Scholarios talks about Theodoros II Palaiologos

  The churches of the Monastery of the Pantokrator,
now the Zeyrek Çamii, where the last Palaiologoi were buried.

The Byzantine Studies Association of North America begins its annual meeting Friday, this time in Chicago. I will be speaking on the construction of the throne room wing of the palace of Mistra which was built about 1430 under the aegis of Theodoros II Palaiologos.

I have apparently written about Theodoros in sixteen other entries, and I have written with increasing despair. Recently Pierre MacKay translated for me the speech Scholarios made after Theodoros died, which adds considerable nuances but does nothing to alleviate the despair.

Theodoros died in Selybria in June 1448 of plague, and was buried with his father and brother in the Pantokrator in Istanbul.  He had exchanged Mistra with Constantine for Selybria in 1444, anxious to be close to Istanbul where their brother the Emperor was increasingly weakened from gout, sure that he was entitled to inherit the throne.  George Gennadios Scholarios, the High Judge of the Court of Constantinople, spoke at the memorial before John VIII and the court. Possibly his brother Demetrios was present, and certainly his mother, Helena. Scholarios began:

I have put off my speech about the deceased brother of our mighty emperor until this day, in the third month after his death, not because I had no sense of what to say about him, nor because I thought it was proper to add my silence as one more misfortune for him but (the truth will out), understanding that that the enmity that many feel for him will have abated over time, and that thus, more reasonable judges of arguments in his favor will be found, and that those who are absolutely intolerant of listening to this memorial utterance will be less offensive toward me. 

His own feeling, and the enmity in the court, had been so intense that the eulogy had to wait for three months. This enmity is somewhat explained later in the speech, but some things have to be deduced.  It appears that certain people had urged Theodoros in his desire for the throne, probably because John had been very ill.  Scholarios spoke in September.  John died the end of October.  Fortunately, Theodoros died first:

He did not cause loss to any of the Greeks, but as he was on the verge of doing so or, as it seemed to some that this was so, he departed this life, which is his good fortune, that in such an evil circumstance he succeeded in doing nothing that was irreparable.

Scholarios spent considerable time at the beginning of his speech discussing how each of us has failings, and people have to be judged by the totality of their characters and not just by one incident.  He admitted that Theodoros was a fair and just ruler, and he was most respectful of his parents.  Then Scholarios cut loose and spoke of the Turkish incursion of 1423  and of the subsequent assault on the Isthmus of 1446.

There is one thing that one might blame him for, if one failed to give it proper thought, that fecklessness about the Isthmus of Corinth, which led to his being defeated, the people of Peloponnesos being taken captive, and a great many being killed. But if one were not to acquit the man of this, neither will his brother's actions be spared . . . It would not be right for the most stalwart Constantine to be deprived his praise for this . . .  nor should anyone burden his brother with responsibility for not setting up the wall strongly in the first place. That, the earlier and also the later collapse of the wall was a matter of the vileness itself of those living within the isthmus, as were the misfortunes that oppressed the entire Peloponnesos . . . the Peloponnesians knew not how to come to a call for aid, nor, if they did come, how to defend the land and keep it safe, being unwilling to confront the enemy, or, if they did face up to him, not having the courage to endure and to overpower him but rather to desert and run . . . while those who were destroyed by their own cowardice of spirit and intention seem to the observer who knows nothing about the defects and sicknesses of the ruled to have been ill-generaled and badly governed. The present population of Peloponnesos can be said to be heirs of the land and the name of the race only, but of the virtue of their forefathers they they have not even what might seem to be the expected inheritance of bastard offspring.

 Floor plan of the Pantokrator.

In 1423, the troops of Turahan Bey had come all the way to the walls of Mistra before returning home, and it was the Albanians alone -- "those laborers who had taken over Peloponnesos" -- who made any effort to stop them.  Those would be the same Albanians whom Manuel had praised for their work in building the wall.  Coincidentally, it was in that year of 1423 that Theodoros was considering becoming a monk.  Recently, in the winter of 1446, Constantine and Thomas had to defend the Isthmus against Murad II, the Greek troops cut and ran, and the brothers barely escaped alive.  Murad's troops went as far as Patras before turning back.  


Scholarios gave personal information, some of it a little surprising.  I had not expected Theodoros to have such physical interests:

Was he not strong? Was he not athletic? Was he not a fine rider capable of guiding an untrustworthy horse down a hillside? Was he not ready to set his hand to anything that anyone might have conceived in reason? Was he not superior in dexterity of hand and nature to the masters of crafts? But all this is a matter of physical skills.whereas he was better in more important thing: he was a lover of learning, a quick learner and thus a polymath. I shall pass over the rest, but in calculation, and geometry and in the so-called organizations of the sciences who was there who handled such matters better in both theory and practice?

Just possibly, Theodoros talked a great deal too much.  Scholarios is complimentary, but still:

In quickness of tongue, grace flowering in words, and cleverness in conceptions whether with or without training, I do not think there was any one at all who could equal him. Rather I think it came to him from God. Who, on hearing him speak would not forget his own circumstances, who would not be delighted and would not beg to hear more, as it flowed continuously, to the extent that they were able to neglect their necessary concerns.

Apparently, his interest in becoming a monk had started even before he was married, in 1421.  Scholarios makes only the most limited mention of his marriage and family: 

Such a man he was, zealous in his private self, and happy in public goods. He was blessed with a distinguished marriage and proved to be the father of a fine child resulting from this marriage with a most distinguished family, and came to a similar end. He did not enslave cities, nor place a yoke on peoples.

 Scholarios' information combined with the letters Bessarion wrote to Theodoros (links below) -- quite apart from the information we have from his marriage, gives us an exceptional portrait of character and personality, for any Palaiologos, and certainly for the period. It is not a pleasant portrait.

Translation copyright © Pierre A. MacKay, October 5, 2011.  Text from M. Jugie, L. Petit, and X.A. Siderides, Oeuvres complètes de Georges (Gennadios) Scholarios, vol. 1. Paris: Maison de la bonne presse, 1928: 247-283.

 

More on Theodoros: 
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2010/02/theodoros-ii-palaiologos.html
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/04/glory-days.html 
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2011/05/bessarion-to-theodoros.html 
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2011/05/bessarion-to-theodoros-part-two.html
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2010/10/theodoros-poem-to-cleofe.html
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2010/06/emperor-in-pain-part-2.html 

http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2008/07/pavane-for-dead-princess.html

http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/02/pavane-for-dead-princess-part-two.html

http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2009/07/pavane-for-dead-princess-part-three.html

Stone Clamps

 Houses in Longanikos

Kostis Kourelis wrote recently about stone masons in the Morea.  He gives me the explanation for some photographs I took in the interior of the country after Jack Davis called my attention to the stone clamps on old houses:

"In summary, architectural labor from the 18th to the early 20th century was organized in itinerant groups of masons. They would specialize on the finer aspects of construction, such as the corners, quoins, the windows, openings and roofing and would hire local work for the unspecialized work, such as building infill walls."  Such construction is shown in the next pictures.

 Main street through Longanikos

Main street through Leondari

 Leondari

Stones were secured with iron clamps, and each group signed its work with its own design of clamp. You can see at least 8 of them around the large doorway -- click to enlarge --  in the photograph at the top, and at least 6 around the smaller. Similarly, you can find at least 8 clamps for the left-hand doorway in Leondari and 10 for the second.

Here are two such signatures from a group that worked in Tegea:

Tegea

 

Tegea

All the other towns here are mountain towns.  Mountains are made of stone.  Tegea is on flat, damp land.  These Tegea houses were immediately around the remains of the temple of Athena Alea and were built of its stones.  I was there two years ago with a learned group, and there was an interminably long lecture about the remaining stones of the temple.  No one seemed to care, or even notice, all the stone houses -- with their spolia.  Tegea houses are plumped full of spolia, like puddings with raisins.

Apparently a great deal has been written about these clamps, and many photographs taken, but they were new to me.  

South of Leondari

Ag. Nicholaos, Karitena

 

Dimitsana

Dimitsana bell tower

 

Dimitsana

Many of these itinerant groups were Albanians and there was a new wave of stone workers in the 1980s and 1990s.  These were the men I saw working on the palace at Mistra when I was there in 1995.

I like these continuities: so much of Greek history has been discontinuous.  In 1480 and 1480 when Bartolomeo Minio was rebuilding the walls of Nauplion, he could find no one who knew how to build in stone.  He had to have five masons and a master-builder sent out from Venice.  Travelers write about the shabbiness of Venetian towns in Greece and their proneness to fire.  I found good evidence that Venetian houses were for the most part wooden, at least above the ground floor, and standardized sizes of planks and nails were shipped out from Venice for their construction.

There was no Morea-made iron in the 15th century. Minio had to order clamps -- and nails, and anything of iron -- ready-made from Venice, again in standardized sizes. Already before 1420, Plethon had worried to Manuel II and Theodoros II about the lack of local skills and Moreote dependence on foreign imports,  In the 1440s, Bessarion wrote Constantine, concerned about the lack of Greek skills -- iron-working was one he particularly mentioned, along with ship-building and weaponry -- and suggested that eight young men be sent to Italy to learn. More on that later.

Diana Gilliland Wright, “The Wooden Towns of the Stato Mar: Medieval Construction in Nauplion,” 

 Studi Veneziani 40 (2000) 169-178.

Nauplion: The Siege of 1500

In the 15th century, July and August were the times for massacres -- Negroponte on 12 July 1471, Otranto on 14 August 1480, Modon on 9 August 1500. Under Ottoman law, a city that did not surrender was up for grabs.  Modon tried to surrender, but the white flag was not seen in the turmoil.  And massacres happened in late summer, because the Ottoman armies could not leave home before mid-May because of the length time needed to send messengers across the expanses of the empire and for men to get to the meeting points.  There is an adequate account of the war here.

On this date in August 1500, Nauplion was put under Ottoman siege.  Expecting a siege, Venice and Crete had sent men and supplies, but most support had to be sent to Modon and much of the available shipping was involved in that disaster. It is difficult to work out the sequence of events  now: more difficult in 1500 as reports did not get to Venice until October, being written days after the events they relate, and arriving out of order.

The Sultan, Beyazid, after watching the executions at Modon, accompanied the Ottoman governor of the Morea and 30,000, or 10,000, or 60-70,000 troops -- reports differ -- to Nauplion. They arrived on the 25th or 26th -- reports differ -- and immediately encountered a band of stratioti to whom it was suggested that Nauplion might surrender. Beyazid's tents were set up by the church of Santa Veneranda on the side of Palamidi. [Now Ag. Pareskevi, the church is still there, on private property.]

On the 26th, Ottoman messengers were sent with formal offers of surrender and were turned away. Polo Contarini, governor of Coron which had insisted on surrender against his own wishes, was used as an emissary.  Januli Stathi reported that he was brought up to the gate by three Turks, and then there was this conversation: Contarini said, "Modon is taken, Coron has surrendered, and you, poor fellows, what are you going to do?"  Stathi replied, "We are going to fight for our faith. We have all taken an oath that we will all die rather than surrender."  Contarini, "I will die with you."  A moving account, Stathi's.

Contarini's own account said that he had been dressed up by the Turks, given a gold collar, and promised great things should Nauplion surrender.   He was brought up by ten or fifteen Turks to the walls where a row of crossbowmen trained their sights on him.  Terrified -- swords at his back, arrows at his front -- he called out, "Don't you recognize me?" -- he had formerly been castellan in Nauplion -- "I'm Polo Contarini!"  Some men came out and embraced him.  Making a gesture to negate what he was saying, he said what he was supposed to say about handing over the keys of the city.  While they were making their formal response, he broke away from his guards and darted through the city gate.

Inside Nauplion, he found a great deal of confusion, some arguing for surrender and others arguing against.  There was a good supply of food and water, but not of ammunition. That same day, the governors of Nauplion -- Jacomo de Renier and Alvise Barbarigo -- put him with 19 other men on a small boat called a gondola and sent them off to find the Captain General for more information and instructions.  Gorlin of Ravenna, a commander of foot soldiers, sent a letter with them saying they in Nauplion were all united, soldiers and residents alike, and would live and die to the honor of the Signoria.

Contarini and the boatmen spotted the Ottoman fleet down in the bay, and went ashore at Kyparissia.  They went through the mountains and down to Monemvasia, and then Vatika where the Venetian Captain General was anchored with the Venetian fleet.  Two of them were captured by the Turks, but the rest got through safely. 

Outside the walls of Nauplion, there was frequent skirmishing ["scaramuzava"] between stratioti and Ottomans -- now reported to be 100,000. The stratioti were splendid, at least at the beginning, and were reported riding back and forth with Turkish heads on their short spears.

The Ottoman fleet arrived in the bay on the 28th, and anchored at Kiveri-Myloi, across from Nauplion, where it could take on fresh water.  There was general panic in Nauplion, particularly among the peasants who were unused to city walls and who knew what was happening to their homes and lands. Everyone had heard what happened at Modon. 

To defend against the Ottoman fleet, Renier and Barbarigo had the Venetian galleys unloaded and planks taken to make a great palisade along the marsh [You can see a hint of this if you click on the image below.]  Then five galleys and all the little boats -- all the fishermen's boats -- were sunk around the island fortress and along the harbor to prevent the arriving Ottoman ships from being able to get close. The rest of the boats were burnt. The sailors tented over the plateia with the sails from the galleys.  The Greek and Venetian priests concelebrated a mass on the plateia, and all the men embraced each other in turn, asking forgiveness for any offenses.

The Ottoman fleet left the bay on the 4th, and went to Spetses where it was held for several days by the bora, a N -NE wind.  Then the fleet went to Aigina, and eventually started back to the Dardanelles, with the Venetian fleet in pursuit.

A number of Greeks wanted to go over to the Turks.  The issue was settled when a band of Albanians killed twenty of them and put an end to such talk.  Somehow word of this incident was taken by land across the Morea and then to Corfu, where it was sent on to Venice. Spies were sent from Corfu to get more information about Nauplion but they were captured and killed.  Skirmishing continued, with many reports of Turks "tagliato a pezo." The Turks put a trebuchet on Palamidi, and offered the Manessi and Busichei clans 1000 horses to come over, but they refused.

Meanwhile, Coltrin, was working on the walls.  He reinforced the round tower at the end of the wall that you see below [the inlet had not been dug then] and reinforced the advance wall.  He dug out a cistern for the tower and planned four more, as the autumn rains had begun.  Since boats could now come and go, he sent off an order for 2400 planks, 200 shovels, and other implements for construction. The wall building continued under fire.  Nauplion men and women voluntarily worked day and night, carrying stones and dirt. A German cannonier, Corangian Lanier, arrived from nowhere and was put in charge of the island fortress.

A hundred and twenty-eight men were reported missing -- some known dead, some known to have levanted, some known to have been killed.  There were 551 horses within the walls, many in poor condition, and many more horsemen whose mounts were dead.  There seems to have been a good bit of coming and going, with occasional skirmishes, people going off to find their families, and some joining the Ottoman army.  Not knowing how long the food in storage would have to last, decisions had to be made about how much grain could be spared for the horses.  Gorlin was extremely ill, and was put on a boat to be taken where he could get help.

Then in the early hours of 15 October, the Ottoman army moved out, burning a few houses and leaving mounds of rubble and their dead. A small number of troops were left on the Argos-Nauplion border  -- 4,000 or 10,000 -- to continue the siege. The stratioti continued, as the report said, "to treat them badly," also raiding down in the Morea where they loaded up on loot the Ottomans had had to leave behind.

The withdrawal happened because Beyazid had seen he could do nothing to take Nauplion -- having lost 16,000 men there, or it happened because word had come of a disaster to an Ottoman army in Hungary.  There was extensive evidence of dysentery in the Ottoman camp. Beyazid had gone to Megara.  Or Negroponte.  Or Thessalonike.  Or Constantinople. Bits of news arrived in Venice from all over and no one there was sure what was happening.  What certainly must have happened is that the Ottoman army was short of food.  Without supplies from the fleet, there was no way an army of 10,000 or 100,000 could have kept itself supplied off the countryside.  Further, the Ottoman army normally disbanded in the fall so the men could return home for the winter plowing and sowing.  So an end to the siege might reasonably have been anticipated.

That is pretty much it.  There are no tidy wrap-up reports but there was no massacre in Nauplion in 1500 and very few deaths at all. Barbarigo and Renier saved the city by the simple decision to destroy their boats.  Once the Turkish army had left, there was no produce to bring into the city from the countryside, and no firewood.  People were hungry. Bartolomeo Minio, captain of Crete, sent as much food as he could -- beans, biscuit, some flour, but Crete was stretched thin, having lost many ships and men at Modon, and then having to supply the Venetian fleet.  Nauplion was safe for another 38 years, but it was always under strain as the Turks who occupied the whole Morea, with the exceptions of Monemvasia and Nauplion, put pressure on the boundaries and moved in closer.

The top image is a detail from a 16thC icon  of the Crucifixion. The helmets  and spears are appropriate for 1500 and the Italian soldiers would have had them. The stratioti would have been lucky to have much of anything.  The Camoccio map of Nauplion is the first known, published in 1571 but made before 1540.  It makes clear the advance wall and the Albanian houses between it and the city wall.  The information here comes from Volume 3 of Sanudo's Diarii.

Archons: Demetrios Laskaris Asan of Mouchli

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the Turks came to Davia

Aerial view of Tavia, now Davia, west of Tripolis, in the foothills of Mainalon

Among the resources for the 15th century Morea are the little chronicles called the Vracheachronika, or Kleinchroniken, depending on which edition you use. These are lists, mostly of one-sentence paragraphs recounting events as recorded by monks in various monasteries. Sometimes these are lists are taken from single events noted on the margins of a manuscript about something else. Sometimes they cover two or three pages in a codex.Some of them are fragmented collections of a few dates of Biblical history, a bit of Constantine, two incidents from the 1100s, a death of an abbot, and something about a despot. Often a chronicle is simply copied from another chronicle.

So we get staggeringly limited records such as:

1499, Naufpaktos.
1500, Methoni

referring to Ottoman conquests of Venetian-occupied Greek cities, and the copyist certainly wrote these down years after the events.

Page after page, the chronicles are, for the most part, frustratingly limited and reflect the dreary mindset where those who could be considered literate thought this was an adequate record of events:

1402. When they took Prusa.
1430. When they took Thessakoniki.
1430. When they took Ioannina.
1439. When the Emperor John went to Florence and there was the Eighth Synod.
1187. When they took Jerusalem.
1446. When they took the Hexamilion.
1451. When they took Karamania.
1453. When He took Constantinople.
1456. When they took Athens.
1458. When they took Serbia.
1458. When they took Corinth.
1460. When He took the Morea.

There are more in this series, but it suggests the copyist did realize the taking of Constantinople and the Morea were of possible significance to him. But what is Jerusalem doing in there? Did he see a notation of it elsewhere and think it belonged in the conquest list?

There are rare bits of useful information, particularly in two chronicles from the Nauplion area that report the collapse of the apse of a church as the result of a thunderstorm, and the miracle that happened when a Venetian bishop opened the tomb of Ag. Petros of Argos. Not enough is reported. None of them mentions the war in the Morea that lasted from 1463-1478. None of them mentions the Kladas revolt of 1480, which is what I was given an NEH grant to spend last year in Athens doing research for a book about.

But I was intrigued by this event at Davia (picture) in 1423, tracking it through the chronicles. Here are the various ways it was recorded:

They came to Tavia and killed the Albanians there on 5 July
They destroyed the Albanians at Tavia.
He slaughtered the Albanians at Tavia.
They cut down the Albanians at Tavia on 22 May.
He slaughtered the Albanians.
They killed the Albanians on 5 June.
The Ninth Death, when the Albanians came to Tavia.
They came to Lakedaimonia, also Leondari, also Gardiki, also Tavia where there they cut down the Albanians.

One copyist who was not paying attention wrote: "The Albanians killed them at Tavia." What was this about Albanians at Tavia?

In 1423, Turahan Bey, head of one of the Ottoman families that was allowed to remain independent for a promise of not contesting the sultan's authority, made a raid into the Morea. This allowed Turahan's soldiers practice and loot, and the sultan acquired half of the loot without the nuisance of war. Further, it contributed to weakening Greek resistance and discouraged any aid from being sent to Constantinople to oppose the sultan's attack there.

In May, Turahan broke through the Hexamilion which Manuel II had rebuilt eight years before with such fanfare, and then made a drive down through the Nemea valley, and into the passes of Mt. Lyrkeo, past Mantinea, and down past Tripolis, as far as Mistra. This raid was timed to take advantage of the barley harvest, and then the wheat. After raiding the Mistra area, Turahan started back north through the miserable passes of the Taygetos range and back up into the plain south-west of Tripolis where he assaulted two of the more important Greek cities in the Morea, Gardiki and Leondari. The choice of the Taygetos passes indicates that he knew there would be no opposition. One wants to know how Turahan knew about these various routes.

There was no opposition. The Despot, Theodoros II, who might have been expected to direct some sort of resistance, went into a panic and dithered about going into a monastery. Ioannis Frangopoulos, protostrator or general, of the Morea, but did nothing (though the next year he built the lovely Pantanassa at Mistra).

What happened is somewhat explained in the history of Laonikos Chalcocondyles. Or -candyles, depending on your edition. Chalcocondyles was from an important Athenian family, his father was a member of the court at Mistra, and he grew up knowing everyone who was anyone in the Morea, and with access to any written records he wanted.* He wrote two massive volumes covering Greek history from 1298 through 1463, and gave a paragraph to what happened at Tavia. This is his account -- there were at least 6000 Albanians in the Morea potentially available to bear arms.

The Albanians assembled around the center of the region, and they planned to break away from the Greeks in order to destroy the army of the Turks. Turahan, however, when he discovered that the Albanians were uniting against him in the one place, so that he could not escape them, arranged himself for battle, and the Albanians being assembled, came against him. When they came into confrontation, they could not withstand the Turks, and turned to flight. At that point, Turahan, coming out of formation and pursuing them, destroyed many, and those he captured alive, about 800, he executed, and made a tower of their heads.**

Well, it would happen, wouldn't it? The Turks were well-armed, trained, disciplined. The Albanians had little armor and were accustomed to independent, guerrilla-style tactics. But they tried. Possibly they had the thought they could also relieve the Turks of the loot they had acquired in the Morea.

Davia, twelve miles west of Tripolis, is now is a scattering of houses on a foothill of Mainalon (upper right) that slopes into a broad plain with a river (far left). In ancient times Davia was a substantial city with a fortress. It was sacked five years before this event, in 1418, by Centurione Zaccaria, Prince of the Morea. It is farming and herding country, though the fields tend to damp, as do all those upland Moreote plains. We drove through, to pay homage to the warriors of 1423, but it was snowing, mixed with rain, impossible to take photographs, and we did not stop.

It is an event of no significance in the overall history of the Morea, but it was as significant in the chronicles as almost anything else besides the Fall of Constantinople. It has shown up in a couple of modern Greek historians as an example of the Albanian penchant for revolt, rather than as an example of courage. The major Moreote historian gives one sentence, "A large number of Albanians met death at Tavia when they were attacked by the troops of Turahan."

George Seferis wrote:

No one remembers them. Justice.

* And of course, Chalcocondyles met Cyriaco when he was visiting there, twenty years after Tavia. Cyriaco wrote: "Also, I saw rushing to meet me in the palace, the gifted young Athenian, Laonikos." The next day, Laonikos took Cyriaco to look at the ruins of ancient Sparta.

** Thanks to Pierre MacKay for help with translation.

The Great Deaths

The First Death happened in 1347.
The Second Death in 1362.
The Third Death in 1373.

The Fourth Death in 1381. 

The Fifth Death in 1390.

The Sixth Death in 1396.
The Seventh Death in 1409.
The Eighth Death in 1417.
The Ninth Death in 1423 when the Albanians came to Tavia.

The Tenth Death in 1440.

So it is written in the fragmentary chronicles of the Morea, so fragmentary they rarely tell us anything but the year. The First broke out in September, the Fifth in April. The Seventh took 10,000 people in Constantinople in 1409 and was still requiring deaths in Nauplion at Christmas 1410.

In 1416 in Greece, they heard of plague around the Black Sea. If you lived in a port city, you simply waited for it to arrive. In 1417 it reached Constantinople and then the Morea in the summer and stayed for a year. It, or a new Death, broke out in Constantinople in 1419 and lasted into1421. The Ninth erupted in the Morea in 1422 or 1423 from an earthquake, lasting all through 1423. That particular year was remembered because the Turks broke down the wall at the Isthmus of Corinth in May, ravaged into the heart of the Morea and--the chronicles say--the Albanians came to Tavia. The Albanians, mostly recent immigrant herding clans who preferred war, were the only opposition to the Turks. Eight hundred Albanian heads were left at Tavia in June.

[Tavia is now Davia, but the eight hundred is its own kind of Great Death, a summer Turk-born contamination. Eight hundred were beheaded at Negroponte on 12 July 1471. Eight hundred were beheaded at Otranto on 14 August 1480. Eight hundred were beheaded at Modon on 9 August 1500. Eight hundred shows up in chronicles and eye-witness reports like a liturgical response.]

The Byzantine year began in September, so deaths reported in one year usually spill over into another year in our calculations. The chronicles stop numbering after the tenth episode of Death, but it is nearly always there in the records. The Venetian Senato warned the ship carrying Manuel II home from the West was warned not to stop there because of the plague that struck in the winter of 1401 and went into the spring. Negroponte had plague in the summer of 1426, Patras in 1430 when people were were weak from the famine of the previous year. A "terrible" plague hit Constantinople in 1435, and the beginnings of the Tenth took the wives of John VIII Palaiologos and his brother Demetrios. It came again in 1447 and1448, moving down to Negroponte where it devoured two-thirds of the city's population over two years, into the Morea, and then to Italy where it fed for four more years. Crete and the Morea were attacked in the summer of 1456 with plague that lasted into the next year. The 1460 plague in Negroponte moved on to Modon for 1461.

The Deaths mostly followed the shipping and trade routes, but Pius II's crusade against the infidels, brought plague from Ancona into the Morea in the summer of 1464. They were already dying on the ships, and ultimately three-fourths of Sigismondo Malatesta's army died, but enough survived to carry it from the west coast to Nauplion, and all across the south. It hung on for years, at least through 1468, supplemented by starvation because of the loss of so many farm workers, either because they had gone for soldiers, or had taken sick, or because those living around the cities disappeared into the mountains for fear of plague. When you count up the years of known plague in the Morea, they take in more than a third of the century.

The chronicles tell us that Moreote outbreak in 1423 was caused by an earthquake, and Halley's comet caused the plague of 1456. In fact, the etiology for 1423 may not be completely off: an earthquake could well dislodge rats and the burrowing rodents that carry the plague fleas, and they certainly associated rodents with plague. The ancients called Apollo "the far shooter," the bringer of plague, and also the mouse god, so possibly he was responsible for the comet, too.