Negroponte in 1395

How di Martoni would probably have appeared.
Western merchants, fresco detail ca. 1400,

Ag. Paraskevi, Halkis/Negroponte

A recent entry concerned Negroponte and Evliya's 1668 account of the channel for the mill wheels. Pierre MacKay, working on evidence for the channel, became charmed by the 1395 visit of Nicola di Martoni who also noted the mill wheels.

Di Martoni, returning to Italy from the Holy Land, stopped at Negroponte, Athens, and Corinth -- the last two at singularly important dates in their medieval history. He was a notary, married, the father of two children who had died prematurely. He was, as he says below, stuck in Negroponte for forty days, hoping for a galley that would take him back to Italy.

* * * * * * 

The island of Negropont is 300 miles around and is separated from the mainland by an arm of the sea some XII passus wide or a little more.  The city of Negropont is built at the extreme corner of this island near that arm of the sea and is smaller than the city of Suesse,¹ but is well populated with Latins and Greeks. The island has many fortresses and towns and a population of 14 thousand households.²  The largest church in the city is called the church of St Mary³ and is quite beautiful.  In other ages the city was three times as large, but was ruined by wars.  Now it is confined to one place close to the afore-mentioned arm of the sea.  Outside the city are various dwellings and ancient buildings among which is the priory of St. Francis. which is a fine large place where the friars live from their own produce.  The wardens of this place say that its annual revenue is about a thousand ducats.  Not far away from here is a convent of nuns which is called Santa Clara.  

The ancient castle:  In this arm of the sea which separates rhe island from the mainland there is a certain large and ancient building which thay say was the castle of Fata Morgana, the Lady of the Lake, and the mother of Pozella Gaza, and they say that  Lord Calvano was held captive in this castle.⁴

The bridges:  On this arm of the sea, there are two bridges made of wood, one on either side of the castle, and the men who travel back and forth by land, whether towards the mainland or the island of Negropont pass over these bridges and through this same castle, and armed men are assigned to stand diligently on guard over these bridges and the gateways.  The water in this arm of the sea flows continually, like a river, sometimes from the one harbor and sometimes from the other, for there are two harbors for ships here.

The mills:  In the said stream there are three mills, cleverly made so that they grind grain, whichever way the current flows.  The revenue of these is about fifty ducats annually.⁵  On occasion, the current in this stream flows so violently that the wheels of the mills are smashed.   The city itself is strongly surrounded by the sea on three sides and has fine walls and many towers encircling it.  It has many well-bred and wealthy men, as well as beautiful women.  I think that they are the descendants of the enchantresses who lived in the ancient castle.  They are in general distinguished by great beauty and wear fine clothing in the Italian style. 

We waited forty days for the ship that was to come from Venice, feeling great anxiety in moth mind and heart, but had no news of her arrival.  Finally, on the advice of the bailo, we accepted some letters of recommendation from him and set out to return to Athens, so as to seek a return voyage home from there.

(Translation: Pierre MacKay. More from di Martoni later. Meanwhile, the Latin text of his travels can be downloaded here.)

1 Suesse is Sessa Aurunca, northwest of Naples. Di Martoni compares everything to home.

2 This would mean an island population of 58,000 which is not at all likely.

3 SS Mary and Dominic: the Dominican priory church, now Ag. Paraskevi.

4 The names come from the northern Italian Arthurian tradition.

5There is surely a problem with this figure which is much too low.

Despite the mosque and contemporary buildings, this 1890s photograph of
Negroponte gives a sense of the fortress, city, and great Dominican church
that di Martoni saw.  The towers and gate were rebuilt in the 15th C.

The dog of Venice

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here are some dogs of Venice:

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

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

 Halkis

 Halkis

 

 Methoni

Heraklion

 

Rethymno

 Nauplion

 Methoni  

  Methoni 

 Methoni 

 
 

Nauplion

Nauplion ca. 1470

 Nauplion, ca. 1700 & 2009

 

The finest lion of all, Halkis.


 

On Vacation: Ag. Paraskevi's Carvings

From Ag. Paraskevi, a 13th-century Latin Dominican priory church used since independence as the cathedral of Halkis, an assortment of medieval stone-carving on bosses and finials (one a Green Man). You can see most of the bosses from the front of the church, but the finials are all behind the iconostasis, carefully concealed from view.  To judge from the photographs, the quality of the carving is extremely fine. A later post will show other medieval treasures from Ag. Paraskevi. Pierre MacKay and restoration architect Nikos Delinikolas have written extensively about the church and the dating cannot be questioned, although there are those in Halkis who persist in calling it a Byzantine basilica, and others who say the origin is still under discussion.  These are not my photographs because the church caretaker and then the bishop's office would not permit me to photograph the carvings behind the iconostasis: I have collected them from the interwebs.

 

 

Green Men

 

Pantanassa, Mistra

The Green Man -- or Wild Man or Woodwose --is a creature of European folklore and imagery, found frequently in churches.  He does not seem to appear in Greece without a special invitation.  I have been trying to spot Green Men, and I have found a very few. There is an enormous literature on Green Men in western Europe, which I would like to avoid here, and I will define a Green Man as an image of a face with leaves, usually coming out of its mouth.  I have these here for the pleasure of them, but this would be a fine topic for someone's formal study.

The first two Green Men in Greece -- that survive: surely there were others -- appeared in the 13th century, in monastic buildings built by Westerners.  This first is a finial in a corner behind the iconostasis of Ag. Pareskevi, in Halkis. 

Ag. Pareskevi, Halkis

This next was found in the ruins of the Cistercian monastery of Zaraka, built by monks from northern France, and has been removed to the museum of Chlemoutzi.  

Zaraka

He is strikingly like a Green Man found in the notebooks of Villard de Honnecourt, who drew several.  Villard also lived in the 13th century and was  from northern France.

 Villard de Honnecourt

Then there was a gap of nearly two hundred years before they appeared in 1428 in the Pantanassa.  Earlier they were faces in their own right.  Now in the Pantanassa, they are startlingly used as decorations for the evangelists in squinches under a dome.  Three groups have survived: one is shown at the beginning.  The groups were supposed to have three Green Men each, one on either side of the evangelist, and one beneath:

 Pantanassa, Mistra

Here the lower Green Man is badly damaged but he survives in the third cluster.

 Pantanassa, Mistra

Did these Green Men come from western influences, or had the painter seen the frescos in the Chora in Constantinople where they decorate the Virgin and child, and an angel, in a dome?

  Kariye Cami, Istanbul

In the picture below, where the Virgin is reversed, there is one Green Man just to the lower left corner of the picture, and then a whole line of them running down from the center.
 

Green Men, Kariye Cami, Istanbul

Finally, there is an unlikely trio of Green Men in Nauplion.  The first two, which can be dated exactly to 1708, appear at the top and the base of the carved shield of Francisco Grimani, Captain-General of the Fleet.  The shield has little cannon off the bottom corners.

Grimani shield, storage yard of Nauplion museum

The third, my favorite appears on a wooden door panel on the main street.  I have watched, over the years, thousands of people walk past and never look at this marvel of survival.

  Nauplion door

I would be delighted to know of sightings of more Greek Green Men.



Thanks to Henry Maguire who told me about the Green Men at the Kariye Cami.

Far-Away Peter and the Lion in the Rafters

He is a clumsy thing, this mannikin with the great hands. Barely a foot high and so far away as to be nearly invisible, he stands at the right end of the triumphal arch in the church of Ag. Pareskevi in Halkis, Greece. He is St. Peter Martyr and at the left end of the arch is an equally clumsy but less interesting St. Dominic.

The other image here below, the merry feathery lion, even smaller and more completely invisible from the floor, is the Lion of St. Mark, painted on the end of one of the massive rafters in the same church

These two unlikely images are unlikely in their location, and even more unlikely in that they may be the oldest surviving images of their types.

The church, long claimed to be a sixth-century Byzantine basilica by nationalists who willfully failed to consider the Gothic arches and rafters before their eyes, has been demonstrated by two scholars independently to be a Dominican priory church, dated by dendrochronology to 1261 or just after. Peter, a Dominican monk, became a martyr in 1252 and was canonized in 1253, so he had barely been minted which this image of him was created.

Brother Peter of Verona was a Dominican inquisitor, and though most people have an instant hostile reaction to the word, he never did anything to anyone. In fact, he had called off an inquiry into the Cathars at Milan with the idea that they might return to the fold of the church more readily with kindness than with discipline, and he was such a good preacher that they were. He was walking to Milan with Brother Dominico to find our how things were working when he was attacked in the forest of Barlassina by two men, Carino and Manfredo who had been hired by wealthy Cathars to get rid of him. Brother Peter bled to death almost immediately. Brother Dominico was wounded and died a week later.

Brother Peter's skull survives, and it is easy enough to see the hole and slice in his skull made by the blow of a pruning hook -- and what other sure weapon could a countryman risk being caught carrying in a woods? The Dominicans, running far behind the Franciscans in interesting saints, pushed through his canonization immediately, and authorized images of him to be set up in their churches along with St. Dominic.

Very few images make any pretense of accuracy, though this portrait of Savanarola as Peter Martyr comes fairly close. Fra Angelico tones it down, but one can't imagine Fra Angelico doing anything else. This image, though, is a melodramatic interpretation of his martyrdom, surpassing most other melodramatic images such as this, this, or this, and it is probably a fair sample of the images that appeared in the first generation after his death. This little big-handed man had an iron blade slicing through his face, attached with dowels to the stone -- you can see the holes for the dowels and the place where the face was cut away for the blade. It is a shame, really, that he was too small, too high up, too far away for this to be seen.

Another first, this exuberant little lion, fairly dancing on his Gospel book, because the first known use of the winged lion of St. Mark to represent Venice was in 1261. It is a very familiar image now, painted, carved in stone, in moleca -- the last appeared by 1263. He holds a book, this one closed, but conventionally it is open and says, 'Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meum." The rest of the phrase says, "here will your body rest," because the body of Mark is believed to rest in the crypt of S. Marco in Venice. Someone has demonstrated the body of Saint Mark is really the body of Alexander the Great, because Mark was brought from Alexandria and Alexander was buried in Alexandria, and it all stands to reason.

Carino, by the way, allowed himself to be captured. He had been promised aid, and that seems to be why he was able to "escape" from prison. It is a great story. He eventually ended up, ill and wracked with guilt, in the Dominican hospital in Forli where he made a deathbed confession. When he failed to die, he became a lay brother of the Dominicans and lived a life of such devotion, that after his death he became the focus of a cult and is even now recognized as the Blessed Carino of Balsamo by the people of Forli.