The bureaucracy deals with the Young Emperor and the Despot

An extraordinary diplomatic memorandum from 1418 gives a list of twenty complaints made by an ambassador of the Despotate, and twenty responses by the Venetian Signoria referring to events which involved the Palaiologos brothers, John and Theodoros. The memorandum was written on behalf of the Despot in awkward Italian: the Venetian clerk carefully reproduced the spelling and grammar of each item, and then gave the formal Latin response from the Signoria. The events had happened in 1416 when co-emperor John (Venetian sources call him “the young emperor”) was giving his brother Theodoros hands-on practice at war in the Morea. The Despotate was at war with the Prince of Achaia, and a thin strip of Achaian territory separated the Venetian territories of Methoni and Koroni.  Territorial boundaries were disrespected.  Venice had to request information from the Morea after receiving the complaint, information had to gathered and sent back, and the time lapse alone suggests the near-impossibility of handling these crises. Simultaneously, Venice was making complaints about raids into Venetian territory by the Despotate.  This memorandum is five large folio pages long, too long to quote completely, but a partial and prejudicial paraphrase will convey the general situation.

* * * * * *

[1] Despotate: What really happened in that riot is that our men were taking some of the men of the Prince (of Achaia). They insulted them, and the Despots came, and told them that . . .

Signoria: With all due respects to your ambassador, what happened is not like that. Your Despots were coming down this way to fight the Prince, and your men attacked our subjects and devastated our casale of Spanacori. They had given us warning of their coming and promised there would be no damage.

[2] Despotate: About the Albanians, the truth is that they were going to Koroni to sell a heifer, and someone told the castellan that they had stolen his goods and killed his pigs, so the castellan hanged them. Word got back. We have 6,000 armed Albanians up here -- the Despots were ready to take them to fight at Clarenza and then the news about Koroni came -- the Albanians wanted to go attack Koroni and it was all the Despots could do to prevent them!

Signoria: Our castellan didn't hang your Albanians for a cow. He hanged them for the wheat, barley, millet, cotton, clothing, wine, and other things they had been taking at knife-point from our subjects in our territory. And your Despots were not going to Clarenza: John was on the other side of the Morea at Mouchli.

[3] Despotate. About the Methoni incident, the Albanians conscientiously did not go down there to cause trouble, but to rob in the Principality. They ran into 300 soldiers who attacked, wounded several horses, and killed one of them. So they got a little excited and misbehaved.

Signoria: That's not what we heard. They came into our territory, insulted some of our people at Chinego who tried to defend themselves, then they attacked and robbed Chinego. The leader is a Greek named Koracha.

[4] Despotate. A man who lives in Methoni, a Piero Catalan, is a great friend of the Prince. He is responsible for the deaths of a number of our men because he has sold blades and crossbows to the [Principality of Achaia]. He has also provided bread and wine and supplies to the Genoese at Belvedere. He also went to Clarentza, took a number of Greeks, took them in irons to Methoni and locked them up. And then sold them to a Catalan ship.

Signoria: We have no information on this. The export of weapons from our territories is not permitted. Had we known about the sale of the Greeks, our officials would have stopped it.

[5] Despotate. One of our rebels, Lamburcho, escaped from prison and went to Nauplion where he was given refuge, then to Koroni. This violates the peace you made with the old Despot (Theodoros I).

Signoria: We have no information on this. We will look into it.

[6] Despotate. Some of your people have amazed us by trying to build fortifications on our territory. We are certain you didn't know about this.

Signoria: We have no information on this. Nor do we believe it.

[7] Despotate. We built the Hexamillion with great expense, and called our people -- top ones and little people -- to work on it, but our villani complained and decamped into your territory, and that's not right.

Signoria: Our territories are open and free to all comers who wish to live well, but if your serfs come our officials will send them back.

* * * * * *

The memorandum noted that on a previous occasion, the despotate had sent down a diplomat, Manuel Sophianos, and a certain David who inspected the damages in detail (“minute examinando”) and agreed with the Venetian estimate of loss. It also said that on this occasion the new damages did not need viewing and examination: it was just needed for the despots make restitution. The present memorandum continues for thirteen more items, providing a remarkable amount of information on aspects of life in the Morea, and dealings between the powers, and claiming attacks from Venetian territory against the Despot's people. It also makes clear that the Despotate had little effective control over its own people, whether merchant or criminal, even when it presumably had some interest in maintaining control.  

From Sathas 3: 174ff.

The Little Despots

 Detail, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Ms. Ivories A53, f.1  1408.
Theodoros, πορφυρογέννετος and δεσπότης.
Andronikos, αὐθεντόπουλος  

This miniature family portrait is on the first page of a manuscript of Pseudo-Dionysios that Manuel II sent as a gift to the Abbey of St. Denis in Paris.  It is usually dated to 1403-1405* but there are reasons that doesn't seem right to me.

Theodoros is identified as Despot, and he is wearing -- agreed, there is a lot of wear on the painting -- the four-arced crown that Pseudo-Kodinos says the emperor puts on the head of the despot as part of the despot-making ceremony.  

the emperor puts on his head, with his own hand, a crown ornamented with precious stones and pearls which has four small arcs, in front, behind, and on each side,

His brother Andronikos is identified as Prince, and he is wearing a diadem with no arcs.

Theodoros was created Despot of the Morea in the summer of 1407 -- a chronicle says his uncle Theodoros I died on 24 June, a date a little suspect since that is the date much more reliably given for the death of Theodoros II as well.  However, an action by the Venetian Senate of 27 August refers to the "despotum novum creatum," so he must have died around that time.  Sphrantzes  Somebody tells us, not Sphrantzes -- that Manuel went to the Morea, and I think it is safe to assume he created Theodoros Despot then.**  That gives two months for Manuel to learn of his brother's death, make the trip to the Morea, and then for news of the ceremony to get to Venice. 

 

 "dominum despotum de novo creatum"
ASVE Senato Secreti r.3, f. 74r, 27 August 1407 

 

Theodoros was about 9 years old at the time, and he had been in the Morea for several months already, watching his uncle die from gout. Manuel described his excruciating pain, his inability to use his limbs.  The painting of Theodoros I at Mistra shows him grossly swollen from progressive renal failure.  He must have died from kidney failure.  The child Theodoros saw his uncle's pain, saw his friends tending him as if he were a baby, smelled the growing sores from the gout, the odors from the kidney failure.  It was a harsh beginning for a bright and sensitive child, and it explains the end of his life.

Andronikos was created Despot of Thessaloniki after 22 September 1408, the date his older cousin John VII of Thessaloniki died.  He was not quite 8 years old. John should have been succeeded by his own son Andronikos, but Andronikos died earlier in the year. Sphrantzes tells us that Manuel took Andronikos to Thessaloniki and created him Despot there.**  It is a nice, literary, effect: Manuel replacing a Theodoros by a Theodoros, an Andronikos by an Andronikos, but it seems a hard thing to impose on small boys.  

So I believe the family painting was painted after the summer of 1407 and before the fall of 1408, which fits with the 1408 date of the gift of the manuscript to Paris.

Another thought: Manuel -- and John who is not shown in the detail -- is wearing black.  I believe Manuel is depicted wearing mourning for his brother. I have seen only two mentions of what he was wearing at particular times: both times white.  Pseudo-Kodinos says the emperor wears white or yellow for mourning, but many details of the imperial court can be seen to have changed between P-K and Sphrantzes.  Black was the usual Byzantine color for mourning, and it was the usual color for mourning in the West, where this manuscript was going.

I cannot think I am the first person to note these details: I would be grateful for any references anyone has that confirms them.

 

* Byzantium: Faith and Power.  Metropolitan Museum of Art (2004) p. 20, fig. 2.5  

** A description of the ceremony to create a despot is here..

Theodoros' Poem to Cleofe

 

Polyphemus and Galatea

This weekend the Byzantine Studies Association of North America is meeting at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I am speaking Friday on the poem Theodoros Palaiologos wrote for Cleofe, or on the reasons why it is by Theodoros and not by Bessarion as asserted since Allatius pronounced it so in 1648 and so maintained up to this day by a remarkable number of people who should know better.

It is also asserted that the poem is in Bessarion's handwriting, but an examination of the script and comparison with other documents certainly by Bessarion shows several distinct differences in letter formation, even if the overall effect is similar. However, since it is not possible to assert that handwriting is the equivalent of authorship, we will just let that go.

It is, I think, in the contents of the poem itself that authorship is made clear, both in what Theodoros writes and in the use he has made of two other poems. I am putting all three poems here, the original texts and the translations Pierre MacKay and I have made, which is what I will use as the handout for my conference paper.

στϊχοι ἐπιτύμβιοι ἰάμβικοι ἐπὶ τῷ τάφῳ τῆς μακαρίτιδος βασιλίσσης κυρᾶς Κλεόπης τῆς Παλαιολογίνης MS. Venice. Marcianus 533 f. 48b

Καὶ σώμασι πρίν, φιλτάτη, ξυνημμένοι
μία τε σὰρξ ὄντες, θεοῦ φάσκει λόγος,
τῷ πνεύματι ξύνειμεν ἄρτι κρειττόνως,
σοῦ μὲν νοητῶς καὶ τρόπον μοι καὶ λόγον
βιόν τε καὶ νόημα πᾶν οὐρανόθεν
ἐμοῦ καθαρῶς καθορώσης ᾗ θέμις,
ἐμοῦ διχασθέντος δέ, φεῦ, ἐπωδύνως
θερμοῖς τε σὺν δᾶκρυσιν ἐκκαλουμένου
μέρος τὸ λεῖπον καὶ καλὸν δή μοι μέλος.

Ταύτῃ γὰρ ἐν ταύτῃ σε γράψας εἰκόνι
πάντως ἐμαυτὸν προσπαρέγραψα τρόπῳ,
ἑνώσεως θέλων ξυνῆφθαί σοι τρίτῳ
ὡς τοῦ πόθου σβέσαιμι τὴν δεινὴν φλόγα
ψυχῆς τ’ ἐπαντλήσαιμι οἰδαῖνον πάθος.

Ἀλλ’ ὦ θανοῦσα καὶ θεῷ ζῶσ’ ἀξίως,
ἡνίκα τοῖς σοῖς τὸ χρεὼν ταὐτῷ τάφῳ
ὀστᾶ συνάψῃ τἀμὰ τετράδι τρόπων
αἰσθήσεων ἔξω με δεῖξαν πεντάδος,
πέμπτον σύναψον κρειττον’ ἀλλον δὴ τρόπον
τρυφῆς μετασχείν καὶ θεοῦ θεωρίας,
σὺν σοὶ τὸ θαρρεῖν ὡς ἔχουσα καὶ μάλα
δοῦσα ξυνεργὸς ἁμὸς οἷα καὶ μέλος.

Funerary iambic lines on the tomb of the
blessed Basilissa, Lady Cleofe Palaiologina.

Although, my dearest, we were once united,
being one flesh, the word of God claims
that it is better now to be together in the spirit,
you, living in thought, looking down from Heaven
upon my life, my words, my ways, and thought,
seeing all clearly as it is your right,
I, alas, torn apart, living in pain,
calling out for you with scalding tears,
for me, one thing is left, one good thing, song.

And so, portraying you in this image,
I have put myself beside you in every sense
wishing to be united in a third form of union.
so as to quench the terrible fire of longing
and to empty out the agony from my soul.

But, you who have died but live with God, deservedly,
when in the same tomb necessity brings
my bones together with yours in the fourth way
then, showing me what lies beyond the five senses
unite with me in the fifth and greater way
to share in delight and in the sight of God
my courage lies with you, who possess and indeed
give me, as my fellow-poet, this song.

Malatesta "dei Sonetti" di Malatesti

Rime

       Morta è la sancta donna che tenea
mio spirto unito, tacito e contento;
anzi vive nel cielo, e io in tormento
remaso sono, altr’uom ch’io non solea:
      non huom, ma bruto, sì che ben dovea
sequire il corpo suo di vita spento,
né mai partir da lato al monimento,
ma incenerarmi ove ’l suo cor giacea,
      ché forse l’alma lei sequita arebbe
nel triumpho celeste, ove si vive
eternalmente per divina possa.
      Se pur di seguir lei fusser stà prive
le forze mie, almen stato serebbe
sepulto il corpo presso a le sacr’ossa.

       The holy lady is dead, who used to keep
my spirit united, quiet and content;
Now she lives in heaven, and I in torment
am left, another man from what I was:
      not man, but brute, so that I had best
have followed her body now bereft of life,
never to depart from her tomb-side
but scatter my ashes where her heart lies.
      Perhaps my soul might follow her
in the celestial triumph, where all live
eternally by divine power.
      Then if my efforts still left me prevented
from following her, my body would at least
be buried close beside her sacred bones.

Theocritus XI, 1–4 (Cyclops).

Οὐδὲν ποττὸν ἔρωτα πεφύκει φάρμακον ἄλλο,
Νικία, οὔτ’ ἔγχριστον, ἐμὶν δοκεῖ, οὔτ’ ἐπίπαστον,
ἢ ταὶ Πιερίδες· κοῦφον δέ τι τοῦτο καὶ ἁδύ
γίνετ’ ἐπ' ἀνθρώποις, εὑρεῖν δ’ οὐ ῥᾴδιόν ἐστι.

There is no other drug for love, Nicias, nor salve, nor poultice,
except the Muses, and this is something sweet and gentle
for men, yet it is not easy to discover it.

Archons: Demetrios Laskaris Asan of Mouchli

 

This court official of Mistra  is standing in for Demetrios Laskaris Asan.  He was known to the Venetians in Nauplion and Argos as Demetrios Laskaris, and to the Greeks as Demetrios Asan, and it has taken a while to figure out that they were the same person.  Demetrios was the kefali, or governor of Mouchli, one of the Byzantine border fortresses, and he was not one of the glories of Byzantium.

Mouchli is this great bald peak, to the left of the highway from Myloi to Tripolis, just at the point where you begin to come down out of the mountain curves.  It has the same configuration as the peaks of Mistra and Karitena, and it is completely isolated from the mountains that chain down from west of Argos.

Mehmed II did not take Mouchli by blocking an aqueduct, as Kritoboulos claimed, because there is no place from which an aqueduct could have brought water to Mouchli. [Late correction: not Kritoboulos: Chalcocondylos.] There are still springs on the hillside, and they and cisterns would have been adequate for a city that probably never held even 2000 people.  Mehmed took Mouchli by a simple surrender from Demetrios Laskaris Asan because six years earlier he had already pledged his loyalty to Mehmed.  

Little is left of Mouchli now -- this photo shows the most interesting remains, though there are considerable traces of walls made from the local stone and the same color -- but there was never much of Mouchli.  Twenty-five years ago you could still find traces of a fresco on a wall fragment of what is called the Mouchliotissa, a church of the Virgin.

Like Mistra, Mouchli was a new city, founded for its defensive site at the end of a major mountain pass.  It was built by Andronikos Asan, Byzantine governor of the Morea between 1316 and 1322.  He was the son of Tsar Ivan IV of Bulgaria and Eirene Palaiologos, sister of Andronikos II who appointed him to the job.  Asan's daughter Eirene married John VI Kantakouzenos, whose daughter Helena married John V Palaiologos, which makes Andronikos Asan the great-grandfather of Manuel II and Theodoros I Palaiologos. From then until the final surrenders to Mehmed in 1460, Asans married Palaiologoi and held governorships.

It is difficult to think what would have supported the city of Mouchli, other than sheep and goats, and high-level brigandage --  waylaying travelers and merchants from Venetian Argos and Nauplion, raiding the Argolid.  We have evidence for both.  Last spring the apple trees were blooming across the hillside, and there is a nearby town named for pear trees, but fruit cannot have contributed much to the economy.  

Demetrios Laskaris Asan was a difficult person.  Anonymous of Nauplion went to him in 1449 to complain about Mouchli Albanians rustling his animals at the Fair of Ag. Demetrios, and Asan's response was to imprison and torture him for two months, before sending him home.  (Another Asan at Mouchli did this to Nicolò Catello of Nauplion in 1399 when he went to clarify a financial matter.  The Venetian governor had to write to the Despot, Theodoros I, to get him freed.)

The Venetian community of Argos wrote a complaint to the Signoria of Venice about Asan, about what happened at the same Fair of Ag. Demetrios that Anonymous attended:

Also, about the Albanians who live in the territory of Your Excellent Signoria -- [Demetrios Laskaris Asan] orders them about and attacks and beats them, and takes them by force and imprisons them, and judges them in his way and says that they are his and not the Signoria's.

And he makes the Chief of the Albanian catuna pay 1 gold ducat for each hearth, for some two ducats, and for some three according to the families that he has. The said Chief is called the primicerio, and if he doesn't pay immediately, his cow or horse or sheep is taken, and he is put in prison. Because of this they ask the favor that they be protected so that they want to be under Your Signoria rather than under Greeks. La chiefali of Mouchli is named Dimitri Laskaris.

He came to trade at the Fair of S. Francesco at Kiveri, that was last Saturday and that he should favor our journey, for we wanted to go to Venetian territory for the one at Nauplion since I trade with him. And the Sunday of which Dimitri was at the fair we were making our way between Argos and Kiveri. He dashed past the toll post, and we were surrounded, and we were seized and we were unhorsed and were taken with an Albanian from Argos who came with us to bring the horses back.

And he strikes to the ground and inflicted much dishonor on Messer the Rettor [Perigrino Venerio di Bernardo], and has horses given to us, pretends to let us go on our way, and he sends a man to say that we would be held in Mouchli. And because of that Messer the Rettor sends the horseman to see what was going to happen to us, and thus he was held as well. And he has the horse of Messer the Rettor taken -- the poor young man went on foot -- as far as Argos, where he ate, and ordered taken the pigs of the brother of the Albanian whom he had in prison. And he sent the Albanian to take the horse of the priest-teacher and [he said] “Give it to me and then I will give you your pigs!”

Answer. We are writing the Lord Despot Demetrios [Palaiologos at Mistra] in the usual form to satisfy custom that he should see that similar incidents do not occur.

This is only part of a fascinating document, and it gives us a lot of subsidiary information, such as the fact that there was a Franciscan monastery at Kiveri [now Myloi], and that pigs were raised in the territory.  But this makes two serious incidents -- the Anonymous affair, and this last, really a cluster of incidents -- involving Demetrios Laskaris Asan of Mouchli and the Fair of Ag. Demetrios of 1449, and we have no reason to think he was any worse than a number of other archons of the Morea.  People who lament the fall of Byzantium might bear in mind that the archon business was a very large proportion of that civilization for all of its thousand years, in Asia Minor and in Greece.

Demetrios Laskaris Asan was acquired by Mehmed at the surrender of Mouchli in 1460, and then was the intermediary who arranged for the surrender of Demetrios Palaiologos, Despot of the Morea, and Mistra on 29 May. [Late correction: Mouchli was surrendered in 1458, and it was Mathaios Asan of Corinth who dealt with his brother-in-law, Demetrios Palaiologos, on Mistra.] He would have accompanied Mehmed when he returned to Constantinople.  It was Mehmed's practice to keep the nobles of conquered lands close to him so he could keep an eye on them, occasionally putting them in governing positions in other territories with other languages.  But we don't know what happened to him after 29 May 1460. [Correction: after the summer of 1458.]

This last dramatic view shows what Anonymous and the assorted prisoners and merchants saw as they looked to Nauplion beyond the distant mountains, with Mouchli on the right. 

Thomas Palaiologos

If this were a folktale, the youngest brother would end up with the princess, the throne, and live happily ever after. But even though the Palaiologue jewels and robes have appeared in one folktale or another for 600 years, the Palaiologos family did not live in a folk tale. Nor did any of them live happily ever after: the family simply unraveled.

The youngest Palaiologos brother, Thomas, is the most enigmatic of the brothers. The Italians who knew him in his last years noted his fine appearance, his dignity, his melancholy. Melancholia. Depression.

Depression is understandable, even normal: he had left the Morea in July 1460 with his family, pursued by Mehmed. He had not surrendered his Despotate or dowry lands, and he spent his last five years waiting on the kindness of strangers. Pius II was going to lead a crusade to retake the Morea and, ultimately, Constantinople, and make him the eastern emperor, but Pius died in August 1464, just before the crusade sailed, the crusade went wrong in the Morea almost immediately, and Thomas died in May 1465.

He moved into history at the age of 8, when he was shipped off to the Morea to join his brother Theodoros. It was normal practice for the Palaiologos family to hive off its sons very young. His introduction to Italy probably came a few years later through his brother's wife Cleope and her Italian companions, not to mention a steady stream of Italians -- merchants, colonists, diplomats, curiosity-seekers -- I almost said, people like Cyriaco of Ancona, but there was no one like Cyriaco.

In his teens, Thomas joined his brothers, Theodoros and Constantine, in a series of small military campaigns to take over the non-Byzantine lands of the Morea. The campaign against the Principality of Achaia was settled when he was 21, with marriage to Catharine Zaccaria, daughter of the last Prince of Achaia, and more than a third of the Morea as dowry -- western Morea across to Karitena and down to Kalamata, Vostitsa nearly to Corinth, and the eastern Argolid. John sent an emissary from Constantinople to tell him that he had been awarded the title of Despot over Achaia. There seems to have been a pattern in the family of formal titles coming with marriage, and like Theodoros, John and Constantine, he married a Latin woman in conformance with his father's strategy that marriage in the Latin church would bring Western aid.

We know of little he did in his role as Despot beyond signing the occasional grant of land. He lived primarily in Patras and Leondari. One account mentions his giving an order to have someone blinded. This may not tell us anything about him: it was normal Byzantine judicial practice and we know of a similar order from his brother John. A foreign writer commented that you saw a lot of mutilated people in Greece.

Despite his apparent affinity for things Italian, he did not go to Italy until his late 20s when his brother Constantine sent him with a message to John at Floremce, and Florence must have been overwhelming -- Brunelleschi's dome was half-way along, Fra Angelico was frescoing the convent of S. Marco where many of the Greek delegation were staying, the Gates of Paradise were dazzling in the summer sun. But this is a problem. We know of nothing Thomas did or sponsored in the Morea that would indicate he had seen or enjoyed Italy, or that he had learned anything there, and when he had to live in Italy, he was an outsider and a subject for art. He is reported to have had beautiful manners, but this was reported of most of his family.

He becomes more problematic after Constantine moved to Constantinople on the death of their brother John, and Demetrios was sent out to hold the position of Despot of Mistra. That is when the vocabulary comes in and one chronicler describes them as "those brothers who swallowed their oaths like cabbages," and another, "those brothers who ate each other's hearts." (These were quoted in the entry on Demetrios, but they are eminently quotable descriptions by people who knew them better than we do.) Demetrios was with reason jealous: Thomas had been in the Morea for nearly 32 years, he had acquaintances and alliances, and he would have liked the whole thing. Even though Demetrios was older he was the new boy.

After the Fall of the City the brothers were left flailing at each other, surrounded by revolts, needing Ottoman aid to maintain their titles, needing Venetian aid to balance off the Ottomans. Several of Thomas' followers offered their allegiance to Mehmed. Then after five years, Mehmed demanded the surrender of Constantine's cities -- Corinth, Patras, Kalavryta -- which Thomas held. They were formally surrendered on his behalf, but the next year he went to war with 300 soldiers sent from the west, and took Kalavryta and some few territories back. But he found that his followers were now ruling, not on his behalf, but were treating these lands as their personal conquests, and the 300 were were rampaging and out of control. He and Demetrios continued to tear at each other, encouraged by various archons who changed sides with the weather. What could any of them have thought would happen?

Inevitably, in 1460 Mehmed came into the Morea, took the surrender of Mistra and added Demetrios Palaiologos and his family to the numbers who traveled with his camp. He set out next for Leondari and Thomas, but Thomas worked his way south with his family. He never surrendered. He took ship at Porto Junco/Pylos for Corfu where he left his family and went to Italy to obtain Papal assistance. He was dependent on others for his support, and while he shows up often enough in art, and even on the central doors of St. Peter's in Rome, he is essentially unknowable.

His last years were a litter of losses, failures, waiting, dependency -- all done with beautiful manners. Melancholia. His wife died on Corfu. He never saw his children again though he left detailed instructions for their education -- daughter as well as sons-- with his friend Cardinal Bessarion who became their guardian. He had no more knack for fatherhood than his own father who also suffered from melancholy.

He died on 12 May 1465, aged about 56.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Three

Cleofe -- that is how she signed her name in three of the four letters we have from her -- may not have dressed like this Greek bride. Her Italian dress was one of the problems that came up. But perhaps she allowed herself to be adorned for the wedding celebrations at Mistra in February 1421. Was that before or after she learned that her bridegroom had made a vow to live in chastity for six years (and not eat meat which, presumably, would inflame his sexual desire)?

Was the vow made before he met her, or after? Everyone agreed she was beautiful and very bright. She is reported to have been tall. Theodoros was probably shorter than average, like his father and brother John. He was awkward and immature, raised by clerics and professional intellectuals who taught him mathematics and theology. He knew nothing about women, except that they were occasions for sin. One can imagine him pudgy, possibly a little nearsighted, and absolutely terrified by the gaiety and charm of this young woman they had shipped in for him for the benefit of his father's political arrangements. Perhaps the wedding night was a disaster and he found a vow a great relief.

We don't know. We do know that Cleofe was miserable because her letters say so, and the women in her family wrote each other that she was. Four of her letters survive, as well as one from her sister Paola, and two from their sister-in-law Battista. These were highly literate women: there must have been many more and our view of her life and marriage might be profoundly changed if we had them. Finally -- despite the letter Theodoros had written the Pope guaranteeing she could maintain her religion and her Italian customs -- she, after much pressure from him, took to wearing Greek dress and was received into the Orthodox church. She took up fasting according to Orthodox practice.

This is where it gets complicated. Jacomo de Sancto Angelo from Padua talked to Cleofe when he was in Mistra, and reported to her brother in Patras that she had said, "I have not become a nun, just because I was anointed with a little oil. My heart is as free as it ever was." And Christofano, another friend of her brother, commented that she could dispute religion so well she could corrupt a lamb, and that she was the most perfidious Greek in the world.

Most writers misunderstand this last phrase and take it that she had "betrayed her faith," but Greek perfidy has been a catchphrase ever since the Trojan horse, and everyone who has studied Latin, and many who haven't, knows "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." Cleofe made such a performance of being a devout Orthodox woman that her husband and his courtiers were deeply impressed. He had grown up without women and couldn't have been expected to know better, but it also suggests that the Greek aristocratic male mindset saw categories of women rather than individual people. Or perhaps no one who caught on to the truth wanted to make more difficulty for her.

Whatever the tensions between Cleofe and Theodoros, she was allowed much personal freedom. She had books and music. She wrote. She talked at great length with various men who visited Mistra, and gave them intimate information to take back to her family. Her letters told Paola and Battista that Antonio da Fossombrone, Conte Ricardo, the Mega Kartophylax, were bringing messages.

She was moody. In three of the four letters -- no longer than would fit on a postcard -- she says she does not have time to write more. The four letters date from October 1426, January 1428, March 1428, July 1428.

The marriage was complex, more complex than I have seen recognized in print, and the period of abstinence was not one of calm. Her sister-in-law Battista wrote the Pope about "internecine warfare" and wanted him to interfere. This is a clue that Cleofe was not simply a victim. She remembered that she was a Malatesta. The Malatesta did not go as lambs to the slaughter. She threatened to leave him, delivering literary tirades, or being ominously silent. Everyone knew that his brother John's wife had left him because he ignored her: John, in fact, wanted her to leave.

Perhaps Cleope threw Theodoros' math manuscripts out the window. One hopes so. But Theodoros must not have actually wanted her to leave. A year after the six years of abstinence were completed, in the January 1428 letter, Cleofe refers with anxiety to her pregnancy. She was very close to delivery. She may have been normally concerned, or she may may have been aware of potential difficulties. The second pregnancy killed her.

The March letter is a long and wrenching train-of-consciousness. She was desperately lonely for her sister. She begged for letters, about the children, about anything that has happened. She asked as a favor, but if she doesn't get letters from home, she will die. She hoped God would confine her unhappiness to this world. Her life was bitter, she was worthless. She could not stop crying. There was not enough paper to record her unhappiness. The only consolation she had is from her baby daughter -- this a bare mention at the end of the letter-- but no consolation comes through to the reader. If there ever were a portrait of post-partum depression, this letter is it. The letter has not previously been read with this interpretation.

The letter has one more point of interest, and that is the signature. Her usual signature was "La vostra sorella Cleofe Paleologhina," but this one she signed as "La vostra sorella Cleofe Paleologhina. Deo gratia, vasilisa della Morea." Theodoros gave her a title when Helena was born, βασιλίσσα, and she was proud of it, and she spelled it the way it is pronounced with a V for the B.

Theodoros must have been frightened. They were parents and he knew that should have been a source of joy for both of them, but he was afraid and she wouldn't stop crying. He couldn't handle the situation. The intensity of his own emotions was too much, and he talked about retiring into a monastery. He had been talking about it ever since she became pregnant. The monastery would have been pretty much the same kind of life he had at Mistra before Cleofe arrived, only without the burdens of ruling and having interpersonal relations.

This is at least the third example we know of his choosing retreat when confronted with crisis. When they were making him into a boy ruler and intellectual, no one considered that his heart needed education, too. Several years earlier, in the summer of 1423, when an Ottoman army invaded the Morea and came all the way to the walls of Mistra, he had thought he would go into a monastery. This most recent time, his family took it so seriously, that his brother Constantine had arrived in December to take over.

He decided not to retire. He hung on, and during the next year and a half, his brothers conquered their rivals for power in the Morea and doubled the size of the Palaiologos holdings in the Morea. The family had acquired glory and apparently considerable wealth. Theodoros became wonderfully exhilarated and thought ruling had definite appeal. Cleope's father came to visit. One can imagine that when he went back to Italy he sent Theodoros an architect, because this was the period when the great Italian wing of the palace was built at Mistra.

Somewhere in here, things changed between Cleofe and Theodoros. Perhaps planning for the new palace allowed them to discover how well they could work together. They studied poetry together, wrote it. Her father was a well-known poet, Petrarch had been a family friend. Theodore developed an interest in Italian poetry.

She became pregnant again in 1432, probably in August or September. It is not clear just what happened -- probably the foetus died before it could be born, perhaps Dr. Pepagomenos interfered more than his skills warranted and gave her puerperal fever. Cleofe suffered for days. Theodoros sat with her, holding her hand until she died on 18 April 1433.

Theodoros' heart was broken. He wrote a poem to go in her tomb and from it we get hints that whatever the fears and furies that had been between them, they had become lovers and companions.




The primary sources and a bibliography for the Theodoros and Cleope story can be found here. The poem and its sources can be found here.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Two

The story of Kleope Malatesta and Theodoros II Palaiologos has already been told here, a version of it with what the research had shown up to that point. It used a borrowed portrait to represent Kleope. The child here is Theodoros, painted when he was about six years old, in a formal family portrait. It is the only picture that has survived of him, but he tells us below that there was another, of him and Kleope together, at Mistra. It has been ravaged, as was so much else there, by time.

Kleope died on April 18,1433, the Saturday after Easter, following a long illness. They had been married just over twelve years. She was buried in the church of Agia Sophia just up the hill from the palace at Mistra.

There is a poem in the Bessarion manuscripts in the Marciana in Venice long thought to be a poem by him on the tomb of Kleope. This only shows that no one has ever paid any attention to the poem at all, and that the fact that it is in Bessarion's handwriting was considered by scholars who should know better an adequate reason to consider him the author. But it is impossible to read the poem and not think that it comes from her grieving husband.

It is a striking poem, if only because the Byzantines almost never wrote romantic personal poems, and this one is to a woman in heaven who is guiding the writer on earth, a woman whose body the writer knows. The poem is written on the Italian model--Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura are easy associations, and there is that famous poem by Petrarch supposedly written to be put into Laura's tomb, as this one surely was put into Kleope's.

Kleope's father was a well-known poet, Malatesta dei Sonetti, and his father had been a friend of Petrarch. Everyone in her family wrote poetry: it was what humanists did. Beyond that, this poem suggests that this Byzantine prince, known for his qualities as the quintessential geek, had been reading and writing poetry with his Italian wife. It suggests that the marriage reported to have been miserable had in reality developed into a union of intellect and body.

Theodoros had been reading Theocritus--she knew Greek as well, and the ending of the first section of his poem with its reflection that the one thing left for consolation in his heartbreak is song alludes to the opening of Theocritus' poem on Polyphemus, which is framed by a teasing remark to a physician that some diseases are beyond the healing power of medicine and for them the only remedy is the effort of composing poetry. (And one of the eulogies for Kleope had mentioned the failure of medicine, and her doctor had himself written a lament.)

Theodoros was a mathematician, and this poem makes quiet reference to that with its structure based on the number five, thinking of the five senses, identifying five ways he and Kleope could be together. Possibly he set out to write one example for each sense, but then after Touch, Hearing, and Sight, found himself unable to match the final ways and senses.

He gives us one other valuable piece of information: he tells us that her tomb is marked by a dual portrait. There are other such portraits of husband and wife on Mistra tombs, and the image used to stand for Kleope is half of such a portrait--but it was found in a church other than the one where Kleope was buried.

Before this poem was buried with her, the monk Bessarion, who was the same age and a fellow-scholar, and who thought she was lovely, must have asked to be allowed to make a copy for himself.

Here is Theodoros' poem for Kleope:

Although we were before, my dearest, brought together
being one flesh, the word of God says
that it is better now to be with the spirit,
as you, in pure intelligence, look down from Heaven
on my life, my words, and all my thought,
as it is right that you should
while I am torn apart, ah, painfully,
calling out for you with scalding tears,
one thing is left for me, one good thing, song.

In this way, picturing you in this image,
I have added myself to the image,
wanting to join myself with you in a third way.
so as to quench the terrible fire of longing
and to empty out the agony from my soul.

But, you who have died and live, as you deserve, with God,
when in the same tomb necessity brings
my bones together with yours in a fourth way
showing me what lies outside the five senses
join with me in a fifth and greater way
to share in the delights of Heaven and the sight of God.
My courage lies with you, who possess and indeed
give me, my fellow-poet, this song.

A scholarly discussion of this poem, written with Pierre A. MacKay, will be appearing later this year.

The Greek poem and the other primary sources for the Theodoros and Cleofe story can be found here.
 The narrative is continued in

Pavane for a Dead Princess, III
Pavane for a Dead Princess, IV 
Pavane for a Dead Princess, V


Pavane for a Dead Princess, VI

Glory Days
Theodoros II Palaiologos 
Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesti
 

Visiting with the Palaiologues

These are Theodoros and Andronikos Palaiologos, about six and four, possibly a little older. They are portrayed with their parents, Manuel and Helena, and big brother, John, in a formal portrait sent to Paris in 1403 or so, in a picture that can be seen here That same year a Spanish nobleman, Clavijo, visted them and wrote:

The Emperor was seated on a raised dais, carpeted with small rugs, on one of which was spread a brown lion skin and at the back was a cushion of black stuff embroidered in gold. After conversing for some considerable time with us, the Emperor at length dismissed us, and we returned to our lodgings, whither later on his Highness sent up a stag, which his huntsmen had just brought in to the palace. With the Emperor at our audience had been present the Empress his wife, with three young princes, the eldest of whom may have been eight years old.

The eldest was John who was actually eleven, but he was small for his age and fine-boned, having inherited his father's build. When John was emperor, in 1437, another Spaniard, Pero Tafur saw the lion skin again, it or a replacement: "I then entered the Palace, and came to a hall where I found him seated on a tribune, with a lion's skin spread under his feet." But the palace was run-down and though the royal apartments were kept up, John and the lovely Maria of Trebizond and their attendants lived crowded in together. Still, the palace must have been a civilized place to visit:

At the entrance to the Palace . . . is an open loggia of marble with stone benches round it, and stones, like tables, raised on pillars in front of them, placed end to end. Here are many books and ancient writings and histories, and on one side are gaming boards so that the Emperor's house may always be well supplied.

For all his magnificent wardrobe when on show, John seemed to prefer a lack of complications, given the choice. He was an unexpected guest of Giovanni di Jacopo di Latino de' Pigli, out from Florence one day in 1439. De'Pigli quickly prepared a bed for the Emperor--it had white sheets and a green bedspread--but given that it was July in Italy, he reasonably prefered to nap in the garden:

. . . instead he had a sort of couch made on two benches with a little mattress and with a carpet . . . under the arbor, and there he slept until his people produced something for him to eat. When food was provided, he had a small table placed before his couch. I found him some white table cloths, and then he ate alone;

His desire for privacy was strong. De'Pigli thought he had lost the use of his legs because he had come into the house on his horse, dismounting only in the view of close friends. John did have episodes of terrible pain in his legs and could be bed-ridden for days--possibly rheumatoid arthritis? [Late correction: he had severe gout.] The nap gave De'Pigli time to send around to the neighbors for help with lunch--John was travelling with a party of about seventy--and it does sound like a meal put together in a hurry. I like to think I would have done better on the meat, at least for him.

. . . the first food the Emperor ate was a salad of purslain and parsley, with some onions, which he himself wished to clean. After that there were chickens and pigeons, boiled, and then chickens and pigeons quartered and fried in the frying pan with lard . . . he took what he wanted, and sent them along to the others. His last dish was eggs thrown on hot bricks . . . and then they set them before him in a plate with many spices.

After lunch John played backgammon under the arbor and joked with friends. De'Pigli spent the time talking with Cyriaco of Ancona who was one of the party.

Mostly, though, what John's guests reported was hunting--it was mobility and air, even when his legs were not working-- and he enjoyed having guests. In 1437, just before John left for Italy and the Ferrara-Florence circus, he was host to Pero Tafur:

This day the Emperor sent for me to go hunting, and we killed many hares, and partridges, and francolins, and pheasants, which are very plentiful there, . . . and from that day onwards, when he or the Empress, his consort, desired to hunt, he sent horses for me, and I went with them, and they said that they had great pleasure in my company. . . The Empress rides astride, with two stirrups, and when she desires to mount, two lords hold up a rich cloth, raising their hands aloft and turning their backs upon her, so that when she throws her leg across the saddle no part of her person can be seen.

Maria of Trebizond's riding astride fascinated the Westerners. Bertrandon de la Broquière had seen it a few years earlier and wrote that three eunuchs held up the screen. This is an interesting detail left hanging: was she the only woman hunting? Did she not have ladies-in-waiting? When John and his delegation of nearly seven hundred had left for Italy, Tafur went on to his business in the Black Sea and visited Maria's family in Trebizond. When he came back to Constantinople, he had letters and news for Maria, and spent time with her and and with Constantine who was serving as his brother's regent. Then she and Constantine took him to services at Ag. Sophia and gave him a guided tour of the relics--Constantine held one of the keys to the relic chamber. The next year when Tafur was in Italy, en route home to Spain, he stopped in Ferrara to visit John who was a guest of the Marquis of Ferrara, in a palace on the banks of a river, with gardens:

In the evening I went to wait upon the Emperor of Greece, and gave him letters from his consort and from his brother the Despot. He received me gladly, saying that I was his kinsman and a native of his country. He drew me to him and made me sit there beside him, asking me for news of his country and telling me that I must visit him each day I was there, and that it would give him much pleasure if I were to reside with him. Thus we were very familiar together . . .and he made me dine at his table and showed me many kindnesses.

Cyriaco was with him again in 1444 for a summer hunt. John's interested in clothes extended to his hunting wardrobe, and he had handsome Persian bow and arrow cases. It is unfortunate to have to admit that when he was at Ferrara there were complaints that he and his courtiers had denuded the countryside of game (and had trampled the farms), but in 1444:

The most serene emperor himself, John Palaiologos, and his brother, Theodore Porphyrogenitos . . . left Byzantium to go on a hunt, splendidly accompanied in the usual royal manner by his more high-born principal courtiers . . .The hunters brought to the king's tent from their booty two bristly boars and two fawns. From these the most splendid prince made gifts . . .. And finally, the Cretan falconer Manuel held out a large, long-footed lizard that a peregrine falcon had killed before my eyes in the clear sky. Then the jovial emperor invited me to receive a portion of the prey.

A rare period of happiness for John in those years, but he can never have been jovial. Later that year, Cyriaco visited John's brother Constantine at Mistra. He had nothing special to report about that visit, but once Constantine had taken him to watch an athletic competition in Sparta at which he distributed prizes. The outdoors comes into these accounts of visits with the Palaiologues, again and again, fresh air and movement and space as antidote to the ceremonies and close quarters of the palaces, interludes of release from the squeeze between the Unionists and the Turks and the Anti-Unionists.

For fuller accounts of these visits.

Pavane for a Dead Princess

This faceless, nameless woman is not Cleofe, but she is a woman from Mistra. She is wearing a gown similar to one Cleofe might have worn and she has been invited here to represent Cleofe because the Byzantines royals so rarely portrayed their wives and daughters.

Cleofe was the youngest daughter of Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesti, Lord of Pesaro, a bright young woman in a family of bright people, all raised with humanist tutors and books and languages and much music.She spoke Greek. She was quite beautiful: comments by her contemporaries sound convincing on that point. Her name is often rendered as Cleopa: possibly the humanists had suggested Cleopatra would be a nice name. [Late note: more probably she was named for Sta. Maria Cleofe, one of the three women to go to Christ's tomb.]

We know much more about her sister-in-law, Battista Malatesta de Montefeltro, daughter of the Count of Urbino, who married Galeazzo Malatesta in 1405, when Cleofe would have been quite young. Poised, superiorly educated as a humanist, she wrote hymns and poetry that have survived, and gave lectures at court on philosophy. But as a young woman she nurtured the toddler Cleofe along with her own daughter, helped her with her lessons, and talked to her about what young women marrying rulers of courts needed to know.

Cleofe appears in history with the arrangement of her marriage to Theodoros Palaiologos, second son of the Emperor of Constantinople--no great shakes, that position, those days--and Despot of the Morea (Despot was a title given royal sons as governors of provinces).Cleofe's uncle, Pope Martin V, had given permission for Western ladies of the highest rank to marry into the Byzantine royal family, one of his tactics for joining the Orthodox church to the Roman. The royal Byzantines were glad to marry Western ladies because any ties with the West could be useful in getting help against the Turks who had a strangle-hold on the Empire, and four princes married six (wealthy) Italians. One historian says that these were prestigious marriages for the princes: au contraire, they were prestigious marriages for Italian courts in the early Renaissance. The situation was rather like the heirs of great British estates in the late 1800s and early 1900s marrying American heiresses for cash to shore up their positions.

So it was a political arrangement, but well-born young ladies expected nothing else. She traveled to Constantinople on a Venetian galley with Sophia of Montferrat who was to marry Theodoros' brother John. That marriage was a disaster: John disliked her intensely and they lived apart. That theme comes into Cleofe's small story.

When Cleofe arrived in the Morea--in 1420 or 1422--she was in her mid-teens. Theodoros was twenty-four. She had brought with her a large dowry, a splendid wardrobe, jewelry, and small furnishings to make her feel at home. The Pesaro composers had written motets for the wedding. Guillaume Dufay who was working for Carlo Malatesta, wrote a gentle, almost romantic, motet for a text that began Vasilissa ergo Gaude -- Therefore, Queen, rejoice! --a nice blending of Latin and Greek for a marriage between a Greek and a Latin. Hugo de Lantins wrote one, too.

Across how many regions, does the sun moving so
turn and view with absolute confidence,
and see, O Sparta, none so happy as you.
You were the home of Queen Helen,
who through everything she did
drained the strength of all who ever wrote.

Now you possess something more divine,
Madona Cleofe,
born of the Malatesta, as you well know.
These are the glories and powers
you have added to the empire of Constantinople
with its many lords, so great and noble.

It was not, perhaps in the best of taste--that image of Helen draining her men. And there is no information as to when or where these offerings were performed, but if you have seen Mistra and know the music, you will see how it fits.

Cleofe lived with Theodoros for thirteen years in small, charming, provincial Mistra on the orchard-covered slopes of a snow-capped mountain, above a clear shallow river. Nothing much happened in Mistra, except that there were painters painting frescoes in pretty churches; Italian, French, Catalan, and Venetian merchants dropping by; and several outstandingly intelligent men doing philosophy and corresponding with Italian humanists. Cleofe's father came out once, to help negotiate a problem between the Despotate and Venice. Mistra's fashions in this period--clothes, art, ideas-- came from the West and Mistra was, all in all, a shadow Italian city-state.

Theodoros enjoyed philosophy--his father Manuel and his brothers John and Constantine did, too--but his particular interest was mathematics and he is said to have been one of the best mathematicians of his age. We know nothing of any work he did in those lines. What we do know is that his father had sent him away from home at the age of ten to rule the Morea from Mistra (a regent was sent along with him). He grew up a geek in a milieu of bullies and sycophants, with a certain amount of taste for things Italian.

Things should have worked out better than they did. As part of the marriage arrangements, he had signed a letter to the Pope promising that Cleofe would be able to keep her her religion and ritual, her chaplain, and her Italian customs. And that she would not be asked to change any of these, directly or indirectly.

The first thing that happened in her marriage was that Cleopa became Kleope--royal Byzantine brides routinely had their names changed far more than that. The next thing that happened was that Theodoros started demanding that she become Orthodox and stop paying attention to her Italian companions. In his clumsy way, the lonely boy was learning something about being loved.

In 1424, her brother Pandolfo--he could not be a warrior because of a deformed back, but he could be parked in the Church--was sent to Patras as Archbishop and ruler.The Malatesta liked building, and Pandolfor rebuilt Patras' cathedral of St. Andrew. His friend Dufay wrote an elegantly meditative motet--Apostolo glorioso-- for its consecration. Kleope and a host of Italophiles from Mistra must have gone up to Patras for the ceremonies, and surely people she knew came over from Pesaro. Of this building and event, only the music survives.

It is probably during this period that the handsome Italianate palace of Mistra was built, a wing for public spaces with great windows looking across the orchards and wheat in the valley of Sparta, and the high round windows for looking at the snow on the mountain ridges. Perhaps Kleope's dowry helped pay for it, perhaps builders were brought over from Pesaro and Rimini, perhaps Kleope had a voice in the design. Perhaps not. There is no information about its bulding, no approximate date.

In public, the couple were gracious hosts to the philosophers and travellers, but privately, the marriage continued tense. There were arguments, fights. The pressure to convert increased. Kleope wrote Battista. In 1425 Battista wrote to their uncle, the Pope Martin V who, against anyone's idea of pastoral care and avuncular affection, wrote a letter to Kleope full of fire and brimstone, promising her hell if she strayed from her Catholic faith. Kleope must have felt that hell on earth was worse than hell after earth, for at some point--the date, again, is one more unrecorded detail--she converted to Orthodoxy, altering her Italian fashions to the more covered-up Greek style. The year before, Leonardo Bruni had written Battista a letter, discussing the problems of giving women the kind of education that their constricted lives could not make fair use of. Unless he had written it earlier when Battista was teaching her. He may have heard of Kleope's problems.  [Late note:  I took someone else's word for the date of the letter.  I am now sure it was written about January 1427.]

Two years before Battista's letter, in 1423, Theodoros had started talking about retiring from the job of Despot and going into a monastery. He talked about it for years. People said it was because he hated Kleope, but no one blamed the rift on her. Far from it: people who knew her considered her "outstanding for beauty and for all other seemliness." After four years of it, his family finally took him seriously and sent Constantine to the Morea to take his place, and he arrived in Mistra the day after Christmas 1427.

That was enough for Theodoros who changed his mind. It may be only a coincidence, but Helena was born in 1428, named formally for her grandmother, but no one, from Mistra or humanist, could avoid the association with Helen of Troy. All three Helens (see that praise song above) were queens.

While Kleofe was pregnant, her brothers-in-law, Constantine and Thomas, trying to absorb all of the Morea into Palaiologue possession, attacked Patras. Theodoros declined to join them, possibly out of consideration for his wife. Her brother the Archbishop complained to the Venetians and ordered up as supply of powder for his cannon, and then left the country. But Constantine and Thomas attacked again, and in June 1429 Patras belonged to the Palaiologues and Kleofe's had lost a brother. The same year, the highest-ranking court official in Mistra began building the lovely Pantanassa, a church with Sicilian flavors, but it is something we can imagine Cleofe watching with pleasure.

She died in 1433. One historian has pronounced this an "obscure" death, but the Palaiologues weren't that kind of people. There is absolutely no information on this topic other than that she died. It could have been plague or malaria. Or she bled to death after a miscarriage. It was not an immediate death: there was time for Theodoros to hold her hand and weep. He loved her in his own, limited, way. Without her, there was no one other than his mother in Constantinople who loved him, and we can only hope that she did--there is no evidence of her emotional state.

A number of intellectuals gave glowing tributes at her burial. The young Bessarion who was going to be very famous spoke of her beauty, her intelligence, her piety. The very famous Plethon spoke of her piety, humility, intelligence, beauty, character, gentleness and generosity, commending her for giving up her "soft Italian customs" and dress, and adopting the Greek practice of fasting--thereby demonstrating that she had satisfied Greek male demands for a woman's behavior. It would have been inappropriate for him to mention the fashion for Italian dress among the upperclass women in Mistra. Then he told Theodoros to buck up, because Greece had real problems.

Fragments of a body dressed in Italian gowns were found in a grave at Mistra, in the church where she was buried. It may be Kleope, it may not be. It is allowed to hope that Theodoros had buried her in one of the dresses she preferred.

Despite Plethon, it is difficult to think of a Malatesta being humble, but the women of that family had learned to walk tightropes to survive. I see here a private diary in which she poured out--writing too fast for beautiful humanist penmanship--all the things she could not do or say if she expected a tranquil life. I also see this diary being burned by one of her household, about five minutes after she died. There is no evidence for this diary.

Little good happened to her immediate family, though nothing unusual for families in their position. Her brother Galeazzo, Battista's husband, was killed by their brothers in 1431. Battista's son-in-law, Pier Gentile, husband of her daughter Lisabetta, was imprisoned in a war among his brothers. She took her daughter and grandchildren and returned to Urbino. Trying to save Pier Gentile, she made a public speech about these events to the Holy Roman Emperor iwhen he stopped in Urbino in May 1433, but he was killed by a papal agent anyway. Battista raised her granddaughter Costanza so that she became one of the best-known, best-educated women of the Renaissance. Costanza named her daughter Battista (1446-1472). Battista was married before she was fourteen and died at the age of twenty-six, after giving birth to her son Costanzo, having produced at least six children for a very famous humanist condottiere.This is why she is so pale in her portrait.

Helena was married to John II, King of Cyprus in 1441. He was twenty-three, she was thirteen. A modern, otherwise reasonable, historian has called her "a violent, neurotic girl in permanent ill-health" without helping us out with corroborative illustrations, but the Renaissance thought marriage made up for child molestation. Helena died in 1458, having given birth to one, maybe two daughters, one of whom she named Kleopha. Kleopha died very young. But given Helena's ancestry, and the probability that she was mostly ignored after her mother died--she was five--and the probability that although philosophers and foreign intellectuals, including Cyriaco of Ancona, were all over the palace at Mistra, she was badly educated. She must have been desperately frustrated, desperately sad.

At my first visit to Mistra more than thirty years ago, knowing nothing of its history, enchanted by the apple and orange blossoms, the snow capped ridges of the mountain, I wandered in the ruins of the palace, hearing Ravel's Pavane in my mind. This, now, is why.

The narrative is continued in
Pavane for a Dead Princess, II
Pavane for a Dead Princess, III
Pavane for a Dead Princess, IV 
Pavane for a Dead Princess, V
Pavane for a Dead Princess, VI
Glory Days
Theodoros II Palaiologos 
Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesti

The primary sources for the Cleofe and Theodoros story can be found here.