The Necessitous Inhabitants of Greece: Part One

House on Aigina where Miller was based
"The ancient houses in this island are now all cleared from the dirt
and rubbish which filled them, and the earth is again peopled
with inhabitants, but in the most wretched condition."

In August 1828, Col. Jonathan P. Miller of Vermont published a book with the title The Condition of Greece in 1827 and 1828; Being an Exposition of the Poverty, Distress, and Misery to Which the Inhabitants Have Been Reduced by the Destruction of Their Towns and Villages, and the Ravages of their Country by a Merciless Turkish Foe.

Miller had been what he called "an unruly dissipated youth."  After a religious conversion while in the army, he left and went to the University of Vermont to study Greek classics. Coincidentally with the college buildings burning down and destroying his books, he learned of the death of Byron. He volunteered to fight for Greek independence, with the backing of the Boston Greek Committee, and arrived at Missolonghi in November 1824, the first American Philhellene. 

He learned Greek quickly, and acquired a reputation as the "Yankee Dare-devil," fighting Ibrahim Pasha at the Battle of the Mills near Nauplion in June 1825. After the fall of Missolonghi in 1826, he returned to the States where he actively campaigned for Greek independence, lecturing and raising funds for civilian relief.  In 1827, he was sent by the Greek Committee to take a relief ship to Greece, one of 8 the States sent in 1827 and 1828.  Seventeen more embarked from Ancona in 1826 and 1827, sent by a Swiss banker, Eynard, and the Paris Greek Committee.

Miller's book reports the donations for which he was responsible. The donations of cash amounted to $36,209.30, the largest individual donations being for $100.  Many donations were in change, many were for 1, 3, or 5 dollars. It is impossible to calculate a modern equivalent.  Miller's donors include: John J. Astor, A Friend, A Friend to religion and humanity and a friend to the Greeks, A Lady, several identified as A Gentleman,A Mechanic's weeks work ($5), A Soldier of the American Revolution, and someone from a previous relief ship giving back the remains of his expense money.  Collections came from churches, schools and other institutions, including the NY High School, Eighth Presbyterian Church, German Reformed Church Christie Street, Pupils in a Select Male School, Proceeds of a Ball at the Park Theatre, Master Stone Cutters' Society, New York Typographical Society, and West Point Cadets.

Most interesting are the donations of goods.  A very partial list of individual gifts:

• 20 pair men's shoes
• 25 "   ladies    "
• 12 pair drill trowsers
• one bundle clothing
• 15 vests
• 4 blankets, 4 sheets, 2 pillows & cases, 1 counterpane
• one piece of flannel
• 53 caps
• 1 barrel of beef [there were many barrels of food and flour]
• 3 casks of hams
• 1 barrel Indian meal
• 1 "         "         " and 25 chemises
• a chest and assortment of medicines
• 28 barrels of flour and 1 of pork
• 1 barrel mackerel, and 1 of smoked meat
• provisions and clothing

The Greek Committee's letter of instructions said, more than once: "You are aware that this cargo is the result of contributions made by benevolent individuals and associations . . . to the sole object of feeding and clothing the necessitous inhabitants of Greece.  . . . these are not designed to supply the garrisons . . . but are intended for the relief of the women, children, and old men, non-combatants of Greece."

Miller and his ship Chancellor arrived at Nauplion on the night of 23 May, and in the morning, discovered with delight that the US frigate Constitution was in the bay. [This lovely ship still sails, and can be visited in Boston harbor.]  After unloading some 160 barrels of bread and flour at Myloi, 60 for the Greeks in the hills, and 100 for the women and children who had escaped Missolonghi, Miller received a letter signed by Makryannis and several others ordering him to come to Poros to the current seat of the Greek government.  He left a large selection of supplies in Nauplion with Samuel Gridley Howe [much more about Howe in another entry] to distribute there.

Makryannis

Miller went to Poros, met with members of the government, and was warmly welcomed.  He set about discharging his cargo, which was not easy, as there were no wharves, and everything had to be off-loaded onto small boats and rowed in from the Chancellor out in the bay. Makryannis immediately introduced Miller to families in need of help to whom he gave barrels of flour and pieces of cloth.

In contrast, Howe wrote to Miller that Kolokotronis and Grivas had tried to seize the supplies in Nauplion for their soldiers.  It took the authority of the Captain of the Constitution to force them to return the keys of the storehouse to Howe.

Theodoros Kolokotronis

The efforts to distribute food and clothing to the needy with some fairness was constantly interrupted by attempts of one captain and another to commandeer supplies for his soldier or his family.  Miller was armed, known as a fighter, and did not hesitate on occasion to use force to keep control of the decisions.  His reports of his distributions are, for the most part, short and unemotional, but the cumulative effect is shattering:

• Gave cloth to six girls and four small boys, sufficient to make them all suits of clothes.  Gave also to six women, a pair of shoes to each.
• Commenced delivering out the flour to the poor widows and orphans at Poros, collected from various places.  To those of Poros I gave seven barrels of flour, which were divided equally among ninety-seven souls: to the others I delivered one hundred and twenty barrels of flour, to be divided among one thousand eight hundred and two souls.  Sent the half barrel to Spetzia for the suffering family of eleven individuals.  Also delivered about one thousand yards of cotton and woolen cloth to the naked.
• In the evening I took a long walk on the Peloponnesian side of the Island. . . . I found a family under a tree, the mother of which was sick of a fever, with four children around her.  Having nothing else with me, I gave the mother two dollars, at the same time telling here that it was a donation from the ladies in America.  The poor creature was overwhelmed with joy.  She called upon God to bless the souls of those who had so liberally supplied her wants.
• Gave to the refugees from Thebes and Athens fifty-five garments, out of the box sent from New Haven, in Connecticut; also six pair of shoes.
• In the evening I saw upon the Platine [plateia] a man whom I thought I knew, though he was disguised in a Hydraote dress.  It proved to be one Allen, from Kentucky, a man whom I am ashamed to acknowledge as a countryman.  Any thing further concerning this person, will not be necessary for those who have been in the Levant for the last three years.
• There arrived at this place last evening six females, who had just escaped from the Arabs.  Early this morning they were brought to my quarters. . . . A girl of eleven or twelve years of age stood before me, with her nose cut off, close to her face, and her lips all cut off, so that the gums and jaws were left entirely naked.  All this had been done more than a year ago, and the poor creature was yet alive.  Her refusal to yield to the embraces of an Arab was the cause of this horrid and shocking barbarity.
• We called upon the gallant Canaris, having previously selected from among the dry goods a fine piece of light-coloured cassimere.  We thought it advisable to make him a present of it, in the name of the benevolent citizens of our country, as it is well known that he is poor, and notwithstanding his services, often straitened in his means of supporting his family. [Canaris was regarded as a hero in the United States for his fireships. The cadets of the US Constellation, sister-ship of the Constitution, had been thrilled to be introduced to him, and Herman Melville included the fireships in Moby Dick.]

Konstantinos Kanaris

To be continued.


The pictures here by Bavarian artist Karl Krazeisen  were used for the more familiar etchings.  The nuances of character which he conveys, and the youth of many of the participants, are lost in the etchings. They are from the collection of the Ethniki Pinakothiki-Mouseio Alexandrou Soutzou of Nauplion.

The Condition of Greece in 1827 and 1828; Being an Exposition of the Poverty, Distress, and Misery to Which the Inhabitants Have Been Reduced by the Destruction of Their Towns and Villages, and the Ravages of their Country by a Merciless Turkish Foe can be downloaded from Google books.

The Mocenigo War: Part One

In 1470, after Nicolò da Canale helped lose Negroponte to Mehmed II, Venice replaced him as Captain General of the Fleet with Pietro Mocenigo.  In 1474, after a series of military and diplomatic successes along the coast of Asia Minio and Cyprus, Venice elected Mocenigo doge.  One of the sopracomiti -- ship commanders -- Coriolano Cippico, a Dalmatian in his 50s, wrote an account of these ventures for Marcantonio Morosini, Venetian ambassador to Burgundy,.  Burgundy was theoretically an ally of Venice in this war that Pius II had got going -- he called it a crusade against the infidel but he died before the ships sailed -- and this document was most likely intended to encourage Burgundian participation and financing by reassuring them about the Venetian leader.

The document is printed in the 7th volume of Konstantine Sathas' invaluable collection of Venetian documents for 15th-century Greece which you can download here. Cippico's description of the stratioti seems to be the basis of the famous description Sanudo gave later.  Cippico writes:

The Venetians, in all the cities of the Morea that are under their dominion, have hired many Albanians on horseback, who are called by the Greek name stratioti.  These with their swift raiding have so wasted the part of the Morea that is under the Turks that is is almost a desert and a solitude.  These people are by nature intensely rapacious, and more apt to raid than to give battle.  They use a shield, sword, and lance; few have breastplates; the others wear a bombazine cuirass as protection against the blows of an enemy.  The most valorous of all are those from Nauplion.

Mocenigo's tactics were exceptional for that time: he took took the stratioti with the fleet, and not in roundships and towed hulks, but on the war galleys, carrying ten horses on each galley.  Depending on how many allies were sailing with him, this allowed him 400 mounted stratioti.  Without heavy, slower ships, he was able to attack with exceptional speed, which was increased by his having the fleet sail to its target by night so the attack could begin dawn.  Cippico describes that over and over in this account.  Mocenigo had certain principles: he would not attack Greek islands held by the Turks, because the residents were Christians, but only sites on the Turkish mainland.

After a brief description of an attack on the mainland opposite Lesbos.  Cippico describes the division of the spoils, a few comments in parentheses:

The stratioti brought the General the heads of their dead enemies, to have a ducat each, as the General had promised them: this has always been their custom.  The General loaded the galleys with the spoils, and came to a deserted island with good landings, between Chios and the mainland, which is now called Panagia.  Here were put all the spoils. Three arbitrators were selected from the sopracomiti, two Venetians and the third a Dalmatian, which is the custom always used in such circumstances.  The arbitrators, according to ancient Venetian custom, gave one tenth of all the spoils to the Captain General. (1/10)  The stratioti for their part kept two-thirds (6/10), and the arbitrators one-third (3/10).  The General had promised them this.  All the prisoners were consigned to the arbitrators: these were sold at auction.  (It appears from various reports in Cippico that slave dealers followed the fleet.)  The money was divided in this way.  First, all the soldiers who had brought in an enemy prisoner were given three ducats.  Then, the sopracomiti were paid for the expense of the stratioti's horses. The rest was divided equally among the galleys.  The galley of the provveditori was given double what was given to the other galleys.  The sopracomiti kept one third, and distributed the rest among the soldiers and oarsmen, according to rank.

The next division of the spoils was made on Delos, where Cippico noted columns, statues, remains of temples, an amphitheater, and a colossus of 15 cubits with the inscription

                                  ΝΑΞΙΟΙ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙ

The people of Naxos to Apollo

The next island episode was on Samos, :

Samos at present is a deserted island and has always been celebrated for its fertility.  Now it is full only of all sorts of animals, an abundance of woodland honey which one can find all around in the forests, and springs of sweet and living water that rise in all parts.  The horsemen and soldiers were disembarked to drill and refresh themselves.  The soldiers and others went hunting and while they were taking various prey, a youth of the Dalmatian nation and language encountered a bear of marvelous size.  The bear avoided his blow, went behind the boy and knocked him to the ground.  The boy, without losing spirit, jammed his fingers into both the bear's eyes and held its head so that it would not lacerate him, long enough for another youth of the same nation to kill the bear from behind with a sword.  On all sides there was a great killing of animals, and the whole army was employed in the hunt.  Several days were spent  in festival, with a great deal to eat and drink.  More than anyone else, the Schiavoni, of whom there were a great many among the oarsmen, sang drinking songs.  After everyone was sated, they boasted about the great deeds they had done, and how they had prospered so successfully against such vile men.

More from Cippico in another entry.

The top image is a detail from a Genoese tapestry of the Battle of Lepanto; the bear is from a medieval bestiary, and is actually licking her cub into shape rather than eating something.

Toufa, Toupha: Part Three

 Detail, second king, from Adoration of the Magi,
Gentile da Fabriano, 1422-23,  Florence

An earlier Western conception of the toupha has turned up, this time in the Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano, a Florentine painter, thirty-five years before the Benozzo Gozzoli  Procession of the Magi, also in Florence.  I had blithely assumed that Gozzoli had created this toupha:

Gozzoli painted his Magi in 1459-60, and I had been pleased with the discovery that not only was his painting based on the visit of John VIII Palaiologos to Florence in 1438, but that this toupha uses the red, gold, green, and white colors of the Medici who commissioned it. (The Medici were sponsors of a religious organization that specifically honored the Magi.)

However, Gentile da Fabriano painted his Magi in 1422-23 and the toupha may have been his design.  Here the toupha has red and gilded feathers, the Strozzi colors of red and yellow, and this painting was commissioned by Palla Strozzi.

(click to enlarge)

Gentile paints the the Magi three times as they process into the realm of magic and off the edge of this world, and each time one of them is wearing the gold and red feather toupha:

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

There are other elements to notice.  The forked beard, for one, which is very common in Western portrayals of John.  The short-sleeved outer garment, typically Byzantine.  And that this toupha-wearing king is the second king in the line to adore the Infant.

Now back to the Gozzoli.  He, too, is a second king.  The beard hints at a fork, although not obviously.  And he is wearing that short-sleeved outer garment. (Do notice the luxurious fabrics and colors both are wearing.)

John was in Ferrara and Florence in 1438, trying desperately to get help for Constantinople.  John was in Venice and Milan in the winter of 1423 and spring of 1424 trying desperately to get help for Constantinople.

But: Gentile da Fabriano signed and dated his altarpiece in May 1423.

And the beard turns out not to be diagnostic.  Other painters of the period have a second king with a forked beard, or a king with the short outer sleeves, though I have not identified any more combinations of forked beards and short sleeves.  The forked beard seems to be an attribute of  "a king from somewhere exotic."  So do the sleeves.

Had Gentile seen pictures of the toufa, such as this from 1340?  Or pictures of John? Or pictures of Eastern emperors?

Moving on to the animals, Gozzoli gave his magi cheetahs and a lynx.  Gentile includes a cheetah and a leopard, on the rumps of their keepers' horses, and hunting.

Clearly, Gozzoli drew heavily from Gentile's work and these quotations must have given a great sense of security to his viewers who were looking at a very different style of painting. Surely some art historian has tidily explained this, and the business about the two Second Kings, and some reader can send me the relevant references -- which I have not found although I have looked for them.

This is the great pleasure of research: there is always something else out there you haven't seen yet.  It is not a matter of "Gotcha!"  It is the joy of the exploration that leads from Cyriaco's ridiculous sketch to Gentile's shimmering gold.  It is the  matter of the journey, riding with the Magi, following the shining track, discovering the unlimited abundance just over the next hill.




Toufa, Toupha: Part Two
Toufa, Toupha: Part One
The Leopard-Wranglers: Part Two
The Leopard-Wranglers

The Capi

 

 Manessis icon, 1546
S. Giorgio dei Greci, Venice,
(probably) Comin Manessis, d. 1565

  

There are very few pictures of named kapetanioi to be found. I have identified, with help from a friend, a total of five -- all of them painted in Italy in Italian style -- and only one is a real portrait, though one other shows a recognizable face. All five of them, in Italy, considered Nauplion as their home town and that is mostly because of the accident of history that let Methoni and Koroni be taken by the Turks in 1500, and let Nauplion stay Venetian for another 40 years.

 Manessis icon, S. Giorgio dei Greci, Venice,
Ioannis Manessis, son of Comin.

  Manessis icon, S. Giorgio dei Greci, Venice,
Giorgios  Manessis, son of Comin.

They never dressed that way in Greece.  In this icon the Greek-Albanian Manessis men have become Italian soldiers. These three shown here as donors of one icon were all capi of stratioti.  Comin may just possibly have been Nicolò or Todoro (d. 1545): the records are confusing. Members of the family were prominent in the Venetian-Ottoman War (1463-1478), and in those years owned land in Mani, in the mountains above Kardamyle.  

During the war, five Manessis capi whom the Venetian command considered homini da conte had to beg for food for their families because they were near starvation, and men in one of the Manessis villages finally made a private peace with the Turks to avoid starvation.  Later they went back to fighting for the Venetians and one of them, Marino, was captured and flayed by the Turks for his treason.  The Venetians felt a strong obligation to families who had risked so much for them, and after the war, made sure they had positions as capi and land for their families near Nauplion.

 

 Stratioto Demetrios Palaiologos, in Venetian dress

Theodoros Palaiologos, father of the man in this picture, was given a fief with a castle at Thermissi, in Nauplion territory, in 1479 (he was aged about 30) in return for leading troops in the Venetian-Ottoman war of 1464-1478. For the next thirty or so years, Theodoros, and Demetrios in turn, when they weren't off fighting somewhere else, were difficult tenants for the Nauplion administration: they ignored the tax requirements, and used their men for private raids into Turkish territory, and their Greek tenants complained to the Venetians about their violence. 

After the peace treaty was signed, Theodoros was rehired to lead a small band of horsemen in Friuli. He was made military governor of Zakynthos in 1485, and married Maria Kantakouzene of Corfù in 1486. He fought for Venice in the terrafirma in 1489-95.  After that, Venice found Theodoros useful as a spy, an interpreter, and a minor diplomat.  His name is remembered in Venice now as one of the men who persuaded the Senato to establish a Greek rite church in Venice. He died in 1532.

The position of capi passed from father to son. Demetrios eventually moved to Venice and became a member of the Greek confraternity there.  He probably died in 1570, shortly after making his will  He identified himself as "da Costantinopoli," probably figuring that with his name, Constantinople would be more advantageous than Nauplion or Zakynthos. Some of the family had escaped from Constantinople in 1453.

The  picture of Demetrios appears at the end of the Gospel of John in a gospel book of the mid-14th century, made in Constantinople.  The text behind his head reads X(ριστο)ῦ τοῦ Θ(εο)ῦ Δημήτριος Παλαιολόγος: the servant of Christ the Lord, Demetrios Palaiologos.  The book is now in the National Library of Russia. The artist, probably Markos Vathas or a member of his workshop,painted a number of Italian-style images in the book.  There are also several imperial-type images added to the book by a Greek-style painter, which Demetrios probably commissioned.

 Mercurio Bua, by Lorenzo Lotto
1527-1530

Mercurio Bua (1478-1452?) was a son nephew of one of the leading archons and capi of the Morea, Petro Bua, who fought outside the Morea for the Venetians once the peace treaty had been signed. Members of his family led the Bua revolt at Nauplion in December 1480 in support of the Kladas revolt when he was an infant.  After Petro Bua died, in 1489, Mercurio (formerly Maurikios) moved to Venice and changed his name to something Italians could manage  Although the family had originally moved from Albania to Ioannina to the Morea over several generations, Mercurio identified himself as coming from Nauplion.

Sanudo said he was a small man, but this did not seem to affect the regard in which he was held.  Beginning with a small band of men, twenty-five or so, he acquired a tremendous record during his career as condottiero, rather than a capo or kapetanios, and eventually was awarded the title of Count of Aquino and Roccasecca from the Holy Roman Empire.  He was twice widowed: this portrait shows a small skull and fallen rose petals beside his hand, and is thought to have been painted in commemoration of one of those losses.

This painting shows something else.  This is not the face of a proud man, which he certainly was, or of a comfortable man, which he had achieved along with the knowledge of a very good and fashionable portrait painter, or of a man who has won an extraordinary number of battles.  He poses as a duty. He seems to be bracing his weight with his right hand and leaning against the wall.  For years, various people had been commenting that he had gout, and once that he had had to miss a festival because he was in bed with gout. Shortly before this portrait was painted, Sanudo wrote that his body was full of gout. As gout advances it affects not just the feet, but joints over the whole body.  The crystal deposits can be felt in many places under the skin and even break through. Bua was in excruciating pain, as well as grief, for this portrait.

When Mercurio Bua died in Treviso, in 1542, he was given a magnificent tomb in S.ta Maria Maggiore.

One of the interesting things in the stories of these men is that  four, whom outsiders might identify as Albanian, identified themselves as coming from Nauplion -- originally a Greek city but by 1500  Frankish and then Venetian for nearly 300 years. The fifth man had the name to enable him to claim Constantinople.  The modern insistence on nationalism comes from immature egos, and is an advantage only to suppliers of armaments. To insist on these men as Albanians is to completely ignore the culture in which they lived.  They spoke and wrote Greek and Venetian, and worshiped as Greek Orthodox.  They lived by choice in Venice and the terrafirma. They were professional military, even though sometimes their bands were as small as 15.  We have no idea what they would claim for themselves, beyond Nauplion.

Venetian documents in the 15th century consider Albanians either [1] people living in that geographical area; or [2] migrant herders in the stato da mar territories.  Stratioti were military who lived on land assignments, an inheritance from the Byzantine tradition, whether they were Greek or Albanian or of some other origin.  Albanians were migratory; they moved about with their flocks and had no fixed address.  They may have been soldiers with capi, but they were not identified as stratioti in the documents and when there was no war they paid no attention to Venetian authority.  The matter of stability was key for Venetians, and the Venetians saw that Albanian loyalty was first of all to the clan, not to Venice.  So one of the things you see with these four men is that, though their families of origin were Albanian, they have become urbanized and ultimately Venetian.

My great appreciation to Ersie Burke for her identifications in the Manessis icon, and her information on all of these men. Her book, Coming to Venice, about stato da mar Greeks in Venice, should be out in a year.  It will have much more substantive information to offer about all these capi and their families.


For Mercurio Bua and his portrait, the source is  
Lorenzo Lotto. Il Gentiluomo della Galleria Borghese

Maria Luisa Ricciardi

Artibus et Historiae
Vol. 10, No. 19 (1989), pp. 85-106

Published by: IRSA s.c.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1483285

NOTE: While I have put links here to an Italian site on condottieri , the information should be used with great caution.  We have found  a considerable number of errors in family names and places of origin.

The Man Who Shot Jesse James Tried to Marry my Great-Grandmother

Esther Kirby Whitehurst

My grandmother, Ann Whitehurst Jordan, told me this story about her mother.  She, my grandmother, loved history -- mostly history of the mother of the Gracchi  and "I cannot tell a lie" sort -- and frequently illustrated some point or another with an historic example.  She shared a birthday with Mozart, and played the violin somewhat, and so she considered herself an authority on Mozart:  his favorite color was yellow; he loved canaries.  She was sure that my grandfather's name, Eugene, meant that he came from an aristocratic family, and that we were descended from the fifth wife of Henry VIII.  I am relating this to give the story a kind of context, to convey her sense of historical rigor, and to explain why I have been so fascinated that she considered Jesse James to be a hero.

My father, the missionary and preacher, did too.  Along with millions of other lower-middle-class Americans in the great middle strip of the US from Minnesota down to Mississippi and Alabama.  In their stories, Jesse James was a sort of Robin Hood, who took from the big banks and the railroads and gave to the poor.  Contemporary historians regard Jesse James otherwise, but I grew up with the popular hero, and for this story to work he is the popular hero.

My great-grandmother, Esther Kirby lived with her family in Kossuth, Mississippi, in Tishomingo County out of which came such horrors in the 1960s. There are five towns in the US named for Kossuth, and one of the endearing things about small-town America for me is the towns named for these beacons of freedom -- Bolivar, Tennessee and West Virginia, Ypsilanti Michigan.  Esther was born in 1860, she had heard the guns from the battle of Shiloh in 1862, and her family had taken in and nursed some of the wounded.  Her father--Irish famine immigrant Timothy Kirby -- went to war for the Confederacy, was taken prisoner, and interned in a Union prison at Alton, Illinois.  He so won the heart of the commandant that he was allowed to go on leave to see his family, on his word of honor that he would return.  He was given a Union uniform and one of Esther's earliest memories was being told that, "Ma's in the kitchen kissing a Yankee."

The family story says that he returned.  His CSA military record reports him as AWOL.  Both could be right.

At some point -- late 1870s, early 1880s -- the Kirbys took in two boarders, Bob and Charlie Ford, who traveled along the railroad line, stopping off where they could get work building chimneys.  After a while, Esther noticed that Bob Ford was, as my grandmother said, "sweet on her."  Then one day, when she was tidying up the dresser, she noticed a gold ring.  She told her mama.  Her mama told Timothy Kirby.  Timothy Kirby told Esther's brothers when they came in from the fields, and that evening the Kirby brothers escorted Bob and Charlie Ford to the county line and told them not to let themselves be seen in those parts again.

That was pretty much it.  Esther Kirby married Zebedee Benjamin Whitehurst on 26 January 1882.  In April 1882 word exploded across the country that Bob Ford, the dirty little coward, had shot Jesse James in the back on the 3rd.  While he was straightening his mother's photograph.

Shooting someone in the back was, of course, unspeakable.  But to dishonor a man's mother -- I don't know what the modern historians have done about his mother's photograph.

But look at the conjunction of those dates.  What is one to think?

My grandmother told me this story when I was 10, when we were living in Missouri, and my father drove us over to St. Joseph to see the James' house -- and retired President Harry Truman on the veranda of his.

The thought of how closely I escaped the humiliation of being the great-granddaughter of the man who shot Jesse James frightened me for years.  There wasn't a person in the country who didn't know Bob Ford as the dirty little coward.

It took me many more years to realize that I was the great-granddaughter of Zebedee Benjamin Whitehurst whose first love was books, and who had been known to buy another book when buying food for the family was a problem.  I am, most definitely, his descendant.

Esther Kirby Whitehurst at her desk.

My aunt said, "She did her correspondence
in the morning in a fine hand."

Ikaros at Yerákova

 

 Kevin Andrews at AcroCorinth, 1950
LIFE Magazine

Three years ago Pierre MacKay reviewed the new edition of Kevin Andrew's Castles of the Morea with Glen Bugh's fine introductory essay.  Recently, a publisher who had seen the review sent us a copy of the new edition of Andrews' Flight of Ikaros, the most powerful of all the "travel" books ever written about Greece.  This is the original edition, not the second edition that was tarted up with political harangue.  There is more than enough of the political intensity and fury of the Civil War in the original Ikaros to satisfy anyone.

This new edition, has to my mind, wrongly, and without editorial explanation changed at least one of the names Andrews used and so it shifts the way Andrews came at things.  For example, he wrote extensively of the harshness -- terror-- he encountered at Yerákova, in the meanness between ELAS and CHI, and having no preconception about Yerákova we are shattered by what he encountered, particularly in the long conversations with Kostandi.  

This new edition has helpfully changed Yerákova to Mistra, and once you have the name Mistra you cannot but clutter his account with your own ideas of the place. Even though you recognize Andrews' "flat triangular slope . . . the ghost city . . . seven centuries old" as long as it is Yerákova you are forced to see Andrew's city. (Although the new edition missed the Yerákovítes (192; orig. 188) and should have turned them into Mistriotes.)


This is Andrews' account of his first visit to Ayios Yannis:

Walking along a rocky lane between the narrow walls, I looked for a way in, but there was only an arch opening on a courtyard with the three gates of the church walled up with masonry at the far end.

Then a voice called; an old woman leaning over a parapet overhead motioned me to another archway farther down the wall.  Inside, a flight of open steps led up the side of the church.  She stood at the top, clawing at the air. 'Come up, come up.  You can't get in the other way.  There are no proper stairs inside for us, the evil-fated.'  She withdrew through a tiny door, mumbling incomprehensibly with toothless gums.  I followed.

Coming in out of the light, I slowly began to see figures moving across a vaulted platform littered with piles of bedding and household goods.  It was the upper part of the church originally intended for the use of women who were not allowed to come nearer the ceremonies below.  Everywhere, a grey half-light hung in the vaulted spaces of the clerestory, filtered down from rings of windows underneath the several domes into a narrow depth of columns and darkly frescoes walls.  Through air stale with the after smell of incense and snuffed-out candles I could just make out the shrouded, icon-bearing encrustations of sanctuary and altar when I stepped on somebody's leg, and a boy with a fat, round face sat up convulsively, then sank back gurgling and slowly jerking on a straw pallet.

The old woman said, 'She can't move, poor burning soul.  She's paralysed, eh heh, what can you do? . . . We live close to one another in this church . . . It is not safe in our houses.  Here we are all together.'

 . . . I was glad to be out in the light, but the sun had gone.  We went round through the courtyard I had first seen and passed under four archways into a graceful peristyle of smooth marble columns, open to the east over the plain of Sparta.  There was an upper balcony with wooden poles and tiled roof, and in one colonnade paving-stones and the timbers of a fallen stair lay ina heap under a great hole in the gallery above.  Through a door to the church on the lower level half-naked children came out and stared at me.

Ayios Yannis is Ag. Demetrios, the Mitropoleos.  The picture above was taken after the refugees were scooped out and the church cleaned. 


If you do not own The Flight of Ikaros, you should.  Amazon has it inexpensively.  The original 1959 edition is more expensive from Amazon, less bought from an English bookseller.

Nauplion: Spolia: Part Two

 
A reader from Nauplion recently responded to my request for more spolia several months ago and sent me six "new" finds. This first is a late Ottoman inscription spotted in a private yard, now turned on its side but originally a tombstone.  It reads:

CA[L/N?]PANIN OĞLU MERHU[M]
gone to rest          son of
ABU BAKR RUHN [??]
AL-FATIHA  (name of first verse of Quran)

  (See reader's correction in Comments.) 

The next is a second is a used and reused classical doorstep rotated 90 degrees for use as a doorstep on the south side of Panagia.

 My correspondent found several spolia in the walls around the Pentadelphia bastion and the walk beside the swimming area where -- unaccountably -- I never managed to walk during my 10 visits to Nauplion in 10 months.  This next  is particularly interesting.  Possibly it is related to the two faces on the front of the Arsenale at the platea. I would love to learn more about it.

This fragile Ionic fragment is to the right of the Sea Gate. 

And this piece, that looks to me like a cannon butt, is to the left of the Sea Gate: 

Finally, a pretty piece from the side of the 1830s building that was once the Ministry of the Armed Forces, on Papanikolao St., near Ag. Spyridon.  It is a shame that the owners of the building have not shown it more respect.

There are 6 pieces of spolia in this entry and 12 in the first.  Considering the length of time Nauplion has been inhabited, there should be more.  I suspect that private gardens shelter quite a few not easily photographed by the passer-by.  If anyone has found and photographed spolia in Argos, I would be delighted to include them here, too.  Or, for that matter, spolia anywhere between Kiveri-Argos-Nauplion-Tolo.

My great appreciation to Prof. Keith Sturgess of Nauplion for making the time to take these photographs for me. 

Pierre A. MacKay read the Ottoman inscription.

 

Columbus: What They Wrote

Parrots, Peter Boell

Two contemporaries of Columbus report what they had learned about his voyages:

Pietro Bembo's History of Venice:
Heading from there [the Canaries] into the setting sun for 33 days together, he discovered six islands, two of them very large indeed, where nightingales sing in November and naked men of a gentle nature use boats made of a single tree trunk. These people have a cereal which they call maize, with much bigger ears and stalks than ours, reedy foliage, and very numerous plump grains which are attached to the ear and covered with a sheath in place of beards, which it casts off as it matures. they have very few kinds of quadrupeds, among them tiny dogs which are actually mute and do not bark. But they do have a great many types of birds, both larger and smaller than ours, so that some little birds are found which together with their nests weigh no more than a 24th of an ounce each. 

There are parrots of various shapes and colors in great abundance. They collect fleeces which grow by themselves from the woods and hills, but when they want to make them whiter and finer, they clean them and plant them by their homes. They have gold, which they collect in the sands of the rivers; they do not have iron. In its place they use specially hard and sharp stones, both for hollowing out their boats and for shaping other wood for domestic use and working gold. But the gold they work only for ornament, wearing it suspended from their pierced ears and nostrils -- they are indeed unacquainted with coinage, nor do they use any kind of money. 

*     *     *     *     * 

Piri Re'is: annotations on the Atlantic map:

These coasts are named the shores of Antilia. They were discovered in the year 896 of the Arab calendar. But it is reported thus, that a Genoese infidel, his name was Colombo, be it was who discovered these places. For instance, a book fell into the hands of the said Colombo, and be found it said in this book that at the end of the Western Sea [Atlantic] that is, on its western side, there were coasts and islands and all kinds of metals and also precious stones. The above-mentioned, having studied this book thoroughly, explained these matters one by one to the great of Genoa and said: "Come, give me two ships, let me go and find these places." They said: "O unprofitable man, can an end or a limit be found to the Western Sea? Its vapour is full of darkness." The above-mentioned Colombo saw that no help was forthcoming from the Genoese, he sped forth, went to the Bey of Spain [king], and told his tale in detail. They too answered like the Genoese. In brief Colombo petitioned these people for a long time, finally the Bey of Spain gave him two ships, saw that they were well equipped, and said:

"O Colombo, if it happens as you say, let us make you kapudan [admiral] to that country." Having said which he sent the said Colombo to the Western Sea. The late Gazi Kemal had a Spanish slave. The above-mentioned slave said to Kemal Reis, he had been three times to that land with Colombo. He said: "First we reached the Strait of Gibraltar, then from there straight south and west between the two . . . [illegible]. Having advanced straight four thousand miles, we saw an island facing us, but gradually the waves of the sea became foamless, that is, the sea was becalmed and the North Star--the seamen on their compasses still say star--little by little was veiled and became invisible, and be also said that the stars in that region are not arranged as here. They are seen in a different arrangement. They anchored at the island which they had seen earlier across the way, the population of the island came, shot arrows at them and did not allow them to land and ask for information.

The males and the females shot hand arrows. The tips of these arrows were made of fishbones, and the whole population went naked and also very . . . [illegible]. Seeing that they could not land on that island; they crossed to the other side of the island, they saw a boat. On seeing them; the boat fled and they [the people in the boat] dashed out on land. They [the Spaniards] took the boat. They saw that inside of it there was human flesh. It happened that these people were of that nation which went from island to island hunting men and eating them.

They said Colombo saw yet another island, they neared it, they saw that on that island there were great snakes. They avoided landing on this island and remained there seventeen days. The people of this island saw that no harm came to them from this boat, they caught fish and brought it to them in their small ship's boat [filika]. These [Spaniards] were pleased and gave them glass beads. It appears that he [Columbus] had read-in the book that in that region glass beads were valued. Seeing the beads they brought still more fish. These [Spaniards] always gave them glass beads.

One day they saw gold around the arm of a woman, they took the gold and gave her beads. They said to them, to bring more gold, we will give you more beads, [they said]. They went and brought them much gold. It appears that in their mountains there were gold mines. One day, also, they saw pearls in the hands of one person. They saw that when; they gave beads, many more pearls were brought to them. Pearls were found on the shore of this island, in a spot one or two fathoms deep. And also loading their ship with many logwood trees and taking two natives along, they carried them within that year to the Bey of Spain. But the said Colombo, not knowing the language of these people, they traded by signs, and after this trip the Bey of Spain sent priests and barley, taught the natives how to sow and reap and converted them to his own religion. They had no religion of any sort. They walked naked and lay there like animals.

Now these regions have been opened to all and have become famous. The names which mark the places on the said islands and coasts were given by Colombo, that these places may be known by them. And also Colombo was a great astronomer. The coasts and island on this map are taken from Colombo's map.

 

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.

Gregorio of Nauplion, Glass Painter

Mayster Grigorius de Napolis,31 March 1280

end of first line, second paragraph from the bottom

Gregorios of Nauplion first appears as a painter of glass, pittore di moioli, in Murano in this document from 1280, and between then and 1288 he shows up another thirty times.  He is the first "foreign" painter to appear in Muranese records, but as a foreigner was anyone from outside the commune of Venice, it is remarkable that the foreigner was Greek.

Really, there is no information about him, beyond the fact that one of these records shows that in December 1280 he took on Piero, Vido's son, as an apprentice for 11 months, and all the others indicate that people had trouble getting him to pay his debts.  It appears that a major reason for glass-worker debts at that time was failure to pay up for wood for the glass furnaces, and for the frit that was melted down for glass-making. He lived in the parish of S. Stefano, and the remnants of that church are shown here in front of S. Pietro Martire.

 How Gregorios got from Nauplion to Murano (Nauplion was then under the de la Roche Dukes of Athens), and where he learned to paint glass (Corinth would be likely) -- all that is anyone's guess.

No Murano glass survives from that time, so we don't know what his painting might have looked like. Surviving records have an order for 100 glasses with three figures around a tree, another order for glasses with garlands and pearls.  This is one of the earliest survivals, from 1330, modelled on Islamic glass.  Those little white dots are probably what is meant by pearls.

The Murano glass industry was producing in large and standardized amounts.  There are orders for 750 drinking glasses, 26 footed glasses, two large cases of footed glasses with garlands and pearls for export to Romania -- that would be Constantinople or Greece or Crete, 600 footed cups and 600 footed cups with a thread around the foot and the mouth.

A blue thread is common in that early Murano glass, and the first time I visited Monemvasia, in June 1978, I found part of the foot of a glass with a deep blue thread around the edge.  I found another fragment of threaded glass at Mistra two days later.

Lift a glass to Gregorios of Nauplion.

My great appreciation to Michael Pettinger for discovering Gregorios for me in Vetro e Vetrai di Murano, Vol. 3, by Luigi Zecchin.