Peacemakers

 

One of the galleries at Tiryns, Minio's Castellazo.

On 9 October 1480, the Greek kapetanios Krokondelos Kladas led a company of stratioti out of Koroni in a private war against the Turks in Mani. He carried a Venetian banner, to give the impression that he had serious backing, and he acquired Greek, Albanian, and Italian supporters as he went. Mehmed II wrote Venice that he knew they had nothing to do with it and sent two different military expeditions to bring Kladas down and punish his accomplices.

On 15 December, Captain-General Morosini of the Venetian fleet reviewed the troops in Nauplion -- he had already done this in Methoni and Koroni -- and fired most of the Greek and Albanian stratioti or reduced their ranks, without their back pay. In peacetime Venice had no need for so many troops. When they protested, he demoted some and had others beaten. One of the leading Albanian kapetanioi, Thodaros Bua, stormed out with some 60 followers. They attacked Turks farming outside Argos, killed three, and went south to join Kladas. (See Letter 23.)

Ottoman reprisals were terrific, towns were burned, hostages taken, a few prisoners sent to Constantinople where they were cut to pieces. The impression from the documents is that it was not those responsible who received the brunt of the punishment. Kladas and Bua fought over control, Bua pulled out. Avoiding the dragnets across the Mani, many of the rebels made their way toward the borders of Koroni and Nauplion territory and started operating as bandits. Nauplion's provveditore, Bartolomeo Minio, banned the bandits from entering Nauplion territory and prohibited the sale of their goods. Nicolò Navagero, did the same for Koroni territory. This was their only defense when they could not lay hands on the guilty.

In early March, Bua got in touch with his cousin, Ismail Pasha, voivode of Karitena (who had taken troops across Mani) and asked for pardon. On the 12th Ismail wrote Navagero, provveditore of Koroni, proposing that both sides grant mutual amnesty -- he knew Navagero well after spending three weeks with him the previous fall in negotiating the territorial boundaries, but Navagero replied that he was unable to take such an action. Bua, taking pardon for granted, went into Monemvasia where he was immediately recognized and jailed.

In April, Kladas abandoned his followers, perhaps a day before certain capture near Porto Quaglio, sailing away on a ship belonging to the King of Naples on which there was someone he knew. For nearly a year, what was left of the revolt remained in a limbo, with some of the rebels hiding in the mountains, some looting and attacking Turks.

In January of 1481/82, Ahmed Beg, the new Ottoman governor or sancakbeg, arrived in the Morea. On 13 February, he -- with 300 horsemen and his personal staff -- met Bartolomeo Minio -- with 500 horsemen, 200 foot, and half of Nauplion -- at Castellazo. Then the two of them, each with five attendants, withdrew to talk. After issues of mutual interest had been discussed, and much good will exchanged, Ahmed Beg took one of the voivodes as a translator, Minio took his secretary and his translator, and the five of them talked privately.

I chose the picture above of one of the galleries at Tiryns, as it seems a most likely place for them to have talked. It offers shelter from the February chill, and privacy.

Ahmed Beg said that he wanted to put the matter of the revolt to rest. One of his voivodes who was related to the Busichi clan, and Ismail Pasha, had been working on it (or maybe the voivode and Ismail were the same person), and he asked Minio if he would share in a joint pardon.

Minio said that he himself did not have the authority to pardon rebels against the Signoria, people who had violated their peace agreement with the Ottomans. Ahmed urged him again, saying that if he -- the offended party -- was willing to forgive them and Venice was not, it could be taken that they were willing for the rebels to continue. Minio saw his point and said that he would write to the Signoria.

It was agreed that, until they had the Signoria’s response, the rebels were to withdraw and remain quiet. The voivodes and some of the kapetanioi said they would speak with their rebel relatives and asked for three days to get an answer. By the end of the three days, the kapetanioi brought word that Mexa Busichi, Elia Sagan, and Canessi Climendi, the rebel leaders, were willing to accept that.

So Minio sent his secretary with two Nauplion citizens with the kapetanioi to meet the rebels and record their oaths to remain at peace. Minio wrote the sancakbeg about this, and received from him a pardon and safe-conduct for the rebels. 

Minio urged the pardon on the Signoria, pointing out all over again that the offended side had already given a pardon. Further, this was a matter of 77 men, all of them first-rate men with good horses that the Signoria could ill-afford to lose. He was taking a great risk: had his proposal been resented in Venice, he could have lost any future position and could have been hit with enormous fines. Then Minio wrote something else, something he had not written the Signoria before because loyalty to a senior officer was such a supreme Venetian value. Minio explained what had happened to prompt the Nauplion revolt:

The Magnificent Captain General, held a review . . . through the bad information given for their advantage by those who were close to his Magnificence, . . . many of the old and competent stratioti have been rejected and their appointments annulled, and other useless ones taken on. Mexa Busichi, a competent man, and personally more valuable than his other Busichi brethren . . . was downgraded and listed as a simple stratioto. . . . Elia Sagan, who was a kapetanios of the stratioti, a provisionato, and one of the old stratioti of this territory . . . and his brother who was also a kapetanios and provisionato and others of his family have died in Your Lordship's service . . . was not only discharged . . . by the aforesaid Misier Hieronimo, but was also beaten.

He said a great deal more than this. (See Letter 72) Minio’s sense of unfairness and his strong loyalty to ’his’ stratioti won him enormous loyalty in return. His arguments convinced the Signoria, and within six weeks the first pardons -- seventeen -- were issued. It took several months to get it all settled, and the Busichi had to be pardoned for assorted homicides as well, but it was done, and then Venice offered them all jobs fighting in the Ferrara war. How they were seen in Italy is described here .

In fact, the stratioti were so contemptuous of the leadership they got in Italy that they refused to fight if not assigned a leader of their own choice.  They were given Minio. The sequel to this story, and the Ferrara war, will be told in a few weeks.

Minio’s letters are dowloadable here.

The Greek Correspondence of Bartolomeo Minio:
Volume 1, Dispacci from Nauplion, 1479-1483.

Diana Gilliland Wright & John Melville Jones

Unipress: Padua, 2008.

The Capi

 

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

 

 Stratioto Demetrios Palaiologos, in Venetian dress

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

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

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

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

 Mercurio Bua, by Lorenzo Lotto
1527-1530

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Maria Luisa Ricciardi

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

Published by: IRSA s.c.

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

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