The Pepagomenos Problem

Formally-dressed 15th C Byzantines.

When Manuel Palaiologos came to the Morea in 1415, he brought with him a doctor, Demetrios Pepagomenos who served as a secretary. This Pepagomenos, a correspondent of John Chortasmenos, is said to have also been a correspondent of John Eugenikos and Bessarion. This Pepagomenos is further identified as the Demetrios Pepagomenos who delivered a monody on the death of Cleofe Malatesta, the wife of Theodoros II, and an author of at least four medical treatises. I resist the idea that these are all the same individual. I cannot definitively prove otherwise, although I can try.

In Mazaris' Journey to Hades, composed in 1414-1415, Mazaris encounters a Dr. Pepagomenos in Hades and has a long conversation in which Pepagomenos mentions two of his his sons -- Demetrios ("Lizard-Eyes"), also a doctor, and the highly ambitious Theodosios ("Little Shit"). Mazaris makes a good deal of humor out of Pepagomenos once poisoning himself, and refers to his stopping bleeding with the herb ox-eye (βοόφθαλμον). The significance of its being mentioned at all lies in the fact that a Demetrios Pepagomenos made a collection of "folk" remedies.

Mazaris' Pepagomenos is sometimes identified with the first Demetrios Pepagomenos here, though that is a problem if Mazaris' Pepagomenos is actually dead. If the death is a literary device, there is no problem. But the Pepagomenos of interest to me is the Pepagomenos who was a friend of Bessarion and Eugenikos, and spoke at the death of Cleofe, who is more often identified as the son of Pepagomenos-in-Hades, Demetrios "Lizard-Eyes" Pepagomenos. (You can see the kind of eyes that were probably meant in Piero della Francesca's King Solomon.)

The Pepagomenos of my interest was a man of wide-ranging curiosity and great empathy, loving, and much-loved by his friends. He wrote a famous treatise on the treatment for gout, which was translated into Latin and printed in 1517 and reprinted as late as 1743. He is an easy writer, concerned for his patient's pain (he used opium, and colchicine, still the drug of choice for gout pain), frequently writing, "Δοκεῖ μοι" -- "it seems to me." He also made a collection of folk remedies, wrote treatises on the feeding and medication of hawks, and on dogs. He seems to have become the court doctor, and to have attended Cleofe's childbirths.

Chortasmenos' letters can be clearly dated to 1414-1415, when their addressee was in the Morea with Manuel II. One of the letters comments on problems that Pepagomenos had had with a patient. Dating the Eugenikos and Bessarion letters is a little more chancy. Their addressee, the doctor and writer Pepagomenos, was most likely to have met Bessarion at Mistra, where Bessarion was only between 1433 and 1437.  At the time of the letter from Bessarion, Pepagomenos' wife has given birth while they were away. It is  possible that this absence, or the first absence, can be identified with some specificity.

On March 25, 1436, the despot Theodoros II arrived in Constantinople on the ship with the bride for his brother Demetrios. Theodoros had come to Constantinople with the intent of remaining as successor to the throne. Four years earlier, his brother, the emperor John, had had a long period of extremely painful and paralyzing illness, possibly an aggravated chronic rheumatism, with extreme muscle weakness, if not actual paralysis.

Accounts from 1437 through 1440 give similar descriptions of a fugitive illness which was diagnosed as gout. I suggest that John had had another grave episode, and of course Theodoros had great familiarity with the family gout, having watched his uncle Theodoros I in his illness and death. A letter from Bessarion to Theodoros while he was in Constantinople remarks on the grand procession with which John had honored Theodoros, and acknowledges that Constantinople had made a great deal of him. Theodoros had found himself quite popular. Bessarion and Scholarios both comment on what a good talker he was -- they seem to suggest discourse rather than conversation -- and, of course, perceived proximity to the throne contributes greatly to popularity.

Theodoros had taken with him an elaborate epitaphios for the tomb of his parents (though his mother was still living) with double portraits of both and sixty-some lines of poetry, all embroidered in gold. I believe he took another present. He took Pepagomenos, the great specialist in gout and treatment of pain. Pepagomenos' treatise on gout is dedicated to "the emperor," and although the emperor is unnamed and the dedication gives no hint of identity or of illness, I suggest that Pepagomenos dedicated his treatise to John. There is no evidence of this, only coincidence, but a great deal of Byzantine history is written on coincidence. I also believe that Pepagomenos was unwilling to leave his pregnant wife in Mistra without good medical care and took her with him to Constantinople where his skill did save her life and that of their child. It was a boy: Bessarion's letter tells of the delight when they learned about it in Mistra.

Bessarion's moving letter compliments him on the survival of his wife and son: Pepagomenos had written Bessarion about his concerns, and then Bessarion praises the exceptional -- equal -- relationship between husband and wife. But there is another aspect to Pepagomenos writing Bessarion about those lives saved from a dangerous childbirth. They had both spoken at the memorial for Theodoros' wife, Cleofe, who died in childbirth, together with her child -- in Pepagomenos' care. Both friends had shared a specific and terrible loss, which could not have been away from their minds with this new pregnancy. 

And the warmth and affection of Bessarion and later of Eugenikos for Kyria Pepagomeni and the boys contrasts strikingly with the fact that Theodoros has left in Mistra his eight-year old daughter, Helena, and has no intention of returning. Perhaps he thought John would die soon, he would become Emperor, and he could then send for her, but her later life was not the life of a person who had received much affection as a child.  

It fits with what we learn of Pepagomenos from these letters that it was he who gave Helena, "your dear child who weeps for you bitterly," more than a bare mention at her mother's memorial -- "Your beloved daughter mourns you, bereaved of her dear mother at so young an age, at a time when she most needed you, and required your instruction and advice, who have left her with no maternal consolation."  He was the one who described the quality of companionship in marriage that Theodoros and Cleofe had achieved, who described Cleofe  visiting the poor, taking firewood, and fixing food for them -- "taking no account of the heat of the fire, the intense burden of the smoke, and the inescapable duration of this service," giving assistance to widows and strangers. He was the one who noted that Cleofe made marriages possible for women of the court.

While Papagomenos was away on another trip, he left his sons with the Eugenikos family.  John Eugenikos is said to have been at Mistra between 1439 and 1447, which somewhat suggests a date for the trip. (Cleofe and Bessarion were gone when Eugenikos arrived: his presence must have been a great joy to Pepagomenos and Theodoros.) A manuscript in Pepagomenos' handwriting, containing his own writings and others that he copied -- surely in Constantinople -- can be dated by the watermarks on the paper between 1437 and 1444, which focuses the date a little more.  His wife was with him on this trip, too.

John Eugenikos compliments the excellence of two boys, calling them "that pair of ours, and especially Nicholaos" (there was a remarkable and brilliant Nicholaos Pepagomenos in Constantinople in the 14th century), and then he compliments their mother's excellence and intelligence, and again, the relationship between husband and wife. In another letter, Eugenikos describes a group that he had invited to hear a new letter from Pepagomenos that had brought spring to their winter. (This is a topos in Byzantine letters, but that does not mean that it was not winter.)  He included "our good Nicholaos" and his friends in the audience -- it looks as if Nicholaos was the older son. (I think -- can't prove -- that the younger was Giorgos.) 

Everyone was tremendously enthusiastic about the letter (this is a topos in Byzantine letters, too),  then Nicholaos and his friends took the letter, "treating it lovingly," and tried to work it out for themselves. Their Greek had not yet become Byzantine. It is an appealing glimpse of Mistra life, the circle of friends including the boys in their reading. All three of these letters reveal a warmth in relationships that -- if it existed -- is concealed in the pompous oratory and discourses on Athenian history and the Muses in the letters of Chortasmenos. These are letters from different generations, from different cultures. (Chortasmenos taught Bessarion in Constantinople: the generation difference is clear.)

[LATE NOTE: I have learned that Eugenikos was not in the Morea between 1430 and 1440, so if Theodoros took Pepagomenos to Constantinople in 1436, the boys were not with Eugenikos that year.]
 

Unusual for a name that shows up over and over, Pepagomenos seems not to have been a name involved in political matters, or representing one court or another in the West, and mercifully he left no letters of advice to emperors or disquisitions on the Procession of the Holy Spirit.  He hasn't left any letters at all, which is only to be regretted. He seems to have died about 1450.

Possibly the doctor and writer Pepagomenos who interests me is the same individual who accompanied Manuel and corresponded with Chortasmenos. If the sons of Mazaris' Pepagomenos-in-Hades were adult in 1415, the older son Demetrios is a much more reasonable candidate. However, other than the coincidence of name, there is no positive evidence. That a Demetrios Pepagomenos corresponded with Chortasmenos, and a Demetrios Pepagomenos corresponded with Bessarion and Eugenikos, does not require belief that they were the same Demetrios Pepagomenos. 

I have several publications on my desk on Demetrios Pepagomenos.  I have the PLP and the ODB which give the bones.  I have four articles that discuss the manuscripts associated with the medical writer Demetrios Pepagomenos, and I needed those articles, particularly the splendid one by Lazaris,* to overcome my unhappiness at finding an important source described as "oral tradition." I have the Greek, Latin, and French versions of his book on gout, and the Greek of his collection of medical cures.  Assorted texts mention him as one of the intellectuals at Mistra. Nothing considers him as a human being and an exceptionally humane one.  But if you look at the character of Demetrios Pepagomenos, Bessarion, and Cleofe, you could really believe that for a brief shining hour, Mistra lived an ideal.

*  S. Lazaris. "La Production nouvelle en médecine vétérinaire sous les Paléologues et l’oeuvre cynégétique de Dèmètrios Pépagôménos," in M. Cacouros & M.-H. Congourdeau, eds., Philogophie et Scences à Byzance de 1204 à 1453. Actes de la Table Ronde organisée au XXe Congrès International d’Études Byzantines. Leuven 2006: 225-267.

Flowers of Crete

Trifolium Spinosum
Clover or Trefoil

In 1583, Onorio Belli was sent to Crete to be staff doctor for Alvise Antonio Grimani, duca of Candia.  When Grimani finished his term of office and returned to Venice, Belli stayed on until 1599, except for a visit back to Venice and Padua in 92-93. His wife died in 1597, and in 1599 he  returned to his home in Vicenza.  Belli was first of all a botanist, and during his years on Crete made copious collections and notes of the flowers he found, and discovered dozens of new species.  He also collected plants and seeds, and sent them back to colleagues at the University of Padua, where a painter, G. Dyckmann, did the studies you see here. The names under the pictures are Dyckmann's.

Chamepeuce Plinij Anguillarae 
or Ptilostemon chamaepeuce.

Along with botany, he also did detailed architectural drawings of classical ruins on Crete, and wrote a geographical and physical description of Crete, and descriptions of its cities, and accounts of its famous men.  This 1854 book, available on-line through Google's new format that seems designed to discourage readers, gives many of the Cretan architectural drawings and reports of antiquities and inscriptions.  By 1589 he had become so famous for his scholarship that a statue was put up in his honor in the wonderful Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. (I believe he is supposed to be second from the left of the inscription, top row, in that first photograph on that link.) 

Clematis

One of the things we learn from Belli is that a lot of Venetians in Crete had gardens, and sought out and cultivated local species deliberately. Felix Fabri had said nearly 80 years earlier that there were beautiful houses and gardens, but he told us nothing about the gardens.  Belli doesn't write of layouts and landscaping, but of plants.  Scientific names of plants had not yet been stabilized, so I have found some of these difficult to identify despite having three books on Greek trees and flowers. From his lists:

Peonis flore albo simplici

* Sesili Peloponnese, a beautiful and noble plant, in the garden of Mocenigo at S. Euphemia.
* In the same garden, an enormous number of hyacinths and tulips (Giacinti et Dulipani).
* Viole de Spagna, or matronali, in the gardens of Mussati and in that at Ca' Capello.
* Large and most beautiful iris in the garden of Cao di Lista, and he has promised me a plant.
* The Mussati have Lisimachia with yellow flowers, it is similar to the leaves and almost to the flowers of the flamula Jovis and flowers at the same time, that is June, but it has yellow flowers.
*The garden at Ca' Capello can give me genestella (white broom), crimson poppies, dulipani.
* Double red mallows at Ca' Prioli.  Centaurea minore  (a kind of thistle), a night flower, in the same garden. Also double mallows in the Bembo garden.

Convolvolus

Someone asked him for a shipment of plants from Candia in 1587 which included:
* A round cyprus, very familiar, but send a box with green roots because they last as fresh as on land.
* Tragorigano cretico which is commonly called rigani.
* Aspalatho (great spiny broom), which is the same in Candia as on Rhodes, is very well known for its spines.
* The true platans can be brought quite well in a case if they are taken care of.
* A cyprus plant with leaves similar to that of willow, narrower, and sharp; it has little fruits like little white olives, and scented: there they call it the tree of paradise. 

Ranunculus

He was in Chania when he wrote a letter to his uncle and addressed the letter: Al Magnifico Signor Valerio Barbarano mi Signor osservandissimo.  Vicenza alla Spiciaria del Sarasin.  He described a particular plant at great length, and said: "I found [this plant] 3 years ago in the territory of Rethymo in a most delicious valley called Vicilis near Lampeo and brought it to Rethymo where was my most illustrious patron, and at the house I also found our Signor Silverio and together we showed it to the Most Excellent Daniel Furlani, doctor of Rethymo, my very good friend from school at Padua."

Millefoliei

Continuing, he said: "He (Daniel Furlani) agreed with me that this was the tragio of Dioscorides,* and then sent seeds to Signor Guilandino who wrote that this was not the tragio of Dioscorides, but that Dodoneo called this plant Rutha silvestris Hipericordes, he absolutely amazed me since this plant is very different from that of Dodoneo, if I do not deceive myself, and think think it without doubt the tragio of which Pietro Bellonio makes mention in his book De arboribus coniferis.  Nevertheless I listened to the words of a man such as the Most Excellent Guilandino, and will push myself to find the true tragio of Dioscorides if it can still be found in nature and is not a fable: although I have used extreme diligence in this Regno** I have not yet found another of the tragio."

Verbasco cretense, or mullein.

* I think this is the Cistus villosus sspl creticus that produces labdanum or a kind of myrrh.
** In the 16th century Crete had come to be called a Regno, kingdom.

The images are by G. Dyckmann, from Onorio Belli a Creta: un manoscritto inedito della Scuola Archaeologica Italiana di Atene (1587). Atene: Scuola Archeologica Italiano, 1999.

On Vacation: Painted Lady

Three Peaches on a Stone Ledge with a Painted Lady Butterfly
(1693-95). Adriaen Coorte. 31.3 x 23.3 cm.

On Vacation: Cheetahs

Two Cheetahs (1400-1410)
by a follower of Govannino de Grassi.
British Museum.

Eustacio and the Franciscans of Nauplion

North side of Panagia, in Nauplion, originally a 15th-century
church, possibly the Franciscan church of S. Maria Val Verde.
Possibly not.

 Eustacio showed up the other night.  In my world it was 1491, and I hadn't seen him since 1483.  He was Bartolomeo Minio's cancellier,* which means that he maintained financial records and files, and wrote necessary documents for Minio's administration. He provided deeds, various legal papers, and letters in Italian and Greek for local clients.  They paid him for each individual service, and these examples from 1515 show what they paid.**

- for a letter, 3 aspri; for a letter within the territory, 2 aspri.

- for a document authenticating manumission of a slave, 1 ducat.

- for a document authenticating ownership of a slave, 3 hyperpera.

- for writing out the payroll for a ship, 2 marcelli; for a grippi, 2 aspri; for a barcha, 4 soldi.

- for an inventory of the deceased's possessions: moveable property 1/2 tornese per hyperper; for real estate, 1 aspro per hundred; for a fair copy on good paper, 2 aspri.

His documents moved into history: he wrote the Greek versions of the two boundary agreement that were accepted by Mehmed and Beyazid. So Eustacio should have been comfortable.  He was a survivor of the siege of Negroponte, but his wife and children were taken as slaves.  He had been able to redeem three daughters who needed dowries, but two daughters were still -- more than ten years later -- in Turkish possession.  

In addition to being Minio's cancellier, in 1475, the provveditor of the Venetian fleet and the Captain General had jointly appointed him as paymaster for the Greek and Albanian stratioti, and the Italian fanti. 

When the provveditor of the Venetian fleet arrived in Nauplion in late January of 1480/81, besides firing stratioti, and beating and humiliating some of the kapetanioi, he fired Eustacio -- two months before his appointment was to end -- and assigned his own cancellier as paymaster. This was a serious matter, because the paymaster took a cut from every salary paid, and Eustachio lost in some instances a good four years' worth of benefits. 

What these paycuts meant in actuality was that Minio thought a stratiote should have received 28 soldi for one pay, six times a year.  If Venice was overdue -- and it always was -- there may have been back pay, too.  From that 28 soldi, the Paymaster General back in Italy got 4 soldi and Eustacio was to get 2. When the provveditor put in his own paymaster, the new paymaster took Eustacio's 2 and then another 2 for himself.  So a stratiote could pay nearly a quarter of his salary for the privilege of having a salary at all.  

Minio says that this system was put into place by Valerio Chiericati during the war of 1463-78, when he was sent out to standardize the pay system across the Venetian territories.  I have never been so close to a storming-the-Bastille-and-Winter-Palace mood as I the day was when I was in Vicenza and saw the Chiericati palazzo, the eventual celebration of grinding down Nauplion -- and many other -- stratioti and fanti and soldati.

Minio began writing to Venice about this outrage to his cancellier, and although it took more than two years, Minio managed to get Eustacio's money repaid and, in fact, the payment was put into the hands of Minio's brother-in-law, galley captain Piero Trevisan, to bring to Nauplion.***

In 1491, two Franciscan friars were sent to Nauplion.  There had been no Latin clergy in Nauplion since 1487, and nothing tells us what was going on -- if anything -- in the little Latin churches.  In an effort to remedy this problem, the Senato Mar formally gave possession of the church, friary, land, and houses of S. Maria Val Verde in Nauplion to the Franciscan Minister of the Province of Greece.****  The Senato also provided the first year's expenses for the friars.

When the friars arrived, they found the house where they were to live a calamitatem, there was no place else suitable, and they had no way of building a new house.  They complained to the Nauplion governor, provveditor, probably Giovanni Nani.

A petition was sent to the Senato -- the petitioners are not identified in the Senato document -- which said that since a staff chaplain, capellan, for the provveditor cost 48 ducats a year, that money could be used to build a house for the friars, and then provide for their necessities.  Also, the provveditor would like two more friars to be sent.  He wanted to be able to have Mass said for him and his staff in his own house in the fortifications on Akro-Nauplion, or in church.  The provveditor and the Nauplion council were in agreement with the petitioners.  The Senate approved the petition on 15 December 1491, which is the document I have.

We have almost no information about Latin churches in Nauplion.  There was a Franciscan convent at Myloi in 1450. (Here, #6.)  There was a S. Anastasio on the plateia and a S. Veneranda outside the walls in 1500, and a S. Niccolo (which could have been a Ag. Nikolaos) on the waterfront in 1480. (The dates are the dates of my documents, and don't suggest anything about when the churches appeared.  The Camoccio map shows a number of churches, all certainly small, but they cannot all be Latin rite.

Nauplion's Panagia has been shown to be a 15th-century church, and it is my own prejudice after living beside it for two years that the street organization in its vicinity derives from its origin as a conventual church, and so Franciscan. {Domenicans were never in Nauplion despite what guidebooks  have claimed.]  

[I would be grateful for information from anyone who has knowledge of the archaeological findings that made it 15th-C -- what I know comes from a tiny sign on the rear of the church.]

 South side, remains of earlier arch.

As the photographs indicate, Panagia has been built and rebuilt to such an extent that the original appearance is speculative, though it surely looked like these little churches from Camoccio, or a very small version of Ag. Pareskevi in Chalkida:

 It has been through periods as a mosque, and about 1700 the Venetians reconfigured the roof to give it the flat ceiling customary at the period.  But we don't know if Panagia was S. Maria Val Verde.

The connection between the friars and Eustacio is that he is identified in the Senato document as writing the Nauplion petition.  The petition is so clearly worked out in detail,with all the possible bases for objection covered, that you can see the careful work of the man Minio wrote about during the early 1480s.  It was Eustacio who allowed me to identify Minio's handwriting: the manuscript of the Minio letters is written in four different hands, closely related. There are occasional glosses in the margin written in one of the hands, and you can see how that works in the printed version of the Minio letters, say on page 101 here. Eustacio's name never appears in the letters, but in the margin of Letter XXVII, the gloss says about my Eustacio, cancellier and collateral. That my Eustacio -- mio Eustacio -- identified Minio's handwriting is not an earth-shaking discovery in many worlds, but it was exciting for me after so many years of living with the letters. After finding this document, he is mio Eustacio, too.

* Bartolomeo Minio's letters about Nauplion between 1479 and 1483 are here.

** These can be found in volume 4 of Sathas, 216-217, here. 

*** Possibly as a result of the Eustacio affair, the Senato declared in 1485 that no cancellier could hold his position under the same governor for more than two years. Obviously, Eustacio had been rehired.

**** S. Marie Vallis Viridis in the document. The mother house was  in Venice, in Cannaregio.  The Franciscan Minister of the Province of Greece who had to handle the matter of sending Franciscans to Nauplion in 1491 was Gratiano of Brescia.

Brigitte Eckert took the photographs.

Red Ink

Image of signatures of Demetrios Palaiologos, 1451.*

I was recently reading Warren Woodfin's fascinating book, The Embodied Icon,** which discusses ecclesiastical dress. At one point (173) he relates the color of the ink used in signatures to the rank and costume of the signer: patriarchs tend to wear blue and sign in blue ink; the emperor wears red shoes and signs in vermilion; despots wear shoes of mixed purple and white, and sign with purple. (There is also an article on this topic here.)

I like that idea a great deal, but it makes me think that no one told the later Palaiologues.  The treaty Theodoros I signed with Venice in 1394 described itself as "subscriptione in fine instrumenti rubei literarum manu propria domini dispoti . . .."  Theodoros II signed a letter to the Pope and a grant of land in red -- vermilion -- ink.  The same with the signature of Demetrios, above.  The image in last week's entry showed the little Despot Theodoros wearing red: we couldn't see his shoes.
 
A signature of Andronikos in 1414, confirming a grant from Manuel in Thessaloniki on his way south to build the Hexamilion -- is in black.***  He was a minor then, just 14, and the signature is in the genitive -- Andronikou -- "by me, Andronikos." You will notice that Demetrios' signatures above and below are in the nominative.

Manuel and Andronikos, 1414.

A  second signature at Thessaloniki, this from 1419, is in red and the ending is in the nominative -- ὁ δεσπότης.***  Eighteen was a significant age for Byzantines, and I believe the change in case ending is an indication that Andronikos had become of age to rule for himself, without a regent.
 

A signature from Demetrios,*** when he was Despot of Lemnos under Mehmed II,  is also in red.

Demetrios Palaiologos, Despot, 1462.

                * Image from: "Σφραγιδες των τελευταιων Παλαιολογων και των περι αυτους," Νεος Ελλςηνομνημων 1: 416-432.
** Warren Woodfin, The Embodied Icon.  Oxford University Press, 2012. 
*** Treasures of Mount Athos, Thessaloniki 1997. Ch. 13.  The quality of the color printing in this heavy, expensive volume produced by Athos and the Ministry of Culture is shameful.

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..

The Chimneys of Mistra

 Orlandos, in Palaces and Houses of Mistra, 1937.

This is a view of the throne-room wing of the palace of Mistra, as seen from the back.  There are eight chimneys, elegantly disposed, fed by eight fireplaces in eight individual rooms on the level under the throne room, which has the largest windows.  Anastasios Orlandos, in 1937, explained at some length how these chimneys and fireplaces provided heat for the throne room, a space 36.50 meters by 10.43 meters. Architectural historians Charalampos Bouras and Gianluigi Ciotta repeat this information quite flatly, as do the guidebooks and travel books and tourist articles.

So I was thinking about that, half-dozing in an afternoon nap, how it would work: how many people would be needed carrying how many armfuls of logs up the stairs to the second floor to keep the fireplaces fed, how much labor and refuse removal would be constantly visible from the formal front of the palace, the constant procession of people carrying armfuls of wood through those twisty difficult Mistra streets.  And then I started thinking about our own fireplace, how there is never a sign in the room above when the fireplace is working below, how I do not feel any heat from the chimney even just above the fireplace -- that sort of thing.

I compared building materials, thickness of walls and floors, even looked up burning temperatures of different kinds of firewood, and calculations for dimensions of fireplaces.

As you can imagine, none of this was helpful, and I remembered reading in Kostis Kourelis' dissertation that archaeologists have found "no evidence of hearths of fireplaces joining or inserted within the wall construction" of medieval houses in Greece.  I decided that the famous archaeologists were wrong, but I needed to find support for my unspecialized opinion.  I finally wrote a builder of chimneys in England, sent him photographs and architectural drawings and dimensions.  He wrote back:
 

From what I can see, the chimneys were not designed to heat the throne room, as the chimneys are on the outside of the external walls. Had they been on the internal walls, they would have given some heat to the room. I would have thought if they wanted to heat the throne room they would have built the fireplaces in the room

Then I found an article by architect Stefan Sinos in which he stated that these chimneys served individual living quarters on the floor below the throne room.  Well, of course, and there are fine surviving examples -- in Venice -- of very similar fifteenth-century rooms and chimneys, again on the second level: 

 

 E. Trincanato: Venise: Guide de l'Architecture Mineure (1997).

This was the model followed for the rooms on the second level. Heat in the throne room, if any, would have come from portable braziers.  And layers and layers of wool.

 
 Photograph of chimneys, 1995, after new roof and some reconstruction.

Diplomatic Expenses

Detail from Carpaccio, Triumph of St. George. 

Bartolomeo Minio twice had to negotiate the dividing line between Argos and Nauplion territories with the Ottomans. The first was in August 1480, to fulfill the terms of the peace settlement between Venice and Mehmed II.  The second was in April 1482, because Mehmed had died and all agreements had to be renegotiated with Beyazid II.

This 1480 commission was the first territorial definition in a very long time, certainly since 1460 and the period of the despots when borders between the despotate and Venetian territories had been extremely porous.  At Methoni-Koroni, the lands of several Italians who had fiefs over the borders -- Marin Sisani, Nicoli Romagni, the Ca' Gezzo family, and Jacopo Testa -- had been included in the Venetian limits because they had given gifts to the Ottoman negotiators.  At Nauplion, Minio reported giving the lead negotiator, Sinan Bey, 30-40 ducats as a gift to ensure things went well, as well as providing the housing expenses for him and his suite.  In fact, between gifts and expenses, Minio paid out 100 ducats before they ever got to the negotiations He was going to collect a quarter of that from the citizens, but he was concerned about the burden it would be for them.

In 1482, Minio wrote, after the territorial agreement had been written out, the sultan's slave (who had accompanied the emin who conducted the negotiations) refused to hand it over until he had received a present, which amounted to 30 ducats and 6 braccie ("arms") of scarlet cloth for a robe.  Minio gave the emin 40 ducats, and 6 braccie of scarlet.  The scrivan who wrote up the agreement (and who had been most generous) got 10 ducats, the emin's three servants 5 each, and the translator 2, for a total of 97 ducats.  This did not include the cost of the cloth, or the candy, or the expenses for food. The governor at Methoni wrote Minio that they had spent a total of 300 ducats on various gifts that year.

Certain Naupliots got more benefits out of the boundary settlements than others: the holders of the castelli at Castri (a Palaiologos) and Thermissi (including the bishop), and the mills of Kiveri/Myloi. Then there was the land held by the church of the bishop, and assorted other less important fiefs.  Minio decided to prorate a good share of the expenses for gifts according to how much each of these had profited.  Things must have improved for the fiefholders considerably in the past two years, after the first definitions of boundaries, as Minio did not this time seem concerned about burdening them.

No one thought these diplomatic expenses at all unusual.  Minio wrote in other letters about making gifts of wine, fish, sugar, bread, honey, candles, white cloth, and silver cups to various Ottoman officials, and told of being given camels' hair cloth and a blue sash.  These were more the sort of gifts exchanged between visitors or neighbors, and it is interesting that he is in the position of providing basic goods, as well as small luxury gifts.




Read and download the letters of Bartolomeo Minio from Nauplion.
http://www.nauplion.net/MINIO.html 

April 1941: Part Two

British troops passing Palamidi, going to Tolo. LIFE Magazine.  

Continuing the accounts from last week:

Bernard Ryan, 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion, Redhead, NSW: 

We reached the vicinity of "T" Beach on 25th April, after passing through, I think Nauplion & Argos . . . My recollection is of a couple of days spent taking cover in gullies with Messerschmidts & Stukas attacking anything that moved.  . . . One memory I have is of seeing fireflies for the first time -- they do not occur in my country so far as I know.
      At last our turn came for evacuation and for the first time since arriving in Greece, I saw the sea.  I don't think there was any moon but we could make out the shape of the ships quite close to the shore, perhaps no more than 100 yards away.  At the head of the queue was a small barge or lighter and I was near enough to it to see a group standing on it waiting to be transferred to the ships . . . Whatever the intention, the barge or lighter did not move at all while I was watching it.  I calculate there is a very good chance I would have been in the next batch to board the craft.  A story went the rounds at the time that the thing was stuck on the bottom because it was overloaded and no-one would disembark to allow it to float free . . . It remained stranded by the outgoing tide and the ship sailed away.
      Dawn found us at a village which may have been Tolo.  We set up a defensive perimeter of sorts, although weapons of any kind were scarce, and there was some firing exchanged between us & the German troops who were now appearing in force.  It still had not been realised by most of us that the evacuation was over & that we had been left behind.
      During that day I saw the waters of the bay in full sunlight and even in the circumstances I realised why the coastline of Greece was so famous.  There was a small island perhaps a quarter mile from shore and I remember a woman in a small rowboat standing up & calling to someone on the island. (I saw no Greeks in the village at "T" beach except the woman in the boat out in the bay.)  I saw an English sergeant take the ammunition out of his revolver & throw it into the bay.   . . .  In the afternoon there was a meeting between one of our representatives and the German command . . . The news that we were prisoners of war was brought to us by a Salvation Army major, I can even remember his name -- Major Hosier.  It was about 5 o'clock in the afternoon of 29th April 1941.  I cannot begin to convey to anyone the sense of shock . . .
       Our imprisonment started with a march of about 3 hours in the early part of the night . . . I am sorry to say that in the doorway of a few houses along the road -- not many -- people stood giving the raised hand of the Nazi salute.   [In Nauplion] we were in a compound at the foot of [Palamidi] next day, 30th April, and looking up the first thing to take the eye was a huge swastika flag flying over the fort . . . I think we spent one or two days & nights there in the open. There was no shelter but that was no novelty if you were in the infantry.
         

POWs, Nauplion.  

We travelled to Corinth by rail and I think it may have been a narrow gauge railway, in closed trucks, and of course without any contact with the Greeks. At Corinth we spent, I estimate, about two months in a huge compound which I believe had been a Greek military barracks.  There were buildings there, filthy of course, but a least they provided a roof over the head.  In this prison camp we joined another 3000 or 4000 allied troops who had been captured at Kalamata  . . . In addition to about 5000 British, Australian & NZ troops, there were Yugoslav, Cypriots and a few hundred Indian civilians who were said to have been brought to Greece to look after mules or donkeys.  As well, there were a couple of thousand Italians who had been made prisoners by the Greek army near the Albanian frontier . . .

     In Corinth we did have some contact with the Greek civil population, in that the Germans allowed the Greeks to set up a few food stalls, just inside there wire, where, if you were lucky enough to have any drachmae, you could purchase such items as dried fruit & the like.  About once a week the Germans took us down to the beach to swim and I remember a Greek woman attempting to distribute a basket of bread among us being roughly handled by the Germans for her pains . . .

     The compound at Corinth was a really dreadful place -- open latrines, lice, bugs, and starvation.  We spent two months there &  then moved to Salonika, which was much worse.  The journey to Salonika was by rail & on foot, where bridges & tunnels had been wrecked.  There were many escapes on this journey and a number of fatalities.  Some who escaped lived with the Greek people for two years evading capture at what must have been great risk to the inhabitants who sheltered them. 

* * * * * *

There is much more in Bernard Ryan's account which begins with his background in Australia, an interlude in Alexandria, his arrival at Piraeus, rail trip to the north of Greece, and arrival at Veria with the Aliakmon in flood, where their retreat began and he was injured. He describes the retreat, being bombed at the Larissa railway station, passing through Athens, and then comes the section excerpted above.  He left Greece on a train (with a German military band playing "Roll out the Barrel," for prison camp in Germany. 

* * * * * *  

Sometimes the midday sun, sometimes handfuls of light rain
and the beach covered with fragments of ancient jars . . .
Friends from the other war,
on this deserted and cloudy beach
I think of you as the day turns.
                                     G. Seferis