The Spanish princess marriages

 Alfonso V.

"Spanish Princess" came into the United States by the 19th century as the name of a scam, and it would be difficult to prove that it was not a scam used on the Palaiologues in the 1440s.  The phrase may derive from the "Spanish prisoner" scam of 1588 in which money was sought to free a high-ranking prisoner. A high-ranking lady was offered as part of the reward in that one.

From 1442 to 1458, Alfonso V of Aragon, Barcelona, and Mallorca, was also king of Naples and Sicily.  Many of the Catalan ships that turn up in Moreote history were his -- it was one of his ships that took Constantine to Constantinople to be Emperor. When Constantine briefly held Athens between 1444 and 1446, Alfonso asked for Constantine to give it to him so he could renew Catalan Greece. For at least a decade, Alfonso held out promises -- to Constantinople, to Constantine, to Theodoros, to Thomas, to Demetrios -- of financial aid, of ships and troops, of brides.  Brides were of some concern: there were no male heirs after their generation to the throne of the Eastern Empire, and Constantine and Theodoros were currently unmarried.

The story of Alfonso V is much too involved to relate here but some very slight details from the Spanish-princess promises have survived.

The summer of 1443 the Neapolitan consul to Constantinople, Pere Rocafort, had taken the new King Alfonso a series of proposals he had worked out with John: in exchange for the support of twenty to twenty-five galleys, Alfonso could have his choice of Imbros, Lemnos, or Skiros. John's brothers in the Morea could produce 40,000 horsemen and 20,000 archers (again, the epenthetic zero appears). Alfonso was to have a consul at Patras.  Thomas was asked for a coastal castle, while Constantine was to give Alfonso the fief of Chalandritza, inland from Patras, for a colony.  Bessarion thought this would be a great help for the Morea and wrote Constantine, "It will be of great benefit to our power and our future hopes to give an enthusiastic welcome to volunteers from whatever part of the external world who wish to dwell in Peloponnesus."

In addition, Alfonso was to arrange marriages for Constantine and Theodoros to two Spanish ladies related to him: "la una, jermana de don Pedro de Cardona, l'altra, filla del comte Gilabert dels Exovars."  The one for Theodoros was Beatriu Coloira Caterina de Cardona i de Villena, daughter of the Catalan Count of Collesano in Sicily, but whatever happend, she was married to two other people.

From 1443 through the summer of 1448, Theodoros was Despot of Selybria, a two-day ride from Constantinople, and a position that allowed him to obsess about becoming Emperor himself. He must have been conducting his own negotiations as in 1444, the Prince of Taranto had contracted to give him his niece and heir, Isabella of Claramonte, as a bride. 

Isabella was heiress to much of southern Italy, and the titles of Prince of Achaia and Latin Emperor of Constantinople had belonged to several direct ancestors. Probably no heiress in western Europe was more suitable for marriage to an heir to the throne of Constantinople.  Unfortunately for Theodoros, Taranto's overlord, Alfonso V of Naples, stepped in very quickly and married her to his (bastard) son and heir, Ferdinand. Ferdinand had six children by her, eight by other women. 

Theodoros apparently continued to negotiate for a Spanish bride, but he died abruptly of plague at the end of July 1448, before anything could happen.  One of the eulogies for him says: 

O most holy despot, you sent out envoys to Iberia suggesting a most advantageous course for yourself, but time had different ideas and wedded you to a tomb. The returning messenger will carry a fine message, that you are dead, you have been committed to burial and that you have no further concern with life. How your betrothed will cry out, as instead of being surrounded by brilliance and splendor, she becomes dark and downcast. No wedding hymn will be sung for her, nor will the bridal lamps be lit; there will be only sad music, the shearing of her hair in mourning and wailing, prophetic of many evils, All this she has unhappily come to through your death.

That is all we know about that one. 

My great appreciation to Daniel Duran y Duelt for introducing me to this topic.

On Vacation: Hondius his map

Mercator Hondius, 1625-35, 13.5 x 17.2 cm.

Published in Purchas, His Pilgrimes
Hand-colored. DW Collection.

The Tall Book

I still own, after 68 years, the first book that I remember, and in that memory I am in my crib refusing to be settled down for sleep if I don't have my book with me. The front cover is gone, and parts of many pages, but my favorite pictures survive.  The Tall Book -- this one is Mother Goose, and there are other Tall Books of fairy stories, of make-believe, of nursery tales, of Christmas -- was published in 1942, republished ever since. If you google on "the tall book" you can find an infinite number of original copies to buy, from $4.25 to $110 or so, as well as other books of the same name but not of the same character.

The artist, Feodor Rojankovsky, had only moved to the United States from Russia, by way of France, in 1941.   In my early years I had a stack of books illustrated by Rojankovsky.  He gave me -- and how many other children? -- the idea of an artist's style, the immediate sense of comfort and familiarity.  His images combine a quality I later learned to recognize as "European" with something else that could only be "American."  Like this boy who prepared me to meet Huckleberry Finn.  If his sweater was not American in 1942, his ears and sunburn certainly were.

It was only when I was reading The Tall Book to one of my own children that I recognized Humpty-Dumpty and could admire the slyness of the artist, or the publishers, who chose to publish this sequence in 1942.  

This lovely boy could be drawn from my grandson, Ryan:

A few more:

Mapping the territory, Part Two

Detached fresco, Berroia, Ag. Photida

Late 14th-early 15thC.

In March 1489, Ianni Dilalo, Vasili Pullisiano, and Nicola Capsocollo were directed by Antonio Venier and Dominico Bembo, the "magnificent and generous rettori and most worthy provedditori" of Koroni, to make a survey of the property held by Nicola Xachili that had formerly belonged to the late ser Farante Suppin. Dimitri Cutrulli, the captain of Meronada, brought them their orders and papa Dimitri Calamara wrote down the legal record.  This was part of the same survey that was discussed last week.

Nicola Xachili (that Venetian X can be pronounced as a Z or an S or an H) held land at Milopotamia -- notice the mills mentioned.  He was one of the larger landholders, owing 28 perperi* a year.  This is what he owned -- notice that single trees are counted.

*A free tavern, bordered by the public road and the mill of Calamara.

*A garden, one octava: it has 3 orange trees and 1 walnut.

*On the west a garden, one octava: it has 4 orange trees.  It borders with the garden of Calamara, and with the garden of ser Gilio Defrancheschi, and with the mill of the signoria, which borders on the public road and is held by the said Nicola Xachili.**

*A vineyard, worked by 1/2 man, produces annually 4 measures of must. It borders on the east with the field of Dimitri Palamida, on the west with the garden of ser Theofilato Cocalla, on the north with the public road, on the south with the garden of the late Zorzi Chalifa.

* A little garden, one octava. It has 7 orange trees, 3 fig trees, 1 cherry tree, 1 pomegranate, and 1 walnut. It borders on the east with the public road, on the west with the field of ser Theofilato Cocalla, on the north half with the mill of the signoria, and the other half with the mill and property of Nicodimo, and that mill borders on the public road and on the north with the field of Colafti.

* A field of one mozada. It has 6 olive trees, 3 orange trees, 1 walnut tree, and 6 fig trees.  It borders on the east with the watercourse for the mill, on the west with the field of ser Theofilato Cocalla, on the north with Colafti, on the south with the said ser Theofilato.

* * * * * *

It is striking to find cherry and walnut trees so far south.  Both this document and the one from last week suggest that land was held  in very small parcels.

Again, I would be grateful if someone could tell me how much land was contained in a mozada and an octava.

* Based on the monetary equivalents Bartolomeo Minio gave 8 years earlier: 1 ducat was the equivalent of 13 perperi & 10 soldi di tornese, while 20 soldi equalled 1 perpero.

** The mill belongs to the Venetian administration.  Xachili pays an annual rent for it and is then free to charge customers what he can get.

I am indebted to Konstantina Papakosma for these documents, which I am glad to make available to anyone else.  The originals are found in the Venetian archives, ASVe, Avogaria di Commun, Miscellanea Civil, b. 145, f. 17 et seq.

Mapping the territory, Part One

Detail from 17thC icon of Ag. Menas

Istituto Ellenico, Venice

In March 1489, Petro Charzia, Antonio Varda, and Zuan Palamida, all of Meronada, (perhaps not the three men in the icon above) made a description of the lands and landholders of the casali of Sisani and Nicolizi. The men are identified as vetrani, veterans or respected older residents who can remember land over time. The sites of Meronada, Sisani, and Nicolizi are unknown to me, but because of the mention of the casal of Griso, I am envisioning the general area as west of Koroni (there was a Grisi about where the Grizokampos that I find on GoogleMaps is now).  

Dimitri Cutrulli, the captain of Meronada, brought them their orders for the survey from the "magnificent and generous rettori and most worthy provedditori" of Koroni, that is, from Antonio Venier and Domenico Bembo, and Ianni Stachlo wrote down the legal record.  It is probably not essential to remember these names: it is essential to remember that we have this fragment of witness to their existence and their work.

There are several definitions of casali: think of them as small clusters of houses of people who are mostly paroikoi.  Small, because of needing not to walk too far to work the land. Casali are often named for, say, the head of the family.  Nicolizi may have been named for the stasio** of papa Theodoro Nicolizi who is now dead and whose property is in the hands of Marco Gambrullia.

 

The first lines give the main landholders.  Marco and Theofilato Gambrullia and Nicola Roditi are the largest, each owing 35 perperi a year.* After them are Anastassi Chithirioti for 11 perperi,  Anastassi Stassopulo for 10 perperi, and Papa Nichita Stassopulo for 15 perperi. Nothing in the list tells us how much land they had, but most of the other properties are located in relation to those of the top five.

The list is not perfectly made, and it is sometimes difficult to identify owners, but we have a detailed description of the countryside and an extraordinary number of place-names. When it lists adjacent landholdings, it tends to list them in the order of E, W, N, S. I imagine a surveyor with good aerial maps and software could make up a map recognizable to the landholders.   Here are some sample entries:

* Anastassi Stassopulo owes for his vineyard at the place called Astavara 1/2 measure of must.  The vineyard borders on a mountain on the east, on the west it borders with Nicola da Ceria, on the north it borders on the public road, on the south it borders on the public road.

* The lake where they wash the linen, called Linovrochio.  After this lake is a place called Santa Barbara.  He pays every year 6 perperi. 

* A field after Santa Barbara, Stamati Castriti holds one mozada that borders on the east with Papa Nichita Stassopulo, on the west with the public road, on the north with Dimitri Condo, on the south with the field of the Signoria, which Papa Nichita holds as abandoned land of Patea . . . [someone] owes 10 perperi.

* At Linovrochio, a field of 6 octave.  On the east it borders with Papa Nichita, on the north with Petrochili, on the south with Stamati Castriti's woodland and grazing lands.

* At Loganito a field of 1 octava.  It borders with Zorzi Deneto, that is with his olives.

* At S. Herini, a field of 1 1/2 mozada.  It borders on the east with the ruined houses of the late Cardolemi, on the west with the well of Loganito.

* At Frangata, olives and a field of 5 octave.  On the east it borders with the field of the church, on the west with Xeropotamo, on the south with the public road. 

To be continued with a second document, this listing the property of one individual.

* Based on the monetary equivalents Bartolomeo Minio gave 8 years earlier: 1 ducat was the equivalent of 13 perperi & 10 soldi di tornese, while 20 soldi equalled 1 perpero.

** Stasio = the holding of a paroikos, usually a house and nearby land. 

 

* * * * * * * * *

I am indebted to Konstantina Papakosma for these documents, which I am glad to make available to anyone else.  The originals are found in the Venetian archives, ASVe, Avogaria di Commun, Miscellanea Civil, b. 145, f. 17 et seq.

I would be indebted to anyone who could tell me about octave and mozade.

On Vacation: A Mistra song from Evliya

 Gentile Bellini, Turkish Woman, ca. 1480.

 

A song collected by Evliya Çelebi in the late summer of 1668, included in the Mistra section of the Seyatahatname.   Evliya wrote a transliteration of the Greek in Arabic script.  The transliteration into the Latin and Greek alphabets, and the translation are by Pierre MacKay.

Evliya's transcription is remarkable, in part, because Arabic script does not permit the consonant clusters so common in Greek.
 

Kla pste ma tia mou, kla pse te, na ka me te mia vri si,

na rthi sto dil be ra ki mou, na tou ge mi si pi kri

ti e his mav ri ko ra ka, kin ta fte ra sou mav ra,

ki ne tav ga sou me la na, kin ta pou lia sou mav ra?

an e his po no stin kar dia, e la na klem' an ta ma.  

Weep my eyes, oh weep, and make a fountain

that may flow to my lover and fill him with sorrow.

What ails you, black crow, that your feathers are so black?
that your eggs too are black and your chicks black?
If you have trouble in your heart, come let us weep together .

κλάψτε ματιά μου, κλάψετε, νὰ κάμετε μιὰ βρύση.

ν’ἄρθη στὸ ντιλμπεράκι μου, νά του γεμίση πίκρα,

τί ἔχεις μαύpη κόρακα, κ’εἶν’ τὰ φτερά σου μαῦρα,

κ’εἶναι τ’αὐγά σου μελανά, κ’εἶν’ τὰ πουλιά σου μαῦρα;

ἂν ἔχεις πόνο στὴν καρδιὰ, ἔλα νὰ κλαίμ' αντάμα.

The dog of Venice

In a graduate class on Venetian history, a young man was discussing the role of the "Dog of Venice." He was a Navy SEAL, and we admired him too much to smile, or to embarrass him with a correction.  But I have cherished that Dog of Venice, and was utterly delighted when Pierre MacKay said, But that is what the Ottomans called the lion!

Correspondents have sent me references, which Pierre MacKay translated.  Claudia Römer sent a passage from Evliya Çelebi SN VIII 309b about Candia in 1668:

First of all, Kanye means dog-house in the Italian Frankish language, because the Venetian Franks who worship a two winged dog named San Marco, dedicated it to San Marco the dog under the name Kanye.

Then from Gülçin Tunalı, from Mahmud Efendi in Tarih-i Medinet'ül- Hukema, 48b, ca. 1700:

They treated this dog with great respect and reverence. When the dog died they buried it and built a shrine and temple over it.  Over the door of the shrine they depicted the dog and revered it.  And not satisfied with this level of honor, everyone to the best of his ability made an image of the dog out of silver and gold and placed it on the house as a blessing.  Rich and poor, small and great, each to the extent of his means, expended them for the making of a gold, silver, copper or brass image of the dog.  And still, today, Venetian infidels love no animal as much as they do the dog.

Robert Dankoff comments that Evliya (SN.IX257b15) called the Venetian ducat the kelbi ḳuruş = the dog ducat.

So here are some dogs of Venice:

An unexpected lion of S. Marco on a 17th C crucifix at the Pantokrator on Mt. Athos.  

End of ceiling beam, Ag. Paraskevi, Halkis, ca. 1270.

 Halkis

 Halkis

 

 Methoni

Heraklion

 

Rethymno

 Nauplion

 Methoni  

  Methoni 

 Methoni 

 
 

Nauplion

Nauplion ca. 1470

 Nauplion, ca. 1700 & 2009

 

The finest lion of all, Halkis.


 

The leading men of the Morea

Detail, Klontzas, Passion

The earliest documentary evidence for Krokodylos Kladas seems to be a letter from Jacopo Barbarigo of 25 July 1465. It is true that Sphrantzes wrote about him in terms of 1460, but Sphrantzes was writing after 1472 when he became a monk.

Barbarigo was provveditor general of the Italian troops in the Morea for a year of the Ottoman-Venetian war. Eighty-seven of his letters survive, written betwen 5 June 1465 and mid-March 1466, and they can be found starting on page 1 of volume 6 of Sathas here.

Twice Barbarigo gives distinct lists of the men who he says are the leading men of the Morea – homini da conto, zentilhomini, i molti principali, le persone de i condition. Combining the two lists, in their spelling, we get:

Petro Bua

Alexio Bua

Gini Bua Protostrator, Isaac Paraspondylos

Michali Rallis “principal homo de questa Amorea”

Michali Rallis Drimi dal Granzas [Graitzes]

Peregrino Busichi & his brother

Matheo Sfranzi [Sphrantzes]

Epiphani & Corcondilo Clada

A few other names can be collected from various Barbarigo letters:

Comes Glava

Comes Comnino

Comes Megara

Nikolaos Boccali and brother

Manoli Clada

5 Manessi kapetanioi

Silas and Zorzi Busichi, principali de Busichi

Ioannis Menaia

 The three counts are not from the Morea,  Komninos and Glava are brothers, from the north side of the gulf of Corinth, and I suppose the Count of Megara is from Megara. They all seem to disappear from the records.

 

Barbarigo calls the men on his lists stratioti, and says that their support will guarantee general Moreote support for the Venetian effort.  He also calls all the Albanian and Greek horsemen stratioti: stratioti was the general Venetian term for the non-Italian soldiers with horses.  In his first letter he says, "Isti paesani sint potentiores gentibus Italicis" -- "These peasants are more effective than the Italians."  The stratioti had certain advantages: their dress and horses were better suited to the climate and the terrain, they already knew the mountain routes, and their numbers had not been debilitated by plague.

Within two months of Sigismondo Malatesta's arrival in the Morea in August 1464 as commander of "crusade" forces against the Turks, 1500 of his 7000 soldiers were dead of the plague, peste, they had brought from Ancona, and by the end of the year only 2,500 remained. He and many of the living were ill. Between October and December, they had walked from Methoni to Mistra to Nauplion, then back across Laconia to Messenia, a formidable mechanism for transmitting plague, and famine, across the heart of the Morea. Plague not only kills, but it leaves survivors physically debilitated and depressed, and sometimes blinded. A number of Barbarigo's letters describe Malatesta's profound depression, as well as his physical weakness.  Barbarigo reported massive losses in the Italian companies – more than 200 dead out of a company of 500, 200 out of 400. The Ottoman army was also severely affected, and whatever original number Omar-Bey was supposed to have had – 3,000 or 8,000 – it was down to 1500 in June 1465.  

Stratioti were auxiliary forces in 1463, and the provveditor of 1464 was directed not to hire them, but  the losses to plague made them essential.  We see Barbarigo trying to persuade the Venetian senate to allow him to give provisioni - pronias -- to the leading men so they would be available.  These provisioni were, for the most part, in cash rather than land, although landholdings can be tracked in the letters. A number of these are the landholdings that were later lost in the Kladas revolt. There was a problem with the cash provisioni, however, in that Venice had not sent out any actual cash for two years, and we find most of these men paying their own soldiers and financing the Venetian effort themselves.

One of the things we see in Barbarigo with Kladas, Rallis, Bua, and the others is the change of the archon class to a military class, from a landholding and sometimes-fighting culture, to a culture of mercenary soldiers.  In the next generation -- Petro Bua's nephew Mercurio is the most famous example -- some of them become condottieri.   In the five years since the final surrenders of 1460, nearly a whole class, with the exception of those on Barbarigo's lists, essentially disappears from the records. Some of those on Barbarigo's list had gone to Corfu with Thomas in 1460, and had returned for the war.  Some were killed in the fighting of 1460.  Two or three were executed.  Quite a few were exported, as Doukas says:   

After taking all of the Peloponnesos, the tyrant installed his own administrators and governors. Returning to Adrianople, he took with him Demetrios and his entire household, the palace officials and wealthy nobles from Achaia and Lakedaimonia and the remaining provinces. 

Certainly some were assimilated into the Ottoman system: Kladas nearly was, except that the "crusade" against the Turks was said to be going to put Thomas Palaiologos on the throne of the Eastern Empire, and that would be centered at Mistra.  Kladas had been loyal to Thomas till the end, and after he escaped from Mani and his failed revolt, he joined Thomas' son.  

Hiring stratioti made language problems for Barbarigo, and he needed to find people to serve as paymasters and record-keepers who could write and speak Greek.  And he had to persuade Venice to provide salaries for them.  He  found a Venetian, an Andrea Corner, who had served his predecessor as an interpreter and secretary, and a Zuane da Ponte.  He thought he should pay Andrea 5-6 ducats a month (there were 10 months in the pay-year) but there was no documentation authorizing pay.  So he found a boy who could stay in his tent, and decided to pay him by skimming the stratioti pay, but since the stratioti were not getting any pay, it was all theoretical.

More on Barbarigo's stratioti here.