Argolid Villages, 1700

Grimani shield, "palato d'argento e di rosso di otto pezzi."
Two versions from contemporary maps.

In 1700, the governor-general of the Morea, Francesco Grimani, ordered a census. It mapped territories, listed names, mapped out ownership of properties, and noted what was being grown on every tree. It itemized butcher shops, mills, ovens, shops and ergasteria. It specified whether houses were owned privately or by the state, and whether the roofs were tile or straw.  In recording personal information, the census distinguished between males and females, and grouped them by age: 1-16, 16-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60.  Men were vecchi at 60, women were vecchie at 50.

I have already written about the little Nauplion churches discoverable in the census, but what fascinates me now are the profiles of two villages printed in V. Panagiotopoulos, Πληθυσμος καὶ οἰκισμοι τὴς Πελοποννησοῦ, 13os-18os Aiōnas.

These villages are Kato Belesi and Mikro Lalouka.  (Laloukas is still there, east of Argos on the way to Ag. Triada. Can anyone tell me about Kato Belesi?) Between them, they had 30 families.

The sixteen families in Kato Belesi had an average household size of 4.7, with 1.6 children per household.  The fourteen in Mikro Lalouka had an average household size of 3.6 with 1.3 children.  (The current rate in Greece is 1.5.) These figures strongly suggest -- insist -- that parents were strictly controlling their fertility.  Even so, Belesi's children made up 35% of the population, and Lakouka's 40%. In Greece now children are about 15% of the population and in the US 21%.

Various studies of Greek households over time give similar results, and have been extremely assuring in the work I am attempting for the fifteenth century. Liata's numbers from a several Venetian censuses around 1700, give household sizes ranging from 3 to 4.97 , clustering between 3.4 and 3.9. Laiou found a maximum household size of 4.7 in 1300-1 and a minimum of 3.67 in 1338-41, in northern Greece.  Similarly, the percentage of children and adolescents in Kato Belesi and Mikro Lalouka fit Laiou's profiles for the 14th century, and Baxevannis' for the 1907 Peloponessos.

What is so remarkable to me in these village profiles is the extreme variety of domestic configurations they show.  Only two or three simply have the "nuclear" family of two parents and their children, a configuration that really only comes prominent in Western culture in the later 18th century (has anyone written about what a class- and income-related affair this is?), and "official" after 1900.  Because of the way the data is presented, it is sometimes tricky to decide whether or not two people are a married couple, or a parent and adult child, or some other relationship.

Here are some of the villagers of 1700:

Dimitri Rogachi had 5 of the 13 sons in the village. He was in his 40s and his wife in her 30s. Dimo Yianni and his wife, both in their 50s, had 5 girls in their household -- their grandchildren? These are the households in Kato Belesi with the largest number of children. For the other households, only three have 3 children, six have 2, and thirteen have 1. In Lalouka, only two households have 3 children, three have 2,  six have 1.

The widow Maria, in her 50s, had the care of three children. The household of the elderly Kosta Yanni had three children and a woman in her 40s.  Stamati Sochina's household consisted of 1 elderly man, two men and a woman in the 16-30 range -- might these be his two sons and the wife of one? Sotiri "of the widow" was 16-30 and lived with his widowed mother. Papa Giogachi, in his 40s, had a wife in her 30s and two daughters. The elderly Cap' Chiriachi and his slightly younger wife had the care of a child, as did Coglia Tanasi and Panno Sisa and their wives. Troublesome generation-gaps are common.

The household of Yanni Sisa consisted of two girls and a boy, all under 16, and no adults -- this worries me. The largest household, that of Kyriako Manessi, had nine individuals: a boy, two men and two women in the 16-30 range, two men in their 30s, and a couple in their 50s. This looks like three generations with three couples and a child, plus two extra men, but the configuration could be accounted for in other ways. The Manessi household was probably the best-off household in that village.

Each person who uses the Grimani data formulates it in different ways. The tables I am working on from Pangiatopoulos do not specify what kind of roofs these peoples' houses had, or how many olive trees they owned.  I would like to know more about their lives: I suspect they were difficult. I am recalling clichés such as "the short and simple annals of the poor."  The stories of the people of Kato Belesi and Mikro Lalouka were anything but simple.

Grimani shield from the Nauplion walls,
storehouse of Nauplion museum.

For more reading on the Nauplion census, see Ευτυχια Δ. Λιατα, Το Ναυπλιον και η Ενδοχωρα του απο τον 17^ο στον 18^ο αι (Αθηνα, 2002).

Misunderstanding Mistra

 Late fifteenth-century Florentine painting from a series concerning 

Jason and the Argonauts that makes great use of gilt and Byzantine headgear.
Immediately after 1453 the West decided that Byzantine meant serious status.

I want to talk about some Mistra-related assertions that have come my way.

1.

1.1.2.1.1.1.2. Manuel II Paleologo, (1350-1425), Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, (r. 1391-1425), married 1392 to Jelena Dragas, with issue.

1.1.2.1.1.1.2.1. John VIII Paleologo, (1392-1448), Co-Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, (r. 1421-25), Emperor of the Byzantine, (r. 1425-48), married (1) 1409 to Princess Anna of Moscow, married (2) 1421 to Sophia di Montferrat, married (3) 1427 to Princess Maria Komnene of Trapezunt, dsp.

1.1.2.1.1.1.2.2. Prince Constantine Paleologo, (1393-1405), dunm.

1.1.2.1.1.1.2.3. Prince Theodore Paleologo, (1394-1448), Despot of Achaia, (Cr 1407) Despot of Mistra , (Cr 1443 Principe di Selimbria), married 1421 to Cleofa Malatesta di Pesaro e Fano, with issue.

1.1.2.1.1.1.2.3.1. Princess Helena Paleologo, (1428-58), married 1441 to John III de Lusignan, King of Cyprus.

1.1.2.1.1.1.2.3.2. Prince Emanuele Peter Paleologo, (1425-75), Titular 2nd Despot of Mystra and Prince of Selimbria, married at Messina 1447 to Isabella di Lotto, with issue.

Number 1.1.2.1.1.1.2.7.2.1.3.1.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.2.1.2.2.1 who designates himself as "Prince" and "Barone" sent me -- at my request -- this proof of his descent from Manuel Palaiologos. It took me two years to get around to looking at the genealogy because it is so very very long with so very many of those numbers, and I found the first problem precisely at the point where I have been doing research these past two years.

It should be easy enough to identify: the genealogy gives Theodoros and Cleofe a son, two years before they began a sexual relationship, and it gives him the name of Manuel Peter. Manuel is fine: the first son gets the name of the father's father, but there is no family source for the name Peter either with the Malatesti or the Palaiologoi for the name, and the chance of a Greek rite imperial family employing the name is -- I'm guessing here -- highly unlikely.

The next problem is the daughter, Theodora, assigned to Constantine XI, but neither Theodora nor Manuel Peter need have been mentioned at all since 1.1.2.1.1.1.2.7.2.1.3.1.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.2.1.2.2.1 claims descent through another Constantine, a grandson of Thomas Palaiologos, and a son of Andrea.  There is debate among reliable historians as to whether Andrea actually had a son.  Now, the non-existent Manuel Peter and this possibly non-existent Constantine both -- according to this list -- married Sicilians.  It is at this point that I begin to sense an ancient and fishlike smell and I am not giving credence to the claims of 1.1.2.1.1.1.2.7.2.1.3.1.1.2.1.1.1.1.1.2.1.2.2.1.  I could be wrong.

In the years after the Fall of the City, it would have been easy for any well-spoken Greek to have invented a new name in Italy, and given the laxity in the Byzantine system of names someone who already had Palaiologos as one of his names could have given the wrong impression to someone.

PS.  Do NOT make use of this site for Palaiologan genealogy. A massive number of erroneous details just in the names I checked -- sons of Manuel II -- and no way to submit corrections.

* * * * *

The other Battista, and her husband, Frederigo de Montefeltro


2.

Battista Malatesta de Montefeltro was not one of Cleofe's ladies-in-waiting. She was the wife of Galeazzo Malatesta, Lord of Pesaro; daughter of the Count of Urbino; niece of Pope Martin V; correspondent of Leonardo Bruni, and one of the most literate and respected women of her generation. She was the aunt of Frederigo de Montefeltro, condottiere and great patron of Piero della Francesca, and the great-grandmother of Frederigo's fragile wife who was named Battista for her.

Despite the abundance of material on Battista (summed up here) to be found in writings on 15th-century humanism, she was curiously identified as Cleofe's "dame d'honneur" by Denis Zakythinos . Everyone else has mindlessly copied from Zakythinos: Runciman says,"one of her ladies-in-waiting", and elsewhere he adds "a cousin"; Ronchey, "dama di compagnia"; most recently, "μιά κυρία της ακολουθίας (πιθανώς εξαδέλφης την δέσποινας)" in Zēsēs Tsiopas dissertation, and in Dabrowska who goes so far as to say that Cleofe was "spied on by one of her ladies-in-waiting, her cousin Battista."

Possibly Zakythinos made his assumption based on the fact that Battista wrote a letter to Pope Martin V about the marriage problems of Cleofe and Theodoros. (He found the letter in Iorga.  The letter has been carelessly dated to 1421 or 1425.  It was certainly written in January 1427, at the same time as Paola's letter to the Pope on the same topic.)   It seems never to have occurred to anyone that the information might have been transmitted from Cleofe in Mistra to Battista in Pesaro by letter, or messenger, or gossip.  No one had a basis for assuming Battista's presence in Mistra. Zakythinos is a giant in the pantheon of Greek historians and can be forgiven. Information on Battista may not have been available in the 1930s had Zakythinos wanted to investigate Battista. The others cannot because they did not check out their source. 


A letter by Battista on the death of Cleofe's and Paola's father can be found here. Letters by Battista, Cleofe and Paola can be found here.  

Turkish Views, Part One

Because so many people have downloaded Theo MacKay's watercolor of the dog Ayyusha, it seems appropriate to share more of Theo's work.  This little sketch is of Fawzi, another Egyptian dog.

In 1965-1966, Theo and Pierre MacKay spent a year at the British School at Ankara. During that year they traveled with Ayyusha and a Landrover to sixty-one of the sixty-seven vilayets in Turkey.  Theo painted the town scenes below from hotel windows between arrival and nightfall, and the flowers at lunchtime stops by the road.

Because today is her daughter Alexandra's birthday, this is for Alexandra, with love.

* * * * * *

 Boyabat
17 October 1965

 Divrigi
31 October 1965



 
Zara
31 October 1965

 Trebizond
6 November 1965

 Near Siirt
24 May 1966



 

Ordu
7 November 1965

 

 Tokat
10 November 1965

 Sivas
11 November 1965

Near Sidur
7 December 1965

 Yozgat
12 November 1965

 



Copyright © Alexandra MacKay 2011

Nauplion's Wooden Houses

Nauplion Houses.
Detail from Camoccio map, 1571.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Canon Casola and Felix Fabri described Modon:

CC: I did not see either houses or palaces worthy of description; for its size it has many houses, and they are close together. . . . The majority of their houses, whether they are large or small--at least from the middle upwards--are built of timbers.   

FF: If I had waited even the sixth of a 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.

No one described Nauplion houses, except for Bartolomeo Minio's remark when Giovanni Dario visited: "I paid the expense of a house for him and his household, the best that I could manage, considering the condition of the place."

At the beginning of the century, from 1400-1405, Giovanni Cavaza was castellan at Nauplion,the second-highest position in the administration. A Venetian merchant who was a permanent resident in Nauplion, he had been appointed to the job where we might have expected a castellan to be an official sent out from Venice. The castellan had a budget of about 500 ducats a year. Cavaza was responsible for defense of the city, police functions, security of the castro, operation of the prison, and executions. He made “foreigners” and sailors sleep outside the city at night, regulated curfews, taverns and markets, kept shops and workshops closed on holy days, gave permission to bear arms within the city, supervised guilds, punished illegal dumping of trash, and had laws and announcements proclaimed in the marketplace “in latino et greco.” In addition to the 500 ducats,which paid for staff and expenses, Cavaza collected fees from innkeepers, shopkeepers and prisoners.

Cavaza is mentioned in two brief documents from 1400 in which the Senato Mar made arrangements for repair of the house provided for the castellan. These documents make dire remarks about the “ruritura” of the house and castro, about a man without a place to house “sua familia.” The podestà, Albano Contarini, had written a number of letters about “magna reparatione omnino necessaria,” apparently to small effect until Cavaza delivered a proposal which stimulated a decision. Cavaza had offered to bear half the expense of rebuilding the official residence. Apparently his residence was even more desperately in need of repair than that of the bailo of Negroponte, described in 1403 as:

. . . in the worst condition, because the rain comes through almost the whole roof, and the wood is rotten, and in parts threatens ruin. Similarly, most of the sala magna is badly covered and it pours in, and the wood is rotten, and it is like that in the whole.

The Senato Mar, in a list that slips back and forth between specificity and “other things” itemized wood and nails--in standardized sizes--to be shipped out for repair of the house and the “turrim Sancti Marie.”
      For construction on the tower of S. Maria, larch posts de mesura 12
      Larch planks 40
      Rafters for fitting the house of the said castro 100
      Beams for fitting the house of the said castro 40
      Large nails for constructing a frame for the thatching 200
      Fir posts 10
      Fir beams 50
      Fir planks 300
      Lathes 1050 
      Large nails to repair the roofbeam and for work on other things 200
      Small nails 600
      Slats 200
      #25 nails 2500 
The important thing to note here is that all the items on the list came in standardized sizes.  It is well-known that the arsenal used standardized, interchangeable, parts for building galleys on an assembly line.  It has not, as far as I can tell, been noticed that construction materials for houses were also standardized.

The Senato also provided 200 ducats for administration, another 200 for transporting earth for land-fill, and for manual labor, and gave Cavaza a tax exemption on his half of the imported lumber. Clearly, the castellan’s house, on a standardized plan, was primarily of wood, at least above the ground floor. Cavaza’s thatched roof comes as a surprise, though it is perhaps not so surprising in an economically stressed community without a convenient supply of clay for tiles, fuel for firing, or adequate transport. Still, the image of wooden houses with thatched roofs changes pictorial assumptions of medieval Greece.

[Nauplion construction for the past 400 years -- until cement -- has been mostly half-timber above the ground floor.  But in the 15th-century, Nauplion had no one available who could cut stone, and Minio had to have stone-cutters sent out from Venice when he was working on repairing the walls of Acro-Nauplion and building the walls of the lower city, and he sent soldiers and wagons to Tiryns to collect suitable building stone for the stone-cutters to work on.  The village in the ruins of Tiryns seems to have been abandoned then.]

In the years immediately after this document, massive amounts of wood were shipped to Greece for Venetian concerns. In 1402, a shipment of wood was sent to Corfu to repair the castro. A thousand posts were sent in 1404 for construction at the “Garland” -- the castle -- of Argos. In 1403, the Senato Mar sent wood and nails for the unroofed Arsenal at Negroponte and sent 30 33-foot larch poles, 30 larch posts, 500 planks of larch or fir, 500 palm-sized nails, 500 foot-sized nails, and 6000 #25 nails. With this shipment went wood for the ruined house: 400 fir planks, 100 larch planks, 500 narrow planks, and one barrel of posts. A little later, the regimen of Methoni and Koroni needed to import firewood from Venice, and Nauplion had to import wood to construct a mill.

This is not to suggest that all Venetian houses in the stato mar were generally either wooden or shabby. Canon Casola who found Methoni tawdry apparently saw a few grand houses and non-wood houses there, and he reported that Candia had beautiful houses, beautiful palaces, beautiful gardens.

And there is a slender hint that Nauplion may have had a few substantial houses. Cavaza had been involved in building on another house: in his will, he makes reference to a house in the burgo, on which “fecerim multas expensas de meis denariis.”   I cannot help but wonder about that tax-free wood supposedly shipped out for the castellan’s official residence, and the idea that he had two houses is provocative. He also held a fief of 200 stremmata, and a few years after he died that fief was the reason for the attempts at murder here.

A house in the burgo, the part of the city outside the defensive walls, is an important piece of information: it has been an article of faith among those writing on Nauplion -- most of whom pick this up from Kevin Andrews who got it from (Pseudo)Dorotheos of Monemvasia -- that there was no construction outside the castro until the landfill projects after 1500. Cavaza’s will provides documentary evidence to supplement the visual evidence to be found in Nauplion that such construction had been taking place at least 200 years before the assumed literary date.  

 * * * * * *

Late addition: I have been thinking about the nails and wondering about their manufacture.  I asked the people at the Guru's den at Anvilfire.  This is their answer

"It depends somewhat on the size and type of nail but a nailmaker working a long (10 hour) day was said to be able to make 1,000 nails in a day. In modern nail making competitions it is not unusual for a smith to make 25 nails in 15 minutes. This adds up to 100 per hour or 1,000 in a 10 hour day.

"Such work was often done by young apprentices, women or slaves. Making your daily quota probably determined whether or not you got fed. The reason I say this is because doing such boring work is is easy to let your mind wander and your production rate to fall. So maybe it was a 12 hour day. . . Quotas may have varied according to type of nail."
 

This material is from my article “The Wooden Towns of the Stato Mar: Medieval Construction in Nauplion,” Studi Veneziani 40 (2000) 169-178.
 

Tiryns, 1834

 From Schliemann's 1885 book, the plateau of Tiryns and the Argolic Gulf,
with Nauplion's Bourtzi in the distance.

Here is Brigitte Eckert's translation of Bettina Schinas'  visit to Tiryns in 1834.  Notice how, like so many artists of the period, she completely omits mention of constructions more recent than antiquity, such as the small Byzantine church Schliemann demolished.

* * * * *

I owe you a report about it a long time, I think we were there at the beginning of December, I told you before. Tiryns lies immediately beside the road to Argos, about half way between Argos and Nauplia in quite a distance to the sea, which makes the road to Argos longer than necessary. We went on foot, and not exceptionally fast because it was very hot in the sun. From the town gate to the ruins we went from 1-2 o'clock.  We climbed around there one hour, back from 3-4 o'clock.  I am speaking for the moment only about the ruins. 

The hill on which old Tiryns has been built is one of a few completely isolated rocks in the wide plain of Argos. One walks around it: at all sides the mass rises steeply like the rocks in the Salzburg region. We needed more than a quarter of an hour to walk around it. The ruins consist of cyclopean walls which surround the hill's irregular curves, always leaning toward it and bending in- and outwards. The whole thing is oval, but the difference between width and length is not significant. Like all walls of this kind it consists of  irregularly big rocks put together without lime or another binder, the outside worked roughly square stone blocks, all other lines uneven as I told you. 

At the side of the road one sees a narrow pointed arch like a gate, the lower part buried by fallen rock pieces and rolling clods of earth. The height of the wall changes, at many parts pieces have come down, as pieces were taken away for construction, but maybe the wall may not have been of regular height from the beginning. The inner hill forms in a way two plateaus one of which is significantly lower, both are cultivated on the thin cover of earth (enclosed leaves are from the cotton plants there).  Where the lower plateau meets the higher there are at the side not away from the road two square towers, but only parts of them: one can see that they must have been higher, connected to each other with double walls, the distance between them  the width of the towers. Not far of these towers the wall ends, the hill gets is low one can climb up. A walk running parallel in about half height to the surrounding walls is entirely preserved. Both side walls are built the same way -- 4 steps apart, 4-6 layers of big rocks -- then on them large stones supporting each other to make a pointed ceiling which covers completely the walk 50 steps long.

There is another walk at the side where the surrounding wall starts again at the lowered part of the hill, but only a small part is still visible, maybe parts of it are buried. Thiersch and S. visited together and took a close look.  S. found on the highest plateau square bases of hard reddish stone, porphyry or not I don’t know -- it doesn't look like marble to me,  at regular distances apart in a straight line; these bases rest on steps. Closer investigation showed a white stone floor under the bases and two feet of ground, made of small broken pieces of stone in a formerly soft and then hardened mass. It has not been examined further so far. Obviously the bases carried pillars which ran along the facade because they stand aligned with the road and the coast, at the side above the remains of the gate I mentioned above.

The view from here to Nauplia is magnificent, Itsh Kale [Acro-Nauplion] in the background of the town closing up to the mountains beyond the gulf making it look like a huge lake. Far behind Itsh Kale the sea is visible again. In Kapodistrias'  time large plots of lands around the ruin were bought for the ferme modèle (about which Thiersch writes in his book) which was established a few hundred steps from ancient Tyrins and given the old name.  The whole is now state property. Katakazi had the permission to equip and use the house and garden as a summer residence but had to move to Athens now after the works were finished. At the moment it is inhabited by a Bavarian captain ,von Weeg: under his management it became a separate royal estate which has to exist on its own income.

Previous letters from Bettina Schinas:

The lovely mighty waves will carry her away

Here, more than anywhere else, patience

Only soldiers are dying, not the officers

I wish I could have enjoyed it with you
Outstanding infinite excellence
Bare Planks and Green Silk

Copyright © Brigitte Eckert 2011


Ruth Steffen: Leben in Griechenland 1834–1835. Bettina Schinas, geb. von Savigny. Briefe und Berichte an ihre Eltern in Berlin. Verlag Cay Lienau, Münster 2002.   ISBN 3-934017-00-2.

Under the shade of Your Signoria

15th C Venetian lion, Negroponte

Last March at the Renaissance Studies Association, there was a series of panels on the Venetian stato da mar.  In a discussion on terminology, I suggested that  "protectorate" might appropriately be used at times to describe Venetian rule. I was told firmly that "protectorate" was unacceptable -- without being allowed to offer any evidence, and several people used the word "oppression" conflating the many varieties of administration in the stato da mar with that of Crete and going along with various trends in "post-colonial" studies.

Now a certain amount of oppression is in the eye of the beholder, and I think you have to accept that nearly everyone in the 15th century was, in 21st century terms, oppressed by someone else.  But the Venetian città or terre in the Morea, which is the part of the stato da mar on which I feel entitled to make pronouncements could not have survived with very much comparative oppression happening at all.  The ratio of Venetians to Greeks was very small indeed, and Greeks oppressed by Venetian rule were perfectly capable of voting with their feet and going to the Greek-ruled Despotate.

What you find is the opposite.  They slipped into Venetian territory on occasion and the Despotate regularly asked for them to be returned.  Venice tended to respond that all were welcome in Venetian terre. Massive evidence from the mid-1300s through the Ottoman conquest describes persistent exploitation, raiding of, and violence against Greeks in the Despotate by Greek archons, and the arbitrary infliction and collection of taxes. They raided Greeks in Venetian territories, too, and you get a snapshot of such an event in the Argos petition. 

You see Despots occasionally remitting taxes on the archons and frequently on Monemvasia and on monasteries, but never on those who worked the land and who paid their taxes to the archons.  A. Kontogiannopoulou has a horrific article in the 2009 volume of Revue des Études Byzantines detailing the tax burden extracted by the last Palaiologues. In contrast, quite a few edicts from Venice lift various traditional taxes on the land-working class for the terre of Methoni, Koroni, Nauplion, and Argos, and what you see over and over in the letters of Bartolomeo Minio is Venetian pacification of the Greek and Albanian residents, not oppression.

We have a number of instances in which people ask to be taken under Venetian protection, "under the shade -- sub umbra -- of Your Signoria" which my imagination, because of that wonderful lion above, changes to "under the wings of your lion." Here are some:

In 1388 citizens from Nauplion asked for Venetian rule as protection from Nerio Acciauoli, tirannus crudelissimus -- they had come into the hands of a young woman who probably had never seen Nauplion and who certainly could have given no protection (Venice wanted Nauplion anyway). In the summer of 1423, Adam de Melpignano, a baron of Achaia, asked to be taken into Venetian protection, as did Rosso Bua, leader of an Albanian clan.  In 1426 Theodoros II Palaiologos asked Venice to take the whole Morea under its protection. In 1428, Archbishop Pandolfo of Patras asked Venice to protect Patras against the Despotate. In 1456 Demetrios Laskaris Asan asked Venice to take over the territory of Mouchli, which Venice refused to do -- it was too far inland, and he had already given it to Mehmed in 1454.  At the same time Athens asked for Venetian protection-- also no go, and Joannis Spagnoli asked for protection of Damala, Fanari, and Ligurion.  Venice took those: Fanari and Damala were on the coast and Ligurion was a nice bridge between the coast and Nauplion territory. 

In 1465 archon Petro Bua put his territory and people under Venetian protection -- this was early in the Venetian-Ottoman war, and at the same time the Greeks governed by Micheli Rallis asked for Venetian protection from Rallis' harshness, as did the town and castle of Longanico. A group of Moreotes who took refuge on Tocco-ruled Zante during the war put up the flag of S. Marco in the face of an Ottoman assault. The Kladas brothers put Vordounia under Venetian protection, and when Kladas declared his private war against the Turks in October 1480, he carried the flag to claim that protection.  Much earlier, in 1410, Mauricius Spata used it in Arta.

It worked better at some times than others, and I am not arguing for Venetian benevolence in the stato da mar, though when you track through the records of the families of Greeks and Albanians who died for Venice and look at Venetian generosity to their children and grandchildren the word seems quite reasonable.  I am arguing for a more responsible use of evidence.  I go back to Bartolomeo Minio.  He was keenly aware of the burdens Venice placed on the people in Nauplion territory, and when he had to call a corvée, he labored with them, carrying stone and lumber.  He wrote, "I want to do what I can to help these poor people."  And he was remembered, 150 years later, in Greek tradition, as a protector:

At that time, the governor of the place, that is, the Venetian, with all the people of Nauplion, did all the building, and built the walls around, just as they appear today . . . and the governor of the place, the Venetian, gave benefits and many gifts . . .

Τότε ὁ Ἀφεντὴς, ἤγουν ὁ Βενετζιάνος, μὲ τὸν λαὸν ὃλον τοῦ Ἀναπλίου, ἔκαμε πᾶσαν οἰκονομίαν καὶ ἔκτισαν τριγύρον τὰ τείχη, καθὼς φαίνονται ἒως τὴν σήμερον . . . καὶ ὁ Αφεντης` τοῦ τόπου ὁ Βενετζιάνος ἔδοκεν εὐγερσίας καὶ χαρίσματα πολλὰ τῶν Χριστιανῶν ὅπου ἧρχονταν ἀπὸ ἐκατοικοῦσαν μέσα εἰς τὸ Ἀνάπλι καὶ ἔδωκε καὶ ταῦτην τήν χάριν.

The Duel between Manessi and Caragusa

I was reading my favorite writer's -- Sir Thomas Browne's --  Musaeum Clausum (1684+) in which he creates a museum of pictures and antiquities he would like to have.  One item was:

34. A noble Picture of the famous Duel between Paul Manessi and Caragusa the Turk in the time of Amurath the Second; the Turkish Army and that of Scanderbeg looking on; wherein Manessi slew the Turk, cut off his Head and carried away the Spoils of his Body.

He was thinking of a painting on the order of this, or this.
I sent this item to the Byzantine list and a couple of correspondents, and asked for help with the incident. One of my correspondents, Pavlos from London, immediately sent back a link to this passage from Knolles' History of the Turkes (1638).  I have added some paragraphing.

* * * * *

Mustapha [general of the Turks] having many times in vain sought to draw the garrison souldiers out of their trenches, by offering them many opportunities of advantage, and now out of hope that way to circumvent them, began to spoil and burn the country round about: but when he understood by his scouts of Scanderbegs comming, he speedily called together his army, and incamped within two miles of Scanderbegs camp, at a place called Oronoche, in the upper country of Dibra. Scanderbeg had there in his Camp, of the garrison soldiers and those he brought with him, 4000 horsmen and 2000 foot, all old expert souldiers, where after he had made his trenches strong, he left therein 300 of them, and brought the rest into the field in order of battell. Mustapha likewise on the other side likewise brought on in good order his army also. But whilst both armies thus stood ranged one within view of an other, expecting nothing but the signall of battell, suddenly a man at arms in gallant & rich furniture, issued out of the Turks army, into the midst of the plain betwixt both armies, and from thence with a loud voice challenged to fight hand to hand with any one of the Christian army: this Turk was called Caragusa. 

At the first Scanderbegs souldiers upon this challenge stood still, one looking upon another; for as they were all ashamed to refuse so brave an offer, so the danger so suddenly offered staid every mans forwardnes for a while: until that one Paul Manessi, accounted the best man at arms in Scanderbegs army (upon whom every mans eye was now cast, as if hee had beene by name called out by the proud Challenger) not able longer to endure the Turks pride, with great courage and cheerful countenance came to Scanderbeg, requesting him that he might be the man to accept that challenge. Who greatly commended him, and willed him on Gods name to set forward, first to win honor to himself, and then to give example of his valor for all the rest of the army to follow. Paul staying a while, untill he had for that purpose most bravely armed himself, presently mounted to horse, and riding forth into the plain, called aloud unto the Turk, that he should make himselfe ready to fight. Whom Caragusa required to stay a while, that he might speak unto him a few words, indifferently concerning them both.

“The victory (said he) our force and fortune shall determin; but the conditions of the victory we are now to appoint our selves. If the Destinies have aßigned unto thee the honor of this day, I refuse not but that thou maist by law of arms, when I am overcome, carry away with thee my rich spoiles, and at thy pleasure dispose of my dead body. But if thou shalt fal under my hand, I require that I may have the same right and power over thy captive body; and that the Generals will grant, that no man shall move out of either army, to better the fortune of either of us in the time of the combat, or after.”

Whereunto Maneßi answered; “That he agreed to those conditions of the combat, which hee upon a needlesse feare had so required to be kept: saying, That where the fierce soul had yeelded, there of good right all the rest ought to be the Conquerors. And that therfore he should fight without fear of any more Enemies than himself, whom so soon as he had deprived of life, he should have free power to doe with his dead body what he would. Which if thou wouldst give (said he) to the tears of my fellow souldiers, yet would not worthy Scanderbeg suffer the carkasse of a vanquished coward to be brought backe againe into his Campe.”

Caragusa marvelled to heare his so brave resolution, and as it was thought repented him of his challenge. But after both the Generals had upon their honors confirmed the lawes of the combat before rehearsed, both the champions were left alone in the middest of the plain betwixt both armies, with all mens eies fixed upon them. Now both the Armies betwixt fear and hope, stood in great expectation of the event of the combat, presaging their own fortune in the fortune of their Champions. In which time they both having withdrawn themselves one from another a convenient distance, for the making of their course, and after with great violence running together, Caragusa was by Manessi at the first incounter struck through the head and slain. Maneßi alighting, disarmed the dead body & struck off his head; and so loded with the armor and head of the proud challenger, returned Victor of the Army, where he was joyfully received and brought to Scanderbeg, of whom he was there presently honorably both commended and rewarded.  

Scanderbeg seeing his men by this good fortune of Maneßi, greatly encouraged, and the Turks as men dismaied with the death of their Champion, hanging their heads, like an invincible Captaine, himselfe set first forward toward the enemy, as it were in contempt of their multitude: and had charged them as they stood, before they had set one foot forward, had not Mustapha to incourage his soldiers, with certain disordred troups opposed himselfe against him; which the whole army seeing, faintly followed: but as they set forward with small courage, so were they at the first incounter easily driven to retire. Which when Mustapha say, he called earnestly upon them to follow him, and the more to encourage them by his own example, put spurs to his horse, and fiercely charged the front of Scanderbegs army, as one resolved either to gaine the victory, or there to die: after whom followed most of his principall captains of his army, which would not for shame forsake their Generall: thus by his valor the battell was for a while renewed. But Moses prevailing with great slaughter in one part of the Army, the Turks began to fly: in which flight Mustapha the Generall, with twelve others of the chiefe men in that army, were taken prisoners, but of the common souldiers few were saved. 

There was slaine of the Turks army ten thousand, and fifteene ensignes taken; whereas of the Christians were slaine but three hundred. The Turks tents and campe, with all the wealth thereof, became a prey to Scanderbegs soldiers: wherewith although he had satisfied the desires of them all, yet to keep his old custom, he entred into the confines of Macedonia, and there burnt and spoiled all that he could. And afterward leaving a garrison of two thousand horsemen and a thousand foot for defence of his frontiers, returned again with the rest of his army to the siege of Dayna.

William of Moerbeke

The loveliest Virgin in Greece, a 13th C fresco
in the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, Merbaka/Ag. Triada 

A portrait of William of Moerbeke -- or Moerbeek, Morbecca, Morbeka, Morbeto, Morbekanum, Morbecha, or Merbaka, no monotony in spelling here -- must be compiled from fragments and hints. A personality always on the verge of taking shape, he is never fully visible: identifiable because of the shape that fits the hole left at the convergence of events. Little is sure about the man, beginning with the date he was born and ending with the date he died. It is not certain that he was from Moerbeke.

William was a Fleming, born about 1215, or 1230, in the province of Brabant, (probably) in Moerbeke, now a small town in the flat farmland of central Belgium. (His father was a knight or a merchant or a stone cutter or a weaver. His mother died at his birth, or she had eight children after him, or she owned the village bakeshop.) Nothing is known of his family or of the influences that directed him to the Order of Preachers. 

He joined the Dominican order at Louvain or Ghent, in the Dominican province of Teutonica. As an exceptional young scholar, he was sent to continue his studies in Paris, and in 1243, was invited to Cologne to study with Albertus Magnus. Somewhere Moerbeke studied Greek, learned it thoroughly, and later, according to his friend Witelo, acquired a knowledge of Arabic.  He probably began his study of Greek in Paris. The Order of Preachers may have sent him to Thebes for the purpose of learning Greek -- they were highly concerned with language training -- but evidence for his residence there is not sure until 1260. If he was born about 1215, he would have been about forty-five, which is very late to begin classical Greek. (I attest to this from painful experience.)  If he was born about 1230, he would have been closer to thirty. One of his teachers may have been the Dominican friar, Bartolomeo, who wrote in 1252 a treatise for the use of Dominicans in Greece.  Not sure -- if -- may: just about everything that can be written about Moerbeke requires those words.

Moerbeke's primary reputation is for having acquired and translated various Greek manuscripts, especially Aristotle, for the use of Thomas Aquinas, and you can read about that on the interwebs. He was appointed Archbishop of Corinth and so is next associated with the lovely Church of the Dormition of the Virgin in the flat countryside of the Argolid, at the town of Merbaka.  The name of Merbaka has long been thought to have come from his, Moerbeke, but there has never been solid evidence for that until Guy Sander's recent work on the spolia of the church (first recorded by Cyriaco of Ancona).  Someone has written a dissertation on Moerbeke and the church, but this person will not allow it to be read "because someone might steal my ideas." I have been told that this person claims Moerbeke built the church as a burial chapel for himself, but if there is actual evidence connecting the burial chamber with Moerbeke, the evidence has not been made available.  We have no idea if or why Moerbeke thought he wanted to be buried in the Argolid.

What most interests me about William is what appears to be a shadow career as diplomat and intelligence agent, made possible because of his closeness to a series of popes, and because of his deep familiarity with Greek and Greece. This career is mostly speculation, and has to be teased out from coincidences of dates and places.  In April 1260, Moerbeke was in Nicea, captial of Byzantium-in-Exile. The previous year, in September 1259, Michael Palaiologos had defeated the knights and barons of the principality of Achaia in battle at Pelagonia. They followed the retreating Franks as far south as Thebes which they pillaged.  How this affected the recently-established Dominican House at Thebes is unknown. Presumably, Moerbeke saw something of events.

Very nearly all of the knights and barons of Frankish Greece, with the exception of Guy de la Roche who had been in Paris, including William Villehardouin, Prince of Achaia, were under house arrest in Nicea while details of their ransom were worked out. A major Moerbeke scholar suggests that Moerbeke was sent with a commission to negotiate the release.  That is as may be, but we do know he looked at manuscripts. Nicea was the place he would have met Greek scholars in his fields of interest: students of Niceforos Blemnmydes who taught mathematics there between 1224 and 1236, or the metropolitan, Eustratios, who wrote a commentary on the Nichomachean Ethics. He completed three translations in Nicea. The first, Comentary on the Meteorology of Aristotle by Alexander of Aphrodisias is dated 24 April 1260 “apud Niceam urbem Grecie,” and as such, is the first documented date for Moerbeke that we have. 

In Nicea, then, he would have met William Villehardouin and other Franks from Achaia, Athens, and Thebes, setting a foundation for information. He may have met Villehardouin’s (probably) half-brother Theodore, Patriarch of Antioch, an acquaintance of Michael Palaiologos. Nicea was the place to observe alliances and collect information. The Byzantines were in the midst of negotiations with Charles of Anjou and the Papacy, on the brink of their reconquests. Michael Palaiologos took Constantinople the next year, in 1261, and the dreary Latin Empire of Constantinople came to an ignominious end.  

Moerbeke returned to Thebes where he completed a translation of De partibus animalium by Aristotle, dated 23 December 1260, “anno Domini 1260 decimo Kalendas Ianuarii Wihelmus interpres.” It is likely  that he was in Thebes in May of 1262 when William Villehardouin met there with the Venetians to settle his war with his in-laws, the Triarchs of Negroponte. The next date we have for him is 1266, when we was in Orvieto. At Orvieto he came to the attention of the Dominican Pope Urban IV who had a particular interest in Aristotle and in 1263 endorsed the Church’s desire for a new and correct version of Aristotle.  Thomas Aquinas had arrived at Orvieto in 1262. 

Fortified with Aquinas’s treatise, Contra errorum Graecorum, (and certainly background information from Moerbeke) Urban IV entered into negotiations with Michael VIII on questions of political and church union. When Urban died in 1264, he was succeeded by Clement IV (1265-67), Charles of Anjou’s candidate at the conclave. Anxious about the Hohenstaufens, Clement made use of Anjou as a counterweights, appointed him senator of Rome, and encouraged him to attack Manfred. After the defeat of Manfred at Benevento in 1266, Clement recognized that Angevin ambition and aggression were more of a present reality and future threat to the balance of powers than the Hohenstaufens had ever been. 

In May 1267, Clement concluded two treaties for Charles of Anjou, now King of Naples and Sicily: one between Anjou and William Villehardouin, Prince of Achaia; the other between Anjou and Baldwin II, ex-emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Typically, these were family arrangements among the principals. Villehardouin’s older brother had married Baldwin’s older sister in 1218. As part of the two treaties, Villehardouin’s daughter, Isabelle, would marry Charles’ son, Philippe, and Charles’ daughter, Beatrice, would marry Baldwin’s son, Philippe. These treaties made Anjou Villehardouin’s overlord and eventual heir for the principality of the Morea, and gave Anjou claim to the title of Emperor of Constantinople, ultimately forestalling Villehardouin from making his own claim to Constantinople. Anjou thus controlled half of Greece and acquired the Frankish income, manpower, alliances, and ports to support his projected conquest of Constantinople. Moerbeke must have been present, for he already knew the principals. 

Clement’s death in 1268 left an interregnum which lasted two years and nine months, a conclave that threatened to continue indefinitely which was only settled when the governor of Viterbo took the roof off the cardinals' chambers and put them on bread and water. Morebeke got more work done in this period than in any equivalent length of time while encumbered with a pope. He wrote a comment on one manuscript with unusual feeling: 

I, Brother William of Moerbeke, O.P, confessor and chaplain to the lord pope, offer this, done with much physical labor and much tedious Latin, thinking by this work of translation to add to Latin scholarship. This translation was finished at Viterbo, 1271, 17 Kalends of July after the death of the fourth Clement, pope of good memory, the apostolic seat being vacant.  

 On 1 September 1271, the conclave elected the absent Tedaldo Visconti, Archdeacon of Liege, as Pope -- stay with me: this is a tangent, but tremendously interesting -- Visconti was on crusade with Prince Edward, son of Edward I of England. The Polo brothers had come to Viterbo, hoping the new pope would help them fulfill Kublai Khan’s request for oil from the lamp at Christ’s tomb, and for a hundred learned men. Pressed for time, the Polos returned to Venice, collected young Marco, and sailed for Acre. The Polos met Visconti in Acre; their travels and plans coincided with his own interests, but his position gave him neither the authority or status to communicate with an Emperor. The Polos left Acre on horseback, riding to the northeast. When notice of Visconti’s election reached Acre, he had first to be ordained a priest before he could be invested as Pope. With his credentials in order, he sent riders after the Polos with holy oil and letters to Kublai Khan explaining the delay. The two Dominicans whom he sent in place of the hundred learned men did not survive their assignment. Visconti, who took the name of Gregory X (1271-1276), asked Moerbeke to continue as chaplain and advisor. Gregory called for the Council of Lyons.  

The Council  was bracketed by the deaths of giants: Thomas Aquinas before, and Cardinal Bonadventure after. Gregory opened the Council on 7 May 1274, but the Greek delegation, delayed by a shipwreck in which half of their number were drowned and most of the luggage lost, did not arrive until 24 June. This should have been a warning to them when 1437 came around. Moerbeke was prominent in the Council and on 6 July a letter from Michael VIII Palaiologos was read in which he declared his acceptance of the Roman version of the faith, and papal primacy. 

Gregory died on 12 January 1276, the year of four popes.  The last was Nicholas II who appointed William Archbishop of Corinth on 11 November (he must have so wanted to get away from all the politicking), but he did not actually confirm the appointment until 9 April 1278. (One might note that revenues due the Archbishop during those 20 months or so went to the papal treasury.) Nicholas sent a letter to William Villehardouin, commending the See of Corinth to his care.  Corinth was a family possession of the Villehardouins, although William's father had granted the tolls from the Isthmus traffic as a fief to the Duchy of Thebes and Athens which had their own archbishops.  The Archdiocese of Corinth supervised churches in the Principality of Achaia.  

William Villehardouin died on 1 May -- he probably never saw the letter -- and Achaia came into direct Angevin control.  (The Argolid and Athens were not included in this.) Given the papal antipathy towards the Angevins over the previous ten years, I see Moerbeke in a unique position to be able to observe and report on Angevin actions.  Moerbeke may have visited the Dominican houses in Thebes, Negroponte, and Modon, and -- at least because of his rank -- Nicholas II de St Omer who had married Villehardouin's widow, the Greek princess Anna.  All the lines of acquaintances keep curling back among themselves. 

Beyond more translations, mostly of Proclus, we have no information about his life as Archbishop in Greece. Corinth was hot in summer, wet in winter, crowded, rife with disease, susceptible to contagions spread from other Mediterranean ports. Twenty-six members of the Latin colony, twelve of them small children and infants, died in one summer’s epidemic. A Byzantine chapel was taken over for their burial

William returned or was recalled to Italy and carried out a specific mission for Martin IV. In December of 1283, he was at Orvieto, with a mission to Perugia to settle an issue involving the excommunication of the captain, counsellors, and certain individuals in the city because of “their detestible disobedience and notorious contumacy.” His diplomatic handling of the crisis made it possible for Martin to move the papal household and curia to Perugia for an extended visit.  This is the most direct evidence for his diplomatic activity -- all the rest has been speculation. While in Perugia, Moerbeke apparently dictated a will to a certain Bartolomeo.  

The next date we have is 26 October 1286, recording the election (by the cathedral chapter of Corinth) of a new archbishop.  William could have died any time in the previous 34 months, but it was probably very soon after the will.

. . . in te tunc archiepscorum Corinthiensem direximus oculos nostre mentis, quem nobis et fratribus nostris de litterarum scientia, morum maturitate, religionis honestate, prudentia spiritualium et temporalium provedentia, familiaris, experimentian noscitur approbasse. Nicholas III, 1278.

William of Moerbeke's handwriting from a Vatican manuscript.

The picture of the Virgin was found on the internet, on a site I cannot now locate.