Travelling: Love in Mistra

Cities

Idealized city walls, Pantanassa, Mistra

I have been trying to get a portrait of the cities of the Morea in the fifteenth century.  City, in this case, indicates the presence of walls, the position of bishop who may reside elsewhere, a market, craftsmen, some kind of local administration with a governor or his representative, and possibly a few foreign merchants or their agents. One can make no assumptions about size or architecture.

The port cities -- Patras, Clarenza, Corinth, Kalamata, Methoni, Koroni, Nauplion -- were small and shabby (possibly Monemvasia was an exception early in the century), and the interior cities -- Mistras, Mouchli, Leontari, Longaniko, Nykli, Mostenitza, Andravida, Chalandritsa -- were small. As a comparison, fifteenth-century Italy -- admittedly the most urbanized area of Europe -- had more than 90 cities with a population of 5000 or more. In the Morea, none is likely to have had more than 2000. 

A Latin memo of 1437 reported that the Morea had 30 cities, 200 of the strongest fortifications, and 400 villages: this was propaganda to encourage aid for Greece and cannot be used for court evidence. Pero Tafur, seeing Corinth in the 1430s, said that it was much depopulated. In the Ottoman cadaster of 1460-1463 it had 392 households, or about 1400 people, making it the largest city in the cadaster which represented between 1/3 and 1/2 of the population of the Morea. The other "large" cities in the cadaster were Vumero with 242 households, Ag. Georgios with 242, and Leondari with 204. All of them were larger than Argos with 115 households in 1450, fewer than 200 households a generation later in 1480.  (I have been using 4.2 as a multiplier for households to get the population.)

Tafur reported Clarenza depopulated, though it had apparently been a small city at best: in the 1390s it had only 300 households. Tafur was there in 1437 and there was some rebuilding and refortification just after 1441. Mistra is unlikely to have had as many as 2000 people within the walls on that steep hillside -- Tito Papamastorakis thinks only 1000 after comparing maps of the excavations with Venetian maps of 1700 and the population then of under 1100 -- and it was a heavily masculinized city primarily of monasteries and church administration.    The former Frankish capital of Andravida had 36 inhabitants. In 1460 Mouchli and three outlying villages accounted for 105 households, or fewer than 500 people.

Minio suggests an unprepossessing Nauplion -- "the best house that I could manage, considering the condition of the place." Casola found Methoni with its 2000 inhabitants shabby, the houses of wood, the cathedral impoverished, and said that, "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." Even late Byzantine Athens had grain fields within the city walls, and in 1395 was said to have been a town of 1000 houses. If so, it was larger than anything in the Morea -- except, again, Monemvasia. Fortifications were often mud-brick and rubble, like the city wall of Argos, or the outer wall of Nauplion at the Ottoman attack in 1463. 

It is a depressing image of the Morea, but one could hardly expect better of cities in a culture whose archons occupied themselves by raiding the food resources of other cities.  The Ottoman raids are blamed for much, but they cannot bear all the blame here. 

 Idealized city from the Kariye Djami

Misunderstanding Mistra, Part Three

Angel, Pantanassa, Mistra.

I have, for some time, been offended by the omission of Cleofe's name from an inscription in the Pantanassa copied by Michel Fourmont in 1730. The inscription mentions Lord Neilos as Metropolitan of Lakedaimon and the Patriarch Lord Dionysos, and then says:

ἐπὶ βασιλείας τῶν εὐσεβεστάτων / βασιλειῶν ἡμῶν κῦρ Θεοδώρου Παλαιολόγου τοῦ πορφυρογενήτου / κατα μηνα σεπτεμβριους του 6937 ‒ "in the reign of our most devout rulers, Lord Theodoros Palaiologos in September 1428." 

To mention "our rulers" and then give only one name suggested that Fourmont had copied carelessly. But this inscription has been the foundation of the conviction that the Pantanassa can be dated to 1428.

A recent article by the wonderful art historian, Tito Papamastorakis (citation below) addresses problems of this inscription, as well as a number of other Mistra issues, and I am lifting from him for this entry.    It was already known that Neilos and Dionysos did not co-exist in the same year, as an inscription from Gortynia has a Matthaios as Metropolitan in 1427-28.  Papamastorakis translates εὐσεβεστάτων βασιλειων as "pious emperors" and believes John VIII and Maria of Trebizond should be named, as well as Theodoros and Cleofe.  But various contemporary writings from Mistra refer to the Despot as βασιλειος and his wife as βασιλισσα, so I don't worry about John and Maria.

Papamastorakis went hunting in the Mistra museum storerooms and found a slab of marble with an early Christian cross on one side, and on the surviving border the part of the inscription that mentions Lord Neilos.

 τῆς ἀγιωτάτης μ(ητ)ροπόλεως Λακεδαιμονίας

Papamastorakis finds that the mixing of Σ with C for sigma, and also the Ω indicate a late date for the inscription, after the 16th century and before 1730.  This altar inscription is, then, a fake, and the date of 1428 is quite useless for dating either the founding of the Pantanassa or its paintings.

Still, I wonder -- were there so many travellers in the 17th century that it was thought worthwhile to forge an altar?  Might the monks have been trying to recreate an altar they thought they knew something about?  Or was the creation of the altar intended to support the Pantanassa's side in an argument between monasteries over authority?

Nevertheless, the Pantanassa angel above is a small miracle.

 

            Tito Papamastorakis, "Myzithras of the Byzantines / Mistra to Byzantinists," in T. Kiousopoulou> Οἱ Βυζαντίνες Πόλεις (8ος-15ος Αιωνας). Rethymon 2012: 277- 296.  I am glad to make a copy of this available if needed.

 

What happened to the children?

Detail, icon of S. Georgio dei Greci, Georgios Klontzas, 16th C.

Istituto Ellenico, Venice

I have already written here about the ability of the Palaiologues to lose close members of the family, in this case the children of Manuel II's brother, Theodoros, Despot of Mistra, not to mention Manuel's own daughters.  There are more misplaced children, and Manuel's grandchildren, too -- the children of his son Andronikos.

That would be poor, sad Andronikos, Despot of Thessaloniki, who died young of leprosy. He was Despot from the age of 8, in 1408, until 1423 when he handed the city over to the Venetians with the hope that they might defend it better than Byzantine resources could.  He seems to have gone to the Morea for a while, then to Constantinople where, in the family tradition, he became a monk in the Pantokrator, and died at the age of 28, in March 1429.

A. Sideras, in "Neue Quellen zu Andronikos Palaiologos," in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 80 (1987) 3-15, has found more information on Andronikos than anyone imagined existed, and it isn't very much.  What interests me here is a footnote with a scrap from a manuscript in Moscow that says:  

. . . for your sons (παισὶ) this has been sorrowing loss, over your absence and their separation from one another as they were scattered here and there . . .

One of the children has been identified as John, and the John Palaiologos whom Cyriaco of Ancona met in Mani has been stated to be the son of Andronikos. Because of the ages and additional genealogy, I believe Cyriaco's John to be the son of Theodoros I.   But what happened to Andronikos' John and his brother?  Were there more than two children.  Why were the children scattered? 

It is not clear in that excerpt -- which is all Sideras gave me to work with -- whether the scattering was after Thessaloniki, or after the death of their father. Did no one in the family have any regard for them? Constantine probably did: he was the one for whom we have any record of family affection. It is certainly asking to much to wonder what happened to their mother.  Or mothers.

No chronicler or historian thought any of this information important to record. We are told that Byzantines, like other people, loved their children.  Of course they did, but we have precious little evidence for it outside of the wonderful essay Psellos wrote on his daughter.  If we go by the pictures they left, the Byzantines for the most part thought children were short, deformed monsters, as in the Klontzas icon above.  Look at these two fresco details from the Pantanassa at Mistra: 

 

 Seldom do we find a child appropriately proportioned to an adult:  

Detail from Triptych, Georgios Klontzas, 16th C.
Istituto Ellenico, Venice

The more time I spend with the Palaiologos family, the more I see of civil war, to the end and well past the end, and the hiving-off of young children. The family models the history of the late Byzantine period.

Don't miss Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters: The Byzantine Family of Michael Psellos, by Anthony Kaldellis (Notre Dame Press, 2006).

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.

A Second-Hand Hat

Continuing a little longer with the topic of John VIII's headgear.

This is Manuel Laskaris Chatzikis who died in 1445 and was buried in the Pantanassa monastery at Mistra. The inscription on the fresco identifies him as "servant of the Despot, Constantine."

That is all we know about Manuel Laskaris Chatzikis, except that this image shows him wearing a style of hat that is otherwise only seen in portraits of John VIII, his brother Thomas, and their father, Manuel II. The hat is generally called a skiadion, but that is the wrong name and the right name is eminently forgettable.* Call it the Palaiologos hat, or the melon hat. Chatzikis also appears to be wearing a robe very like the one John wears in his portrait, although we can't be perfectly positive about the sleeves.

There was another Laskaris in John's ambit, about whom we also know nothing, except that John sent him to Italy to help make arrangements for the Council of Ferrara-Florence.

There were more Laskarids than just those two. They were a huge family, intermarried with all the other huge families, and you couldn't swing a cat in the Morea, or Constantinople either, without taking out half a dozen. But we are limiting attention just now to the coincidence of these two.

The Palaiologoi were accustomed to reward individuals who gave significant service with significant contributions to their wardrobe. Sphrantzes reports that Manuel II once gave him a dark-colored robe lined with fur and a chest that had belonged to his father, while John's wife, Sophia, gave him one of her green robes for his future wife.
.
On another occasion -- this when Sphrantzes was released nearly dead from imprisonment at Patras in a tower with mice and weevils -- Constantine gave him a double green tunic lined with fine green linen from Lucca, a red cap decorated with gold and a silken lining from Thessalonike, a heavy gold-colored caftan from Brusa, a green coat, and a finely worked sword. One might think green was the Palaiologos' special color.

When John was visiting Venice in conjunction with Ferrara-Florence, he presented someone there with one of his hats. Western artists were enthralled by John's hats, and his wardrobe generally. (He also wore a green robe one day in Florence.)

We need more evidence for this, but it may not be too much to think that in this portrait of Manuel Laskaris Chatzikis we are seeing the emissary for Ferrara-Florence, and that he is wearing John's hat and robe, a signal to the cognoscenti that he was a person of high significance, not only to Constantine who ruled at Mistra, but also to the Emperor in Constantinople.

Late addition: The fact that Chatzikis had himself painted wearing this hat and robe does not mean that he actually wore them, but he might have been buried in them.


* For the sake of conscience, the name of this style of hat is kamelaukion.To my knowledge, this is not only the only non-imperial person shown wearing this hat, this is the only Greek fresco of this hat.  All other images I know of this hat were painted in the West. I would be grateful for more information here.

** Go here for more information on the kamelaukion.