Download PDF | ( Oxford Studies In Byzantium) Clare Teresa M. Shawcross, The Chronicle Of Morea Historiography In Crusader Greece ( 2009)
418 Pages
Preface
Of the writings produced by the era of the Crusades, the Chronicle of Morea is undoubtedly one of the most important and engaging. As such, it has attracted the notice and captured the imagination of some of the main intellects of our age. No less a figure than Goethe appears not only to have known the work well, but to have felt the influence to such a degree of its portrayal of the early rulers of the Principality of Morea that he moulded the hero of his Faust to be as they were said to have been—an adventurer and conqueror from the sunless north who descended upon the Peloponnese and, there, with his knightly companions, settled down and built castles with lofty gothic halls, within twenty years of his arrival on the scene becoming master of the land and its prince, and securing the respect and admiration of his native subjects for his ‘vigour, daring and cleverness.
Another great poet, Cavafy, for his part, can also be identified as having attentively perused an edition of the Chronicle, reflecting upon its content as he went along, and jotting down a series of notes for himself. Among scholars, too, many have made the study of the Chronicle an interest of theirs, including one of the fathers of both modern lexicography and modern history, Du Cange, and others whose names have continued to preserve their lustre for generations after their owners’ deaths.
To follow after such examples is inevitably to feel that one is but a pygmy clambering up onto the shoulders of giants. Yet, for all the risk of vertigo, the task which I have attempted here was one that sorely needed undertaking, for no substantial book-length examination of the texts of the Chronicle of Morea has been published for over a century—and certainly none at all that attempts to achieve a rounded, interdisciplinary appreciation by combining codicological, literary, and historical approaches. As well as commenting upon formal or stylistic characteristics, my analysis seeks to draw attention to the Chronicle as a precious artefact both of the context in which it was created and of those in which it was subsequently transformed. I have tried to give an impression of some of the aesthetic and ideological preoccupations of that bygone society distinctive to the Crusader States in Greece, and to suggest the complexities of the cultural and political interaction of that geographical area with the wider medieval world. If these aims have been achieved at least partially, and my endeavours encourage others, I shall be more than satisfied.
This present volume began as a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Oxford. At that time, my investigations were placed under the aegis of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the J. E Costopoulos Foundation, while Exeter College provided an intellectual home. Initial insights were then revised and developed, and matters were brought to completion, during a year spent in tenure of a Hannah Seeger Davis Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Program of Hellenic Studies at Princeton University. I owe a great deal to teachers and colleagues both at these institutions, and from further afield. My thanks go, first and foremost, to Elizabeth Jeffreys, Bywater and Sotheby Professor at Oxford, who patiently watched over the progression of the various drafts, and was unfailingly a source of sound advice.
I am especially grateful to Michael Jeffreys, who willingly put his expertise at my disposal, and agreed to look at and discuss an early version of the argument presented here; to David Gwynn, who encouraged me to persevere with the writing of individual chapters; and to Michael Angold, Tony Hunt, and Paul Magdalino, who, towards the end, read what I had written and made a number of apposite comments and suggestions. I would also record the mentorship and friendship given by Helen WatanabeO'Kelly, James Howard-Johnston, and Jonathan Shepard, together with that of Peter Brown, Danny Curti¢, and Dimitri Gondicas, as well as the readiness with which Jean Dunbabin, Catherine Holmes, Julian Chrysostomides, and John Haldon shared their erudition.
Working on the Chronicle of Morea has, as was only to be expected, taken me well away from my everyday university surroundings on more than one occasion. I am deeply beholden to the Biblioteca nacional de Espafia, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana di Venezia, the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino, the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Bibliotheque royale de Belgique, the Bibliothéque de la Bourgeoisie or Burgerbibliothek Bern, and the Kongelige Bibliotek of Denmark for allowing me to conduct research on the manuscripts belonging to their rare collections.
Because of the generosity of the custodians of these libraries, permission was granted to reproduce in this volume colour photographs of folios from all the exemplars of the Chronicle to have survived; it is hoped that, as a result, my readers and I will, in a sense, turn over the pages and make out the words together. In Greece itself, considerable kindnesses were shown to me by the British School and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, by the staff of the LPevvddevos and the Edvixn BiBAcobyKxn, and also by the local officials and the innumerable ordinary people whom I encountered. I shall never forget the bread eaten round a kitchen table within sight of the pass of Macry Plagi, nor indeed the glass of water offered under the ruined walls of Our Lady of Isova.
Before ending, I must, of course, express my warm thanks to the President, Cyril Mango, and the Members of the Board of Oxford Studies in Byzantium, as well as to the editors at Oxford University Press, for making publication possible. The greatest debt of all to be acknowledged, however, is that to my parents. My gratitude for their support over the years is such that it can never adequately be put into writing; it is to them, as is only right, that this volume is dedicated. Finally, I should like to mention that, although my typescript was already written and submitted when I arrived at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, it is here that the very last touches have been put to the book, and here, in the Hall’s sunlit gardens, with justice called by Henry James ‘the prettiest corner of the world’, that I pen these lines.
Spring 2008
A Note on the Rendition of Names and Quotations
The Latinized or Anglicized form of the names of persons and places in Greek has been preferred in cases where other forms would appear pedantic (e.g. Nicaea and not Nikaia, Constantine and not Konstantinos); for less familiar names, transliteration with ‘k;, ‘es’ and ‘os’ has been adopted (e.g. Kalodikes). In dealing with first names or surnames derived from Latin or Romance sources, the form most indicative of the ethnic origin of the individual concerned has usually been chosen (e.g. Guillaume de Villehardouin rather than William of Villehardouin, Niccolo Acciauioli rather than Nicholas Acciauioli).
All quotations from the Chronicle of Morea and from other primary sources given in the original language are accompanied by a translation into English which will be found either in the main text or in a footnote. These translations are my own except in those rare cases where they are acknowledged as having been derived or adapted from a published version.
Introduction
‘Never did Alexander or Charlemagne or King Louis lead such a glorious expedition, nor could the valiant lord Aimeri or Roland with his warriors win by might, in such noble fashion, such a powerful empire as we have wor’ (vv.73-9)." Writing in Greece in the summer of 1205, the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras celebrated the Fourth Crusade by comparing its achievements with the greatest deeds known to history or legend. Another poet also gloried in the exploits performed by himself and his companions, and marvelled at the fabulous wealth that had subsequently fallen into their hands.
Once we had succeeded in vanquishing our enemies, Hugues de Berzé recalled, ‘we were raised from poverty and surrounded by riches—emeralds and rubies, silks and purple, lands, gardens, and handsome marble palaces’ (vv.454-62).* Naturally, such exultation was not shared by everyone. An anguished lament survives from the pen of a Byzantine, Nicetas Choniates, who, following his own people’s defeat, found himself, like many courtiers and magnates, driven into exile. Considerable reservations were expressed in other circles regarding the legitimacy of the diversion of the Crusade from its initial objective.* Some observers went so far as to accuse the crusader leaders of abandoning their pilgrimage and accepting Saracen bribes to reroute military aid away from the Holy Land.” Yet, whatever the misgivings articulated by contemporaries, the fact remains that after the capture of Constantinople on 12 April 1204, westerners proceeded to conquer and hold extensive territories formerly belonging to Byzantium.° Given that every one of the major crusades had, for over a hundred years, been accompanied by plans for precisely this outcome,’ the event was hardly one that had been unanticipated.® As such, it represented, when it finally did occur, the last great push for expansion made by the crusading movement in the eastern Mediterranean.
The participants in the enterprise were of diverse geographic origin. Of the two major contingents, one originated in French-speaking Northern Europe—Champagne, Flanders, and the Hainault—and the other in Venice. A treaty, drawn up in March 1204, on the eve of the assault on Constantinople, set out how the booty and, subsequently, the land resources of the Byzantine Empire would be split, and a Latin emperor and patriarch elected.” More detailed negotiations took place after the fall of the Byzantine capital. The result, enshrined in the Partitio Romaniae of September or October 1204, envisaged a three-way partition, with one quarter of the Byzantine provinces going to the new emperor, three eighths to the doge and the commune of Venice, and three eighths to the other crusader leaders.'° Despite these provisions, the reality which emerged was essentially that of a free-for-all. Within a decade, a number of western states and colonies had come into being.'' Of these, some were already recovered by the Byzantines in the thirteenth century.
Others, however, did experience greater longevity and indeed were still in existence at the dawn of the modern era. Such was the case with mainland Attica and Boeotia, as well as with Crete, Euboea, or the Negropont, and numerous other islands of the Aegean. Although many of the conquerors had originated within the ranks of the minor nobility, over time their prestige grew and the dynasties founded by them acquired a reputation for refinement and chivalry. Thus, during the initial period after 1204, those who remained behind in the old western homelands were amazed that Othon de la Roche, the son of ‘a certain nobleman from Burgundy, Pons de la Roche’, should have been raised by ‘a sort of miracle’ to become “Duke of Athens and Thebes’.’” A century later, adventurers following in the footsteps of the crusaders expressed acute feelings of social inadequacy, declaring themselves unfit even to hold the finger-bowls in which the wives and daughters of the old settlers washed their hands when waited upon at table.'”
Of the states founded by the crusaders, the Principality of Morea or Achaia was the most successful.!* It was established in 1205, and, until 1261, experienced continuous growth, significantly extending its territory and imposing its hegemony upon many of its neighbours. The areas under its control began gradually to contract after this period, as its soil turned into a battlefield where the ambitions of the diverse powers which disputed the Aegean and Near East were played out. Yet, even in the face of adversity, the Principality proved remarkably durable, remaining in existence for over two centuries, with its last outposts finally surrendering to Byzantine reconquest only in 1429-32. Such was the splendour of its rulers at the zenith of their power that they were alleged not only to have maintained a salaried personal guard of ‘eighty knights’ shod ‘with golden spurs’, but to have presided over a court which, with ‘seven hundred or a thousand noblemen always in attendance’, eclipsed that of ‘a great king.'” Similarly, the Principality’s magnates and noblemen were so admired that even their enemies acknowledged them to be ‘the most noble knighthood in the whole world."
THE PRINCIPALITY OF MOREA
The beginnings of the Principality of Morea can be traced to the meeting of two men—Guillaume de Champlitte and Geoffroy de Villehardouin—and their decision to join forces and conquer the Peloponnese.'’ Of the pair, the former had been present already at the siege of Constantinople, while the latter had arrived afterwards, drawn no doubt by tales of aggrandizement. The field-army at their disposal was small, totalling according to one estimate no more than five hundred horsemen, of whom about a hundred were knights and the rest mounted sergeants,'® yet these numbers proved adequate since the districts in which operations took place capitulated with little show of resistance. Although the peninsula that would form the heartland of the future state was initially referred to in accounts as the ‘isle of Modon;,”” after the harbour in the south-east, long a port at which traders and pilgrims had called, and past which the crusader fleet had sailed on the way to Constantinople, other names, derived from an increased knowledge of topography of the north-west Peloponnese, and reflecting the actual physical location not only of the administrative centres but also of the main royal residence created by the conquering regime, soon came to be preferred. Of these names, that of ‘Achaia, appropriated from imperial and papal precedents established many centuries previously, indicated a concern to lay claim to a title of suitable pedigree and antiquity, and was preferred in official contexts, while that of ‘Morea’, referring perhaps to the mulberry trees abundant in the region, was the appellation used by the indigenous population at the time of the arrival of the crusaders and appears to have consequently become the usual choice in common parlance.
Within a few years of the invasion, the departure of Guillaume I de Champlitte, followed by his death shortly afterwards, meant that it was his junior colleague, Villehardouin, who appeared at the head of the crusader forces of southern Greece at a parliament convened in Ravennika in 1209, where he received confirmation from the Latin Emperor of his territorial possessions and claimed the title of “Prince of Achaia’ by which he subsequently began to style himself.*’ By the end of his reign (1209-28), the entirety of the Peloponnese, with the exception of an area in the south-east, had fallen under his sway, and these conquests were consolidated and further extended by his sons and unchallenged successors, Geoffroy II (1228-46) and Guillaume II (1246-78).
The occupation was facilitated by the use made of castles, some of which were functioning strongholds that were merely taken over at the conquest, others ancient acropolises that were adapted, and still others new foundations built on virgin ground.** Many of these strongholds, from Acrocorinth in the north-east, to Chlemoutsi or Clermont and Pontikokastro or Beauvoir in the north-west, Androusa and Kalamata in the south-west, Mistra in the centre, and Maina and Monemvasia in the south-east, passed under the direct control of the prince or were built at his expense, resulting in the formation of a ring of ‘royal’ fortresses that was complemented and reinforced by additional castles, such as that at Karytaina, held by other crusaders. These places acted as barracks for troops, as refuges, storehouses for goods and money, prisons, and, above all, statements of power and status.’ As the process of settlement gathered pace, wives and children were brought over, and old patronymics given up and replaced by new ones assumed from the toponyms of the lands of conquest.** Thus, prior to his coronation as prince, even the future Guillaume II went under the name ‘Guillaume of Kalamata.” In many instances, possession was taken of holdings carved out of great estates previously belonging to Byzantines based in Constantinople, whether members of the imperial family or other courtiers, so that lands which had previously known absentee proprietors often came under the control of a lord who spent at least a portion of the year in residence together with his household.”° Service amounting to ‘four months on castle-guard and four months on campaign’ was expected of knights, while the duties and rights of other categories of people were also regulated.”” Officers such as the grand constable and marshal, the logothete or chancellor, and the protovestiarius or chamberlain, but also various captains, castellans, and bouteillers, were appointed by the prince and assisted him in government. More generally, society took shape along lines which meant it comprised, in descending order, high barons or bers de terre, liege men, men of simple homage, archondes or native lords, sergeants, bourgeois and other free men, and, finally, villeins, whether paroikoi or the even more lowly nicarioi.”*
The Villehardouin, in the years from 1212 to 1258, were able to impose their hegemony both outside the Peloponnese as well as within it, being recognized as suzerains by the rulers of much of the territory remaining in western possession during this period. Thus, the Duchy of Athens, the Triarchy of Negropont, the Duchy of Naxos, and the County of Cephalonia all became dependencies of the Principality of Morea.*’ The ambitions of the dynasty may have extended even further. Having acquired, through a marriage alliance, potential claims upon the succession to the imperial throne, the Villehardouin involved themselves heavily in the affairs of the capital of the Latin Empire, with Geoffroy II repeatedly leading his fleet up the Bosphorus during the 1230s and 1240s, and Guillaume campaigning in Macedonia in the 1250s.°° Possession of Constantinople was imputed by some to have been the objective of these undertakings.*' Certainly, desire not merely to dominate regional politics in Greece, but to acquire renown and make a mark within the wider international arena may be argued to have been the motivation behind Guillaume’s decision to join the Seventh Crusade in 1249-50. The Moreot contingent of four hundred hand-picked knights and twenty-four galleys and vessels brought by Guillaume to Cyprus and Egypt appears to have made a profound impression. Indeed, when, some months down the line, the leader of the crusade, King Louis IX of France, wavered outside the walls of Acre, deliberating whether he should stay or abandon the siege, he was advised by his counsellors that the best means to secure victory was to recruit more knights from the Morea.**
If these years represented the apogee of the Principality of Morea, the state’s territories began to shrink as the result of concessions made after the defeat of the army of Guillaume de Villehardouin at Pelagonia in 1259, and the imprisonment of the Prince himself, together with many of his vassals, by Michael VIII Palaeologus. The surrender of the three ‘royal’ fortresses of Monemvasia, Maina, and Mistra, the price set by Michael VIII for the release of his prisoners, gave the Byzantines a bridgehead which, following their reconquest of Constantinople in 1261, they could exploit fully.** A contemporary who commented upon the situation conveyed the sense of an imminent threat: ‘Constantinople has been lost, and the Morea is bracing itself to receive a rude shock... .** The Peloponnese would never again be free from conflict, for its territorial integrity had been compromised, and Franks and Byzantines henceforth faced each other across the peninsula, their respective power-bases, in the north-west and south-east, connected transversally by a corridor traced by the riverbed of the Alpheios or Charbon. This natural route for invasion became strewn in time with the sites of battles and skirmishesPrinitsa, Sergiana, Macry Plagi, etc. The war was ‘so bitter and bloody’, according to one report, and the life-expectancy of the defenders of the Principality so short, that a single woman ‘married, one after the other, seven men, all of whom met their death on the battlefield’.*° Although the advance of the Byzantines was initially halted during the 1260s, the high cost of these Frankish victories in numbers of casualties created problems for the long term, as the ranks of the settlers, never numerous to begin with, ran the risk of being completely depleted.
It was this that led to the search for an external protector who could provide the Principality of Morea with the additional military support it needed. Attention turned to Charles d’Anjou, who, with the backing of the papacy, had recently succeeded in destroying the Hohenstaufen and seizing the Kingdom of Sicily and Southern Italy. The outcome of negotiations with this new ruler and neighbour was the signing, in 1267, of the Treaty of Viterbo. In exchange for aid, according to the conditions of that treaty, Guillaume de Villehardouin was, during his lifetime, to accept Charles as his overlord and agree to the marriage of Isabeau de Villehardouin, his eldest child and heir, to one of Charles’s sons. At the death of Guillaume, the Principality together with its dependencies was to pass to Guillaume’s son-in-law, or, if that son-in-law predeceased him without producing male offspring, to the Angevin crown.”° By virtue of these terms, the demise when still childless of Isabeau’s husband, Philippe d’Anjou, meant that the Villehardouin dynasty could be dispossessed, as indeed happened in 1278. After this date, King Charles I and his successor Charles II could claim to be not merely suzerains of the Morea, but its direct rulers.*” Yet the natural heirs were in fact not so easily eliminated, and for another forty years first Prince Guillaume’s daughter, Isabeau, and then his granddaughter, Mahaut, would continue to be closely associated with their birthright.** Indeed, from 1289 to 1307, and again from 1315 to 1317, the heiresses resided in the Principality and themselves assumed its government. Their position, admittedly, became increasingly precarious, with the Angevins initially succumbing to pressure and agreeing to the reinstatement of the Villehardouin line, but then actively seeking their elimination, particularly after the women, in an attempt to bolster their independence, contracted marriage alliances. As a result of this, even while Isabeau and Mahaut were alive, but especially after their deaths, which took place abroad respectively in 1311 and 1331, the princely title and throne were disputed, with varying success, by a range of contenders. Some, but by no means all, of these individuals were relatives of the Villehardouin by blood or marriage.*”
These events resulted in a change in the demographic of the Principality.*° New groups of westerners arrived, often disembarking in the north-west Peloponnese, at the port of Clarence or Glarentza, which, bustling with activity, issued its own standards of weights and measures," and had become one of the major entrepots of the Mediterranean.” Inland, between the area controlled by the Franks and the Byzantines, an extensive frontier zone developed.** This zone remained unstable, for Palaeologan encroachment could not be stemmed, let alone reversed. An especially great blow came in 1320-1, when Andronicus Asen, the Byzantine commander, succeeded in seizing a string of castles, reducing the Principality to a rump of its former self.** The state’s dependencies above the Isthmus or ‘pass of Megara’ had already been lost in 1311 to a company of Catalan mercenaries which had initially been recruited by the Byzantines, then changed sides, before striking out on its own.
Trying to resist the onslaught was an extremely costly business. Of the castles not yet fallen to the enemy, many were used as surety in order to raise loans for defence requirements, with the result that, by 1364, more strongholds were in the hands of the Acciaiuoli family of bankers than continued to belong to the princely desmesne.*® Such external aid as came from the West often consisted of inadequately provisioned troops, who were then forced to pillage and live off those they were supposed to be protecting.*” As if Byzantine and Angevin demands were not enough, the Kingdom of Aragon, the Republic of Venice, and, finally, the Ottoman Turks, also began to exert pressure, bringing the wider conflict for supremacy of the Mediterranean to the locality.** In 1377, the Principality of Morea was temporarily leased to the military order of the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John, an indication of the extremity of the situation.*” Nonetheless, although things seemed desperate, it would take another half century for the vestiges of the once flourishing state—the strongholds of Patras and Arcadia—to be surrendered by its last prince to the Byzantine Despotate of Mistra.””
A LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
On the eve of the Fourth Crusade, the lands of which the Villehardouin would soon be masters had been referred to by the Byzantines as the ‘catwrixa wépn’ or ‘southern regions’ and their inhabitants as ‘catwrucol or ‘southerners.”! The area constituted an imperial province extending ‘from Tempe to Sparta that was known as the theme of Hellas and the Peloponnese.”” Despite suffering from the disruptions caused by the Slav invasions of the seventh and eighth centuries,”> the economy of this theme may have begun to recover as early as the ninth century,”* and was experiencing growth and prosperity on an unprecedented scale in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.”” Already in the reign of the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the Peloponnese, by then an ‘inner’ territory remote from the frontier, had, according to one account, forty major settlements, of which Corinth, Argos, Lacedaemonia or Sparta, and Patras were the foremost.”° Under this Emperor’s successors, the peninsula was described as ‘flourishing’, with about fifty settlements of note, including sixteen or so main cities as well as numerous fortresses and large villages.” Of these, Corinth was identified as the most important, while Patras, Arcadia, Navarino, Modon, Coron, Maina, Sparta or Lacedaemonia, Monemvasia, and Argos were also singled out because of their size or renown.”* The urban fabric of many of these settlements, together with that of Athens, Thebes, Evripos, and Karystos further to the north,”’ appears to have provided the possibility of a comfortable life-style. Helping make these locations attractive as places of residence was the existence of permanent markets.® Individuals could occupy their leisure hours by frequenting bath-houses,°’ by playing a game resembling polo called or by attending the meetings and feasts of religious confraternities.”
The wealth that rendered the pursuit of such diversions possible was derived from agriculture and manufacture. Goods suitable for export included thoroughbred horses, leather equipment, parchment, and iron weapons. The two main commodities, however, were oil and textiles. The south Peloponnese had invested in the monoculture of olive trees to such an extent that this activity provided the local population with its main source of income.® Indeed, in the words of one twelfth-century observer, ‘there is no place in the whole world where there are made such vast quantities of olive oil.°° By contrast, in the central and northern Peloponnese, as well as in Attica and Boeotia, communities specialized in various processes associated with the production of linen, wool, and, especially, silk, with attested professions including those of purple-fishers and dyers, of weavers and clothiers, and of tailors.’ The reputation of these craftsmen was already such in the tenth century that the author of the Vita Basilii, when attempting to describe the magnificent gifts he claimed were made to the Emperor Basil I by Danielis, a fabulously wealthy widow from Patras, gave pride of place to the presentation by her not only of a hundred weavers but also of a large quantity of fabrics and garments made out of various yarns, including those spun of silk, mixed linen-wool, and pure linen, some of which were of a heavy weight while others were ‘lighter than spiders’ webs.°* The same widow is said to have later financed and overseen the production of enormous carpets intended as a donation to an important religious establishment.” At Salonica in the twelfth century, the handiwork of “Theban and Corinthian fingers’ represented one of the most desirable luxuries on sale at the great annual fair of Saint Demetrius, while at Constantinople samites and sendals of similar provenance were used for the ceremonial robes that clothed palace courtiers.”
Such prosperity had significant consequences for provincial society, leading as it did to the emancipation of a particular category of individuals. These were the archondes.’ Constituting the eminent citizens and chief notables of the cities, these men dedicated themselves to the cares of public affairs, and took a keen interest in local politics.’” Technically often holders of imperial offices or titles, the archondes nonetheless acquired a measure of independence through the strengthening of their power bases within the locality as a result of increases in the material resources available to them.”* Indeed, although imperial administration attempted to maintain its prerogative to impose taxes,”* it appears to have renounced the strengthening of fortifications, the maintenance of road-networks, and the provision of adequate water-supply, all tasks instead taken up by community leaders.” As a result, Constantinople lost control not only over some of the main aspects of government within the theme, but of actual sovereignty of entire geographical sections.’° Symptomatic of the trend was the ability in the twelfth century of one archon, the father of Leo Sgouros, to become the de facto ruler or dynast of the city of Nauplion; his more famous son would go on to dominate, with some sort of private army, a region which at one point seems to have stretched from the Pass of Thermopylae to the Argolid.”’ Successes of a similar nature were apparently achieved by the Chamateros family in the southern Peloponnese.”®
Thus, economic expansion rather than decline and stagnation can be said to have been behind the break-away tendencies already in evidence in provincial Byzantine society in the years leading up to the arrival of the crusaders.
This coupling of regional wealth with weak central government meant that Greece, and the Peloponnese most particularly, presented an enticing prospect for westerners intent on self-advancement. It is indicative that Philippe de Remi, a native of the County of Clermont writing in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, castigated in the prologue to his romance Jehan et Blonde those of his countrymen who were “so overcome by lethargy that they know only listlessness and are unwilling to seek to better themselves and raise themselves up out of their misery’ (vv.5-8).’”” People who ‘stay at home with hardly the bare necessities for the preservation of life when, by emigrating, they could acquire honour, friends and riches’ (v.9-13), deserve, according to de Rémi, not only to be despised (v.16) but to be actively punished (v.27)—for the wrong they commit both to themselves and to their kin by tarrying in their homeland is a great one.*” No quarter should be given to the individual who maintains he does not know whither to betake himself (v.37), since such claims can have no basis when reports can be heard ‘every day’ of the ‘dealings to be had with good men in the Outremer and the Morea’ (vv.39-41).°! It would seem from comments such as these that the fame of the Principality of Morea as a land of opportunity was one that spread rapidly in the decades immediately following its formation.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE
The Fourth Crusade and its aftermath were hardly the first instance of contact between East and West. Greek wordlists composed for western travellers survive from the eleventh and twelfth centuries.®” One of these, copied in a manuscript originating at Mont-saint-Michel, teaches the words for ‘horse’, ‘bed’, ‘house’, ‘clothes’, and also a few expressions, such as how to ask for food (‘da mihi panem da mihi piscem: dosme psomi dosme opsarir’).** Another, from the abbey of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif in Sens, lists salutations (‘bonus dies tibi: calos ymera si), requests for directions (“Ubi est via: Po ne strata?) and other simple and useful phrases.** The borders of the Byzantine Empire were permeable, and travel in the eastern Mediterranean before 1204 was a relatively normal occurrence.” Innumerable crusaders and pilgrims from all over Western Europe passed through the territory of Byzantium either on their way to Jerusalem or on their return voyage. Thus, Saewulf, who, heading out to the Holy Land in 1102, sailed from Patras to Corinth, recorded that he visited the shrines of Saint Andrew and Saint Lawrence, as well as the place from which the Apostle Paul was said to have preached, before continuing onwards overland ‘to Thebes called Stivas in the common tongue’ and the Negropont.*° Similarly, Roger of Hoveden, returning from the Levant in 1191, jotted down, as he skirted the southern coast of Peloponnese, his impressions of the lofty mountains and impressive fortresses seen from the ship’s deck, and reported hearsay regarding the character of the inhabitants.°” Also attested as having made the journey East are ambassadors, mercenaries, merchants, artists, and scholars,®® with twelfth-century commercial documents in particular providing numerous itineraries of voyages.*”
Something of the multi-cultural atmosphere of the Byzantine capital under the Emperor Manuel Comnenus (1143-80) is apparent from the Epilogue to the Theogony of John Tzetzes. While describing a walk through the streets of Constantinople, Tzetzes shows off his linguistic and poetic skills by listing, among seven ways of addressing foreigners, various greetings and questions intended specifically for westerners. In a tour de force, the author, adhering throughout to his metre, transcribes the Latin phrases into the Greek alphabet, and gives their translation (vv.9-17):
The reputation of Constantinople as a cosmopolitan city, home to sizeable communities of westerners, was recognized not only by the Byzantines themselves, but also far more widely. Without ever having set foot in the East, the Welshman Walter Map, for instance, a near-contemporary of Tzetzes, saw fit to describe the Queen of Cities in the reign of Manuel as a place where there could be found many ‘people whom the natives called Franks—foreigners from almost every nation’ (p.178).”!
A significant western presence is also recorded in the provinces of the Empire on the eve of 1204. A Jew from the Iberian peninsula, Benjamin of Tudela, who in the 1170s set down a report of the places and peoples he visited, appears to have gained on his travels more than a passing acquaintance with imperial territories. Among his observations concerning Greece is a mention that at Almyros, “Venetians, Pisans, Genoese and other merchants are to be found and transact business’ (p.11).”” The mercantile activities in the eastern Mediterranean of the Italian maritime republics, and particularly of Venice, were considerable. In the late eleventh century, a chrysobull of Alexius I Comnenus had brought with it the right to trade with exemption from taxes for Venetians across the greater part of the Empire, including at Modon, Coron, Nauplion, Corinth, Athens, Thebes, and the Negropont.”* These privileges were subsequently renewed by the Emperors John and Manuel, and extended by the Angeloi.”* Individuals who ‘boasted Aquileia as their homeland’ are noted to have taken up residence on imperial soil by a hagiographical work possibly composed as early as the eleventh century, the Bios Kai TodTela Kal pepikyn Oavpatav dinynats Tod ayiov Kal Pavpatoupyot Nikawvos pvpoBAvTov Tod Meravoette, which refers to ‘two brothers [...] who [...] moved to our city of Sparta for the sake of trade”? Some five hundred commercial documents confirm that, by the 1130s, Venetians were settling in earnest in towns in mainland Greece and the Peloponnese, where they invested considerable capital.”° Although luxury goods, such as woven silks, were exported from Attica and Boeotia,”’ the majority of traders appear to have dealt in olive oil and other agricultural products.”® Contract notes, for instance, show that Italians resident in Sparta acted on behalf of Venetian corporations, assessing the value of the crop in the autumn of each year and setting a price, then calling upon the stock when instructions arrived from headquarters.”” Merchant communities of sufficient size to support a Catholic monastery or church are recorded at Thebes, Corinth, and Sparta.!°° In these and other places, westerners not only owned property, but on occasion acted as landlords to local Greeks.'°
If visitors and settlers from the West were a customary sight both in Constantinople and in the Byzantine provinces, the Fourth Crusade nonetheless transformed matters fundamentally. The revolution was of a political nature. Although the Byzantine Empire had begun already to disintegrate in the twelfth century, this process of fragmentation was greatly intensified by the conquests made by the crusaders, and by the ensuing occupation.'°* The activities of Venetian merchants in earlier years had called for purely economic and social intercourse with local inhabitants, and temporary or even permanent residence had had little bearing on the position of westerners as aliens; if anything, their foreign status had been emphasized by the award of commercial and judicial privileges specific to them.'”* A change of regime, by contrast, occurred with the Fourth Crusade, since the army which took Constantinople assumed power both there and in the provinces. As a result, relations between westerners and the indigenous population needed to be redefined and a pattern of permanent coexistence devised. This was especially important because the composition and character of the conquerors, their descendants, and the Latins who joined them, meant that, far from being restricted to the mercantile classes, the incomers included groups previously largely absent. Thus, in the Peloponnese, the invasion was carried out by an essentially landed nobility with origins, for the most part, in the County of Champagne. These individuals brought with them a reliance upon homage, vassalage, and highly developed concepts of feudalism.
QUASI NOVA FRANCIA
Writing between 1325 and 1328 about the Principality of Morea, the chronicler Ramon Muntaner insisted upon the nature of its aristocracy as being French. The settlers, he asserted, had succeeded for over a century in keeping their blood pure, their customs intact, and their language untainted. According to Muntaner, the rulers and other men of standing in the Morea were renowned everywhere for their chivalric ethos, spoke ‘French as beautiful as in Paris, and married only women who belonged to ‘the very best houses of France’ or, at the very least, were descended from ‘noble knights of France’ (§261).'°* Statements such as this drew upon a long-standing tradition. Already in 1224, within a generation of the conquest of Constantinople, Pope Honorius III had declared that there had been created ‘practically a New France’ in the Latin Empire, or, as it was called then, the Empire of Romania, the loose group of western-occupied territories established in the wake of the diversion of the Fourth Crusade (pp.250-1).'°° Again in 1262, following the recovery of Constantinople by the Byzantines, similar sentiments were echoed in the description by the trouvere Rutebeuf of a largely francophone and French-identifying eastern Mediterranean world under threat (vv.13-96).!°° In the Complainte de Constantinople, Rutebeuf, invoking in the same breath not only Jerusalem, Antioch, and Acre, but also Cyprus, Constantinople, and the Morea, speaks of these places as lands which belong to Frenchmen and whose fate remains the concern of the Kingdom of France.'°” All three remarks imply the transplantation of political organization and social structures from the homeland, and the wholesale recreation of a familiar environment in the territories of conquest.
The authors of these remarks were, however, outsiders to the situation they purported to describe. What is more, they were addressing themselves primarily to an audience that was based not in the eastern Mediterranean, but rather in western Europe, often specifically in the court of the Capetian monarchs of France. The evidence from within the lands acquired during and shortly after the Fourth Crusade suggests, as we shall see, a more complex, and, at times, strikingly different, story. The survival of the polities founded by the crusaders was predicated upon their capacity for continuous transformation and renewal. Certain forms of accommodation between conquerors and conquered occurred, while further influxes of westerners brought fresh fighting power to the region. The newcomers, generally of a provenance rather dissimilar to the original conquerors, tended to establish themselves at the expense of the older elites. By the fourteenth century, ties with France, although not dissolved, were in the process of being worn thin.
THE CHRONICLE OF MOREA
Our main narrative source for the conquest and occupation of the former provinces of the Byzantine Empire is the Chronicle of Morea. The source comprises a detailed account of the creation and government of the Principality of Morea. This material is preceded by a prologue, which, in the majority of the manuscripts, describes the beginnings of the crusading movement and gives a summary of the events surrounding the Fourth Crusade, the fall of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Latin Empire. The main narrative opens with the crusader campaign in the Peloponnese, and outlines the role played in this initial phase of conquest by Guillaume I de Champlitte, before turning to an account of the elevation to the leadership of Geoffroy I de Villehardouin, and of the foundation of the ruling dynasty. The reigns of Geoffroy II and Guillaume II, the two sons of Geoffroy I, are both recounted. Next, reference is made to the government of the Principality by a series of baillis, after which an account is given of the reign of Isabeau de Villehar-douin, first jointly with her second husband, Florent de Hainault, then as sole ruler, and, finally, in some of the manuscripts, jointly with her third husband, Philippe de Savoie. The narrative continues even further in one manuscript, to cover the abdication of Philippe and death of Isabeau, and the war of succession that followed. Also related in this manuscript is the invasion and conquest by the Catalans of the Duchy of Athens, while particular attention is paid to the campaign of the Byzantine general Andronicus Asen in the central Peloponnese, and to the unsuccessful Latin counter-campaign. Subsequent events are dealt with more rapidly, with the exception of the very last episode, that of the leasing of the Principality of Morea to the Knights Hospitaller, which receives detailed treatment.
The importance of the Chronicle of Morea for our understanding of the fortunes of the crusader states in the late medieval eastern Mediterranean has long been acknowledged, with the work being repeatedly perused and evaluated in order to extract the information embedded in it. This emphasis has inevitably led to a focus on the reliability or otherwise of the work’s content, with certain passages being valued for their veracity and others rejected as inexact. One of the passages to receive condemnation is that dealing with the marriage of Geoffroy II de Villehardouin.'°* According to the Chronicle, the occasion for this marriage arose when two galleys which were bearing the daughter of the Emperor Robert of Constantinople and her entourage to Aragon chanced to break their journey by calling in at the port of Pontikokastro or Beauvoir in the Peloponnese. Upon learning of the arrival of the lady, Geoffroy, who had already succeeded his father as lord of the Morea and was residing in the vicinity, made haste, the Chronicle states, to meet her and receive her at his castle as his guest. Then, when the time came for the ships to set sail again, the young lord, persuaded by his counsellors that a match between him and the lady would be to the advantage of his lands and people, pleaded his suit to her through the mediation of two courtiers, and was accepted. Initially, this union, we are told, was not to the liking of the Latin Emperor, but matters eventually resolved themselves, and Robert, granting his new son-in-law a dowry, accepted the fait accompli. A comparison of this account of events with that offered in another source suggests that the Chronicle of Morea gives misleading impressions regarding both the date of the marriage and the identity of the participants, getting things wrong at a number of points.'°? Of the errors committed, the most glaring is that of an anachronistic reference to negotiations for a marriage alliance between the rulers of the Latin Empire and of the Kingdom of Aragon. Marital policy involving these two parties would have made little sense and brought few benefits in the context of international diplomacy almost a century before the actual intrusion of the Aragonese in the politics of the eastern Mediterranean.'!°
Other examples could be added to this one.!!! To sift, however, in this somewhat fixated manner for the nuggets of truth in the Chronicle among the dross of falsehood is to miss the point, for there is rather more to be learned from medieval histories than the raw facts they contain. Merely labelling certain passages as inaccurate or misinformed is to ignore the possibility that there may be a rationale behind the ‘errors’. In the case of the representation of the episode of the marriage of Geoffroy II, for instance, the liberties taken, such as the misdating of the event or the introduction of unattested characters, result in a story that, at the time of the Chronicles composition, could be counted upon to be more aesthetically pleasing and relevant to a potential readership than the unadulterated version. Generally, the persons responsible for the production of medieval histories did not simply pick up a quill and ramble on in a random fashion until they had either run out of material, or been forced by death or some other external circumstance to cut short their task. Their works, in addition to being repositories of data, were also consciously devised compositions dependent upon a series of textual strategies. By focusing upon these strategies, and by examining their nature and function, we can succeed in conjuring up forgotten societies in the act of shaping and defining themselves. These societies can be observed even as they struggled with their obsessions and anxieties, undergoing successive metamorphoses, and re-interpreting their past over and over again in a constant quest for alternative presents and futures. It is a glimpse of one such society of notable richness and complexity that is afforded us by the Chronicle of Morea if we are willing to read it for what it is. Yet, despite the obvious gains, no attempt has been made until now to interpret the work as historiography.
Composed locally in the fourteenth century, and subsequently rewritten many times, the anonymous Chronicle survives in eight manuscripts in four languages: Greek, French, Aragonese, and Italian. Much of its interest lies in the distinctive features of these different manuscript versions. As the first appreciation of the Chronicle was continued through further receptions, the fluid and dynamic nature of transmission made the active intervention of the audience a precondition of the work’s continued life. Each new version can be shown to represent a revised horizon of expectations. The analysis undertaken here seeks, initially, to gain an understanding of the contexts within which the Chronicle was composed and circulated. Once this has been achieved, the reactions of the work to changes in its literary and material environment are then examined. It becomes possible to isolate the principles of selection and presentation that underpinned its various manifestations. In turn, this examination of the resources and pressures which conditioned the evolution of the work deepens our knowledge of the Principality of Morea itself. Often inadvertently or perhaps even deliberately misleading with regard to dates and facts, the Chronicle is nonetheless a unique document of the mixed society that created it—a precious relic of a particular discourse and particular mind-set of the late Middle Ages. The emergence of a new type of historiography in the eastern Mediterranean can be shown to have been the correlative of the development in a number of territories of something akin to a primitive sense of nationhood, with the early Chronicle both reflecting and itself contributing towards the elaboration of a unique Moreot identity in which Greeks and Latins could equally have a share. Yet, the narrative offered in its pages was also one that invited reinterpretation by competing interests external to the Peloponnese. The successive translations and adaptations of the Chronicle bear witness to the complexities of the cultural, social, and political interaction of the Crusader States with the outside world.
The first part of this study (Chapters 1-3) presents the extant manuscripts of the Chronicle of Morea, considers their relationship with one another, and discusses internal evidence for the work’s development. The Chronicle’s sources are identified and the material contexts in which the work was shaped and transmitted are traced. The specific case is demonstrated to exemplify a general trend: chancellery archives, medieval inventories of library collections, together with individual codices, show that many other texts either travelled east to the Peloponnese only to be re-exported in a changed form, or originated there and were subsequently disseminated more widely. These preliminary findings provide the foundation for an analysis of the interplay between influence and originality in the cultural production of the eastern Mediterranean. Part Two (Chapters 4-7) investigates the aesthetic preoccupations of the Chronicle of Morea. Important insights can be gained from an exploration of aspects of narrative technique, with emphasis being put on the role played by traditions of literacy and orality. As we discover similarities and differences between the Chronicle and preceding and contemporary texts, our knowledge is enhanced of the stylistic trends which the work incorporated or reacted against. Part Three (Chapters 8-11) delineates the ethos of the Chronicle, before going on to compare that ethos with the ideological positions occupied by other historical writings, with particular weight being given to the manner in which identity is constructed within each text. In this context, it becomes relevant to consider the social function performed by historiography. A careful perusal of the Greek, French, Aragonese, and Italian manuscripts of the Chronicle of Morea reveals precious information regarding the political desires and aspirations of those behind the processes of creation and revision. Indeed, certain fundamental conclusions can be drawn regarding the motivation not only of the original work, but also of its subsequent versions.
The experience of reading the different versions of the Chronicle of Morea side by side is a truly fascinating one, but it cannot always be achieved at first hand by everyone as some of the texts are not readily accessible. As a way round this potential difficulty, a selection of appropriate material (Selected Passages) has been provided at the end of this present volume. Twelve representative passages from the Chronicle have been chosen to illustrate the similarities and differences between the various language versions, and then presented in parallel columns in the tongues in which they were written, as well as in a modern translation. You are invited to turn to these pages, and browse at will, sampling whatever you choose. Perhaps the way to think of it is as a wine-tasting, where one observes a variety of results produced by the same grape—results that depend upon the soil in which the fruit was grown, the abilities of the wine-maker, and the expectations of the market.
A visitor to the north-west Peloponnese may, on his travels, get to see one of the most intriguing inscriptions of the late Middle Ages. A broken slab, measuring less than a metre in height and width, carrying a decoration of peacocks and palm trees in the Byzantine style, is bordered by the words: ‘+ Ici gist madame Agnes iadis fille | dou despot kiur Mikaille...’."'* This grave cover is from a tomb erected in 1286 or shortly afterwards at the church of Saint James for Anna Doukaina, rechristened Agnés, who was the daughter of the Byzantine Despot of Epirus, Michael II, and the third wife of Guillaume II de Villehardouin, Prince of Morea.
In the twenty-first century, the physical remains of the crusades continue to mark the landscape and to accumulate in the museums of Greece. As is also true in the case of these ruins and artefacts, the appreciation of the writings of the crusader period has suffered from what has been described as ‘unacceptable chauvinism’.'’” Initially framed according to nineteenth-century concerns—those of French colonialism in the Near East on the one hand, and of the struggle for self-definition by the newly created modern Hellenic state on the other—the debate regarding the effects of western occupation upon the late medieval eastern Mediterranean has yet wholly to shake off that legacy.''*
At the beginning of it all had been the disembarkation of the Expédition scientifique de Morée in 1829. The mission upon which this group of archaeologists, artists, and scientists was engaged represented the second of three undertakings within the Mediterranean, all of which reflected, even if in varying degrees, imperialist aspirations. Thus, the first mission accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt in 1798, while the third was sent to Algeria in 1839.'!° The Expédition de Moree itself, which was associated with a military campaign and funded by the French State, was under an official remit to explore and study the peninsula, observing, measuring, classifying, sketching, and recording everything that might be of interest—or of use.!°
Its report on the architecture, sculptures, inscriptions, and topography of the Peloponnese attests, as do other ancillary writings, to a certain insistence upon seeking out, describing, and drawing medieval monuments in particular, an emphasis admitted by the leader of the investigative team, Bory de Saint-Vincent, to be the result of the realization that claims could be advanced that the land under study constituted a place which preserved the traces ‘of the glory [...] of our ancestors. '’” Out of this, an entire tradition of primarily francophone scholarship developed in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which concerned itself with what were referred to as ‘the baronies of our crusaders’.''® Tours of the sites were carried out by travellers according to itineraries declared to have a character that was ‘entirely national’, and, when these initiatives gave way to the more institutionalized practices of the Ecole francaise d’Athénes, excavations occurred in specific locations chosen precisely because they were considered capable of giving Frenchmen cause for pride.'’?
These activities, initiated shortly after the War of Independence of 1821, understandably provoked a strong reaction in Greece itself. Unable to deny the reality of the era of the crusades outright, but considering that era to have contributed to centuries of oppression out of which their enslaved people had only recently succeeded in emerging in order to acquire their liberty and forge their own state, Greek writers turned for a remedy to literature, and in particular to historical fiction. A gallery was in consequence fabricated of medieval heroes and martyrs who were made to participate in episodes depicting appropriate acts of resistance against foreign dominion; thus, suicide as a fitting response to conquest formed the subject of ‘O ad@éévrns tod Mwpéws, a novel by Alexandros Rangaves, as well as being the central theme in the plays Mapia Aogéararpy and Ta réxva tov Aogaratpy, respectively by Demetrius Vernadakes and Sophocles Karydes.'”° Self-avowedly seeking to foster patriotic ideals, these writings, which were intended as a body of fiction suitable for consumption by staunch citizens, not only won prize after prize in competitions judged by the Academy of Athens but enjoyed especially long runs at the nascent National Theatre.'*!
Indeed, their resonance was such that, in the 1930s, the artist Kontoglou, commissioned by the dictator Ioannes Metaxas to paint, for the official residence of the Mayor of Athens, a series of friezes showing the deeds of ancient, medieval, and modern heroes, would draw inspiration from these works,!”* while, as late as the 1950s, Athenian schoolteachers were in the habit of declaiming extracts from them in history classes. Set against the backcloth of these older sensibilities, the analysis of the Chronicle of Morea offered in the pages that follow here will—it is hoped— contribute to the rather more measured approach that has begun to develop in recent years.
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