preyed on the shipping of the Venetian islands. Leonardo
Tocco had strengthened the old fortifications, which were
defended by a considerable Turkish garrison. But the papal
commander occupied the shallows which separated the town
from the mainland, and the Venetian admiral bombarded the
castle with such vigour that, after six days, the Turks con
sidered the desirability of surrendering. While they were
deliberating, the besiegers entered, and thus, on 30th August
1502, Sta. Mavra fell. At first sight it seemed to be a
valuable prize ; a large sum of money belonging to the
sultan was found in the treasury, a number of captive
Mussulmans became slaves, and strategically it was " a beam
in the Turk's eye," " the key of Corfu, Cephalonia, and
Zante." But its loss so infuriated Bajazet II. that he refused
to make the peace which Venice was anxious to obtain, unless
it were restored to him, and a party in the island was
intriguing with the Turks, with whom the natives had
intermarried. The republic reluctantly consented to sur
render a place which she had begun to fortify, and a year
and a day after its capture the first Venetian governor
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 1274, 1639 (who gives the date, which was
wrongly copied by Hammer, ii., 611). Cf. Bembo, ff. 1 15-17 ; Sansovino,
f. 201 ; Lunzi, Della Condizione, 222-7 ; Sdthas, v., 155-6.
2 Risposta di Jacopo Grandi, 22.

500 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
handed over Sta. Mavra to the Turks. Nearly two centuries
were to elapse before the lion-banner again flew from the old
castle of the palatine counts.1
The results of the war had been disastrous to Venice ;
the tomb of her victorious admiral, in the church of the
Frari still magniloquently records his Greek triumphs, and
portrays the two captured Ionian castles ; but her sole gain
was Cephalonia; and the peace of 1502-3 left her nothing
but Nauplia and Monemvasia, with their respective appurten
ances, in the Morea. She failed to retain Maina, which the
son of Kladas had won for her;2 and against the sack of
Megara by the men of Nauplia she had to set the temporary
capture of the castle of ^Egina by the redoubtable Kemal
Reis and the carrying off of 2000 ^Eginetans — a foretaste
of what that fair island was to suffer a generation later.3
For more than thirty years Greece ceased to be the
battlefield between Venice! and the sultans, for both parties
were occupied elsewhere ; the treaty of 1 502-3 was renewed 4
in 1513 and 1521, and the Venetian colonies were thus able
to enjoy a long period of repose before their final catastrophe.
From the petitions of those communities and the reports of
their governors we are able to form a clear idea of their
condition during this last generation of Venetian rule.
Peace did not bring them plenty, for both Nauplia and
Monemvasia bitterly complained that the restriction of their
respective territories after the last war had deprived them of
the lands which they had been wont to sow. All their
supplies of corn had now to be imported from the Turkish
possessions, and it was thus in the power of the Turks to
starve them out by simply closing the frontier, while corsairs
rendered dangerous all traffic by sea, and many a fisherman
of Nauplia was carried off and put up for ransom at the old
Frankish castle of Damala, now included within the Turkish
boundary.5 The total population of the town of Nauplia was
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iv., 313, 315, 394, 645, 667, 781 ; v. 46-7, 85 ;
Bembo, f. 141 ; Sansovino, f. 202 ; Predelli, Comnumoriali, vi., 65-6 ;
Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 344-54.
2 Ibid., iii., 17, 730; Sathas, v., 152.
3 Ibid., iv., 83, 604 ; Bembo, f. 114.
1 Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 360 ; Predelli, op. eit, vi., 131.
6 Sathas, iv., 197, 220, 230 ; vi., 247-8, 254 ; Sanudo, Diarii, xxix., 482.

STATE OF NAUPLIA 501
nearly 1 0,000, while the whole colony, which comprised the
castles of Thermisi and Kastri, contained 13,299 souls.1 In
1 5 19, its government was reformed; the system of having
two rectors was found to lead to frequent quarrels ; and the
republic thenceforth sent out a single official styled "bailie
and captain," assisted by two councillors, who performed the
duties of camerlengo by turns. The bailie's authority
extended over the rector of ^Egina, whereas Kastri had been
granted to two families, the Palaiologoi and the Alberti,
whose administration was the cause of much discontent.2
Early in the sixteenth century a democratic wave passed over
the colony. Society at Nauplia was divided into three classes
— nobles, citizens, and plebeians ; and it had been the ancient
usage that the nobles alone should hold the much-coveted
local offices, such as that of judge of the inferior court and
inspector of weights and measures. The populace now
demanded its share of these good things, and the Home
Government ordered that one at least of the three inspectors
should be a man of the people. The democracy managed,
too, to make its influence felt on the Municipal Council of
Thirty, which met with closed doors, to the no slight scandal
of the governor, who complained to Venice of such irregular
proceedings. In order to spare the pockets of the community,
it was ordered that appeals from his decision should lie to
Crete, instead of Venice. Economically, the colony paid its
way, though for twenty years the inhabitants were granted
exemption from local dues as the reward of their fortitude in
the late war ; an octroi duty on all foreign animals, a tax on
donkeys, and a duty on the salt-pans of Thermisi, were the
chief imposts ; but a serious drain on the budget was the
bakshish paid to the Turkish governor of the Morea and to
the voivode who was stationed at the frontier.3 The fortifica
tions, too, were allowed to fall into disrepair, and were
inadequately guarded. The low sea-wall had never been
completed ; the hill of Palamidi was still unenclosed ; the
"castle of the Greeks" on Itsh Kaleh was unguarded and
almost in ruins ; and it was difficult to get men to garrison the
1 Report of 1531, Sdthas, vi., 249.
'J Ibid., iv., 220 ; vi., 246, 254 ; Sanudo, Diarii, xxvii., 315, 338, 358.
3 Sathas, iv., 195, 198, 200, 203, 215, 219, 223 ; vi., 245-6, 252.

502 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
island fortress where the executioner now resides. The
peasant-soldiers of Nauplia used sometimes to leave the
" castle ofthe Franks " with only half a dozen men in it, while
they went out to earn their living, for they were badly paid ;
and racial jealousies divided the stradioti, Greeks refusing to
serve under Albanians, and Albanians under any chief who
was not of their own clan. The fact that both races had
their own "chief priest," or protopapds, would not tend
towards greater union, while the presence of a Catholic
bishop — for Nauplia now figured as an episcopal see — must
have increased the causes of discord. Worst of all, the Turks
were always in and out of the town, and knew perfectly well
all the weak points of a strategic position, which a high
Venetian officer had declared to be " most important not
only to Venice but to all Christendom." l
.-Egina had always been exposed to the raids of corsairs,
and was cursed with oppressive governors during these last
thirty years of Venetian rule. The island was remote and
lonely ; Venetian nobles were as little anxious to go there as
are modern Italian officials to go to Sardinia ; and we may
thus explain the high proportion of bad rulers at this period
of its history. Three rectors of ^Egina were severely punished
for their acts of injustice, and we have a graphic account of
the reception given by the suffering ^Eginetans to the captain
of Nauplia, who came to hold an enquiry into the administra
tion of one of these delinquents. We are told how all the
people came out on to the square of Palaiochora with loud
shouts of " Justice ! Justice ! Marco ! Marco ! " ; how they
had given a sack full of documents, setting forth their
privileges, to the rector, and how he had returned the precious
papers all mice-eaten and in pieces ; how he had spurned
their ancient right to elect an islander to keep one key of
the money-chest ; and how they threatened to leave the
island in a body with the commissioner, unless he avenged
their wrongs. A Latin inscription over the door of the
Latin church of St George at Palaiochora, the arms of the
visiting councillor of Nauplia, and a jug below, still record
the last of these enquiries, in 1533. The inscription has a
1 Sathas, vi., 244-5, 25°-i I Sanudo, Diarii, vii., 654 ; xi., 138 ; xxvi.,
457, 476 ; xl., 338 ; Lamansky, 608,

STATE OF MONEMVASIA 503
pathetic interest, for it is the last memorial of mediaeval
-Egina. Four years later the mountain capital was a smoking
mass of houses and ruined churches.1
Monemvasia had suffered a long blockade during the
last war ; she had lost her outlying castles of Rampano and
Vatika, her famous vineyards and her cornfields were in
Turkish hands. But she remained what she had been for
centuries — an impregnable fortress, the Gibraltar of Greece.
The Venetians renewed the system, which had prevailed
under the Despots of the Morea, of devoting one of the local
imposts to the repair ofthe walls ; the Venetian podesta seems
to have been a popular official ; and the republic had wisely
confirmed the special privileges granted by the Byzantine
emperors to the church and community of this favoured city.
Both a Greek metropolitan and a Latin archbishop continued
to take their titles from Monemvasia, and the most famous
of these prelates was the eminent scholar, Marcus Mousouros.
In 1524, however, despite the thunders of the oecumenical
patriarch, the Greek and the Italian arranged between them
selves that the former should retain the see of Monemvasia
and that the latter should take a Cretan diocese.2 The
connection between the great island and this rocky peninsula
was now close. The Greek priests of Crete, who had
formerly gone to Modon or Coron for consecration, after the
loss of those colonies came to Monemvasia ; the Cretan
exchequer contributed to the expenses of the latter, and
judicial appeals from the podesta of Malmsey lay to the
colonial authorities at Candia, instead of being remitted to
Venice ; for, as a Monemvasiote deputation once plaintively
said, the expenses of the long journey had been defrayed by
pawning the chalices of the churches. Even now Monemvasia
is remote from the world ; in those Venetian days she was
1 Sathas, v., 39-40 ; Sanudo, Diarii, vii., 258; xvi., 651, 655-7; xvii.,
79-80; xviii., 98; xix., 343; xx., 150, 182; xxii., 468, 529; xxiv., 49;
xxxii., 402 ; lviii., 556. The inscription has, I think, never been published.
I copied it on the spot. " Tempore syndicatus clariss. domini Antonii
Barbara Dignissimi Consiliarii Nauplii Romanie Die Prima Aprilis
MDXXXIll." The jug, not a Venetian emblem, was perhaps added by
Barbarossa, the jug-maker's son.
2 "Stas "EXKtivop.v-fip.iav, III., 56; Sanudo, Diarii, vii., 714; xxiii., 536;
xxiv., 669 ; xxv., 64 ; xxix., 402 ; xxxi., 227 ; xxxv., 363 ; xliv., 475 ; lv., 296.

504 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
seldom visited, not only because of her situation, but because
of the fear which ships' captains had of her inhabitants.1
The long peace was interrupted in 1531 by a sudden
descent upon Modon by the Knights of St John. Driven
from Rhodes by the Turks eight years earlier, the Knights
had not abandoned the idea of settling in the Levant, and
the Venetian island of Cephalonia,2 and the Turkish fortress
of Modon were alternately suggested as suitable places of
abode. Even when Malta had been granted to them by the
Emperor Charles V, they continued to plan the capture of
the former Venetian station in Messenia, which in their hands
would have become an outpost of Christendom. Two Greeks,
who had formerly been servants of the Order in Rhodes, but
who now held posts at the harbour of Modon, entered into
the plot ; a flotilla was equipped under the command of Fra
Bernardo Salviati, prior of Rome and nephew of Pope
Clement VII. ; and two schooners were laden with planks in
such a manner as to conceal a number of armed men below.
One of these innocent-looking vessels was entrusted to
Yanni Skandales, a Greek from Zante and son of the friendly
customs' official at Modon ; and its Greek crew was disguised
as janissaries. While the rest of the squadron remained
behind the island of Sapienza, the schooners went on in
advance to Modon. The two confederates kept their word ;
the harmless merchants and the false janissaries were allowed
to land, and the latter spent the night in the tower on the
mole, of which Skandales's father was governor, pledging the
garrison in the excellent local vintage. To secure or slay the
sleepy and drunken Mussulmans was easy ; the tower was
captured ; the soldiers landed from the two schooners ; and
the town was soon entirely in their possession, except the
former palace of the Venetian governor above the land gate,
whither the rest of the garrison had hastened. The Knights
were, however, slow in arriving from Sapienza to complete
the capture ; so that, before their cannon had made the least
impression on the palace, a large Turkish force was reported
to be approaching. Accordingly, after sacking the place, they
1 Sanudo, Diarii, xi., 349 ; xxxiii., 366 ; Sdthas, iv., 224, 227, 229, 234 ;
Lamansky, 059 ; Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, f. 112.
3 Sathas, vi., 278.

DORIA RECAPTURES CORON 505
sailed away with 1600 captives. Their adventure, reported
to the pope, it is interesting to note, by one of the Acciajuoli,
was welcomed in Rome, but caused much annoyance to
Venice, anxious not to provoke the anger of the sultan, who
might hold her responsible for the acts of her Ionian subjects.
Accordingly, as a measure of precaution, Skandales was
banished from Zante.1
In the following year the Greek coasts were exposed to
a much more serious visitation. War broke out between
Charles V. and the sultan, and the former, more anxious to
damage the Turks than to benefit the Greeks, the exploits
of whose ancestors left him cold, despatched the famous
Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria, to the Levant. Doria
gained a series of rapid successes. The allied imperial,
papal, and Maltese squadron, with the aid of the Greek
inhabitants, speedily captured Coron ; 2 a Te Deum of triumph
was sung in the reconsecrated cathedral, and at the moment
of the elevation of the Host the standards of the three
confederates were run up on the walls. Mendoza, a Spaniard
and a Knight of Malta, was left behind with a garrison of his
countrymen, Acciajuoli was appointed civil governor, and
Doria sailed away to Patras, whose garrison capitulated and
whose inhabitants he pillaged. He completed his cruise by
an attack on the two castles which Bajazet II. had built on
either side of the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth ; the castle
of the Morea surrendered ; but the garrison of the other fired
the powder-magazine and perished beneath the ruins of the
fortress. Nothing but harm accrued to the Greeks from Doria's
expedition, and they had, indeed, good reason to pray for
deliverance from their deliverers. Deluded by his promises
and elated at his victories, they rose and4 slaughtered their
Turkish masters, who retaliated upon them as soon as
the Genoese admiral had set sail. Charles V. soon realised
that he could not permanently keep an isolated station in
1 Sanudo, Diarii, liv., 603-8 ; lv., 9-13, 25, 49, 85 ; Spandugino apud
Sithas, ix., 193-4 ; Bosio, III., 75-6, 103-7 ; Codice Diplomatico Gerosoli-
¦mitaTW, 1 1., 204.
2 There is a curious painting of this event in the Archivio at Siena, on
one ofthe covers ofthe old Treasury registers, or tavolette.

506 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
Messenia, far from his own dominions and exposed to
continual Turkish attacks. So, after once relieving the
beleaguered garrison, he endeavoured to transfer to Venice
or to the Knights of Malta the responsibility of its defence.
The former, with characteristic prudence, declined to accept
her former colony, just as she had refused the offer of the
castles formerly dependent upon Monemvasia. The latter
knew that they could never maintain it without Venetian aid,
and they knew, too, that the selfish republic would never
tolerate the intrusion of another Christian power in the
Morea, and had refused to co-operate in the capture or support
of Coron. Meanwhile, the Turks were keeping up a con
tinuous blockade, and hunger and plague were reducing the
strength of the garrison. At last, in 1534, the emperor
resolved to abandon it and remove its inhabitants to his own
dominions. This compulsory emigration of the people,
mostly Albanians — for the Greeks had been transferred to
Cephalonia thirty years before — recalls the cession of Parga
by Great Britain three centuries later. They sought refuge
in the churches, and implored the Divine Providence to avert
from them the miseries of exile ; but they found that they
must either submit to the Turk or obey the commands of
the emperor. Many died of plague on the voyage to Sicily,
while the survivors were attacked by the terrified population
of Messina on landing, and driven into the lazzaretto like
pariahs. So wretched was their condition, that the emperor
granted to those of them who took up their abode in Naples
a yearly allowance and valuable fiscal exemptions, as well as
the possession of the Greek church of SS. Peter and Paul,
which had been founded at Naples by one of the Palaiologoi
more than twenty years earlier. In return, they entered his
service as stradioti, and displayed in other lands a valour
which might, under better auspices, have saved their beloved
home from the Turk. Others settled in Calabria and the
Basilicata, others again in Sicily, and an Albanian monk at
the Greek monastery of Grotta Ferrata, near Rome, told the
author that most of the Albanians from his part of Sicily
were the descendants of these exiles from Coron. One Greek,
who had specially distinguished himself in the siege and
defence of the place, received from the emperor the barren

DEVASTATION OF .EGINA 507
honour of knighthood, and a grant of the villages of Leondari
and St George of Skorta, " whensoever it should please God
to drive out the Turks." x
In 1S37^ Suleyman the Magnificent declared war upon
Venice, and the Turkish fleet, under Khaireddin Barbarossa,
after a vain attempt to take Corfu, and after ravaging the
Ionian islands, in October fell upon ^Egina,then well inhabited.
No considerations of sentiment stayed the hands of the red-
bearded pirate. His men scaled the high rock in the interior
of the island, which resembles the Akropolis of Athens, and
on which, from fear of corsairs, the mediaeval capital was
built. On the fourth day, Palaiochora fell ; the town was
destroyed ; but the Latin church, which we saw mentioned
four years earlier, was spared ; the grown-up men were
butchered, and the governor with one of the Caopena, who
had come to the rescue of his ancestors' island, and more
than 6000 women and children were carried off as slaves. So
thoroughly did the Turks accomplish their hideous work, that
when Baron de Blancard touched at ^Egina with a French
fleet soon afterwards, he found not a single soul on the
island.2 Few now set foot in the abandoned streets of this
town of churches, where the scanty inhabitants of the
scattered hamlets still worship, save when, once a year, the
pious islanders assemble round the marvellous spring in the
church of Our Lady to keep the festival in honour of the
Virgin's birth. From below, the mountain side seems covered
with buildings, and the castle stands out from the flat summit
of the rock, just as if the Venetian sentinels were still on the
watch for pirates in the Saronic Gulf below. Remains of
1 Guazzo, Historie,S. 124, 128-30; P. Jovius, Historice sui temporis,
ii., ff. 116-18, 126-8; Bosio, III., 114-16, 125-7, 132; Sanudo, Diarii, lvii.,
94-5, 182, 227, 668, 678 ; Paruta, Historia Venetiana, i., 328, 333, 339 ;
Mustoxidi, "Ek\-qvoiMvijp.wv, 147-9 ; Duplessis, In Difesa dei Nazionali Greci
per la Chiesa di rito Greco . . . di Napoli. I could not find in the
Greek Church at Naples the tombs mentioned by Mustoxidi ; but there
is one of a stradioto, who died in 1607.
2 Paruta, i., 381 ; Maurocenus, Historia Veneta, 182; A. Cornaro, Historia
di Candia, II. , f. 92 ; Charriere, Negocialions de la France dans le Levant,
i., 372 ; Haji Kalifeh, The Maritime Wars, 58 ; Sdthas, ix., 199 ; Hopf,
Karystos (tr. Sardagna), 72 ; Dordtheos of Monemvasia, 437. Cf. my
article on Palaiochora in the Morning Post of 23rd December 1904.

508 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
frescoes still cover the crumbling walls of the old Venetian
chapel within the castle walls, where the last Venetian
governor, warned that Barbarossa's pennant had been
sighted, flung himself down on his knees and prayed the
preoccupied saints to save this outpost of the republic from
the enemy. No site in Greece is more lovely, none more
mediaeval. Palaiochora belongs to a world very different
from ours ; it tells us of what life — and death — must have
been like in the last years of Venetian rule in the small
Greek islands.
Meanwhile, the Turks, acting under orders from Kassim
Pasha, were striving to capture the last two Venetian colonies
in the Morea. The operations before Nauplia began on 14th
September, and it was soon obvious that the Greek and
Albanian stradioti intended to make a desperate defence.
Two successful sorties as far as Argos adorned the walls of
Nauplia with many a Turkish head, and even when Kassim
himself arrived, his men made little impression on the stout
hearts of the garrison. At the two outlying fortresses of
Kastri and Thermisi he was more successful ; the defenders
of Kastri preferred slavery to being burned alive inside the
castle, and the four Palaiol6goi, whose fief it was, were
beheaded at Argos. Upon this Thermisi surrendered; but
neither of these disasters* diminished the heroic courage of
the men of Nauplia. Fresh supplies were thrown into the
town, but the lack of water began to be severely felt — for
the cisterns were running dry — and a party which sallied
forth to fetch water from the wells near Mount Elias, was
surprised by the Turks, and Vettore Busichio, the bold
captain of the light Albanian horse, was mortally wounded.
Kassim now occupied the hill of Palamidi, which the
Venetians had neglected to fortify, and which commanded
the town, and moved his headquarters from Argos to Tiryns,
and thence to the church of St Friday, only a thousand paces
from Nauplia. But, in spite of the heavy missiles discharged
from the heights of Palamidi, where the convict prison now
stands, by a big Turkish gun, which the besieged nicknamed
"bone-breaker" with a humour worthy of Ladysmith, the
place held out, and further reinforcements arrived. Kassim
next dug trenches close up to the edge of the moat ; but the

PEACE OF 1540 509
men whom he placed there fell victims to a bold night attack.
At last, when the siege had lasted fourteen months, he retired
with the bulk of his army to Argos, leaving a small garrison
on Palamidi, which was speedily captured by the Venetians
and its newly-erected bastions destroyed. Desultory skir
mishes went on during the spring of 1539, but Nauplia, like
Monemvasia, proved too strong for the Turks to take.1
Venice was no longer alone in her struggle against the
sultan, for Pope Paul III. had at last succeeded in forming
a league between the Emperor Charles V, the republic, and
himself. The fleet of the three allies assembled at Corfu,
and sailed to Preveza, where Barbarossa had taken up his
position. There, at the mouth of the Ambrakian Gulf, where,
sixteen centuries before, the fate of the Roman world had
been decided, the hostile navies met. Unfortunately, the
command of the imperial vessels had been entrusted to
Andrea Doria, who showed, as was natural in a Genoese,
little enthusiasm in the cause of Venice. Owing to his
timorous tactics, the victory rested with Barbarossa, and the
rapprochement between Charles V. and the French monarch
broke up the league. Venice had no option but to make
such terms with the sultan as she could obtain. Humiliating,
indeed, was the peace of 1540; Venice ceded Nauplia and
Monemvasia — her two last possessions in the Morea ; 2 and
Admiral Mocenigo was sent to break as best he could to her
loyal subjects the sad news that the republic for whom they
had fought so well and had endured so many privations had
abandoned their homes to the Turk. The Venetian envoy,
if we may believe the speech which Paruta puts into his
mouth, repeated to the weeping people the ancient adage,
ubi bene, ibi patria, and pointed out to them that they would
be better off in a new abode less exposed ^ than their native
cities had been to the Turkish peril. In November a
Venetian fleet arrived in the beautiful bay of Nauplia and
off the sacred rock of Monemvasia, to remove the soldiers,
the artillery, and all the inhabitants who wished to live
under Venetian rule. Then the banner of the Evangelist
1 Guazzo, ff. 205-8 ; Dordtheos of Monemvasia, 437-8 ; Paruta, i.,
379-8o, 391-2, 412, 439.
2 Predelli, Commemoriali, vi., 236, 238.

510 THE VENETIAN COLONIES
was lowered, the keys of the two last Venetian fortresses in
the Morea were handed to Kassim Pasha, and the receipts for
their transfer were sent to Venice.1
The inhabitants of the two cities had been loyal to
Venice — for not only had the stradioti fought like heroes,
but no less heroic had been the conduct of the 7000
Nauplians who had died of hunger and enteric rather than
surrender — and Venice was loyal to them. The first idea of
transporting the Monemvasiotes to the rocky island of
Cerigo was abandoned, in deference to the eloquent protests
of the metropolitan, and lands were assigned to the exiles
in the more fertile colonies of the republic. A commission
of five nobles was appointed to consider the claims and
provide for the settlement of the stradioti from Nauplia and
Monemvasia, and this commission sat for several years, for
the claimants were numerous, and not all genuine.2 Some,
like the ancient Monemvasiote family of Daimonoyannes,
former lords of Cerigo, received lands in Crete,3 where the
last " chief priest " of Nauplia and some of the Athenian De'
Medici, who had so long been settled there, also found a
home; one of the latter clan returned to the land of his
ancestors, and was glad to accept a small post at Verona.4
The Caopena, whose father, captured at ^Egina, perished in a
Turkish dungeon, settled at Venice, where a century later the
family became extinct.5 Others were removed to Corfu, where
they formed an integral part of the Corfiote population, and
where the name of the stradioti is still preserved in a locality
of the island ; while others again were transplanted to Cepha
lonia, Cyprus, or Dalmatia. Not a few of them were soon,
however, smitten with homesickness ; they sold their new
lands, and returned to be Turkish subjects at Nauplia and
Monemvasia.8 Thus fell the last Latin colonies in the Morea For
nearly a century and a half the Lion of St Mark did not own
1 Paruta, i., 45 1 -3.
2 Lami, Delicia Eruditorum, xv., 203; Sathas, viii., 310-13, 320-1,
335, 344, 377-8, 441-3.
3 Ibid., 342, 413, 450, 454 ; Sansovino, Cronologia del Mondo, f. 185.
' Sdthas, viii., 370, 451, 455.
0 Ibid, 434, 457- r' Ibid., 396.

VENICE DISAPPEARS FROM THE MOREA 511
a single inch of soil on the mainland of Greece, where since
the early years of the thirteenth century he had constantly
retained a foothold. But the Venetian fortifications of
Nauplia, with here and there a winged lion or a dated tablet,
remained to remind the rayah of the Venetian days ; and
the pictures and churches of Monemvasia, the encircling
walls, the quaint Italian chimneys, and the well-head up in
the castle, which bears the date of 15 14, the arms of the
republic and of her last podesta, Antonio Garzoni, and the
initials and escutcheon of Sebastiano Renier, who had also
her representative, still speak to us of this first Venetian
occupation.1 With the disappearance of the Venetian flag from the
mainland, the Greeks lost the refuge which they had been
accustomed to find since the Turkish Conquest in the
Venetian settlements. Most of their leaders had, like
Michael Ralles, found a shelter beneath the banner of St
Mark, and it was there that the klephts, who afterwards
played so great a part in the liberation of Hellas, first
organised their raids. That the Greeks at that period,
whatever might have been the case in the eighteenth century,
preferred Venetian to Turkish rule, seems obvious from the
alacrity with which they flew to arms at the bidding of their
Latin allies. Up to 1540 the republic was always at hand to
suggest, if not to urge, the possibilities of a successful rising,
and the Venetian settlements maintained the Western
standard of culture in the midst of the general stagnation
which fell upon Turkish Greece. At the same time, the
flight of the winged lion from the Morea meant for that
sorely-tried land a respite from the almost constant turmoils,
to which it had been exposed since the removal of Guillaume
de Villehardouin's strong hand first plunged the peninsula
into anarchy. Under the Turks there was at last a dull
uniformity, which was not without the advantage that it
consolidated the various elements of the nation.
1 J. H. S., xxvii., 240.

CHAPTER XV
corfij (1214-1485)
We have described in the previous chapters the rise and fall
of the various states of continental Greece, whose history
occupied the period between the Latin and the Turkish
Conquests. We must now turn to the two principal island
possessions of the Franks, omitting, for the sake of clearness,
those minor places in the ^gean whose fortunes do not
affect the main narrative. These two insular states are the
duchy of Naxos, and the colony of Corfu. In the history
of both, Venetian enterprise played a conspicuous part
Both survived, though for different periods of time, the
establishment of Turkish rule on the mainland, and Corfu,
the most important of the Ionian islands, was practically
never subjected to the Mussulman yoke. But in other
respects the careers of the two exhibit widely different
results of Latin rule in the Levant.
The island of Corfu, the loveliest spot in all Greece, has
had a history separate, down to very recent times, from the
rest of the country. Even the other Ionian islands, except
the little island of Paxo, lie far away from the ancient home
of the Phseacians. For well-nigh three centuries its history
was quite distinct from theirs, and it was not till after the
Turkish Conquest of the mainland of Greece, that they were
all united under the Venetian banner, which waved over
them until the downfall of the republic in 1797.
We saw in the second and third chapters how, after two
Venetian attempts to colonise Corfu, the island was captured
by Michael I., Despot of Epiros, about the year 12 14, with
whose continental dominions it remained united for half-a-

THE ANGELI AND THE CHURCH 513
century. We saw, too, how one Despot after another ratified
and extended the privileges of the Corfiote Church, which
they wisely recognised as the bulwark of their rule over the
islanders, and which furnished them, from the pen of the
metropolitan, George Bardanes, with plausible arguments
against the theologians of the Nicene Empire. Under the
sway of the bastard Michael II., the island was specially
favoured. An usurper, he was bound to conciliate his
subjects, and we accordingly find him lavishing one privi
lege after another upon the fortunate Corfiotes. At the end
of 1236, immediately after he had made himself master of the
island, he not only confirmed their former rights, but made
them and their villains practically exempt from taxation and
customs duties ; J ten years later, by two successive golden
bulls, he freed the thirty-two priests of the town of Corfu,
who formed a religious corporation, from all forced labour,2
and bestowed similar privileges upon the thirty-three country
popes, who were consequently described as the " freemen " (or
Aev6epia>Tat), forming a regular caste, into which none but
members of their own families could enter.3 From the
scanty notices of the period when Corfu belonged to the
Despotat of Epiros which have come down to us, it is clear
that this was the zenith of the orthodox church in the island.
Long after the times of the Despots, the Corfiote clergy were
wont to produce their charters when they sought for redress
from their Angevin or Venetian rulers, and the institution of
the thirty-two town priests still existed in the middle of the
fifteenth century,4 when it was regarded as the mainstay of
orthodoxy in the island. These privileged priests never
forgot their benefactors, and the wise ecclesiastical policy
of the Despots of Epiros saved the Greek Church through
centuries of Roman Catholic predominance.
Of the civil administration of the Despots in the island we
know scarcely anything, beyond the fact that in their time it
was divided into ten " decarchies " 5 — possibly a continuation
1 Barone, Notizie Storiche di Re Carlo 111. di Durazzo, 61-4.
2 Ibid., 65-6 ; Sdthas, Mi^/trfa, I., 48-9.
3 Romands in AeXriov ttjs'Iot. xal'E0v. 'Ertupias, II 594-6.
4 Phrantzes, 412 ; Lamansky, Secrets de fEtat de Venise, 050.
¦> AeXriov, II., 594.
2 K

514 CORFU
ofthe Venetian system of colonisation by ten nobles, possibly
a survival of the old Roman decuriones, or local landowners.
It is interesting to notice that among the names of these
"decarchies" which have come down to us, one at least, in
the slightly corrupted form of " Bistoni," preserves that of the
classic mountain of Istone, the modern Santi Deka, which
figures in Thucydides' account of the Corcyraean sedition.
The oldest historian of Corfu may be exaggerating when
he says that the Despots of Epiros " adorned the city with
most noble buildings" j1 but tradition and probability are with
him when he ascribes to them the castle of Sant' Angelo on the
west coast, whose ruins, in a superb situation above the blue
Ionian sea, still preserve the name of that adventurous race.
Michael II., as we saw, considered it necessary to secure
the alliance of King Manfred in his struggle for the leadership
ofthe Greeks. Accordingly, in 1259, he married his beautiful
daughter Helene to the sovereign of the Two Sicilies, to
whom she brought as her dowry Corfu, the fortresses of
Butrinto, Suboto, and Valona, and one or two other places
on the mainland. It was not the first time that the island
had been a Sicilian possession, for more than once in the
course of the twelfth century the Normans of Sicily had
temporarily occupied it. Unable, however, to govern it in
person, Manfred entrusted the island, together with his
possessions in Epiros, to his admiral, Filippo Chinardo,
who, as a Frank from Cyprus, had had experience of
managing Greeks, and who endeavoured to win over the
Corfiotes by exempting them from the duty of repairing
the Sicilian fleet. Even after Manfred had fallen at the'
battle of Benevento and his widow and children were
prisoners of Charles of Anjou, Chinardo maintained his
position in Corfu and the Epirote fortresses for a few more
months. The crafty Despot of Epiros gave him the hand of
his sister-in-law, and recognised him as lord of the island by
regarding it as her dowry, now that his daughter, its rightful
owner, was in prison. Chinardo felt himself secure enough
to bestow Corfiote fiefs upon his lieutenants,2 thus extending
1 Marmora, Delia Historia di Corfi>, 210.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 1 1., i., 309-10; Del Giudice, La
famiglia di Re Manfredi, 428.

CHARLES I., "KING OF CORFU" 515
the feudal system which had been founded under the Greeks
and which so long prevailed in Corfu. But there was a Greek
party in the island which was in communication with tbe
Despot, and the latter had no difficulty in procuring his
assassination. Michael II. did not, however, reap the profit
of his crime. One of Chinardo's newly created barons,
Garnier Aleman, a member of the Provencal family which
we saw installed at Patras, had the strongest motives of
personal interest to keep out the Greeks. He naturally
turned for aid to his fellow-countryman and fellow-Catholic,
Charles of Anjou, who regarded himself as the representative
of the conquered Manfred in all the latter's possessions. On
hearing of Chinardo's murder, Charles had, in January 1267,
appointed the murdered man's son captain of Corfu. But
Aleman's position and services called for this reward, and
the office of captain and vicar-general was transferred to
him by the cautious king.1 The treaty of Viterbo, two
months later, formally recognised Charles's rights over the
lands "which had been held by Manfred and Filippo
Chinardo." Thus, in 1267, began the Angevin domination
over Corfu.
For the next few years, however, Charles of Anjou was
too much occupied with Italian politics to devote his personal
attention to that grand scheme for the conquest of the
Eastern Empire, which had been conceived at Viterbo, and
towards which he, like Bonaparte five centuries later,
considered the occupation of Corfu to be the first step. He
added indeed the style of " King of Corfu " to his other
titles, and deputed Prince William of Achaia to make
arrangements for its custody; but he thought it expedient
to allow Aleman to remain in undisturbed and practically
independent possession of the island and its castles, excusing
him from rendering any account of his administration, and
pardoning any offence which he might have committed
against the king's orders. It is clear that the diplomatic
monarch was anxious not to offend the proud Provencal
baron, to whom he owed the island ; it is clear, too, that he
desired to conciliate the Greek party among the Corfiotes;
1 Minieri Riccio, Alcteni fatti, 21, 24, 37 ; Del Giudice, Codice Diplo
matic, I., 278, 298.

516 CORFU
one of his first acts was to recall all the natives who had fled the
island, except those implicated in Chinardo's assassination;
another was to guarantee to all the citizens the security of
their lives and the enjoyment of their property according to
the usages and customs of the island.1
Just as the death of the Despot Michael II. gave Charles
the opportunity of carrying out his long-deferred plans in
Epiros, so that of Garnier Aleman in 1272 made him for the
first time the real master of Corfu. Aleman's son was
satisfied with a money payment and with confirmation of his
family fiefs in the island, and Giordano di San Felice, the new
vicar-general and captain of Corfu, took possession in
Charles's name ofthe three fortresses of Castel Vecchio, Castel
Nuovo (as the two summits of the present Fortezza Vecchia
were then called), and Sant' Angelo. Under his jurisdiction
were the castles of Suboto and Butrinto, " the key of Corfu,"
as the Venetians called the latter, which had once belonged
to Manfred and Chinardo, which had been retaken by the
Greeks, but which, in 1279, was restored to Manfred's
conqueror by the feeble Despot Nikephoros I.2
The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from
its origin, was especially intolerant of the orthodox faith
Charles owed his crown to the pope, and was anxious to
repay the obligation by propagating Catholicism among his
orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined
tolerance of the Greek Church during their brief period of
domination ; the Despots of Epiros had made it a privileged
body ; now for the first time the islanders learnt what
religious persecution meant. The metropolitan of Corfu,
whose dignity dated from the tenth century, and who had
played so conspicuous a part in the disputes between Epiros
and Nice, was deposed, and in his place a less dignified
ecclesiastic, called "chief priest" Gue'ya? irpwTo-jrairai) was
substituted. This personage was elected by the thirty-two
1 Del Giudice, La famiglia di Re Manfredi, 403-4 ; Codice Diplo
matic, i., 307 ; ii., 35 ; Mustoxidi, Cose Corciresi, pp. hii., 442 ; Buchon,
op. eit, 406.
2 Ibid, 397, 4°5-7, 409-12, 414-16 ; Buchon, op. eit, 309, 407 ;
Riccio, // Regno di Carlo I., 58, 60, 87, 107 ; Saggio di Codice
Diplomatico, 1., 99, 175, 180 ; the history of Butrinto has been summarised
by Romands in the AeXHov, HI., 554 et sqq.

THE ANGEVINS AND THE CHURCH 517
priests of "the sacred band" and by the same number of
local nobles, while eight similar ecclesiastics were appointed
for the benefit of the Greeks throughout the island. The
title of "Archbishop of Corfu" was usurped by Antonio, a
Latin priest, and the principal churches, including the
cathedral, which was then in the fortress, were seized by the
Catholic clergy; the residence of the metropolitan had
already been pulled down by Chinardo. It was not till the
Russians landed in Corfu a hundred years ago that the Greek
Church recovered its high position in the island, though the
successors of Charles showed their willingness to grant
favours to the Greek clergy.1
Towards another religion, that of the Jews, the Angevins
were sufficiently tolerant to induce that race to settle for
the first time in any numbers in the island, where a ghetto
and its vicar are mentioned in 1365; but the injunctions of
successive sovereigns, bidding the Corfiotes treat them well,
would seem to show that this protection was seldom
efficacious against the prejudices of the natives, prejudices
not quite extinct in our own day. That these Jews came
from the Levant rather than from Italy seems proved by
the curious fact that the Greek is the older of the two
Corfiote synagogues, and that the earliest known example
of vulgar Greek prose is a translation of the Book of Jonah
for the use of the synagogue in Corfu.2
The military and civil administration was placed, as was
natural, in the hands of Italians or Provencals. At the
head of the government was the captain, or vicar-general,
usually directly dependent upon the king, but at times
specially placed under the supreme authority of the royal
representative in Albania. A magister massarius, or
treasurer (so called because one of his duties was to look
after the material of war and other instruments of the
massa, or public " estate ") was the second Angevin official,
and in the middle of the fourteenth century the two offices
were united in the same person. A third official was styled
1 Marmora, 216; Mustoxidi, 410; Del Giudice, op. eit, 425, 434;
Les Registres de Grdgoire X., 208.
2 Romands, H 'E/3pcu>ri) kolv6tt)s T-rjs Kepxipat, 4, 5 ; AeXrlov rijs 'I<tt. 'Et.,
ii., 605.

518 CORFU
inquisitor?- The High Court of Justice, or Curia Regis,
was composed of the captain, a legal assessor, and a notary,
all foreigners and all appointed by the sovereign, together
with two or three Corfiote judges, who from their tenure of
office were styled judices annuales. This court, which sat to
try all civil and criminal cases, met in the loggia adjoining,
or in a palace •' above the iron gate," an important entrance,
the custody of which was entrusted to a special officer.2
The official language of the court was Latin, but we find the
captain signing his name in French, and there was a public
notary for the Greek tongue, in which contracts between a
Greek and a foreigner were drawn up.3 One of the first
acts of the Latin rulers was to introduce the feudal usages
and customs of the Empire of Romania.4
The island, under the Angevins, was divided into four
bailiwicks, each administered by a bailie, and called re
spectively the Circle, the Mountain, the Centre, and
Levkimme after the White Cape at the South. The old
decarchies, however, continued to exist, as in the days of
the Despots. The land^belonged partly to the royal domain,
and partly to the barons, to whom it had been granted by
the sovereign.5 One of Charles's chief instructions was to
draw up a complete list of the Corfiote fiefs, distinguishing
those created by Manfred and Chinardo from those of Greek
origin.6 This list has been lost ; but, if we may believe the
historian Marmora,7 there were twenty-four at the time of
the Angevin occupation. These fiefs passed into the posses
sion of Provencal or Italian families like that of Goth (or
Hugot), which had accompanied Charles to Naples, or those
of Altavilla, S. Ippolito, and Caracciolo. This great
Neapolitan clan left its name long imprinted on the land
which was once its property. Even the little group of
1 Marmora, loc. city, Del Giudice, op. eit., 423; Romands, Antp-oolo.
Ilpajis. 2 AcXtlov, ii., 603, 606 ; Del Giudice, Codice Diplomatic, i., 308 ;
Barone, 24, 26 ; Romands, A^oo-ia ITpafis, 7.
3 Barone, 25 ; Romands, TpaTtavbs Zcipfijs, 311-13.
4 Del Giudice, La Famiglia di Re Manfredi, 410.
6 Barone, 22-4 ; A^KtIov, ii., 605.
6 Del Giudice, La Famiglia, 42S.
' P. 283.

ANGEVIN ADMINISTRATION 519
the Othonian islands formed one of the fiefs in the gift of
the sovereign of Corfu.1
The Latin barons formed a council which met in the
arcades near " the iron gate," and which elected the above-
mentioned " annual judges," four officials, named sindici, who
were the representatives of the community, and two others,
bearing the ancient Byzantine title of catapan, who looked
after the food supplies. As time went on, baronies were
conferred on Greeks who had rendered services to the
sovereign, such as the family of Kavasilas from Epiros ; and,
towards the close of the Angevin period, we find the com
munity, or at least the principal persons composing it,
summoned by the sound of the bell for the discussion of
public affairs. One prince after another, as the Corfiotes
confessed, conferred privileges upon them.2
The island was, indeed, valuable to the Angevins for
other reasons than its strategic position. Charles I. found
it well suited for horse-breeding ; it possessed valuable salt
pans ; it produced plenty of wine ; and its olive-trees, though
not what they afterwards became in the Venetian times,
are already mentioned in the fourteenth century. The
fisheries of Butrinto were a source of revenue, and there
was sufficient trade to attract a Venetian, as well as a
Jewish colony, to the island.3 Moreover, the Corfiotes,
descendants of the sea-faring Phaeacians, were bound to
furnish crews for the Angevin fleet.
The Sicilian Vespers and the consequent struggle between
the houses of Aragon and Anjou entailed the vengeance of
the former party upon the unhappy Corfiotes, who had the
misfortune to be subjects of the latter. Roger de Lluria
twice ravaged the island, burning and destroying the castle ;
Berenguer d'Entenca and Berenguer Villaraut both raided
this beautiful spot; and, on its way to Constantinople, the
Catalan Grand Company did not fail to plunder it.4 Nor
were the Aragonese fleets the only evils of which the
1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, IL, i., 409 ; Barone, 20, 23, 25.
2 Marmora, 221 ; Mustoxidi, lx., Ixvii. ; Buchon, dp. eit, I., i., 410.
3 Barone, 25, 29; Predelli, Commemoriali, ii., 21.
4 Muntaner, chs. cxvi., cxvii., clix. ; N. Specialis apud Muratori, x.,
960 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, i., 31.

520 CORFU
islanders complained. The captains at this period were
absentees — men of great name and lineage, like Hugh of
Brienne, baron of Karytaina; Count Richard of Cephalonia;
and Florent d'Avesnes, Prince of Achaia ; who had more
important interests elsewhere, and whose deputies oppressed
the people. Charles II. of Naples, who was now their
sovereign, showed, however, that he wished them well. In
1294, he confirmed1 the golden bull which the Despot
Michael II. had issued in 1236; in the same year he
bestowed the island, together with the castle of Butrinto
and its dependencies, upon his fourth son, Philip of Taranto,
on the occasion of his marriage with the fair Thamar of
Epiros, reserving to himself the overlordship as a matter of
form. Thus the Prince of Taranto repeated the diplomatic
marriage of Manfred under more favourable auspices.
Holding Corfu, with its dependencies and the dowry of
Thamar on the mainland, he seemed to occupy a stronger
position than any previous Latin ruler of the island. So far as
high-sounding titles went, there was soon no personage in the
Latin Orient so magnificent as the new " Lord of Corfu," as he
styled himself on his coins, who was also titular Emperor of
Constantinople, Prince of Achaia, and Despot of Romania.2
His long reign of nearly forty years over the island was,
if we may believe the indiscriminate panegyric of Marmora, a
second golden age, during which a well-beloved prince
governed a devoted people. He strengthened the Catholic
element, and at the same time encouraged agriculture by
conferring upon the archbishop the waste and uncultivated
lands of the island for the support of the established church.3
He issued orders for the protection of the Jews, whose Sab
bath services were disturbed, whose possessions were liable to
seizure, and whose services were enlisted as galley-slaves, or
worse still, as public executioners, a duty all the more repug
nant because the gallows were erected in the Jewish cemetery.4
1 Barone, 60.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 1 1., i., 407 ; Riccio, Saggio di Codice,
supp., part I., 79 ; Schlumberger, Numismatique, 389 ; Supplement, 22.
8 M. Mustoxidi, 'Ioropi/cd 'AviXexra, 98.
4 A. Mustoxidi, Cose Corciresi, 445 ; 'E\\-nvop.v/)/i<M, 486 (more accurate
than Buchon, op. eit, I., i., 408).

CORFIOTE PRIVILEGES 521
But there are some dark shadows on the picture, which
the courtly artist has omitted. So ardent a Catholic
as the Prince of Taranto could scarcely be expected
to tolerate the Greek Church, which represented a national
as well as a religious force, especially as the Greek emperor
had recently bestowed upon the new metropolitan of Joannina
the offensive title of " Exarch of Corfu." There was, too,
the alarm of Greek invasions from the mainland opposite.
At one moment we find the Despot Thomas of Epiros
scheming with the Greek emperor's admiral to make a
descent from Valona on Corfii ; at another it is Count John
II. of Cephalonia who threatens the fortunate island; or,
again, it is the imperial fleet which blockades the harbour.
Philip's governors, too, oppressed even the Catholic Church ;
and the prince, always an absentee and for some years a
prisoner, was not able to keep a tight hand upon them.
Still, in the Venetian times, the Corfiote nobles looked back
on the good Prince of Taranto as the founder of many of
the privileges which they enjoyed, and he confirmed and
strengthened the feudal system by grants of new baronies to
his friends.1 Among these was Guglielmo Tocco, who, as
his governor in Corfii, laid the foundations of that remarkable
family's fortunes in the Ionian islands.2
Philip's son, Robert, was a minor at the time of his
father's death, and his mother, the titular Empress Catherine
of Valois, exercised authority in her own and his name in
Corfii, as well as in Achaia. Robert followed his father's
policy of protecting the Corfiote Jews, and of rewarding his
faithful adherents, both Greek and Italian, by the bestowal
of feudal lands. He confirmed the local privileges, especially
those of the thirty-three country priests, granted a century
before by the Despot Michael 1 1., and released them from
the exactions of the magister massarius and from the obliga
tion, which lay upon all the Corfiotes, of making a present
to the prince whenever they appeared in his presence. The
fertile island enabled him, too, to make provision for his
wife, Marie de Bourbon, in the event of her widowhood, and
during the struggle which arose between the widow and her
1 Thomas, Diplomatarium, 135, 161.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I., i., 410.

522 CORFTJ
brother-in-law, Philip II. of Taranto, she had sufiicient
authority in Corfu to repeat her late husband's orders on
behalf of the Hebrew colony.1 But, from the death of his
brother in 1364, Philip II. exercised the rights of sovereignty
over the island. He, too, strove to protect the Jews, ratified
the franchises so long enjoyed by the village popes, and
ordered his officials not to interfere in the affairs of the
Greek clergy, the punishment of whom he allowed the
protopapddes of the city of Corfii to determine, as had been
their immemorial custom. In this tolerant policy he was
guided by Romanopoulos, the archbishop, who, though a
Greek by race and a Catholic by religion, had neither the
Chauvinism of a naturalised foreigner nor the bigotry of a
convert.2 According to some authorities, it was during this
reign that the fief of the gypsies, of which we shall hear more
in the Venetian period, was first created. At any rate, the
gypsies, of whom we have seen traces in other parts of
Greece, where the various Tv^roKaa-Tpa still preserve their
name, seem to have crossed over to Corfu from the mainland
during the Angevin domination. These may have been the
oft-mentioned " men from Vagenetia " in Epiros, who first
found refuge at the courts of the Corfiote barons in the
reigns of Charles II. and of Philip I. of Taranto. Catherine
of Valois and her son Robert made these serfs, whose name
still lingers in Corfu, a source of revenue, by imposing a poll-
tax upon them, to be paid by their feudal lord when they
entered the island and his service; and Philip II.'s second
wife, Elizabeth of Hungary, to whom he granted Corfu on
his marriage in 1371, tried to seize them all and make them
serfs of the princely domain. Against this high-handed act
the barons successfully protested.3
Both Elizabeth4 and her husband died in November
1373, and his young nephew, Jacques de Baux, became the
1 Mustoxidi, op. eit, 447-9, lxi. ; Romands in AeXrlov, ii., 601 ; and
'E(3ptti'KTJ Kolv&t-os, 5.
2 AcXtIov, 587 ; Marmora, 223 ; Miklosich und Miiller, v., 67 ; Buchon,
op. eit, I., i., 413.
3 Mustoxidi, op. eit, 449; Hopf, op. eit, lxxxvi., 33, 186; Barone,
25 ; Romands, Ai)p.oola KepKiipaM) Ilpafts ; Albdnas, Ttepl Tuviiv Kcpicpa.
tItKihv, 1 3, 29.
4 Crassulto, De Rebus Tarentinis in Raccolta di I'arie Cronache, v., 1.

JACQUES DE BAUX 523
heir of all his titles and dominions. The Corfiote barons,
however, were as little inclined as their fellows in the Morea,
to accept his sway. During the civil war, which raged
between the Baux and Queen Joanna I. of Naples, Jacques
found a temporary refuge in his Greek estates ; but the
Ionians, headed by Guglielmo and Riccardo d'Altavilla
proclaimed the Queen of Naples as Lady of Corfu, the
suzerainty over which had been preserved, as we saw, ninety
years before, to the Neapolitan Crown. Joanna retained
possession of the island for seven years; she pacified the
Greeks by renewing the privileges of the thirty-two city
priests, granted by the Despot Michael II., and confirmed by
her predecessors ; she guaranteed to the citizens their old
customs and the franchises bestowed upon them by a long
line of Angevin princes ; she extended her protection to the
Jews ; she encouraged the immigration of the " men from
Vagenetia " ; and ordered her officials to see that the Venetian
merchants, so long established there, enjoyed their time-
honoured rights undisturbed.1 But, in 1380, Jacques de
Baux thought that the moment was favourable for the
assertion of his claims in Greece. The Navarrese Company
was despatched thither to do his work, and its first achieve
ment on Greek soil was the capture of Corfu. The last
titular emperor of Constantinople did his best to win
adherents in the island. Almost his sole act was to purchase
the support of the powerful baron, Adamo di Sant' Ippolito,
by the grant of the island of Paxo, which had belonged to
Filippo Malerba of Verona, a recent captain of Corfu — one
of the few allusions to the smallest of the Seven Islands
during the Angevin period.2 But the distracted politics qf
the time made the baron of Paxo soon forget his benefactor.
Charles III. of Durazzo descended upon Naples, and robbed
Joanna of her crown and life. Corfu, too weak to stand
alone, was divided into three factions — that of the usurper ;
that of Joanna's heir, Louis of Anjou, one of whose officials
was pleased to style himself " Marquis of Corfii " ; and that
of Jacques de Baux, whose Navarrese garrisons must have
1 Sithas, op. eit, i., 47 ; iii., 31 ; Barone, 22, 24, 26, 65 ; Lunzi, 79-82 ;
Predelli, Commemoriali, iii., 130.
2 [Archduke Salvator,] Paxos und Antipaxos, 9-13.

524 CORFU
been detested alike by Greeks and Italians. Sant' Ippolito
and Riccardo d'Altavilla saw that it was their interest to
worship the rising sun. They succeeded, not without con
siderable labour and expense, in driving the Navarrese
veterans out of the castles of Corfii and Butrinto ; most of
the barons joined them; and, in 1382, Charles III. was lord
of the island. The usurper showed the usual " kindness of
kings upon their coronation day " ; he rewarded the services
of the two most conspicuous traitors, graciously received a
deputation of Italians and Greeks, renewed the ancient
privileges of the city and its thirty-two Greek priests, en
deavoured to repair the ravages which the recent struggle
had made in its finances, assured the Jews of his royal pro
tection, and confirmed important feudal lords, such as the
Caracciolo, in their fiefs.1 To those who remember Corfii in
the days of the British protectorate, when the island of Vido
in the harbour was defended by those strong fortifications
which we subsequently blew up, it may be of interest to
recall that it formed one of his feudal grants. It was then
known as the island of Santo Stefano 2 — a name derived from
the old church, which our engineers sacrificed in 1837. At
the time of the siege of 1537 it was called Malipiero, but
later in the sixteenth century it received from its then owner
the name of Vido, changed by the French, during their brief
occupation, into He de la Paix.
There was, however, another Power, which had long
coveted Corfii, and had been closely following the various
revolutions in the ownership of the island. Venice had
never forgotten that the key of the Adriatic had once been
hers ; during the Angevin period she had made successive
attempts to obtain it — in 13 14 and 1351 by purchase, in 1355
by a coup de main. More recently, negotiations had been
opened with Jacques de Baux for the mortgage, lease, or
purchase of the island; but these negotiations also fell
through. Meanwhile, the Venetian consul, after the fashion
of Levantine consuls in our own day, was busy preparing
public opinion in Corfu for a Venetian occupation. There
was a party among the Corfiotes, which could not help
1 Mustoxidi, 452-3 ; Barone, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24-6, 29.
"- Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, IL, i., 409-11.

VENICE OCCUPIES CORFU 525
contrasting the unbroken continuity of Venetian administra
tion with the continual civil wars of Naples. Money was
freely spent and promises as freely made to wavering nobles,
who may have been frightened by the execution of one of
their order for high treason, but who, when death had
removed both Jacques de Baux and Charles III., found
themselves without a sovereign lord. Their allegiance to the
throne of Naples at this moment received a further shock
from the discovery that the baron, who held the city and
castle for the late king, was an impostor who had forged his
patent. While the Neapolitan party advocated loyalty to
Ladislaus, Charles's little son and successor, some thought of
Genoa, others of Venice, and others again actually offered
their country to Francesco da Carrara, Signor of Padua, who
at once sent Scrovigno, a trustworthy servant of his own and
of the late king, to occupy the place. That Corfii should fall
into the hands of her bitterest foe was more than Venice
could stand ; a recent incident had made it unnecessary to
spare the susceptibilities ofthe Neapolitan court any longer.
Miani, the Captain of the Gulf, chanced to be in Corfiote
waters at the time ; he landed and explained to a meeting of
the citizens that his government was both willing and able
to protect them, that Genoa, the only other maritime power,
would treat them like slaves, while Padua had no navy.
These arguments proved effective ; the town was peaceably
surrendered ; and Scrovigno shut himself up in one of the
two forts of the sea-girt castle. But siege materials were
despatched from Venice, the castle was besieged, and
Scrovigno was glad to escape by night on a Genoese galley.
Miani then summoned the garrison to surrender ; once again,
after the lapse of 170 years, the lion banner was hoisted over
Corfii ; thenceforth it floated there for more than four
centuries. A few places, however, held out some time longer
for the King of Naples — the second of the city forts, the
lofty castle of Sant' Angelo on the west coast, the recently
constructed castle of Cassopo at the north of the island, and
that of Butrinto on the opposite main. These strongholds
were, however, all surrendered or taken ; that of Cassopo was
destroyed for fear lest it should fall into the hands of the
Genoese ; strange legends grew up around its ruined

526 CORFU
ramparts ; and a hundred years later, travellers were told that
it had been deserted because a fiery dragon had poisoned
the inhabitants with his breath.1 As for Butrinto, its
governor, Riccardo d'Altavilla, who had received his post
from Charles III., capitulated as soon as he had secured his
reward from the Venetian commander.2 Malipiero arrived
from Venice as rector and provveditore of Corfii.
On 28th May, 1386, a meeting of the commune or " of the
larger and saner part of it," was summoned by the sound of
the bell to elect a deputation which should do homage and
present the petition of the commune to the Venetian govern
ment. All the three races of Corfii — Italians, Greeks, and
Jews — were represented among the six Corfiote envoys, and
the fact that the name of " David, son of Simon," figures
beside that of the proud Altavilla, shows the influence of the
Hebrew element in the island. The deputation was instructed
to beg that the new masters of Corfu would observe all the
privileges granted to the community by the Angevins ; that
the republic would never dispose of the island ; that all fiefs
should be confirmed, and that the barons and Holy Church
might continue to exercise the right of dragging their
recalcitrant serfs before the captain, who would keep them in
prison till their lords should have obtained satisfaction; that
the captain should administer justice, in civil and criminal
matters alike, with the assistance of the "annual judges,"
according to the ancient custom ; that, whereas the commune
had resigned to the new rector the time-honoured Corfiote
privilege of exemption from all taxes and tolls, in considera
tion of the prosperity of the town, an annual salary should be
paid to a doctor, the walls should be repaired, and a loggia
erected for the honour of the republic and the island ; and
that all the provisional arrangements made between Miani
and the community should be ratified. A second meeting,
held on 9th June, proclaimed the formal acceptance of
Venetian rule, because the island was deprived of its lawful
1 Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, 36, 54, 185 ; Revue de fOrient latin, I.,
231 ; III., 666.
2 Lunzi, 85-105 ; Mustoxidi, 455, lviii., lxiv. ; Marmora, 231 ; Sanudo
and Navagero apud Muratori, xxii., 760-1 ; xxiii., 1070-1 ; Thomas and
Predelli, Diplomatarinm, ii., 185 ; Arch. Veneto, xvii., 252.

THE VENETIAN CHARTER 527
protector, "coveted by its jealous neighbours, and almost
besieged by Arabs and Turks " ; and conferred the post of
captain and magister massarius upon Miani, as a token of
gratitude for his peaceful occupation of the city.1
The six envoys met with a warm reception from the
Venetian aristocracy and a handsomely furnished palace was
placed at their disposal. On 8th January, 1387, they
obtained an audience of the doge, whom one of their number
addressed, so it is said, in the florid style of the Levant. He
spoke of their past history — how Corcyra had been ruled by
Roman and Greek emperors, by Despots and kings, and
expressed the hope that the Venetian lion, the king of beasts,
would scorn to tyrannise over his subjects, but would be
content with their homage and leave them their ancient
liberties. The doge was graciously pleased to accept the
one and confirm the other, with a few alterations and addi
tions. Thus, it was provided that justice should be adminis
tered by the Venetian governor and the " annual judges,"
according to the customs of Venice, to which an appeal
would lie ; but no Corfiote was to be tried outside the
island, except on appeal. A Greek notary was to be elected,
according to usage, to draw up citations on the Greeks, and
two officers of the court were to be appointed to serve them.
A clause was inserted, owing perhaps to the experience of
Crete, ordering the island barons to perform their feudal
service with good and sufficient war-horses; another
prohibited the Venetian officials from forcing the Corfiotes
to sell them food or to fish for them ; while a third directed
that the measure for the sale of new wine should be
stamped by the authorities in October, or oftener, but
that the customary fee should be only paid once a year.
Finally, the offices of catapan and syndic were to be retained,
and no one except the governor was to interfere with
them.2 Great was the joy of the Corfiotes at the return of their
envoys with the charter of the island ; nor had they reason to
1 Mustoxidi, lx.-lxiii. ; Thomas and Predelli, op. eit, ii., 199-204 ;
Sanudo, op. eit, xxii., 751.
2 Marmora, 238; Mustoxidi, lxiv.-lxviii.; Thomas and Predelli, op. eit.,
ii., 204-9.

528 CORFU
repent their change of masters. The Venetian bailie, as the
governor was called by the express desire of the islanders,
reduced the chaos of the last few years to order. During the
general confusion of the interregnum, various persons had
appropriated public property, which they were now compelled
to restore. Such was the popularity of the new government,
that the municipality granted it the proceeds of the two per
cent, customs duty, which had lately been imposed, in order
to hasten the restoration of the walls.1
Venice was, however, anxious to legalise her position as
mistress of the island. The Queen-regent of Naples
complained of the annexation; Ladislaus, when he came
of age, demanded, and attempted to exercise, his rights, but
hinted that he did not mind coming to terms. The negotia
tions were protracted till 1402, when Ladislaus finally sold
the island with all its dependencies to the republic for 30,000
gold ducats.2 Thus ended the rule of the Neapolitan princes
over the fairest of Greek islands, and with it their last
connection with Greece. In its early days it was, on the
whole, easy, though its ecclesiastical policy was unfair to the
church of the majority. Later on, when it was weak at home
it was ineffective at Corfu. Every revolution at Naples had
an echo in the island, with the worst effect upon the morality
of its public men. It became the highest form of statesman
ship to go over to the winning side, in the certainty of
obtaining a fief or an office as the reward of disloyalty. On
the other hand, the insecure title of these successive rulers
made them peculiarly ready to respect the ancient privileges
of the islanders. Indeed, it is probable that, in the Angevin
days, when the sovereign was always an absentee, Corfii was
a paradise for the barons and an inferno for their serfs. The
chief result of the Neapolitan domination was to strengthen
the feudal system and so to confirm that spirit of aristocracy
which still characterises the Ionian islands.
Modern Corfii contains scarcely a trace of its Angevin
rulers. The church of Santo Stefano has vanished, Cassopo
is a heap of ruins, and one coin alone preserves the name of
1 Marmora, 249 ; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 1 1., i., 423.
2 Mustoxidi, lxviii. to end; Lunzi, 1 17-18; Thomas and Predelli,
op. eit, ii., 263-89.

VENETIAN ADMINISTRATION 529
the princes of Taranto,1 from which a recently extinct
Corfiote family boasted its descent. The Angevin barony of
De Martina, once held by the Tocchi, which till lately sur
vived in the topography of the island, has now changed its
name.2 But the pilgrimage church on the summit of Panto-
krator dates from this period.
The administration of Corfii during the Venetian period
was modelled on that which had long prevailed in the older
colonies of the republic. For the first twenty-four years, the
government was entrusted to a single Venetian official,
styled " bailie and captain," who was elected by the Home
Government and held office for two years. But, in 1410, it
was decided that two councillors should be sent from Venice
to assist him in the exercise of civil and criminal jurisdiction
and to perform the duty of chamberlain. Each of the
councillors was to receive 300 gold ducats a year, and two
towers of the city were assigned as their abodes. They and
the bailie were ordered to sit in court five days a week, and
the •' annual judges," whose numbers were now increased to
three, one Latin and two Greeks, continued to act as their
assessors. The peasants, however, soon found that the
presence of the two councillors tended to protract litigation
and led to their having to supply two more officials with
fodder for their horses. They accordingly petitioned for a
return to the former system of one-man rule, which is really
more beneficial to the poor in southern countries than more
democratic arrangements. Their prayers were, however,
rejected, and the island continued to provide posts for the
two councillors. We are specially told, that, though the
Venetian officials were forbidden to engage in trade, these
appointments were considered as the plums of the colonial
service. So, in the British days, the pleasant island of the
Phaeacians was regarded as the best of our foreign stations.3
The power of the bailie was further limited by the institu-
1 That which bears the inscription of Johs Despotus Curfou Civis,
which Buchon ascribed to John of Gravina, who was never lord of Corfu,
has been described by Schlumberger (op. eit, 389) as a forgery. Could it
refer to Count John II. of Cephalonia, who styled himself "Despot,"
and threatened Corfu ?
2 AeKriov, IL, 597, n. 2 ; Gerakares, KeptcvpaXical 2e\ides, 53.
3 S&thas, op. eit, ii., 249 ; iii., 88, 247 ; Marmora, 256.
2 L

530 CORFU
tion of a third office, that of the provveditore, who was in
command of the garrison and resided in the fortress, and
who also decided those moot points of feudal law which were
of frequent occurrence in a community such as Corfii. He
was, moreover, judge in disputes between the citizens and the
garrison, and his authority extended over the island barony
of Paxo, which was treated by the Venetians as by their
predecessors, as an integral part of its larger neighbour. It
continued to belong to the great baronial family of Sant'
Ippolito, which in 1423 fortified it against the Turkish
corsairs, who were wont to carry off the defenceless serfs.
When that clan became extinct, it passed to the other great
Neapolitan house of Altavilla, and thence to the republic. In
1 5 13, however, it was sold, together with the taxes which it
paid, to the family of Avrames, which treated the inhabitants
so badly that many of them fled to Turkish territory. In
consequence of this, it was restored to the jurisdiction of the
provveditore, who was locally represented by a leading native.
As time went on, that important official assumed also the title
of " captain," which had originally been borne by the bailie, and
his delegate in Paxo was accordingly styled " captain " also.1
In the sixteenth century the appointment of the great
naval authority of provveditore generede del Levante, whose
headquarters were Corfii, completely overshadowed that of
all the other Venetian officials in the Ionian islands. His
arrival for his three years' term of government was regulated
by an elaborate code of etiquette, still preserved in a special
volume in the Corfiote archives ; the Jews had to provide the
carpets for the streets, along which the great man would
pass ; the heads of both the Latin and the Greek Church
greeted him with all the splendid rites of their respective
establishments ; a noble Corfiote pronounced a panegyric
upon him in the church of St Spiridion, before whose remains
his excellency would kneel in prayer ere returning to his
palace, where obsequious Hebrews, laden with flowers, bent
low as he crossed the threshold. Strict orders were issued
to these officials that they should respect the rights of the
natives, and spies, known as " inquisitors over the affairs of
1 Sdthas, iii., 249, 422; v., 235; Lunzi, 252, 348; Paxos und Anti-
paxos, 13-14 ; Buondelmonti, 55.

THE TWO COUNCILS 531
the Levant," were sent from time to time to the islands for
the purpose of checking the Venetian administration and of
ascertaining the grievances of the governed, who had, as
under the Angevins, the often-exercised privilege of sending
special missions to lay their complaints before the Home
Government We can see from the Venetian archives what
Ionian historians unanimously assert to have been the case,
that redress was almost invariably granted, though the
abuses of which the natives complained were apt to grow
up again.1
A large share in the local administration was granted to
the inhabitants, or rather to the aristocracy. At the time of
the transfer of the island to Venice, the General Assembly
consisted of the principal citizens, Greeks as well as Italians ;
but, as time went on, strange elements, Albanians and
Cephalonians, crept into this body, so that, in 1440, it was
ordered that the bailie, with the advice of the " good citizens,"
should choose some seventy prominent persons as a council
for the term of one year ; half a century later, this body
was increased to 150 — a total preserved till the last years
of Venetian rule. There were henceforth two councils — the
General Assembly and the Council of 150. The former
became an oligarchy, composed exclusively of Greek and
Italian nobles, together with a few foreigners who had
resided ten years or married into a Corfiote family. But
when the numbers of the nobility were much diminished
by the first great Turkish siege in 1537, new families were
added to the list from the burgher class, the qualification
for noble strangers was subsequently reduced to five years,
and Marmora gives the names of 1 1 2 noble families inscribed
in the " Golden Book " of the Corfiote aristocracy when he
wrote his history in 1672. The "Golden'Book" was burned
as the symbol of hated class distinction in the first enthusiasm
for liberty, equality, and fraternity, after the French repub
licans took possession of Corfii. As all the nobles were
debarred from engaging in trade, it may readily be imagined
that a premium was put upon place-hunting. Very early
in the Venetian period we hear of the number of Greek
lawyers — then, as now, the plague of Greece. It only re-
1 Lunzi, 253-65.

532 CORFU
mained to discourage agriculture by compelling the nobles
to reside in the city if they wished to take part in the
Assembly, and the corruption of Corfiote society was com
plete. To these arrangements we may trace the neglect of
country life and the consequent distress of the island in the
present day.
The General Assembly met every year at the end of
October to elect the Council of 150 from among its own
members. At first it seems to have held its sitting in " the
hall above the Chancery " ; but, after that building was
destroyed by the Turks at the time of the first siege, it was
convened in a quaint house, decorated with pictures of
Nausikaa welcoming Odysseus and of other scenes from
the early history of Corcyra, and situated on the esplanade
between the Fortezza Vecchia and the town. This interest
ing memorial of Venetian rule has long since been swept
away.1 It was the policy of the Venetian Government to leave
the Corfiotes all the minor offices, and it was the desire of
the islanders that these offices should be annual, so that they
might be enjoyed by as many people as possible. Thus,
the Council of 150 elected the three "annual judges," who,
besides sitting as assessors of the bailie and the two council
lors in the High Court, formed a petty tribunal of their own
for the trial of cases where the sum at issue was small. It
elected the four syndics, two Greeks and two Latins during
the period of which we are treating, who were required to
be at least thirty-eight years of age and who were the
representatives of all classes of the community, collectively
and individually, bringing their grievances before the Vene
tian authorities, and also regulating prices in the market — a
function which bordered on that of the still existent catapans.
It chose, too, the clerk ofthe Court, two taxing masters, who
regulated the scale of law costs ; the giustizicri, or officials
who stamped the weights and measures ; and the person
entrusted with the census, which was supposed to be made
once during each bailie's term of office.2 In 1470.it obtained
the privilege of electing the captain of the war galleys fitted
1 Lunzi, 274 ; Marmora, 312-13 ; Sdthas, ii., 159 ; iii., 467 ; v., 226, 249.
2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 425.

THE CONTINENTAL DEPENDENCIES 533
out at Corfii, a wise concession of the Venetian Government,
which found, on the great day of Lepanto, that its Corfiote
captains were worthy descendants of the seafaring Phaeacians.
Venice was unwilling, however, to relinquish to the natives
the posts of constable of the island, captain of "the iron
gate," dragoman, and salt commissioner ; but the command
of the castle of Sant' Angelo, which included some petty
judicial authority, passed in time into the hands of the
Council. Later on, too, the Council elected a species of
cabinet, called the Conclave and composed of the three
"annual judges," the four syndics, and five other officials,
whose number was fixed in the seventeenth century, and
whose meetings were held with closed doors.1
The dependencies of the colony on the mainland likewise
furnished posts, some of which were in the gift of the Council,
and all were held by Corfiote nobles, usually for a year.
Butrinto was the most important of these stations, both
strategically and economically, for it was not only "the
guardian and right eye" of Corfu, but yielded from its
fisheries, once the property of Cicero's friend, Atticus, 1300
ducats a year.2 More interesting, however, from Byron's
noble lines and from its dramatic history in the early days
of the British protectorate, when official ignorance of
geography abandoned it to the Turks, was " Parga's shore "
— an outpost boldly occupied on his own responsibility by
the Venetian bailie of Corfu in 1401, and accepted, after
some hesitation, by the republic. This hesitation was not
unwarranted, for, despite its poetic name, the practical
Venetians found that the place, whose sugar had proved so
remunerative to Count Nicholas of Cephalonia a century
before, now cost more than it was worth, and accordingly
several times urged the inhabitants to ^emigrate over the
narrow channel to the islet of Antipaxo, where they enjoyed
the right of tilling the land, or even to Corfu, where unculti
vated ground was always at their disposal. But then, as in
1 8 19, the Pargians showed a touching, if inconvenient,
attachment to their ancient home, which was well situated
1 Sdthas, i., 112-14, 221; ii., 151, 213, 221; v., 224, 251; Lunzi,
279-87, 299-302 ; Marmora, 9, 270, 314.
2 Sathas, v., 250,

534 CORFU
for purposes of piracy, and they combined devotion to
Venice, from whom they had obtained excellent terms,
with the lucrative traffic of selling the weapons sent for their
defence to the neighbouring Turks. The governorship of
Parga, at first bestowed on a Corfiote noble for life and
then placed at the disposition of the Council, was, at the
petition of the Pargians, in 15 ii, taken from that body and
transferred to the Venetian authorities of Corfii : but it was
ultimately restored to the Council. The post could not,
however, have been either lucrative or easy ; for out of his
exiguous salary the governor had to provide each Pargian
family with five measures of salt a year, and each priest and
local magnate with a dinner on Christmas eve and at
Epiphany, while a local council of thirty -two managed most
of the affairs of this small community, and a irpa>TOTraTra<;
looked after its spiritual welfare.1 All the inhabitants were
soldiers, and many of them pirates, and they were known to
imprison a Venetian governor, just as the Albanians of to
day besiege a Turkish Vali, till they could get redress. At
the same time as Parga, Corfu acquired the castles of
Saiada and Phanari, which with La Bastia, Suboto, and
Strovili made up the continental dependencies of the island
in the fifteenth century. For a brief period Lepanto was
placed under the jurisdiction of Corfii.2 Under Venetian
protection, too, were the monks who inhabited the ancient
home of the harpies, the Strivali islands, where Theodore
Laskaris and Irene had long ago established a Greek
monastery of the Redeemer. Thither in the thirteenth
century the Benedictines had gone, and on one occasion we
find the pope appointing the prior of " Our Lady of
Stropharia." When, however, the Greeks recovered Achaia,
the Emperor John VI. restored the monastery of the
Redeemer. Every passing ship reverently greeted and
gave alms to the monks, whose exploits against the Turks
who had dared to set foot on their wind-swept solitude
1 Sathas, ii., 45-6, 232 ; iii., 32, 466 ; v., 256, 328-30 ; Marmora, 253, 282,
285; Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., 170; Predelli, Commemoriali, i., 217;
Jorga in Revue de fOrient latin, vi., 378 ; P. A. S., 'H Ilipya, 75-7 ; TJ.
Foscolo, Prose Politiche, 447-52.
2 Sathas, iii., 32 ; v., 246, 336.

THE GREEK CHURCH 535
enhanced the prestige of their sacred habit among pilgrims
on their way to the Holy Land.1
The ecclesiastical policy of the Venetians was always
less bigoted than that of other Catholic powers ; and while,
as Catholics, they continued to give precedence to their
own Church, which in Corfu became a perquisite of the great
Venetian families, they never forgot that the interests of
the republic were of more importance than those of the
papacy. Accordingly, they studiously prevented any en
croachments on the part of either the oecumenical patriarch
or the pope, fearing the political influence of the one and
the theological fanaticism of the other. The externals of
the Angevin ecclesiastical system were therefore retained
as being well adapted to this cautious policy. The head of
the Orthodox church was still called " chief priest " Cue'ya?
TrpurroTrairai;), while the title of archbishop was reserved for
the aristocratic Venetian who was the head of the Catholic
clergy. The "chief priest" was elected by thirty chosen
members of the General Assembly and by the "sacred
band" of the thirty-two city priests, whose numbers,
however, in the later Venetian period, were really only
twenty. His term of office was five years, at the end of
which time, if not re-elected, he sank into the ranks of the
ordinary clergy, from whom he was then only distinguished
by his crimson sash. Merit had, as a rule, less to do with
his election than his relationship to a noble family and the
amount of the pecuniary arguments which he applied to
the pockets of the electors, and for which he recouped
himself by his gains while in office. In each of the four
bailiwicks into which Corfu was still divided, and in the
island of Paxo, then, as now, a part of the Corfiote diocese,
there was a irpwToiraira<! under his jurisdiction, while he was
dependent upon no other ecclesiastical authority than the
oecumenical patriarch, with whom, however, he was only
allowed to correspond through the medium of the Venetian
bailie at Constantinople. He had his retinue of officials
1 Les Registres de Boniface VIII., ii., 540 ; Revue de V Orient latin, i.,
232 ; iv., 508, 563 ; Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, ff. 125, 233 ; Faber, Evaga-
torium,\., 164; Buochenbach, Orientalische Reyss, 34; Chidtes, 'Iotoplko.
'Awop.viifioveip.aTa, ii., 535 ; Purchas His Pilgrimes, vii., 546.

536 CORFU
with high-spunding Byzantine titles ; he enjoyed consider
able honours ; and from his decision in ecclesiastical cases
there was no appeal. Two liberal popes, Leo X. and Paul
III., expressly forbade any interference with the religious
services of the Greeks on the part of the Latin archbishop,
and the doges more than once upheld the ancient charter of
the city priests and the privileges of " the decarchy " of the
thirty-three rural popes. At the same time, measures were
taken to prevent the increase in the number of Greek priests,
monks, and churches, which gave the Venetians cause for
alarm, because they were well aware that to the Greeks
politics and religion are inseparable. This was especially
the case, when numbers of fugitive priests sought refuge in
the island after the capture of Constantinople and the
Morea. But, in spite of all regulations, the Orthodox
church kept alive the national feeling in the island. Mixed
marriages were allowed ; and, as the children usually became
Orthodox, it is not surprising to learn that twenty years
before the close of the Venetian occupation there were only
two noble Latin families which still adhered to the Catholic
faith. It was a natural result of the Venetian policy that there
was less bitterness in Corfu than in most other places
between the adherents of the two religions. The Catholics
took part in the religious processions of the Orthodox ; the
college of thirty-two priests on the eve of Christmas and
Epiphany delivered an eulogy of Venetian rule at the bailie's
palace, whereupon two condemned prisoners were released
to them, after the fashion of Barabbas. When the body of
St Spiridion was carried round the town, the Venetian
authorities and many of the garrison paid their respects to
the sacred relics ; twenty-one guns were fired from the Old
Fortress, and the ships in the harbour saluted. The Orthodox
clergy reciprocated these attentions by meeting the Catholics
in the church of St Arsenios, the tenth century bishop who
had been the first metropolitan of Corfii, where the discordant
chanting of Greeks and Latins represented their theological
concord, and by praying for the pope and the Latin arch
bishop at the annual banquet in the latter's palace. They
were ready, also, to excommunicate refractory villages at the

THE JEWS 537
bidding of the Government, and this practice, which filled the
superstitious peasants with terror, was one of the greatest
social abuses of Corfii. It is not quite extinct in Greece even
now.1 The position of the Corfiote Jews, though far less favour
able than that of the Orthodox, was much better than that ofthe
Hebrew colonies in other parts of the Venetian dominions.
In the very first days of the Venetian occupation an order
was issued to the officials of the republic, bidding them to
behave well to the Jewish community and to put no heavier
burdens upon them than upon the rest ofthe islanders. Many
of the Venetian governors found it convenient to borrow not
only money, but furniture, plate, and liveries from them.
That they increased in numbers — owing to the Jewish immigra
tion from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and from Naples,
Apulia, and Calabria half a century later — may be inferred
from Marmora's statement that in 1665 there were about 500
Jewish houses in Corfii ; and the historian, who shared to the
full the dislike of the Hebrew which has always characterised
the Greeks and has been always cordially reciprocated,
naively remarks that the Corfiote Jews would be rich if they
were let alone.2 They paid none of the usual taxes levied on
Jewish banks at Venice ; and when, by the decree of 1572,
they were banished from Venetian territory, a special exemp
tion was granted to the Jews of Corfii. They were allowed to
practice there as advocates, with permission to defend Chris
tians no less than members of their own race. They had
their own council, and elected their own officials, representing
the Greek and the " Apulian " or " Spanish " synagogues —
for from 1540 there were two — who managed the internal
affairs of the ghetto.3 Outside its limits they were allowed
to own real property worth no more th^n 4000 ducats
between them — indeed, public opinion would have left them
no land but their graves — and they were expressly forbidden
to have serfs, or to take land or villas on lease, with the
exception of one house for the personal use of the lessee.
But the effect of this enactment was nullified by means of
1 Sdthas, i., 46-51 ; ii., 143, 150, 193 ; iii., 33, 431 ; Lunzi, chs. xi. and
xii.; Lamansky, 050; Misti, xii., f. 54; Marmora, 319-22.
2 P. 430, 3 Romands, 'E/3paiiri| Koic6tijs, 8.

538 CORFU
mortgages ; and if a Jew wanted to invest money Jn houses
he had no difficulty in finding a Christian who would
purchase or rent them with borrowed Jewish capital. Nor
was it easy to confine the growing Jewish colony within its
separate quarter. When the old ghetto, " the mount of the
Jews,"1 was pulled down in 1524 to make room for the
fortifications, orders were given to choose a new site ; but
sixty years later we find a Venetian report complaining that
they were living among the Christians and even in the
castle. Later plans of the city show us, however, the ghetto
marked in the same place and called by the same name as
the still surviving Hebraikd? At the same time, the Jews
had to submit to some degrading restrictions of costume.
They were compelled to wear a yellow mark on the breast, as
a badge of servitude, and a Venetian ordinance naively
remarks that this was "a substitute for the custom of stoning,
which does so much injury to the houses." True, a money
payment to the treasury secured a dispensation from the
necessity of wearing these stigmas ; but it is obvious from
the complaints of their envoys that the Jews were badly
treated by the natives, who refused them access to the
principal well and harried them while they were doing their
marketing. Absurd tales, too, were current about them.
The old fable that Judas Iscariot was a native of the island,
was still told to travellers, who were shown a lineal descendant
of the arch-traitor. They were expected to offer a copy of
the law of Moses to a new Latin archbishop, who sometimes
delighted the other Corfiotes by lecturing them on their
shortcomings. Finally, they were forbidden to indulge in
public processions — an injunction perhaps quite as much
in their own interest as in that of the public peace.3
The feudal system continued to form the basis of Corfiote
society, and became the bulwark of Venetian rule. The new
masters of the island confirmed the Angevin barons in their
fiefs, but created few more, so that towards the end of the
Venetian period the original twenty-four baronies had
1 Sathas, iii., 46 ; Romands, op. eit, 9 ; Marmora, 286.
2 Marmora, 364-5.
3 Ibid., 255-6, 286, 370, 430, 437; Sathas, ii., 150-3, 206; v., 261;
Buochenbach, Orientalische Reyss, 27 ; Lunzi, 455-61.

THE GYPSIES 539
dwindled to from twelve to fifteen, among them two still
bearing the names of the extinct clans of Altavilla and Sant'
Ippolito, one or two held by old Greek families, and the rest
by Venetian aristocrats long settled in the island. For as
the " Customs of Romania " continued to prevail, it followed
that the Salic law did not obtain in Corfii ; accordingly, there,
as elsewhere, many baronies passed into the hands of women,
who usually found husbands in the Venetian aristocracy.
In theory each baron had to keep at least one good horse
and a certain number of retainers for the defence of the
island, and to present himself with them for review in the
castle on the ist of May. We have an account of the brave
show made by the barons, then fourteen in number, in 1 5 1 5 ;
but in practice this chivalrous custom was usually allowed
to lapse. A less picturesque but far more efficacious body was
the armed band of the peasants, the so-called cernide, which
guarded the coast and at times furnished the republic with
some of her best seamen. In this body all between the ages
of twenty and sixty-five were bound to serve. A clause in
the charter of Parga specially stipulated that the natives of
that rock-fortress should only be liable for service in defence
of their own home.1
By far the most interesting of the fiefs was that of the
' kBlyyavoi or gypsies, who were about a hundred in number
and were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the baron
upon whom their fief had been bestowed — "an office," as
Marmora says, " of not a little gain and of very great honour."
Their feudal lord could inflict on them any punishment short
of death — a privilege denied to all his peers ; they were his
men and not those of the Government, which could not compel
them to serve in the galleys or render the usual feudal services
of the other peasants. They had their own military com
mander, similar to the drungarius of the gypsies at Nauplia,
and every May-day they marched, under his leadership, to
the sounds of drums and fifes, bearing aloft their baron's
banner, and carrying a May-pole decked with flowers, to the
square in front of the house where the great man lived.
There they set up their pole and sang a curious song in honour
of their lord, who provided them with refreshment and on the
1 Sathas, i., 267-9 ; Lunzi, 452-4, 467 et sqq. ; Marmora, 259, 283-4.

540 CORFU
morrow received from them their dues. Originally granted
to the family of Abitabuli, whose name perhaps came from
the habitacula, or encampments of these vagrants, and then
held by the house of Goth, the fief of the gypsies was con
ferred in 1 540, after the great siege of Corfu, upon Antonios
Eparchos, a versatile genius, at once poet, Hellenist, and
soldier, as compensation for his losses and as the reward of
his talents. By a curious anomaly the jurisdiction of the
gypsy baron extended over the peasants of the continental
dependencies of Corfu. It is therefore possible that the serfs
called vaginiti, whom we found under the Angevins, and who
emigrated from the mainland, and paid a registration fee on
their arrival, were gypsies.1
The Corfiote serfs were of three classes, those of the re
public — for Venice had domain lands in the island, which were
usually let to the highest bidder on a twenty-nine years' lease
— those of the Latin Church, and those of the barons. The
Corfiote peasants, though they sometimes amassed sufficient
money to enfranchise themselves, and though Venice often lent
a ready ear to their grievances, were worse off under the feudal
system than their fellows on the mainland under Turkish
rule. They had no political rights whatever ; they were
summed up in the capitulations at the time of the Venetian
occupation, together with " the other movable and immovable
goods " of their lords ; and it is no wonder that they some
times ran away to escape the tyranny of a hard master. The
peasants on the domain lands had a lighter lot than the other
two classes ; though all except the priests were liable to
forced labour, they could obtain exemption on payment of a
very small sum. Their chief grievances were that they were
compelled to labour on Government works in the town at
times when they wanted to be sowing their corn or gathering
their grapes ; that they had to cut firewood for the bailie, and
to provide oil even in years when the olives did not bear.
Occasionally we hear of a peasants' insurrection against
their oppressors, and Marmora remarks in his time that " the
peasants are never contented ; they rise against their lords on
the smallest provocation." Yet, until the last century of her
1 Lunzi, 464-6; Sdthas, iii., 31, 38-40; the words of the gypsy song
are quoted in the 'OS^As rijs Kepnipas (ed. 1902),

EDUCATION 541
rule, Venice had little trouble with the inhabitants. She kept
the nobles in good humour by granting them political privi
leges, titles, and the entrance to her navy ; and, so long as the
Turk was a danger, she was compelled, from motives of pru
dence, to pay a due regard to their wishes. Moreover, by an
almost complete neglect of education, the republic was able
to prevent the growth of an intellectual proletariat, such as in
the British times furnished an ample supply of political
agitators.1 During the four centuries of her rule, Venice did practi
cally nothing for the mental development of the Corfiotes.
No public schools were founded ; for, as Count Viaro
Capodistrias informed the British Parliament much later, the
Venetian Senate never allowed such institutions to be estab
lished in the Ionian islands.2 When the Catholic archbishop
wanted an excuse for remaining in Venice, he pleaded that he
could not study theology at Corfu. The administration was
content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Italian ; and to
grant the Ionian youths the special privilege of taking a degree
at the University of Padua without examination. Moreover,
the Corfiote student after his return soon forgot what he had
learned, retaining only the varnish of culture. There were
exceptions, however, to this low standard. When Cyriacus of
Ancona visited Greece, he was able to purchase Greek manu
scripts at Corfii. Others were copied by the exiles who fled
there after the conquest of the Morea. In the sixteenth cen
tury there was quite a number of Corfiote writers — poets like
Eparchos and Triboles, the traveller Noukios, the theologian
Kartanos ; but they mostly wrote abroad. It was a Corfiote
who founded at Venice, in 1621, the Greek school, called
Flangineion, after the name of its founder, Flangfnes, which
did so much for the improvement of Grefk education, and
which still exists by the side of S. Giorgio dei Greci. But
even in the latest Venetian period there were few facilities for
obtaining knowledge in Corfii. No wonder that the Corfiotes
were easier to manage in those days than in the more
enlightened British times, when newspapers abounded and
1 Sathas, ii., 169 ; iii., J7, 85, 89, 290, 422.
2 Remarks respectfully committed to the Consideration of the British
Parliament, 64.

542 CORFU
some of the best pens in Southern Europe were ready to
lampoon the British Protectorate.1
The long Venetian domination exercised a natural in
fluence on the language, especially in the town. At the time
of the annexation, the islanders had stipulated, as we saw,
that a Greek notary should be appointed, as under the
Angevins, for serving writs in Greek on the Greeks, and a
Greek interpreter formed part of the Venetian administration.
From 1524 dates the appointment of the first Greek teacher.
That Greek continued to be used in private documents, while
Venetian or Latin was the official language, is clear from the
will of one of the barons, which has been preserved, and
which is drawn up in Greek, though the testator was of
Frankish origin. But at the time of the battle of Lepanto,
when Venice was particularly anxious to conciliate her
Greek subjects, the bailie issued a Greek translation of his
proclamations for the special benefit of the country folk.2 It
was among them, of course, that the language of Hellas held
its firmest roots, and even to-day it is almost the only tongue
understood in the country-districts of Corfii, while Italian is
readily spoken in the town. In the Venetian times, the
dialect of the rulers was the conversational medium of good
society, and the young Corfiote, fresh from his easily won
laurels at Padua, looked down with contempt upon the
noblest and most enduring of all languages, which had
become solely the speech of the despised peasants. Still,
nature will out, and Greek idioms occasionally penetrated
the Venetian dialect of Corfu. But it was only towards the
close of the Venetian domination that Greek became fashion
able. Two Corfiotes, Eugenios Boulgaris and Nikephoros
Theotokes were the pioneers of modern Greek, and in one
of Goldoni's comedies we are told that the street-boys of
Corfii sang ditties in that language.3
The Venetian flag naturally attracted a far larger amount
of shipping to the island, which served as a half-way house
1 Sathas, ii., 245 ; v., 269 ; Marmora, 433 ; Kyriaci Anconitani Itine
rarium, 29 ; Veloiides, 'II cv Bevtrla 'EXX^i/ci) airoLKla (ed. 2), 1 16.
2 Romands, i>rltwds ZApto, 57, 59, 314-20. Gerakares, op. eit, *!'.
3 Romands, 0/. eit., 29-30 ; Goldoni, La famiglia delV Antiquario, Act
II., Scene 10.

FISCAL SYSTEM 543
for galleys between Venice and Crete, and a traveller, who
visited it in 1480, says that the harbour " was never empty."
But these visits of the fleet led to many fatal brawls, while
Ionian commerce was hampered by the selfish colonial
policy then prevalent in Europe, which aimed at concentrat
ing all colonial trade in the metropolis, through which
Corfiote exports had to pass. This naturally led to a vast
amount of smuggling, even now rampant in Greece. Among
the exports we read of valonea, cotton, all sorts of fruit, and
salt, which was sent to the other Venetian colonies in
Dalmatia and Albania ; a considerable amount of wine was
produced; and the oil-trade, now the staple industry of
Corfii, was so greatly fostered by a grant of twelve gold pieces
for every plantation of 100 olive trees, that in the last half
century of the Venetian rule there were nearly 2,000,000 of
these trees in the island. Even the now bare islet of Vido,
which the French made a solitude and called it lie de la
Paix, was, in Marmora's time, so thickly planted with olives,
that it " looked like a forest swimming in the waves." Yet
Corfu then, as now, presented the paradox of great fertility
combined with great poverty. When the corn raised on the
mainland was exported abroad, instead of being kept for the
consumption of the colony, the Corfiotes were in despair, for
their island did not produce nearly enough grain for the
whole year ; hence its export was more than once forbidden
by the paternal administration, and public granaries in which
officials were ordered to deposit a part of their pay, were
established to mitigate the severe famines. The taxes con
sisted of a tithe of the oil, the crops, and the agricultural
produce ; a money payment on the wine sold ; a " chimney-
tax" on each house; and export duties of 15 per cent, on
oil, 9 per cent, on salt, and 4 per cent.* on other articles.
There were also import duties of 6 per cent, on Venetian,
and of 8 per cent, on foreign, goods. The salt-pans of
Levkimme formed a Government monopoly, and the importa
tion of foreign salt was punished by banishment. The
fisheries of Butrinto were let, as we saw, to a Corfiote, and
yielded 1300 ducats a year.1 Corfiote merchants received
1 Sathas, i., 1 12-14 ; ii-, 126, 131, 140, 307 ; iii., 33, 90, 200, 302, 356,
359, 470 ; v., 224, 227, 228 ; Marmora, 10, 257, 258 ; Lunzi, ch. xv. ;

544 CORFU
the same treatment in Venice as those of Candia and the
other Greek colonies, and the bezzoni and tornesi of the
Venetian mint did duty in Corfii.1
It is to Venice that Corfii, almost more than any other
place in Greece, owes its present appearance. The streets,
the fortifications, the houses are all Venetian rather than
Greek ; indeed, in some respects, the traveller just landed
there can scarcely fancy that he has set foot on Greek soil,
for neither forty-three years of union with Greece, nor fifty
years of British protection, nor yet the brief interregnum of
French and Russian rule, have succeeded in removing the
mark of Venice. The lion of St Mark still watches over the
walls ; from his mouth the water still flows at the fountain of
Kardaki, where Venetian ships used to fill their tanks ; the
castles still retain their Venetian names, a Corfiote village on
the slopes of Pantokrator is still called Enetfa. The whole
fabric of modern Corfiote society, the conditions of land
tenure, and the habits of the people are still largely based
upon the Venetian polity. The titles, which the lonians
almost alone of Greeks still use, are relics of the days when
the shrewd statesmen of the mercantile republic, like our
modern Prime Ministers, closed the mouths of obstreperous
subjects or rewarded loyal services by the bestowal of honorary
distinctions. Many of the most ardently Greek opponents of
the British Protectorate bore aggressively Italian names, and
among the modern Corfiote Members of Parliament there are
some whose Italian origin is scarcely concealed by the classical
terminations of the Greek declensions.
If we would figure to ourselves what Corfii was like
during the first 150 years of the Venetian domination, that
is to say, up to the period of the first great Turkish siege, we
must remember that the town, despite the resolutions of the
Venetian Government, remained unwalled, and that its sole
defences were, as in Angevin times, the two fortified peaks
of what is now known as the Fortezza Vecchia, then distin
guished as the " old " and " new castles " (the latter built by
Charles I. of Anjou), whose commanders changed every
Jervis, History of the Island of Corfii, 125 ; Botta, Storia Naturale delP
Isola di Corfii, 61 ; Faber, Evagatorium, iii., 351.
1 Archivio Veneto, xvii., 88 ; xviii., 114.

APPEARANCE OF THE TOWN 545
sixteen months. Familiar landmarks were the two towers,
in which the councillors resided, the " tower of the iron gate,"
the church of St Nicholas, and that of the Holy Apostles.1
In 1394, a Corfiote baron of Neapolitan origin, Pietro Capece,
built the Catholic convent and church of the Annunziata, the
oldest of all the extant Latin churches in the town, which he
subsequently placed under the care of the bailie, and which
contains many tombs and inscriptions, mostly relating to
Corfiotes who fell in the Turkish wars. Another church,
that of St Michael, attributed by some to the Despots of
Epiros whose name it bore, is said by Marmora to have been
perhaps founded on the day when the islanders resolved to
accept the sway of Venice. But the most famous shrine in
the island was that of Our Lady of Cassopo, to which home
ward-bound mariners were wont to pay their respects, and
which rose on the site of the altar of Zeus, before which Nero
had inaugurated his artistic tour of the Greek provinces.
Around it there had grown up a much-frequented market,
which was free from all dues.2 Owing to the number of
poor and infirm pilgrims who passed through the island to
and from the Holy Land, a hospice was provided for their
accommodation ; but towards the end of the fifteenth century
their usual abode was the cloister of the Bare-footed Friars.
Upon travellers from the north, the town did not at that
time make a favourable impression. The streets were
" narrow, dark, and smelly," the place swarmed with " abject
persons," and the pious pilgrim was offended by the contrast
between the meanness of the archiepiscopal residence and
the numbers of the Jews.3 Yet at the time of the siege we
hear of the " beautiful and splendid houses " of the suburbs
and of the splendid Avrame Palace by the sea-shore — a
mansion adorned with fine marble statues, and standing in a
lovely garden. It is interesting to note that visitors were
shown the rock which Pliny the elder had long ago identified
1 Sathas, ii., 10, 81, 85, 87, 116, 117 ; iii., 46.
2 Marmora, 232, 251 ; Sdthas, ii., 141 ; iii., 30, 85, 263, 460 ; Buondel
monti, 54, 55, and his plan of the island ; Burney MS. 213, f. 23.
3 Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, ff. 36, 351; Casola, Viaggio, 34-5; Sathas,
iii., 57 ; Jovius, Historia sui temporis, ii., f. 186 ; Guazzo, Historie,
f. 203.
2 M

546 CORFU
with " the ship of Ulysses." x Another spot associated with
classical Corfii, the ancient Hyllaean harbour, now received
its modern name of Chaliki6poulo from the family of that
name to which it belonged.2
The Turkish peril had not become acute at the time of
the Venetian occupation. The neighbours of the new
Venetian colony were either Italian princelets, like the
Tocchi, who ruled over the other Ionian islands, and like
Esau Buondelmonti, the Despot of Joannina, or else Albanian
chieftains who had established themselves at various points
in Epiros after the break-up of the Greek Despotat It was
the policy of the republic to play off the Italians against the
Arnauts and the Arnauts against the Italians. Thus, when
Esau was captured by the Albanians, the bailie of Corfii
intervened to obtain his release and entertained him in
the castle ; while, on his death, the Corfiotes assisted the
Albanians to occupy Joannina, rather than that it should
fall into the hands of his ambitious nephew, Carlo Tocco,
who was a vassal of the King of Naples to boot. The latter's
aggressive and successful policy in ^Etolia and Akarnania led
to occasional friction with Venice, but never endangered the
safety of Corfu.
It was otherwise, however, with the Genoese. These
commercial rivals of Venice did not abandon all hope of
obtaining so desirable a possession until some time after
the establishment of the Venetian protectorate. Twice,
in 1403 and again in 1432, they attacked Corfii, but on
both occasions without success. The first time, under the
leadership of Marshal Boucicaut, they tried to capture the
impregnable castle of Sant' Angelo, which was courageously
defended by a Corfiote noble, and were routed by the island
militia with great slaughter near the village of Doukades.
The second attempt was more serious. The invaders
effected a landing, and had already ravaged the fertile
island and burned the borgo and suburbs of the capital,
when on the seventh day a sudden sally of the townsfolk
and the garrison checked their further advance. Many of
the Genoese were taken prisoners, while those who succeeded
1 Faber, op. eit, iii., 347.
2 Romands, TparLavbs Zdpfrs, 316 ; Sathas, v., 318.

ARRIVAL OF GREEK EXILES 547
in escaping to their vessels were pursued and severely
handled by the Venetian fleet. The further attempts of
Genoese privateers to waylay merchantmen on their passage
between Corfii and Venice were frustrated, and soon the
islanders had nothing more to fear from these Christian
enemies of their protectors. The raid had proved what
Venetian statesmen had once doubted — the fidelity of the
Greeks ; but the loss of life and property which it had
caused, and which was intensified by visitations of the
plague, led the Government to grant five years' exemption
from all services and dues to all who would settle in the
island.1 Meanwhile, however, the Turks had been rapidly gaining
ground on the mainland opposite. The first serious alarm
arose when they captured the harbour of Valona, one of
the keys of the Adriatic, from Regina Balsha, the lady of
the place.2 In 1430 Joannina fell, and in the following year
the Turks made their first attack upon Corfu ; but the
repulse with which they met discouraged them from renew
ing the attempt for more than a century. Henceforth,
however, especially after the disappearance of the Tocchi
from the continent, the continental dependencies of Corfii
were constantly exposed to the danger of Turkish or
Albanian attack. The people of Parga, in particular,
suffered terribly for their devotion to Venice; their homes
were captured, their wives and children carried off, and it
required a vigorous effort by the Corfiotes to recover the
rocky fortress, which was now their outpost against the
Turk.3 After the fall of Constantinople and the subsequent
collapse of the Christian states of Greece, Corfu became
the refuge of many distinguished exiles. From the imperial
city came the famous family of the Theotokai, which has
given so many leading men to the island of its adoption.4
From the Morea fled the last Despot Thomas Palaiologos
1 Marmora, 253-7 ; Chalkokondyles, 265 ; Sanudo apudMuratori, xxii.,
1030 ; Sithas, III., 433, 445, 466, 472 ; Kyriaci Anconitani Itinerarium,
29, 30. 2 Sdthas, III., 159, 181.
3 Kalligas, MeXfrai, 653 ; P. A. S., 'H Ilapya, 80-1 ; Marmora, 260-1 ;
Sathas, v., 328. 4 Romands, Tpariavbs Zdpfys, gg.

548 CORFU
with his wife and family, the historian Phrantzes, and the
ancestor of the Corfiote historian Marmora. Phrantzes
wrote the story of his troubled times at the instance of
some noble Corfiotes in the repose of the Phaeacian island,
and his remains, with those of his master's consort, the
Despoina Caterina, sleep in the church of SS. Jason and
Sosipater. So great was the influx of Greek priests that
Venice became seriously alarmed lest they should undermine
the loyalty of her Corfiote subjects, and issued an order
that the ancient " college of 32 " should hold no more
meetings, and that all popes settled in the island during
the last ten years should leave it. But the need of humour
ing the Greeks in view of her own struggle with the Turks
induced her to pursue her usual tolerant policy.1
The religious enthusiasm of the Greeks increased all the
more, because at that time Corfii became the shrine of her
famous saint, Spiridion, a Cypriote bishop who took a
prominent part at the council of Nice, and whose remains
had been transferred to Constantinople. A priest, named
Kalochairetes, brought the holy man's body and that of St
Theodora, the consort of the Iconoclast Emperor Theophilos,
to Corfii in 1456, and upon his death his two eldest sons
became proprietors of the male saint's remains, and his
youngest son received those of the female, which he
bestowed on the community. The body of St Spiridion ,
ultimately passed to the distinguished family of Boiilgaris,
to which it still belongs, and is preserved in the church of
the saint, just as that of St Theodora reposes in the
cathedral. Four times a year the body of St Spiridion is
carried in procession, in commemoration of his alleged
services in having twice delivered the island from plague,
once from famine, and once from the Turks. His name is
the most wide-spread in Corfii, and the number of boys
called " Spiro " is legion.2
During the operations against the Turks at this period
the Corfiotes distinguished themselves by their active co-
1 Lamansky, 047, 049, 050 ; Marmora, 267.
2 Brokmes, He/>i tuv ^njcrtws reXov/iivoiv tv Kepxipa \LTaveLtov tov 0. Xeitj/dvov
tov 'Aytov ZTvplSuvos (English tr. by Mrs Dawes); Marmora, 261-7,287;
Sathas, v., 260.

CORFIOTE LOYALTY 549
operation with their protectors. We find them fighting twice
at Parga and twice at Butrinto ; during the long Turco-
Venetian war, which broke out in 1463, we hear of their
prowess at the isthmus of Corinth, beneath the walls of
Patras, and behind the ramparts of Lepanto ; it was a Corfiote
who temporarily gained for the republic the castle of Strovili
on the mainland, and even in her purely Italian wars the
islanders assisted. The privilege of electing the captain of
the Corfiote war-galleys was the reward of this loyalty.
Meanwhile, headed by their archbishop, they worked on
their own fortifications, and, regardless of archaeology, found
in their ancient city, Palaiopolis, a handy quarry. It seems,
indeed, as if the words of Marmora1 were then no mere
servile phrase : " Corfu was ever studying the means of
keeping herself a loyal subject of the Venetians."
1 Sithas, v., 222, 224, 246, 336-9 ; vi., 219 ; vii., n ; Marmora, 268-70,
324-5, 333 ; P. A. S., 'H Udpya, 81-4 ; Malipiero, Annali, 89, uo.

CHAPTER XVI
« THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE (1485-1540)
THE sequel of the long war which ended in 1479, fatal as
it was to the ancient domination of the Italian counts of
Cephalonia over the four Ionian islands which had so long
formed a separate Latin state, enabled Venice to increase
her possessions in the Ionian Sea. We saw in a previous
chapter how in 1482 and the following year, she drove
Antonio Tocco out of Zante, and Cephalonia, when he had
recovered them from the Turks, and how she was forced to
cede the latter of her conquests to Bajazet II., but managed
to keep permanent possession of " the flower of the Levant,"
on payment of an annual tribute of 500 ducats, which
continued from 1485 down to its abolition by the treaty
of Carlovitz in 1699, and formed a heavy burden on the
revenues of the island.
The first care of the Venetians was to repopulate their
new possession, which had not recovered during the brief
restoration of the Tocchi from the emigration and devasta
tion caused by the Turkish Conquest. The authorities of
the Venetian colonies on the mainland were ordered to offer
lands to settlers in the island ; especially to stradioti from
Modon, Coron, Nauplia, and Lepanto, who would serve as
a protection; numbers of those light horsemen accepted,
on condition that they should be free from tithes and from
all compulsory feudal service for four years ; and thus the
republic soon had at her disposal a seasoned body of men —
at once colonists and cavalry — for they had to keep their
own horses — under the command of Theodore Palaiol6gos,
perhaps a son of the defender of Salmenikon, who had
660

REPOPULATION OF ZANTE 551
already acted as an agent of the republic in sounding the
opinions of the people of Cephalonia. In comparatively few
years' time, the stradioti of Zante numbered 1 500 families ;
and, though they were liable to serve outside the island, they
had a strong motive for settling there, in that they could
bequeath their lands. The loss of Lepanto, Modon, and
Coron naturally increased the tide of immigration to Zante ;
the Knights of Rhodes received lands there; in 1528, despite
plague and earthquakes, the population had reached 17,255
souls, and among them were some of the most illustrious
Greek families of Crete, Constantinople, and the Morea.
The island replaced Modon as the port of call on the way to
the East ; a flourishing town grew up at the water's edge,
where the modern capital stands ; and successive governors
noted with alarm the steady depopulation of the old
mediaeval city on the castle hill, where the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities lived, and strove by fiscal privileges
to prevent the human current from flowing downwards.1
The new colony was at first ordered to be governed by
the laws of Lepanto, but the administration of Zante was
later assimilated to that of Corfu. Down to 1545 it was
entrusted to a single provveditore, who was at first a
subordinate of the governor of Modon ; but, in that year,
at the request of the community, two councillors were
appointed in Venice to accompany him, and to hold office
for the term of two years, like himself. These councillors
took it in turns to act as treasurer, a month at a time, and,
together with the provveditore, they administered justice, an
appeal lying from their decisions to Corfu. A secretary com
pleted the resident Venetian official hierarchy.2 There was,
however, a much greater personage, the provveditore generate
del Levante, an official first appointed in 1500, after the loss
of Modon, whose commission included the supervision of
all the Venetian colonies, but more especially Zante, in
consequence of its increased importance. Every year it was
1 Sdthas, v., 75-6, 81-3, 91, 96 ; vi., 253-63 ; vii., 43 ; Lunzi, 203-4 ;
Remondini, De Zachynthi Antiq., 147 ; Chronicon breve, 522 ; Mustoxidi,
'EXKyvopLviipLoiv, 299-300 ; Bembo, f. 15; Chi6tes,'lo-ToptK&.'A-iropLvripLovetip,aTa,
ii., 305-11,633. 2 Sathas, v., 100, 103 ; vi., 269 ; vii., 45.

552 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
his duty to visit the various islands; on his arrival the
powers of the local governor lapsed, and those who had
grievances hastened to lay them before him. The day of
his arrival was a public holiday ; the Greek and Latin clergy
walked in procession to his palace ; the Catholic bishop and
the Greek " chief priest " offered him respectively the cross and
the Gospels to kiss ; then they all proceeded in state to the
Catholic cathedral, where the rival heads of the two churches
sat side by side ; the protopapds wished the republic and her
representative many years ; the bishop celebrated mass ; and
a banquet to the magistrates and the nobles ended the day.1
In Zante, as in Corfu, there was a General Council,
composed of all the nobles, which met once a year to elect a
smaller council, whose numbers, limited to ioo down to 1545,
were finally fixed at 1 50. The organisation of the latter was
deliberately borrowed from the similar body at Corfu ; and,
like it, the Zantiote Council of 1 50 had the right of conferring
the local offices, which were few, unimportant, and highly
coveted. This body also elected the three annual judges,
and the captains of any galleys that were fitted out at Zante.
The community had the right of sending deputations for
the redress of grievances at its own expense to Venice, or to
the provveditore generate, whose headquarters were Corfii.
Society in Zante was formed on aristocratic lines; the
islanders were divided into three classes — the people, the
burghers, and the nobles ; and the feudal system, introduced
by the Latin counts, had split up the island into twelve fiefs.
The noble families were for long unlimited in number; in
1542, however, it was ordained that no newcomers, except
those who had emigrated from Nauplia and Monemvasia
(then recently lost), could form part of the General Council
unless they had resided for five years ; and the total was
finally fixed at ninety-three, the place of an extinct family
being filled by the ennoblement of a family of burghers.
There was no distinction, as at Corfii, between Latin and
Greek nobles ; the population of Zante was a mixture of
races — Italians, Greeks from many parts of the Morea, and
Jews, who had a ghetto walled in and guarded — and it was
to this truly Levantine characteristic that Venetian governors
1 Sdthas, i., 319-20; Lunzi, 314-16.

CATHOLICISM IN ZANTE 553
attributed the difficulty of keeping order. Homicide was
common, and the Mainate emigrants took the blood-feud
with them to Zante.1
The Catholic Church required re-establishment, for the
Turks had destroyed the Franciscan monastery and the old
cathedral in the castle, and the only Catholic place of worship
left in the early years of the sixteenth century was a small
chapel, which served as a barn. Under these circumstances,
it was not to be wondered at that the Catholics had become
converts to the Greek Church. The island now, however,
became again the seat of a Catholic bishop. From the time
when Honorius III.2 had added the see of Zante to that of
Cephalonia, its holder had hitherto always styled himself
" Bishop of Cephalonia and Zante," and had resided down to
the time of Leonardo III. Tocco in the former and more
important island. When, however, the last of the Palatine
counts restored the Greek bishopric of Cephalonia and
Zante, he ordered that the next Catholic bishop, Giovanni
Ongaro, while retaining the double title, should reside in
Zante, where the number of Italians was larger than in the
more purely Greek island, and thither, after the Venetian
Conquest, the exiled Latin prelate returned. When, in
1488, he was laid to rest in the duomo, his successor altered
his title, styling himself as His Grace "of Zante and
Cephalonia," the change in the order of the islands being
doubtless due to the fact that Cephalonia was still in the
power of the Turks. Even after it too became Venetian,
Zante continued to be the residence of the Catholic bishop
and to give him his first title, as is still the case. For long,
however, the Catholic prelates were absentees ; one of the
Medici of Nauplia held the see for many years without
visiting his flock ; the number of Catholics naturally
dwindled ; and the Cephalonians complained that their
children were left unconfirmed and the Latin churches
allowed to fall into ruin. In Zante, however, the Venetians
founded the still existent Catholic cathedral of S. Marco,
which replaced the old minster of the Redeemer up in the
1 Sithas, v., 100, 112 ; vi., 257, 275 ; Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber,
lxxxvi., 186 ; Lunzi, ch. viii.; Mercati, Saggio Storico Statistico di Zante^
33. 2 Regesta, IL, 50,

554 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
castle ; the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie ; and
S. Antonio ai Lazzaretti, besides restoring the old cathedral
in the time of Sixtus V., whose arms were placed in the
church, and the ancient Franciscan monastery, afterwards
converted into barracks.1
The Greek bishop of Cephalonia, whom Leonardo III. had
appointed, was still living at a very advanced age when the
Venetians occupied Zante, and his successors, like their
Latin rivals, included both islands in their titles, and claimed
to exercise authority over both. Hence disputes arose
between them and the protopapds of Zante, an official
elected by the Council of 1 50 for the term of five years,
who was the real head of the Greek Church in the latter
island. These disputes were further accentuated by the
attempt of the metropolitan of Corinth to interfere in the
affairs of a see, which was held by one of his suffragans.
This interference was stopped by the Venetians, who forbade
Greek priests to go to the mainland for consecration. A
further grievance of the Orthodox Zantiotes was that the
Cephalonian clergy always elected a native of that island to
the episcopal, or archiepiscopal throne, as it became in 1632,
while they had no voice in the election ; it was accordingly
at last decided that a Zantiote must be chosen on every
third vacancy.2 The incident was typical of the jealousy
between the islanders ; and it is characteristic of Greek life,
that when, in the sixteenth century, the Cephalonians claimed
precedence over Zante, they quoted to the Venetians in
support of their claim the fact that in the Homeric catalogue
the people of Zakynthos are only cited as the subjects of
Odysseus ! 3 Some of the Catholic bishops of Zante, like
Medici, contravened the privileges of the Orthodox, ordering
Catholic priests to perform services and baptisms in Greek
churches.4 But against this the republic, true to her principles
of toleration, promptly protested. Venetian policy in these
islands was to pay respect to the Orthodox hierarchy, and
at the banquet in honour of the provveditore generate at
1 Sathas, v., 79-80, 95, 1 80- 1 ; Lunzi, ch. xiii. ; Chidtes, II., 298, 492,
497, 5°6, 515, 532-4 ; vi., 98-103 ; Mercati, 31.
2 Sathas, v., 80, 108, 109, 136, 140, 188; Chidtes, IL, 520, 527;
Miklosich und Miiller, v., 74-6. 3 Sdthas, iv., p. iv. 4 Ibid., v., 167.

COLONISATION OF CEPHALONIA 555
Cephalonia, the Orthodox bishop sat at his right hand and
ate from a plate of gold.
When, in 1500, Cephalonia also became a Venetian
possessionj it was treated in the same way as Zante. The
island needed cultivation ; for the Venetian Government
during its previous brief occupation between 1483 and 1485
had ordered that it should be made to appear as desolate as
possible, in order that the sultan might not think it worth
while to insist upon its evacuation. The Turkish domination
and the various attempts of the Venetians to recapture the
island had naturally prevented its improvement, so that the
first act of the latter, when they recovered it, was to plant
there a military colony of stradioti from Modon and Navarino,
with other survivors of those fallen towns, confiscating a part
of five feudal baronies for the purpose. So greatly did
Cephalonia increase in population, that, in 1548, despite the
great Turkish raid of ten years earlier, it contained 15,304
souls, while the policy of fining all who left their lands
untilled increased its fertility. But at this period there was
only one fortified town in the island, the castle of St George,
which the Venetians restored — for Assos was built later — and
the inhabitants lived for the most part in scattered hamlets,
which afforded a temptation to foreign and native thieves.
Its government during the previous Venetian occupation had
been modelled on that of Lepanto ; it was now assimilated to
that of Zante. But the character of the two islands, though
separated by only a narrow channel, was widely different.
Cephalonia, owing to its purer Hellenic population, was
actuated by the democratic sentiments engrained in the
Greek race, despite the existence of six baronies, a relic of
the feudal system. The meetings of the Cephalonian
Council were noted for their turbulence and irregularity, of
which the Venetian governors often complained. The
request for a " Council of primates " had been granted in 1 506
on condition that every councillor should reside not more
than a mile from the capital; but in 1548 we are told that
" there was neither means nor place of meeting." Tumultuous
gatherings, at which even peasants took part, were held in the
street, and we hear of 800 or 900 persons electing the captains
of the galleys, the three annual judges, and the other local

556 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
officials. Hence, while Corfiote nobles temporarily resident
in Zante and Zantiote nobles in Corfii were allowed to take
part in the General Council of their hosts, both islands scorn
fully refused the privilege to Cephalonians. After half a
century of Venetian rule, a governor sums up the condition of
the island in a sentence : " The inhabitants are poor and idle ;
civilisation and municipal laws there are none." Yet the
natives, like true Greeks, had even then a yearning for
education. " There is not a single schoolmaster in all
Cephalonia," they pathetically wrote to Venice, and they
begged that a portion of the fines paid by criminals might be
set aside to provide a teacher's salary. Their petition was
granted, and at Zante the abbot of the Anaphonetria monas
tery was obliged to pay 150 ducats to the community every
year as the pay of a schoolmaster. Otherwise a single
Italian master in either island represented the most cautious
republic's total contribution to public education.1
Under the jurisdiction of Cephalonia was the ancient
home of Odysseus. After its devastation by Ahmed Pasha
in 1479, Ithaka remained deserted and unclaimed till 1503,
though it is mentioned several times during the previous
war as a station of the Venetian fleet.2 But in that year a
party of Venetian subjects landed on the island with their
oxen, and began to cultivate it. The governor of Cephalonia,
afraid of remonstrances from the sultan, advised caution, and
reported the matter home.3 Thereupon, in 1504, an order
was issued from Venice for repopulating "an island named
Val di Compare situated opposite Cephalonia, at present
uninhabited, but reported to have been formerly fertile and
fruitful." Accordingly, lands were offered to settlers free
from all taxes for five years, at the end of which time the
colonists were to pay to the treasury of Cephalonia the
same dues as the inhabitants of that island. The offer of
the Senate seems to have been successful ; among those who
accepted it were the families of Boua Grivas, Petalas, and
Karavfas, which last in modern times produced a local
1 Sathas, v., 150-5, 163, 175, 179, 186-7, 200 ; vi., 279, 281, 285 ; vii.,
86, 120 ; Lunzi, 205, 216, 227-31, 318-23, 472 ; Chidtes, iii., 75.
2 Sanudo, Diarii, iii., 444, 488, 498, 500,
3 Ibid, v., 883.

ITHAKA 557
historian of Ithaka. In 1545, the tithe of Ithaka — 82 bushels
of wheat — figures in the budget of Cephalonia, and three
years later the retiring governor of the latter island reported
that "under the jurisdiction of Cephalonia there is another
island named Thiachi, very mountainous and barren, in
which there are different harbours and especially a harbour
called Vathi or Val de Compare ; in the which island are
hamlets, in three places, inhabited by about sixty families,
who are in great fear of corsairs, because they have no
fortress in which to take refuge." These three hamlets are
doubtless those of Palaiochora, Anoe, and Exoe, which are
regarded as the oldest in the island. In 1563, Ithaka is
described as "very well populated, for many Cephalonians
go to live there," and we obtain a glimpse of its internal
government. In 1504 a Venetian governor had been
appointed, and a certain Pugliese had subsequently been
made "captain" of Ithaka for life. On his death, in 1563,
Venice allowed the Cephalonian council to elect one of its
members every year to fill his place "without any cost to
the republic," on condition that he recognised in all things
the superior authority of the provveditore, who paid it an
annual visit. Ithakan interests were represented by two
" elders of the people " (Stj/noyepovTei), who acted as assessors
to the "captain," and the natives, after several complaints
to Venice against his extortion and interference in their
local affairs, at last secured the abolition of this office, so
that thenceforth the two "elders" ruled alone. Every
year the principal men of the island met to elect the local
officials. Small as it is, Ithaka boasted of one feudal barony,
held by the family of Galates — the only Ithakan family
which enjoyed the privileges of nobility in the Venetian
period. It had first received exemptions from Leonardo
III. Tocco, and it is still extant in the island.1
At first both Zante and Cephalonia were a drag on the
Venetian exchequer, for both required development, and the
former was saddled with the Turkish tribute. But the
introduction of the currant in the first half of the sixteenth
1 Sithas, v., 157, 202 ; vi., 284, 285 ; Karavias, 'laropla ttjs vrfo-ov'Wdicris,
69 ; Lunzi, 348-50 (Greek ed., pp. 83-5) ; Meliardkes, TewypaLpia tov vop.ov
KeipaXX-qvlas, 150, 191 ; Chidtes, IL, 228.

558 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
century x enormously increased the revenues of Zante. The
wholesale conversion of corn-fields into currant plots caused,
however, such alarm that the local authorities applied to
Venice for leave to root up the currant bushes. The
republic replied by allowing the currants to remain, but at
the same time levied a duty (the " new tax," as it was called)
upon them, the proceeds of which were devoted to the
purchase and storage of bread stuffs.2 The two islands
were also useful to the fleet, which bought its wine at
Zante, and obtained its masts and spars from the forest on
the Black Mountain, which the republic reserved for her
exclusive use.3 She took over at the outset all the salt
pans, fisheries, mills, and other appurtenances of the Palatine
counts,4 and farmed out the taxes in the usual manner.
They chiefly consisted of a tithe on the produce, from which
the stradioti were exempt, and which was assessed by assessors
named scontri, annually elected by the governor and
Council ; of a house-duty, or livello ; of a duty on all wine
sold ; and of the so-called preda, a tax on flocks and herds.
Out of the corn paid as tithe by the Zantiotes sufficient was
ordered to be sent to Venice every year to defray the
amount of the Turkish tribute on that island.5 Thus, a
century later, it came to be said that, if Corfii was useful
to the republic as a strategic position, the other two islands
were valuable from their revenues. Nor were the Cepha-
lonians and Zantiotes, if we may believe the reports of their
Venetian governors, otherwise than loyal to the republic.
They knew that they had no alternative but Turkish
government, and they saw, too, from their vicinity to the
Morea, that their fellow-Greeks there were worse off than
themselves. The peasants might not like the obligation to
serve in the armed force or man the galleys of the islands,
which the nobles were so proud to command. But they
knew that the blood-tax, the iraiSondfama, of the Turks was
harder than these milder forms of conscription. The
1 It is spoken of as "recent" in 1541 (Sathas, -vi., 268); in 1553
Zantiote currants were sent to England (Feyerabend, Reyssbuch, f. 376).
2 Lunzi, 433-4.
3 Sathas, v., 97, 170, 177 ; vi., 278. * Ibid., v., 156.
6 Ibid., v., 77, 88, 94, 161 ; vi., 266-7, 272, 2S4.

SIEGE OF CORFU 559
Zantiote peasants hated their own aristocracy ; the Cepha-
lonians often quarrelled among themselves ; but neither
island ever rose against the republic which secured them
the almost uninterrupted blessings of peace.
The Turco- Venetian war of 1499- 1502, which gave Cepha
lonia to Venice, scarcely affected the sister-islands. Zante was
reassured by the coolness of a stradioto at the moment of
a scare of invasion. Corfii, which Bajazet II. had threatened
ten years earlier, prepared for an attack, and the houses of
the suburb were sacrificed to the defences of the city.1 But
the colony sustained no loss save the temporary capture of
Butrinto ; while a Corfiote captain, one of the ancient family
of Goth, greatly distinguished himself by running the
blockade of Modon, receiving in return for his services the
jurisdiction over the fief of the gypsies.2 For a whole
generation the Ionian islands enjoyed, like the other
Venetian colonies, the long peace.
At last, however, after rather more than a century of
almost complete freedom from attack, Corfii was destined
to undergo the first of the two great Turkish sieges, which
were the principal events in her annals during the Venetian
occupation. In 1537 war broke out between the republic
and Suleyman the Magnificent, at that time engaged in
an attack upon the Neapolitan dominions of Charier. V.
During the transport of troops and material of war across
the channel of Otranto, the Turkish and Venetian fleets
came into hostile collision, and though Venice was ready
to make amends for the mistakes of her officials, the sultan
resolved to punish them for the insults to his flag. He was at
Valona, on the coast of Epiros, at the time ; and, removing
his camp to Butrinto,3 whose commander surrendered at his
approach, he gave orders for the invasion of Corfii.
The island was not taken unawares. The presence of the
1 Sathas, vi., 237-9 ; vii., 66 ; Malipiero, 169 ; Chronicon Venetum,
apud Muratori, xxiv., 150.
2 Marmora, 277 ; but Lunzi says that the fief had been granted to his
family a generation earlier.
3 So Paruta and the Duke of Naxos ; and the position of Butrinto
makes this more probable than La Bastia or Paramythia, the alternative
sites for his camp.

560 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
sultan in Epiros and the naval operations of Andrea Doria to
the north and south of Corfii had put the authorities on their
guard, and Admiral Girolamo Pesaro with a large fleet,
which was joined by a contingent of five Ionian galleys, had
been despatched to Corfiote waters. The town still relied for
its protection upon the two fortified peaks of what is now
called the Fortezza Vecchia, defended by a garrison of some
2000 Italians and the same number of Corfiotes, under the
command of Naldo, an officer who had distinguished himself
in the Italian wars, while four galleys, with their crews on
board, lay behind the breakwater below the fortress. The
place was well supplied with guns and ammunition ; it
contained provisions for three years ; and its defences were
strengthened by the destruction of 3,000 houses in the
suburbs, which might have served as cover to the enemy.
The Turks, under the command of the redoubtable
Khaireddin Barbarossa, the most celebrated captain in the
service of the sultan, landed at Govino, where the much later
Venetian arsenal now stands, towards the end of August,
destroyed the village of Potamo, and marched upon the
capital. On the 29th another force of 25,000 men crossed
over to join him, these operations being facilitated by the
fact that Pesaro had sailed up the Adriatic without engaging
the Turkish fleet. The mart, as it was called, which lay
outside the city walls, was speedily taken, and its remaining
inhabitants found the gates shut against them and were forced
to crouch under the castle ramparts on the rocky promontory
of S. Sidero or behind the breakwater. The Corfiote traveller,
Noiikios, an eyewitness of the siege, has left a graphic account
of the sufferings of these poor wretches, huddled together on
a narrow ledge of rock, without food or shelter, and ex
posed to the stones of the garrison and to the full force of one
of those terrific storms of rain not uncommon in Corfu at that
season. Those who could afford to bribe the soldiers on the
walls were pulled up by means of ropes, while the rest were left
to die of cold or hunger. When it seemed that the siege was
likely to last, the Venetian governor, in order to economise
food and space, turned out of the fortress the old men, women,
and children, who went to the Turkish lines to beg for bread.
The Turkish commander, hoping to work on the feelings of

SIEGE OF CORFU 561
the garrison, refused ; so the miserable creatures, repudiated
alike by the besieged and the besiegers, wandered about
distractedly between the two armies, striving to regain
admission to the fortress by showing their ancient wounds
gained in the Venetian service ; and, at last, when their
efforts proved unavailing, lying down in the ditches to die.
Meanwhile, for three days and nights the suburbs were
blazing, and the Turks were ravaging the fair island with
fire and sword. The castle of Sant' Angelo on the west
coast alone resisted their attacks. More than 3000 refugees
from the countryside had congregated within its walls, and
four times did its brave Corfiote garrison repulse the enemy.
Barbarossa, whose headquarters were at the Avrame Palace
on the sea-shore, now began the bombardment of the fortified
peninsula, which contained the mediaeval city of Corfu. He
planted a cannon on the islet of Vido, then called Malipiero,
the pleasaunce of a nobleman, and noted for its abundance of
game. But the gunners made such bad practice that in three
days they only hit the mark five times, while the rest of their
shots flew over the fortress into the sea on the other side.
Nor was Barbarossa more fortunate in an attempt to bombard
the city from his own galley ; a well-aimed shot struck the
vessel ; and, when he retired in the direction of the fountain
of Kardaki, where ships were accustomed to water, and began
a cannonade of the place from that side where the walls were
lower, the great distance caused most of his projectiles to fall
short of the mark. At this, Ayas Pasha, the grand vizier,
resolved to see for himself the prospects of taking the city ;
he therefore ventured out one dark and rainy night to inspect
the moat and the walls. What he saw convinced him that
Corfu could only be captured after a long siege, whereas the
month of September had now begun and sickness had broken
out among the half-starved Turks. He therefore advised the
sultan to abandon the attempt. Suleyman first resolved
to try the effect of persuasion upon the garrison ; he
therefore sent a Corfiote prisoner to frighten the Venetian
authorities into surrender. The bailie, Simeone Leone, and
the provveditore, Luigi da Riva, dismissed the sultan's envoy
without a reply, and a brisk cannonade from the castle
batteries proved an effective answer to fresh demonstrations 2 N

562 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
of hostility. Suleyman accordingly made a virtue of necessity ;
the grand vizier sent for the Venetian representative at
Constantinople, who was at the sultan's headquarters, and
offered to raise the siege, if the republic would compensate
his master for his losses ; but, before any reply could arrive
from Venice, the siege had been already raised. After firing
all the houses that remained standing in the suburbs, the
Turks were ordered to embark ; their fleet made one more
demonstration ; but on 1 1 th September, after a stay of only
thirteen days in the island, they recrossed the channel to
Epiros. But in that short time they had wrought enormous
damage. The Corfiote traveller tells us that they had
destroyed " all the works of men's hands " throughout the
island, and that they slew or carried off all the animals they
could find ; sparing only the trees and vines owing to the
suddenness of their departure. The Duke of Naxos wrote to
the pope, that two large cities might have been built out of
the houses and churches which they had destroyed ; the
privileges and letters-patent of the islanders had perished in
the flames or had been used as ammunition, and a Corfiote peti
tion states that they carried away more than 20,000 captives.
The population was so greatly reduced by this wholesale
deportation, that the nobles had to be recruited from the
burgesses, and nearly forty years afterwards the whole island
contained only some 17,500 inhabitants, or less than one-
fifth of the estimated population in classical times. Among
these captives was a young girl, Kale Kartanou, whom (and
not a Baffo of Paros) the Corfiote historians believe to have
been the mother of Murad III.1
Great was the joy in Venice at the news that the invaders
had abandoned Corfu, and public thanksgivings were' offered
up for the preservation of the island, even in the desolate
condition in which the Turks had left it. Planks were sent
to rebuild the suburb; the Italian mercenaries who had
maltreated the inhabitants during the siege were hanged;
and a noble Venetian was beheaded. The Greeks had made
1 Noukios, "Airodi,p.LQv, 7-14; Paruta, I., 372-9; Maurocenus, 176-81;
Marmora, 301-12, 327 ; Haji Kalifeh, The History ofthe Maritime Wars,
57-8 ; Guazzo, ff. 199, 201-4 ; Jovius, ii. ff. 186-8 ; Buchon, Recherches,
ii., 4667 ; M. Mustoxidi 'I<rro/>«& ko.l *iXoXo7ik& 'AvdXetra, 83-97, 193.

FORTIFICATION OF CORFU 563
immense sacrifices in their determination never to yield —
they could not have fought better, it was said, had they been
fighting for the national cause — and they had their reward.
The new bailie, Tiepolo, contented everyone, we are told,
by his wise provisions ; he restored order out of chaos, and
did his best to promote peace with the Turks ; while the
republic bestowed upon Eparchos, the distinguished Corfiote
scholar and envoy, the vacant fief of the gypsies, as compensa
tion for his losses and as the reward of his services. But
the chief result of the siege was the tardy but systematic
fortification of the town of Corfu, at the repeated request
of the Corfiote Council, which sent several embassies to
Venice on the subject. More than 2000 houses were pulled
down in the suburb of San Rocco to make room for the walls,
for which the old city of Palaiopolis once more provided
materials, and Venice spent a large sum on the erection
of new bastions. Some parts of the Fortezza Vecchia date
from this period ; what is now called the Fortezza Nuova
was built between 1577 and 1588, when the new works were
completed. The traveller Buochenbach, who visited the
island in 1579, gives the inscriptions placed on two of the
new bastions ; we have two plans showing the fortifications
of the citadel and of the town about this time ; and visitors
to Venice will remember the models of Corfu in the arsenal
and on the outside of Sta. Maria Zobenigo.1
The other Ionian islands suffered in less degree at the
hands of the Turks. They ravaged Paxo, carried off over
13,000 souls from Cephalonia, descended upon Zante, and
burnt Parga, whose inhabitants long wandered homeless
about the mountains of Epiros, until Venice at last restored
their beloved abode.2 They laid in ashes the monastery of
the Redeemer on one of the Strivali islands, the Strophades
of the ancients — a building already once before destroyed by
the Turks — despite the prowess of those very muscular
1 Sathas, v., 269; Lamansky, 611 ; Guazzo, f. 208; Miklosich und
Miiller, iii., 364-6 ; M. Mustoxidi, op. eit, 52, 193 ; Buochenbach,
Orientalische Reyss, 24 ; Marmora (364-5) and Jervis (History of the
Island of Corfii, 126) give the two plans.
2 Paruta, i., 379 ; P. A. S. 'H Hdpya, 86 ; S&has, v., 98, 289 ; viii.,
331 ; Guazzo, f. 242 ; Maurocenus, 181.

564 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
Christians, the monks, whose martyrdom was commemorated
by a Zantiote poet.1 Finally, the devastation of the Venetian
islands was completed by a raid upon the southernmost of
them all, Cerigo.
This seems the most appropriate place to describe the
vicissitudes of Kythera, or Cerigo, which, though neither
geographically nor any longer politically one of the Ionian
group, was so reckoned during the British occupation and
during the last eighty years of Venetian rule. The history
of the fabled home of Venus was absolutely different from
that of the other Greek islands, in some respects resembling
that of the Cyclades, in others that of the Ionian islands,
just as it is placed half-way between the two. At the time
of the Conquest, in 1 207, it was occupied, as we saw, by the
Venetian family of Venier, self-styled descendants of the
goddess of love, who took the title of Marquis of Cerigo,
because they guarded the southern marches of Greece, while
the same style was adopted by their fellows, the Viari, who
held sway over the islet of Cerigotto, famous in our own
time for the discovery of the bronze statue of " the youth of
Antikythera." 2 When, however, the Greeks recovered
Monemvasia, the position of the two marquises became
dangerous. It would appear from a confused passage of
the Italian memoir on the island, that the natives of Cerigo,
impatient at the treatment which they received from their
Latin lord, sent a deputation to invoke the aid of the Greek
governor of the new Byzantine province.3 At any rate,
Licario's famous cruise among the Latin islands proved
fatal to the rule of both the Venetian marquises. A
governor was sent to Cerigo from Monemvasia; but ere
long the island was conferred by Michael Palaiol6gos upon
Paul Monoyannes, one of the three great Monemvasiote
archons, who is described in a Venetian document as being,
in 1275, "the vassal of the Emperor and captain of Cerigo."
Monoyannes fortified the island, where his tomb was
discovered during the British protectorate, and it remained
in the possession of his family till 1309, when intermarriage
1 Sathas, Mi^/ieta, v., 78-9, 102 ; TovpoKparovpLiv-ij 'EXXds, 122.
2 Chilas, Chronicon, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 346.
3 Antique Memorie di Cerigo, a/W Sathas, vi., 301.

CERIGO AND THE VENIERI 565
between the children of its Greek and Latin lords restored
Cerigo, with the approval of Venice, to the Venieri.1
The island now received a strict feudal organisation,
which long continued to affect its topography and its land
tenure. It was divided up into twenty-four carati, or shares,
six of which were owned by each of the four brothers Venier,
while the fertile plain and the castle of Kapsali were held in
common. In order to increase the population, the brothers
invited Cretans to settle there, granting them exemption
from all services and dues for ever. The rest of the islanders
were simple serfs, whom the brothers divided among them
like so much live stock ; these pdroikoi, as they were called,
ran with the land ; they could not marry without the consent
of their lords ; they could not engage in any except the
smallest trade ; they could not quit the island without
leaving a pledge of their return ; in short, they were at
the beck and call of their masters, or worse, of their masters'
agents, for the marquises usually preferred residence in
Crete to their ancestral castle of Kapsali, where one of the
clan held the command for the others.2
Such was the state of Cerigo down to 1363, the year of
the great Cretan rebellion. In that rising the Venier family
took a very prominent part ; Tito Venier was one of the
ringleaders, and both he and two other members of his
family paid for their disloyalty with their heads. A
Venetian fleet arrived off Cerigo, and young Piero Venier,
who held the castle, had no option but to surrender. The
republic took possession of the island, and for thirty years it
formed a Venetian colony, governed by a castellano, sent
every two years from Crete.
The Venieri did not, however, abandon the hope of
recovering their confiscated marquisate; they had influence
at Venice; they had not all been disloyal to the mother
country; and, accordingly, in 1393, a portion of the island
was restored to them. Henceforth, eleven out of the twenty-
four shares were held by Venice, and the remaining by the
1 Sanudo, Istoria del Regno, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 127 ; Pontes
Rerum Austricarum, xiv., 181 ; Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv.,
310 ; Sansovino, Cronologia del Mondo, 185 ; Arch. Veneto, xx., 92.
2 Sathas, vi., 302-3 ; Stai, Raccolta di antic he autorita, 45.

566 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
Veriieri — an arrangement which we find in force two
centuries later — but the republic continued to appoint the
governor. In fact, the system adopted resembled the
administration of Tenos in the sixteenth century. The
Venieri were never disturbed again in the possession of their
thirteen shares; down to the fall of the republic in 1797
they remained " partners," or compartecipi, of Venice ; and
their name is still borne by humble inhabitants of Cerigo.1
The organisation of this distant colony by the republic
resembled that of Corfii. In 1 502 the governor received the
higher rank of provveditore, the first of whom was specially
sent out to strengthen the fortifications of the castle, above
whose gate may still be read the date of 1 503, when the old
fortress was enlarged.2 This official, who exercised judicial,
executive, and military powers, was dependent on the
Government of Crete, so long as that great island remained
Venetian ; during the brief Venetian occupation of the
Morea in the eighteenth century, he took his orders from
there ; and, finally, after the peace of Passarovitz, he became
the subordinate of the provveditore generate del Levante at
Corfii. Appeals lay from him to those officials, and from
them to the Home Government. In 1573, on the petition
of the principal inhabitants, a Council of thirty was estab
lished, whose members formed a close oligarchy, and a
" Golden Book '' was started, in which the names of the nobles
and their sons were registered. This body, which existed
down to 1797, had the exclusive right of electing the local
authorities from its own ranks, including two councillors, who
acted as assessors of the governor, and three judges of petty
sessions, who had jurisdiction in small cases. The Council
also had the privilege of electing envoys, or sindaci, who were
commissioned to lay any complaints which the islanders had
against the Venetian governor or his subordinates before the
authorities at Venice. But the local historian informs us
that Venice always upheld her own officials.3 To her the
island, from its geographical position, was of much im
portance after she lost her last stations in the Morea. Cerigo
1 Sdthas, vi., 303-5 ; Chilas, 347, 350 ; Relasioni degli Ambasciatori
Veneti, Ser. III., iii., 13 ; Stai, Raccolta, 46.
2 Sathas, vi., 306 ; Stai, 48. 3 Stai, 50-1.

BARBAROSSA RAIDS CERIGO 567
was then her only port of call between Zante and Crete ; it
was also an excellent post of observation where news could
be easily obtained from the Morea and ships sighted at a
huge distance. From March to October, the dangerous
months, a guard was always mounted on Cape St George,
beacon-fires were lighted at night, and the Cretan Govern
ment was kept advised of the approach of a Turkish fleet ; in
short, Cerigo was " an eye of Crete " ; but, after the loss of
that island, it too lost its importance, and after the peace of
Passarovitz it was practically useless.1
To the inhabitants, however, the situation of the island
was a doubtful advantage, for it exposed them to the attacks
of corsairs and Turks. True, it was defended by three castles,
in which Venice kept a small garrison, paid by the Cretan
Government. But, in 1537, it suffered terribly from
Barbarossa's raid. From the castle of San Dimitri, at
that time the chief place of the island, 7000 souls -were
carried off without the least resistance, and the other towns
were sacked and destroyed. This raid made a profound
impression on the islanders, and " Barbarossa's sack of
Palaiochora" was long spoken of as the blackest day in
the annals of Cerigo. The survivors either fled to the
thickets, or else escaped to the Morea, whence it was difficult
to entice them back. Hence the land went out of cultivation ;
the population sank in 1545 to 1850, and the Venetian part
of the island yielded less than a quarter of the corn which it
produced before the war. Such was the distress that, in
1562, all the inhabitants desired to emigrate into Turkish
territory. Their misery wasj indeed, due to domestic
tyranny, as well as to foreign invasion. The Venieri let
their portion of Cerigo to local personages, who farmed the
taxes, and their share of the island came to be called the
Commessaria from being managed by these commessi, or
agents, who ground down the peasants with every kind of
exaction. It was impossible to induce their victims to bring
their woes before the Venetian governor, because as the
peasants shrewdly remarked, "our rectors come and go,
while our tyrants live permanently here." In vain, both
Venice and the Venieri tried to lure the peasants back by
1 Sdthas, vi., 286, 289, 290 ; Lamansky, 660 et sqq.

568 THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENICE
exemptions for five years from the terzarie, or third of the
produce, which was the chief revenue of the island. A
Venetian governor declared that he had never heard of a
single fugitive who had returned. Hence the Venetian
commissioner who visited Cerigo in 1563 reported that all
the revenues of the republic's portion, amounting to an
average of 500 ducats, were eaten up by the officials' salaries
and the costs of the swift vessels which carried news to
Crete.1 The Venieri and the Venetians treated the Greek Church
with leniency. The famous golden bull of Andronikos II.,
issued in 1293 during the brief sway of the Greeks over the
island, mentions the bishopric of Kythera as already exist
ing, and names its bishop as first among the suffragans of
the metropolitan of Monemvasia. We hear, indeed, of a
TrpwToiraTras instead of a bishop in the second half of the four
teenth century ; but later on the chief ecclesiastic of the island
had the episcopal title, and enjoyed the exclusive right of
ordaining the Cretan priests. The best known of the series,
Maximus Margounios, who was appointed towards the close
of the sixteenth century, won fame as a Greek scholar, a
theologian, a letter writer, and a lyric poet It is only in
our own time that the exigencies of local politics threatened
for a moment this ancient see.2 And down to our own day
the Kytherians, whether at home or at Athens, celebrate
every 7th October (n.s.) the festival of their patron saint,
Our Lady of the myrtle bough, whose image borne by the
waves to the island and found in a myrtle tree represents the
Christian version of Aphrodite rising from the sea
. The peace of 1540, which restricted the possessions of
Venice in the Levant to Crete and Cyprus— the latter soon
to go — the solitary outpost of Tenos in the ^Egean, and six
out of the seven Ionian islands with their dependencies of
Parga 3 and Butrinto on the mainland, greatly increased the
1 Sathas, v., 53-62 ; vi., 287, 288, 292, 306, 307 ; Stai, 54 ; Cornaro,
MS. "Historia di Candia," 1 1., fol. 92 ; Lamansky, loc. eit
2 Stai, 49-50; Chilas, 348; Lami, Delicto: Eruditorum, ii., 292-318;
ix., 1-61 ; Horatio F. Brown, The Venetian Printing Press, 135 ; Sathas,
v., 66-75 ! AAtIov ttjs XpLor. 'Apx. 'Et., vi., 115.
3 Predelli, Commemoriali, vi., 236.

IMPORTANCE OF THE IONIAN ISLANDS 569
importance of this last group to the republic. We saw how
the stradioti from her lost colonies in the Morea found a home
in Corfu; and, were we to continue the story of the lonians
under Venetian rule, we should find that they came at last to
represent all that was left of her once splendid colonial
empire in Greece. But the history of the Ionian islands
down to the fall of the republic in 1797 is beyond the scope
of the present work.

CHAPTER XVII
THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO (1207-I463)
To complete the history of Frankish Greece it only remains
to describe the most romantic and also the most durable of
all the creations ofthe Fourth Crusade — the island duchy ofthe
Archipelago. Italian rule over the classic home of lyric poetry
which the noble verses of Byron have immortalised, estab
lished by the swords of a handful of aristocratic freebooters,
not only survived by more than a century the Latin states of
the mainland, but continued to exist in isolated fragments
down to the seventeenth and even to the eighteenth century.
We saw in the second chapter how, in 1207, the Venetian
Marco Sanudo and his comrades made themselves masters
of the isles of Greece, and how the bold adventurer fixed his
residence at Naxos. The Byzantine capital had been in the
south, where the ruins of the castle of Apaliri still mark the
site. The conqueror founded the present city. There, on the
hill above the sea, where the arches and tortuous lanes of the
upper town still recall the picturesque rock-villages of the
Italian Riviera, he built a strong castle, flanked with twelve
large towers, and a great square donjon in the middle, a frag
ment of which stands to-day, a monument, like the tower at
Paros, of Italian rule in the Archipelago. There, too, he
erected a Catholic cathedral, on which, in spite of its restora
tion in the seventeenth century, his arms may still be seen ;
while below, the remains of a massive mole tell of his efforts
to shelter the port which the little island of Palati protects on
the other side. It was he, too, according to one authority,
who made boat-houses for a small fleet of galleys,1 so neces
sary to the lord of an insular realm.
1 Lichtle, MS. ("Description de Naxie"), however, assigns them to the
Knights of Rhodes. Cf. Bys. Zeit, xi., 496-S.
570

DUKE MARCO I. 571
Sanudo, though a Venetian citizen and descended, so
flattering genealogists afterwards pretended, from the historian
Livy, had no intention of acknowledging the suzerainty of
the republic and of becoming a mere republican governor,
although the deed of partition had assigned Andros and most
of the other Cyclades to the Venetians. He did homage to
the Latin Emperor Henry, the over-lord of the Frankish
states in the Levant, who invested him with his islands " on
a freer tenure than any baron who was then in all the
empire of Romania," 1 and erected them into a duchy, then
known by its old Byzantine name of " the Dodekanesos "
(or "the Twelve Islands"), but soon called the "duchy of
Naxos," or, " of the Archipelago " — the form into which the
Latins corrupted the Greek term " Aigaion Pelagos." Duke
Marco I. remained true to his sovereign ; one account
represents him as being at the emperor's side when he died
at Salonika.2 Towards his mother country, however, he was
not so loyal. When, in 12 12, the Cretans, under the leader
ship of the Hagiostephanitai, rose against Venice, Tiepolo,
then Duke of Candia, summoned Marco Sanudo to his aid,
stimulating his patriotism by the promise of 30 knights' fees
in the colony. According to another account, Sanudo had
already been promised broad lands in Crete as the reward of
his services at the time of the sale of the island to Venice.
At any rate, he came with a large body of men, speedily
stamped out the rebellion, and claimed his reward. When
Tiepolo delayed to carry out his part of the bargain, the
Duke of Naxos listened willingly to the treacherous sugges
tion of a Cretan archon, named Skordili,.that he should seize
the island with the assistance of the Greeks. The idea
appealed to his ambition, and his soldiers, discontented at
the scarcity of bread in the market, were glad of an excuse
for war ; the Greeks fraternised with them ; the town of Candia
was soon theirs ; the Venetian duke, disguised as a woman,
was let down from the wall, and escaped to the neighbouring
castle of Temenos, which the Byzantine conqueror Nikephoros
Phokas had founded 250 years before on the double hill
1 Pacta Ferrarice, published by Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 167 ;
Zabarella, Tito Livio Padovano, 56, 78 ; Sauger, Histoire nouvelle,
13-14. 2 Ibid., 23, 27-8.

572 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
which is so prominent a landmark to the mariner. Marco,
leaving his relative Stefano in charge ofthe town, then set out
with his army of Greeks and Italians to conquer the other forts
of the island. But his career of conquest was checked by the
arrival of Venetian reinforcements at the port of Fair Havens,
whereupon Tiepolo sallied forth from his stronghold, occupied
and fortified a commanding position at Upper Sivriti, the
modern Amari, while Marco was compelled to hide in a cave,
waiting for help from his island duchy. Then Tiepolo by a
brilliant coup de main recovered Candia without bloodshed,
and put the commander in chains. Though the castle of
Belvedere in the south and all the district from Mylopotamos
as far west as cape Spada was still his, Marco saw that
further resistance was useless ; but he made, as might have
been expected from so clever a diplomatist, most favourable
terms for himself. On condition that he surrendered the
seven castles which he held, he was to receive 2500 hyperperi,
to take from the land which was still his 3000 bushels of corn
and 2000 of oats, while twenty Greek archons who had been
compromised in the rebellion were allowed to leave the island
with all their property. Sanudo promised never to set foot
in Crete again, unless the Duke of Candia summoned him to
his aid, and in 121 3 he returned to Naxos. But the failure of
this attempt to make himself " King of Crete " did not in the
least damp his ardour. He fitted out eight galleys, descended
upon the coast of Asia Minor, and captured Smyrna ; but the
fleet of Theodore Laskaris, the Emperor of Nice, nearly four
times larger than his own, defeated and captured him. He
was forced to restore his conquests, but his valour and beauty
appealed so strongly to the emperor, that he not only liber
ated his prisoner, but bestowed upon him the hand of his
sister.1 Thus allied by marriage with an Orthodox sovereign, the
first Duke of Naxos, who, as a Venetian, was not likely to
be a bigot, naturally showed a wise spirit of tolerance for
1 L. de Monacis, 1 54-5 ; A. Dandolo and Sanudo apud Muratori, xii.,
338 ; xxii., 545 ; E. Dandolo, Cronaca Veneta, fol. 44-5 ; Cornelius,
Creta Sacra, ii., 241-9; Tafel und Thomas, ii., 159-66. Cf. Gerola,
Monumenti Veneti nell' isola di Creta, i., 105, 181, 191, 195, 219, 237,265,
284, 285.

THE CHURCH 573
the religion of his Greek subjects. Provided that their
Church was not molested, they had little objection to being
governed by an Italian ; so, when they saw that he had no
intention of banishing their metropolitan — a position twice
offered to the exiled Michael Akominatos of Athens by the
patriarch of Nice1 — or of taxing their monasteries, his rule
became popular in the Borgo and adjacent " Neochorio," or
new town, where the Greeks clustered at the foot of the
castle hill. Many Catholics, however, doubtless flocked to the
Cyclades to make their fortunes in the delectable duchy which
he had founded, and a Catholic archbishopric was therefore
established for their welfare at Naxos, with four suffragans
at Melos, Santorin, Tenos, and Suda, as Syra was called in
the Middle Ages, while the bishop of Andros was placed, as
we saw, beneath the see of Athens.2 Such was the begin
ning of the Latin Church in the Archipelago, which has
proved the most durable of all the Frankish institutions in
the Levant; for even to-day Catholics are numerous there
and a Catholic archbishop still resides in the town of Naxos.
About the year 1227 the creator of the new state closed his
successful career, the career of a typical Venetian adventurer,
brave, hard-headed, selfish, and unscrupulous ; in short, just
the sort of man to found a dynasty in an age when a weak
empire had been dismembered and in a part of the world
where cleverness counts for more than heroic simplicity of
character. His son and successor, Angelo, though the child of a
Greek mother, rendered loyal service to the decaying Latin
Empire, doing homage successively to Robert, John of
Brienne, and Baldwin II., and distinguishing himself — it is
said — by his vigour in the defence of Constantinople against
the Greeks of Nice and their Bulgarian allies in 1236, when
his large contingent of ships did great 'execution, and he
led the vanguard with Geoffrey II. of Achaia.3 This
incident had a profound effect upon the external relations
of the duchy; for, as we saw in a previous chapter, it was
out of gratitude to the Prince of Achaia that the Emperor
1 Lampros, M.ixa^X Akoiilv&tov, ii., 154-5.
2 Les Registres d' Innocent IV, iii., 196, 207, 239, 328; Les Registres
de Gre'goire IX., i., 613 ; Sauger, 11-13. 3 Ibid., 40-4.

574 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Baldwin II. conferred upon the latter the suzerainty over
the Archipelago. Angelo received from the emperor a
leaden bull setting forth this new feudal bond, by which
the dukes of Naxos became vassals and peers of the
principality of Achaia, and which, though occasionally
disputed by Venice, was still in force at the close of the
fourteenth century.1 In virtue of this arrangement, Angelo
and the other lords of the Cyclades were summoned by their
suzerain, Prince William of Achaia, to assist him at the
siege of Monemvasia in 1247, and to aid him in his ill-
starred campaign, which ended with the battle of Pelagonia
in 1259. Both Angelo and the Grand-Duke of Lemnos
were invited by Venice to join in maintaining the crumbling
fabric of the Latin Empire in 1 260 ; and, in the following
year, when the fugitive Emperor Baldwin II. landed at
Negroponte and proceeded to Thebes, the Duchess of
Naxos, a French dame of high degree who had been
married in his palace at Constantinople in happier days,
met him with grand presents. The penniless emperor had
nothing substantial to give her in return ; but he knighted
her son Marco, the future duke, who had studied in the
best school of chivalry, the court of William of Achaia,
and bestowed upon her husband the empty title of " King." 2
By his assistance to the Latin Empire, Angelo had, however,
incurred the wrath of Vatatzes, the Emperor of Nice, who
had revenged himself by capturing from him the island of
Amorgos and bestowing it upon Geremia Ghisi, chief of a
Venetian family related to the Sanudi, which already held
all or part of no less than eight islands, and was therefore
second to the ducal dynasty alone. Sprung originally from
Aquileia, the Ghisi were more loyal to Venice than their
independent cousins, and every St Mark's day the offering
of a large wax-candle in the great church signified that they
remained true sons of the republic.3 Angelo behaved
towards the Venetians much as his father had done. When
a fresh rebellion broke out against their rule in Crete in
1229, he obeyed the summons of the Duke of Candia, and
1 Sanudo apud Hopf, Chroniques, 124.
2 Ibid, ioo, 102, 115, 172; X.t. M., 11. 2891-6; L. d. C, 119, 145;
L. d. F, 52, 56, 61. s Ersch und Gruber, lxvi., 336.

THE CASTLE OF ANDROS 575
built, at his request, the castle of Suda. But when the
Cretans implored the aid of Vatatzes, and a Nicene fleet of
thirty-three sail arrived off the island, Angelo abandoned
the Venetian cause and returned to his duchy, bribed, it
was said, by the money of the Greek emperor.1 He ended
his long reign in 1 262 " beloved by his people," if we may
believe a late panegyrist, and "worthy," according to the
same authority, " of the Empire of the East."
Nearly half a century had now elapsed since the founda
tion of the duchy, and the Latin rule seemed to be well-
established. A Venetian document 2 of this period informs
us that all the islands possessed fortresses, of which the
picturesque ruins of the castle of Andros may be taken as a
specimen. Situated on a rock at the mouth of the harbour,
and approached by a stone bridge of a single span, which has
defied the tremendous storms of seven centuries, and by
three steps, it bore over the entrance a statue of Mercury.3
The statue has disappeared ; but the castle of green stone,
the work of Marino Dandolo, its first Venetian lord, still
remains, though the sea has eaten away its face till it is as
jagged as the teeth of a saw, and a vaulted roof inside one
of the blocks of masonry may have been the baronial
chapel. Sometimes, as in the case of the tower at Paros,
the petty lords of the islands built their residences out of
the marble fragments of some classical monument, and thus
destroyed what had hitherto escaped destruction. But
though each island baron needed one or more castles for
his own abode or for the protection of his subjects against
corsairs, he did not always reside there himself. While the
dukes habitually lived in their picturesque duchy, not a few
of their vassals, who had property or official posts in Crete,
Negroponte, or in some other Venetian colony, preferred the
more brilliant and amusing society of those places to the
solitary splendour of a grim baronial castle on some rock
1 L. de Monacis, 156; A. Dandolo apud Muratori, xii., 346; Cor
nelius, Creta Sacra, ii., 263 ; who all ascribe this incident, by an anach
ronism, to Marco Sanudo.
2 Hopf, Chroniques, 175-6.
3 Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, Periplus, 21 ; Hopf, Andros (tr. Sar-
dagna), 161.

576 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
in the JEgeaA which the ancient Romans, whose descendants
they boasted themselves to be, had regarded as a dismal
exile for traitors rather than an agreeable pleasaunce. Thus,
Marino Dandolo of Andros, one of the pleasantest and most
fertile of the Cyclades, an island of streams and lemon-
groves and ferns, usually governed it from his palace in
Venice, and the Barozzi of Santorin spent less time in their
castle of Skar6s than on their Cretan estates. Besides, as
time went on, the baronies of the Archipelago became a school
for the governors and diplomatists whom the republic of St
Mark required in the Levant, and 'it was thence that she
often selected her bailies of Negroponte and her captains
of Modon and Coron.
Already, in the mouths of Venetian colonists and sailors,
the nomenclature of the Cyclades had been strangely distorted.
Delos had become " Sdili " ; Syra was " Lasudha " ; Patmos is
scarcely recognisable under " Sanctus Joannes de Palmasa " ;
" Serfento " and " Sifanto " were the corruptions of " Seriphos "
and Siphnos " ; " Fermene " had taken the place of Thermia,
or Kythnos. Already, too, in the above-mentioned Venetian
document, the name 1 " Arcipelago " is used for the JEgean
— Egeopelagus, as it figures in the Latin titles of the later
dukes. The rule of the Latins over the Cyclades received, how
ever, a severe shock during the reign of Marco II., the third
duke. The Greek cause was now everywhere in the
ascendant, for not only had the Latin Empire fallen, but the
Byzantine double-eagle now waved over the south-east of
the Morea, whence Tzakones and half-castes flocked to man
the navy of Michael VIII., whose admiral, Philanthropen6s,
was despatched against the ^Egean islands. The native
population of the Cyclades was naturally excited by these
successes of its race, and the island of Melos, the nearest to
the great Greek stronghold of Monemvasia and situated on
the main route between that place and Constantinople, was
specially affected by the national movement. A Greek
monk placed himself at the head of the insurgents, who
seized the castle and drove out the Latins. But Marco II.
1 It also occurs in the treaty of 1268 ; (Pontes Rerum Austriacarum,
part ii., xiv., 96).

LICARIO'S CRUISE 577
possessed all the vigour of his family. He assembled a
fleet of sixteen galleys, and, with the aid of some French
adventurers from Constantinople, carried the fortress of
Melos in less than a couple of hours, but wisely pardoned
the rebels, with the exception of the ringleaders. The monk,
however, he thought it necessary to punish, as an example
to the others. He therefore had him bound hand and foot,
and then thrown into the sea. This combination of clemency
and cruelty had the desired effect.1 But a far m6re
dangerous antagonist now appeared in the Archipelago.
We have already described the career of Licario — the
Italian of Eubcea, who was driven by the aristocratic pride
of the Lombard lords into the service of the Greek emperor,
and who inflicted such immense damage upon his own
countrymen. We saw how he took Skopelos, an island
supposed to be impregnable, from the Ghisi ; but this was
only one of his exploits in the Archipelago. The rest of
the Northern Sporades — Skyros, Skiathos, and Chiliodromia
— were now all recovered for the Byzantine Empire ; and
Lemnos, the fief of the Navigajosi, shared their fate. The
island was strongly fortified, and the principal castle was
held by Paolo Navigajoso, who still bore the proud title of
Grand Duke, or Lord High Admiral, of the fallen Latin
Empire, with a garrison of 700 men. So desperate was his
resistance, that the Greek- emperor offered him 60,000 gold
hyperperi for his castle — an offer disdainfully refused by that
brave and wealthy noble. Even after Paolo's death, the
Grand Duchess, a sister of Duke Marco II. of Naxos, still
held out ; till, when the siege had lasted three years, she
departed with all the corn in the granaries, the lead off the
palace roof, and the clothing and money in the castle.
Thenceforth Lemnos, like the Northern Sporades, remained
in Greek hands till the fall of Constantinople. Ten other
islands were at the same time lost for twenty years or more,
and their Latin lords were expelled. The Ghisi were driven
from Amorgos, Seriphos, and Keos; the Barozzi fled from
Santorin ; the Duke of Naxos was deprived of los, Siphnos,
Sikinos, and Polykandros ; the Quirini, who vaunted that they
were of even nobler origin than the Sanudi, belonging to the
1 Sauger, 78-80. 2 O

578 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
same family as the Roman Emperor Galba, were ousted from
Astypalaia ; and the terrible corsair Giovanni de lo Cavo
freed his native island of Anaphe from the Foscoli. Two
dynasties alone — the Sanudi and their vassals the Ghisi,
remained in the whole Archipelago ; and both were thankful
to be included by the Venetians in the treaties of peace
which the republic concluded with the Byzantine Empire in
1277 and I285, on condition that they harboured no corsairs.
In her earlier treaty of 1265 the republic had abandoned
" all the islands which had been under the suzerainty of the
Latin Empire or of the principality of Achaia " to the tender
mercies of Michael VIII.; she now attached more import
ance to their preservation, and did not forget that their
rulers were of Venetian origin and might further Venetian
aims against her great commercial rivals, the Genoese. The
latter had obtained from the Greek emperor by the treaty of
Nymphaion1 in 1261 the right to establish commercial
factories at Lesbos and Chios — the commencement of the
famous connection between Genoa and the rich mastic island.2
The growing desire of Venice to acquire direct authority
over the duchy was now shown by her attempt to claim the
suzerainty over it — a claim repudiated strongly and success
fully by' Duke Marco II. An excuse for the Venetian pre
tensions was afforded by the affairs of Andros. On the death
of Marino Dandolo, the first baron of that island, without
direct heirs, Duke Angelo, in strict accordance with the
feudal code of Romania, had left half of the barony to the
widow and had invested Geremia Ghisi with the other half.
But Ghisi was a powerful man without scruples — in fact, the
greatest filibuster in all the Archipelago ; he made himself
master of the whole island, and hoisted his pennant over the
castle. The widow, in her despair, sought the aid of the
gallant Jacopo Quirini of Astypalaia, an influential Venetian
in whom she found both a second husband and a warm
advocate. Quirini appealed to Venice, which peremptorily
ordered Ghisi to surrender the island to a plenipotentiary of
1 Sanudo and Magno, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 123-5, I27, I32> lSl-2 >
N. Gregoras, i., 98 ; Pachymdres, i., 204-5, 209 ; Pontes Rerum Austria-
carum, part ii., xiv., 68-9, 80, 138, 326, 344 ; Zabarella, II Galba.
- Hopf, Les Giustiniani, 5, 6.

MARCO II. REPUDIATES VENICE 579
the republic. But Ghisi, too, had friends at court; for his
daughter was married to a son of the doge ; so matters were
delayed in the usual dilatory style of Italian justice, till at
last both Ghisi and the Lady of Andros were both dead.
Upon this, Marco II., who was now Duke of Naxos, assumed
possession of the whole island, as no claimant had made his
appearance. Two days, however, before the period of two
years and two days allowed by the feudal code had expired,
there landed at Naxos Niccolo Quirini, son of the Lady of
Andros by her second marriage, and demanded his mother's
share. The duke might have imitated Geoffrey I. of Achaia,
and have dodged the claimant among the bays of his islands
for a couple of days, till the full term was expired. But he
was sufficiently conscientious not to avail himself of this
quibble, and expressed his readiness to abide by the decision
of the feudal court of Achaia, of which state he was the
vassal. This did not satisfy the claimant, who, like his father,
appealed to Venice, hoping that she would support the cause
of one who had been her representative in the Holy Land.
After a further long delay, Marco II. was at last cited in
1282 to appear before the doge. To this summons the duke
replied in a very able state paper, in which he pointed' out
by irrefragable historical evidence that Venice was not his
suzerain, and had therefore no jurisdiction over him. It was
true that the deed of partition, upon which the Venetians
based their claim, had assigned Andros to the republic.
But his grandfather had conquered it and the rest of the
duchy at his own cost ; he had been invested with his island
domain by the Emperor Henry, and that sovereign's suc
cessor, Baldwin II., had transferred the suzerainty over the
duchy to the Prince of Achaia. In 1267, by the treaty of
Viterbo, Baldwin IL had ceded the suzerainty over that
principality and all its dependencies, of which the duchy
was one, to Charles of Anjou, and had expressly bestowed
upon that monarch " all the islands belonging to the Latin
Empire," except four outside the limits of the Cyclades.
Accordingly, on the death of Prince William of Achaia in
1278, Marco II. had done homage to King Charles, who was
his legal suzerain, and had commanded three galleys in the
fleet which that sovereign despatched to attack the Greek

580 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Empire. It was, therefore, to the feudal court of the latter,
and not to Venice, that an appeal from the ducal court should
be referred. At the same time, he gave Venice a significant
hint not to cross the path of so mighty a sovereign as the
King of Naples, then at the height of his power. The
republic thereupon dropped the matter; Marco was wise
enough to pacify Quirini, who enjoyed great influence at
Venice — it was he who built the still existing Palazzo
Quirini-Stampalia in that city — by a money payment ; no
more was heard of a case which had lasted over half a
century ; the Sanudi retained possession of Andros as long
as their dynasty existed, and they added its name to the
ducal title, styling themselves " Lords of the duchy of Naxos
and Andros," and residing at times in Marino Dandolo's
wave-beat castle.1
The campaign of Licario in the Archipelago had another
effect, more disastrous even than the loss of the islands.
Piracy has in all ages been the curse of the ^Egean, and at
this time the corsairs of every nation infested that beautiful
sea. Skopelos and Keos, the volcanic bay of Santorin, and
the fine harbour of los, were favourite lairs of the pirates ;
they infested the terrible Doro channel between Andros and
Eubcea, and robbed one of the island barons in the haven of
Melos. The Greek governors, who were appointed to
administer the conquered islands, connived at the doings of
the corsairs, who might even fly the imperial flag and style
themselves " Lord High Admiral," like Giovanni de lo Cavo
of Anaphe, while the reduction of the imperial navy by
Andtonikos II. converted swarms of half-breed sailors into
pirates. The exploits of these men have already been
described, and the terrible devastation which they wrought
on the smaller and more defenceless islands may easily be
imagined. Sometimes the more remote consequences of
their raids were worse than the raids themselves. Thus, in
1286, on one of these expeditions, some corsairs carried off a
valuable ass belonging to one of the Ghisi, and sold it to
Duke Marco II.'s son William, who was baron of Syra. The
1 Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 36-52, 161-70 ; Vencto-Byzantinische
Analekten, 462-4 ; Ducange, Histoire de P Empire, i., 455-63 ; Buchon,
Recherches et Matc'riaux, i., 32, 33 ; Sanudo, 130.

fa

WAR OF THE ASS 581
purchaser was under no illusions as to the ownership of the
ass, for it was marked with its master's initials, but was
perfectly aware that he was buying stolen goods. Seeing
this, Ghisi invaded Syra, and laid siege to the castle. But the
fate of the ass had aroused wide sympathies, and was agita
ting all the small world of the Archipelago. Just at this
moment it chanced that the admiral of Charles II. of Naples,
who was now the suzerain of the Sanudi, had put into Melos
for provisions. Feudal law compelled him to assist the son of
his master's vassal ; the prayers of the fair chatelaine of
Melos, Donna Cassandra Sanudo, conquered any hesitation
that he might have felt ; so he set sail for Syra, and with the
aid of the ducal troops, forced Ghisi to raise the siege. The
great ass case was then submitted to the decision of the
Venetian bailie in Eubcea, who reconciled the two great
families of the Archipelago and restored the peace of the
duchy, but only after " more than 30,000 heavy soldi " had
been expended for the sake of the animal, which had probably
died in the interval.1
A fresh disaster fell upon the Archipelago in 1292, when
the Aragonese admiral, Roger de Lluria, arrived on his
punitive expedition against the Greek Empire. Latin or
Greek was all the same to this licensed freebooter, when
plunder was to be had. Andros, Tenos, Mykonos, and
Thermia were all ravaged by his sailors, who thus gave
Greece a foretaste of Catalan cruelty.2 Yet, if we may credit
a later historian, even at this very period, Naxos was a
flourishing island. We are told that the fertile plain of
Drymalia then " contained twelve large villages, a number of
country houses, and more than 10,000 inhabitants " — a total
doubtless partly due to the immigration of the population of
Amorgos half a century earlier. Yet towards his orthodox
subjects Marco II. was by no means so conciliatory as his
two predecessors. There was in the island an altar dedicated
to a portly man of God, St Pachys, or "the fat," who was
believed by the superstitious Naxiotes to possess the power of
making their children stout, and consequently comely,
according to Levantine ideas. Fond mothers accordingly
flocked to his altar with their skinny offspring, and pushed
1 Sanudo apud Hopf, Chroniques, 1 1 3- 1 4. 2 Muntaner, ch. cxvii.

582 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
their children's bodies several times through a perforated
stone still preserved as a curiosity in the seventeenth century,
and similar to those which have been found in Cyprus and
Ireland. If Marco II. had been a wise statesman, he would
have allowed the Naxiote matrons to offer up prayers to the
" fat " saint as long as they pleased. But he was either too
bigoted, or too sceptical, to tolerate this harmless exercise,
which savoured of paganism and had doubtless originated in
classical times. He smashed the altar, and thereby so greatly
excited the Greeks, that he had to build a fortress to keep
them in order. The double walls and the round tower of this
stronghold, Castel d'Alto, or Apanokastro, as it was called,
still stand on a mountain commanding the plain of Drymalia
— a warning to those who would interfere with the beliefs of
the people.1
Towards the end of his long reign, Marco II. had the
satisfaction of seeing the recovery of several of the lost
islands. During the seven years war between Venice and
Andronikos II., supported by the Genoese, which began in
1296, the republic of St Mark repeated the tactics of ninety
years earlier, and let loose a new swarm of privateers upon
the Archipelago. The bailie of Negroponte was ordered to
fit out vessels to prey upon the Greeks, and as that official
happened to be one of the Barozzi, the dethroned barons of
Santorin, he naturally carried out his orders with the utmost
zeal. Other dispossessed island lords joined in this filibus
tering expedition, the Ghisi, the Michieli, and the Giustiniani,
while a new and bourgeois family from Venice, the Schiavi,
recaptured the island of los for the Duke of Naxos and
received it as a fief from his hands. The patrician exiles
were equally successful ; the Barozzi recovered Santorin and
Therasia, the Ghisi and their fellows Amorgos, Keos, and
Seriphos, and these five islands were specially confirmed to
the conquerors in the treaty which Venice concluded with
the Greek emperor in 1 303. But the feudal relations of these
barons no longer remained on the old footing. It was under
Venetian auspices and by Venetian diplomacy that they had
regained and retained their lost islands, and it was thence-
1 Sauger, 65-8 ; Buchon, Les Cyclades in Revue de Paris for 1843, vo1-
xvi., 350 ; xvii., 269.

DISUNION IN THE DUCHY 583
forth Venice, and not the Duke of Naxos, whom they
regarded as their suzerain. Such an attitude of independence
naturally provoked ill-feeling and led to disputes between
him and them, and thus destroyed the unity of the Latin
duchy. Moreover, the long war, successful though it had
been, had added yet another scourge to the Archipelago, and
all the islanders were not so fortunate as those of Keos, who
received compensation from the Genoese republic for the
damage inflicted by its subjects upon that most convenient
maritime station, where galleys could obtain provisions on
their way to the East.1 But the Catalans were less scrupulous
than the Genoese ; their leader, Roger de Flor, ravaged Keos
in 1303, carried off many of the islanders, and inflicted
damage, against which remonstrances were idle.2
Marco II. seems to have died in that year, and was buried
in the church of St Catherine' in the plain outside the town of
Naxos, which served as the ducal chapel, and in which his
tomb was afterwards found, marked by an inscription and
the arms of his family.3 William I., his eldest son, the hero
of the famous War of the Ass, followed him as fourth duke,
and endeavoured to compel the reinstated barons of the
other islands to return to their old allegiance to the duchy.
As might be inferred from his former exploit, he was not
likely to be hampered by scruples. Accordingly, when
Jacopo Barozzi, lord of Santorin, was traversing the Archi
pelago, he had him seized by corsairs and flung him into the
dungeons of Naxos. This was, however, more than Venice
could stand, for the kidnapped baron had been her bailie at
Negroponte and her governor in Crete. An ultimatum was,
therefore, sent to the duke, bidding him send his captive to
Negroponte within a week, under pain of being treated as
an outlaw. This message had the desired effect ; the duke
let his prisoner go, and men saw that the name of Venice
1 Hopf, Veneto-Byz. Analekten, 502 ; Navagero apud Muratori, xxiii.,
1009, ion ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., 15, 18 ; Sanudo, in op. eit, 131 ;
Predelli, Commemoriali, i., 36, where the Michieli and Giustiniani write
in 1303, that essi avevano riconosciuto la sovranitd feudale di Venezia
sopra quei luoghi. George I. Ghisi even issued coins.
2 Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., 138, 149.
3 Buchon in Revue de Paris, xvi., 348 ; William L. is first mentioned
in a document of 1303, alluded to, below.

584 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
was more powerful than that of Sanudo in the yEgean. But
William was not easily baffled. He despatched his faithful
vassal and admiral, Domenico Schiavo of los, against the
Ghisi's island of Amorgos in an unguarded moment and
reunited it with his duchy.1 Thanks, too, to the feeble
policy of Andtonikos II., the Greeks continued to lose the
ground which they had acquired under the energetic rule of
his predecessor. In 1307 a whole batch of islands was
recovered by the Latins. John, or Januli I. da Corogna,
whose name indicates that his family had come originally
from Corufia, and who belonged to the Knights of St John,
seized Siphnos, threw off his allegiance to his Order, and
declared himself a free and independent sovereign, in spite of
the protests of the Sanudi, who still considered the island
theirs. At the same time, his namesake, Januli Gozzadini, a
member of that ancient and only just extinct family of
Bologna, a branch of which had been settled in Greece for
the past half century, recaptured the distant island of Anaphe,
or Namfio, of which he became the petty sovereign. Thus,
exactly a century after the Latin Conquest, two new Latin
families, one Spanish, one Italian, established themselves in
the Archipelago. The Gozzadini still ruled there in the
seventeenth century, while the ruined "chancery" of the
castle of Siphnos still bears a Latin inscription of Januli II.
da Corogna, dated 1374, and the family still flourishes in
Santorin.2 Finally, in 13 10, the Quirini, aided by another
Venetian family, the Grimani, recovered their lost island of
Stampalia, for which they did homage to Venice and which
was too remote from Naxos to be molested by the jealous
duke.3 Thus, Greek rule had once more been eliminated
from the islands, but the place of the Byzantine governors
had been taken by Venetian vassals or independent lords.
Outside the frontiers of the duchy the Latin cause in
the Levant was at this time strengthened by two important
1 Hopf, Veneto-Byzantinische Analekten, 388, 454.
2 Ibid., 466, and apud Ersch und Gruber, lxviii., 306, 307 ; Ixxvi., 415,
416 ; Buchon, Recherches historiques, ii., 475-6 ; Tournefort, Voyage du
Levant, i., 68. He, Ross (Reisen, i., 1,43), and.Hopf misread the date,
which Mr Wace has copied for me on the spot.
3 Piacenza, L'Egeo Redivivo, 241 ; Zabarella, // Galba, 82.

THE KNIGHTS AT DELOS 585
conquests. In 1304, Benedetto Zaccaria, the rich Genoese
who already owned the valuable alum mines of Phokaia and
had married a sister of the late Emperor Michael VIII.,
occupied the island of Chios, nominally as a vassal of the
Greek Empire, really as an independent prince. Five years
later, the Knights of St John, in quest of a new home, now
that they had been driven from the Holy Land, conquered
Rhodes from the Turkish corsairs, who had made themselves
its masters. We are specially told by the elder Sanudo that
the Duke of Naxos sent his dashing son Nicholas with a
fleet of galleys to assist them in this conquest. It was perhaps
at the duke's suggestion that they occupied the classic island
of Delos, where the Emperor Cantacuzene describes them as
settled twenty years later, and where the remains of their
castle have been traced by some archaeologists on the top
of Mount Kynthos, by others on Rheneia.1 The duke was
naturally pleased to see the warrior Knights established at
Rhodes, and the Zaccaria at Chios, for they were likely to
defend the Archipelago against the Turkish pirates from the
coast of Asia Minor^jvho had now begun to make their
appearance. In 13 18 we find them ravaging the rich island
of Santorin, and already some of the Cyclades had been
almost depopulated by their raids.2 Yet Marin Sanudo
wrote in 1321 that Melos could provide mill-stones and the
other Cyclades plenty of large and small cattle, as well as wood
and straw for his projected crusade.3
Both William Sanudo and his eldest son Nicholas were
adventurous men, leading figures in the critical period which
saw the establishment of the Catalans in the duchy of
Athens. William was one of those invited to the grand
tournament on the isthmus of Corinth in 1305; and, as we
saw in a former chapter, his heir, who was.^ married to the
half-sister of Walter of Brienne, commanded a Naxian
contingent at the great battle of the Kephissos, where he
received two wounds in the face and hand, and was among
1 Cantacuzene, i., 380, 476-78, 485 ; Journal of Hellenic Studies, i.,
38; Revue de Paris, xvi., 339.
2 Hopf, Les Giustiniani, 14; Sanudo, Ep., vii., apud Kunstmann,
810 ; Pachymdres, ii., 344 ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, i., 107, 108, 110.
3 Secreta Fidelium Crucis, 67.

586 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
the few Latin nobles who were taken alive, while another
magnate of the Archipelago, George Ghisi of Tenos, was
among the slain. Undeterred by this experience of Catalan
warfare, he went to the aid of his father's suzerain, Princess
Matilda of Achaia, in 1316, when that principality was invaded
by the Infant of Majorca, and at the battle in Elis he was
again taken prisoner. In revenge for these two acts of
hostility against the Company, Alfonso Fadrique overran
the island of Melos, and carried off about 700 captives ; and,
when the Venetians remonstrated with King Frederick II,
of Sicily at this invasion, the latter replied with perfect
correctness, that in feudal law the Duke of the Archipelago
held his islands as a fief of the Princess of Achaia, so that
" the republic had no jurisdiction " in any of them. Duke
Nicholas, who succeeded his father in 1323, continued
scrupulously faithful to this feudal tie, and we find him
assisting John of Gravina, his suzerain, in his campaign
against the Greeks of the Morea. Together they attempted
in vain to capture the strong castle of Karytaina, and when
the Prince of Achaia returned to Italy, the warlike Duke
of the Archipelago was left behind as commander-in-chief
of all his forces. In that capacity he routed the Greeks with
great loss in the plain of Elis below the castle of St Omer,
not far from the place where he had once been taken
prisoner.1 Old Marin Sanudo was horrified at these
proceedings ; he pleaded his kinsman's youth as an excuse
for what he had done, and promised to persuade him to be
a good servant of the Greek emperor, as his father had been
before him, and at the same time to give him some good
advice for the preservation of his duchy.
So restless a personality could not be expected to
acquiesce in the continued independence of the former
vassals of the duchy. Like his father, but with more
success, Nicholas attacked the Barozzi of Santorin and
Therasia, in spite of their appeals to Venice and their high-
sounding title of" Lord High Admiral " of the paper Empire
of Romania, extracted a reluctant pledge of homage, and in
1335 wrested their two valuable islands from them and
1 L. d. C, 271, 465 ; X. ,. M., 11. 8032-5 ; C. d. M., 461 ; L. d. F, 88,
99, 120, 144-6; Predelli, Commemorialix\., 111-12,,

POWER OF DUKE NICHOLAS I.

087

united them with his own possessions. The Barozzi never
regained the barony of their forefathers, which remained
united with the duchy for over a century; they retired to
Crete, and thence emigrated, after the Turkish conquest of
that island, to Naxos, where the author has seen their tombs
and where they were still extant at the close of the eighteenth
century. The Sanudi did not neglect their new acquisition ;
they encouraged cotton-planting on the volcanic soil of
Santorin, they strengthened the fortifications; and, for the
greater security of the island, Nicholas, in 1336, conferred
the fortress of " La Ponta," or Akrotiri, as it is now called,
upon the Gozzadini, who had recently established themselves
with his consent in the island of Kythnos, or Thermia, which
formed a portion of the duchy. So strong was this castle, as
its ruins still testify, that it remained in the hands of the
Gozzadini long after the Turkish Conquest. It was not till
1617 that it at last succumbed to the crescent.1 As the
plebeian Schiavi, of los, had been induced to resign it to their
lord, the duchy was now more important than it had been
since the early days of Marco II., and for the first time had
a currency of its own. The duke now had in his immediate
possession the richest and largest islands — Naxos, Andros,
(where he sometimes resided), Paros and Antiparos, Melos
and Kimolos, Santorin, Syra, and los, while the Gozzadini
of Thermia and the Schiavi and Grimani, upon whom the
late duke had bestowed the island of Amorgos (the latter
a Venetian family engaged in the alum trade), were his
vassals. His hereditary rivals, the Ghisi, however, still held
Tenos and Mykonos under Venetian suzerainty ; the Quirini
and Grimani looked to the republic to protect their island of
Stampalia ; newcomers, like the Premarini 2 of Keos and the
Bragadini of Seriphos, were Venetian by race, and as much
bound to their old home as the Giustiniani and Michieli, who
divided those islands with them ; the Knights of Rhodes had
1 Hopf, Analekten, 391-8, 505, 515-16. The Gozzadini had taken
Thermia from the Castelli (a family from Treviso, connected with, and
attracted to Greece by, the Catalans of Attica), on whom Nicholas
Sanudo had conferred it about thirteen years earlier. Like the Schiavi,
they were one of the two or three middle-class families which became
barons in the Cyclades, and their sway was even shorter.
2 Ibid., 443. A coin of one other Duke, John I., is in the Museo Correr.

588 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
a garrison at Delos ; while at Anaphe the Gozzadini, and at
Siphnos the Da Corogna, asserted their independence, alike
of Venice and of the duke.
At such a critical period, when the Turks were rapidly
advancing, it was most important that the minor luminaries
of the Archipelago should rally round the duke. The
historian, Sanudo the elder, considered that his ambitious
relative ought to sink his ancient feud with the Ghisi and
unite with them in keeping up one galley, while, the Genoese
barons of Chios should maintain another, against the common
foe of Christendom. "The Turks," he wrote in 1326,
"specially infest these islands, which are appurtenances of
the principality of the Morea" (that is to say, the duchy
of Naxos) ; " and if help be not forthcoming, they will be
lost. Indeed, if it were not for the Zaccaria of Chios, and
Nicholas Sanudo of Naxos, and the Holy House of the
Hospital, who have hitherto defended and still defend them,
those islands could not exist. Nor do I believe," concludes
the pious Venetian, " that they will continue to exist, without
the help of God and the pope." 1 Two years earlier the Turks
had ravaged Naxos during the absence of the duke in Achaia ;
two years later the Venetian bailie of Negroponte wrote that
the whole Archipelago threatened to fall into the hands of
these corsairs, who had dragged away from the islands some
15,000 men in a series of raids; on one of these terrible
visitations, no less than 380 Turkish vessels with 40,000
hands on board plied their deadly trade in the fair iEgean,
and carried off more than 10,000 souls. But even these
severe lessons failed to make any permanent impression
on the jealous Latins of the Levant. At one moment we
find Nicholas Sanudo joining Ghisi and the Knights of
Rhodes in a league against the Turks; at another we
hear that he has attacked Mykonos in his colleague's
absence, and carried off his wife. He even sends six
vessels and 100 horsemen to assist the Greek Emperor
Andtonikos III. in capturing Chios from the bold Genoese,
Martino Zaccaria, titular "King of Asia Minor," in the
heraldry of the phantom Latin Empire, who had killed
1 Sanudo, Secrela Fidelium Crucis, 2, 30, 294, 300, 302 ; Villani apud
Muratori, xiii., 723 ; Arch. Veneto, xx., 86-9.

TURKISH RAIDS 589
or captured no fewer than 10,000 Turks in his fifteen years'
tenure of that island, and he showed his friendship to the
emperor by appearing in person to pay his respects, and
to offer him gifts. His relative, Marin, explains that he
had been compelled to act thus by the apathy of those from
whom he had a right to expect aid in recovering and pre
serving his dominions — an excuse usually made for unnatural
alliances in the Near East to-day. Yet the duke was quite
ready to join the Knights of Rhodes and Cattaneo, the lord
Phokaia, in attacking the Greek island of Lesbos when
opportunity offered. On this occasion, however, Nicholas
was well served by Cattaneo, who prevented his allies from
plundering and dividing the island between themselves.
The result of these animosities among the Christians was
seen in 1341, the last year of the duke's reign, when
Omarbeg of Aidin, the same satrap who was pleased to
style himself " Prince of Achaia," or Morbassan, ravaged
the islands of the Archipelago with a large fleet, and forced
them for the first time to pay an annual tribute.1
Nicholas's brother and successor, John I., took an active
part in all the stirring events of a period which saw the
Turks cross over into Europe and the Genoese establish
themselves in the ^Egean. He contributed a galley to the
allied fleet, which, under the auspices of Pope Clement VI.,
attacked and took Smyrna in 1343. In the following year,
a body of Turks, led by a Genoese pirate, occupied the lower
town of Naxos, plundered the island, and carried off 6000 of
his subjects into slavery. Two years later, the " Black Death "
traversed the Archipelago in its course across Europe, and
animals as well as human beings perished in its embrace.
His fidelity to Venice, which had assisted him with arms
against the Turks, involved him in the great war between
the Venetian and Genoese republics, of which the Levant
was the theatre in the middle of the fourteenth century. So
zealous was he to aid his old home, that he at once joined his
flotilla to the Venetian fleet, and was about to proceed in
person to Venice to offer his aid, when the Genoese squadron
of fifteen galleys appeared off his capital. The town of
1 N. Gregoras, i., 438, 523-7, 597 ; Cantacuzene, i., 385 ; Secreta
Fidelium Crucis, 315 ; Buondelmonti, Liber Insularum, ch. xviii.

590 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Naxos surrendered, and, in 1354, the duke was taken away
as a captive to Genoa. Keos was ravaged ; Melos and other
islands fell a prey to the Genoese; but at the peace of 1355
the duke was released, and they were restored to him.1 The
critical circumstances of the time taught him the wisdom of
securing unity in his island domain ; he, therefore, pacified
the Ghisi by conferring upon them the island of Amorgos,
which his father had taken from them, as a fief of his duchy,
and bought off any claims of the Barozzi to Santorin by a
money payment. The Ghisi did not, however, long retain
the island of fair women ; the baron of Amorgos was so rash
as to take part in the great insurrection of the Venetian
colonists of Crete against the mother country in 1363; he
atoned for this act of treason on the scaffold, and Venice
took possession of his island. But the Cyclades were no
longer desirable acquisitions, for there was a complete dearth
of labour to cultivate the land. We are told at this time that
the serfs had fled from Anaphe, Amorgos, and Stampalia to
Crete, because they did not think it worth while to sow, in
order that Turks and Catalans might reap. The one excep
tion to this general state of desolation was the island of Seriphos,
a rugged rock, possessed, however, of mineral wealth, which
is still exploited. A large share of this island had passed to
Ermolao Minotto, a Venetian noble, who worked the iron
mines and made it one of the richest spots in the Archipelago.
The serfs had saved enough money to purchase their enfran
chisement, and the importance of the place may be judged
from the fact that Gregory XI. included Minotto among the
dignitaries whom he summoned to the congress at Thebes
in 1373.2 John I. of Naxos died3 in 1361, leaving an only daughter,
Fiorenza, an extremely eligible young widow, for she was
not only Duchess of the Archipelago, but had been married
to one of the great Dalle Carceri clan, who owned two of
the three big baronies of Euboea, and by whom she had
1 Lichtle, Histoire de Naxiej N. Gregoras, ii., 797 ; L. de Monacis,
222 ; Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, iii., 194.
2 Ersch und Gruber, lxvi., 338, 343 ; Hopf, Analekten, 438.
3 Predelli, Commemoriali, 1 1., 327, whence Count Mas Latrie (Les
Dues de PArchipel, 8) infers that he was already dead.

FIORENZAS WOOING 591
had one son, still a mere child. It was the first time that
this romantic duchy had been governed by a woman, and
needless to say, there was no lack of competitors for the
hand of the fair Fiorenza. Over her second marriage there
now raged a diplomatic battle, which was waged by Venice
with all the unscrupulousness shown by that astute republic
whenever its supremacy was at stake. The first of this
mediaeval Penelope's suitors was a Genoese, the most
important of the merchant adventurers, or maonesi, who
held the rich island of Chios much as modern chartered
companies have held parts of Africa under the suzerainty
of the Home Government. Venice had viewed with alarm
the recent establishment of Genoese influence at Chios and
Lesbos, and she was resolved that no Genoese citizen should
be installed at Naxos and in Euboea as Fiorenza's consort.
The lady was therefore solemnly warned not to bestow
her hand upon an enemy of the republic, when so many
eligible husbands could be found at Venice or in the
Venetian colonies of Crete and Eubcea. At the same time,
the bailie of Negroponte was instructed to hinder the
Genoese marriage by fair means or foul. The beauteous
Fiorenza's mother meekly replied that her daughter had
never dreamt of marrying anyone unacceptable to the most
serene republic ; but soon afterwards the young widow
showed a desire to accept the suit of Nerio Acciajuoli,
the future Duke of Athens, whose family had long had her
in view as a desirable match for one of its members. This
alliance the republic vetoed with the same emphasis as the
former; but the Acciajuoli had much influence at the
Neapolitan court, and Nerio was therefore able to obtain
the consent of Robert of Taranto, who, as Prince of Achaia,
was suzerain of the duchy. To his letter requesting Venice
not to interfere with the matrimonial arrangements of his
vassal, the Venetians replied that Fiorenza was also a
daughter of the republic, that her ancestors had won the
duchy under its auspices, had been protected by its fleets,
and owed the continued existence of their dominions to its
diplomacy. Simultaneous orders were sent to the com
mander of the Venetian fleet in Greek waters to oppose,
by force if necessary, the landing of Nerio in the Cyclades.

592 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
The Venetian agents in the Levant had, however, no need
of further instructions. They knew what was expected of
them, and were confident that their action, if successful,
would not be disowned. Fiorenza was kidnapped, placed
on board a Venetian galley, and quietly conveyed to Crete.
There she was treated with every mark of respect, but was
at the same time plainly informed that, if she ever wished
to see her beloved Naxos again, she must marry her cousin
Nicholas Sanudo " Spezzabanda," the candidate of the
republic and son of a large proprietor in Eubcea. The
daring of this young man, which had gained him his
nickname, "the disperser of a host," may have impressed
the susceptible duchess no less than the difficulties of her
position. At any rate, she consented to marry him ; the
republic expressed its complete satisfaction, and pledged
itself to protect the duchy against all its enemies. " Spezza
banda" showed his gratitude to his Venetian patrons by
going with a flotilla to assist in suppressing the great
Cretan insurrection of this period, and loyally administered,
with the title of duke,1 the dominions of his wife till her
death in 1371. As his stepson was still not of age, he
continued to govern the duchy in his name, as avogier, or
tutor. It was to his influence in this capacity that we may
attribute the grant of Andros, the second island of the
Archipelago, as a fief to his little daughter Maria Sanudo —
an act which weakened the state at a moment when it
needed a centralised administration.2 Andros had been an
immediate possession of the dukes for over a century; it
never again enjoyed personal union with Naxos.
When young Niccolo dalle Carceri came of age, he proved
to be the worst ruler who had ever reigned over the
Archipelago. Hitherto, the dukes had had no interests
outside their duchy, and had always resided in it, either at
Naxos or at Andros. But their successor was, unfortunately,
a great baron in Eubcea as well, and lived most of his time
in the latter island, for which he cared more than for his
ducal throne. Leaving one of the Gozzadini of Anaphe to
1 All the documents are given by Gerland, op. eit, 138-49. Cf. also
Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II., i., 175.
2 Magno, 1 82 ; Sdthas, i., 204.

MURDER OF NICCOLO DALLE CARCERI 593
act as regent for him at Naxos, he schemed to extend his
possessions in Eubcea, and in 1380, while Venice was at
war with Genoa, he plotted the capture of the city of
Negroponte with the assistance of the Navarrese Company,
which had then entered Attica. While this act of treachery
irritated Venice, which had helped him with a galley against
the Turks, he aroused the strongest resentment among his
subjects by his extortion, and they found a ready leader in
an Italian who had recently become connected by marriage
with the Sanudo family. This man, Francesco Crispo — a
name which suggested to biographers of the late Italian
Prime Minister a possible relationship — belonged, like the
Dalle Carceri, to a Lombard family from Verona, which
had settled in Negroponte, where Francesco, or Franguli, as
the Greeks called him, held the barony of Astrogidis. • A
few years before he had married the daughter of Marco
Sanudo, brother of Duke John I. and baron of Melos, which
would seem to have prospered greatly under his rule.
Crispo had succeeded his father-in-law as baron of that
island, but aimed at being something more than a vassal
of the young Duke of Naxos. He sounded the discontented
in several of the islands, and set out for Naxos, where
Niccolo chanced to be. According to one story, the duke
met his fate in his capital ; according to another, a ducal
hunting-party in the interior of the island gave Crispo an
opportunity for carrying out his plan. The merry band of
huntsmen set out for the lovely valley of Melanes, a
paradise of oranges and lemons, where the duke had a
villa, still called Aphentiko, " the lord's domain." After the
luncheon, they proceeded to a spot where game was
plentiful, Crispo- leading the way with the duke's most
trusty friends, so that his unsuspecting host was left with
his own minions. Suddenly, on the mountain-side the
duke's companions fell upon him; in vain he tried to
defend himself; a sword-cut laid him dead on the ground.
The murderers, carefully instructed by their employer,
hastened after him, and told how the duke had been
attacked by a body of strange horsemen, who had either
killed or carried him off— which of the two they had not
stopped to enquire. Crispo feigned amazement and indig-
2 P

594 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
nation at his kinsman's fate ; he was for returning at once
to the scene of the murder, but allowed himself to be
dissuaded by his partisans, who begged him not to expose
his life also to an ambuscade. Two horsemen, sent back to
investigate, reported that they had found the duke lying
in his blood; one of Crispo's intimates urged him to seize
the fortresses of the island at once, in order to prevent the
designs of the mysterious assailants of the unfortunate
Niccoli. Crispo at once occupied the ducal castle of Naxos ;
and the Naxiotes, glad to be freed from their tyrant,
unanimously accepted him as their duke, for, in virtue of
his wife, he was the next-of-kin to the late ruler, with the
exception of Niccold's two step-sisters. Thus, in 1383, a new
dynasty arose in the Archipelago, which lasted for nearly two
hundred years. The Sanudi disappeared from Naxos; but
illegitimate descendants of the Dalle Carceri lingered on
there as late as the seventeenth century, and their arms still
adorn the pavement before the door of the Greek cathedral1
Even in our own time, the assassination of a sovereign has
not prevented Christian Europe from recognising his successor,
and the Venetians were avowedly politicians first and
Christians afterwards. They had no reason to love the
murdered duke, who had plotted against them, while his
assassin was a man of energy, who could defend the duchy
against the Turks, and, being an usurper, would be more
amenable to Venetian influence than the legitimate dynasty.
Like his modern imitator, Francesco Crispo found a high
ecclesiastic to act as his apologist ; the bishop of Melos went
as his envoy to obtain the consent of Venice to his usurpation,
and to prepare the way for a visit from himself Everyone
wrote in his favour — the Latin nobles of the Archipelago
and the Duke of Candia alike ; of all the barons of the
Cyclades, Januli Gozzadini, the late duke's viceroy, alone had
the chivalry to protest against him. By a clever stroke of
diplomacy, the usurper won the bailie of Negroponte to his
cause by depriving Maria Sanudo, the late duke's half-sister,
1 Magno, 182-3; Rubid, Los Navarros, 436 ; Sauger, 185-92 ; Lichtle ;
Buchon, in Revue de Paris, xvii., 269 ; Byz. Zeitschrift, xvi., 259 ; Revue
de I 'Orient latin, iii., 581. The family arms given by Turresanus are,
however, quite different,

FRANCESCO CRISPO'S USURPATION 595
of her island of Andros, and bestowing it, combined with Syra,
upon the bailie's son, Pietro Zeno, together with the hand of
one of his own daughters. A proposed matrimonial alliance
between one of his sons and a daughter of the doge, gained
over the chief magistrate. Two voices alone were raised
against him — those of Maria Sanudo and of the late duke's
widow. The latter, who had trumped Crispo's cards by
herself marrying a son of the doge, was ultimately pacified by
a widow's portion near the hot baths of yEdepsos in Eubcea ;
the former, whom Crispo hypocritically pretended to " treat as
his own child," 'received as compensation the marble island of
Paros, on condition that she married Gasparo di Sommaripa,
a member of a family which still flourishes in the Archipelago.
Originally descended from the Marquis de Sommerive, in
Languedoc, they had emigrated to Verona, whence, like the
Dalle Carceri and the Crispi, they had come to seek their
fortune in Greece. Various motives seem to have operated
with Crispo in the choice of the man. The Sommaripa may
very likely have been connected with the Dalle Carceri, in
which case he would think it desirable to pacify a dangerous
rival ; or else he may have considered that a man who had
hitherto held no position in the feudal world of Greece,
would feel gratitude to his benefactor ; a third reason, we are
expressly told, was to neutralise the claims of Maria Sanudo
by marrying her to one who was regarded in the exclusive
circles of the Archipelago as a parvenu. In this, however, he
was disappointed; she did not abandon her claim, and,
though her husband appealed in vain to his relative, Giovanni
Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, after a long and wearisome
litigation their son regained, half a century later, his mother's
island of Andros.1
The Venetians had every reason to be content with the
usurpation of Francesco Crispo. It gave them a free hand in
Euboea, for he prudently made no claim to succeed the late
duke in the two great baronies of that island, which thus
J Magno, 183-5 ; Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 779, 783 ; Lichtle ;
Sauger, 325 et sqq. ; Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 78 ; Codice Cicogna,
2532, § 34. The first of these reasons seems to have been the tradition in
Naxos, for Sauger makes Crispo anxious to discredit Sommaripa by
accusing him of the late duke's murder.

596 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
passed under Venetian influence ; it made the Archipelago
much more dependent upon the good will of the republic,
which henceforth took a keener interest in its preservation.
In the person of Pietro Zeno, the new baron of Andros, she
found the most useful diplomatist of the age, a man perfectly
familiar with every phase of the Eastern question, whom she
employed in all her delicate negotiations in the Levant.
Moreover, in 1390, the Ghisi family, the second most
important dynasty in the Cyclades, came to an end in Tenos
and Mykonos, and those islands, with Delos, passed by will
into her hands. There are still Ghisi in Greece — the
author has met them at Athens — proud of their genealogical
trees, conscious of their aristocratic past ; but they never held
sway again in their ancestral islands. Thus, Venice became
paramount in the Archipelago ; in the very year of Crispo's
usurpation, Jacques de Baux, the last Angevin Prince of
Achaia had died, so that the new duke had nothing to hope
for from the old feudal overlords of the duchy. Venice, on
the other hand, assisted him with vessels against the
privateers of the Sultan Bajazet, and included him in her
treaties with that sovereign and other Levantine powers,
only protesting when he himself indulged in piratical expedi
tions as far as the Syrian coasts. There can be no doubt
that the Greeks preferred the rule of Venice in the Archi
pelago to that of the petty barons. When Tenos and
Mykonos became Venetian, the islanders implored the
republic not to dispose of them, and declared that they would
emigrate into some other Venetian colony rather than
remain in their own island, if it were bought by Pietro Zeno
of Andros.1 " No lordship under heaven," they protested,
" is as just and good as that of Venice," and this was not
altogether an exaggeration, as an incident which occurred
at that time in the Archipelago showed.
In the flourishing island of Seriphos, the wise rule of
Ermolao Minotto had been followed by the grinding tryanny
of a perfect fiend in human shape, a Venetian noble, Niccolo
Adoldo. Fortunately for the Seriphians, their lord was
usually an absentee, preferring the delights of Venice to
residence in the island, which the ancient Greeks and
1 Predelli, Commemoriali, iii., 278.

TYRANNY IN SERIPHOS 597
Romans alike had regarded as the abomination of desolation,
and which the fifteenth century traveller, Bartolomeo dalli
Sonetti, calls Serfeno de la calamitate. But from time to time
Adoldo descended upon Seriphos for the purpose of wringing
more money from his unhappy subjects. On one of these occa
sions, he landed with a band of Cretan mercenaries — the worst
species of cut-throats — invited various leading Seriphians
to dinner in his castle, and then had them arrested. The
most awful tortures failed to make them disclose the spot
where they had concealed their money, whereupon the
baffled tyrant hurled them from the castle battlements to
death on the stones below. Seriphos was a remote island
in 1 393 — it is not very accessible now — but in course of time
the news of this massacre reached Venice, for the Venetian
families of Michieli and Giustiniani had also shares of
Seriphos, and Adoldo had encroached upon their rights.
He was accordingly put on his trial for cruelty and murder,
sentenced to two years' confinement " in the lower prisons,"
and forbidden ever to revisit his island, his share of which
was sequestered by the republic. Thus, the islanders had an
object-lesson in the vengeance which Venice meted out to
tyrants who happened to be her citizens. As for Adoldo, he
died at a ripe old age in the odour of sanctity ; his remains
were interred in the church of S. Simeone Piccolo, which he
endowed, and a splendid tomb was erected over his unworthy
ashes.1 Francesco Crispo died in 1397, leaving a large family of
sons, and the necessity of providing for them led to the
further sub-division of the duchy into baronial fiefs. Thus,
while his eldest son, Giacomo I., succeeded him as Duke of
Naxos, another of his children received Melos and Kimolos,
a third Anaphe, a fourth Syra, and a fifth los. Giacomo,
though he gained the epithet of " the Pacific," was none
the less ready to join the other Christian powers of the
Levant in defending their common interests against the
Turks, whose great defeat by the Mongols at Angora had
given the Archipelago a merely temporary respite from
attack. Thus, he was a member of the Christian League,
on whose behalf his brother-in-law and vassal, Pietro Zeno
1 Ersch und Gruber, Ixvi., 344.

598 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
of Andros, concluded the very advantageous treaty of 1403
with the new Sultan Suleyman.1 A year later he even visited
England to invoke the aid of Henry IV. Our enterprising
sovereign was not able to assist him, though he had at one
time intended to lead an army " as far as to the sepulchre of
Christ " ; but, when Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester,
made a pilgrimage to Palestine in 141 8, he was conveyed
back to Venice on one of Pietro Zeno's galleys — the only
connection, so far as we have been able to discover, between
England and the duchy.2 The duke was ready, too, to join
his galley to those of the Venetian colonies in a campaign
against the Turks on the coast of Asia Minor, and Venice
not only described him as her " good and dear friend," but
used her friendly offices with the sultans Musa and
Mohammed I., and with Elias Bey, the ruler of Caria, to
preserve the Archipelago from depredations, besides allowing
her protege" to buy arms from her arsenal and to export
cypress wood from Crete for the fortification of his islands.
None the less, however, did the duchy suffer from the raids
of the inevitable Turks, which, as Zeno told the Venetian
Government, were of daily occurrence. In 1416, the tactless
omission of the duke to salute Mohammed I. at Smyrna
brought a large Turkish fleet down upon the Cyclades, which
carried off many of the inhabitants of Andros, Melos, and
Paros, and did a vast amount of damage. Venice avenged
this attack upon one who, in the words of the Byzantine
historian, " had long been her vassal and flown her flag," by
the naval victory of Gallipoli,3 but the injury inflicted on the
islands was so great, that some of them were almost depopu
lated. The Florentine priest Buondelmonti, who spent four
years at this time, " in fear and great anxiety," travelling among
the Cyclades, of which he has left us one ofthe earliest accounts
composed by any writer during the Frankish domination,
depicts life in the Archipelago in gloomy colours. At both
Naxos and Siphnos there was such a lack of men, that many
women were unable to find husbands ; in fact the small
1 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., 290-3.
2 Sathas, ii., 125 ; Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 923 ; Antonio
Morosini, Chronique, ii., 164.
3 Doukas, 109 ; Sflthas, ii., 174 ; iii., 92-3, 112.

LIFE IN THE CYCLADES 599
and wretched population of the latter island, still the absolute
property of the Da Corogna, who had a tower there in a lovely
garden, was mainly composed of females, who were zealous
Catholics, though they did not understand a word ofthe Latin
language, in which their services were held. At Seriphos,
so rich forty years earlier, the cultured Florentine found
" nothing but calamity " ; the people passed their lives " like
brutes," and were in constant fear, day and night, lest they
should fall into the hands of the Infidels, though Venice had
the island included in her treaties with the Turks, like so
many others of the Cyclades.1 Syra, destined in modern
times to be the most flourishing of all the islands, was then
" comparatively of no account " ; the islanders fed on carobs
and goats' flesh, and led a life of continual anxiety, though
a strong sense of clannishness bound them to their poverty-
stricken home. The people of Paros were in the same plight,
the principal town of Paroikia had few citizens, while pirates
frequented the big bay of Naoussa. Antiparos and Sikinos
were abandoned to eagles and wild asses, and most of the
islets were deserted. Compared with the other islands,
Andros had suffered least, owing no doubt to the energetic
personality of Zeno, the " Duke of Andros," as he was some
times called,2 and the vigour of Januli della Grammatica, his
henchman. But even Zeno found it politic to harbour the
dreaded foes of Christendom in his island, just as the duke of
Naxos gave shelter to corsairs from Catalufia and Biscay.3
The one place in the ^Egean which the Mussulmans never
molested was the monastery of Patmos, whose monks were on
the best of terms with them. In order to repair the ravages
made by the Turkish raids, several of the island barons took
steps at this time to repopulate their desolate possessions.
Thus, Marco Crispo colonised los with Albanians from the
Morea, and strengthened the defences of the place by building
a castle and a town at its foot, the remains of which may still
be seen.4 To this castle the peasants used to climb up every
1 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., 295, 320.
2 Sanudo, xxii., 896.
3 Sithas, ii., 255 ; iii., 158 ; Revue de P Orient latin, iv., 319.
4 Sauger, 214-15 ; Tournefort, i., 95-6 ; Pasch von Krienen, Breve
Descrizione, 31.

600 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
evening from their plots of land in the rich plain below, nor
did they dare to open the gates in the morning and sally
forth, till the old women whom they had sent out as spies
before dawn, reported that the coast was clear and no pirate
craft was careening in the fine harbour. In 141 3 Giovanni
Quirini of Stampalia, who was also administering Tenos
and Mykonos for the Venetians, proceeded to repopulate
his own island, which had never recovered from the great
raid of Omarbeg Morbassan seventy years before, at the
expense of the two Venetian colonies committed to his
charge. This wholesale emigration of Teniotes to Stampalia
attracted great notice throughout the Archipelago. An
inscription, together with a stone escutcheon quartering the
three lilies of the Quirini, and his wife's nine counters, in the
chapel of the castle at Stampalia which he restored, still
reminds us that the " Count of Tenos," as he styled himself,
began the importation of the colonists on 30th March 1413,
the feast of the translation of his patron saint, S. Quirinus,
and almost every successive traveller in the Cyclades alludes
to it. But Venice naturally objected to the depopulation of
her two islands ; Quirini was ordered to return thither with all
the people whom he had transported, and not to move more
than twenty-five miles from his office.1 Similarly, the Goz
zadini repopulated the town of Thermia, which the Turks had
taken by treachery, and it was probably at this period that
the Albanians crossed over from Eubcea to settle in the north
of Andros — the only island of the Cyclades which still retains
an Albanian population. Under these circumstances, the
mineral resources of the islands, except the Parian marble
quarries, could not be exploited. The gold found in some parts
of Naxos was left unworked, and the emery mines of that
island, which Buondelmonti mentions, and which are now so
profitable to the Greek Government, do not seem to have
been a source of revenue to the duke, who was obliged to raise
money for the payment of his liabilities by the sale of horses
and mules at Candia, just as, even then, the cattle of Tenos
were highly esteemed.2 Buondelmonti mentions the sulphur
1 Buchon, Atlas, xiii., 2, 3 ; Sathas, iii., 4 ; Buondelmonti, ch. xviii. ;
Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, 12 ; Boschini, L' Archipelago, 20; B.S.A., xii.,
152. 2 Sdthas, ii., 129, 130, 279 ; Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 177.

THE SALIC LAW 601
springs and the millstones of Melos, and alludes to an
unsuccessful experiment made by Duke Giacomo to plumb
the unfathomable depths of the crater which forms the
harbour of Santorin.1
Giacomo I. died of a flux at Ferrara in 1418 on his way
to meet Pope Martin V. at Mantua.2 He had played a
considerable part in the Levantine politics of his time ; he
had been instrumental in arranging the retrocession of
Corinth to the Greeks by the Knights of St John ; 3 his
possession of his father's usurped throne was little disturbed
by the continual appeals for pecuniary compensation, which
the widow of the last legitimate duke made against him at
Venice, and to which he opposed the usual dilatory tactics
of Italy, supported by the normal impecuniosity of the
Levant. By his will he appointed his brother John as his
successor, thus for the first time in the history of the duchy
setting aside the usual custom of the Empire of Romania,
according to which one of his daughters should have suc
ceeded him. It might have been well for the rest of Greece,
had this frank recognition of the advantages of the Salic
lav/ in troublous times been generally accepted ; certainly
the history of the Frankish states would have been more
pacific, if less picturesque. At any rate, Giacomo I. thus
set a precedent, which was subsequently followed ; no woman
sat again on the sea-girt throne of the Archipelago.
The Venetian Government, long anxious to obtain a
hold over the duchy, thought that the time had come for a
decisive step. It was accordingly proposed to occupy the
late Duke's dominions in the name of his widow and her
mother, and to confirm all his brothers in their respective
fiefs, on condition that they paid the same homage as before.
In that case, the republic would be willing to put the castle
of Naxos into thorough repair. A Venetian ambassador
was to convey these proposals to Niccolo Crispo of Syra,
who was acting as regent in the absence of the late duke.
But more prudent counsels prevailed. Niccolo, it was
pointed out, was not only an adversary of Venetian rule, but
had a Genoese wife — according to another account she was a
1 Buondelmonti, chs. xviii.-xx., xxiv.-vi., xxviii.-xxx., xxxii.-iv., xxxvii.,
xl., xlix., lxxix. 2 Sathas, i., 96. 3 Bosio, pt. ii., 121.

602 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Princess of Trebizond — while his brother John, the late
duke's heir, was fond of Venice. He was in the habit of
residing there for months at a time ; he was at that moment
staying with his sister-in-law at the convent of S. Maria
delle Vergini, now used as a magazine; and he chose his
wife, not from Genoa or Trebizond, but from among the
daughters of the republic.1 It was therefore decided to
recognise him as duke, provided that he took an oath of
obedience to Venice and acknowledged his duchy to be a
Venetian dependency. A Venetian galley was accordingly
made ready to conduct him either to his capital or to his
own island of Melos. He had the sense to meet any possible
opposition from his brothers by increasing their already
considerable appanages, bestowing Santorin, which had been
united with Naxos for over eighty years, upon Niccold of
Syra, and Therasia upon Marco of los — an arrangement
which, though doubtless inevitable, tended to weaken the
unity of the State. But where there was a large ducal
family, subdivision was the only alternative to civil war.2
On the other hand, the new duke acted with a complete lack
of chivalry towards his sister-in-law and her mother, Maria
Sanudo, reducing them to penury and exile by depriving
them of their islands of Paros and Antiparos, valuable pos
sessions which each furnished thirty sailors to the ducal galleys,
and restoring them to the unfortunate ladies only after strong
and repeated remonstrances from Venice, backed by force.3
John II., though he had succeeded to the duchy with the
full approval of Venice, found that, in that time of stress,
she was not always able to protect her distant nominee.
Occasionally she would give him a galley for his defence
against the Turks; and in her treaties with Mohammed I.
and Murad II. in 1419 and 1430, she inserted a clause to the
effect that he and his brothers should be included in the
terms of peace, treated as Venetians, and exempted from
1 Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 923 ; Antonio Morosini, toe. eit. ;
Cicogna, Iscrizioni Veneziane, v., 92, 629 (whose quotation from the
chronicle of the convent obviously refers to this duke); S&has, i., 96-101;
Sansovino, Cronologia del Mondo, f. 184.
2 Sauger, 213.
3 S&has, i., 124, 129-33; »>•, 220, 223-4, 283; Revue de t Orient
latin, v., 137.

THE CRISPI AND GENOA 603
tribute and other molestation. Indeed, in a schedule of the
former treaty, the sultan expressly stated that he reckoned
" Santorin, Anaphe, Therasia, Astypalaia, Thermia, Amorgos,
los, Paros, Naxos, Syra, Melos, Siphnos, Keos, Seriphos,
Tenos, Mykonos, and Andros " as all Venetian. But, in
1426, the proud republic frankly confessed that she could
not help him, and was content that he and Zeno of Andros
should make the best terms they could with the Turks, so as
to save their islands, provided only that they neither received
nor victualled Turkish ships, nor in any way aided those
foes of Christendom. The duke, however, not only agreed to
pay tribute and to open his ports to the Turks, but inflicted
an even greater injury on Venetian interests by omitting
from that time to light the usual signal fires to warn the
bailie of Negroponte of the approach of an Ottoman fleet.1
His connection with Venice proved, at times, to be an actual
source of danger to himself; for, when the Venetians ravaged
the Genoese colony of Chios in 143 1, the Genoese admiral,
Spinola, took revenge by seizing Naxos and Andros, and all
the diplomacy of the Crispi was required to prevent their
islands from becoming Genoese possessions. Great was the
disgust of Venice when she heard that her " dear friends " had
made a treaty with, and paid blackmail to, her deadliest rival ;
none the less, they continued for some years to be adherents
of Genoa.2 But then, as now, the small states of the Levant
could retort with some truth that, if their natural protectors
in Europe neglected them, they must fend for themselves.
John II. would seem to have died3 in 1433, leaving an
1 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., 318-19, 345 ; Predelli,
Commemoriali, iv., 164 ; Sathas, i., 179 ; iii., 304, 372 ; Revue de POrient
latin, v., 320, n. 3.
2 Ibid., vi., 124, 130; Foglietta, Historia Genuensium (ed. 1585), p.
208 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, iv., 208.
3 Not in 1437, as Hopf and Count Mas Latrie assume from the
Venetian document of that year addressed to him and printed in
Sardagna's translation of Hopfs Andros, p. 171, where, as Jorga has
pointed out (Revue de POrient latin, vi., 383 ».), "Johanni" must be a
mistake for "Jacopo," who is obviously "the duke" alluded to in another
Venetian document, issued the same day, as having " made a marriage-
contract with the daughter of the late lord of Andros." A document from
the ducal chancery at Naxos, dated 26th December, 1433, speaks of John
as dead (Byzantinisehe Zeitschrift, xiii., 143). Cf. Magno 186.

604 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
only son, Giacomo II., still a minor, under the guardianship
of a masterful woman, the dowager Duchess Francesca;
while the child's three uncles, Niccolo of Syra and Santorin,
Marco of los, and William of Anaphe, were appointed their
brother's executors, and the first of the trio regent of the
duchy. Giacomo II.'s reign was chiefly remarkable for the
final settlement of the claims of the Sommaripa family to the
island of Andros. Maria Sanudo had never abandoned her
rights to that valuable island, which the first of the Crispi
dukes had bestowed, as we saw, upon Pietro Zeno. That
famous diplomatist, so long the leading figure of the Latin
Orient, who, if his lot had been cast on a bigger stage, might
have left a great name in history, had died in 1427 ; and, as
his son and successor, Andrea, was delicate, and had an only
daughter, Venice early made preparations to occupy Andros
on his death, lest it should fall into undesirable hands, and
decided that his daughter should be under the tutelage of the
republic till her marriage. News of these plans, however,
leaked out ; and, when Andrea really died in 1437, the
Venetian bailie of Negroponte, who had been ordered to
seize the island in the name of the republic, found himself
forestalled and his envoy refused admittance by the young
duke's uncles, who had imprisoned the late baron's widow in
the old castle at Andros and forced her to sign a document,
promising the hand of her little daughter, still a mere child,
to their nephew within the next five years, together with
Andros as her dowry. The Venetian Government was
naturally indignant at this frustration of its long-cherished
scheme by the petty lords of the Archipelago ; a Venetian
noble, Francesco Quirini, was sent to Naxos ; backed by a
Cretan galley, and the threat that the duke would be treated
as the enemy of the republic, he obtained the cession of the
island to himself, as Venetian governor, pending the decision
of the question. For three years he and his successor
administered Andros in the name of the republic, which
protested that she merely wanted to assert her jurisdiction in
the Archipelago, while all the claimants were being heard
at Venice. Finally, in 1440, the Venetian court decided that
the lawful baron of Andros was Maria Sanudo's son, Crusino
I. Sommaripa, lord of Paros and triarch of Eubcea ; Crusino

CULTURE IN THE CYCLADES 605
agreed to pay indemnities to the members ofthe Zeno family,
and thus, after more than half a century, Andros returned
to its legal possessor.1
Installed in this valuable island, which it retained till
the Turkish Conquest, the Sommaripa clan now occupied
the position formerly held by the Ghisi — that of the second
most important family in the duchy. Crusino was, moreover,
a man of culture as well as a man of affairs. He had exca
vated marble statues at Paros, and was delighted to show
them to Cyriacus of Ancona, who visited him more than once
and inspected the quarries of that island, whence marble was
still exported. The antiquary found a ship laden with a
cargo of the polished Parian stone lying in the harbour
ready to sail for Chios, whose rich Genoese colonists had
ordered the material for their villas, and Crusino allowed him
to send the head and leg of an ancient statue to one of his
friends there. When, therefore, archaeologists blame the
Latin rulers of the Cyclades for destroying classical temples
in order to build their own castles out of the marble frag
ments — an example of which may be seen at Paros itself — it
is well to remember that some of them, like Crusino, did
something for archaeology — more, perhaps, than archaeologists
have ever done for the remains of the Middle Ages.
Cyriacus himself mentions that he saw at Mykonos marble
fragments of statues, which had been brought from Delos.2
Buondelmonti, a quarter of a century earlier, had noticed
more than a thousand scattered on the ground of the sacred
island, whence he had in vain tried to raise the colossal statue
of Apollo.3 The installation of the Sommaripa at Andros was not
the only dynastic change in the Archipelago at this period.
Crusino's son-in-law, a Loredano, received from him the
island of Antiparos, and thus a fresh great Venetian family
obtained a footing in the Cyclades. This infusion of new
blood was of great benefit to the island, which had long been
1 Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 17 1-9; Revue de POrient latin, vi.,
379, 383, 388; Sdthas, i., 199-208; Magno, 185-93; Predelli, Com
memoriali, iv., 224.
2 Tozzetti, Relazioni di alcuni viaggi, v., 423 ; Bulletino delP Istituto
(1861), 187. 3 Ibid., 181 ; Buondelmonti, ch. xxxii.

606 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
uninhabited : for the energetic Venetian repopulated it with
new colonists, and built and resided in the castle, whose
gateway, now fallen, still preserved, in the eighteenth
century, his coat of arms.1 At the same time, another
Venetian coloniser, Giovanni Quirini of Stampalia, acquired
the whole of Amorgos, and this increased stake in the
Levant might perhaps warrant the title of "Count,"
which he and all his descendants bore.2 A third Venetian
family, the Michieli, now owned all Seriphos, and set up
their arms with the date of 1434 over the castle gate. Even
non- Venetian dynasties, such as the Gozzadini of Thermia
and Keos, and the Spanish Da Corogna of Keos and Siphnos,
were glad to be regarded as Venetians, whenever the republic
concluded a treaty of peace with the Turks, although Januli
da Corogna proudly asserted that he owned allegiance to no
man for his rock of Siphnos,3 over which the Dukes of Naxos
still claimed a shadowy suzerainty, and of which their vassals,
the Grimani, long pretended to be the rightful lords.4
The fourteen years' reign of Duke Giacomo II. was a
period of peace for the Archipelago. The energies of the
Turks were temporarily diverted to Hungary, and their
crushing defeat by John Hunyady at Nish emboldened the
Venetians to send a fleet to the ^Egean under Luigi Loredano,
father of the new baron of Antiparos. In these circumstances,
we are not surprised to find the islands of Andros and Naxos,
which had just strengthened its flotilla, contributing galleys
to the Venetian squadron ; but the overthrow of the perjured
Christian host in the great battle of Varna led Venice to
make peace with the sultan in 1446, including the Naxian
duchy in the provisions of the treaty.5 The following year the
duke died,2 leaving his wife enceinte with a son, who was
1 Magno, 194 ; Pasch von Krienen, 128 ; Sauger, 346.
2 Magno, 195 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, iv., 299 ; Zabarella, // Galba,
82 ; Hopf, Analekten, 524-6.
3 " Esse liberum dominium insule Siphani," in a document of 1434, apud
Ersch und Gruber, Ixviii., 307. 4 Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 185.
6 Sathas, i., 208 ; Thomas, Diplomatarium, ii., 368 ; Predelli, Com
memoriali, iv., 296.
0 The doge of Genoa wrote to him in 1447 (Giomale Ligustico, iii.,
315)— the last allusion to him ; Magno (p. 196) says he died "in 1450 or
thereabouts."

GROWING VENETIAN INFLUENCE 607
born six weeks after his father's death, and received the name
of Gian Giacomo. The two strongest members of the
family, Niccolo of Syra and Santorin and William of Anaphe,
the same who had acted as regents of the late duke, once
more assumed the government with the assent of Venice, and
imprisoned the child's grandmother, the dowager Duchess
Francesca, who had exercised great influence during the late
reign, and who claimed the regency. Niccolo soon died, and
we then find the Duchess Francesca, the archbishop, and the
citizens of Naxos, electing his son Francesco in his place, and
begging the Venetian Government to ratify their choice — an
interesting fact, which shows that the people had a voice in
the selection of a regent, and that the duchy was more than
ever dependent upon Venice. The republic accordingly
again included the two regents in the treaties of peace which
she made with Alfonso I. of Naples and Mohammed II. in
1450 and 145 1 — the last agreement which she concluded with
the Turks before Constantinople fell.
In 1452 the little duke died,1 and a disputed succession
at once ensued. Had females been allowed to succeed, the
next-of-kin was the boy duke's aunt, Adriana, wife of
Domenico Sommaripa, son of the baron of Andros, and
it had been stipulated in her marriage-contract, that if her
brother Giacomo II. died without heirs, she should succeed
him. But there was already a precedent in the Crispo
dynasty for the exclusion of women, and this afforded a
pretext to the two regents, old William Crispo of Anaphe,
the late duke's great-uncle, and Francesco of Santorin, his
cousin, for claiming the duchy as the nearest agnates. At
first, the Venetian Government, by a decree of March 1452,
excluded both these rival candidates, and it might have been
possible for the Sommaripa family, had they taken the trouble
to canvass at once in person at Venice, to secure the succes
sion.2 But William Crispo, though he was old, was ambitious ;
he had twice acted as regent of the duchy, and was in no
mood to end his days in the castle which he had built on his
island of Anaphe, the most remote of all the Cyclades. He
1 Magno, 196-98 ; Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium, ii., 383-4 ;
Predelli, Commemoriali, v., 56, 65 ; Revue de POrient latin, viii., 42, 76.
2 Sauger, 214, 226, 343, 348 ; Lichtle.

608 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
came to terms with his nephew Francesco, which seemed to
be favourable to both of them. He was to be duke for the
rest of his life ; and, as he had only one legitimate child, and
that a daughter, the duchy was to pass at his death to his
nephew, his daughter was to inherit distant Anaphe, while
lands and female serfs in Naxos were the portion of his
bastard Giacomo.1 Civil war was, above all else, to be avoided,
for by this time the Turks were masters of Constantinople,
and a scare of Turkish and Catalan corsairs had lately
frightened the islanders, who fled in numbers at the bad
news from the great city. Accordingly, before the end of
1453, William II. was proclaimed duke: and though Venice
cited him to appear before the senate to answer the plaint of
the Sommaripa, she at last wisely acquiesced in the succes
sion of so experienced a man, who was ready to place his
naval resources at her disposal, and allowed his chancellor to
accompany her fleet.2 The domineering dowager, Francesca,
who had so long exercised influence in the affairs of the
duchy, had now retired to her native lagoons, so that there
was no one at the ducal court to dispute his supremacy. The
memory of the Duchess Francesca is, however, still preserved
at Naxos by the little church of S. Antonio on the shore,
part of the monastery which she had built, and which she
bestowed on the Knights of St John in 1452, in order that
she might obtain the jubilee indulgence of the anno santo,
which Pope Nicholas V. had proclaimed two years before.
From that time Naxos became one of the bailiwicks of the
Order, paying' no less than 5 irooo florins a year to the grand
master at Rhodes. The arms of the Knights still adorn the
little church ; on the right of the altar are the tomb and
escutcheon of Giovanni Crispo, who was commander of the
Order ; and hard by are the remains of the arsenal, where
they kept some half-dozen galleys.3 It was, indeed, the era
of pious foundations in Naxos. This was not the only
1 Sauger, 227 ; Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xiii., 150. This deed, dated
9th November 1453, is his first known act as duke.
2 Predelli, Commemoriali, v., 92 ; Magno, 200 ; Chalkokondyles, 400.
3 Magno, 199-200; Bosio, II., 239; Sauger, 220; Lichtle; Buchon
in Revue de Paris, xvi., 343 ; Atlas, xl., 33. The church was built
before 1440, for in that year Niccol6 Gozzadini of Thermia left it a legacy
(Ersch und Gruber, lxxvi., 419). There are no arms at St Elias now.

ERUFTION OF SANTORIN 609
church built by the Duchess Francesca, and the piety of
her son, Duke Jacopo II. and his wife is said to have been
recorded by their armorial bearings on the church of St Elias.
During the reign of Duke William II. occurred one of
those tremendous phenomena which have conferred world
wide notoriety upon an island of the Cyclades. For more
than seven centuries, ever since the year 726, the volcano of
Santorin had been silent, though the lava rocks and the
strong wine may have reminded the islanders of its origin.
But, in 1457, the sea murmured as if in agony, the rocks of
Old Kaymene, " the Burnt Island," which had arisen in the
harbour 200 years before Christ, were cleft asunder with a
groan, and a fresh mass of rock, black as a coal, was thrown
up from the deep to fill the gap. The "birth of this
memorable monster," the third accretion to the islet, was
commemorated in a set of detestable Latin hexameters
inscribed on a slab of marble at the castle of Skar6s and
addressed to Francesco Crispo, " true descendant of heroes,"
who was at that time baron of Santorin and who was soon
to be Duke of Naxos, and two centuries later the offspring
of this upheaval could be clearly distinguished by its burning
sand from the older portions of the "burnt" rock.1 For
more than a hundred years no further eruption disturbed
the "magnanimous" rulers of Santorin.
But the political cataclysms of the time were more serious
than those of nature. It was reserved for old William of
Naxos to witness the disappearance of one Christian state
after another before the advancing Moslem. In the year of
his accession the Byzantine Empire had fallen ; in his reign
fell, too, the Byzantine principality in the Morea, the
Florentine duchy of Athens, and, still nearer home, the
island state which the Genoese Gattilusii' had ruled for
over a century in Lesbos. Of all these calamities, the fall of
the Gattilusii must have affected him most, for his family was
connected with them by ties of matrimony, and when Dorino
Gattilusio was driven by the Turks from y£nos, he settled
in exile at Naxos, and married the grand-niece of the duke.2
1 Peguesf Histoire de Santorin, 138 ; Casola, Viaggio a Gerusalemme,
96 ; Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, 5.
2 Kritdboulos, ii., 16.
2 Q

610 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
It was now, too, that the islands of Skyros, Skopelos,
and Skiathos offered themselves to the Venetians. More
clearly even than their fellows of the Northern Sporades,
the islanders of the Cyclades saw that Venice was now their
only possible protection against the Turk — for what would
the 2000 horsemen of the duchy avail against the hosts
of Islam ? On her side, Venice did not forget " the Duke
of Naxos, his nobles and their men, with their places and
all that they have," in the treaty which she made with
Mohammed II. in 1454, and which specially exempted them
from " tribute or any other service," and gave them the status
of Venetians,1 with the right to hoist the lion banner of St
Mark from their castles. Yet the duchy was only saved by
one of those sudden storms so common in the ^Egean from
an attack by a large Turkish fleet under Junis Beg in the
very next year — an attack justified in the eyes of the irate
sultan by the hospitality and shelter which pirates had
received in the harbours of Naxos, Paros, and Rheneia.
Warned by the fate of the Lesbians, and by a fresh Turkish.
raid, the duke thought it advisable to ensure his possessions
by paying tribute to the all-powerful Mohammed.2 He felt
himself terribly isolated from the rest of Christendom since
the Turkish conquest of the Greek continent ; he must have
realised that sooner or later a similar fate awaited his own
dominions, and that the highest form of practical statesman
ship was to supplement the paper safeguards of Turco-
Venetian treaties by the more durable cash nexus with the
sultan. 1 Sanudo apud Muratori, xxii., 1155.
2 Kritdboulos, ii., 3 ; iii., 10 ; Doukas, 331, 340.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO (1463-1566)
WILLIAM II. died in 1463, and, in virtue of the arrangement
made at his accession, his nephew, Francesco II. of Santorin,
succeeded him. But the new duke did not long enjoy this
coveted dignity ; afflicted with a serious malady, he went to
seek the advice of a doctor at the Venetian colony of Coron,
and died there the same year. His son, Giacomo III., was
proclaimed duke by the people, under the regency of the
late duke's widow,1 though it seemed doubtful at first whether
the lad's uncle, Antonio of Syra, would not usurp the throne.2
Coinciding as it did with the long Turco- Venetian war, which
lasted from 1463 to 1479, the reign of Giacomo III. could not
fail to be affected by the further disasters befalling the
Venetian possessions in the Levant. In 1468 four Turkish
vessels attacked Andros ; Giovanni Sommaripa, baron of the
island, lost his life in defending his home ; and the invaders
withdrew, after ravaging the place, with numerous prisoners
and booty to the value of 15,000 ducats. Two years later,
after the crowning disaster of the war — the capture of
Negroponte — the Turkish fleet landed at Andros again on
its way home, and carried off so many captives that the
population was reduced to 2000 souls. Despite the reassuring
visits of Venetian fleets, almost all the islands suffered in
greater or less degree from Turkish raids at this terrible
period. Paros retained no more than 3000 inhabitants ;
Antiparos, repopulated a generation before by Loredano,
1 The doge wrote to her in 1464 as Gubernatrici Egeopelagi.
Cornelius, Ecclesice VeTieta, viii., 272.
2 Magno, 204-5.
611

612 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
was reduced to barely a hundred persons ; despite the
previous efforts of Giovanni Quirini to colonise Stampalia,
the carelessness of his son, an absentee, allowed the colony
to dwindle down to 400, while the rich island of Santorin,
though now a direct possession of the Duke of Naxos,
nourished only 300 inhabitants, and yielded the duke no
more than 500 ducats. Still smaller was the population of
Keos and Seriphos, while the two Venetian islands of Tenos
and Mykonos had long complained of the devastation wrought
by the Turks — to which must be added the drain of men
enlisted in the Archipelago for service in the Venetian navy,
which put in there on the way to attack Smyrna in 1472.
Delos, which the Venetian admiral, Mocenigo, visited at
this time, was quite deserted ; but the remains of the temple
and the theatre, the colossus of Apollo, the mass of pillars
and statues, and the cisterns full of water are described by
his biographer.1 Naxos was visited by the Turkish fleet
in its turn in 1477, and two years later the Naxian diocese,
which had for some time been very poor, is described as being
largely in the occupation of the Turks.2 Happily, the peace
of 1479- at last terminated the long contest between Venice
and the sultan ; the Duke of Naxos and his subjects were
treated as Venetians, and three years later the new sultan,
Bajazet II., repeated his predecessor's compact.3
The restoration of peace was naturally a subject of
rejoicing to the sorely tried Archipelago, and the marriage
of his daughter at the Carnival of 1480 gave the duke an
opportunity of giving vent to his own and his people's
feelings. He had chosen as his son-in-law, Domenico Pisani,
son of the Duke of Candia and member of a very distin
guished Venetian family, and he bestowed upon him, as
his daughter's dowry, his own native island of Santorin, on
condition that Pisani should restore it in the event of a son
being born to the ducal donor. Never had there been such
splendid festivities in the history of the duchy. The castle
1 Magno, 205, 207 ; Rizzardo, Lapresa di Negroponte, 24 ; Sdthas, i.,
244 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, v., 230 ; Cippico, P. Mocenigi Gesta, 341,
344- • 2 Eubel, ii., 221.
3 Predelli, op. eit, v., 228, 241 ; Miklosich und Miiller, iii., 295, 314 5
Malipiero, Annali, 121.

THE IDYLL OF SANTORIN 613
at Melos, where Giacomo III. was then residing, rang with the
mirth of the wedding guests ; and the merriment was
renewed when the young couple landed with the duke in
their new domain. Giacomo, we are told, "danced every
day, leaping for joy and singing," while the islanders
shouted Viva Pisani! in honour of their baron. In the old
castle ofthe Barozzi at Skaros, the chief of the five fortresses
of the volcanic island, whose ruins still look down on the
bottomless harbour far below, Pisani knelt down with his
wife before their lord the duke, and received from his hands
the keys of the castle, the rod which betokened their feudal
rights, and the scroll, drawn up by the chancellor, which set
out the conditions of their investiture. Then, in the tower
of the lower castle, the vassals were ushered in to do homage
to their new lord, foremost among them the two great
families of Santorin, the Gozzadini and the Argyroi, or
D'Argenta, Latinised Greek archons, who boasted their
descent from one of the Byzantine emperors, but did not
scorn to hold the castle of S. Niccolo from the lord of Santorin.
When the ceremony was over, the flag of the Pisani was run
up on the upper castle; the new dynasty was officially
recognised in the motley heraldry of the Archipelago. Then
the duke returned to his residence at Melos, and the new
lord of Santorin set out to survey his island domain, too
long neglected by its absentee ruler. Pisani showed all the
energy of a king upon his coronation day. He planted vines
and olives, sowed cotton, and consulted how he could best
benefit the traders of the community. A new era seemed to
have opened for the depopulated island ; wherever the baron
went, the church bells rang a merry peal to greet him ;
whenever he lay down to rest, the governors of the castles
laid the keys in his chamber. Anxious "for the spiritual
welfare of his subjects, he appointed a new bishop ; desirous
to secure them against attack, he placed his island under
Venetian protection, hoisted the banner of the republic beside
his own, and journeyed with his wife to Venice to obtain con
firmation of his possession. Naturally, Venice granted the
request of so desirable and so well-connected a ruler.
But the idyll of Santorin did not last long. While Pisani
was still in Venice, his father-in-law died. Giacomo III. had

614 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
left no son, so that, by virtue of the marriage-contract, Pisani
was entitled to retain his island ; indeed, had not the Salic
law been adopted, as we saw, in the Crispo dynasty, his wife
would have succeeded as Duchess of the Archipelago. But
the late duke's brother, John III., not content with succeeding
to the duchy, landed in Santorin, occupied Skaros, pulled
down the Pisani flag, and hoisted the lozenges and two
crosses of the Crispi. Pisani's father complained at Venice
of this act of violence, and the Venetian Government ordered
the admiral of the fleet to compel restitution of the island.
But when his emissaries arrived at Santorin, they found that
John III. had strengthened the defences of Skaros, and were
compelled to retire ignominiously under a heavy shower of
stones. This was more than the Venetian authorities could
endure. They ordered the erring duke, in a most peremptory
letter, to appear at Venice to answer the charges against him.
His reply was to instruct his brother-in-law, then in Venice,
to act on his behalf. The whole question was then
investigated, and as important points of feudal law were
involved, the judges ordered a clerk to make a fresh copy
of the Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania, and
to draw up a genealogical tree of the Dukes of Naxos — the
oldest pedigree of the Sanudi and Crispi, with which we are
acquainted. After opposite opinions had been expressed by
the Court, a compromise was at last agreed upon, that the
duke should keep Santorin on payment of compensation to
Pisani and his heirs. John III., having obtained what he
wanted, now humbly replied that he " was ready to live or
die for Venice " ; while the Pisani family ere long had the
doubtful satisfaction of reigning over three of the smaller
islands of the Archipelago.1
The peace concluded between Venice and the Turk did
not ensure the security of the Levant. During Mohammed
II.'s operations against Rhodes, the jEgean was beset with
Turkish pirates, who were a continual dread to the more
or less pious pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, and
1 Magno, 209 ; Sdthas, vi., 225, 233 ; Hopf, Analekten, 404-13, 517 ;
Andros (tr, Sardagna), 185 ; Predelli, op. eit, v., 305 ; Feyerabend,
Reyssbuch, f. 371 ; Canciani, Barbarorum Leges, iii., 485. The author
published the genealogical tree in Bys. Zeitschrift, xvi., 258.

VENETIAN INTERVENTION 615
it was no uncommon thing to find the hold of a Turkish
corsair filled with prisoners dragged away from their homes
in the Cyclades.1 Bajazet II., the new sultan, in spite of
his pledge to Venice that the duchy should not be asked
for tribute, demanded arrears of payment, and complained
that the Duke of Naxos and the baron of Paros harboured
pirates who preyed upon the Turkish dominions. He
followed this complaint by preparing a small fleet to drive
the latter offender from the marble island. The republic
ordered her admiral to protect him, and the Archbishop of
Paros and Naxos took the opportunity of his presence in
the Archipelago to suggest that the offer of an annuity
might induce the rulers of those islands to make over all
their rights to Venice. Neither the duke nor Sommaripa
were, as a matter of fact, willing to abdicate, though the
latter was glad to fly the Venetian flag beside his own.
But the tyrannical conduct of John III. soon brought
about a Venetian occupation. That headstrong ruler
exasperated his subjects by his exactions to such a pitch,
that, led by a Greek veteran, they besieged him and the
nobles in the castle, whence he was only rescued by the
timely arrival of a fleet belonging to the Knights of Rhodes.
Even this lesson did not make him mend his ways. The
execution of the rebel leader rekindled the enmity of the
people against the duke, and, when he died, in 1494, many
of his subjects wagged their heads and spoke of poison.
Though he had left two children, a son and a daughter,
both were minors and both illegitimate, so that the moment
was favourable for Venetian intervention. It was perhaps
not a mere chance that the Venetian admiral with six
galleys was in the harbour, and his appearance inspired the
popular party to advocate annexation to the republic. The
chief men, however, favoured the claims of the children's
mother; and the most energetic member of the Crispo
family, Giacomo, bastard of the old Duke William II.,
assumed the title of Governor of Naxos on their behalf
and issued official documents in that style. Meanwhile,
however, the people, accompanied by their wives holding
their children in their arms, approached the Venetian
: Bartolomeo dalli Sonetti, 36 ; Faber, Evagatorium, i., 37.

616 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
admiral with cries of " we want to be governed by Venice !
we submit to her!" The admiral, who had probably
suggested this demonstration, received them well, appointed
a Venetian governor of Naxos, and despatched officers to
occupy and administer the other islands which hacl belonged
to the late duke— -Santorin, Syra, Nio, and Melos. At the
same time, an envoy of the Naxian people was sent to
Venice to announce the news, followed by their archbishop
and a formal embassy. It was then proposed in the senate
that the republic should accept the duchy, after making due
provision for the late duke's widow and children, in order
to relieve the people from tyranny, and to prevent the
islands from becoming a nest of corsairs and a part of the
growing Turkish Empire. It was, however, decided that
the administration of the island revenues should be left to
the ducal family; but that a Venetian governor should be
appointed for a term of two years with residence at Naxos
and a salary of 500 ducats payable out of those funds;
Naxian citizens were to be sent to govern the dependent
islands. As first Venetian governor of Naxos, Pietro
Contarini was elected. Thus, in 1494, Venice at last
became mistress of the duchy of the Archipelago.1
The acquisition was not perhaps of great economic value.
We are told that of the five islands which the late duke had
held under his immediate sway, Santorin and Nio contained
800 souls, and Syra half that number. Both Nio and Melos
had fine and frequented ports, but the fortifications of the
latter harbour were in ruins, and the Milanese canon Casola,
who put into Nio just before the duke's death, likened the
mountain castle of the Crispi there to " a pigstye," where
the inhabitants were crowded together for fear of pirates,
but where the food was good and the women beautiful.
Melos and Naxos were the most flourishing of the Cyclades ;
the former was rich in saltpetre, pumice, and mill-stones ; and
its hot baths, which had proved fatal, so it was said, to old
Duke William II., were second only to those of Thermia,
which the enthusiastic Venetian mariner, Bartolomeo " dalli
1 Magno, 209 ; Sathas, vi., 241 ; Navagero, xxiii., 1203 ; Bembo,
Historia Veneta (ed. 1809), i., 73, 101-2 ; Casola, Viaggio, 96 ; Archives
de POrient latin, i., 614.

STATE OF THE ISLANDS IN 1494 617
Sonetti," as he called himself,, declared to be superior to the
baths of Padua. Of the other Cyclades, where Venetian
influence was now predominant, though the island barons
were nominally independent of her, the two most prosperous
were those of the Sommaripa — Paros and Andros. The
German pilgrim, Father Faber, who was in the Archipelago
eleven years earlier, tells us that Parian marble was exported
to Venice, and that the island produced another stone, better
even than marble.1 The lord of Andros, who was recognised
by Venice as quite independent of the duchy of Naxos,
seems even to have styled himself "Duke" of his own
island,2 as Pietro Zeno, a much more important man, had
done. All the other islands, except three and part of a
fourth, now belonged to Venetian families — Amorgos and
Stampalia to the Quirini ; Seriphos to the Michieli ; Anti-
paros to the Loredani ; part of Keos, whose harbour could
hold a great fleet, to the Premarini. The daughter of old
William Crispo, Fiorenza, still held her isle of Anaphe ; and
the Gozzadini ruled over Siphnos, Thermia, and part of Keos.
Seeing that Venice was absolute mistress of Tenos and
Mykonos, as well as of the Northern Sporades, and had
acquired Cyprus five years before, she still possessed a con
siderable stake in the Levant, despite the loss of Negroponte.
The Cyclades were all fortified, as we can see from the
plans of each island, which the Venetian mariner, Bartolomeo
dalli Sonnetti, has inserted in his quaint metrical account of
his many voyages among them.3 Santorin and Keos
boasted five castles apiece ; Paros four (among them the
strong fortress of Kephalos, which Niccol6 Sommaripa had
recently erected as his residence on a high rock above the
sea); Naxos and Amorgos three each; Melos two; and
1 Sathas, vi., 241 ; Casola, 39, 96; Faber, Evagatorium, iii., 299, 301, 3 1 9-2 1 .
2 Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 135, 185.
3 The author's surname is unknown, but he dedicated his book to
Mocenigo, the doge who held office from 1478-85. The only historical
allusions in it are to Fiorenza, Lady of Melos (fl. 1376) ; to the recolonisa-
tion of Astypalaia by Quirini in 1413 ; to the eruption of Santorin in
1457 ; to the dismantling of Tenedos in 1384; and (perhaps) to the loss of
Negroponte. Much of the book is not original, being merely copied
from Buondelmonti ; hence it must be used with caution ; but the plans
are very accurate, as I have found from personal observation.

618 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Syra and most of the other islands one. Such was the
condition of the Archipelago when the first Venetian
governor landed at Naxos.
The Venetian administration, brief as it was, seems to
have been beneficial to the islands. For a moment corsairs
were wiped from the sea, and the frequent presence of a
Venetian fleet in one or other of the harbours gave the
inhabitants a sense of security. "They look upon our
admiral," so runs a Venetian report, " as the Messiah." But
these benefits were only temporary. The pirates returned to
their favourite hunting-ground as soon as the Venetian
admiral had sailed, and two of them in particular, Paolo de
Campo of Catania, half-corsair half-hermit, and his rival,
Black Hassan by name, did much damage. Moreover, the
renewal of hostilities between the sultan and the republic
in 1499 alarmed the islanders. The Venetian governor of
Naxos wrote that he had no powder ; a Venetian ambassador,
who paid a passing visit, reported that the fortifications were
weak, and suggested that the governor should be recalled
and his salary devoted to strengthening them. This policy
received powerful support at home from the Loredano family,
one of whose daughters, " a lady of wisdom and great talent,"
had married Francesco, the son of the late Duke of Naxos ;
accordingly, as the latter was now of age, the senate decided,
in October 1500, to restore the duchy to him, on condition
that he promised not to take his father as his model. And
thus, in an evil hour, a youth who turned out to be a
homicidal maniac, took the place of Venice.1
The change was in every way unfortunate for the people
of the Cyclades. The continuance of the Turco-Venetian
war exposed Naxos to two attacks in successive years, in the
course of which the lower town was taken and sacked, and
many Naxians carried off as prisoners. So savage were the
feelings of revenge which such deeds caused, that a celebrated
Turkish corsair, driven ashore at Melos, was slowly roasted
for three hours by the infuriated people. The peace of 1 503,
as usual, included the Archipelago, but the petty lords of the
1 Sanudo, Diarii, i., 204, 463, 739, 744, 815 ; ii., 130, 630, 662-3, 7°' 5
iii., 23, 85, 971 ; Bembo, i., 324 (f. 115, Latin ed.) ; E. A. C, Cenni storici
intorno Paolo de Campo.

THE MAD DUKE 619
^Egean were at this time often more oppressive to their
subjects than the Turks themselves. The Sommaripa of
Paros were at war with the Sommaripa of Andros; the
hapless Andrians wrote in Greek to Venice complaining that
many of their fellow-countrymen had been borne off to the
marble island, while their own " Duke " Francesco was so
cruel a tyrant that they actually thought of calling in the
Turks. Rather than allow such a calamity to happen, the
republic removed the oppressor to Venice, and for seven
years, from 1507 to 15 14, Andros was ruled by Venetian
governors and the lion banner floated over the wave-beat
castle of her feudal lords.1 Meanwhile, the capital of the
Archipelago, the fairest isle of the ^Egean, had been the
scene of one of the most ghastly tragedies in the history of
the duchy. Francesco III. had for long been ailing, but it
was not till 1509, when he was engaged with the ducal galley
in the Venetian service at Trieste, that we first hear of his
madness. So violent was his conduct, that his men vowed
they would rather serve the Turk, and the duke was put in
custody at San Michele di Murano,2 the present cemetery
island. Thence, however, in accordance with a practice still
common in Italy, he was released, and thus given the oppor
tunity of committing an atrocious crime. On 15th August
1 5 10, he managed, "by songs, kisses, and caresses," to entice
his wife to his couch with the object of murdering her. For
the moment, the duchess succeeded in escaping from the
maniac's sword by fleeing, just as she was, in her nightdress,
to the house of her aunt, the Lady of Nio, Lucrezia Loredano.
Thither, however, on the night of the 17th, her husband
pursued her, burst open the doors and forced his way up
stairs, where he found the Lady of Nio in bed. Meanwhile,
on hearing the noise, the terrified duchess had hidden under
a) wash-tub ; but a slave betrayed her hiding-place ; the duke
struck her over the head with his sword ; and, in a frenzied
aittempt to ward off the blow, she seized the blade with both
t.ands, and fell fainting on the floor at his feet. Even then
tjhe wretch's fury was not appeased; he gave the prostrate
1 Sanudo, Diarii, iv., 40, 178, 205, 310 ; v., 1007 ; vii., 159, 683, 717 ;
kelazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, Series III., iii., 14, 15.
2 Sanudo, Diarii, viii., 328, 337, 355, 366.

620 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
woman a thrust in the stomach, and then left her to die.
Meanwhile, the whole town was on its feet ; the duke fled to
his garden, and was thence induced by the people to return
to his palace, where he vainly endeavoured to prove that his
wife's wounds were the result of playing with a knife. A
meeting was now held, at which it was decided to depose the
murderer, to proclaim his son Giovanni, then not more than
eleven years of age, and to elect as governor of the duchy
Giacomo Gozzadini, baron of Keos, who resided in Naxos
and had already held that office once before. The news of
his deposition reached Francesco as he sat at meat in the
palace with his son ; so great was his fury that he seized a
knife to slay his heir, and had not the palace barber caught
his arm, a second murder would have been committed.
Fortunately, the lad escaped by leaping from the balcony;
the people rushed into the palace, and after a fierce struggle,
in which the duke was wounded, he was seized, and sent off
to Santorin in safe custody.1
The Naxiotes lost no time in reporting what had occurred
to the nearest Venetian authorities, and the question was
brought before the Republican Government. The latter
decided to send out Antonio Loredano, the brother of the
murdered duchess, as governor of Naxos, with a salary of
400 ducats a year, payable out of the ducal revenues, and to
remove the maniac to Candia. There, in 15 11, on the
anniversary of his crime, he died of fever. For four and a
half years Loredano remained in office, and thus for the second
time Naxos enjoyed a brief Venetian protectorate.2 As
Andros was also under the administration of the republic,
pending the settlement of the various claims to that island,
the shadow of the winged lion had fallen over the whole
Archipelago. Nor were the Venetian governors by arjiy
means to be pitied, for life was taken easily in the ^Egean
when there was no fear of plague and when there was ta
temporary lull in the raids of corsairs. We have an interest
ing account of the amusements organised for one of the
Venetian ambassadors who stopped in the islands at thiJs
period. " Naxos and Paros," we are told, " are places of muc|a
1 Sanudo, Diarii, xi., 393-4, 705.
" Ibid, xii., 22, 175, 503 ; xx., 354, 356, 376.

GAIETY OF THE ISLANDERS 621
diversion, whose lords honoured his Excellency with festivities
and balls, at which there was no lack of polished and gracious
ladies." The rector of Skyros reported that his island would
be most productive, if only the Greeks could be induced to
cultivate it assiduously. But there were only two working-
days in the week; day after day the people were keeping
some festival, gazing with awe at the famous miracle-working
eikons in the church of St George, which even Turks thought
fit to propitiate with offerings, or dancing the picturesque
country dances that have now all but gone. " So passes our
life," the rector, evidently a serious man, sadly wrote. Under
these circumstances, it is no wonder that no revenues were
ever seen at Venice from the Venetian islands ofthe ^Egean.1
The Venetian administration of Naxos ceased when the
young Duke Giovanni IV. came of age,2 and as Alberto
Sommaripa had at last been recognised as rightful lord of
Andros and clad in scarlet at Venice in token of his succession,3
the Cyclades were once more left to the government of the
local dynasties. The reign of Giovanni IV. was the longest
of any Duke of the Archipelago, and, with one exception, the
most unfortunate. He had not been long on the throne,
when he was surprised while hunting, by a Turkish corsair,
and carried off as a prize. Venice at once ordered her
admiral in Greek waters to ransom her protege", and the
Venetian ambassador at Constantinople spoke so strongly
on the subject, that the sultan promised to issue a letter
" marked with the corsair's head." The duke's imprisonment
was brief, but his capture, as he plaintively said, had so bad
an effect on his finances that he could not pay his liabilities.4
Possibly he was not sorry of an excuse for shirking them, as
a Venetian commissioner found his revenues to be 3000
ducats and his expenditure 1 300. " The yqung duke," wrote
this authority, " is surrounded by evil counsellors ; his island
is weak, his castle strong, but badly armed." Sanudo, who
met him in Venice, describes him as " a very inexperienced
1 Sanudo, Diarii, xvii., 35 ; xviii., 359-60 ; xxvi., 457.
2 From Sanudo, Diarii, ii., 701, and xxvi., 457, it seems that he was
born in 1499 ; he is first mentioned as duke in May 1417.
3 Ibid., xviii., 358, 361.
4 Ibid., xxiv., 467, 471, 596, 645 ; xxv., 158, 185.

622 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
youth," but none the less the proud republic treated him with
the utmost consideration. Not only did she include " Naxos
and the islands appertaining to it " in her treaty with Selim I.
in 1 5 17, but she bestowed many marks of honour upon the
ducal visitor, which show how high was the social status of
the ruler of the Archipelago. Four nobles in scarlet and
many more in black were sent by the doge to escort him
from the house where he was staying, six trumpeters and the
men of the ducal galley preceded him, and when he appeared
clad in crimson velvet with a gold chain round his neck, the
doge embraced him and bade him be seated at his side.1
Like most of his race, however, Giovanni IV. did not
scruple to defy the republic when it suited his purpose. Soon
after his accession, the Sommaripa dynasty became extinct in
Paros, by the death of the last baron without issue. Several
claimants at once arose ; for Paros, though its revenues were
then small, was one of the most important islands. Of these
claimants the most active was the young Duke of Naxos, who
captured the castles of Kephalos and Paroikia, and installed
his own officials in both of those fortresses. Meanwhile, the
Venetian Government, in its capacity of the late baron's
residuary legatee, and in virtue ofthe general powers of arbitra
tion which it harj long claimed in such cases, ordered a
commissioner to occupy Paros in its name, pending the
decision of the dispute. The Naxian garrison, however,
forcibly repulsed his overtures, and it was necessary to make
a naval demonstration before the duke was brought to reason.
The question was then submitted to a committee of experts
in Venice, and the senate decided in favour of Fiorenza
Venier, who, as sister of the late baron, was the legal heiress,
according to the statutes of the Empire of Romania, and who,
as widow of a Venetian noble, was the most desirable candi
date. Thus, in 1520, the marble island, like the island of
Venus, passed to the Venjeri. But they had little time to
leave any mark upon their new domain, for their dynasty too
became extinct at Paros eleven years later, when a fresh
dispute arose as to the succession. On this occasion, the
Duke of Naxos, now grown wiser, did not interpose ; a
Venetian commissioner was sent to govern the island in the
1 Sanudo, Diarii, xxv., 416 ; xxvi., 457 ; xxxiv., 245, 246, 250, 260.

FALL OF RHODES 623
interim, and in 1535 the republic decided in favour of another
woman — Cecilia, sister of the last baron and wife of a brave
Venetian, Bernardo Sagredo, whose heroic defence of the
island against the Turks is one of the last and brightest pages
in the history of the Archipelago.1
The accession of Suleyman the Magnificent renewed and
increased the dangers to which the petty lords of the ^Egean,
as the advanced guard of Christendom, were peculiarly
exposed. Any advantages which they might gain from his
treaty with Venice were more than balanced by his capture
of Rhodes — a feat of arms facilitated by the indifference of
the most serene republic. But the Duke of Naxos was not
indifferent to the fate of the warrior Knights, a branch of
whose Order existed in his capital, and who had held for the
last forty years the neighbouring island of Nikaria. He
prayed God to help them in this, their hour of need, and
incurred the censure of Venice and the risk of a Turkish attack
by furnishing them with provisions. It seems, indeed, to
have been thought that after the fall of Rhodes they would
ask his permission to make Naxos their headquarters. Such
an act of generosity would, however, have been fatal to the
duchy ; for either the newcomers would have made themselves
its masters, or the sultan would have annexed it without
delay, rather than allow so central a position to fall into the
possession of his deadly foes. The popes had, however, long
ago transferred Lindos and two Asian bishoprics to the
metropolitan see of the Archipelago at Naxos, and now
endowed the archbishop with the goods of the Order there.2
During the next ten years we hear little of the duchy ;
Venice was at peace with the great sultan, so that her
prottge" was able to leave his island state for the purpose of
paying a vow at Loreto and Rome, undisturbed except by
the visit of some dangerous Turkish corsair. His weakness
was, however, clearly displayed in 1532, when Kurtoglu, one
of the worst of those sea-robbers,' suddenly appeared at
Naxos with twelve sail, and was only bought off by a gift of
1 Sanudo, Diarii, xxv., 259, 264, 281, 282, 421, 422 ; xxvi., 24, 160,
161 ; xxvii., 482; xxix., 52, 55, 57, 64, 68, 507 ; Sauger, 344.
2 Ibid., xxxi., 59 ; xxxiii., 362, 375 ; Sauger, 286 ; Lichtle, op. eit. ;
Reg, Av., clxvii., f. 441.

624 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
money and refreshments. Both the Venetian governor of
Paros and the petty seigneur of Sifanto had to pay black
mail to this ruffian, who levied 30 ducats from the exiguous
finances of the latter island. '' It would make the very stones
weep," wrote the Venetian rector of Mykonos, " to see the
ruin " which another of these pirates caused.1 Meanwhile,
the nephew of a famous corsair compiled a Turkish account
of the Cyclades to facilitate their conquest.
The long-threatening storm at last burst over " the isles
of Greece." In 1536 France and the sultan made an unholy
alliance for the purpose of driving Venice from the Levant,
and in the following year the war broke out, which was
destined to deprive the republic of her last possessions in
the Morea.2 The Turkish attack upon Corfii failed, as we
saw ; but a fleet of seventy galleys and thirty smaller vessels
appeared in the ^Egean under the command of Khaireddin
Barbarossa, the terrible corsair, himself an islander from
Lesbos,8 who had risen to be the Turkish admiral. His first
attacks were directed against the two Venetian islands of
Cerigo and ^Egina, whose terrible sufferings at his hands
have been described in previous chapters. From ^Egina the
red-bearded commander sailed to the Cyclades, where one
petty Venetian dynasty after another fell before him. The
castle of Seriphos, where the Michieli had lorded it for over
a century, could not save their diminutive barony from
annexation ; the group of three islands, Nio, Namfio, and
Antiparos, which had passed by marriage or inheritance a
few years before from the ducal family to the Pisani,3 now
became Turkish ; the Quirini lost their possessions of
Stampalia and Amorgos, whose inhabitants fled to Crete.
These six islands never again owned the Latin sway.
Abandoned by Venice in the shameful treaty of 1 540, their
Venetian lords in vain attempted to recover them by negotia
tions with the Porte. The Pisani pleaded for the restitution
of little Namfio, but the Venetian bailie at Constantinople
1 Sanudo, Diarii, xxx., 450 ; lvi., 882 ; Mitteilungen (Athen), xxvii.,
4I7-30- 2 Haji Kalifeh, History ofthe Maritime Wars of the Turks, 28.
3 Hopf, Analekten, 419; Sanudo, Diarii, lvii., 472; Pasch von
Krienen, 31.

BARBAROSSA'S CONQUESTS 625 t
replied that all the inhabitants had been removed, and that
the islet had been left a mere barren rock. The Quirini
were willing to acquiesce in the loss of Amorgos, if they
could but retain Stampalia, the island whose name they had
incorporated with their own. But there, again, the sultan was
inexorable.1 The escutcheon of the Michieli over the castle
gate at Seriphos alone preserves the memory of their rule
there ; but the connection of the Quirini with Stampalia
survives in their arms and superscription in that island, and in
the name of the square, street, bridge, and palace in Venice,
where they long resided, and where the last of their race only
recently died. But few who enter the library, into which
the Palazzo Quirini-Stampalia has now been converted,
realise the historic meaning of its double name.2
Having thus made an easy conquest of the smaller
islands, Barbarossa appeared at Paros, and ordered it to
surrender. But Bernardo Sagredo, the baron of the marble
island, was resolved not to relinquish his newly-won
possession without a struggle. Abandoning the fortress
of Agousa to the enemy, he shut himself up with the small
forces at his command in the strong castle of Kephalos,
where, with the aid of a Florentine outlaw, he not only held
out for several days, but made effective sorties against the
besiegers. Want of powder, however, forced him to yield ;
his wife, Cecilia Venier, was allowed to withdraw to Venice,
and Sagredo himself was soon released from captivity, thanks
to the gratitude of a Ragusan sailor who had once rowed
in a galley under his command. The Parians, some 6000 in
number, were treated as the other islanders had been ; the
old men were butchered, the young men were sent to serve
at the oar ; the women were ordered to dance on the shore,
so that the conqueror might choose the most pleasing for his
lieutenants ; the boys were enrolled in the corps of the
janissaries.3 Though. Sagredo tried to recover his lost island
1 A. Maurocenus, Historia Veneta (ed. 1623), 182 ; Paruta, Historia
Venetiana (ed. 1703), 382 ; Predelli, Commemoriali, vi., 236, 238 ; Hopf,
op. eit, 417, 476 ; La Vidade Barbaroxa in Arch. Stor. Sicil, xi., 105-9.
2 Pasch von Krienen, no.
3 Maurocenus, loc. eit. ; Paruta, loc. eit; Buchon, Recherches, ii., 468 ;
Hopf, Andros (tr. Sardagna), 148-50; Pasch von Krienen, 119; A.
Cornaro, " Historia di Candia," ff. 93, 94. 2 R

626 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
by the offer of tribute, it was abandoned to the sultan by
the treaty of 1 540. But the latter would seem to have given
it to the Duke of Naxos, among whose possessions we find
it included some twenty years later, while at the same time,
a Greek named Eraclides Basilikos, one of those adventurers
so common in the Levant, who boasted that he was descended
from the rulers of Moldavia, was pleased to style himself
Margrave Palatine of Paros ! 1
From Paros the Turkish fleet sailed across to the capital
of the Cyclades. We have from the pen of the duke himself
a graphic account of this dreaded visitation. As soon as the
fatal galleys were sighted, the inhabitants fled from all parts
of the island to take refuge in the city, leaving in their haste
their heavy goods and chattels behind them. The Turks had
no sooner landed than they forced their way into the tower
near the sea and the adjoining houses, and, in their rage at
finding no one there, destroyed all those buildings and broke
open the cellars, where corn, wine, and oil were stored.
Meanwhile, a Christian emissary of the Turkish commander
sought an audience of the reluctant duke in his palace in the
upper town. " If," he said, " you will voluntarily submit
yourself and your islands to the emperor, already master
of Asia and ere long of all Europe too, you may easily
obtain his favour. If not, then I bid you expect his hatred
and indignation." The envoy continued in the same strain :
"If you surrender, all your possessions shall be saved;
but if you refuse, we will send you, your wife and children,
your fellow-countrymen and subjects, to destruction to
gether. We have a powerful fleet, a vigorous and vic
torious soldiery, and an admirable siege equipment. Take
warning and counsel, then, from the ^Eginetans, the
Parians, and the other lords of the Cyclades. You
are fortunate to be able, if you choose wisely, to profit
by the misfortunes of your neighbours." The duke begged
the envoy to withdraw, while he took counsel with his
advisers. The trembling council hastily met, and, as the
ducal resources were inadequate to the task of resisting and
there was no hope of help from Western Christendom, it was
decided to accept the Turkish terms, rather than expose the
1 Gratiani, De Joanne Heraclide Despota, 6.

THE DUKE'S APPEAL TO CHRISTENDOM 627
duke and his subjects to the certainty of death or slavery.
Accordingly, on nth November, Giovanni IV surrendered,
promising to pay an annual tribute of 5000 ducats,1 and
paying the first year in advance, in order to mollify his
threatening adversary. The sum, he plaintively says, was
beyond the means of a poor duke and an exiguous state, but
the loss of the money was a lesser evil than the loss of his
dominions. Yet, with all these concessions, he could not
prevent the Turks from ravaging "the Queen of the
Cyclades" and carrying off more than 25,000 ducats' worth
of booty, and he already foresaw that, unless Christendom
would unite against the Turk, in a few years' time he would
share the same fate which had, eighty years before, befallen
the last Greek emperor of Constantinople.
With the forlorn hope of making Christendom forget its
quarrels and combine against the common foe, the duke
addressed his memorable letter to "Pope Paul III.; the
Emperor Charles V. ; Ferdinand, King of the Romans ;
Francois I. of France ; and the other Christian kings and
princes." In this curious document he bade them "apply
their ears and lift up their eyes, and attend with their minds,
while their own interests were still safe," lest they, too,
should suffer the fate of the writer. He reminded them of
the wealth and strength of the magnificent sultan, which,
even if united by some miracle, they would find it hard to
resist. He pointed out that Suleyman's policy was to
separate them, so as the easier to destroy one while cajoling
another, and that by this means ere long the whole earth
would be the sheep-fold of Mahomet. He emphasised these
admirable truisms, which might have been addressed to the
Concert of Europe at any time during the last thirty years,
by a well-worn tag from his ancestor Jjallust — Sallustius
Crispus "the author of our race" — and urged his corre
spondents to wake up and invade the Turkish Empire while
the sultan's attention was distracted by the Persian war.2
But neither his platitudes nor his allusion to his distinguished
1 In 1553 and 1554 the tribute for the Cyclades was 6000 ducats;
Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, Series III., i., 39, 150.
2 Buchon, Recherches, ii., 464-72 ; Charriere, Negotiations de la
France dans le Levant, L, 373.

628 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
ancestry, which he might have had some difficulty in proving,
availed the unfortunate duke with the selfish powers of
Europe. Meanwhile, Barbarossa went on with his career -of
conquest ; Mykonos, so sorely tried sixteen years before, now
succumbed, never to become Venetian again, though the
rector of Tenos might still pretend to jurisdiction over the
sister island and for half a century longer bear its name in
his commission. Many of the inhabitants were carried off;
the rest fled to Tenos. The people of the latter island,
despite their devotion to Venice, yielded at once to the
summons of the terrible admiral; at the suggestion of a
treacherous Melian, who, as a subject of the Duke of Naxos,
was no friend of the Venetians, they handed Dolfino, the
rector, to Barbarossa. They soon repented their precipitate
surrender, sent to Crete for aid, and once more hoisted the
lion banner. So ashamed were the Teniotes of their dis
loyalty, that later travellers were told that their ancestors
had merely thought for a moment of surrender, and that they
had not only routed the forces of Barbarossa, but had thrown
down from the battlements of the castle the officer whom he
had sent to arrange the terms of the expected capitulation.1
Keos, then divided between the Premarini and the Gozzadini,
was captured, but bestowed by the sultan on the duke in
the following year.2 Crusino Sommaripa lost Andros, but
managed to regain possession of his island, thanks to the
intervention of the French ambassador at Constantinople, to
whom he doubtless emphasised his own French descent. It
was arranged that he should pay an annual tribute of 35,000
aspers to the Bey of Negroponte, and a firman of the sultan
specially allowed the Andrians to defend themselves against
the violence of the janissaries.3 The other islands received
similar capitulations.4
In 1538, Barbarossa made a second cruise in the ^Egean
1 Cornaro, op. eit, ff. 94, 95, 99 ; Maurocenus, loc. tit. ; Tournefort,
Voyage du Levant, i., 139. Cf the author's article on Mykonos in the
English Historical Review, xxii., 307.
2 Haji Kalifeh, op. tit, 58 ; Mar., xxvi., f. 48 (mistranslated by Hopf,
Analekten, 451.)
3 Sauger, 349-5' > P^gues, Histoire de Santorin, 609.
4 Sanudo, Diarii, Iv., 458-9, 472-6.

CAPTURE OF THE NORTHERN SPORADES 629
with a fleet of 120 sail, received the tribute due from the
Duke of Naxos, and put an end for ever to the rule of
Venice in the Northern Sporades. Though at times
oppressed by their Venetian rectors, the Greeks of those
islands had often sought and found justice from the Home
Government. Only a few years before their capture by the
Turks, they had taken the opportunity of the visit of a
Venetian commissioner to complain of the tyranny of their
rectors. Sanudo has left us a picturesque account of the
scene — how the people of Skyros, men and women alike,
came down to the shore, crying " Mercy, mercy upon us ! "
how the commissioner bade the town-crier summon all who
had any grievance against the rector to appear before him,
and how they told him the piteous tale of their woes.
Their rector, said their spokesman, the Greek bishop, had
" cornered " all the corn of the island, and had prevented the
importation of more by asking the neighbouring Turkish
governors to send none to Skyros. Then, despite the
express clause in their capitulations forbidding the rector to
engage in trade, he had sold them his whole stock at his own
price, and allowed no one to bake bread except from his
corn, so that many had fled to Turkey. Similarly, the people
of Skiathos had complained that there was such insecurity
that they must perforce remain shut up in the castle " like
a bird in its cage." In both these cases the rector was
removed, and Venetian justice was amply vindicated ; it
might therefore have been expected that the natives would
have fought to the last for their masters. But their treachery
caused the loss of both these islands. The people of Skyros
at once handed over Cornaro, their rector, with his court and
some Italian artillerymen sent from Candia, and offered to
pay 2000 ducats tribute to the Turk. Memmo, the rector of
Skiathos, knew that the lofty castle possessed great natural
strength ; he therefore resolved to hold out, and, as his
garrison was small, armed the natives, on whom he thought
he could rely. Unhappily, an arrow wounded him at the
first attack ; as he lay wounded in his litter, the traitors in
the castle fell upon him and slew him ; whereupon they let
down ropes from the rocks and drew the Turks up into the
citadel. Barbarossa was so indignant at the murder of his

630 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
brave opponent, that he ordered the instant beheadal of the
men who had betrayed their commander, and carried off
the rest of the inhabitants into slavery. When Baron
Blancard, the French admiral, passed soon afterwards, he
found Skiathos and Skopelos both deserted.1
Like the islands of the dispossessed barons of the
Archipelago, the Northern Sporades and the much older
Venetian colony of Mykonos were retained by the sultan at
the peace of 1 540, despite the efforts of the Venetian plenipo
tentiary. Five years later we find Venice still in vain trying
to obtain the restitution of little Mykonos.2 Only the non-
Venetian dynasties of the ^Egean — the Crispi, the Sommaripa,
and the Gozzadini — survived the two fatal visits of the red-
bearded admiral. Even the lord of little Siphnos was glad to
pay tribute, "not wishing to appear either wiser or more
foolish than his neighbours." 3 They well knew, however, that
they only existed on sufferance. Venice could no longer
afford them protection, nor had she the same interests as
before in a sea where Tenos was now her sole possession.
Her shameful neglect of even so important an outpost as
Tenos was shown from the fact that no sindici visited the
island to redress the grievances of the Greeks for over thirty
years. It is to the visit of one of these officials in 1563 that
we owe a most interesting account of the state of the Cyclades
on the eve of the Turkish Conquest. " Tenos," he wrote, " is
the richest and most populous of all the ^Egean islands, with
the exception of Chios ; the fortress is almost impregnable,
though the garrison consists of but twelve foot soldiers ; the
population is 9000, a good part of whom speak Italian and
are Catholics. Such is their Civilisation, that this remote
island scarcely differs at all from Venetia ; while the corsairs
are a constant menace to the other islands, they rarely
venture to molest Tenos, defended as it is by 2000 able-
bodied men. Among themselves the Teniotes are peaceable ;
the oldest inhabitant cannot remember a murder ; the rectors
1 Maurocenus, 196 ; Paruta, 409 ; Charriere, loc. tit; Cornaro, loc.
tit. j Haji Khalifeh, 59-61.
2 Predelli, Commemoriali, vi., 236, 238 ; Lamansky, Secrets de I'Etat
de Venise, 58 ; Sftthas, viii., 451.
3 Cornaro, op. eit, f. 100.

TENOS IN 1563 631
find them excellent and most obedient subjects, and fines
are accustomed to be paid in silk, the staple of the island.
Yet some of those officials in the past have made too much
out of the islanders, who have one special grievance against
them. Tenos, it should be remembered, consists of two
halves— one half directly administered by the republic, the
other originally let by the senate to the Loredano family and
disposed of by them to some citizens of the island called
Scutoni, or Scutari. According to the Venetian regulations,
the produce of the former half, consisting of corn and wine,
should be sold every year by auction to the highest bidder ;
and out of the proceeds, which should average 800 ducats,
the salaries of the rector and the other officials should be
paid. Latterly, however, in distinct violation of the capitula
tions, which prohibit direct or indirect trading by the rectors,
those officials have bought up all the corn at low prices, as no
one dared to bid against them, especially as the governors
of Tenos have more power than those of any other Venetian
colony, and are less liable, from their distance from Venice
or even Crete, to be called to account. This abuse is doubly
bad : for not only are the natives compelled to buy corn from
the rector on his own terms, as the island does not produce
sufficient other grain for their nourishment, but the castle is
often left without provisions. Two remedies are suggested :
the increase of the rector's present miserable salary of seven
ducats a month, which forces him to make money in this
way ; and the substitution of a cash payment by the people,
instead -of this zemoro, or tithe in kind, which they would
much prefer. For humanitarian, strategic, and political
reasons alike, the republic should hold this island dear. For
it is the sole refuge in the Archipelago for fugitive slaves,
whose surrender the other islanders dare not refuse, and it is
the first point whence a Turkish fleet can be spied, and thus
Candia can be warned in time. Above all, it is a living
memorial of Venetian rule, which keeps ever before the eyes
of the other islanders the blessings of your sway. Moreover,
if the Teniotes were discontented, you could not retain
them for a moment, nor are there wanting incentives to
disaffection among them. Their neighbour, the Duke of
Naxos, naturally an ambitious man, anxious to increase his

632 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
state by hook or by crook at the expense of his neighbours,
covets Tenos, and lavishes favours on its inhabitants,
whenever they come to Naxos or any of his other islands,
trying to persuade them that they would be better off under
his rule. His argument is an appeal to their material interests.
" ' As my subjects,' he tells them, ' you would be Turkish
tributaries, and in that capacity you would be able to purchase
corn in Turkey and could more easily recover any of your
friends who have been captured by Turkish corsairs.' On
the other hand," added the commissioner, " I have found in
the other islands, formerly under Venetian protection, in
credible affection for, and devotion to, your rule. Never have
those people forgotten that happy time."
It was the Venetian policy to allow the Teniotes a large
measure of local government, and the local offices were held
on short tenures, so that as many as possible might participate
in them. Every 25th of April the rector summoned the
council, composed of all the citizens of the capital, or Castello,
and submitted to them the names of four different families,
from one of which they elected an official, called the " bailie."
Local judges, annually elected, tried small cases, with an
appeal to the rector, instead of to Crete, as the journey
thither was both expensive and unsafe. The republic wisely
allowed the old code to continue in force — the Assizes of
Romania and the statutes of Casa Ghisi, by which Tenos had
been governed for nearly two centuries before her time. She
had confirmed the privileges, alike of the Byzantine emperors
and of the Latin barons, and her rector every two years
named the headmen, or primates (protogeri) of the villages.
Once a year, on May-day, he kept up the ancient custom of
receiving the homage of the feudatories at the mountain of
S. Veneranda ; four times a year it was their duty to practice
the cross-bow for the defence of the island. All the summer
long, watch was kept day and night at the coast (the so-called
merovigli and nichtovigli), and relays of peasants, called
roccari, or " men of the fortress," had to guard the castle at
night. Beacon-fires were lighted as soon as a suspicious sail
was sighted; rewards were offered for every corsair's head
that was brought to the rector; Turkish captains were
propitiated by presents of live stock ; and finally five so-called

THE DUKE'S SPLENDID MISERY 633
" centurions " were elected by the council to form a trainband
of ioo men each, as in the Ionian islands. Such was
existence in the one Venetian island of the ^Egean at the
time of the Turkish conquest of the other Cyclades.
The writer above mentioned then proceeds to describe
the condition of the duchy. " The islands of Zia, Siphnos,
and Andros," he told his Government, " have their own lords
(the Sommaripa and the Gozzadini), but are tributaries of the
sultan ; the other sixteen islands are under the duke, but of
these, only five — Naxos, Santorin, Melos, Syra, and Paros —
are inhabited. The Duke of Naxos, a man of nearly seventy,
is, in point of dignity, the Premier Duke of Christendom ; but,
despite his title, he is duke more in name than in fact ; for
in all things the Grand Turk and his ministers are practically
supreme. Every year, when the Turkish captains arrive, the
duke's subjects bring their complaints against him before
them, so that he dare not punish his own dependents for
their crimes, nor even for their offences against his own
person. He dresses and lives like a pauper, without the
least pomp or princely expenditure ; for, though he raises from
9000 to 10,000 ducats a year out of his islands, he has to pay
4000 ducats as tribute to the sultan, and his sole thought is
how he can save money with which to bribe the Turkish
captains and ministers. Under these circumstances, his
administration is rather the shadow of a principality than a
- government." x
The Venetian commissioner's report is fully confirmed
from what we know of the duke from other sources.
Scarcely had the peace of 1540 been concluded than he,
who had so eloquently preached to the Great Powers the
need of union, exemplified the insincerity of such maxims
by benefiting his own relatives at the expense of his
Christian neighbours. The Turks acquiesced, and the
Venetians in vain protested, when he kept the Premarini
out of their part of Zia, and bestowed it, together with the
devastated island of Mykonos, which Venice had been forced
to abandon to the sultan, upon his daughter on her marriage
1 Lamansky, op. eit, 651-60, 08-10; Sathas, iv., 236-311. Cf. Count
Albrecht zu Lowenstein (who visited Melos in 1562), apud Feyerabend,
Reyssbuch, fol. 205.

634 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
with Gian Francesco Sommaripa, the last Latin lord of
Andros, while allowing the Gozzadini, who were his wife's
relatives and the traditional friends of his dynasty, to retain
their share of Zia.1 The duke might go on distributing fiefs
to his friends — we have several documents bearing his name,
and one bearing his ducal seal2 — he might appoint his
relatives governors of his subordinate islands ; but he was
under no illusions as to the security of his tenure. Every
year the disaffection of his Greek subjects, who at this time
formed nineteenth-twentieths of the population of Naxos,3
increased ; they saw that their Latin masters were them
selves the slaves of the Turks, and when a Western nation
has lost its prestige, how can it hope to govern an oriental
people? Moreover, in order to raise funds for his tribute
to the sultan and for bribing the Turkish officials, the duke
was forced to squeeze more money than before out of his
subjects. The latter, as in the other Latin states of the
Levant, found leaders in the Orthodox clergy. In 1559,
the duke was forced to banish the Orthodox metropolitan of
Paronaxia for sedition. This divine, dabbling in politics
after the fashion of his kind, had conspired with a certain
Mamusso of Candia to stir up a revolt among his flock.
" It was disgraceful," he said, " that so many valiant Greeks
should allow their religion to be insulted and their country
to be governed by a mere handful of Franks."4 Such an
incident, to which there had been no parallel in the history
of the duchy since the days of Marco II., was ominous of
the future. Worse still, the oecumenical patriarch asked the
grand vizier to oust the Catholic hierarchy, whose scandal
ous conduct and great unpopularity were admitted by the
duke in two letters to Rome. " I have decided," he told
the Vatican, " to have no more friars or foreigners as arch
bishops : local people alone are popular." It was obvious
that at any moment the natives might call in the Turks to
1 Hopf, Analekten, 451 ; Sauger, 296, 352 (whose account, more
trustworthy as he approaches his own time, here tallies with the fact,
unknown to Hopf, that Mykonos was no longer Venetian).
2 Buchon, Recherches, ii., 463, 473 ; Atlas, xiii., 14 ; Byzantinische
Zeitschrift, xiii., 154-6.
3 Lichtle.
4 Lamansky, 064 ; Vat. Arch., Arm, xi., Caps, iv., 183.

FALL OF THE DUCHY 635
put an end to the tyranny of the small foreign garrison,
which still preserved its titles and dignities without the
power to make them respected.
Giovanni IV., happy in the opportunity of his death,
was spared the humiliation of witnessing the fall of his
dynasty. He ended his long reign — the longest of any
Duke of the Archipelago— in 1564, and his second son,
Giacomo IV, the last Christian ruler of the duchy, reigned
in his stead 1 — for his elder son, Francesco, who had shared
his father's throne and had therefore acquired some ex
perience of government, had unfortunately predeceased him.
The new duke recognised that he was a mere puppet of
the Turks; in a letter, written in 1565, he plaintively says :
" We are now tributaries of the great emperor, Sultan
Suleyman, and we are in evil plight, because of the
difficulties of the times ; for now necessity reigns with
embarrassment and pain for her ministers ; and, like
plenipotentiaries or commissioners of others, we husband
our opportunities as fate doth ordain." 2 But, though he
saw the weakness of his position, he acted as if it were
impregnable. He and the nobles of his petty court thought
of nothing but their pleasures and of how to gratify them.
The debauchery of the castle of Naxos utterly scandalised
the temperate Greeks ; the heir apparent was a notorious
evil liver; and the climax was reached when the Latin
clergy lived in open concubinage and a Catholic ecclesiastic
publicly accompanied the body of his mistress to the grave
and received the condolences of his friends on his loss.
These shocks to their morality, combined with fiscal oppres
sion, at last made the Greeks desire a change of master,
such as the people of Chios had just experienced. They
sent two of their number to the sultan, begging him to send
them some person fitter to govern them, much as the
Samians constantly do at the present day. The duke now
realised his peril; he collected 12,000 ducats and sailed for
Constantinople to counteract their efforts by the most
convincing of arguments. But he was too late; on his
arrival, he was at once stripped of all his possessions and
1 We have a document of Giacomo IV., dated 10th December 1564,
Byzant. Zeitschrift, xiii., 157. 2 Ibid., I38-

636 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
thrown into prison like a common malefactor, where he
remained for five or six months. Meanwhile, another
Christian renegade, Piali Pasha, who had driven the Genoese
from Chios, returned from the Adriatic, and occupied Naxos
without opposition. The Greeks of Andros, who had learnt
to despise their feeble lord, seeing how successful their
fellows in Naxos had been in getting rid of their duke,
conspired against the life of Sommaripa. Deserted by most
of the Latins of the island, who, instead of rallying round
him, fled from the persecution of the Greeks, he saved his
life, but lost his islands of Andros and Zia, by flight to his
wife's native Naxos. At the same time, the last remaining
Latin dynasty, that of the Gozzadini, was wiped from the
map.1 Thus, after having lasted for 359 years, the Latin duchy
of the Archipelago ceased to exist. Tenos alone survived the
wave of Turkish conquest which swept over the ^Egean.
The Naxiotes and Andrians soon found that they had
exchanged the rule of King Log for that of King Stork
The new sultan, Selim II., bestowed the oldest and most
picturesque of all the Latin states of the Levant upon his
favourite, Joseph Nasi, a Jewish adventurer, who thus, after
many vicissitudes, rose from the prosaic counting-house to
the romantic island-throne of the Sanudi and the Crispi.
Nasi belonged to a family of Portuguese Jews, who had
outwardly embraced Christianity in order to escape persecu
tion, and had assumed the aggressively Portuguese name
of Miquez, the better to conceal their Hebrew origin. Like
other members of his family, J0S0 Miquez, as he was then
pleased to call himself, went to seek his fortune at Antwerp,
where his aunt, a rich widow, admitted him to the manage
ment of her affairs. He there won the favour of the regent
of the Low Countries, Maria, sister of the Emperor Charles
V, and the love of his fair cousin, with whom he eloped.
His aunt sanctioned the marriage, and the whole household
migrated for greater security to Italy. We next hear of
Miquez founding a bank at Lyons, and becoming the
creditor of the French crown to a large amount. Thence,
armed with a letter of introduction from the French
1 Sauger, 299-301, 354-5 ; Luccari, Copioso ristretto degli Annali di
Rausa, 148 ; Conti, Historie de'suoi tempi, i., 475.

THE JEWISH DUKE 637
ambassador in Rome, he made his way to Constantinople,
where Jews were well received, and where his real fortunes
began. There was no longer need for disguising himself as
a Christian ; he returned to the faith and name of his Jewish
forefathers ; and, as Joseph Nasi, gained the intimacy of the
future sultan, Selim II., thanks to one of his co-religionists,
a Jewish doctor named Daout, and retained it by pandering
to the vices of that bibulous and gluttonous ruler, to whom
he presented choice wines and dainties for his table.1 But
Nasi, like the Jewish magnates of our own time, was anxious
to benefit his race as well as himself. He had long cherished
the idea of founding a Jewish state, and thus, in the
sixteenth century, anticipated the Zionist movement. He
had in vain asked Venice to give him an island for the
new Zion; from Suleyman the Magnificent he obtained
permission to rebuild the town of Tiberias. Startled French
diplomatists, upon whom he kept pressing his claims for
payment, reported that he intended to make himself " King
of the Jews " ; fulsome Jewish authors dedicated to him
their works ; the whole downtrodden race regarded him as
its head. Such was the man upon whom Selim II. now
solemnly conferred Naxos, Andros, and the other islands of
the Archipelago, with the historic title of duke.2
When the islanders heard that a Jew was to be their new
master, they hastened to repair the mistake which they had
committed. The Greeks do not love the Catholics, but they
love the Jews even less, and the latter fully reciprocate their
feelings. The subjects of the dispossessed duke begged the
sultan to release Giacomo IV. and restore him to his now
faithful people. Selim set the prisoner free, but refused to
replace him on the ducal throne. Finding that arguments
were useless against the all-powerful Jew, Crispo, accompanied
by his family and by his sister, the Lady of Andros, fled to the
1 Le Relazioni degli Ambastiatori veneti, Series III., i., 343 ; ii., 66,
67, 91.
2 Charriere, Negotiations de la France, ii., 403, 707, 708, 735-7, 773-5 5
iii., 80, 84 ; Strada, De bello Belgico, i., 171-2 ; Reports of Venetian and
Imperial Ambassadors, apud Hammer, Geschichte des osm. Reiches, iii.,
564-5 ; Sereno, Commentari della Guerra di Cipro, 7 ; Contarini, Historia
delle cose successe, 2 ; Carmoly, Don Joseph Nassy (a work to be used with
caution) ; Levy, Don Joseph Nasi; Romanin, vi., 317, n. 2.

638 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Morea, whence he proceeded to Rome to seek aid of Pope
Pius V, while his wife found a refuge in the republic of
Ragusa. From Rome the duke went to beg alms of Venice ;
and the Venetian Government, moved by the spectacle of
his poverty, assisted him, as the pope had done, and thus
enabled him to live in a manner more suitable to the.
" Premier Duke of Christendom." x
The Jewish Duke of Naxos never once visited his duchy
during the thirteen years for which it belonged to him.
Possibly he did not dare, certainly he did not desire, to
quit the court of Constantinople, where he was the boon
companion of Selim the Sot, for the splendid isolation of
the Crispi's feudal castle at Naxos or for the island fortress
of the Sommaripa at Andros. Moreover, he was engaged
in larger enterprises — seizing the French ships at Alexandria,
hounding the Turks against Otranto, scheming for the con
quest of Cyprus. At the same time, he was anxious to make
as much out of the Cyclades as possible — for his tribute to
the sultan from the islands was 14,000 ducats and his personal
expenses enormous — and he therefore sent there as his
deputy a man in whom he had the fullest confidence, Dr
Francesco Coronello, a lawyer by profession, a Christian by
name, but a Spanish Jew by race, whose father, Salamon, had
been governor of Segovia, but was at this time " the right
eye " of Nasi at Constantinople, constantly consulted by the
great financier, and together with his son Francesco — so it
was said in the Cyclades — responsible for the deposition of
the Crispi and the Sommaripa.2 The Jesuit historian of the
duchy, moved by the fact that a Coronello was in his time
French consul at Naxos,3 has depicted Francesco Coronello
as a beloved and respected ruler ; and such was the official
Turkish view.4 But the contemporary opinibn of him, as
held at least in the Venetian island of Tenos, was very
different. The Teniotes had special reasons for disliking
the change of government in the neighbouring islands.
1 Luccari, loc. tit. ; Conti, loc. tit. ; Sauger, 303.
2 Gerlach, Tagebuch, 426 ; Lamansky, Secrets, 82.
3 Sauger, 302.
1 As expressed in the capitulations of 1580 and 1640 ; Pegues, Histoire
de Santorin, 609, 614.

TENOS THREATENED 639
The lords of Andros and Naxos, even when Turkish
tributaries, had not ceased to be Christians, and had always
secretly warned their co-religionists of any coming attack.
The Jewish duke's lieutenant, on the other hand, allowed
neither news nor food to reach Tenos or Crete from his
islands, and sent back all runaway slaves to their masters
at Constantinople. At a time of peace, this " mortal enemy
of Venice" seized a Cretan brig, laden with money and
powder for the garrison of Tenos, taking the cargo and
enslaving the crew. In order to hound on the sultan against
the republic, he sent him a specimen of the bread which
the Venetians of Crete were obliged to eat in their dire
extremity. Being in the adjacent island of Andros in 1 570,
he discovered that Tenos also had no provisions. According
to a story current at the time, he had sent Selim a picture of
a lovely garden, in the midst of which was one very fruitful
tree. " The garden," the sultan was told, " is the Cyclades,
and is all your majesty's, save this one tree, which is Tenos." 1
Sure of the sultan's approval, he therefore urged Piall Pasha,
who was then at Athens, to complete his conquest of the
Cyclades by capturing the Venetian island. " Tenos," he
told the Turkish admiral, " is the refuge of all the fugitive
slaves and of all the Christian vassals; unless you take it,
the other islands will never be quiet." Piali responded to
this appeal ; he landed with Coronello at Tenos with 8000
men ; but though he did great damage, the courage of
Girolamo Paruta, the Venetian rector, saved the last
Venetian possession in the ^Egean. Soon afterwards,
Coronello himself fell into the hands of his enemies. During
a visit to Syra, even then a flourishing island with more than
3000 inhabitants, he was seized in the night by the leading
men, and handed over to the commander of three Cretan
vessels, then lying in the harbour. Wrfen the Teniotes
heard that their arch foe, "the heart and soul of Joao
Miquez," had been captured, they offered the ships' captain
500 sequins to put him ashore on Tenos and let them
execute him with cruel tortures. Coronello, however, bid
a higher sum, if the captain would take him to Canea
instead, and he was accordingly put in prison there, pending
1 Buochenbach, Orientalische Reyss, 39.

640 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
the decision of the Home Government. Meanwhile, the
Turkish authorities despatched a commissioner to punish
the people of Syra, but the latter protested that it was not
they but the ships' captain who had kidnapped Coronello,
and convinced the commissioner of their truthfulness by a
bribe.1 The fatal war had now broken out which was to cost
Venice the possession of Cyprus, and the republic, suspecting
that Nasi had been responsible for the recent conflagration
in her arsenal, and knowing that he had been largely
instrumental in hounding on Selim II. against that island,
whose arms he had had painted in his house, and whose
king he aspired to be,2 naturally bethought herself of the
exiled Duke of Naxos. A Venetian fleet entered the
Archipelago ; the moment was propitious, for Nasi's lieuten
ant was a prisoner at Canea ; and thus, in 1571, with the
aid of the provveditore Canale, Giacomo IV. was restored
to the ducal throne, and Niccolo Gozzadini recovered his
island of Siphnos.3 He does not seem, however, to have
returned to Naxos, which was temporarily placed under the
administration of a certain Angelo " Giudizzi," perhaps one
of the Gozzadini family.4 But he exercised his authority
by nominating a new Archbishop. The duke showed his
gratitude to the republic by following her fleet at the great
battle of Lepanto with a force of 500 men.6
Meanwhile, the Teniotes had sent a secret envoy to
Venice, imploring the republic not to let loose so dangerous
a man as Coronello. The senate accordingly ordered the
Cretan authorities to enquire into the truth of the allegations
against him ; if they proved to be true, then to put him to
death secretly and give out that he had died of an illness ;
if there was any doubt about the charges, to send him to the
prison at Candia for greater security.6 The sequel of this
1 Lamansky, Secrets, 80-3 ; Contarini, op. tit, 5 ; Hammer, op. eit,
iii., 576.
2 Contarini, op. tit, 2 ; Charriere, op. tit, iii., 88 ; Relazioni degli
Ambasciatori veneti, Appendice, 391.
3 Crescenzi, Corona della nobiltd d Italia, ii., 1 59.
4 Lichtle ; Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxvi., 422, n.
6 Predelli, Commemoriali, vi., 327 ; Theiner, Annates Ecclesiastici, i.,
473. 6 Lamansky, loc. tit.

NASI'S ADMINISTRATION 641
incident is unknown ; but Coronello managed to regain his
freedom and his former position in Naxos, which was re
covered by the Turks under Mehmet Pasha almost as soon
as it had been won by Canale. At any rate, in 1572 we find
Giacomo IV. begging the republic to order its fleet to aid
him in recapturing his dominions,1 and presenting them in
advance to his benefactress Venice. Like other people, he
was inspired with hope by the recent victory of Lepanto, in
which he had borne a part ; but his hopes were disappointed
in the humiliating peace which the Venetians concluded with
the sultan in 1573.
On the death of Selim II. in the following year, the
influence of his favourite Nasi was expected to wane,
especially as the grand-vizier loathed him, and the chances
of the deposed duke accordingly seemed brighter. The
mother of the new sultan (Murid III.), a Baffo, was a native
of Paros, and he therefore hoped that her influence with her
son would be exerted in his favour. Accordingly, in 1 575,
he set out for Constantinople by way of Ragusa and
Philippopolis, where the Ragusan historian Luccari 2 invited
him to dinner and learnt from him much about the past
glories of the Crispi. But his mission failed, and in the
following year he died of a broken heart at Pera, and was
buried in the Latin church there. Nasi, whose influence,
though diminished since the accession of Murid III., was
still sufficient to enable him to retain the duchy of Naxos
and the duty on wine, continued to govern the islands from
his mansion at Belvedere, near Constantinople, through the
faithful Coronello, whose authority was such that he is said
to have styled himself officially " Duke of the Archipelago." 3
Nasi maintained the ancient customs and laws of the Latins ;
his other officials were all Christians ; and^he tried to win
over some of the old families, like the Sirigo and the
D'Argenta, or Argyroi of Santorin, by giving them places
under his lieutenant-governor and by confirming them in
their ancient fiefs. Coronello even succeeded in legitimising
his own position to a certain extent by marrying one of his
1 Haji Kalifeh, Cronologia Historica (tr. Carli), 150; Predelli, Com
memoriali, loc. tit. 2 P- 148-
3 Relazioni degli Ambasciatori, Series III., ii., 166; Lichtle. 2 S

642 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
sons to a member of the old ducal family.1 But his admini
stration was as little able as that of the Crispi to protect the
lives and property of his master's subjects from corsairs. In
1577, tne D'Argenta, who had been barons of the castle of
St Nicholas in Santorin for generations, were attacked by ten
Turkish galleys and carried off to Syria. They managed to
obtain their freedom, but not to regain their ancestral castle ;
for four weary years they wandered about Europe, seeking
the aid of princes and men of renown, till at last, armed with
a letter from Gregory XIII., they knocked one day at the
hospitable door of honest Martin Kraus, Professor of Classics
at Tubingen. Kraus was interested in the new Greece as
well as in the old ; he collected money for his two visitors,
and at the same time material from them for his Turcogracia.
One of them described for him the present condition of the
Archipelago — how Santorin still had five castles, Paros two,
and Melos, Nio, Seriphos, Siphnos, Andros, Mykonos,
Amorgos, Anaphe, and Astypalaia one apiece ; how all these
islands still possessed towns or villages ; and how two of
them, Paros and Melos, were episcopal sees. He told him
how Tenos still kept aloft the Venetian flag ; and he might
have added that the Teniotes were intensely loyal to the
republic, which gave them a large share in the government
Since the severe lesson which Coronello had received, he
does not seem to have molested them again. They now
received news and food from Syra with the more or less open
connivance of Nasi's Christian officials; they continued to
harbour fugitive slaves — a practice at which the Venetian
rector wisely winked, and their only grievance was that the
republic had issued an ordinance confiscating their property
if they were absent for more than six months — a penalty
which affected many breadwinners.2
Duke Nasi of Naxos died of stone in August 1579, and,
as he left no heirs, his dynasty died with him. The Jewish
poets, whom he had so liberally encouraged, lamented him
as " the sceptre of Israel, the standard-bearer of the dispersed
1 Pegues, op. tit, 614 ; Curtiiis, Naxos, 46 ; Sauger, 302 ; >Va neu/Sii/ja,
vi., 572 ; ix., 436.
2 Crusius, Turcogrcecia, 206; Foscarini's Report of 1577, apud
Lamansky, Secrets, 641.

ANNEXATION OF THE CYCLADES 643
Jews, the noble duke, the sublime lord." His widow, the
Duchess Reina, continued to live at her husband's mansion
near Constantinople for many years longer, publishing at her
own cost the works of Hebrew scholars and poets ; while of
his mother-in-law, Gracia, we have two memorials, in the
shape of the Jewish Academy which she founded at Con
stantinople, and in the bronze medallion of herself now in
the national library in Paris. Of Francesco Coronello we
hear no more ; but his family became thoroughly naturalised
at Naxos, and is not yet extinct in Greece.
Thus ended the brief Jewish sway over the " Isles of
Greece " — not the least curious of the many strange accidents
of Levantine history, where the most unlikely nations are
found in the least expected situations. The experiment was
bound to be a failure. A Jew was the last person calculated
to make a popular ruler of a Greek state ; an absentee, whose
expenses, owing to his mode of life and the exigencies of
bakshish, were so huge that three years after he became duke
he was described as " overwhelmed with debts," and that he
did not leave 90,000 ducats behind him when he died, was
sure to wring the uttermost farthing out of his alien subjects.
If the last Crispo had chastised them with whips, we may be
sure that Nasi had chastised them with scorpions. The
official view, as expressed in the capitulations of 1580, was
that they had lived unmolested and unoppressed ; but their
desire for the reinstatement oftheir old masters, already once
manifested, and again demonstrated on the death of the
Jewish duke, proves the unpopularity of his rule.
No sooner was the news known, than several inhabitants
of the Cyclades who were at Constantinople went to the
. Porte and begged for the restoration of their former lords of
Naxos and Andros, whose children had retired to Venice.
The French ambassador reported that the grand-vizier— a
bitter enemy of Nasi — had expressed himself as favourable
to the revival of these two ancient dynasties, but nothing came
of the plan.1 It was decided to annex the islands to the
Turkish Empire, and a sandjakbeg and a cadi were sent to
govern them.2 In 1580, a deputation of Christians from the
1 Charriere, op. tit, iii., 71, 809, 931 ; Carmoly, op. tit, 10-14; Mas
Latrie, Les Dues de PArchipel, 15. 2 Pegues, 609, 614.

644 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
islands, including a Sommaripa of Andros, appeared at the
Porte, and obtained from Murid III. extremely favourable
capitulations. Their capitation tax was to be kept at its
old figure ; their churches were to be free, and could be
repaired at their own pleasure ; all their ancient laws and
customs were to remain in full force ; they were entitled to
retain their local dress ; and, as of old, silk, wine, and
provisions were exempt from duty in their islands. These
capitulations were confirmed by Ibrahim sixty years later,
and formed the charter of the Cyclades under Turkish rule.
But, though the duchy of the Archipelago had passed
away for ever, one petty but ancient Latin dynasty still
lingered on in the Cyclades for well-nigh forty years longer.
The Gozzadini had been restored to Sifanto, as we saw, in
1 57 1, and in their palace in that insignificant island, and in
their time-honoured castle of Akrotiri in Santorin, they
continued to reside. We are not told how they managed to
survive the Turkish wave, which had swept all else away;
perhaps their insignificance saved them — perhaps their greater
subservience to the sultan — possibly the fact that they sprang
from Bologna and not from Venice. At any rate, they, who
had boasted their independence of the duchy, still existed,
though tributaries of the Turkish Empire. In 1607 Angelo
Gozzadini sent his sons to be educated at the Collegio Greco
in Rome, and on that occasion Pope Paul V. issued an appeal
on his behalf to all Christendom, with special reference to the
forthcoming cruise of the Venetian fleet in the ^Egean. " I
have heard," wrote the pope, " that my beloved son, Angeletto
Gozzadini of the noble Bolognese family rules the seven
islands of Sifanto, Thermia, Kimolos, Polinos, Pholegandros,
Gyaros, and Sikinos, truly adhering to the Catholic faith.
All Christians who arrive in his islands should therefore treat
him well." In the following year, the Venetian squadron found
a hospitable reception from him in his island domain, and he
professed himself a loyal vassal of the republic ; but, in 1617,
his diminutive state was swallowed up in the Turkish Empire,
at a moment when feeling ran high against the Catholics of
the Archipelago. Angelo took refuge in Rome, where
Cardinal Gozzadini was then influential ; but in his old age
he returned to Naxos, where his forbears had lived so long.

MEMORIALS OF THE LATINS 645
His two sons, one of whom fought for Venice in the Candian
war, in vain hoped for the restoration of their seven islands,
but they died, like so many dispossessed princes, in exile in
Rome.1 The family has only just become extinct at Bologna ;
Tournefort 2 found three of its members residing at Sifanto,
and it still exists in the Cyclades, where for 310 years it
had held sway. During that long period, as was natural, the
proud nobles from Bologna erected monuments of their rule,
some of which still survive. Their ruined castle at Sifanto
is still called " the palace " {seraglio), and inside, on a marble
pillar, could till lately be seen their arms, with the date 1465
and the initials of Niccolo Gozzadini, the first of the family
who ruled there. One of the two towers of the island long
bore their name, while their escutcheon still ornaments the old
convent, now turned into a school ; their name recurred in
inscriptions on two of the now ruined churches at Zia, and
their arms used to be seen on that of Palaiochora at Melos
recently restored.3 Those from " the palace " are now in Syra.
Owing to its longer duration and to the essentially
aristocratic character of its constitution, the duchy of the
Archipelago has bequeathed to us more heraldic memorials
than the other Frankish states. While coats of arms are
rarely found in the castles of feudal Achaia, with the notable
exception of Geraki, there is scarcely an island in the
Cyclades which has not preserved some emblem of its former
lords. Two hundred years ago the arms of the Sommaripa
covered the walls of Andros ; and the author has seen on a
tower in that picturesque town a splendid escutcheon — two
heraldic monkeys supporting a shield containing two fleurs-
de-lys, while the sun is represented on the stone below.
Allusion has already been made to the heraldry of Naxos,
the big church in the castle at Melos still bears the escutcheon
and inscription of the Crispi, while two crowned lions ram
pant with outstretched paws — perhaps the arms of the
1 Hopf, Gozzadini, apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxvi., 423 ; Veneto-
Byzantinische Analekten, 398, 516 ; Cod. Cicogna, 2532, § 34.
2 i., 68.
3 Pasch von Krienen, 114; Piacenza, 286; Buchon, Atlas, xl., 26;
2T(?a nai/«(6pa, ix., 196 ; Hopf, loc. tit. (who emends MCCCC into MCCCCLXV.
because the Gozzadini were not lords of Siphnos before 1464)-

646 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
Michieli — may be seen on two slabs in the floor of the
church in the ancient monastery of Our Lady at Amorgos.1
Even when they have preserved nothing else, the descendants
of the island barons have cherished these marks of nobility.
But an agency more powerful than stone inscriptions has
kept alive the Latin influence, and has kept together the
old Latin families in the Cyclades. In the very year that
Naxos was finally annexed to Turkey, Pope Gregory XIII.
confirmed the metropolitan jurisdiction of the Archbishop of
Naxos over his suffragans, who in Sauger's time, a century
later, were five in number ; and among the bishops we find
scions of the former dynasties; others of the old Italian
families went over to the Greek Church, but numbers of them
remained true to the faith of their ancestors ; and at the
present day the Catholics of the Cyclades are in many cases
descendants of the Latin conquerors. In the present Greek
parliament there are such names as Crispi ; and the present
Catholic Archbishop of Athens is a Delenda of Santorin.
Of the feudal society in the Cyclades it is. possible to form
some idea from the letters of the dukes which have come
down to us. There, as in the rest of Frankish Greece, the
Assizes of Romania were the feudal code, modified by the
special usages of Naxos, of which one clause in Italian has
been preserved in the British Museum.2 The duke, as the
head of the social firmament was, as we have seen, a personage
of much importance, not only in his own scattered realm, but
in Achaia, of which he was a peer, at the Vatican, where he
insisted on his right of nominating bishops, and at Venice,
where he was regarded as the premier duke of Christendom.
The republic treated him with much the same attention,
and for much the same reason, which the British Government
shows to Indian princes on a visit to London. Nominally
independent, he was really a Venetian vassal, and as such
might at any time be useful to Venetian interests in the
East. In his own immediate circle of islands — those which
were under his direct government — he was more autocratic
than the Prince of Achaia, and the long history of both the
Sanudo and the Crispo dynasties is not broken by the
1 Lettere edificanti, vii., 153 ; AeXrlov, {., 599.
2 Archives de P Orient latin, 613-14 ; Byz. Zeitschrift, xiii., 147, 150.

THE DUCAL GOVERNMENT 647
appearance of those pretenders who were so common in
the more important principality. It was only in the
smaller islands that disputed successions sometimes
arose, and then they were usually settled by Venetian
intervention. More fortunate, too, than their brethren of
the mainland, both the Sanudi and the Crispi produced an
abundant stock of males to inherit their throne. Once only
did the ducal dignity devolve upon a woman, and in the
second dynasty, as we saw, the Assizes of Romania were so
far modified as to exclude females from the ducal succession.
Hence, with one or two rare exceptions, dynastic intrigues
were avoided.
The duke in so peculiarly scattered a domain could not
personally administer the affairs of all the islands which
were directly subject to him, and in these he was represented
by governors. In the ducal letters we read of such officials
as "lieutenants," "bailies," and "ducal factors"— an office
found also under the Jewish dispensation at Santorin — while
there was a "captain" of the castle of Naxos. Another
important post, conferred for a long term of years and extant
also in Turkish times, was that of apanochinigari1 of the
island and city of Naxos — an official perhaps originally the
"chief huntsman" of the ducal household, but later on a
civil authority. Legal documents were usually counter
signed by the chancellor, and the usual language of the
ducal chancery was the Venetian dialect, varied by Latin.
There is, however, an example of a Naxian deed drawn up
in a Greek copy.
In a state where the Latins had dwelt so long, there was
naturally a large number of half-castes, called vasmuli in the
language of the islands. These half-breeds were neither
wholly free, nor wholly slaves ; they could acquire property,
but they could not bequeath it to their heirs, and at their
death all they had was their lord's ; they and their animals
were liable to forced service by land and sea; and, if
enfranchised, they had to purchase their freedom anew from
their lord's successor. As for the serfs, though they could
acquire a peculium of their own, it was ever at their lord's
disposal, and a female serf with her children yet unborn was
1 Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xiii., 156.

648 THE DUCHY OF THE ARCHIPELAGO
transferred from one master to another like so much personal
property. Yet, if these serfs were exclusively Greek, the
dukes, with rare exceptions, treated the Orthodox Church with
respect. There can, however, have been no love lost between
the Greek serf, chained to the oar of the baronial galley, or
labouring in the fields of his feudal lord, and the proud nobles,
who traced their descent from the great families of Venice or
Bologna, and who sat as of right in " the higher and lower
court " of the duchy.1
Taxes and dues, however, do not, as a rule, appear to
have been excessive. An orange at Christmas, or a fowl, was
the usual equivalent of our peppercorn rent — a formal
recognition of feudal ownership. Tithes and thirtieths
were paid by the islanders ; the Byzantine land-tax, or
akrostichon, had survived ; and there was the turcoteli? the
equivalent of our Danegeld, the blackmail levied by the
Turkish corsairs on the duke, and extracted by him in turn
from his subjects. Yet, as we saw, when the islands became
a Hebrew possession, the natives might well have exclaimed
in the language of their former dukes — quando si stava peggio,
si stava meglio.
The Italian society of the Cyclades was by no means
uncultured in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We saw
how Crusino Sommaripa made excavations at Paros, and
how he received the travelling antiquary from Ancona
Giacomo I. Crispo, whose lovely park was a proof of his
taste, made scientific experiments in the crater of Santorin,
and Buondelmonti was able to buy a manuscript at Andros.3
At the end of the fifteenth century, the old baronial castles
of the islands rang with the sound of merriment ; balls were
of constant occurrence ; and, as the Turkish peril drew
nearer and nearer, the motto of the dukes seems to have
been : " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
The duchy of the Archipelago has passed away for ever
— unsung, unlamented. The stern classicist regards the
Italian dukes as mere interlopers on the old Hellenic soil ; he
would pull down their towers as ruthlessly as a Sanudo or
1 Buchon, Recherches historiques, ii., 463.
2 Byzantinische Zeitschrift, xiii., 152.
3 Ibid., xi., 499 ; Buondelmonti (ed. Legrand), 25.

ROMANCE OF FRANKISH GREECE 649
a Crispo pulled down his temples, and a Venetian lion,
winged and evangelised, is of less value in his eyes than a
Periklean potsherd. But the romance, the poetic haze of
Greece was in her middle age, rather than in her classic
youth ; and, as we voyage among those dream islands
over a sea of brightest blue, we seem to see the galley
of some mediaeval duke shoot out from the harbour in
quest of spoil.

TABLE OF FRANKISH RULERS

PRINCES OF ACHAIA

Guillaume de Champlitte .
Geoffroy I. de Villehardouin
Geoffroy II. de Villehardouin
Guillaume de Villehardouin
Charles I. of Anjou .
Charles II. of Anjou
Isabelle de Villehardouin .
With Florent of Hainault
With Philip of Savoy
Philip I. of Taranto .
Matilda of Hainault
With Louis of Burgundy
John of Gravina
Catherine of Valois "i
Robert of Taranto J
Robert of Taranto .
Marie de Bourbon .
Philip II. of Taranto
Joanna I. of Naples .
Otto of Brunswick .

[Knights of St John

Jacques de Baux

Mahiot de Coquerel, vicar
Bordo de S. Superan
Maria Zaccaria
Centurione Zaccaria

Bailie 1209 ; prince

—I377-

0

Vicar I

A.D.
1205 1210 12181246 12781285 1289
1289 130113071313 13131318 '333 13461364 13701374 1376 1381

• 1383
386 ; prince 1396
1402
. 1404-32

DUKES OF ATHENS
Othon de la Roche, Megaskyr . ¦ • • .1205
Guy I. .... Megaskyr 1225 ; duke 1260

John I.
William

1263 1280

651

652

TABLE OF FRANKISH RULERS

Guy II.
Walter of Brienne

Roger Deslaur, chief of the Catalan Company
Manfred
William
John of Randazzo .
Frederick of Randazzo
Frederick III. of Sicily
Pedro IV. of Aragon
John I. of Aragon ¦ .

Nerio Acciajuoli
Antonio I. .
Nerio II.
Antonio II. .
Nerio II. (restored).
FrancescoFranco

Michael I. Angelos ,
Theodore Manuel
Michael II. .
Nikephoros I.
Thomas Nicholas Orsini
John II. Orsini
Nikephoros II.

[Venice

A.D.
1287
1309
1311
13121317 '338
1348
1355
13771387

Lord of Athens 1388 ; duke 1394
1394-1402] 1402
H3514391441145 1
1455-6 ; " Lord of Thebes " 1456-60

DESPOTS OF EPIROS

[Byzantine — 1336-49 ; Serb — 1349-56]

Simeon Urosh
Thomas Preliubovich
Maria Angelina
Esau Buondelmonti [Albanians — 1408-18 ; then united with Cephalonia]

John I. Angelos
Constantine .
John II.

DUKES OF NEOPATRAS

[United with Athens]

PALATINE COUNTS OF CEPHALONIA
Matteo Orsini . •
Richard . . ....

1204121412301236
1271129613181323
1335-58

• 1358I3&71385
1 386- 1 408

1271 1295
1303-18

1 194
Before 1264

A.D.

John I 

I3°3

Nicholas .......

1317

John II 

1323

[Angevins (united with Achaia) — 1324-57]

Leonardo I. Tocco ......

1357

Carlo I. ...... .

Before 1377

Carlo II 

1429

Leonardo III.

• 1448-79

Antonio .......

• 1481-3

DUKES OF THE ARCHIPELAGO

Marco I. Sanudo ......

1207

Angelo .......

. c. 1227

Marco II. ...... .

1262

Guglielmo I.

1303

Niccolo I. .

1323

Giovanni I. .

1341

Fiorenza .......

1361

With Niccolo II. Sanudo "Spezzabanda"

1364

Niccolo III. dalle Carceri .

i37i

Francesco I. Crispo .....

1383

Giacomo I. . . . .

1397

Giovanni II. ....

1418

Giacomo II. ......

1433

Gian Giacomo ......

H47

Guglielmo II.

1453

Francesco II.

1463

Giacomo III. ......

1463

Giovanni III. ......

1480

[ Ven ice — 1 494- 1 500]

Francesco III. .
1500
[Venice— 15 1 1-1 7]
Giovanni IV. ......
1517
Giacomo IV. ......
1 564-6
Joseph Nasi .......
. 1566-79
LORDS OF CORFU
Despots of Epiros .
Manfred of Sicily .
Chinardo Charles I. of Anjou .
Charles II. of Anjou
Philip I. of Taranto
Catherine of Valois ~|
Robert of Taranto]
[Venice — 1206
14]
1214-59 1259-66 12661267
1285 1294
1331
654

TABLE OF FRANKISH RULERS

Robert of Taranto .
Marie de Bourbon .
Philip 1 1, of Taranto
Joanna I. of Naples
Jacques de Baux
Charles III. of Naples

[Venice — 1 386- 1 797]

A.D.
1346 1364I3&41373
1380
1382-86

VENETIAN COLONIES

Modon) Coron J

1 206- 1 500
Argos
1388-1463
Nauplia
1388-1540
Monemvasia
1464-1540
Lepanto
¦ 1407-99
Negroponte .
1 209- 1470
Pteleon
I323-M70
^Egina
1451-1537
Tenos
1390-1715
Mykonos
I39°-I537
Northern Sporades
1453-1538
Corfu . . .
1206-1214 ; 1386-1797
Cephalonia .
1483-5 ; 1500-1797
Zante
1482-1797
Cerigo
1 363- 1 797
Sta. Mavra .
. 1502-3
Athens
1 394- 1 402
Patras
1408-13; 1417-19
Naxos
1494-1500; 1511-17
Andros
1437-40; 1507-14
Paros
1518-20; 1531-36
J of Amorgos
1 370- 1 446
Maina
. 1467-79
Vostitza
1470
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Contemporary Documents.
(a) Venetian :
Tafel und Thomas : " Urkunden ziir alteren Handels-und Staatsgeschichte
der Republik Venedig (1204- 1300) " in Pontes Rerum Austriacarum,
Part 1 1., vols, xii., xiii., and xiv.
Thomas and Predelli: Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum (1300-1454),
2 vols.
Giomo : " Le Rubriche dei Libri Misti perduti," in Archivio Veneto,
xvii., et sqq.
Predelli : / Libri Commemoriali, 6 vols. ; // Liber Communis.
Jorga : " Notes et Extraits pour servir a. I'histoire des Croisades, au
XVE Siecle," in Revue de POrient latin, vols, iv.-viii.
Sathas : Mv-nfiela 'EXk-qvLicfjs 'loroplas (Monumenta Helleniece Historia), 9
vols.
Lamansky : Secrets de PEtat de Venise.
Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti, Serie III. and Appendice.
(b) Neapolitan :
Del Giudice : Codice Diplomatico di Carlo I. e II. di Angib (1265-8), 2
vols. (Napoli : 1863-9).
La Famiglia di Re Manfredi, 2nd ed. (Napoli : 1896).
Minieri Riccio : Saggio di Codice Diplomatico, 2 vols., with supplement.
(Napoli: 1878-83).
Alcuni fatti riguardanti Carlo I. di Angib, dal 1252 al 1270.
// regno di Carlo I. di Angib negli anni 1271 e 1272.
II regno di Carlo I. d Angib, dal 2 Gennaio 1273 al 31 Dicembre 1283.
In Archivio Storico Italiano, Serie III., vol. xxii. — Serie IV.r
vol. v.
II regno di Carlo I. d Angib, dal 4 Gennaio 1284 al 7 Gennaio 1285 ;
Ibid., Serie IV., vol. vii. Genealogia di Carlo II. dAngib, in
Archivio Storico per le Provintie Napoletane, vols, vii., viii.
Della dominazione Angioina nel reame di Sicilia.
Nuovi sludii riguardanti la dominazione Angioina nel regno di Sicilia,
Studii storici fatti sopra 84 Regislri Angioini.
Notizie storiche tratte da 62 Registri Angioini.
Studi storici suifascicoli Angioini.
y Barone : Notizie storiche di Re Carlo III. di Durazzo.

656 BIBLIOGRAPHY
(c) Papal:
Epistolarum Innocentii III., libri XVI. (ed. 1682).
Honorii 111. Opera, 4 vols. (ed. Horoy, 1879-80).
Regesta Honorii III. (ed. Pressutti, 1895).
Les Registres de Gregoire IX. (ed. Auvray, 1896-1906).
Les Registres d Innocent IV. (ed. Berger, 1884-97).
Les Registres d Alexandre IV. (ed. Bourel de la Ronciere).
Les Registres dUrbain IV. (ed. Guiraud).
Les Registres de CUment IV. (ed. Jordan).
Les Registres de Gregoire X. et de Jean XXI. (ed. Guiraud).
Les Registres de Nicolas III. (ed. Gay).
Les Registres de Martin IV. (ed. Ecole francaise de Rome).
Les Registres d Honorius IV. (ed. Prou).
Les Registres de Nicolas IV. (ed. Langlois).
Les Registres de Boniface VIII. (ed. Digard).
Les Registres de Benoit XI. (ed. Grandjean).
Regestum Clementis V. (ed. Benedictine Order).
Lettres secretes et curiales de Jean XXII. (ed. Coulon).
Lettres communes de Jean XXII. (ed. Mollat).
Lettres communes de Benoit XII. (ed. Vidal).
Lettres closes, patentes, et curiales de Benoit XII. (ed. Daumet).
Lettres closes, patentes, et curiales de CUment VI. (ed. Deprez).
Lettres secretes et curiales d Urbain V. (ed. Lecacheux).
(d) Miscellaneous :
Miklosich und Miiller : Acta et Diplomata Graca Medii yEvi, 6 vols.
Exuviae Sacrce Constantinopolitance (ed. 1877), 2 vols.
Lampros : "Eyypatjta dvatpepdpLeva els t^]v pLeoaLLOVLKTjv 'JffTopLav twv 'AQtjvwv. (The
third volume of his Greek translation of Gregorovius, Geschichte
der Stadt A then im Mittelalter).
Ross und Schmeller : "Urkunden zur Geschichte Griechenlahds im
Mittelalter,'' in Abhandlungen der philos.-philol. Classe der K.
Bayer. Akademie, B. II.
A tti della Sotietd Ligure di Storia patria.
Liber Jurium Reipublicce Genuensis.
Documenti suite relazioni ioscane colP Oriente.
Guardione : Sui Dominio dei Ducat i di Atene e Neopatria.
Melanges historiques, vol. iii.
Charriere : Negotiations de la France dans le Levant, vols, i.-iii.
Archives de POrient latin.
II. Contemporary Authors.
(a) Greek:
MixotjX ' AKop-LvdTov toG XavLarov to, ao){6p.eva (ed. Lampros).
Nikdtas Chonidtes (ed. Bonn).
Akropolita (ed. Bonn).
Michael Palaioldgos, De vita sud.
Pachymeres (ed. Bonn).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 657
Nikephdros Gregoras (ed. Bonn).
J. Cantacuzene (ed. Bonn).
Ladnikos Chalkokondyles (ed. Bonn).
Phrantzes (ed. Bonn).
Doukas (ed. Bonn).
Chronicon breve (ed. Bonn).
Epirotica (ed. Bonn).
Kritdboulos apud Miiller : Fragmenta historicorum Grcecorum, vol. v.
Manuel Palaiologos apud Migne : Patrologia Graca.
G. Gemistos Plethon apud Migne : Patrologia Grceca.
Bessarion apud Migne : Patrologia Graca.
Theodoulos Rhdtor apud Boissonade : Anecdota Graca, vol. ii.
Mazaris apud Boissonade : Anecdota Grceca, vol. iii.
Kydones apud Boissonade : Anecdota Nova.
Qprjvos rijs KoivoTavTLvovn-oXeus apud Wagner : Mediaval Texts.
lb XpovLKbv tov M<v>&js (ed. Schmitt). Cited as X. -r. M.
'Dordtheos of Monemvasia : Bl@XIov 'IotoplkSv (ed. 1814).
(b) Miscellaneous:
Le Livre de la Conqueste. (Forming vol. i. of Buchon, Recherches
historiques). Cited as L. d. C.
Cronaca di Morea, apud Hopf, Chroniques grko-romanes. Cited as
C. d. M.
Libro de los Fechos et Conquistas del Prineipado de la Morea. (The
Aragonese version of the above). Cited as L. d. F.
Benedict of Peterborough : Gesta Regis Ricardi, in Rolls' Series.
Matthew Paris : Chronica Majora, and Historia Minor, in Rolls' Series.
Muratori : Rerum Italicarum Scriptores.
Pertz : Monumenta Germania historica.
Historia patria Monumenta. (Torino, 1854-7).
Martin da Canal : " La Chronique des Veniciens," in Archivio Storico
Italiano, vol. viii.
Laurentius de Monacis : Chronicon.
Enrico Dandolo : " Cronaca Veneta." (MS. in Venice).
Amadeo Valier : " Cronaca." (MS. in Venice).
A. Cornaro : " Historia di Candia." (MS. in Venice).
Antonio Morosini : Chronique.
Sabellico : Historia Rerum Venetarum (ed. 1556).
Bembo: Rerum Venetarum historia (ed. 1551).
Guazzo : Historie.
P. Jovius : Historia sui temporis.
Cippico : P. Mocenigi Gesta.
Paruta : Historia Venetiana (ed. 1703).
A. Maurocenus : Historia Veneta (ed. 1623).
Sanudo : Diarii.
Conti : Historie de' suoi tempi.
Contarini : Historia delle cose successe (ed. I572)-
Foglietta : Historia Genuensium (ed. 1585).
2 T

658 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albericus Trium Fontium : Chronicon (ed. 1698).
Philippe Mouskds : Chronique rimie, vol. ii. (Bruxelles, 1838).
" Chronique de Geoffroy de Villehardouin " and " Continuation par Henri
de Valenciennes," in Buchon, Recherches et MaUriaux, vol. ii. ;
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Muntaner : " Cronaca," in Cronache Catalane (tr. Moise) ; and also edited
by Lanz (1844).
The Chronicles of Rabbi foseph Ben Joshua (tr. Bialloblotzky).
Luccari : Copioso ristretto degli annali di Rausa.
Gerlach : Tagebuch.
/Eneas Sylvius : Europa.
Pius 1 1. : Commentarii.
Rizzardo : La Presa di Negroponte.
" De Nigropontis Captione," in Basle ed. of Chalkokondyles.
Pegalotti : Della Decima.
Barbarorum Leges Antiqua (ed. P. Canciani, 1785).
The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (tr. Asher, 1840).
GJographie dEdrisi (tr. Jaubert).
Itinerarium Symonis Simeonis (ed. Nasmith, 1778).
Friar Jordanus : Mirabilia Descripta (tr. Yule).
Ludolph von Suchem : De Itinere Terra Sancta.
Nicolaus de Marthono : " Liber Peregrinationis ad Loca Sancta," in
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Faber : Evagatorium.
Casola : Viaggio a Gerusalemme.
Feyerabend : Reyssbuch des Heyligen Lands (ed. 1 584).
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Tozzetti : Relazioni di alcuni viaggi fatti in Toscana.
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Bartolomeo dalli Sonnetti : Periplus.
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Beugnot : Recueil des historiens des Croisades.
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Cronologia del Mondo.
Spandugino .• / Commentari . . . delP Origine de1 Printipi Turchi (ed.
'551)-

BIBLIOGRAPHY 659

III. Later Writers.
Ducange : Histoire de P Empire de Constantinople, 2 vols. (ed. Buchon).
Buchon : Recherches et MaUriaux, 2 vols.
Recherches historiques sur la Principauti francaise de More'e, 2 vols.
Nouvelles Recherches historiques sur la Principaute francaise de More'e,
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Histoire des Conquetes.
Atlas des Nouvelles Recherches historiques.
La Grlce Continentale et la Morde.
" Les Cyclades," in Revue de Paris for 1843, v°ls- xiii-, xvi., and xvii.
Hopf :>*' Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters bis auf
unsere Zeit," in Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie, vols.
lxxxv. and lxxxvi.
" Ghisi." Ibid, vol. lxvi.
"Giustiniani." Ibid., vol. Ixviii. Also in French, Les Giustiniani
(tr. Vlasto) and Italian, "Di Alcune dinastie latine nella Grecia"
(tr. Sardagna), in Archivio Veneto, vol. xxxi.
" Gozzadini," in Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie, vol. Ixxvi.
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" Geschichte der Insel Andros und ihrer Beherrscher," in Sitzungsberichte
der Wiener Akademie (1855), B. XVI.
" Urkunden und Zusatze zur Geschichte der Insel Andros." Ibid. (1856),
B. XXI. Also, in Italian, Dissertazione documentata sulla storia
delP Isola di Andros (tr. Sardagna).
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'Appiovla. N^a XlavSiipa.
BvfavTLva Xpoi-LKa.

INDEX

(Except where expressly stated, the Greek names of places are used, the Frankish
equivalents being put in brackets after them.")

Acciajuoli, family of, 260, 285, 457-8,
5°5-
Angelo (Archbishop of Patras), 287-
90-
Angelo (son of Niccol6), 290-1.
Angelo (Cardinal Archbishop of
Patras), 34!, 348.
Antonio I. (Duke of Athens), 350-1 ;
takes Athens, 360-2, 376, 387,
397-404.
Antonio II. (Duke of Athens), 400,
406.
Bartolomea, 322, 35P-
Donato, 286, 341, 348, 351-
Francesca (Countess of Cephalonia),
325. 33«. 341. 350-1, 37*. 395-7,
404
Francesco (Duke of Athens), 436.
Franco (Duke of Athens), 406, 436-8;
456-7.
Giovanni (Archbishop of Patras), 291.
Nerio I. (Duke of Athens), 291, 303-4J
3l6, 319. 322 etsqq., 591.
Nerio 1 1. (Duke of Athens), 400, 404-6,
410-12, 422, 435-6.
Niccolo, 261, 270 et sqq.
Achaia, town of, 446.
Acheloos, 29, 293.
Adoldo, Niccolo, 596-7.
.Edepsos, 375, 477, 595-
/E^idius, 20.
iEgina, 1, 8, 9, 11, 18, 29, 45, 115, 194 ;
belongs to Fadrique family, 266,
305, 316 ; passes to the Caopena,
326, 398-9 5 Venetian, 461, 464-5,
481, 500-3 ; Turkish, 5°7-8-
Akominatos, Michael (Metropolitan of
Athens), 6-9, II et sqq., 31-2, 34,
67, 71-2, 573-
Akova (Matagrifon), 50, 53, 144-5, H7>
253,259, 345,433-
Akropolita, 108-9, 112, 130-1.
665

Albanians, 247, 283, 293-4, 309, 311,
317; settle in Morea, 366-7, 38374,
387 ; revolt in Morea, 427-30, 433,
451, 546 ; in Cyclades, 599^600.
Aleman, Garnier (of Corfu), 126, 515-16.
Guillaume I. (of Patras), 51, 64;
Guillaume II. (of Patras), 147.
Thomas (of Corfu), 126.
Alfonso V. of Aragon and I. of Naples,
325, 397, 4", 416, 426, 429-31, 437,
465, 607.
Altavilla, family of, 518, 523-4, 526, 530,
539-
Amadeo VI. of Savoy (Conte Verde),
288.
Amadeo of Savoy (claimant of Achaia),
318-19, 341, 343-5-
Amorgos, 13, 25, 44, 577, 582, 584, 590,
603, 606, 617, 624-5, 642, 646.
Anaphe (Namfio), 44, 578, 580, 584,
588, 590, 592, 597, 603-4, 607-8,
617, 624, 642.
Anatoliko, 29, 363.
Andravida (Andreville), 23, 37-8, 50,
52-3, 91, 122, 124, 144, 146, 180,
271.
Andros, 25, 29, 44, 277, 575-6, 578-81,
587, 592, 595-6oo, 603-6, 610, 617;
Venetian, 619-21, 628, 633-4;
Turkish, 636-7, 642-3, 648.
Androusa (Druse), 53, 318 ; capital of
Achaia, 344, 385, 391, 449-
Angelokastro, 183, 416.
Angelos, -a, Alexios III., 5, 21, 28-9, 32.
Alexias IV., 29.
Anna (Despoina of Epiros), 175, 178,
200-2, 206.
Constantine (Duke of Neopatras),
199-200.
Demetrios (Despot of Salonika), 96.
Helene (Regent of Athens), 165,
1 91-2.
2 T 2

666

INDEX

Angelos, Isaac II. , 3, 7 »., 23, 27, 30.
John (Emperor of Salonika), 95.
John I. (Duke of Neopatras), 132-5,
150, 175, 199- T
John II. (Duke of Neopatras), 199,
218, 222-3, 246.
Manuel (Despot of Epiros), 90, 94-6.
Michael I. (Despot of Epiros), 30, 38,
41, 75, 79-80, 512.
Michael II. (Despot of Epiros), 96,
108 etsqq., 131, 513-15-
Nikephoros I. (Despot of Epiros),
131, 151, 172, 174-6, 178 etsqq.,
199.
Thamar, 179, 182-3, 251.
Theodore (Despot of Epiros), 42, 59,
62, 72, 80, 82 ; Emperor of
Salonika, 83-4, 94-6, 108.
Thomas (Despot of Epiros), 179-80,
200-2, 249, 521.
Anjou, Charies I. of, 125, 128-9 ; Prince
of Achaia, 161, 173; "King of
Corfu," 515-19, 544, 579-8o.
Anjou, Charles II. of (Prince of Achaia),
164, 170, 182-4, 192, 195, 202-4,
520, 522, 581.
Anoe, Januli d' (triarch of Eubcea), 459.
Antelme (Archbishop of Patras), 52.
Antiparos, 44, 587, 602, 605-6, 61 1, 617,
624.
Antipaxo, 533, 602.
Antirrhion, 494.
Apokaukos, 12.
Arachova, Great, 142, 168.
Araklovon (Bucelet), 38, 167-8, 205.
Arethusa, fountain of, 141.
Argos, 5, 11, 23,42,62 244, 251, 264-6,
280 ; Venetian, 339-42, 350 ; Turk
ish, 358, 425, 4&5-7, 5°8-9-
Argyroi (D'Argenta), 613, 641-2.
Arkadia, castle of. See Kyparissia.
Arkadia (Mesarea), 24, 38, 40, 259.
Armer, Alban d', 476 n., 493.
Arta, II, 29, 41, 131, 250, 262, 280-1,
309, 372-3, 416.
Asan, Andrew, 283.
Andronikos Palaiologos, 259.
Demetrios, 434, 438, 457.
Matthew, 425-6, 429, 431, 434-5,
446-7, 449, 452.
Michael, 283.
" Assizes of Jerusalem,'' 49.
Astros, 339, 366, 399.
Astypalaia (Stampalia), 44, 578, 584,
587, 590 ; recolonised, 600, 603,
606, 612, 617, 624,642.
Atalante (La Calandri), 67, 305, 329.
Athens, 5-9, II et sqq., 28, 31-2 ; be
stowed on Othon de la Roche, 34-5,
65 et sqq.: Baldwin II. at, 115,
1 50-1; Catalan, 230, 298-9, 311

et sqq.; Florentine conquest of,
323-5, 329 ; Venetian colony,
353-62 ; Florentine buildings at,
401-3, 411 ; Cyriacus at, 419-22;
Turkish conquest of, 437-8 ; Mo
hammed II. at, 438-43 ; second
visit, 456 ; taken by Cappello, 468.
Monuments of, 15-18, 357, 419, 422,
441-3, 468-9.
Aunoy, Geoffroy d' (baron of Kypar
issia), 178, 186.
Vilain d' (baron of Kyparissia), 147.
Avesnes, Florent d' (Prince of Achaia),
169-71, 177-8, 180, 183 etsqq., 520.
Jacques d', 28, 31, 35-6, 45.
Avrames, family of, 530, 545, 561.
Bajazet I., 346, 358, 369, 596.
Bajazet II., 488, 494-9, 550, 559, 615.
Baldwin I., 27-8, 34, 40.
Baldwin, II., 86 »., 114-15, 126-7,
573-4, 579-
Ballester, Antonio (Archbishop of
Athens), 305, 326.
Berenguer, 306.
Barbarossa, Khaireddin, 507, 509, 560-1,
567 ; in Cyclades, 624-30.
Bardanes, George, 12, 19, 84, 95, 513.
Barozzi, family of (lords of Santorin),
44, 576-7, 582-3, 586-7, 59°-
Basingstoke, John of, 20.
Baux, Bertrand de (bailie of Achaia),
270, 276.
Jacques de (Prince of Achaia), 307,
310, 317, 523-5, 596.
Beaufort, Henry (bishop of Winchester),
598.
Beaumont, Dreux de, 130, 137, 141,
149 n. I.
Bellarbe, Romeo de, 311-12.
Benjamin of Kalamata, 190, 196.
Benjamin of Tudela, 2 et sqq,, 15, 21.
Bernardi, Ramon, 278.
Bessarion, Cardinal, 379, 410, 453"4-
Biandrate.Oberto, Count of. 41, 73-4, 82.
Bochales, family of, 448.
Boniface of Montferrat (King of Salon
ika), 27 etsqq., 40-I, 45.
Bordonia, 445, 448.
Boua, clan of, 294, 363.
Ghin Spata, 309, 331, 372.
Maurice Sgouros, 372.
Paul, 363.
Peter, 427, 430, 466, 486.
Theodore, 490,
Boudonitza, marquisate of, 33, 74, 84,
90, 104, 227, 234, 280, 358 ; Turk
ish, 373-5. See "Is0 PaUavicini
and Zorzi.
Boyl, bishop of Megara, 314-15.
Bragadini, the (of Seriphos), 587.

INDEX

667

Brands, 9, 29.
Brienne, Hugh, Count of (baron of
Karytaina), 143, 183, 191-2, 220,
520.
Isabelle, 227.
Jeanne. See Chatillon.
Jeannette, 218, 228.
John (Latin Emperor), 573.
Walter (Duke of Athens), 220 et sqq.
Walter (titular Duke of Athens), 227,
230, 261-5.
Bruyeres, Geoffroy I. de (baron of Kary
taina), 51, 105-6, 111, 116, 121,
124, 142.
Geoffroy II. de, 167-8.
Hugues de, 51.
Buondelmonti, Esau, 332, 372, 546.
Maddalcna, 316.
Butrinto, 25, 157, 172-3, 249,417, 514,
516, 519-20, 524-6, 543, 549, 559,
568.
Caffaro, 6.
Canale, Niccolb da, 472 et sqq.
Canossa, Albertino of, 73, 76.
Cantacuzene, family of, 9, 29, 259.
Helene (Countess of Salona), 323-4,
326, 343, 346-7-
John (Emperor), 274-5, 280-1.
Manuel (Despot of Mistra), 281-4,
308.
Manuel (" Ghin "), 427, 433,
Matthew (Despot of Mistra), 316.
Michael, 122-3.
Caopena, the (lords of ^Egina), 326,
398-400, 462, 510.
Cappello, Vettore, 416, 428, 465 ; takes
Athens, 468, 470.
Caracciolo, family of, 518, 524.
Cassopo, 525, 528, 545.
Castelli, the (lords of Thermia), 587 n. 1.
Catalans, 138, 211 et sqq.; at Monem
vasia, 448 ; in .(Egina, 462, 583.
Catavas, Jean de, 122.
Catherine of Valois (titular Empress),
218, 251, 261, 269 et sqq., 285,
521-2.
Cattaneo (lord of Phokaia), 589.
Cephalonia, 2, 5, 8, 29-30, 63, 151, 249 ;
Angevin, 260 ; bestowed on Leon
ardo I. Tocco, 292, 352, 371, 416 ;
Turkish, 483-6 ; Venetian, 487 ;
Turkish, 488 ; Venetian, 498-9,
504, 553-9-
Cepoy, Thibaut de, 216-19.
Cerigo (Kythera), 45, 138, 151, 155,
564-8.
Cerigotto (Antikythera), 45, 138, 1 5 5-
Chalandritza, 51, 147, 259, 287, 343,
39L
Chalkis (Negroponte), 5, 7, 14, 22, 75,

104, 114, 138, 152, 209-10, 300-2,
366, 408 ; Mohammed II. at, 443-4 ;
siege of, 470-9.
Chalkokondyles, Laonikos (historian),
403.
Father of, 404-5, 412.
Chamaretos, Ldon, 9.
Champlitte, Guillaume de, 28, 30, 37 et
W; 49-5°-
H ugues de (bailie of Achaia), 50.
Robert de, 60.
Chandrenos, 222-3.
Charles III. of Durazzo (King of
Naples), 317, 523-6.
Charpigny, Hugues de Lille de (baron
of Vostitza), 51.
Guy de Lille de, 162 ; bailie of
Achaia, 168, 189.
Chatillon, Jeanne de (Duchess of
Athens), 227, 230.
Chauderon, Jean de, 117, 146, 162-4,
169, 178, 186.
Chinardo, Filippo, 109, 126-7, 514-16.
Chios, 245, 248, 603, 605.
Chloumoutsi (Clermont, Castel Tor-
nese), 87, 102, 124, 147, 254, 287 ;
residence of Constantine, 388, 429 ;
Turkish, 450.
Chozobiotissa, monastery of, 12.
Church, Greek, 11-14, 47, 58, 65, 71-2,
83, 87-8, 240, 334-7, 345-6, 353,
440, 484, 503, 513, 516-17, 521-4,
535-6, 552-5, 568, 573, 581, 634.
Latin, 52, 59, 62 et sqq., 67 et sqq.,
75-6,88, 151,239,277, 314,438,
440, 484, 503, 516-17, 520-1,
535-6, 552-5, 573, 612, 623,
634-5, 646.
Cicon, Othon de, 66, 105, 115, 137.
Cistercians, 70, 151, 233.
Coinage, 102-3, 114, 162 «., 164, 171,
191, 200, 207, 232, 234, 250, 252,
254, 264, 268, 270, 328, 382, 544.
Comnenos, dynasty of, 9, 12.
Alexios I., 5, 13, 84.
Alexios IL, 14.
Andronikos I., 14.
Manuel I., 5, 25, 28, 30, 84.
Contarini, Bartolomeo, 436-7.
Coquerel, Mahiot de (vicar of Achaia),
306, 317-18.
Corfu, 2, 5, 8, 11, 25, 29-30 ; Venetian,
46, 80, 84, 96, 109, 126, 161, 182,
184, 186, 214, 285, 408, 417, 420,
453, 455-6, 510, 512 et sqq.; siege
of, 559-63-
Corinth, 5, 10-n, 14-15, 22, 36, 42;
capture of, 62, 187, 196; tourna
ment at, 202-3, 280, 285-6, 290-1,
322, 341, 352 ; Greek, 353, 368-9,
432 ; Turkish, 434-5, 467.

668

INDEX

Cornaro, Pietro (of Argos), 319, 322,339.
Cornelia, Bernardo de, 321.
Coron, 24/38I9, 59, 152^3, 157-8, 208,
2§8, 300,1, 336, 340, 385-6,461-2,
464, 490 ; Turkish, 497-8 ; Spanish,
505-6.
Coronello, Francesco, 638-43.
Courtenay, Catherine of (titular Em
press), 179, 182, 214, 218,
Peter of (Emperor), 82, 85-6.
Crete, 29, 47-8, 565, 568, 571-2, 574-5.
Crispo, Antonio, 611.
Fiorenza, 617.
Francesca, 604, 607-9.
Francesco I. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 593-7.
France?co II, (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 607, 609, 611.
Francesco III. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 618-20.
Giacomo I. (Duke of the Archipelago),
597-601, 648.
Giacomo II. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 604-6, 609.
Giacomo III. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 61 1-3.
Giacomo IV. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 635-41.
Giacomo (bastard), 615.
Gian Giacomo (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 606-7.
Giovanni II. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 601-3.
Giovanni III. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 614-15.
Giovanni lV. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 562, 620-35.
Guglielmo II. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 604, 607-1,1, 616.
Marco, 599, 602, 604.
Niccolb, 601-2, 604, 607.
Crissa, 5.
Cruciferi (" Crutched Friars "), 71, 103.
Culture, 19-21, 153, 250, 281, 379, 403,
417, 420, 423, 541-2, 556, 648.
Currant trade, 557-8.
Customs of the Empire of Romania, 54,
261, 461, 518, 539, 614, 632, 646-7.
Cyriacus of Ancona, 415, 417-25, 541,
605.
Da Corogna, family of, 327, 584, 588,
599, 606.
Dalle Carceri, Bonifacio da Verona,
193-4, 200, 209, 216, 220-1, 225-6,
228, 231, 243-4.
Felisa, 136.
Giberto I. da Verona (triarch of
Eubcea), 45.
Giberto II. (triarch), 135-6, 138-9.
Grapella (triarch), 103, 117.

Dalle Carceri, Guglielmo I. da Verona
(triarch), 103, 117, 121, 155.
Guglielmo II. (triarch), 135-6, 144.
Narzotto (triarch), 103, 117, 136.
Niccolo III. (triarch and. Duke of the
ArchipeIago)j303,3io, 320, 592-4.
Ravano (triarch), 28, 31, 45, 73, 77,
103.
Damala, 63, 270, 430, 500.
Dandolo, Marino (of Andros), 44, 575-6,
578.
Daphni, monastery of, 19, 70, 151, 219,
227, 233, 437.
De la Roche, Isabelle, 142-3.
Jacques (of Veligosti), 139, 162, 164.
Jean (Duke of Athens), 134, 138-40,
150, 1 61-2.
Guillaume (Duke of Athens), 104,134,
140-1, 161-2 ; bailie of Achaia,
164, 173.
Guy I. (Duke of Athens), 66, 91-4,
99, 104 etsqq., 107, 114-17, 119.
Guy 1 1. (Duke of Athens), 165, 191-4,
200-4 ', bailie of Achaia, 206-7,
216-20.
Othon (Megaskyr), 28, 31, 34-6, 41,
59, 62, 65, 69, 73-6, 91-2.
Delenda, family of, 327, 646.
Della Grammatica, 599.
De lo Cavo, John, 141, 154, 156, 173,
578, 580.
Delos (Sdiles), 365, 423, 576, 585, 588,
596, 605, 612.
Delphi (Kastri), 247, 418.
Dematra, 164.
Demetrias, 28 ; battle of, 135, 175, 305,
311, 329-
Demetrios (King of Salonika), 41, 66, 85.
De Novelles (hereditary marshals of
Athens), 237, 279, 305.
Dervenaki, 426.
Deslaur, Roger, 223, 228, 231, 236,266.
Domoko, 5, 28, 33, 201, 224, 247, 346.
Doria, Andrea, 505, 509, 560.
DoxapatrSs, 38.
Doxas (or Doxies), 433, 45a
Dushan, Stephen, 280-1, 293.
Edrisi, 15, 21.
Eleusis, 18, 357, 420.
Enghien, family of, 265, 280, 298-9.
Gautier d' (titular Duke of Athens),
299.
Guy d' (of Argos), 298.
Marie d' (of Argos), 319, 339.
Entenca, Berenguer d', 184, 214-15, 519.
Eparchos, Antbnios, 540-1, 563.
Eremites, 207.
Erizzo, Paolo, 472 et sqq.
Eschive (Lady of Beyrout), 220-1.
Estafiol, Berenguer, 236, 241.

INDEX

669

Este, Bertoldo d', 465-7.
Eubcea (Negroponte), 1, 5, 13, 21-2,29,
34-5, 45, 67 ; Venetian colony in,
77-9, 9o; war in, 102-4, 136-41,
208-10, 216, 243-6, 301-2, 319-20,
365-6 376, 394-5, 398, 459-6i;
1 urkish conquest of, 470-9, 595.
Eudaimonoyannes (Daimonoyannes,
Monoyannes), family of, 10, 98,
151, 155-6, 510, 564-
Euphrosyne (Empress), 9-10, 28.
Euth^mios, 12.
Evrenosbeg, 345, 347, 358-9, 372.
Fadrique, Alfonso (vicar-general of
Athens), 242 et sqq., 263, 265-6, 586.
Bonifacio (baron of Karystos), 266,
302.
James (Count of Salona, vicar-
general), 266, 277, 279, 296.
John (of iEgina), 305, 317, 326.
Louis (Count of Salona, vicar-
_, general), 304-5, 3H-I5, 320.
Maria (Countess of Salona), 320,
323-4, 326, 347.
Pedro I. (Count of Salona), 266, 277,
279.
Pedro II. (of /Egina), 305.
Ferdinand of Majorca, Infant, 215-17,
253 etsqq.
Filla, castle of, 78, 138, 140.
Flor, Roger de, 212-15, 583.
Foscolo, family of, 44, 578.
FoucheroUes, family of, 230, 242, 251.
Frangipani, Guglielmo (Archbishop of
Patras), 261-3, 267, 269-70.
Frankish nomenclature, 158-60.
Frederick II. of Sicily, 212 et sqq., 235-6,
242,244.
Frederick III. of Sicily (Duke of
Athens), 278, 284, 296-300, 304-5.
Gabalas, Leon, 43.
Gabrielopoulos, Michael, 150.
Galaxidi, 34, 80, 97, 179, 222, 369, 414.
Galeran d'lvry (bailie of Achaia), 162-3.
Galilee, Prince of, 287-9.
Gardiki (Larissa Kremaste"), 15, 79,
134, 193, 247, 477.
Gardiki (in Morea), 124, 191, 308, 387,
448.
Gasmo&loi (yasmuli), 121, 148, 187, 647.
Gattilusii (of Lesbos), 303, 423, 452,
468, 609.
Gemistos (Pl&hon), George, 378-83,
408-9, 423, 425, 467.
Genoese, 2, 46-8, 118, 180, 300-1,578,
582-3, 589-91, 603.
Georgians, 20-1.
Gerace, Marquis of, 411, 415.

Geraki, 51, 147-8 ; Venetian, 465 ;
Turkish, 470.
Ghisi, family of, 574, 577, 580-2, 584,
587-8, 59°, 596, 633.
Andrea (of Tenos), 44.
Bartolomeo (of Tenos), 259, 263,
r-, 27i'
Fihppo (of Skopelos), 138.
Geremia (of Tenos), 44, 574, 578-9.
Giorgio I. (of Tenos), 185-6, 225,
229, 583 n. 1, 586.
Giorgio III. (of Tenos), 320.
Giorgio. See Zott\.
Giustiniani, the, 44, 582, 587, 597.
Glarentza, 53.87, 145, 153, 162, 171,
T, 185, 198,^54, 256, ,267-8, 272,
! 281, 289, ^344, 371, 385, 388, 390,
392.
Goth, family of, 518, 540.-
Gozzadini, the, 584, 587-8, 592, 594,
600, 606, 608 n. 3, 613, 617, 620,
628, 630, 633-4, 636, 640, 644-5.
Gravia, 33, 134.
Grimani, the, 492-4, 587, 606.
Gritzena, 51, 147.
Gyaros, 14, 644.
Gypsies, 383, 461 ; (fief of the), 522,
539-40.
Halmyros, 5, 21, 28, 32, 73-4, 128,
216.
Helos, 489.
Henry IV. (of England), 598.
Henry (Latin Emperor), 41, 59, 73 et
sqq., 82, 571, 579.
Heredia, 308-9, 316, 318.
Hexamilion, the, 353, 366, 377-8, 383,
387, 412-13, 425-6, 432, 466-7.
Holy Sepulchre, Order of the, 70.
Honorius III., 63, 84, 88, 553.
Hymettos (Monte Matto), 18, 442.
Innocent III., 39, 47-8, 61-2, 64-5, fc?
los (Nio), 44, 577, 580, 582, 584, 587,
597, 599, 603-4; Venetian, 616,
619 ; Turkish, 624, 642.
Irene, Princess, 10, 29.
Isova, monastery of, 122.
Ithaka (Val di Qpmpare), 2, 5, 8, 151-2,
157, 181, 249, 292, 344, 483-6,
556-7-
Ithome, 426, 429, 449.
James II. of Majorca, 254, 258, 275-6.
Jews, 4-5, 23-4, 79, 93, 209-10, 301,
365-6, 383, 386, 495, 517, 520-4,
526, 530, 537-8, 545, 552; Jew,
Duke of Naxos, 636-49.
Joanna I. of Naples, 285, 289 ; Princess
of Achaia, 307-8, 317 ; Lady of
Corfu, 523.

670

INDEX

Joannina, 41, 131, 179, 249-50, 280-1,
331, 372-3; Turkish, 396,
546-7-
John I. of Aragon (Duke of Athens),
324, 326.
John of Gravina (Prince of Achaia),
257-61, 586.
John the Hunter, monastery of St., 19,
69, 93.
Joinville, Nicholas de (bailie of Achaia),
261, 461.
Jolanda (Empress), 83.

KAISARIANE, monastery of, 13, 19, 69,
72, 439, 442.
Kalabaka, 273.
Kalamata, 24, 38, 50-1, 145, 147, 186,
271-2, 285, 287, 289-90, 344, 391,
425, 445, 45o,'47o, 480.
Kalavryta (La Grite), 29, 51, 147, 158,
368, 391-2, 420, 435.
Kapraina (Chaironeia), 305.
Karditza (in Bceotia), 200, 228, 234,
305.
Karydi, battle of, 105.
Karystos (Castel Rosso), 14, 29, 45,
105, 137, 194, 209. 244, 246, 266,
302, 320, 459-60, 477.
Karytaina, 51, 147, 191, 205, 259, 445,
466, 586.
Kastri (near Nauplia), 481, 501, 508.
Kastritza, 445, 448.
Katakolo, 38.
Katzenellenbogen, Berthold von (of
Velestino), 31-2, 73, 76, 83.
Keos (Zia), 25, 34, 44, 156, 577, 580,
582-3, 587, 59°, 603, 606, 612, 617,
620, 628, 633-4, 636, 645.
Kephalos, castle of, 617, 622, 625.
Kephiss6s, battle of the, 225 et sqq.
Kerpine (Charpigny), 51, 421.
Kimolos, 44, 587, 597, 644.
Kirrha (Ancona), 418.
Kiveri, 264, 265 »., 342, 481.
Kladas, Korkodeilos, 449, 489-90.
Knights of St John (Rhodes), 52, 70,
239, 242, 286, 303 ; lease Achaia,
308-10, 317, 343, 357 ; purchase
Corinth, 368-9, 385, 504, 551,
584-5, 587-9, 601, 608, 615,
623.
Koundoura, battle of, 38.
Koupharas, George (Metropolitan of
Corfu), 12.
Kydones, Demetrios, 285, 379.
Kyparissia (Arkadia), 23, 38, 50-1, 343,
391, 449-
Kythera. See Cerigo.
Kythnos (Thermia, Fermene), 44, 576,
581, 587, 600, 603, 606, 616-7, 644.

La Basti a, 534.
Lacedaemonia (La Cre-monie), n, 24,
29, 38, 52, 58, 61, 124-
La Clisura, castle of, 79, 137, 208.
La Cuppa, castle of, 78, 137, 473.
" Ladies' Parliament," the, 116.
Ladislaus of Naples, 348, 525, 528.
Lagonessa, Carlo de, 220.
Filippo de (bailie of Achaia), 163, 173.
Giovanni de, 220.
Lamia (Zetounion, Citon), 5, 33, 79,
134, 179, 200, 223-4, 226, 239,
247, 266, 297, 311, 327, 329, 346,
369; Byzantine, 373, 375 ; Turkish,
394, 4io.
Lampoudios, 282.
Lancia, Nicholas (vicar-general of
Athens), 265, 277.
Larissa (Larsa), 5, 11, 21, 28, 32, 73,
149, 336.
Beatrice de, 149 n. 3.
Guglielmo de, 32, 76.
Larmena, castle of, 79, 137, 209, 244,
246, 302.
Le Klamenc, Antoine (baron of Kar
ditza). 200, 228.
Lelantian plain (Lilanto), 21, 78, 460.
Lemnos (Stalimene), 29, 44 ; assigned
to Demetrios Palaiologos, 452, 466,
470-1, 481-2,, 577.
Le Noir (Mavro), Erard III., 276, 291,
307, 319-
Nicholas, 253 etsqq.
Leonardo of Veroli (chancellor of
Achaia), 116, 127, 145, 153, 173.
Leondan, 345, 387, 445, 448, 507.
Leonidi, 399.
Lepanto (Naupaktos, Nepantum), 5, 9,
11-12, 41, 79, 183-4, 309, 336;
Venetian, 363, 409-10, 434, 438,
458-9, 465 ; siege of, 480 ; Turkish,
492-4, 534-
Lesbos, 578, 589.
Leukas (Sta. Mavra), 11, 29, 42, 112,
131, 151, 181, 262, 264 ; annexed
by Leonardo I. Tocco, 292, 371,
395,416,454,458; Turkish, 483-6;
Venetian, 499 ; Turkish, 500.
Leuktron (Levtro, Beaufort), 100, 391,
445.
Licario, 136-41, 564, 567.
Liedekerke, Walter de, 187-8.
Ligourib, 359, 430.
Liosa, clan of, 294, 309
Listrina, castle of, 341.
Livadia, 69, 227, 229, 240, 299-300, 311,
3i6, 327, 346, 350, 410, 418, 456.
Livadostro (Rived'Ostre, Riva d'Ostia),
67, 399-
Lluria, Antonio de, 321, 326.
John de, 298, 310.

INDEX

671

Lluria, Roger de (Aragonese admiral),
184-6, 195, 208, 519, 581.
Roger de (vicar-general of Athens),
284, 296-9.
Roger de (his son), 321, 326.
Loidoriki, 179, 222, 247, 266, 414,
434-
Loredano, family of, 605-6, 611, 617-20,
631.
Louis of Burgundy (Prince of Achaia),
251-6.
Loukanes, 429, 431, 444-5.
Luke, Blessed (Hbsios Loukas),
monastery of the, 70, 89 n. 2, 207,
234, 418.
Lusignan, Hugues de. See Galilee,
Prince of.
Isabelle de, 289.
Magister Massarius ( pji.o-Tpop.ao--
a&pos), 484, 486 k., 517, 521, 527.
Maina, castle of, 100, 115.
Maina, district of, 24, 384, 427 ;
Venetian, 470, 489-90, 500.
Maisy, Jean de (of Eubcea), 216, 225-6,
228.
Makrenos, 120, 124.
Makronesi, 8,
Makryplagi, battle of, 123.
Malatesta, Cleopa, 383, 415.
Pandulph (Archbishop of Patras),
388-91.
Sigismondo, 467.
Mamonas, family of, 10, 98, 155, 342,
365-
Manfred (Duke of Athens), 236, 243.
Manfred (King of Sicily), 109-10,
112-13, 514-16.
Manolada, battle of, 255.
Mantineia (Lakonian), 391, 433, 449-
Marathon, 18, 69, 157.
Marathos, 449.
Margaret (ex-Empress), 27, 83.
Marguerite of Savoy, 204-5, 275.
Maria (Duchess of Athens), 305, 321,
325-
Marie de Bourbon (Princess of Achaia),
285, 287-8, 291, 317, 521-
Matilda of Hainault, 190 ; Duchess of
Athens, 191, 204, 206 ; Princess of
Achaia, 244, 251 etsqq.
Mazaris, 283-4.
Medici, family of, 338, 510, 553-4-
Megara, 28, 239, 284, 298, 304, 323,
340-2, 350, 352, 437, 500.
Megaspelaion, monastery of, 283, 336,
420.
Meletios, 12-13.
Melings, tribe of, 38-9, I2°-
Melissene, Maria (Duchess of Athens),
399, 4°4-5-

Melissenbs, family of, 41, 150, 247, 391,
399, 455-
Melos, 44, 245, 573, 576-7,580-1, 585-8,
590, 593-4, 597-8, 601-3, 613;
Venetian, 616-18, 633, 642, 645.
Meteora, monasteries of, 294-6.
Michieli, the, 44, 582, 587, 597, 606,
617, 624-5, 646.
Minorites, 71, 227, 233, 343.
Minotto, Ermolao (of Seriphos), 303,
590, 596.
Misito, Janni, 291, 307.
Mistra, 100, 115, 119, 259, 281, 289,
293, 345, 368-9, 379, 409, 415,
421, 423, 429, 445 ; Turkish, 447 ;
besieged by Malatesta, 467.
Mocenigo, Pietro, 478, 480.
Modon (Methone), 5, 24, 29, 36, 38-9,
59, 152-3, 157-8, 208, 288, 300-1,
336, 340, 385-6, 4°8, 449, 461-2,
465 ; Turkish, 495-8, 504.
Mohammed I., 374, 598, 602.
Mohammed II., 425 et sqq., 470 et sqq.,
607, 610, 614.
Moncada, Matteo (vicar - general of
Athens), 280, 284, 296-7.
Monemvasia, 9, 11 »., 14, 23, 39, 58,
62-3 ; capture of, 98-9 ; ceded to
Greeks, 115, 120, 153, 155, 184,
214, 266-7, 336, 342, 367, 408-9,
433, 447; Papal, 448, 453;
Venetian, 466, 481, 491, 503 ;
Turkish, 509-11, 564, 568.
Montesquiou ( Penteskouphia ), castle
of, 36.
Montona, Matteo de (governor of the
Akropolis), 354-5, 360.
Morea, name of, 37 «.
Morlay, Guillaume de (baron of Nikli),
51-
Mostenitsa, 52, 344, 391.
Mota, Bertranet, 346, 351.
Mouchli (Palaio-), 430, 434.
Muntaner, Ramon, 213, 215-17, 254.
Murad II., 387, 394-5, 405, 41 1-1 5, 422,
467, 602.
Mykonos, 44 ; Venetian, 365, 463, 581,
587-8, 596, 600, 603, 605, 612,617,
624 ; Turkish, 628, 630, 633,
642.
NASI, Joseph (Duke of Naxos), 636-42.
Naupaktos. See Lepanto.
Nauplia (Napoli di Romania), 5, 7, 10,
23, 36-7, 40, 42 ; joined to Athens,
62, 244, 251, 264-6 ; Venetian, 339,
342, 350, 425, 461, 480, 495. 500-2,
508-11.
Navarino (Zonklon, Port Jonc), 138,
157, 166, 255, 287-8, 301, 3i8, 344,
385, 408, 449, 493, 495, 497-8.

672

INDEX

Navarrese Company, the, 306 el sqq.,
339 et sqq., 523, 593.
Navigajosi, the (of Lemnos), 44, 577.
Naxos, 11, 25, 29, 43-4, 570 et sqq.
Negroponte, City of. See Chalkis.
Island of. See Eubcea.
Neopatras (La Patre, La Patria), 11-12,
28, 132-4, 239, 247, 329, 346.^
Neuilly, Jean I. de (baron of Passava), 51.
Jean II.de (baron of Passava), 117,
143.
Marguerite de (of Passava), 117,143-5.
Nikaria (Ikaria), 623.
Nikli, 24, 38, 51, 58, 105-6, 147, 199.
Nivelet, barony of, 285, 291.
Guy de (baron of Geraki), 51.
Jean de (baron of Geraki), 148.
Noukios, 541, 560, 562.
Olena, Bishop of, 52-3, 86, 343.
Omar, son of Turakhan, 411, 426, 428 ;
governor of Morea, 435 ; takes
Athens, 437-9, 445, 465, 469.
Omarbeg ( Morbassan, " Prince of
Achaia"), 276, 589, 600.
Oreos, 29, 45, 137-9, 278, 301, 460,
473, 477-
Oropos, 73, 103, 300, 357, 362.
Orsini, John I. (Palatine Count of
Cephalonia), 181, 197, 202-3, 253-7.
John II. (Palatine Count of Cepha
lonia), 250, 264, 273, 521.
Matthew, or Maio (Palatine Count of
Cephalonia), 2, 30, 47, 90, 94, 99.
Nicholas (Palatine Count of Cepha
lonia), 249, 533.
Nikephoros II. (Despot of Epiros),
273-4, 293-
Richard (Palatine Count of Cepha
lonia), no, 151, 161-2, 180-1,
190, 195-7, 520.
Othonian Islands, 519.
Otto of Brunswick (Prince of Achaia),
308, 317.
Palaiol6gos, Andrew, 454-5, 491.
Andronikos II. (Emperor), 125, 165,
175-8, 184, 335-6, 58o, 582.
Andronikos IIJ. (Emperor), 189,
273-4, 588.
Constantine (Emperor), 388-92, 405,
407 et sqq. ; crowned at Mistra,
415, 423-4.
Dem&rios (Despot), 407-9, 415, 423
425-35, 444-52.
Graitzas, 450-1.
John VI. (Emperor), 383, 385, 388,
407-8, 414, 422, 534.
Manuel II. (Emperor), 358, 366, 368,
370 ; visits Morea, 377-84.
Manuel (governor of Monemvasia),447.

Palaiologos, Manuel (son of Thomas),
455-
Theodore I. (Despot of Mistra), 318-
19, 322, 339-42, 351-3, 366-70.
Theodore II. (Despot of Mistri), 370,
378, 383, 386-8, 391, 407-9,
421-2.
Thomas (Despot of Mistra), 385,
391-2, 407 et sqq., 425-35, 444-54,
547-
PaUavicini, Alberto (Marquis of Bou
donitza), 224, 229.
Guido (Marquis of Boudonitza), 31,
33, 73, 76, 83.
Isabella (Marchioness of Boudonitza),
r49, 162.
Ubertino (Marquis of Boudonitza),
105, no, 149.
Panaia (Canaia), 438.
Paralimni, 13.
Parga, 249 ; Venetian, 365, 533-4, 539,
547, 549, 563, 568.
Paros, 44, 570, 575, 587, 598-600, 602-5,
610-11,614,620; Venetian, 622-4 ;
Turkish, 625-6 ; restored to Naxos,
626, 633, 642.
Parthenon, the ("Our Lady of Athens,"
Sta. Maria di Atene), 7, 9, 12-13,
16-17, 34, 68, 74, 207, 226, 239,
315, 327, 335, 342, 349-50, 355-6,
419, 422, 424 ; becomes mosque,
440 ; stiU a church, 443, 469.
PassavS, barony of, 51, 135, 143, 147,
259.
Patesia, 359, 442.
Patmos, 44, 576, 599.
Patras, 5, II, 23, 29, 37, 147, 186, 259,
261, 267, 270, 272, 289-90 ; Vene
tian, 363-4 ; Greek, 388-90, 408-9,
414-15, 429; Turkish, 434-5, 445,
469-70.
Pau, Don Pedro de (commander of
Athens), 321, 323-4.
Paxo, 523, 530, 535, 563.
Pazanike, 433.
Pediadites (Metropolitan of Corfu), 1 2.
Pedro IV. of Aragon (Duke of Athens),
301, 305 etsqq.
Pegoraro dei Pegorari (triarch of
Eubcea), 45.
Pelagonia, battle of, III, 574.
Peralta, Galceran de (governor of
Athens), 299, 311, 313, 315.
Peralta, Matteo de (vicar-general of
Athens), 299 n. 2, 304.
Pesaro, Benedetto, 498, 500.
Pescatore Enrico (Cou 1 of Malta), 48.
Petraleiphas, family of, o, 97.
Phaleron (Porto Vecchio), 420.
Phanari(in Thessaly), 150, 201, 410.
Pharsala, 28, 33, 139, 247, 346.

INDEX

Philanthropenos (Greek admiral), 121,
. 576.
Philanthropenos, Alexios (governor of
Mistra), 178.
Philes, 120, 124.
Philip of Savoy (Prince of Achaia), 195
et sqq.
Phlious, 451.
Pholegandros (Polykandros), 577, 644.
Phrantzes, 385, 388-90, 395-6, 405-6,
409, 427, 429, 43i, 4351 dies at
Corfu, 455-6, 484, 548.
Piada, 272.
PiaU Pasha, 636, 639.
Piracy, 8-9, 67, 154-7, 580, 614-15, 618.
Pireeus (Porto Leone), 14, 23, 245, 328,
403, 420, 469.
Pisani, the, 612-14, 624.
Pitti, Laudamia (of Sykaminon), 400.
Pitti, Nerozzo (of Sykaminon), 438, 457.
Pius II., 446, 448, 453, 470.
Polinos, 644.
Pontikokastro (Beauvoir, Belveder), 38,
85, 205, 254, 287, 344 ; burnt, 480.
Port Raphti, 357.
Pou, Pedro de, 297.
Prcstor (protoprcstor), 6-8, 16.
Preliub (lord of Joannina), 281, 293.
Preliubovich, Thomas (Despot of Joan
nina), 294, 331.
Premarini, the, 587, 617, 628, 633.
Preveza (La Prevasse), 159, 180, 509.
Prinitsa, battle of, 122.
Protimo Niccolo (Archbishop of Athens),
438, 461, 479.
Pteleon (Fitileos), 21, 247, 281, 301,
358, 375, 459, 477-
Quirini, the (of Stampalia), 44, 577-
80, 584, 587, 600, 604, 606, 612,
617, 624-5.
Ralles, Michael, 466, 469-70.
Rambaud de Vaqueiras, 31, 40, 92.
Randazzo, Frederick of (Duke of
Athens), 278, 284.
Randazzo, John of (Duke of Athens),
278, 284.
Ravenika, 5,28, 59; (parliaments of), 74-6.
Ray, Gautier de (bishop of Negroponte),
209, 233, 241, 243.
Rendi, Demetrios, 304, 311-13, 338.
Rendi, Maria, 350.
Rheneia, 585, 610.
Rhion, 494.
Robert (Latin Emperor), 86, 89, 573.
Robert the Wise (King of Naples), 220,
257-8.
Rocaberti, Philip Dalmau, Viscount of
(vicar-general of Athens), 306,
314-16, 320-1, 324-

Rocafort, Berenguer de, 215-19.
Roupele, 433.
Rozieres, Gautier I. de (baron of
Akova), 51.
Rozieres, Gautier II. de (baron of
Akova), 144.
S AGMATaS, monastery of, 13.
Sagredo, Bernardo (of Paros), 623, 625.
Saiada, 534.
Salamis (Culuris), 8, 18, 29, 193, 266-7.
Salmenikon, 450-1.
Salona (La Sole, La Sola), 33-4, 84 ;
Catalan, 232, 234, 239, 266, 279,
311-12, 314, 323-4, 327, 336 ; fall
of, 346-7, 360 ; ceded to Knights
of St John, 369, 418.
Salonika (Greek Empire of), 83, 94-6.
(Latin kingdom of), 28, 30, 41, 83-5,
103, 251-2.
S. Angelo (Corfu), castle of, 80, 514,
516, 525, 533, 546, 561.
St George, castle of (Arkadia), 189, 259,
445, 449, 507 ; (Cephalonia), 371,
555-
S. Ippolito, family of, 518, 523-4, 530,
539-
St Omer, Bela de (baron of Thebes),
66, 92.
(Santameri), castle of (in Morea),
260, 287, 344, 450, 466, 586.
(Santameri), castle of (at Thebes),
165, 216-17, 234 ; destroyed, 263.
Jacques de (of Gravia), 31, 33.
Jean de (marshal of AchaiaJ, 144-5,
162.
Nicholas I. (of Gravia), 31, 33, 76.
Nicholas II. (baron of Thebes), 144,
147, 165.
Nicholas III. (marshal of Achaia),
191, J95, 197, 199-201, 203-4,
206, 228, 253.
Othon (of Thebes), 144, 192.
St Spiridion, 548.
S. Superan, Pedro (Bordo) de, 310 ;
vicar of Achaia, 318, 340-1, 343-4 ;
prince, 367-8.
Santorin, 44, 573, 576-7, 580, 582-3,
585-7, 590, 602-4, 607 ; eruption
of, 609, 61*1-14 ; Venetian, 616-17,
633, 642, 644, 648.
Sanudo, Angelo (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 99, 573-5-
Fiorenza (Duchess of the Archi
pelago), 290-1, 590-2.
Giovanni I. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 589-90.
Guglielmo I. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 225, 255, 580, 583-6.
Marco I. (Duke of the Archipelago),
43-4, 570-3-

674

INDEX

Sanudo, Marco II. (Duke of the Archi
pelago), 101, 173, 574, 576-83.
Maria (triarch, Lady of Andros), 459,
592, 594-5, 602, 604.
Niccolb I. (Duke of the Archipelago),
228, 255, 260, 585-9.
Niccolb 1 1., " Spezzabanda" (Duke of
the Archipelago), 592.
Schiavi, the (of los), 582, 584, 587.
Senacherim, 41.
Serbs (in Thessaly and Epiros), 280-1,
293-6, 331.
Seriphos (Serfento, Serfeno), 44, 141,
576-7, 582, 587, 590, 596-7, 599,
603, 606, 612, 617, 624-5, 642.
Sgouro-mailly (Sgouromaliaios), family
of, 187, 430.
Sgouros, L^on (archon of Nauplia), 7, 10,
22, 31-3, 35-6, 42. See also Boua.
Siderokastron (Herakleia), 134, 247,
279, 306, 311, 320,329.
(in Arkadia), 426.
Sikinos, 44, 577, 599, 644.
Sikyon (Basilicata), 291, 350, 414, 420.
Silk trade, 5, 21-2, 79, 102, 150, 152,
189, 194, 207, 495, 631.
Siphnos (Sifanto), 44, 141, 576-7, 584,
588, 598, 603, 606, 617, 624, 630,
633, 640, 642, 644-5.
Skaros, castle of, 576, 609, 613-14.
Skiathos, 44 ; Venetian, 462-3, 577,
610 ; Turkish, 629-30.
Skopelos, 44, 137-8, 156, 216 ; Venetian,
462-3, 577, 580, 610; Turkish,
629-30.
Skorta (Gortys), 51, 142-3, 189-go,
198-9, 425.
Skyros, 29, 44 ; Venetian, 462-3, 471,
577, 610, 621 ; Turkish, 629-30.
Slavery, 404.
Slavs, 3-4, 51, 383.
Sommaripa, family of, 459, 595, 604-5,
607, 611, 615, 617, 619, 621-2,
628, 630, 633-4, 636, 644-5.
Crusino I. (of Paros), 423, 604-5.
Sophianbs, family of, 10, 98, 430.
Spandugino, Theodore, 483.
Sporades, Northern, 358, 361. See
Skiathos, Skopeios, Skyros.
Stampalia. See Astypalaia.
Stradioti, 482-3, 490, 495, 502, 506,
508, 510, 550-1, 555, 558-9.
Stromoncourt, Guillaume de (baron of
Salona), 149.
Thomas I. de (baron of Salona),
31, 33, 76, 80.
Thomas II. de (baron of Salona),
34 n. I, 105, UO, 149,234.
Thomas III. de (baron of Salona),
34 «. 1, 192, 194, 200, 207, 224,
229, 232, 234,

Strophades Islands (Strivali), 534, 563.
Strovili, 534, 549-
Stryphnbs, Michael, 9, 14, 16.
Stylida, 394.
Styra, 79, 471.
Suboto, 514, 516, 534.
Suleyman the Magnificent, 507, 559,
561-2, 623 et sqq.
Sully, Hugues de, 172.
Sunium, 29.
Sybilla (Queen of Aragon), 515-16.
Sykaminon, castle of, 239, 310, 316,
357, 362, 400, 438, 457.
Syra (Suda), 44, 573, 576, 580-1, 587,
595, 597, 599, 602-4,607,611; Vene
tian, 616, 618, 633, 639-40, 642.

Taranto, Philip I. of, 182-4, 201-2 ;
Prince of Achaia, 204, 206 ; titular
Emperor as Philip II., 251-2, 257,
261 ; " lord of Corfu," 520-2.
Philip II. of (Prince of Achaia, and
titular Emperor as Philip III.),
287-9, 291, 303, 522.
Robert of (Prince of Achaia), 261,
269 et sqq. ; titular Emperor,
285-7, 292, 521-2, 591.
Tarsos, 433.
Taxes, 6-8, 76, 240-1, 380-3, 408-9,
543, 648.
Templars, 45, 52, 64, 70, 146.
Tenos, 29, 44, 365, 439, 463, 568, 573,
581, 586-7, 596, 600, 603, 612, 617.
Teutonic Knights, 52, 267, 343-4, 391,
495-
Thebes (Estives), 5, 11, 14-15, 21, 32,
34, 66; capital, 67-8, 73-4, 104,
115, 117, 204, 220, 230, 240, 284;
congress of, 303, 311, 316, 350,
405-6 ; taken by Constantine, 410,
414, 438, 443-4, 456.
Theotokai, family of, 547.
Therasia, 582, 586, 603-4.
Thermisi, castle of, 264, 265 n., 342,
481-2, 501, 508.
Thermopylae, 32-3.
Thomokastron, 274.
Tocco, family of, 292, 420, 480, 488-9,
529.
Antonio, 487, 550.
Carlo I. (Palatine Count of Cepha
lonia), 325, 352-3, 370-3, 385-8,
395-
Carlo II. (Palatine Count of Cepha
lonia), 395-7, 415-18, 420, 424.
Guglielmo (governor of Corfu), 292,
521.
Leonardo I. (Palatine Count of
Cephalonia), 292, 307, 332 n. 2.
Leonardo II. (of Zante), 352, 371.

IJNDKX

675

Tocco, Leonardo III. (Palatine Count
of Cephalonia). 416, 424, 454, 456,
458, 47o, 483-9, 499, 553-4, 557.
Iheodora, 388, 415.
Toucy, Ancelin de, 123.
Tournay, Geoffroy de, 162, 164, 169.
Jean de, 185.
Othon de (baron of Kalavryta), 51.
TremouiUe, Audebert de la (baron of
Chalandritza), 51.
Guy de la (baron of Chalandritza),
162; bailie of Achaia, 163-4.
Tremoula, castle of, 164.
Trikkala, 5, 273 ; Servian capital, 293.
Turakhan, 387, 405-6, 410-12, 414,
425-6, 429-30.
Tzakones, 4, 39, 51, 58, 99, 121, 130,
383, 408, 576.
Urosh, John (" Father of Meteoron "),
294-6, 331.
Simeon ("Emperor"), 281, 293 4.
VAGINITI, 522-3, 540.
Valaincourt, de Mons, Matthieu de
(baron of Veligosti), 51.
Varnazza, 416.
Vatika, 408, 481, 497.
Velestino, 28, 32.
Veligosti, 24, 38, 51, 58, 124, 147, 259.
Venier, family of (in Cerigo), 45, 138,
155, 564-8 ; (in Paros), 622.
Vessena, 28.
Vetrano, Leone, 2, 6, 30, 46.
Viari, the (of Cerigotto), 44-5, 138,
155-
Vido (S. Stefano, Malipiero), 524, 528,
543, 561.
Vilanova, Ramon de, 321.
Villehardouin, Geoffroy I. de (bailie
and Prince of Achaia), 36 et sqq.
50, 58 et sqq., 76, 86-8, 97.
Geoffroy II. de (Prince of Achaia),
87-9, 573-
Guillaume de (Prince of Achaia), 97
et sqq., 109-11 ; a prisonei,
112-14 ; at Tagliacozzo, 128-9,
141-6, 574.
Isabelle de (Princess of Achaia), 125,
129-30, 146, 170-1, 185, 190,
195 etsqq., 205.
Marguerite de (Lady of Akova), 145,
147, 190, 195, 198, 206, 252-4.

Viterbo, Treaty of, 126-7, 579-
Vitiinitza (La Veternica), 329. 410.
Vlisiri (La Glisiere), 61.
Vonitza, 180, 183, 262, 264, 292, 395,
416, 458.
Vostitza (Aigion), 51, 147-8, 259. 285,
291. 344. 391, 4H, 434-5, 465, 479-
Vourkano, 285, 290.
Wallachs, 2-3, 248.
William of Aragon (Duke of Athens),
243, 276, 278.
Women, influence of, 55-6.
Zaccaria, Asan (great constable), 341,
343-4, 367.
Benedetto (of Chios), 174, 585.
Centurione, 270, 287, 307, 368 ;
Prince of Achaia, 370, 374, 377,
384-7, 391-2.
Giovanni Asan (titular Prince of
Achaia), 392, 413, 428-30.
Martino (of Chios and Damala), 245,
248, 269, 588.
Zagan Pasha, 446, 450-1, 456, 465.
Zante, 2, 5, 29-30, 63, 151, 249, 260 ;
bestowed on Leonardo I. Tocco,
292, 416, 480 ; Turkish, 483-6 ;
Venetian, 487-8, 492, 498, 550-9,
563-
Zamata, 445.
Zenevisi, Ghin, 372.
Hamsa, 445, 447, 450-1.
Zeno, Andrea (of Andros), 604.
Carlo (canon of Patras), 288-9.
Pietro (of Andros), 361, 595-9, 603-4.
Zetounion. See Lamia.
Zorzi, family of, 33, 248, 292, 437,
459-
Antonio (of Karystos, governor of
Lepanto), 479-80.
Chiara (Duchess of Athens), 436-7.
Francesco (Marquis of Boudonitza),
303, 305, 310, 316.
Giacomo (Marquis of Boudonitza),
361, 373-
Niccolo (titular Marquis of Boudo
nitza, governor of Pteleon),
374-5, .459-
Niccolo (titular Marquis of Boudo
nitza, baron of Karystos), 374-5,
399, 436.

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