Download PDF | (Medieval Church Studies, 18) Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis - The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204–1500-Brepols (2012).
420 Pages
Introduction
The conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the armies of the Fourth Crusade and the subsequent installation of a Latin emperor in Constantinople was one of the most momentous events of the High Middle Ages. Although the Latin Empire of Romania (or imperium Romaniae) was not destined to last for more than fifty-seven years, many of its dominions remained under Latin rule for several centuries. The installation of the Frankish knights, the Venetians, and the Genoese in the territories of the Byzantine Empire transformed the face of the Eastern Mediterranean and had far-reaching implications both for the Near East and for western Europe. In the last three decades, after a period of quiescence since 1908, medieval Greece has been the focus of an ever-growing field of research.
The examination of Venetian Crete holds a prominent position within this scholarly field. Crete, which remained under the rule of the Serenissima until 1669, was the most important of the Venetian colonies and the one place where the long interaction between Latins and Greeks resulted in the formation of a unique cultural hybrid. Thankfully, when it comes to the history of Venetian Crete, the historian possesses an invaluable tool that is lacking for the rest of medieval Greece: the meticulous records kept by the Venetian authorities on the island have been preserved and today form part of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (henceforth ASV). Although documentary material is much scarcer for the rest of these territories, the study of Frankish and Venetian Greece has progressed vastly.
Apart from the multitude of works on the political history of medieval Greece, there exists today an abundance of studies1 of the social, religious, and economic history of Latin Romania. Much of this research focuses on the installation of the Roman Church in Greece and the relations and interaction (cultural and religious) between the Greeks and the Latins. It is at first surprising that the Latin monasteries set up in Greece in the wake of the Fourth Crusade have received relatively little attention and have never been the focus of a comprehensive overview.
The houses of the mendicant orders, were subsumed in the general history of the orders’ preaching mission; their relatively short lifespan meant that no monastic writer was tempted to write the history of his own house. Certainly, there exists nothing like David Knowles’s studies of the religious orders in England or Denys Pringle’s gazetteer and commentary on the crusader churches and monasteries of the Holy Land.2 These studies were based upon a combination of monuments and muniments, both of which are sadly lacking in Greece. There was no ordered dissolution of the monasteries to match that in England in the 1530s. In Greece, most Latin monasteries and their archives (assuming these existed) were abandoned or destroyed piecemeal in the years from 1260 to 1450 on the mainland and in the subsequent centuries on the islands.
In the majority of cases, what historical information we have about the orders and their convents in Greece appears in works that focus on other, more wide-ranging subjects. Georgopoulou’s study of Venetian architecture in Crete, for example, includes a discussion of the Cretan convents. Similarly, fragments of the history of the Augustinian friars of Greece can be found in general works investigating the expansion of the order throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. The general political studies of medieval Greece also make reference, on occasion, to the Latin convents, but the information offered there is even less detailed. It would thus be fair to say that, in many cases, the history of the religious orders has been treated as an interesting, but largely inconsequential, side note in the study of medieval Greece.
One study that stands out amongst the existing works on the religious orders is Kitsiki-Panagopoulos’s monograph on the Cistercians and mendicants in medieval Greece. Though primarily an archaeological rather than a historical study, it is the one work whose scope encompasses the whole of Greece and most of the religious orders that colonized it. On the other hand, historical research into the religious orders in Greece has tended to adopt a narrower focus, examining individual houses, individual territories or, at best, individual orders. Many of these works were produced by Dominican historians and pertain to the Dominican convents. Indeed, the Dominican Order has shown unrivalled interest in researching its history in the East. Starting in the first half of the twentieth century Raymond Loenertz produced a string of invaluable articles on the activity of the Dominican friars in the Latin Empire of Romania.3 The subject still attracts the attention of the order’s historians today, as is proven by the recent monograph by Tomasso Violante.4 The history of the rest of the orders remains much more obscure.
It is significant that not a single study has been devoted to the Augustinian Friars of Greece or the Order of the Crociferi, even though the existence of their convents on the islands is well-known.5 The Franciscans of Greece have, on occasion, been the focus of research but to a much lesser degree than the available material would warrant. Although we are relatively well-informed about a few of their most prominent Greek houses, the majority of their convents have gone unnoticed. More importantly, perhaps, there has been no attempt to synthesize the relatively abundant documentary evidence into a unified history of the Franciscan venture in Greece. It should also perhaps be noted that some of the older works on the subject of Latin monasticism in Greece are now slightly dated. As the topic is linked with wider issues regarding the relations between the two churches, it has sometimes elicited judgements that the modern reader may find problematic.
So, for example, Catholic historians have on occasion treated the religious colonization of Greece as a laudable step towards church union; conversely, earlier Greek scholarship has been known to approach the issue from a nationalist viewpoint which overstresses the Greek struggle for religious and political independence. The purpose of the present volume is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to give a comprehensive and cohesive account of the installation and activity of all the religious orders in medieval Greece. The first task in doing so is to investigate the history of each one of the convents that were founded in the territories of the Latin Empire. We are relatively well-informed about a handful of these convents, usually the most prominent ones.
The history of the majority of the Latin monastic foundations, however, remains obscure and many of these houses have not even been identified. In some cases, the scarcity of the sources makes it impossible to redress this problem. On occasion, however, the compilation of information that appears scattered in the above-mentioned variety of secondary works along with the careful examination of primary material allows for an elucidation of the history of individual convents. A significant part of this primary material is published and consists of papal registers, the acts of the orders’ general chapters, as well as literary sources like The Chronicle of the Morea or travel accounts. Though many of these texts have been in print since the nineteenth century, they are still amongst the most useful sources for the student of medieval Greece. Further evidence is furnished by archival research: perhaps the most interesting results in this study were gleaned from the documents of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV). As has already been mentioned, the ASV incorporates the archives produced by the Venetians on Crete.
A significant portion of this archive is represented by the notarial archive of Candia, only a fragment of which has been published. The significance of these documents, especially for the economic history of the Cretan convents, is immediately apparent. They offer important insight into the transactions, and subsequently the financial standing, of convents that have hitherto been almost completely ignored. The present study also makes new use of some surviving monastic cartularies. Medieval monastic cartularies are a very rare commodity for the student of medieval Greece. I was, however, fortunate enough to be allowed access to three such collections of documents. These concern the small Franciscan convent of Agidia on Naxos, the Dominican convent of Chios and, most importantly, the Augustinian Convent of the Annunciation of Corfu. Despite their importance, it appears that the cartularies have not previously been thoroughly studied or used for the examination of the history of these convents. Out of the three, only the third one appears to be complete and thus offers the most original information. All three however can elucidate certain aspects of the history of their respective convents. Finally, there exists one particularly interesting source, which, although well-known, has only been used occasionally, and never to its full potential. This is the fifteenth-century inventory of St Francis of Candia, preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice.
The section on the convent’s library is the only part of the inventory which has been published. Some of the more glamorous relics appearing in the inventory are also occasionally mentioned by historians. Yet the most interesting segment, which offers some insight into the house’s annual income, has thus far gone unnoticed. Such types of sources, wherever available, have allowed me to piece together facets of the history of individual convents. Amongst other things, these documents have shed light on the size and (sometimes) social and ethnic make up of the religious communities, on their land holding, and in a few rarer instances, have allowed us to re-date the foundation of a convent. So, one can begin to redress one of the major flaws in our understanding of the topic: the subject of Latin monasticism in medieval Greece, is one that has been presented in the past in broad brush-strokes; one might say that we have an abstract impression of it, but we lack much of the detail.
The delineation of these details is one of the main objectives of the present work. The second aim of this work is to place the monastic colonization of Greece within the wider context of the ‘expanding frontiers of Latin Christendom’, through the discussion of certain key themes, like the role of religious communities in frontier territories and the interaction between foreign conquerors and indigenous populations. To this end, each of the chapters closes with an attempt to synthesize the information pertaining to individual houses into a concise overview of each order’s activity in Latin Romania, with specific reference to the social role of each of the orders within the Latin communities of Greece, the relations between the regular clergy and the local nobility and secular authorities, and the impact that their installation had on the indigenous Greek population. Particular attention is also paid to the relations of the monks and friars with the papacy, the interaction of the religious houses with the secular church and its prelates and their contacts with the West. All these issues are revisited in the lengthy chapter of conclusions which aims to assess the role and the importance of the various religious orders in medieval Greece and compare the monastic landscape that emerges from my research with the picture of Latin monasticism in Greece presented by previous scholarship.
My hope is that in doing so, some useful insights can be gained, both regarding medieval expansion and colonization in general, and society in medieval Greece in particular, with specific reference to the issue of Greco-Latin relations. It would be useful, however, to begin by defining the exact scope of this work. Firstly, it is important to note that this study focuses on the purely reli-gious orders that migrated to Greece: the monastic and the mendicant orders as well as the canons regular. Though often treated as an afterthought in general histories of medieval Greece, Latin monasticism was a prominent feature of Latin Romania and monastic colonization was widespread throughout most of the Latin dominions of Greece. The very number of religious houses indicates that Latin monasticism occupied a more conspicuous position within the society of medieval Greece than is generally assumed. In the period investigated here (1204–1500) around a hundred and seven houses were founded by the Latins in Greece. Out of these, thirteen were Cistercian foundations, ten were Benedictine, forty-two were Franciscan and thirteen were Dominican. There existed also at least eleven Augustinian friaries, two houses that belonged to the Cluniacs, two that belonged to the order of the Crociferi, one founded by the Servites and one belonging to the Carmelites. Finally there is evidence of at least twelve communities of canons regular.
To these communities one may want to add a handful more, identified by earlier scholarship, but whose existence I have not been able to verify.6 Even so, the list is unlikely to be complete, since it is almost certain that other smaller or shorter lived convents were founded, whose traces have now completely disappeared. The overwhelming majority of these religious communities were male ones, but there also existed eleven nunneries. Some of these were ephemeral, but others were both successful and of great local importance. Three of these nunneries were Cistercian, two were Benedictine, two were Dominican, and four belonged to the Poor Clares. The relatively small number of nunneries is not surprising, considering the turbulent circumstances in Latin Romania. More nunneries were founded in territories like Crete, in the last centuries of Latin rule. Not all of these hundred and seven verified houses existed contemporaneously, as their survival was linked to the, often ephemeral, Latin states within which they were founded. The initial settlement of the Latin conquerors was accompanied by a surge of monastic emigration to Greece, which resulted in the foundation of around forty religious houses in the first five decades after the conquest.
These early foundations were some of the shorter lived ones, as many of them fell foul of the Greek resurgence of the mid-thirteenth century. The Greek reconquest, for example, marked the end of most of the Cistercian abbeys and communities of canons regular. Nevertheless, by the mid fourteenth century there were again at least thirty six (and possibly more) Latin religious houses spread all over Greece and even Constantinople, even though the capital of the empire was back in the hands of the Byzantines. The number of religious houses steadily increased thereafter until the mid and late fifteenth century, when between fifty and sixty religious communities existed at once. The number of convents rapidly dwindled after this time, as territories were lost to the Ottomans, but new houses continued to be founded in the remaining Latin dominions, like Crete. The geographical spread of these religious communities does not present us with any great surprises.7 The vast majority of them were founded in or around the major sites of Latin settlement, and that, in the case of medieval Greece means the towns.
Predictably there was a greater concentration of monasteries and friaries in the main centres of Constantinople and Candia: at least twenty-one (but probably more) religious houses existed at one time or another in or around Constantinople and thirteen were founded in Candia. The orders were also present in most of the other urban centres: Athens had at least four communities, Patras had three, Negroponte six, Methone three, Corone had at least two, Thebes four, and Chanea had at least six. In terms of wider territories, the orders were best represented by far on the island of Crete, where there existed around thirty convents at various times. It is harder to say with any certainty how many houses were founded in the Peloponnese, but it could not have been much less than twenty. Finally, there were several convents on other islands, especially the Ionian ones and those closer to the Anatolian coast, like Mytilene, Chios, and Rhodes. Apart from these orders, both the Knights of St John and the Knights of the Temple acquired lands, houses, and castles in Greece. In addition, a new military order, that of St Sampson, was founded in the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Although the history of these military orders in Greece is interesting and often overlooked, it does not fall within the scope of the present work, for the installation of the military orders in the Latin Empire served a different purpose and fulfilled a different role to that of the regular clergy.
Furthermore, there is very little evidence of interaction between the military orders and the monks and friars. With very few exceptions, which shall be discussed in the relevant sections, the dealings between the Knights and the regular clergy seem to have been restricted to disputes over property. Geographically, this study focuses on the areas that at one point formed part of the Latin Empire of Romania. Therefore, unless otherwise stated, the terms ‘medieval Greece’, ‘Greek territories’, and ‘Romania’ are used interchangeably. They refer to the wider periphery of Constantinople, and an area roughly corresponding to the modern state of Greece, and not to all of the territories inhabited by Greeks or belonging to the Byzantine Empire. So, the island of Cyprus, for example, and the coast of Anatolia are not examined in this study. This is not an arbitrary choice.
The religious orders themselves made the same distinction: the mendicants created new provinces to rule over their Greek convents. The jurisdiction of these provinces usually covered mainland Greece, Constantinople, and the islands; it did not extend, however, to Cyprus, which for most orders formed part of the Holy Land, since it had been captured by the Latins during the Third Crusade.8 In other words, this study focuses on the territories of Greece that were conquered by the Latins during or after the Fourth Crusade. The reader will notice that, as is the case with many other works on medieval Greece, this study also pays particular attention to specific territories, namely Crete and Constantinople, which is fortuitous. As has already been mentioned, a disproportionate body of our documentary evidence derives from the island of Crete.
This is due to the efficient administration and meticulous record keeping of the Venetian authorities. Even though we do not possess similar archives from Constantinople, the city’s special position within the empire has again ensured that we are better informed about events taking place within the capital, than we are concerning most other territories. Much of our documentation concerning Constantinople derives from the copious correspondence flowing between the West and the many lay and ecclesiastic magnates (emperors, patriarchs, podestàs, papal legates, etc.) residing in or passing through the city. In fact, even though our attention may appear to be unevenly distributed through the lands of the empire, it is probably safe to say that it accurately reflects the different scale of activity taking place within these select areas.
The relative abundance of sources for Crete and Constantinople cannot be attributed purely to the fortunate circumstances that allowed its survival. It is apparent that these territories, because of their importance, also produced more material than most other areas. Crete was, after all, the best organized and most stable see of the Latin Church in Greece. Equally, Constantinople, as the empire’s capital and the patriarch’s see, was the focal point of unionist talks and diplomatic and intellectual activity. It is thus reasonable to assume that, even though the uneven nature of our material condemns certain convents to obscurity, it does not greatly distort the overall view of Latin monasticism in Greece. Finally, the chronological scope of this study also requires some clarification. The term ‘medieval Greece’ denotes the period of Latin rule over Greece. The duration, however, of Latin rule varied in different territories. In some cases, like Crete for example, Latin rule lasted well into the modern era, whilst other territories were reclaimed by the Greeks very soon after the Latin conquest. One event, however, marks the transformation of Greece and the entire Eastern Mediterranean and can thus be used as a cut off point for this study. This event is the Ottoman conquest.
Although not all of the Latin convents disappeared after the conquest (and indeed several new ones were founded in the territories of the Ottoman Empire), the Turkish occupation altered the role, the organization, and the function of the Latin Church in Greece. It marks, therefore, the obvious conclusion of this study. As has been mentioned, however, certain areas (like Crete) resisted the Turkish offensive for several centuries, whilst others (for example the Ionian Islands) never came under Ottoman rule. In these cases our examination will extend until the end of the fifteenth century.
Though at the time the Turkish conquest was not yet complete, the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the loss of important Latin outposts (like Negroponte) had already ushered in a new era for the political and ecclesiastical history of Greece. In other words, this study will cover the period between 1204 and 1500, or until the Turkish conquest, in those cases where the conquest took place before the end of the fifteenth century. It is worth noting that, although this is the heyday of Latin monasticism in Greece, it also happens to be the era about which our knowledge of the history of the religious houses is the most flawed. This is entirely due to the nature, or rather the meagreness, of the surviving material. Once we move into the sixteenth century, the relevant sources become much more enlightening, even in the cases of smaller houses, or convents located within the Ottoman lands.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق