The doctor and his patient

Demetrios Pepagomenos was the second of the four speakers at Cleofe's memorial. I have written about these monodies at other times, in detail about those by Bessarion, the last speaker, and George Gemistos Plethon, the first. (The order of the speakers has to be deduced: Plethon was the oldest and certainly of the highest status of the four, Bessarion the youngest and, being a monk, of the lowest status. Cheilas probably has to follow Pepagomenos as he makes a comment about him.)

Pepagomenos was a doctor specializing in gout. We do not have an absolute statement that he was Cleofe's doctor, but there is enough evidence to allow us to deduce it. For example, in his monody he said, “There is need for all of us, and for myself especially, to let our voices loose in the intensity of our suffering.” I read that as a comment on his sense of involvement in, if not responsibility for her death. Later he spoke of “the body of our holy queen, so well-formed, so harmonious as to bring future happiness to the race.” As the daughter of an obstetrician, I read that as saying her body was suited for child-bearing, and so something he would be the only man, other than her husband, in a position to know.

But when Cleofe died at noon on Good Friday, she had been fasting for nearly forty days, and there is strong evidence to suggest that she would have followed the most severe fast. She spent nights standing in prayer. She had, unintentionally, prepared her body for a massive hemorrhage. Pepagomenos called it a cataclysm, a deluge over the whole race – ἄλλον τινὰ καταχλυσμὸν τοῦ γένους παντὸς, and said it had come on suddenly. Bessarion also refers to blood, saying that her husband (like Zeus) had wept tears of blood (and, like Zeus, at the loss of a son in addition to his wife).

I think the dead child was a son, because Pepagomenos said this birth was to have been such an even that “all good and decent things might come to settle not only among us present here but among all the entire race . . . that there might be skipping and dancing . . . the singing of festival chants, the display of general happiness.”

“All the best for us came,” he said to her – sometimes he spoke to the assembled mourners, and sometimes to Cleofe – “with your settling among us. . . . But now everything goes the other way.” He mentions first her husband, “our holy ruler,” and then “her dear daughter . . . all her blood relations, her servants and cities.” Pepagomenos speaks of her daughter three different times, and then again of the loss to her subjects.

He becomes more specific about her subjects: “But the bellies of the poor mourn especially the hands of our queen, which worked as it were to one purpose throughout her life, to nourish those in want, not merely through instruction, and through those of others', as might have been expected of such a queen, but themselves performing the service of cookery, collecting wood from wherever they had to, and lighting the fire, even roasting the food of the poor over it and serving it to them, nourishing them daily, taking no account of the heat of the fire, the intense burden of the smoke, and the inescapable duration of this service. This is an exceptional description. It was conventional for Renaissance and Byzantine ladies of good families to feed the poor, but nowhere, I think, do we learn that they carried firewood and cooked in the smoke.  Though I do wonder where she had learned to cook.  All the speakers spoke of Cleofe's character: Pepagomenos spoke more than the others of what she actually did in her life.

He specified other groups whom she nurtured: “The orphaned children of her household mourn her, who acted as a mother to all, sharing out to each of them what was right, and neglecting nothing of their care; she made it possible for the women to live together with husbands and men with wives, to act openly and to practice another way of life, something that had in many periods over the years been neglected. but was rightly and properly fostered during the reign of our most holy queen, with all attention and concern, as one might say. Widows, too mourn their protector, and strangers the source of consolation from which they often benefited--- all, in short, for whom she offered a respite from loss.”

It is possible that Pepagomenos himself knew the pain of losing a wife. The cleaving of the one flesh that is a marriage was an easy topos for the Byzantines, but he went further: “The cleaving apart of a bodily union brings the unbearable pain of an amputation when a mother dies in childbirth. This, more than anything else makes the pain of the cut intense and presents the suffering as ever new in the eyes of the husband, and becomes an inexhaustible fuel for the fire, always displaying the newness of the loss, and never ceasing. But the severing of spiritual attachment has an intense bite and makes the pain even more unbearable, inasmuch as it is carried on in the the present life, while the former pain, although it is, so to speak, undying, continues to be associated with that material, though now lost, companionship.

He went on to raise topics that might have been considered better unmentioned and, as with Plethon and Bessarion, the frankness of subjects towards their ruler is striking. There were aspects of the earlier relationship between Cleofe and Theodoros that nearly led to his rejection of her, and we might wonder if Theodoros had been repenting to Pepagomenos of his stubborness. “When the time was right, even before your marriage, you lighted the brand of self-mastery with a little spark and disregarding paternal pride, canceling maternal agreements, the petitioning of your sisters, and the native innovations in religion of your homeland, you were pliant in everything to your husband and lord, putting this before all else, to follow his beliefs throughout your life and to practice them as fully as you were able. (Had she confided to Pepagomenos the real facts of her "conversion"?) All of this scorches him the more intensely and causes greater agony as he thinks of what consolation, aid and assistance against this greater and more final loss he has lost.”

Theodoros had apparently insisted that she change her style of dress as well as convert, things directly opposed to the agreements he had made for the marriage. “The wearing of clothes outside our habits of dress, beyond our temperament and sense of what, so to speak, is naturally required, was a matter of her unmaterial and spiritual nature, one unassociated with worldly passion or any kind of bodily necessity, because she aimed, in her unconcern with such matters, at what seemed to her always to be a more perfect order and self-governance. Not that there might ever be perfection more perfect than perfection, or that clothing will change character, but nonetheless, there was some length of time before the end, when, unless she was constrained by official ceremonies, she wore the fashion of those who live monastically, so that what was earlier unappreciated by outsiders, was now obvious to all.”

Toward the end of his monody, Pepagomenos embarked on a series of thirteen “O”s: "O dwelling-place of virtues . . . O all those dreams . . . O charms of that holiest body . . . O lady, death loved you . . . O terrible and lightless day.”  These Os formed a transition from the main body of his monody to his conclusion, addressed directly to her, speaking to her as the representative of all of them there listening: 

“You, most divine, pious and holy queen, who have made this translation only under the instructions of God. . . you have flown from us through the approval of the almighty . . . Do not withdraw into this new world but, even before us, watch over our most holy despot of the Romans, your co-worker utterly cast down by so great strife, and by the onslaught of disasters, brought on him by your death. For you were the best co-worker -- συνεργόν --urging him toward the good, and consoling him for what was incurable, a good counselor, a guide for action, and a harbor for all that is good, and all of this is gone, flown away with you. (Here it is clear that Pepagomenos had read the poem Theodoros had written for her in which he had called her his ξυνεργὸς, his co-worker, though in the poem I have preferred “fellow poet.”)

“This was not a good thing, and not how it should have been. Οὐ καλῶς μὲν οὐδ’ ὡς ἐχρῆν γέγονε δ’ οὖν.

“It would be in your power, either with your prayers to the divine, as you stand immediately beside God, to alleviate the distress of our ruler, and through this the misfortune of the entire Roman people---you can do this, I know, with a mere nod of assent-- δύνασαι γὰρ τοϋτ’, εὖ οἶδα, εἰ κατανεύσειας μόνον -- or to leave us to mourn and lament throughout life, as long as the sun sends its rays over the earth.”

This is astounding: he has put Cleofe in the position of the Panagia, and has given her the nod – and so the authority – of Zeus.

Pierre MacKay made the translation. Greek text available at http://nauplion.net/CL-Pepagomenos (3).pdf

Restorations at Mistra: Questions

Palace, August 1994

Palace 2001.

Palace 1978 to help explain reconstruction below.

Palace, October 2014

So I took my grandchildren to see Mistra last October. Readers of this blog know that Mistra is my passion and the focus of my scholarship. No one can be blamed for the rain: it had already rained in Nauplion for a week, and it continued raining in Monemvasia.

But once again the palace was behind barricades. It has been closed to visitors for more than 20 years. A whole generation of scholars has written about Mistra without ever being inside its single most important secular building. A whole generation of tourists has been turned away from the most comprehensible structure on the site. It is all well and good to publicize that Mistra is a World Heritage Site (and that produced a great deal of funding), but despite the interminable restoration, stabilization, and reconstruction projects, there is less to see than when I was a regular visitor in the late 70s.

A great many houses are being rebuilt, but they were well along in the rebuilding process according to The Monuments of Mystras, edited and mostly written by Stephanos Sinos, published in 2009, and very expensive and very heavy. These house are still not completed and open to visitors.  I will not get into the disappearance of the rest room from the Pantanassa, or the majority of the walkways that are extremely dangerous to those of us who are no longer young.

So this entry is an inquiry: What is going on at Mistra? I hope readers will tell me what they know, either in the Comment section below, or privately at nauplion@gmail.com.

Plethon's Cleofe

Angel, Ag. Nicholas, Mistra.

I recently discussed Bessarion's monody, one of four given at the μνημόσυνον for Cleofe Malatesta Palaiologina.  The memorial would likely have been held at Ag. Sophia, where she had been buried. There was a thunderstorm that day, and crowds of people -- family members, officials, clergy, women of the court, townspeople -- had shoved their way into the little church and its burial chapels and porches. There was a newly-painted portrait of Cleofe and her husband over her tomb, and some of the speakers gestured toward it and said, "You," as they spoke.  But we don't know which chapel the tomb was in.  

I spent some time in Ag. Sophia at the end of October, standing in each chapel, trying to envision the circumstances, trying to consider how well a speaker could be heard from various positions. Most of the people present wouldn't have heard the speakers, and most would not have understood the Greek the speakers used: what was important to them was that they were there.

Hints in the monodies allow us to work out the order in which they were given. Bessarion's was the last. The first was by George Gemistos Plethon. What we have is probably not quite the speech that he gave, but his edited written text.

The magic name of Plethon has preserved this monody in twenty or so copies (one is bound with the only copies of the Bessarion and Cheilas): the other monodies survive in one copy each. Plethon's has been used, or parts of it, a number of times by a number of writers, for what it says about the soul. What has been completely overlooked is that Plethon's discussion of the soul comes from his portrayal of a very specific soul, Cleofe's soul, and then from his portrayal of her husband's.

Gemistos began quietly, speaking of Solon's idea of goodness, and how one could not be sure of human fortune until death. "For this reason," he said, "one would consider epitaphs and funeral addresses to be more reliable than any other encomia . . . for they are concerned with matters already securely established . . . The Athenians . . . thought it right to use these addresses."  Gemistos anchored the storm-blown mourners firmly in the Athenian tradition: "We, likewise, have come forward in this commemoration, not only to speak for our most holy ruler's now-departed wife who achieved a good ending to life . . . but expressing thanks for the reverence and understanding she always exhibited."

He then reminded them that Cleofe had come from Italy whose Romans had ruled the best part of the settled world, from the Danube to the Tigris to Libya to the Atlantic, and that she came from heroic ancestors.  "She came here, lovely and good, to dwell with our most holy ruler . . . bringing with her shining adornment of body and soul, for she was tall and lovely, and had matured into every sort of goodness. . . She, however, exhibited, in addition to the beauty of her body, which was radiant, an even more radiant and holy quality of soul, and showed that her body was a sort of image of the beauty of her soul."

This is an extraordinary emphasis on Cleofe's body, however beautiful, and it should be remembered that Plethon believed that physical desire was a divine gift, and that it was through the body that we become like the gods.

He went on to list the qualities of her soul and then followed them with a brief statement about each: "For she adorned it with every sort of complete goodness: judgement, discretion (illustrated by her “sober prudence in putting off her leisurely Italian ways and taking up the decorous restraint of our women”) , clemency, honesty, piety (illustrated by her worship with prayers and continuous fasting according to our custom"), married affection, and nobility, and having naturally acquired each from birth, she increased each through study and practice and proved herself a glory among women. (This discussion of qualities suggests that Plethon was working on Περι αρετων, "On virtues," earlier than generally thought.) 

"Living in this manner, and with such occupations, practicing and studying, always adding more good to good things . . . and I would add that she recently took part in the most sacred of our feasts and our mysteries." He would have known as well as any of Cleofe's anguished "conversion" to the Eastern rite.  "She departed this life from an affliction beyond the powers of all medicine, so that she seems so dear to God from all these to have been taken up by God, and she left despair in her subjects . . .." 

Leaving the subject of Cleofe specifically, Plethon went on to say that there is a part of us that is mortal, and a part that is immortal, the most important part. The body is a kind of garment, and when we take off this garment, it is wrong to mourn when the important part has moved into a better life. It is the life we live here that prepares us for that life, as did Cleofe's life, while a person who takes no care for the divine in this life will have no contact with it in the next.  Almost all people believe in this continuing life.  The creator, as a good master, would not have given us the longing for eternity unless there was an eternity to long for. Non-rational animals do not because they do not understand cause or infinity. The one who knows something about God must have something in common with him, and we could not know this everlasting life without a desire for it.   

Then Plethon moves to suicide, a peculiar topic in the circumstances, unless he knew something that made this topic relevant.  Many of us who have been widowed have had the experience of being carried along at first, perhaps by shock, but with the sense that we are managing remarkably well.  Then about a month along, there is a great crash and an all-devouring depression.  It is clear, from Bessarion's monody, and particularly from Plethon's conclusion, that Theodoros had fallen deep into a depression, to the point that it had become a political as well as a personal problem.  He had earlier written a poem to Cleofe that looked forward to a radiant reunion in the presence of God.  Had he mentioned to Plethon the possibility of anticipating this?  

It is difficult to think why Plethon would have otherwise brought up the subject, particularly in such public circumstances.  He explained that non-rational animals do not commit suicide because they cannot envision their non-existence.   Nothing seeks its own destruction, so a human would not consider suicide if it would have that result.  A person who is suicidal must feel that suicide just allows it to move out of the body.  Plethon clearly allows more understanding of someone who is suffering, than did -- and does -- church teachings.

Plethon concluded with a firm statement of comfort, correction, and encouragement.   Who else at Mistra could have spoken to the ruler so critically in public?  "If the belief is established as certain within us that the soul is immortal, we shall be nobler and better, and shall bear such losses more gently. And so, most holy ruler, consoling yourself with these words, give up despair, considering again that you were born to preserve the common good in the face of troubles, but despair will stand always in the way of such action. You see how the menace has progressed and requires great concern for recovery and return to safety. This rests on you, and only if you will take care of it appropriately will all the rest follow you so that, if God wills, we shall be saved. 

"But, if you are indifferent, our danger will increase. Consider that if some mischief occurs—may that not happen—all will place the burden of it onto you, while if something happens to rescue us you will carry off the fame of it. So, understanding that you will in either of these cases have the greatest credit and, as your duty to God, who entrusted you with governance over us, stand before us, stronger and more attentive, and God will give you the diligence to be the rescuer of our community and provide you with whatever is necessary. And it has to be that, since your actions bringing us toward salvation will be great, and never trivial that, as well as by us, among all the rest of humanity you will be held in high esteem.  

My thanks to Pierre MacKay for his work on the translation.

Pavane for a Dead Princess: Part Eleven

Possibly Guillaume Dufay.

Cleofe probably never had a pavane –it was a slightly later development of a dance form she knew -- but at least two pieces of music were written for her wedding by two composers whom her father, Malatesta “di Sonnetti” Malatesta employed at his court. Guillaume Dufay, just beginning his career, wrote a motet. Hugo de Lantins wrote a ballata. These were written in 1419 or 1420, before Cleofe left in August for the Morea.

Listen to Vasilissa ergo gaude here or here or here. The performances differ greatly. My own recording, and the performance I heard of Vasilissa one week ago, is by Capella Romana, but I cannot find this one on the internet. However, you can hear it in person with Capella Romana in their extraordinary program of music around the Fall of Constantinople, if you can get to Utrecht for the afternoon of Sunday, 7 September.  Here is my translation of Dufay's motet for Cleofe, and then his Latin.:

Vasilissa, therefore rejoice,
worthy are you of all praise,
Cleofé, glorious from the deeds
of your family Malatesta
princes in Italy,
great and noble.

More glorious from your husband,

for he is nobler than all;
Despot of the Rhômaioi,
whom the whole world reveres;
born in the purple,
sent by God from heaven.

Radiant in youthful bloom
and in beauty,
fecund in your wits,
eloquent in both languages,
more glorious for your virtues
before other human beings.

The ruler has desired your beauty;

now that he is your Lord.

* * * * * *

Vasilissa, ergo gaude,
quia es digna omni laude,
Cleophe, clara gestis
a tuis de Malatestis,
in Italia principibus
magnis et nobilibus

Ex tuo viro clarior,

quia cunctis est nobilior:
Romeorum est despotus,
quem colit mundus totus;
in porphyro est genitus,
a deo missus celitus.

Junvenili estate

polles et formositate
ingenio multum fecunda
et utraque lingua facunda
ac clarior es virtutibus
prae aliis hominibus.

Concupivit rex decorem tuum

quoniam ipse est dominus tuus.

Text from Capella Romana: 
The Fall of Constantinople

I find the use of vasilissa fascinating – it suggests that the marriage arrangements included information as to her title. In the four letters that survive in Cleofe's hand, she uses the title only once, after the birth of her daughter Helen, when she is desperately depressed. I like the motet's suggestion that she knew Greek, and I particularly like the comment about her fertile wits. (Compositions in honor of brides never make a point of intelligence.)  Her family and friends commented on her cleverness, as did Bessarion. The last lines are ironic, given what we know about her husband's six-year refusal of a sexual relationship.

Hugo de Lantins' ballata for Cleofe seems not to have ever been recorded. I would appreciate being corrected on this. Here is my translation of Hugo, and then his version. Hugo was Franco-Flemish, working in a Pesaro where they used a variant of the Venetian dialect. Spelling was quite flexible in 1419  or so.

Across how many regions, does the sun so moving
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,
Madonna 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

************

Tra quante regione el sol si mobele

Gira e reguarda cum intiera fede

Quanti ti, Sparta, beata non vede.

To fosti albergo di Elena regina,

Che per tanto che fe

Stancho le force de che scripse may

Ora possedi cosa piu divina

Madona Cleophe

De Malatesti, mata come say.

Quest'en le lode e le possance c'hay

Gionto a l'impero de Constantinopele

Cum tanta baronia si grande e nobele.

Text from Wikipedia.

It is not, I think, as interesting as the first, but it does show that he knows of Helen of Sparta, and he knows that Mistra is at Sparta. Both songs suggest that her family line is more than adequate to be matched with the imperial family of Constantinople.

Dufay also wrote a short composition for Cleofe's brother, Pandolfo, to celebrate his restoration of the cathedral of St. Andrew when he was Archbishop of Patras. You can hear Apostolo glorioso here. It is called an “isorhythmic motet” and is written for five voices. This will also be in the Utrecht concert.

Glorious Apostle, chosen by God

to preach to the Greek people

His incarnation, for it was blind to it,

and (who) did so without any blame,

and chosest Patras for thy resting-place

and for thy tomb this holy cave;

I pray thee, pray that I may find myself with thee,

by thy mercies, in the sight of God.

With thy teaching thou didn't convert to Christ the

whole country, and with the passion and death that

thou borest here on the cross above the olive tree.

Now it hath slipped into error and is made evil;

wherefore win grace for it again by prayer so strong

that they may recognize the true and living God.

****************

Apostoloso glorioso, da Dio electo

A evangelegiare al populo greco

La sua incarnacion, ché v'era ceco,

Et cusí festi senza alcu suspecto,

Et elegisti Patrasso per tuo lecto,

Et per sepulcro questo sancto specco:

Prego te, preghi me retrove teco,

Per li tuoi merci, nel devin conspecto.

Cum tua doctrina convertisti a Cristo

Tuto el paese, et cum la passione et morte

Che qui portasti in croce in su lo olivo,

Mo' è prolasso in errore et facto tristo,

Si che rempetraglie gracia sí forte

Che recognoscano Dio vero et vivo.

Andrea Christi famulus.

Text and translation, Capella Romana.  The second

 The second section is not politically correct, but Pandolfo's appointment, and Cleofe's marriage, had been arranged by Pope Martin V as part of his effort to bring about Church Union.  This piece was certainly heard in Patras, and was probably written in Venetian-Italian rather than Latin as that would have been the main language heard in Patras other than Greek.

A page of Dufay's music. The West had not yet agreed
on the number of lines to a staff.

George Gemistos Plethon at Mistra

Holograph manuscript of George Gemistos Plethon, Marciana, Venice.

A great deal of twaddle has been written about Mistra and Plethon (a name he never used) by people who ought to have known better:

. . . the imagination offers a splendid choice, whether it be of warriors or artists, of gracious ladies or learned philosophers, of the Villehardouin lords revelling in the loveliness of the countryside, of the dark-bearded Despots in their ceremonial robes discussing with their architects and artists how to add to the city's glories, or of the great philosopher Plethon himself talking to his pupils, while the Lady Cleope leaned from her litter to greet him as she passed . . .

Here strolled Plethon, the famous philosopher, surrounded by students who had journeyed from the four corners of the Byzantine world to listen to his teachings.

In fact, most of the scholars, theologians, philosophers, artists, and architects melt away with the snows of Taygetos if you attempt to find out who they were, or how many.  Consider Plethon's "students from the four corners of the world." We have, in fact, evidence for only two individuals as his students -- Bessarion and Mark Eugenikos, and possibly Scholarios. Some claim Laionikos Chalcokondyles was a student, but the source used to prove that comes from Cyriaco of Ancona who merely used both names in the same paragraph. Undoubtedly most of those who encountered Gemistos took away ideas and learning, but this is something that happens in serious conversation, and serious conversations in themselves are not normally considered school. 

We have no evidence that Gemistos was Theodoros' tutor and we have no evidence that he led any kind of pagan cell: given the intense religiosity of Theodoros II and his closest associates, it is difficult to imagine how such a deviant organization could have been maintained. That was invented by Scholarios who seems to have come to despise Gemistos, despite both being anti-Union.  Scholarios, ever the opportunist, likely resented Gemistos for being so honored in Mistra. He had wanted a position at Mistra himself, feeling inadequately valued in Constantinople, and had written a whining letter to Theodoros begging for an invitation.  Even Demetrios honored Gemistos, despite his political alignment with Scholarios, and Scholarios' correspondence with his wife.

When Gemistos arrived in the Morea is unknown. His introduction to Manuel’s funeral oration is an indication of a close relationship to Manuel, not of residence in the Morea. Gemistos may well have traveled with Manuel in 1407-8 and 1415, at which time he is identified as one of the four καθολικοὶ κριταί, the members of the highest court of Constantinople. His letters to Theodoros, between 1416 and 1418, and Manuel in 1418, about the reorganization of the Morea, do suggest that he had been in the Morea, at least for a while, but they are no proof of residence: he could well have studied the situation on trips and from documents. That Doukas identifies him as a member of the Senate in Constantinople in 1438 means little beyond the survival of the title: there was no Senate, and no action recorded for it since 1204, and in 1438 Gemistos was in Florence at the Council of Union.

A great many writers put him in Mistra by 1410, based on the theory that since he was judged dangerously influential in Constantinople, Manuel sent him to Mistra where he could contaminate the adolescent Theodoros.  This too is twaddle, if you stop to think about it.

While we have manuscripts from Gemistos, all we know that he actually did at Mistra was to speak at Cleofe's memorial service, and have a conversation with John.

The source that comes closest to indicating a date for Gemistos' arrival is Theodoros' statement in 1433, after Cleofe died, that George Gemistos had been sent by Manuel a few years earlier "to be in our service" and "our" would then have made his arrival after early 1421 when Theodoros and Cleofe were married. Manuel died in late July 1425, which would be the latest possibility for Gemistos’ arrival in the Morea. He was clearly at Mistra in 1427, as the 1433 statement confirmed and extended the gift of land Theodoros had made Gemistos in November 1427, in which he was"to serve our rule."

The problem here with this as evidence is the use of the first-person plural. Is this the royal "we" or does it have a more personal meaning? These grants to Gemistos are the only two extant Greek documents from Theodoros I have found (please let me know if there is another), and both speak of "our" service, one use of the plural in each where the singular -- τὴν βασιλείαν μου/my rule ‒ is otherwise the norm. Both John and Demetrios adjusted the land grant: neither used the plural. In the four personal grants Constantine made in the Morea, there are twenty singulars and five plurals. In the grant to Demetrios Mamonas Gregoras, which survives in a seventeenth-century copy, there are four singulars and three plurals, one of them "in our service," and all four include Theodoros in "our." The fourth grant, for Gemistos -- there are five different Palaiologos documents for the same land -- uses two plurals where it refers to Constantine and Theodoros. The evidence indicates a strong tendency towards a use of the plural to indicate more than one person and, on that basis, provides a reason for thinking Gemistos took up permanent residence at Mistra after Theodoros and Cleofe were married.

Gemistos' writings allow the idea that some of the service he provided Theodoros and Cleofe had to do with gently educating Theodoros regarding the matter of sex  (he denied Cleofe a sexual relationship for the first six years of their marriage) and it may be important that the first land grant to Gemistos was made shortly before the birth of their first child. Even if the written text comes from the Laws, considered a late work, there is no reason the ideas could not have been discussed years earlier.  Ironically, when Scholarios praised Theodoros as a ruler, speaking at his memorial in 1448, he described him as guided by ideas of justice which can also be found in the Laws.

To judge from the survivals of documents from Mistra concerning Gemistos and his family, we  assume a particular closeness to the Palaiologos family. Had other documents survived for other families, perhaps they would be seen as equally close, or closer, but there are fewer than ten survivals for other individuals in comparison with five for the Gemistos family. These five documents record gifts of land, first to Gemistos, and then to his sons. The first, from Theodoros in late 1427, two months before Cleofe gave birth, gave Gemistos a kastro and village at Phanari, making him the governor of a small territory for life, which could be passed on to his legitimate sons (γνήσιοι παῖδες) Demetrios and Andronikos.

A year later, John VIII confirmed this gift and added to it a property at Bryse, possibly considering that Gemistos had two sons who should each have his own inheritance, and probably as a gift of appreciation for the practical advice John had received from Gemistos on the annoying question of Church Union while he was at Mistra.  (In Florence Gemistos recalled that when he discussed the council with John during his trip to the Morea in 1428, he warned that "your visit will accomplish nothing and get nothing for us.")

The Gemistos family, like the Sphrantzes family, was intertwined with the Palaiologos family over at least two generations: Theodoros, John, and Constantine use οἰκεῖος (member of the household) for George Gemistos, and Demetrios uses οἰκεῖοι for his sons.  There may be a slight hint that Demetrios and Andronikos Gemistos were young at the time of the first gift of land in 1427, and that they were both of age by 1433, as that year, after Cleofe’s death, Theodoros issued another document in which he made Demetrios governor of Phanari, and Andronikos governor of Bryse and a place called Kastri.  In early 1449, just before leaving Mistra for Constantinople, Constantine issued an argyrobull confirming Theodoros’ gift of lands, quoting heavily from the 1433 text. Finally, in July 1450, Demetrios Palaiologos -- conventionally assumed to have been antagonistic to Gemistos -- issued an argyrobull to Demetrios and Andronikos again confirming that of Theodoros.  Gemistos was over 90 at this point: does this document indirectly suggest that he was failing severely?

The imitation of the immortality of the gods

Out of the overflowing abundance of images from the Byzantine world, this is the only image I have been able to find that shows affection between a man and a woman. I would be greatful if anyone could offer me another. Some will think of the Digenes plate, but that suggests silliness, and the intimacies in the epic are neither affectionate nor erotic. I have mentioned before my dismay at finding no Byzantine love poetry beyond a single late poem that follows an Italian model.   

In contrast, what I have found on George Gemistos Plethon, has been too much.  An unnecessary number of males -- rarely a woman -- seem called on to discourse on his philosophy of the soul. Very few can write about Gemistos without feeling obliged to discuss his paganism.  And very few can avoid yet another unnecessary revew of his suggestions for reorganizing the Morea on the Spartan method.  (No one notices that his suggestion for 6000 soldiers reflects precisely the number of men shown to be available over and over during the century.)  So over and over in working on my book, needing Gemistos if I was to write about Mistra, I have come up between a rock and a hard place in finding Gemistos inaccesible to my contemporary concerns.

Until I analyzed his monodia for Cleofe. George Gemistos spoke of the beauty of her luminous body, and of her even more luminous soul. He, in fact, mentioned her beautiful body three different times.  And it occurred to me that this was a man with a physical body, and a man who liked the fact of a woman having a physical body, and that he was a man who has been carefully muffled by the heirs of the Byzantines who really did not like bodies at all. When you treat him like Plato -- even Plato wasn't Plato -- you get a marmoreal automaton.  My Greek is not adequate to sustain me through very much of Gemistos, so I was glad to find the Alexandre, Pléthon: traite des lois, which has a facing French version, and between them I found evidence of a warm and interesting human being.  This is  Gemistos on affection between and man and a woman.

Very early in the Laws he says, "For the others [in contrast to the celibate] it is a thing most beautiful and most divine to marry and have children." Later he says  -- paraphrasing -- that the sexual relationship was instituted by the gods to perpetuate the race of mortals, to give them a sort of immortality, and that desire is a gift of the gods.  This way, we approach the gods. We cannot deny the importance of this act which in our mortal nature is the imitation of the immortality of the gods. We ought to see that we do it well. We do this [in private] not because of shame, but because most humans do not wish to display publicly those religious acts which they regard as the most holy. It is the most personal thing people can do, and since it is one of the most important things given to people to do, it deserves to be done as perfectly as possible. Nothing is more shameful than an important act poorly done.

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.

Cities

Idealized city walls, Pantanassa, Mistra

I have been trying to get a portrait of the cities of the Morea in the fifteenth century.  City, in this case, indicates the presence of walls, the position of bishop who may reside elsewhere, a market, craftsmen, some kind of local administration with a governor or his representative, and possibly a few foreign merchants or their agents. One can make no assumptions about size or architecture.

The port cities -- Patras, Clarenza, Corinth, Kalamata, Methoni, Koroni, Nauplion -- were small and shabby (possibly Monemvasia was an exception early in the century), and the interior cities -- Mistras, Mouchli, Leontari, Longaniko, Nykli, Mostenitza, Andravida, Chalandritsa -- were small. As a comparison, fifteenth-century Italy -- admittedly the most urbanized area of Europe -- had more than 90 cities with a population of 5000 or more. In the Morea, none is likely to have had more than 2000. 

A Latin memo of 1437 reported that the Morea had 30 cities, 200 of the strongest fortifications, and 400 villages: this was propaganda to encourage aid for Greece and cannot be used for court evidence. Pero Tafur, seeing Corinth in the 1430s, said that it was much depopulated. In the Ottoman cadaster of 1460-1463 it had 392 households, or about 1400 people, making it the largest city in the cadaster which represented between 1/3 and 1/2 of the population of the Morea. The other "large" cities in the cadaster were Vumero with 242 households, Ag. Georgios with 242, and Leondari with 204. All of them were larger than Argos with 115 households in 1450, fewer than 200 households a generation later in 1480.  (I have been using 4.2 as a multiplier for households to get the population.)

Tafur reported Clarenza depopulated, though it had apparently been a small city at best: in the 1390s it had only 300 households. Tafur was there in 1437 and there was some rebuilding and refortification just after 1441. Mistra is unlikely to have had as many as 2000 people within the walls on that steep hillside -- Tito Papamastorakis thinks only 1000 after comparing maps of the excavations with Venetian maps of 1700 and the population then of under 1100 -- and it was a heavily masculinized city primarily of monasteries and church administration.    The former Frankish capital of Andravida had 36 inhabitants. In 1460 Mouchli and three outlying villages accounted for 105 households, or fewer than 500 people.

Minio suggests an unprepossessing Nauplion -- "the best house that I could manage, considering the condition of the place." Casola found Methoni with its 2000 inhabitants shabby, the houses of wood, the cathedral impoverished, and said that, "in the finest and widest street there, the houses appeared to be shut up for the most part, and when I stood in the market place I did not see many people." Even late Byzantine Athens had grain fields within the city walls, and in 1395 was said to have been a town of 1000 houses. If so, it was larger than anything in the Morea -- except, again, Monemvasia. Fortifications were often mud-brick and rubble, like the city wall of Argos, or the outer wall of Nauplion at the Ottoman attack in 1463. 

It is a depressing image of the Morea, but one could hardly expect better of cities in a culture whose archons occupied themselves by raiding the food resources of other cities.  The Ottoman raids are blamed for much, but they cannot bear all the blame here. 

 Idealized city from the Kariye Djami