Better Than You Were Before

In the fall of 1454, Mehmed II sent a letter to thirteen archons of the Morea, accepting their offer of loyalty to him. They were "Kyr Manuel Rallis with all his people, and Kyr Sophianos with all his people, and Kyr Demetrios Laskaris with all his people, and the Diplovatatsoi, the Kavakioi, the Pagomenoi, the Frangopouloi, the Sgouromalaioi, and Mavropapas, the Philanthropenoi, and Petro Bua and his people, and those others who want to come."

All those plurals mean that each of the archons brought with him several dozen, maybe several hundred, more men, so this pledge of loyalty had the result of transferring several towns to Mehmed's service without effort on his part.

To them Mehmed promised: "of your possesions,
and your children, and your heads, and anything of your possessions that remain to you, I will touch nothing, but I will leave you in peace so that you are better than before."
After the Fall of Constantinople, which surprised no one even though it broke many hearts, the Morea disintegrated. The threat of disorder had always been there among the archons, and often happened, but at this point disorder was at every level of society and there was a general revolt -- "of the Albanians" -- the chronicles say, but Greeks revolted, too, and sometimes there were several sides revolting at once. Demetrios and Thomas Palaiologos, each ruler of half the Morea, fought each other, everyone changed sides and Mehmed was invited to send in troops to help pacify the country.
The Venetians saw the general disorder as their opportunity and sent in diplomats to offer gifts, and bribes to anyone where it might be considered used -- diplomats instructed not to put anything into writing. Once they saw how things were going with the Turkish troops, they focused their attention on Thomas, who liked Italians, and later on Demetrios, but neither would make a commitment.
Ever since the Fall, various archons and island rulers had been going to Mehmed, offering him homage, and welcoming him to their towns. By the fall of 1454, and given the revolts, the Morea was so totally hopeless that archons there were doing the same thing. There was a lot of it going around, but it is only these thirteen for whom we have a piece of paper.
Manuel Rallis, a brutal man and a palace official of Thomas Palaiologos, was in control of the area originally called Morea -- the territory of Chlemoutzi, Clarenza, the plain of Andravida. It formerly was controlled by George and Thomas Rallis, for Thomas Palaiologos, their first cousin, but at the Fall, they left for Italy. Just how Manuel was related, we don't know, but he now had that territory as well as his own and he had put it under Mehmed's control. He must have been quickly disillusioned: Mehmed did not tolerate the independence and rapaciousness the Palaiologoi were unable to control.

When Mehmed came into the Morea in 1460 -- and he took the surrender of Mistra from Demetrios Palaiologos on 29 May, the seventh anniversary of the Fall -- he brought people with him to whom he assigned lands. He used the same sort of leapfrogging method of land assignments my father and I used for turtles in the summer of 1950: find a turtle on the road, put it in the floor of the car. Next turtle is put in the car, and the first put out, and so on and so forth, four days from Minnesota to Texas, and four days Texas back to Minnesota.

The people Mehmed brought were the wealthy and powerful from his recent conquests. As he took up the Moreote archons into his train, he assigned their lands to Turks and Hungarians and Bosnians and Albanians, and a Russian. So the archons found their lands evaporating, and Manuel Rallis found his lands going to the sancak bey of the Morea, Sinan bin Elvan, and the Hizir-seraskier of Chlemoutsi. Petro Bua's territory went to an Ibrahim Engurus. [Late correction: we do not know Petro Bua's territory for sure.]

This is probably why most of these archons were to be found fighting for the Venetians three years later when war broke out in the Morea in the summer of 1463. By 1465, Manuel Rallis, four of his sons, and a grandson had all been killed, some brutally. The lands he had claimed were now under his son Micheli whose people complained to the Venetians about his harshness.

In August 1466, Micheli Rallis was with the Venetian army when it was surprised outside Patras. The Venetian commander, Jacopo Barbarigo, fell off his mule when trying to escape, and Rallis, instead of making his own escape, stopped to help him. He was pointed out to the Turks by a priest. Barbarigo was cut to pieces. Rallis and the Metropolitan of Patras were impaled on the seashore.

About the others, we have little information. Petro Bua, his sons and grandsons, were fighting for Venice in the 1480s, and when he died at home in bed, the Venetian Senate heard speeches in his honor. A Sophianos served as an emissary for Mehmed to the West, but it may not have been this one. Some went to Crete, some to Italy, and more were absorbed, one way or another, into the Ottoman system. Some probably ended up administering lands in Albania or Thrace.

And for at least three generations, Venice, out of loyalty and gratitude, was providing employment and allowances and dowries for the desendants of Micheli Rallis and his brother Nicholas.

Ag. Marina at Kazarma

Ag. Marina is in a valley behind the fortress of Kazarma, up the road from the Mycenean bridge. The chairs suggest how very small it is. It was probably built as a burial chapel -- we'll get back to that later. The next photo suggests that there was a collapse of the roof or wall at the rear -- too small to call it an apse -- so that it was clumsily, very clumsily, rebuilt.

The inside has a minute narthex, with an arched entrance to the chapel. The chapel has a stone iconostasis with an arch in the center and another arch on the side. None of these three arches is symmetrical or has the same arc or height. One almost has the impression that the builders had themselves never actually seen an arch before.

Thirty years ago, Ag. Marina was nearly hidden in its valley by damp green grass and shrubbery -- after rains, water came down the hillside all around it. The inside smelled of mold and the candles were too damp to light.

Since then, a dirt road has been put through which channels the water away from the chapel, the grass is regularly cut, and someone keeps the paint around the front door fresh. It has acquired electricity and those chairs.

It was completely frescoed but damp and age and incense and smoke have long since turned the frescos black though ghosts of images remain.
Chunks of plaster have fallen off from old age, and others have fallen where nails were hammered in to support icons.

Fooling around with Gimp on the pictures I tried to take of the wall brought to light a reddish robe over a white gown, possibly of Christ, and of a woman in a white dress of the kind non-Greek women wore in the 14th and 15th centuies. There is too much damage for me to say whether or not she is facing someone, but it was usual to represent an unmarried woman in white in her tomb portrait. This portrait is on the rear of the iconostasis -- not at all a conventional place for such, but that was one of the only two areas in the church with enough space.

This woman in white is a tremendous addition to the historical materials of the Argolid. Otherwise, I have found only five named women in the 15th century: Soi, a serf; Kyria Malaksos, a priest's wife; Maria Buriano, defrauded in an investment; Maria de Cavaza, a land-owner, and producer and dealer in her own linen and wool business; Magdalena de Finctis, Ms. Cavaza's sister-in-law. To be so few, they are a nice variety. Six more unnamed women are mentioned in passing, and there are references to "families."

Ag. Marina was most likely built as a burial chapel for a fief. There are a number of these small chapels around the Argolid, and they will, slowly, allow us to work out general impressions of the locations of the medieval fiefs -- some of them we know had about 200 acres.

But unlike medieval chapels and churches on main roads or beside towns, Ag. Marina has never been formally identified, and it certainly has not been tidied and restored. I am not much interested in disrupting its life. I like the unmatched chairs in front -- a good place to eat lunch or rest when you are hiking, or pruning the olives across the road, but I would like to see those frescos, and the fragments of the others, cleaned up and protected.

[Ag. Marina is continued here.]

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.
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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.

Toupha, Toufa

When Cyriaco of Ancona was in Constantinople, he sketched as best he could the great bronze statue of Justinian (527-565). The statue was made of gilded bronze, and stood on a column 50m. high. The most remarkable thing about the statue itself -- otherwise your basic equestrian statue -- was the headdress, called a toupha, which an earlier traveller drew in great detail in 1340 (right) and you can see that this drawing and Cyriaco's are pretty much in agreement.
[Late correction: I now believe this drawing has been erroneously attributed to Cyriaco.]

.A number of different headdresses have been called the toupha, or toufa as you prefer, but we are currently concerned with the one on the statue, and will describe it a diadem with a lot of peacock feathers. It probably came from the East, perhaps Persia, which is an all-purpose explanation for various Byzantine appurtenances not otherwise explicable.

The toupha had been in use for quite a while before Justinian -- coins of Constantius II (337-361) like the gold here show him wearing one -- and notice the little thing in front that looks like the tuft on a hawk's hood.

When Justinian came along, 200 years later, it was apparently well- established as part of the emperor outfit, regardless of how silly it must have looked, and was worn when an emperor rode in procession to celebrate a triumph.

A hundred and seventy years ago, an extraordinary piece of fabric was discovered in Bamburg, Germany, in the tomb of Gunther, Bishop from 1057 to 1065, a fabric he had obtained in Constantinople. Splendidly colored, it showed a tyche -- a representation of a city, here Constantinople -- presenting presenting a toupha to the emperor John I Tzmiskes (971-976), unless it was to Basil II (976-1025) for defeating the Bulgarians, but either way it was already an antique when Gunther acquired it on pilgrimage. Gunther died on that pilgrimage, and his cloth was buried with him. The tyche seems to be dressed as a bride so this fabric is emphasizing that the Emperor is married to the City, much as Elizabeth II was given a ring as part of her coronation ceremony

John VIII Palaiologos who gave so much pleasure to artists with his dramatic hats went to the Council of Ferrara-Florence in late 1437. Now, Cyriaco who drew the first toupha pictured above, and who was a friend of John, was at the Council when it moved to Florence in early 1439. And the young painter Benozzo Gozzoli (1421-1497), being a Florentine, was there, too.

John didn't wear a toupha in Florence. Florence was a humiliation, not a triumph, and if he had worn a toupha, there would be twice as many pictures of him wearing it as there are of him wearing the melon hat. But one can imagine a variety of ways in which a young painter might have met up with Cyriaco who had recently been in Constantinople, and might have looked at his travel notes and diaries. And might have seen that image of a mounted emperor wearing a toupha.

Or young Benozzo talked to other people who had been in Constantinople and or saw other drawing. He may have made his own copies of them. He may have thought that it was a silly headdress, too, and that he could improve on it. Or he may have only understood that it was a crown with feathers. So that when he came to paint his amazing frescos for the Capello dei Magi in the Palazzo Medici twenty years later, he included the emperor John, wearing carefully curled hair, exotic Eastern robes, imperial red buskins, and a toupha -- a crown bejewelled with the rubies and pearls which John is known to have worn in Florence, and with red, white, and green feathers. 

[An explanation for Benozzo Gozzoli's particular feathers is here.]

Ag. Thomas at Midea

This is how Ag. Thomas looked in 1978 and this is how history happens.

Ag. Thomas is a sweet small church, up many steps above the road leading to the archaeological site of Midea. In 1978 it was surrounded by brush, its walls were rough though immaculately whitewashed, and in 1978 there was evidence on the exterior that it was built in the 13th century.

For one thing, there was a dentil trim--corners of bricks barely visible in this picture -- along the roof line and across each side under the windows. For another, there were -- whitewashed over then -- crosses made of ceramic bowls over the windows on the north and south sides, like this bowl from the church of the Dormition of the Virgin at Merbaka-Ag. Triada which used to have 52 of these jewel-colored ornaments. Ag. Thomas had at least 12 making up the two crosses, and there may have been more.

Inside the apse are remains of indecipherable frescos. The iconostasis was in 1978 and is now painted a splendid bright blue. At the base of the iconostasis is a hole -- recall that Thomas wanted to put his fingers into the hole in the Master's side for proof -- through which children were once, perhaps still are, passed for healing.

What you see in the immaculate exterior, the clumsiness of the arches, the gaiety of the paint and the amateurishness of the icons is that this church is beloved by the people of its small village to whom it belongs.

This may be the problem -- it certainly is a problem for archaeologists, art historians, and those who require history to be frozen for the buildings of their choice. There is a great word here in Greece often seen on restored buildings, anapaliotheke -- "made old again" which is what happens to these medieval churches when they are officially discovered, fixed, and frozen.

Ag. Thomas was not officially discovered and so in recent years, its village has done the fixing. The brush was cleared out and the pavement extended on the south side looking south to Midea and down the valley east to Nauplion and the sea. The porch roofs were sensibly enlarged and electricity put in. So far, so good.

But then the uneven roof line was regularized -- the interior vault was left intact, but the walls on the east and west ends were raised a bit, and the center walls cut down to the tops of the windows. This eliminated the ceramic bowls that had survived for 700 and more years.

The exterior of the church was replastered, eliminating any sign of dentil moldings, sizes and shapes of stones, and any other indications of age. The photographs of Ag. Thomas from 1978 and from 2009 are so unlike that anyone who has not been there may have to accept on faith that these are photographs of the same building. This new one is immaculate, well cared-for, and has nothing of its former appealing shabbiness.

This is partially a class thing, this yearning for charm and shabbiness, this desire for the picturesque. The picturesque is generally a function of long-time poverty, and if there is anything people want when they no longer have to submit to poverty, it is to signal that is has gone. If you repair and paint your home, why not your church ?

This is a problem for me as a historian: why should these remnants of the past, valuable to me as an outsider, one who neither pays taxes here nor helps whitewash -- why should the people to whom they belong maintain them for my satisfaction? Real vandalism has been done to several churches I know, particularly one on private property, but for a government agency to take over under the rationale of the value of "national heritage" may do violence to other values, and to individuals who already have a firm concept of their own heritage based on the information available to them.

I particularly love the Saints Thomas: Thomas Apostle, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Becket, Thomas More -- all in love with accuracy, even to the point of disaster. So I want to be accurate about Ag. Thomas-Midea: it has not been vandalized, it has been cared for by the people to whom it belongs. And it is accurate to say that this care has created loss for another community.

Ag. Petros the Wonderworker of Argos

 
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Peter of Argos, whose feastday is May 3, was born in Constantinople in 855 and died in Argos at the age of seventy. He came from a generous and loving family, and was early offered high advancement in the church. He refused, came to Corinth where his brother Paul was serving as bishop, and took up his preferred life as a hermit.

He was a good and generous hermit, and word got around. Argos was in need of a bishop, and after much persuasion -- and threats -- Petros agreed to go to Argos. One of his many acts of generosity and intelligence there was not only to provide free public education for the children, whether of Argos or of foreigners, but when they were through with school he made sure they had the tools necessary to earn their living.

He was much-loved, as his miracles below might suggest, and when he died the men of Nauplion came over and fought with the men of Argos for possession of his body. Argos kept it, but in time the remains were moved to the Agia Moni, a monastery outside Nauplion, as his Greek church was taken over by the Latin church from the conquests of the 4th crusade. In 1425, Segundo Nani, Venetian bishop of Nauplion, ordered the tomb opened -- he was claiming the monastery as part of his private fief. When the tomb was opened, a great light exploded from it, and thunder and lightening, and the scent of myrrh. Nani's reaction is not recorded, but at some point Petros' relics were removed to Italy.

In the 1990s, monks from Argos began a methodical search of records and churches in Italy, and found Petros' relics in a monastery near Rome. Those monks graciously agreed to return them, and in January 2001, Petros of Argos was brought home.

There are four surviving miracle stories of Ag. Petros, translated below. The author of his vita, his disciple the Blessed Theodosius (whose tomb and miraculous spring are not far from Argos) said there was no point writing things down because everyone knew all about them.

1. A great famine befell the Peloponnesos. The inhabitants try to sustain life with roots and grass; they barely have the strength to bury their dead who fill the roads and footpaths. In that difficult tragic time, the Saint remains firm. He kneels and raises his hands to Heaven. He beseeches mercy and help for his flock. At the same time, he collects wheat, grinds it, fills great storage jars, and instructs the backers to bake and share out the bread with the people in town and from the villages. O! The miracle! With the prayer and blessing of the Saint, the flour does not run out. The amazed bakers want to proclaim the deed but he does not permit them. The storage jars, however, which do not run out at all, show forth the miracle which is much greater than that of the Prophet Elijah who fed only the household of the widow.

For this, the hymn praises him: "He speaks to God and he lives by faith, the most blessed one, storing the left-over inexhaustible flour in the jar, nourishing those suffering famine, his starving people, of godly mind in the midst of famine and death, praising his Christ unto the ages."

2. In those years, the barbarian Saracens [Spanish Arabs] attack from Crete, which they had seized, making raids, pillaging towns and villages, taking with them hordes of prisoners. Learning of the generosity of the Saint, they come often to the shore of the Argolic gulf. They scatter calamity and catastrophe but they sell their slaves to his men.

One day, the Saracens arrive very early with their pirate ship. The representatives of the Bishop give money and ransom a number of slaves. The barbarians, however, do not give up one woman, a young virgin. They want her for their commander. They become angry at the insistence of the representatives, return to the ship with all of them, and remain there. The Saint is deeply saddened. Tears pour down his face. He goes to his room and kneels in prayer. He will not rise if the ransomed girl does not come back to his grieving Christians. That afternoon comes the joyful news: the pirate ship is stuck on a reef and a coastal patrol ship encounters it. The next day, in the moming, the coastal patrol come back triumphantly and, having tied up the Saracen pirates, immediately disembarks the freed prisoners.

The Saint weeps again, this time from holy emotion at the answer to his prayer and from the satisfactory solution to so many difficulties. He kneels, he gives thanks and he praises.

3. One day, a terrified young girl, crying heartbreakingly, takes refuge with the Saint. An officer is after her. She asks the protection of the Saint. He questions her. The officer bursts in cursing loudly. The holy Petros turns to him: "If we have no fear of God, neither will we have shame before men." The officer flees. Then frightful shuddering and violent fever seize him. He sends to ask pardon from the Saint and gives the order to free the girl. With forgiveness, the fever and shaking goes away and he returns to health. The girl is saved.

For these miracles of the Saint. the hymn-writer sings of him: "Our Father never failing, fifty come back from the pillagers, censuring the unjust, inhibiting the mind in its evil at hand."

4. One day, with tears in his eyes, a distraught father falls at the feet of the Saint and askes his help. His daughter, possessed since the day of her wedding, cannot face her husband at all. When he approaches her, she falls rigid and foaming.

The Saint calls his priests immediately, they prepare the blessed oil, and he gives the instruction to the father to anoint her with the oil for seven days. The seventh day, the daemon fled from the woman, and she became a good wife, a mother and mistress of a household.

This miracle the hymn-writer relates: "Just as her father in the spirit freed the dead girl of her pain, prayer unceasing, anointing with oil, freeing singing from suffering, 0 God of our fathers, be praised."

The Villehardouin Granddaughters

The name of the young woman who posed for this 1310 fresco is unknown, but she stands in here for her contemporary, the younger Isabelle Villehardouin. The chronicler Muntaner who knew Isabelle said: "It was no wonder if he [Prince Ferdinand] was enamoured of her, for she was the most beautiful creature of fourteen one could see, the whitest and rosiest and the best. And she was the most learned damsel, for her age, of any in the world. What shall I tell you?"
What I shall tell you is that it was not a good thing to be a princess in the medieval Morea.

When William Villehardouin, Prince of Achaia died in 1278, he left two daughters, Isabelle, whose story was sketched here, and Marguerite, Lady of Akova. Each named a daughter for her sister. Isabelle's Marguerite has no story, only a long life in Flanders and a good marriage, but Isabelle's older daughter Maud had enough story for several.

There are a lot of names in this story.

First, Maud. Maud was married at the age of 12--she was legally an adult--to the young Duke of Athens, Guy II de la Roche, uniting the dynasties of Athens and the Morea, at least on parchment. Her mother Isabelle and step-father Philippe left the Morea in disgrace because of Philippe. Because of William Villehardouin's treaties, the Principality of Achaia now belonged to Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples who needed its wealth to finance his attempt to regain Sicily. He sent over his own governor and gave possession of the Principality to his brother, Philip of Taranto.

Philip appointed Guy as governor, but Guy and Maud made formal claim to the Principality in their own right, with the support of most of the feudal lords who wanted a Villehardouin. Guy died in 1308 after a long illness and Maud was a widow at the age of 15. Philip betrothed Maud to his son Charles who also died, and when she was 20, Philip married Maud off to Louis of Burgundy, an Angevin relative. Maud and Louis were jointly rulers of the Principality of Achaia but as he was a teenager and they mostly lived in Burgundy, Achaia was still under Angevin-Neopolitan control.

Meanwhile, Maud's aunt Marguerite had been widowed twice. She and her daughter Isabelle had their own lives, troubled because of Marguerite's step-son. But when Marguerite's sister and Maud's mother, Isabelle Villehardouin, died in 1312 or 1313, Marguerite began her own efforts to lay claim to the Principality of Achaia. She had considerable support in this from the feudal lords who still resented the Angevin-Neopolitan adminstrators and who still wanted Achaia back under a Villehardouin. The Villehardouins had been popular ever since the first one had landed more than a hundred years earlier.

Parallel with the lives of the Villehardouin granddaughters, and intersecting with them, were the adventures, lootings, slaughters, and conquests of the Catalan Company -- a narrative much too long and unpleasant to relate here which you can read in the terrific chronicle by one of its captains, Muntaner -- but its members had by 1311 managed to take over most of Thessaly, eastern Greece, Thebes, Athens, Attica, Megara, and Aigina. Frederick, the Spanish king of Sicily, and one of the Catalans' backers, sent his cousin, the Infante Ferdinand of Majorca, to Greece to take over. He didn't, but during the next two years he had terrific adventures and made a splendid reputation for himself.

[Just a reminder here: when the Sicilian Vespers overthrough Charles I of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, back in 1286, they invited in Peter III of Aragon to take over Sicily, though the right of inheritance of his wife, Constance of Hohenstaufen. Charles I had taken Naples and Sicily from the Hohenstaufens. So now the Spanish-Sicilian empire controled half of Greece, and the Angevin-Naples empire controlled the Morea. You can see what was bound to happen.]

When Marguerite began looking for support, it was the year the Infante Ferdinand was particularly heroic in battle against the Moslems of Spain. He was apparently as charming a swashbuckler as anyone ever met, but Marguerite did not know this when she proposed to Frederick of Sicily that her daughter Isabelle marry his Ferdinand, and that they be Prince and Princess of Achaia under Frederick.

The ladies were invited to Messina, and Ferdinand was absolutely smitten. Remember what Mutaner wrote:

It was no wonder . . . she was the most beautiful creature of fourteen one could see, the whitest and rosiest and the best. And she was the most learned damsel, for her age, of any in the world.

Isabelle came from a family of at least four generations of splendidly-educated, multi-lingual women. She was swept off her feet. Everyone was enchanted by the couple's delight with each other. Marguerite transferred all her rights to Ferdinand and her lands to Isabella. Of course the Neopolitan Angevins were furious and when Marguerite returned to the Morea, their agents imprisoned her in the castle of Chlemoutsi which her grandfather had built, and confiscated her lands.

Isabelle became pregnant almost immediately and that was a signal to Ferdinand to make his plans to conquer as necessary in the Morea. Marguerite died in captivity: we do not know why, but there were many reasons to die in a medieval prison without needing to suspect underhanded action. Isabelle's pregnancy was in the seventh month and Ferdinand, wanting to protect her, did not tell her the news. Mutaner, delighted with the pregnancy, presented Isabelle with two bales of carpets, assorted garments, worked leather, and jewels. Then he rode up to Messina to help Ferdinand prepare their soldiers to embark for the Morea.

Two weeks later, they received word that Isabelle had given birth to an Infante on the first Saturday of April 1315. Ferdinand came down for a grand ceremony and they baptized him Jaime. Then Isabelle contracted a fever and dysentery. Ferdinand had returned to Messenia to complete plans for conquest but he hurried back. She recovered briefly when she saw him, but then she died when Jaime was 32 days old. Mutaner was directed to take the Infante Jaime to his grandmother, but that is a story for another time.

Ferdinand continued with his plans -- what else was he to do?-- and sailed for the Morea in June, landing near Clarenza which he attacked. Clarenza and several fortresses surrendered easily, and it looked as if Ferdinand was gathering a great deal of support from Moreote fiefholders and cities, including those who had held Marguerite in prison. When the situation looked stable, he arranged a marriage with Isabelle of Ibelin, of Palestine, a cousin of the King of Cyprus.

Meanwhile, opposition was building to the north in Patras and south in Messenia, and Maud who had been with Louis in Burgundy arrived with troops which she led into battle. Ferdinand won. Then Louis arrived with French reinforcements. The great lords from the islands came to the north-western Morea in support of Ferdinand, while the Greeks at Mistra sent two thousand troops to Maud and Louis. Ferdinand was expecting reinforcements by ship from Sicily.

They met in battle at Manolada, in a field not far from the sea, beside a small church of the Virgin. [More on that here.] Maud and Louis rode with their troops. Ferdinand's reinforcements remained off-shore, whether from contrary winds -- and they do blow from the land out to sea at mid-day, or from fear. Ferdinand's forces were completely crushed and he was beheaded on the field.

Two months later Louis died.

A new king, Robert of Naples, decided Maud should marry his brother, John of Gravina. Maud had had it with arranged marriages and said that she had secretly married one of the Burgundian knights, Hugues de la Palisse.

Robert, to no one's surprise, announced that he had discovered that Hugues was plotting against him, and Hughes was executed. Maud was imprisoned in the Castello dell'Uovo at Naples for 14 years (for marrying without permission) and forgotten. She died there in 1331. Her mother's aunt Helena, had been imprisoned for years and had died in prison, after Charles I of Anjou defeated her husband in 1266.

It was not a good thing to be a princess in the medieval Morea.

Glory Days

In September or October of 1429, Despot Theodoros II wrote a poem to his parents, who are shown here in a manuscript portrait from about 1403. This is the earliest of three poems by Theodoros in the handwriting of Cardinal Bessarion and attributed to him, but the author was Theodoros. The third of these poems was discussed here.

This autumn poem of Theodoros was to accompany an elaborately-embroidered panel with two double portraits of his parents, to cover their tomb, something like the Mistra fresco of his uncle Theodore.. His father, Manuel II, had died four years before and was buried in the Church of the Pantokrator in Constantinople (now Zeyrek Djami)..; his mother, Helena, had retired to a convent, which was almost like being dead except for the times she acted as regent

The panel was splendidly worked in gold -- Theodoros wrote, "I describe here in gold as being golden . . . with this torchlight" -- and very probably with pearls and other gems, something like this small portrait of his brother John and his bride, but larger, perhaps like this covering for an altar door. Six years later, a chronicle recorded that it had been sent to Constantinople, but whether Mistra was very short of workers with the needed skills, we cannot know. It might have taken a while to make the necessary gold thread -- Theodoros refers to the "gold hammerings showing what is within."

It is obvious from the poem that these were the glory days of the Despotate of Mistra. The brothers Palaiologos -- John, Theodoros, Constantine, and Thomas -- were at the top of their game, all accomplished without their father.

Theodoros' mood had reversed itself recovered from his own panic of the previous year about becoming a father, a panic that had made him desperately want to retreat to a monastery and left his wife and brothers at loose ends. Here he writes with pride of himself as "purple-born from admired stock" -- an awkward phrase, and continues:

Therefore you selected us, the children of your loins,
to rule the cleruchies of the Ausonians.

Theodoros is showing off his education here, but he had had a great deal of it: Ausonians was a literary way to refer to Italians, but cleruchies is more to the point, because it refers to lands held in another country. The brothers had, as of September 1429, acquired the Italian cleruchies in the Morea (except for a negligible amount of territory held by Venice), doubling both the territory and the income of the Despotate:

• Constantine and Thomas had taken the city of Patras, long a private fief of a series of Italian archbishops, the last one Theodoros' brother-in-law.
  
• The brothers had taken enough land from Carlo II Tocco that he could not continue holding on, and a marriage was arranged between his niece, Maddalena, and Constantine, with the great castles of Chlemoutsi and Clarenza as part of the dowry settlement. Maddalena, her name now changed to Theodora, was pregnant and due to give birth in the late fall.
• The brothers had defeated Centurione Zaccaria, Prince of Achaia, and the settlement of that war was a marriage arrangement between the youngest brother, Thomas, and Katharina Asanina Zaccaria, with the lands of Achaia as part of the dowry settlement.

So there was a great deal in the way of cleruchies for the brothers to celebrate and money to pay for gold and pearls and skilled embroiderers. Gold runs through the poem to describe the moral qualities of Manuel and Helena:

Each of us in different ways, and I joyfully
honoring you with these fine-worked fabrics,
so may you extending your hands from above
through many days guarding the strengths of empire,
appear as defender, foundation, and power.

A gracious tribute, and it makes one wonder exactly how Manuel was portrayed. It suggests he might have been shown in armor and, if so, this is exceptional: when Byzantine rulers are portrayed with their wives, they both wear court dress. Was he shown somewhat in the position of the Virgin and Child in the image here, with his wife below? Then the poem shifts to the images of Manuel and Helena wearing monastic dress, "the dark, black cloths of shrouds." It was very common, particularly in that family, for individuals to retire to a monastery or convent, partly out of religious devotion and discipline, partly because it was a congenial retirement and nursing home. Theodoros makes the point, and then says again, that his parents rejected earthly desires out of pure rationality. The embroidery must indicate that they are praying for their children:

she, near at hand with words of intercession he in with prayers on high showing us, your dearly loved, the way where one must lead.

The brothers Palaiologos must have regarded the prayers of their mother quite seriously, and we learn later, after the Document of Union of 1439 that she refused to pray for her son John who signed the document, and then when Constantine came to the throne in late 1448, accepting Union, she refused to pray for him. This was all in the future, though, and this poem is a powerful tribute from Theodoros who had not seen his mother for twenty-two years, because he had been sent to the Morea at the age of 10 to learn from his dying uncle how to be a Despot.  

  More research has found information which requires a shifting of the dates mentioned here.  This will be included in a forthcoming scholarly discussion of this and the other poems, jointly authored with Pierre A. MacKay. Translation Pierre A. MacKay and DW.    

Continue "Glory Days" with "The Palace of Mistra." 

Anything but your dull maps and measures

William Gell was not perfect. In his Itinerary of the Morea (1817) He heard Merbaka as Mebacca, Chonika as Phonika, and identified as a well at Tiryns what is a large grinding mill. He mentioned the bridge of Karitena (left) half a dozen times, but because his interests were not in medieval Frankish, Byzantine, or Turkish building, he said nothing more than "bridge of Karitena.")*

Richard Burgess, following Gell's route from Leondari to Mistra in 1834 (which would have taken 8 hours and 48 minutes if he followed intructions precisely), wrote, "the details given of this route by Sir William Gell are most accurate," and that is all one could want.

Because of the lady who asked for "anything but your dull maps and measures," and "the events which are at this moment occurring in the Turkish empire," Gell took the opportunity of working up his travel notes into which indicates that he was noticing a great deal besides maps and measures, and what was mentioned by Pausanias and Strabo, and in Journey in the Morea (1823) he gave the bridge a whole sentence:

The bridge, though a wretched specimen of the art of masonry, is not wanting in picturesque beauty, having a sort of chapel against one of its piers, which would seem to give it a Venetian origin.

The chapel is not Venetian but Greek, and very damp, and Gell did not actually climb down in the gorge to visit the chapel where there was at the time of his visit a carving with the name of Manuel Rallis Melikes who built it in 1440. Melikes was descended from a Turk who came into the Morea in the 13th century to fight for the Greeks. Gell did not know this but he would have been pleased: he liked Turks.

Gell altogether preferred the company of Turks to Greeks, and generally traveled with a Turkish interpreter or janissary, and Turkish servants.

No people on earth ever equalled these peasants of Greece, in this unwelcoming species of sullen and ill-natured, as well as ineffectual spite . . . it can never have happened that an European has rested at any house in the country, without leaving the inhabitants the richer for his visit. It is only fear, or interest, which have any effect in opening the doors of an Albanian Greek to a stranger . . .

When an upper-class Greek suggested to him that he might have a different experience were he to go about unaccompanied by a "Musselman," he found

I met with no change in the manner of reception, but a striking difference in the results; and was once compelled to remain in the street an hour, in the snow, at a town where the inhabitants were numerous, and independent enough to venture on such incivility.

Mentioning this situation to the cogia bashi of Kalavyita, DelliGeorge, he was assured that

all Greek archon as he was, and cogia bashi in addition, he never went to any of the villages without being compelled to lay his stick on the backs of some of its inhabitants, in order to obtain the most common necessaries for his money.

The complex and difficult history of the Morea begins to suggest itself in passages such as these. It is not easy to read his criticisms of Moreote Greek ethics and religion -- although he is as often accurate as not, even less easy to read of his bullying of Doctor Zane or the gatekeeper of Tripolis, or of his sneering at the man who, on looking through a telescope, thought he was seeing a ghost. He is contemptuous about the generosity of Gligorasko of Tripolis who exchanged money for him, saying that it was only because Gligorasko thought he was a person of importance from Constantinople. Gell is a prime example of the "wogs start at Calais" school of ethnicity.

This attitude is disappointing when the rest of his work is so thorough and so useful. He was, despite himself, a noticing sort of person, and there is evidence in Journey in the Morea that all the times he measured for his routes in Itinerary were not recorded in unbroken sequence. While he was measuring the distances from Mistra to Sparta and surrounding villages, he was also noting every broken piece of marble he could spot, and recording inscriptions, short ones such as STEPHEN CHAIRE (Farewell, Stephen), and longer ones to demonstrate the style of lettering under the Roman emperors, as well as commenting on regional variations in letter usages. (Has anyone looked to see if any of his inscriptions duplicate any of Cyriaco's?)

At Gargagliano he observed that the local swine,

though not absolutely wild, have longer legs, and backs well arched and fringed with long bristles, presenting the appearance of the boars on antique gems.

In Leondari he observed "the mosque was once a Greek church." In Patras he noted the great cypress tree that Evliya saw in 1668:

at the distance of about a mile from the town, is a most magnificent cypress, which as assumed the form of a cedar: Spon and Wheeler measured it, since which time [1680s] it has much increased in bulk.

In Dimistsana he visited "a library containing some old editions of the classics." You can see these now under glass in a dimly-lighted room, but he must have noticed the 1590 Photius from Augsburg; the 1532 Demosthenes, the1538 Ptolemy, and the1544 Souidias from Basel; the beautiful Greek 1499 Libanius or the 1506 [my handwriting illegible] published by Manutius in Venice.

He was also able to give an account of bandit ethics:

By day there was infinitely less danger for a Frank in his proper dress, as the thieves, who always retire to the Ionian islands when hard pressed by the Pasha, imagine that they would neither be received nor foriven in those pious and moral societies, if they should be known to have molested a foreigner. If it be asked how a traveller can be acquainted with details, which regard the internal government of the robbers of the Morea, I may answer, that I learned them sitting in perfect safety in a drawing-room, with many other particulars, from one of the most daring leaders of banditti, through whose hands, as he expressed it himself in the Greek idiom, I had often passed in the course of my rambles on the mountains in search of antiquties, and positions for geographical observations, my knowledge of which recesses seemed to inspire him with that sort of confidence, which we would have felt for one of his own profession.

Surely the lady who complained about maps and measures was persuaded to think better of them when she read this passage.




* Three weeks ago I fell at the foot of the stairs in the photograph, damaging my right knee and left hand. I wanted to commemorate that event here.

A chapel with vestiges

The picture is of a chapel with vestiges--here a classical column built in, just right of the lower center. William Gell noted this site as he passed by, one eye on his watch, the other on his notebook.


Gell (1777-1836) was a wonderfully obsessive traveller, documenting his modern Greece of the 1810s against Pausanias, and then noting the minutiae of his modern Greece for the travellers he hoped would follow him, and then writing up his interesting experiences and candid descriptions for people who were sensible enough to stay at home, grateful for the blessing of being English, instead of Greeks or Turks..

In the introduction to his Itinerary of Greece, he writes:

To those who may consult this volume as their guide on the road, the advantage of noting every well, rivulet, mill, or farm-house . . . will soon be apparent, in a country which does not abound in water, where every stream has its history, and where every object assists in determining the direction to be pursued, when the road is nothing better than a track frequently interrupted.

This program was fulfilled in the next volume, Itinerary of the Morea. Suppose you were, inadvisedly, wanting to go from Mistra to Krabata, these would be part of your instructions. The numbers refer to minutes:

11 The last sign of Mistra. This road is the same as that to Leondari.
15 A ruined aqueduct, with two ranges of arches, with a stream under it.
10 End of the hill of Papiote, and another piece of the aqueduct
. . . . .
3 The road turns back a little, and a river falls into the Eurotas.
13 Following the glen of the last river, ascend. R. across the stream, a rock with the appearance of antique vestiges.
. . . . . .
9 Very bad road, on a summit. Descend. A church r.
5 Vestiges. A few trees. Bare hills. A stream from r.
2 A fount r in a field.
5 Vestiges r.
5. A red mountain, Krabata, l.
15 Stream r. of the road.
4 A tumulus of stones r. See r. a fine mountain with pines.

At the end of this route you learn that to go from Mistra to Krabata takes 3 hours 48 minutes, a time that assumes you are riding a horse and have a companion-servant-translator who is walking. I personally think you want a happy translator and should have got a horse for him, too, but Gell travelled constantly and seems to have known what he was doing. In fact, all of his measurements of routes and times were taken from the same horse in order to give them consistency.

The traveller needed a Firman

or order from the Sultan, permitting him to pass unmolested, and recommending him to the attention of the . . . Pashas of the Morea . . . An order for post-horses may be annexed to this, by which, wherever the post is established, good horses may be had, nominally free from expence, but presents ought to be given . . . This firman should be procured by the ambassador at Constantinople and sent to . . . the first port hwere the traveller enters the country. If this does not arrive . . .

And so on.

. . . horses seem the best mode of conveyance. Some prefer mules, from an idea of their caution in dangerous or rocky situations, but the horses of the country are equally accustomed to the roads, and are not only more docile, but free from the trick of lying down in the water with luggage, which is frequently the practice of the mules.

Horses could be got for five or six pounds each at the beginning of the journey, and sold at the end. It was necessary to hire Greeks or Turks to care for them and the baggage. So, realistically, the trip from Mistra to Krabata would likely to take somewhat longer than the 3 hours and 48 minutes that you and a single attendant would require.

The baggage to occupy the attending Greeks and Turks would include: a mattress, and a piece of oilcloth to wrap it during the day, and to put on the ground at night; a small carpet for sitting on the ground; a knife, fork, spook, plate, cup, and a pot for boiling water; an umbrella with an iron spike for fixing it in the ground; silk curtains for protecting the bed from mosquitos.

The baggage would also contain presents for the hosts who might offer you a place to spend the night. Depending on circumstances, a watch or cut glass cup might be appropriate, but ordinarily one could do just as well with imitation jewellry such as red glass beads, and particularly imitation pearls.

17 The glen opens into the plain of Argos. R are ruins, on a projecting hill.
8 The plain, covered with stones, some of which have been collectd into a large heap, 400 yards r.
20 A peribola, or garden, r. L. on a hill, a pyrgo. Villages; churches; two wells, and the fragment of a column.
7 Two villages, r.
8 Village, r. L. a church. Ancient foundations r.
15 Three villages r. Pass through a village.
7 A church r. Cross a road from Argos to Epidaurus. On hill l., a church and tumulus. L. rocks. Enter a
grove of olives.
3 Ruins of Tirynthus, and a well.
30 Enter Nauplia, having turned r. at an angle of the bay.

At Nauplion -- fortunately you are not in the mountains where you may have to stay at the wretched khan if the tower is occupied, and the boys at Argos throw stones at strangers (this happened to us, too, in another century) -- and if you are coming from Corinth you should watch out for the chapel with the guard who will check to see if you are bringing plague with you -- have a bath. Preferably not when the bath is crowded.

The first apartment has a fire in the centre, and around the walls are several sofas . . . which have clean sheets and blankets . . . the bather is stripped, a cotten cloth is wrapped round him, and he is conducted in wooden pattens through several vaulted rooms, each hotter than the last, to a chamber, where he is placed upon a wooden platform about the size of a door, and raised four inches from the pavement. His profuse perspiration is rubbed off by one of the attendants . . . After this, a bason full of lather is brought, and the baqther is rubbed with a soft brush made of an oriental plant . . . On clapping the hands, the attendant brings a fresh dress of cotton cloth, which is wrapped round the waist, and another in the form of a turban is placed on the head. He is then . . . placed between the sheets, and drinks a cup of coffee while he is drying.

Those only who have tried can judge of the wonderfuly cleansing and refreshing effect of this custom.