Methoni, 1509

Methoni castle (Kal 'a-i Metoni) 1509,
Kemal Paşa Zade, Tevâŕh-i Al-i Osmân (Ms. Dresd. Eb.391)

[Late note: A correspondent has just sent me a link to the Dresden library ms of the map and I see that they date it 1550.  Thanks, Tom.]

A new correspondent has just sent me photographs of an Ottoman manuscript dated about 1509 1550.  This image of Methoni -- captured from Venice by the Turks in 1500 -- is fascinating where the details are clear.  It is accurate for the moat, the drawbridge, the mole, the cannon ports in the towers, the market place, and the bourdzi, but it shows a brighter, more prosperous, and more citified Methoni than any visitor ever described. 

Canon Casola stopped in Methoni for a few days in 1494, and this is some of what he had to report (I omit the borgo and the  Jewish and gypsy neighborhoods from his account, and from the other writers, as this image shows only the walled city.):

It has strong walls with drawbridges at every gate which are four according to my reckoning .  It is well furnished with towers, and on the towers and the walls there are large pieces of artillery . . . I entered the city where I did not see either houses or palaces worth of description; for its size it has many houses, and they are close together.  I think there are few inhabitants, for in the finest and widest street there, the houses appeared to be shut up for the most part, and when I stood in the market place I did not see many people.  Those I saw, besides that they are Greeks -- for they also belong to the Morea -- are thin and ugly to look at.  The majority of their houses, whether they are large or small -- at least from the middle upwards and on the side facing the public streets -- are built of timbers.  In short I did not see any other beauty there.

He had a bad night of it:

. . . If I had waited even the sixth of an hour, the whole house would have been in flames, and consequently the adjoining houses: for this house was of wood, and very old, of the dryest kind of timbers and with party walls to similar houses in a congested narrow street.

Casola did not see the city of this manuscript. Nine years before this picture was presumably made, the city of wooden houses and dry timbers had been sacked and mostly burned in the Ottoman siege and assault, and it is unlikely that in nine years the Ottomans had rebuilt it in western-style architecture.  I don't believe the painter of this picture had seen the city of this manuscript although he had certainly seen pictures of Methoni.  His Methoni is full of the kind of buildings Turkish manuscripts conventionally used to indicate western-style houses.

In 1497 or so, three years before the Ottoman conquest, Arnold von Harff stopped by Methoni and met a German master-gunner, Peter Bombardere

who gave me good company and friendship.  He showed me the strength of the town and the artillery, and it is in truth a small town but strong.  . . . he took me around the innermost wall, which was very thick and built of rough stones: in addition there is a great rampart against the wall on which stood many fine cannon, great carthouns and slings.

Casola, von Harff, and Felix Fabri and Bernard von Breydenbach (1483) wrote about churches in Methoni, with slight variations.  I have no idea if I am seeing churches in the picture: as in the Koroni picture below, the Ottoman conventions for western houses look remarkably like the western conventions to indicate churches.

(von Harff) . . . a Roman bishopric where the service is according to our use.  Item: they have also built there a mother church of St. Leo, where he lies in person.  There is also the head of St. Athanasius.

(Fabri) I took my lords and some other pilgrims to the church of the Preaching Friars and there we heard High Mass . . . the Cathedral which is consecrated to St. John . . . in which is the body of St. Leo, a German pilgrim who died among the Turks and who was renowned among them for many miracles, the head of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, and the two fingers of Sts. Cosmas and Damianus.

(von Breydenbach) In the parish church named after St. John there are the body of St. Leo and the head of St. Athanasius the bishop.

(Casola) The Cathedral can join the company of the other miserable churches, being badly kept in every way. . . .the relics were shown to us with a very poor light.  We were shown the head of Saint Athanasius [of Alexandria] . . . and the body of Saint Leo.   . . . he was a pilgrim who came from the Sepulchre and died on the galley, and was buried on the seashore.  Afterwards he was revealed to the Bishop who caused him to be brought into the church where he worked many miracles . . . To tell the truth, the said body was kept in a wooden chest which was in a very bad condition.  I do not mention the other churches, because I saw nothing there worth of remark. . . . The said convent [of St. Francis] has no cloister and no refectory; the dormitory consists of four rooms made of planks. 

This manuscript portrays a dozen or so sites -- Koroni, Galata, Lipari, Nafpaktos, Rumeli Hisar, and some others, nearly all of them with these ships that look like geometric tugras.  The image of Koroni, like that of Methoni, is not completely convincing as historical evidence, but it has this charming drunken cluster of western buildings and a mosque on the seashore.

Kemal Paşa Zade, Tevâŕh-i Al-i Osmân, from whose manuscripts these images apparently derive, was an important Ottoman historian and astoundingly prolific writer, and you may read about him here. There is too little information about him in English for me to write with much confidence, nor am I sure that the historian was the painter of these pictures credited to him.  The accounts in the Brill First Enclyclopedia of Islam, and in Babinger omit mention of the pictures at all when discussing his manuscripts, and I look forward to readers giving me more information.

Felix Fabri on Mediterranean Sailing

Felix Fabri is the guest writer for this entry.  He went twice as a pilgrim to Palestine between 1480 and 1483.  He was a Franciscan monk from Ulm, in the center of the Holy Roman Empire, and went by land from Ulm to Venice where he and his groups chartered space on pilgrim galleys.  A pilgrim galley was considerably bulkier than the light galley pictured here.  Below is a link to his fascinating account of his travels. Next month will be two entries on the miseries of winter sailing in the Mediterranean, but for late August his accounts of the joys of summer sailing seem about right.

* * * * * * 

Between these two countries [Morocco and Spain] the Mediterranean Sea flows in from the Ocean through the aforesaid strait, which is scarce a quarter of a mile in width. For washerwomen stand on either bank, pagan women in Morocco, Christian women in Spain, and abuse one another, and there Africa is divided from Europe. . .

These men [pilots] are all alike so learned in their art that by looking at the heavens they can foretell storms or calms, whereof they can also read signs in the colour of the sea,i n the flocking together and movement of the dolphins and flying fish, in the smoke of the fire, the smell of the bilge water, the glittering of the ropes and cables at night, and the flashing of the oars as they dip into the sea. At night they know all the hours by looking at the stars. Beside the mast they have one compass, and another in the uppermost chamber of the castle, and a lamp always burns beside it at night; nor do they ever turn their eyes away from it when sailing at night, but one always gazes at the compass, and chants a kind of sweet song, which shows that all is going well, and in the same tone he chants to him that holdeth the tiller of the rudder, to which quarter the rudder itself ought to be moved: nor does the steersman dare to move the tiller any whither save by the orders of him who looks after the compass, wherein he sees whether the ship be going straight or crookedly, or sideways. . .

. . . these [sailors] are the men who know how to run about the ropes like cats, who ascend the shrounds very swiftly up to the cap, run along the yard standing upright even in the fiercest storms, who weigh up the anchors, diving into deep water if they stick fast, and who do all the most dangerous work on board. They are in general very active young men, who are quite reckless of their lives, and are also bold and powerful in the galley like a baron's armed followers. Under these again there are others who are called mariners, who sing when work is gong on, because work at sea is very heavy, and is only carried on by a concert between one who sings out orders and the labourers who sing in response. So these men stand by those who are at work, and sing to them, encourage them, and threaten to spur them on with blows. Great weights are dragged about by their means. They are generally old and respectable men. . .

This fortunate wind and delightful run lasted all that day and the following night, during which we slept most peacefully, gliding swiftly and sweetly along, because the course of the galley was not sideways, but straight forward, which inclined us to slumber. For when the wind is quite fair, and not too strong, there is hardly any motion which those who are in the cabin can feel, because the ship runs along quietly, without faltering, and both the pilgrims below and the galley-slaves on deck sleep quietly, and all is still, save only he who watches the compass and he who holds the handle of the rudder, for these by way of returning thanks for our happy voyage and good luck continually greet the breeze, praise God, the Blessed Virgin and the saints, one answering the other, and are never silent as long as the wind is fair. Anyone on board who hears this chant of theirs would fall asleep, even though otherwise he could not sleep, just as restless crying children are lulled to rest by their mother's crooning song, when if all was still they would cry, and they go to sleep more because the song assures them of their mother's presence than because of its sweetness.

[At Modon] I took my lords and some other pilgrims to the church of the Preaching Friars, and there we heard high Mass. The prior of that place and the other brethren knew me well from my first pilgrimage. After Mass was over we went to the house of the bakers, where biscuits are baked for seafarers, wherein dwells an old German, and there we had our dinner cooked, and dined. The other pilgrims went over to the house of the Teutonic lords, and there provided a meal for themselves. After dinner we went up to the walls of the town and walked round upon them, and admired its impregnable fortifications. It is not an island, but part of the mainland, whereof the whole belongs to the Turks. On my return I shall tell you more about this . . . for the city of Modon is said to be midway between Venice and Jerusalem. About vespers both patrons blew their horns to call their pilgrims on board . . .

On the twenty-third, the eve of St. John the Baptist, we sailed before a very strong wind, and during the previous night sailed so fast that in the morning we saw no land, nothing but the . . . sea. When the sun set and it was growing dark, our sailors prepared to make St. John's fire on the galley, which they did as follows: They took many more than forty lanterns made of wood and transparent horn, and hung them one above the other on a long rope, and then, when the lamps were lighted, they hoisted them up aloft to the maintop, in such sort that the burning lanterns hung down from the maintop as far as the rowing-benches, and lighted up the whole galley. To see this sight all men came on deck from the cabin, the poop, and the innermost chambers of the galley, and stood round about it. Thereupon the trumpeters began to blow their trumpets, and the galley-slaves and other sailors sang, rejoiced, chanted, danced, and clapped their hands; whereat all who stood round about were wrought upon by the shouts of gladness and the clapping of hands to rejoice at the respect paid to the most blessed forerunner of our Lord. Before this show I never had beheld the practice of clapping the hands for joy, to which allusion is made in the forty-sixth Psalm, which saith: 'O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.' Nor could I have believed at the same time, when done out of gladness, would have such great power to move the human mind to joy. So we rejoiced greatly on board of the galley until about midnight, sailing along all the while swiftly and quietly on our way. After this we laid ourselves down to sleep.

Excerpts are from The Book of the Wanderings of Felix Fabri (Circa 1480-1483 A.D.) trans. Aubrey Stewart. 2 vols. London: Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, 1896. 
 For a very different view of Mediterranean sailing, read what happened to John VIII Palaiologos in the winter of 1437.