CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Cornell University Library DF 757.M65 Essays on the Latin Orient. 3 1924 028 255 861 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEWYORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY 1 CALCUTTA t MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. MADRAS j TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT BY WILLIAM MILLER, MA. (Oxon.) HON. LL.D. IN tHE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF GREECE: CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF GREECE: AUTHOR OF THE LATINS IN THE LEVANT CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1921 " You imagine that the campaigners against Troy were the only heroes, while you forget the other more numerous and diviner heroes whom your country has produced." Philostratus, Life of Apollomus of Tyana, III. 19. PREFACE THIS volume consists of articles and monographs upon the Latin Orient and Balkan history, published between 1897 and the present year. For kind permission to reprint them in collected form I am indebted to the editors and proprietors of The Quarterly Review, The English Historical Review, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Die Byzantinische Zeitschrift, The Westminster Review, The Gentleman's Magazine, and The Journal of the British and American Archaeological Society of Rome. All the articles have been revised and brought up to date by the light of recent research in a field of history which is no longer neglected in either the Near East or Western Europe. W. M. 36, Via Palestro, Rome. March, 192 1. Cornell University Library The original of tiiis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028255861 CONTENTS CHAP. I. THE ROMANS IN GREECE II. BYZANTINE GREECE III. PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE 1. THE PRANKISH CONQUEST OF GREECE 2. PRANKISH SOCIETY IN GREECE 3. THE PRINCES OF THE PELOPONNESE. APPENDIX: THE NAME OF NAVARINO 4. THE DUKES OF ATHENS APPENDIX: THE PRANKISH INSCRIPTION AT KARDITZA 5. FLORENTINE ATHENS APPENDIX: NOTES ON ATHENS UNDER THE FRANKS THE TURKISH CAPTURE OF ATHENS . 6. THE DUCHY OF NAXOS .... APPENDIX: THE MAD DUKE OF NAXOS 7. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS (1204-1669) 8. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE . 9. MONEMVASIA 10. THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA (1204-1414) 11. ITHAKE UNDER THE FRANKS 12. THE LAST VENETIAN ISLANDS IN THE .EGEAN 13. SALONIKA IV. THE GENOESE COLONIES IN GREECE 1. THE ZACCARIA OF PHOC^A AND CHIOS (1275-1329) 2. THE GENOESE IN CHIOS (1346-1566) 3. THE GATTILUSJ OF LESBOS (1355-1462) V. TURKISH GREECE (1460-1684) VI. THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE (1684-1718) viii CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE VII. MISCELLANEA FROM THE NEAR EAST . . 429 1. VALONA 429 2. THE MEDIEVAL SERBIAN EMPIRE . . . 441 APPENDIX: THE FOUNDER OF MONTENEGRO . 458 3. BOSNIA BEFORE THE TURKISH CONQUEST . 460 4. BALKAN EXILES IN ROME 497 5. THE LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM (1099-1291) 515 6. A BYZANTINE BLUE STOCKING: ANNA COMNENA 533 ILLUSTRATIONS PLATE FIGS. TO FACE PAGE I. I & 2. The Church of St George at Karditza . 134 II. I. MONEMVASIA FROM THE LAND .... 234 2. MONEMVASIA. ENTRANCE TO KASTRO . . 234 III. I. MONEMVASIA. Havayia MvpriSiwricTaa . . 235 2. MONEMVASIA. 'Ayia %oology for that creed to Hadrian during his residence in the city; while another Athenian, Hyginos, was chosen Pope in the age of the Antonines. Anacletos, the second (or, in other lists, fourth) Bishop of Rome after THE ROMANS IN GREECE 17 St Peter, is said to have been a native of Athens, and a third, Xystos, perished, as Pope Sixtus II, in the persecution of Valerian. The tradition that Dionysios the Areopagite, became first Bishop of Athens^, and there gained the crown of mart5rrdom, and that St Andrew suffered death at Patras, has been cherished, and in the case of Patras has had a considerable historical influence. With the death of Marcus Aurehus the series of Philhellenic Emperors ended, and the Roman civil wars in the last decade of the second century occupied the attention of the Empire. Without taking an active part in the struggle, Greece submitted to the authority of Pescennius Niger, one of the unsuccessf til candidates, and this temporary error of judgment may have induced the Emperor Septimius Severus to inflict a pimishment upon Athens, the cause of which is usually ascribed to a slight which he suffered during his student days there. His successor, CaracaUa, by extending the Roman citizenship to aU free inhabitants of the Empire, gave the Greeks an opportunity, of which they were not slow to avail themselves. From that moment the doors of the Roman administration were thrown open to aU the races of the Roman dominions, and the nimble-witted Greeks so obtained a predominance in that department such as they acquired much later under Turkish rule. From that moment, too, they considered themselves as "Romans," and the name stuck to them long after the Roman Empire had passed away. But CaracaUa, while he thus made them the equals of the Romans in the eyes of the law, increased the taxes which it had long been the privilege of Roman citizens to pay, while he continued to exact those which the provincials had paid previous to their admission to the citizenship. The reductions made by his successors, Macrinus and Alexander Severus, were to a large extent neutralised by the great depreciation of the currency, which began under CaracaUa and continued for the next half century. The Govern- ment paid its creditors in depreciated money, but took good care that the taxes were paid in good gold pieces. The worst results foUowed: officials were tempted, like the modem Tmrkish Pashas, to recoup themselves by extortion for the diminution in their salaries; trade with foreign countries became uncertain, even the speciaUy thriving Greek industries of marble and purple dye must have been affected, and possessors of good coin buried it in the ground. Amid this dismal scene of decay, Athens continued to preserve her reputation as a University town. Though no longer patronised by cultured Emperors, she still attracted nmnbers of pupUs to her lecture rooms; and the name 1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. in. 4; iv. 23; Liber Pontificalis, i. 125, 131, 155. M. 2 i8 THE ROMANS IN GREECE of Longinus, author of the celebrated treatise, On the Sublime, adorns the scanty Athenian annals of this period. That the drama was not neglected is clear from the inscription which records the restoration of the theatre of Dionysos by the Archon Phaidros during this period. But the philosophers and playgoers of Athens were soon to be roused by the alarm of an invasion such as their city had not experienced for many a generation. Hitherto, with the unimportant exception of the raid of the Kosto- bokes as far as Elateia, Greece had never been submitted to the terrors of a barbarian inroad since the Roman Conquest. The Roman Empire had protected Achaia from foreign attack, and even the least friendly of the Emperors had allowed no one to plunder the art treasures of the Greek cities except their own occasional emissaries. Hence the Greece of the middle of the third century preserved in many respects the same external appearance as that of the same country four hundred years earher. But this blessing of peace, which Rome had conferred upon the Greeks, had had the bad effect of training up a nation which was a stranger to the arts of war. CaracaUa, indeed, had raised a couple of Spartan regiments; but the local miUtia of the Greek cities had had no experience of fighting, and the fortifications of the country had been allowed to fall into ruin. Such was the state of the Greek defences when in 250 the Goths crossed the Balkans and entered what is now South Bulgaria. Measures were at once taken to defend the Greek provinces. Claudius, afterwards Emperor, was ordered to occupy the historic pass of Thermopylae, but his forces were small and most of them had been newly enrolled. The death of the Emperor Decius, fighting against the Goths, increased the alarm, and the siege of Salonika thoroughly startled the Greeks. No sooner had Valerian mounted the Imperial throne, than they signahsed his reign by repairing the walls of Athens, which had been neglected since the siege of Sulla^, and it was perhaps at the same time that a fort and a new gate were erected for the defence of the Akropohs^. As a second line of defence the fortifications across the Isthmus were restored, and occupied, just as by Peloponnesian troops of old on the approach of the Persian host. But these preparations did not long preserve the country from the attacks of the Goths. Distracted by the rival claims of self-styled ^ The passages of Zosimos (l. 29) , who says ' kditvaXoi. nh roB reLxovs iireiieXoOuTO /XTlSe/uas, i^bre SiiWas tovto SiiipSeipev, d|i(o9^cros povTldos, and of Zonaras (xil. 23) seem to support Finlay's view that this was not a new wall. Paparregopoulos, op. cit., II. 490, agrees with it. * Hertzberg: Die Geschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft der Romer, ra. 79. ■ THE ROMANS IN GREECE 19 Emperors, Valens in Achaia, and Piso in Thessaly, who had availed themselves of the general confusion to declare their independence, and visited by a terrible plague which followed in the wake of the Roman armies, the Greeks soon had the Gothic hosts upon them. A first raid was repulsed, only to be repeated in 267 on a far larger scale. This time the Goths and fierce Heruli arrived by sea, and, after ravaging the storied island of Sk5n:os, captured Argos, Sparta, and the lower city of Corinth. Athens herself was surprised by the enemy, before the Emperor Gallienus, whose admiration for the ancient city had been shown by his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries and his acceptance of the Athenian citizenship with the of&ce of Archon Epon5mios, could send troops to her assistance. But at this crisis in her history, Athens showed herself worthy of her glorious past. At that time one of her leading citizens was the historian Dexippos, whose writings on the Sc5^hian wars, preserved now only in fragments, were favourably compared by a Byzantine critic with those of Thucydides^. But Dexippos, if a less caustic writer, was a better general, than the historian of the Peloponnesian war. He assembled a body of Athenians, ad- dressed them in a fiery harangue, a fragment of which still exists^, and reminded them that the event of battles was usually decided by bravery rather than by numbers. Marshalling his troops in the Ohve Grove, he accustomed them Uttle by little to the noise of the Gothic war cries and the sight of the Gothic warriors. The arrival of a Roman fleet effected a timely diversion, and the barbarians, taken between two hostile forces, abandoned Athens and succumbed to the Emperor's arms on their march towards the North. Fortunately they seem to have spared the monuments of the city during their occupation, and we are told that the Athenian hbraries were saved from the flames by the deep policy of a shrewd Goth, who thought that the pursuit of literature would unfit the Greeks for the art of war^. Dexippos, who proved by his own example the compatibility of learning with strategy, has been commemorated in an inscription, which praises his merits as a writer, but is silent about his fame as a maker, of history — known to us from a single sentence of the Latin biographer of Gallienus*. Yet at that moment Greece needed men of action rather than men of letters. For another Gothic invasion took place two years later, and from Thessaly to Crete the vessels of the barbarians harried the coasts. But the interval had been used to put the defences of the cities into ^ 'AAXos fierd nvos rais SKKSi/cais IcrToplan. — Photios, Cod. 82. ' Historici Gmci Minores, i. 186-89. ' Zonaras, xii. 26. * Trebellius PoUio, GalUen. 13. 2 — 2 20 THE ROMANS IN GREECE repair; and such was the ill-success of the invaders, 'who could not take a single town, that they did not renew the attack. For more than a century the land was spared the horrors of a fresh Gothic war. The great victory of the Emperor Claudius II over the Goths at Nish and the abandonment of what is now Roumania to them by his suc- cessor Aurelian secured the peace of Achaia. Although the three invasions had resulted in the loss of a considerable amount of moveable property and of many slaves, who had either been carried off as captives or had escaped from their Greek masters to the Gothic ranks, the recovery of Athens and Corinth seems to have been so rapid that seven years after the last raid they were among the nine cities of the Empire to which the Roman Senate wrote announcing the election of the Emperor Tacitus and bidding them direct any appeals from the Pro- consul to the Prefect of the City of Rome— a clear proof of their dvic importance. But the Greeks soon looked for the fountain of justice elsewhere than on the banks of the Tiber. With the reign of Diocletian began the practice of removing the seat of Government from Rome, and that Emperor usually resided at Nicomedia. His establishment of four great administrative divisions of the Empire really separated the two Eastern, in which Greece was comprehended, from the two Western, and prepared the way for the foundation of Constantinople by Constan- tine and the ultimate division of the Eastern and Western Empires. Diocletian's further increase in the number of the provinces, several of which were grouped under one of the Dioceses, into which the Empire was spht up for administrative purposes, had the double effect of altering the size of the Greek provinces, and of scattering them over several Dioceses. Thus Achaia, Thessaly, "Old" Epeiros (as the region round Nikopolis was now called), and Crete, formed four separate provinces included in the Moesian Diocese, the administrative centre of which was Sirmium, the modern Mitrovitz. The ^Egean islands, on the other hand, composed one of the provinces of the Asian Diocese. The province of Achaia had, however, the privilege of being administered by a Proconsul, who was an official of more exalted ratik than the great majority of provincial governors. Side by side with these arrangements, the currency reform of Diocletian and the edict by which he fixed the highest price of commodities cannot fail to have affected the trade of Greece, while his love of building benefited the Greek marble quarries. After the abdication of Diocletian the Christians of Greece were visited by another of those persecutions, of which they had had experience under the Emperor Decius half a century earlier. But on THE ROMANS IN GREECE 21 neither occasion were the martyrdoms numerous, except in Crete, and it would appear that Christianity in Greece was less prosperous, or less progressive, than the same creed in the great cities of the East, where the victims were far more numerous. Constantine's toleration made him as popular with the Greek Christians as his marked respect for the Athenian University made him with the Greek philosophers, and it is, therefore, no wonder that in his final struggle against his rival, Licinius, he was able to coUect a Greek fleet, which mustered in the harbour of the Piraeus, then once more an important station, and forced for him the passage of the Dardanelles. But the reign of Constantine, although he found a biographer in the young Athenian historian, Praxagoras^, weis not conducive to the national development of Greece. Adopting the administrative system of Diocletian, he continued the practice of dividing the Empire into four great "Pre- fectures," as they were now caUed, each of which was subdivided into Dioceses, and the latter again into provinces. The four Greek provinces of Thessaly, Achaia (including some of the Cyclades and some of the Ionian Islands), Old Epeiros (including Corfu and Ithake), and Crete (of which Gortyna was the capital), formed part of the Diocese of Macedonia in the Prefecture of lUyricum, whereas the rest of the Greek islands composed a distinct province of the Asian Diocese in the Prefecture of the Orient. Thus, the Greek race continued to be spht into fragments, while at the same time the levelling tendency of Constantine's administration gradually swept away those Greek municipal institutions, which had hitherto survived all changes, and thus the inhabitants of different parts of the country began to lose their pecuhar characteristics. A few time-honoured vestiges of ancient Greek freedom existed for some time longer; thus the Areopagos and the Archons of Athens and the provincial assembly of Achaia may be traced on into the fifth century. But their place was taken by the new local senates, composed of so-caUed Decuriones, who were chosen from the richest landowners, and who had to collect, and were held personally responsible for, the amount of the land-tax. This onerous office was made hereditary, and there was no means of escaping it except by death or flight to a monastic cell; even a journey outside the country required a special permit from the governor, and the rich Decurio, like the mediaeval serf, was tied down to the land which he was so unfortunate as to own. Even an Irish landlord's lot seems happy compared with that of a Greek Decurio, nor was the provincial who escaped the unpleasant privilege of serving the State * Historici GreBci Minores, 1. 438-40. 22 THE ROMANS IN GREECE in that capacity greatly to be envied. The exaction of taxes became at once more stringent and more regular — a combination pecuharly objectionable to the Oriental mind — and the re-assessment of their burdens every fifteen years led the people to calculate time by the "Indictions," or edicts in which, with all the solemnity of purple ink, the Emperor fixed the amount of the imposts for this new cycle of taxation. That the ruler himself became conscious of the inequalities of his subjects' contributions was evident half a century later when Valentinian I allowed the citizens of each municipahty to elect an official, styled Defensor, whose duty it was to defend his fellow-citizens before the Emperor against the fiscal exactions of the authorities. The transference of the capital to Constantinople, enormous as its loltimate results have proved to be, was at first a disadvantage to the inhabitants of Greece. We are accustomed to look on the centre of the Byzantine Empire as a largely Greek city, but it must be remembered that, at the outset, it was Roman in conception and that its language was Latin. Almost immediately, however, it began to drain Greece of its population, attracted by the prospects of work and the certainty of "bread and games" in the New Rome. In the days of Demosthenes Byzantium had been the granary of Athens; now Attica, always unproductive of wheat, began to find that Constantine's growing capital had to import bread-stuffs for its own use, and the Athenians were thankful for an annual grant of com from the Emperor. The founder wanted, too, Greek works of art to adorn his city, and 427 statues were placed in Sta Sophia alone; the Muses of Hehkon were carried off to the palace of the Emperor; the serpent colxmin, which the grateful Greeks had dedicated at Delphi after the battle of Platsea, was set up in the Hippodrome, where one of its three heads was struck off by the battle-axe of Mohammed II. The conversion of Constantine to Christianity had the natural effect of bringing within the Christian ranks those lukewarm pagans who took their rehgious views from the Emperor. But the com- parative immunity from persecution which the Christians of Greece had enjoyed under the pagan ascendancy led them to treat their opponents with the same mildness. There was no reaction, because there had been no revolution, and the devotees of the old and the new rehgion went on living peaceably side by side. The even greater temptation to the subtle Greek intellect to indulge in the wearisome Arian controversy, which so long convulsed a large part of the Church in the East, was rejected owing to the fortunate unanimity of the bishops who were sent from Greece to attend the Council of Nice. THE ROMANS IN GREECE 23 Their strong and united opposition to the heresy of Arius wa5 re-echoed by their flocks at home, and the Church, undivided on this crucial question, became more and more identified with the people. After Constantine's death the harmony between the pagans and the Christians was temporarily disturbed. Under Constantius II the pubUc offerings ceased, the temples were closed, the oracles fell into disuse; under Julian the Apostate a final attempt was made to rehabilitate the ancient religion. Julian seemed, indeed, to the conservative party in Greece to have restored for two brief years the silver age of Hadrian, if not the golden age of Perikles. The jealousy of Constantius, by sending him in honourable exile to Athens, had made him an enthusiastic admirer of not only the literature but the creed of the old Hellenes. It was at that time that he abjured Christianity and was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, and when he took up arms against Constantius it was to the Corinthians, Lacedaemonians, and Athenians that he addressed Apologies for his conduct. These manifestoes, of which that to the Athenians is still extant among the writings of JuUan, had such an effect upon the Greeks, flattered no doubt by such an attention, that they declared in his favour, and on his rival's death they had their reward. The temples were re-opened, the altars once more smoked with the offerings of the devout, the great games were revived, including the Aktian festival of Augustus, which had fallen into decline with the falling fortunes of Nikopolis. Juhan restored that city and others like it, and the Argives did not appeal in vain for a rehearing of a wearisome law-suit with Corinth to an Emperor who was steeped to the Ups in classic lore. At Athens he purged the University by excluding Christians from professorial chairs, Christian students were often con- verted, Uke the Emperor, by the genius of the place, and the University became the last refuge of Hellenism in Greece, when JuUan's attempted restoration of the old order of things collapsed at his death. Throughout this period, indeed, the University of Athens was not only the chief intellectual centre of the Empire — for Rome had ceased, and the newly founded University of Constantinople had not yet begun, to attract the best intellects — but it was the aU-absorbing institution of the city. Athenian trade had gone on decaying, and under Constans, the son of Constantine, the people of Athens were obliged to ask the Emperor for the grant of certain insular revenues, which he allowed them to devote to the purchase of provisions. So Athens was now solely a University town, and the ineradicable yearning of the Greeks for poUtics found vent, in default of a larger opening, in such academic struggles as the election of a professor or the merits of the rival corps 24 THE ROMANS IN GREECE of students. These corps, each composed as a rule of students from the same district, kept Athens aUve with their disputes, which sometimes degenerated into pitched battles calling for the intervention of the Roman governor from Corinth. So keen was the competition between them, that their agents were posted at the Piraeus to accost the sea- sick freshman as soon as he landed and enlist him in this or that corps. Each corps had its favourite professor, for whose class it obtained pupils, by force or argument, and whose lectures it applauded whenever the master brought out some fresh conceit or distorted the flexible Greek language into some new combination of words. The celebrated sophist Libanios, and the poetic divine, Gregory of Nazianzos, respectively the apologist and the censor of JuUan, have left us a graphic sketch of the student hfe in their time at Athens, when the scarlet and gold garments of the lecturers and the gowns of their pupils mingled in the streets of the ancient city, which still deserved in this fourth century the proud title of "the eye of Greece." The triumph of paganism ceased with the death of Juhan; but his successor Jovian, though he ordered the Church of the Virgin to be erected at Corfu out of the fragments of a heathen temple opposite the royal villa^, proclaimed universal toleration. His wise example was followed by Valentinian I, who repealed Juhan's edict which had made the profession of paganism a test of professorial office at Athens, and allowed his subjects to approach heaven in what manner they pleased. The Greeks were specially exempted from the law forbidding nocturnal sacrifices because it would "make their life unendurable." The Eleusinian mysteries were permitted to be celebrated, and Athens continued to derive much profit from those festivals. It was fortunate for the Greeks that, at the partition of the Empire between him and Valens in 364, the Prefecture of lUyricum, which included the bulk of the Greek provinces, was joined to the Western half, and thus fell to his share. His reign marked the last stage of that peaceful develop- ment which had gone on in Greece since the Gothic invasion of the previous century. A few years after his death the Emperor Theodosius I pubhcly proclaimed the Catholic faith to be the established creed of the Empire, and proceeded to stamp out paganism with all the zeal of a Spaniard. The Oracle of Delphi was closed for ever, the temples were shut, and in 393 the Olympic games, which had been the rallj^ng point of the Hellenic race for untold centuries, ceased to exist. As a 1 A Greek inscription alluding to Jovian may still be read over the west door, but Mustoxidi (Delle Cose Corciresi, pp. 406-7) difiers from Spon and Montfaucon in thinking that some other Jovian is meant. THE ROMANS IN GREECE 25 token of their discontinuance the statue of Zeus, which had stood in the temple of the god at Ol5nnpia, was removed to Constantinople, and the time-honoured custom of reckoning time by the Olympiads was definitely replaced by the prosaic cycle of Indictions. Yet Athens still remained a bulwark of the old rehgion, and the preservation of that city from the great earthquake which devastated large parts of Greece in 375 was attributed to the miraculous protection of the hero Achilles, whose statue had been placed in the Parthenon by the venerable hierophant of the Eleusinian mysteries. But a worse evil than earthquakes was about to befaU the Greeks. After more than a centmy's peace, the Goths crossed the Balkans and defeated the Emperor Valens in the battle of Adrianople. The Greek provinces, entrusted for their better defence to the strong arm of Theodosius, escaped for the moment with no further loss than that caused by a Gothic raid in the North and by the brigandage which is the natural result of every war in the Balkan Peninsula. But, on the death of that Emperor and the final division of the Roman Empire between his sons, Honorius and Arcadius, in 395, the Goths, under their great leader, Alaric, attacked the now divided Prefecture of Illyricum. The evil results of the complete separation of the Eastern from the Western Empire were at once felt. The Greek provinces, which had just been attached to the Eastern system, might have been saved from this incursion if the Western general, Stilicho, had been permitted by Byzantine jealousy to rout the Goths in Thessaly. As the arm of that great commander was thus arrested in the act of striking, Alaric not only was able to penetrate into Epeiros as far as Nikopolis, which at that time almost entirely belonged to St Jerome's friend, the devout Paula, but he marched over Pindos into Thessaly, defeated the local mihtia, and turned to the South upon Boeotia and Attica. The last earthquake had laid many of the fortifications in ruins, the Roman army of occupation was small, and its commander unwilling to imitate the conduct of Leonidas at Thermopylce. The monks facilitated the inroad of a Christian army. The famous fortifications of Thebes had been restored, but they did not check the course of the impetuous Goth, who, leaving them unassailed, went straight to Athens. A later pagan historian has invented the pleasing legend that Pallas Athena and the hero Achilles appeared to protect the city from the invaders. But the Goths, who were not only Christians but Arian heretics, would have been htile influenced by such an apparition. Athens capitulated, and Alaric, who bade spare the holy sanctuaries of the Apostles when, fifteen years later, he entered Rome, abstained from destroying the 26 THE ROMANS IN GREECE artistic treasures of which Athens was full. But the great temple of the mysteries at the town of Eleusis, and that town itself, so intimately associated with that ancient cult, were sacrificed either to the fanaticism of the Arian monks who followed the Gothic army, to the cupidity of the troops, or to both. The last heirophant seems to have perished with the shrine, of which he was the guardian, and a pagan apologist saw in his fall the manifest wrath of the gods, angry at the usurpation of that high office by one who did not belong to the sacred family of the Eumolpidae. Henceforth the Eleusinian mysteries ceased to exist, and the home of those great festivals is now a sorry Albanian village, where ruins still mark the work of the destroyer. Megara shared the fate of Eleusis, the Isthmus was left without defenders, and Corinth, Argos, and Sparta were sacked. Those who resisted were cut down, their wives carried off into slavery, their children made to serve a Gothic master. Even a philosopher died of a broken heart at the spectacle of this terrible calamity. Fortunately, Alaric's sojourn in the Peloponnese was shortened by the arrival of StUicho with an army in the Gulf of Corinth. The Goths withdrew to the fastnesses of Mount Pholoe, between Olympia and Patras, and it seemed as if Stilicho had only to draw his lines around them and then wait for hunger to do its work. But from some unexplained cause — perhaps a court intrigue at Constantinople, perhaps the negligence of the general — Alaric was allowed to escape over the Gulf of Corinth into Epeiros. After devastating that region he was rewarded by the Government of Constantinople with the office of Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial forces in the Eastern half of lUyricum, which comprised the scenes of his recent ravages. The principle of converting a brigand into a pohceman has often proved successful, but there were probably many who shared the indignant feeUngs of the poet Claudian^ at this sudden transformation of "the devastator of Achaia" into her protector. But Alaric could not rebuild the cities, which he had destroyed; he coxold not restore prosperity to the lands, which he had ravaged. We have ample evidence of the injury which this invasion had inflicted upon Greece in the legislation of Theodosius II in the first half of the next century. Two Imperial edicts remitted sixty years' arrears of taxation; another granted the petition of the people of Achaia that their taxes might be reduced to one-third of the existing amount on the ground that they could pay no more; while yet another relieved the Greeks from the burden of contributing towards the expenses of the pubhc games at Constantinople. There is proof, too, in the pages of a contemporary ^ In Eutropium, li. 212 et seq. THE ROMANS IN GREECE 27 historian, as well as in the dry paragraphs of the Theodosian Code, that much of the land had been allowed to go out of cultivation and had been abandoned by its owners. Athens, however, had survived the tempest which had laid waste so large a part of the country. True, we find the philosopher Synesios, who visited that seat of learning soon after Alaric's invasion, writing sarcastically to a correspondent, that Athens " resembled the bleeding and empty skin of a slaughtered victim," and was now famous for its honey alone. But the disillusioned visitor makes no mention of the destruction of the buildings, for which the city was renowned. Throughout the vicissitudes of the five and a half centuries, which we have traversed since the Roman Conquest, one conqueror after another had spared the glories of Athens, and even after the terrible calamity of this Gothic invasion she remained the one bright spot amid the darkness which had settled down upon the land of the Hellenes. II. BYZANTINE GREECE THE period of more than a century which separated Alaric's invasion from the accession of Justinian was not prohfic of events on the soil of Greece. But those which occurred there tended yet further to accelerate the decay of the old classic Hfe. Scarcely had the country begun to recover from the long-felt ravages of the Goths, than the Vandals, who had now established themselves in Africa, plundered the west and south-west coasts of Greece from Epeiros to Cape Matapan. But at this crisis the Free Laconian town of KainepoUs showed such a Spartan spirit that the Vandal King Genseric was obliged to retire with considerable loss. He revenged himself by ravaging the beautiful island of Zante, and by throwing into the Ionian Sea the mangled bodies of 500 of its inhabitants^. NikopoUs was held as a hostage by the Vandals till peace was concluded between them and the Eastern Empire, when their raids ceased. Seven years afterwards, in 482, the Ostrogoths under Theodoric devastated Larissa and the rich plain of Thessaly. In, 517 a more serious, because permanent enemy, appeared for the first time in the annals of Greece. The Bulgarians had already caused such alarm to the statesmen of Constantinople that they had strengthened the defences of that city, and it was probably at this time that the fortifications of Megara were restored. On their first inroad, however, the Bulgarians penetrated no further into Greece than Thermopylae and the south of Epeiros. But they carried off many captives, and, to complete the woes of the Greeks, one of those severe earthquakes to which that country is liable laid Corinth in ruins. The final separation of the Eastern and Western Empires tended to identify the interests of the Greeks with those of the Eastern Emperors, to make Greek the language of the Court, and to encourage the Greek nationality. But from that period down to the Latin conquest of Constantinople, the Imperial city grew more and more in importance at the expense of the old home of the Hellenes, and Greece became more and more provincial. But it seems an exaggeration to say with Finlay that during those eight centuries "no Athenian citizen gained a place of honour in the annals of the Empire." To Athens, at least, ' Procopios, De bello Vand., I. ch. 22. 30 BYZANTINE GREECE belongs the honour of having produced the Empress Eudokia, wife of Theodosius II, whose acts of financial justice to her native land she may have prompted, such as that which, in 435, reduced the tribute of the dwellers in Greece by two-thirds, while she is said to have founded twelve churches in her native city, among them the quaint Uttle Kapnikarea, so conspicuous a feature of modem Athens, if we may trust the beUef embodied in the inscription inside. The daughter of an Athenian professor, Leontios, celebrated aUke for her beauty and accomplishments, she went to Constantinople to appeal against an unjust decision which had enriched her brothers but had left her almost penniless. She lost her case, but she won the favour of Pulcheria, the masterful sister of Theodosius, and was appointed one of her maids of honour. She used this favourable position to the best advantage, gained the heart of the young Emperor, who was seven years her junior in age and many more in knowledge of the world, and had no scruples about exchanging paganism and the name of Athenais for Christianity and the baptismal title of Eudokia. She showed her Christian charity by forgiving and promoting her brothers; she kept up her literary accompHshments by turning part of the Old Testament into Greek verse; but she was accused of ambition and infidehty, the latter charge being substantiated by a superb apple, which the Emperor had pre- sented to his wife, which she in turn had sent to her lover, and he, like an idiot, had placed on the Emperor's table! She died in exile at Jerusalem, a striking example of the vicissitudes of human fortunes. Yet even in the time of her power, she could not, perhaps would not, prevent her husband's persecution of the religion which she had abjured. His orders to the provincial authorities to destroy the temples or to consecrate them to Christian worship were not always carried out, it is true. But the pictures of Polygnotus, which Pausanias had seen in the Stoa Poikele at Athens, excited the covetousness of an Imperial governor, and the gold and ivory statue of Athena by Phidias vanished from the Parthenon for ever^; the temple of Zeus at Olympia was destroyed by an earthquake or by Christian bigotry, the shrine of Asklepios on the slope of the Akropolis was pulled down, while the heathen divinities became gradually assimilated with the Christian saints, in whom they finally merged. Thus Hehos, the sun-god, was converted into Elias, whose name is so prominent all over the map of modern Greece; the wine-god Dionysos became a reformed character 1 Hertzberg thinks it was the bronze statue of Athena Promachos which was carried ofi. But Gregorovius' view (Geschichte der Stadt A then im Mittelalter, I. 49), that given in the text, seems more probable. BYZANTINE GREECE 31 in the person of St Dionysios, and the temples of Theseus and Zeus Olympios at Athens were dedicated to St George and St John. By a still more striking transformation the Parthenon was consecrated as a church of the Virgin during the sixth century, and was thenceforth regarded as the Cathedral of Athens. The growth of Christianity is observable, too, from the Usts of Greek sees represented at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, while the importance of Corinth as the seat of the Metropohtan of Achaia is shown by the synod which was held there to settle a point of Church disciphne in 419. In spite, however, of its pohtical separation from Rome, we find Greece making appeals to the Pope when grave theological questions arose. At this period the Archbishop of Salonika was regarded as the official head of all the Greek provinces in Europe, yet when he seemed to the orthodox Epeirotes to be affected with heresy, they sent in their adhesion to Rome. Theodosius II was not content with the destruction of temples; he desired the final disappearance of such vestiges of municipal freedom as Constantine had spared. In the same spirit of uniformity in which he codified the law, he swept away the remains of Lycurgus' system at Sparta and the Court of Areopagos. Yet, as institutions usually survive their practical utUity in a conservative country, we are not surprised to find the name of an Eponymos Archon as late as 485. And the University of Athens still Uved on, fighting the now hopeless battle of the old reUgion with aU the zeal of the latest Neo-Platonic school of philosophy. The endowments of that school and the patriotism of rich Athenians, hke Theagenes, one of the two last Archons, and known as the wealthiest Greek of his day, made up for the with- drawal of Imperial subsidies, and the bitter tongue of Synesios could still complain of the airs which those who had studied at Athens gave themselves ever afterwards. "They regard themselves," wrote the philosopher, "as demi-gods and the rest of mankind as donkeys." But the university received a severe blow when, in 425, Theodosius enlarged and enriched the University of Constantinople with a number of new professorial chairs. If his institution of fifteen professors of the Greek language and literature gave that tongue an official position in what had hitherto been mainly a Latin city, it also attracted the best talent — ^men like Jacobus, the famous physician of the Emperor Leo the Great — from Greece to Constantinople, which thus acted as a magnet to the aspiring provincials, just as Paris acts to the rest of France. The last great figure of the Athenian University, Proklos, whose commentaries on Plato are still extant, was engaged in demon- 32 BYZANTINE GREECE strating by the purity of his life and the mysticism of his doctrines that a pagan could be no less moral and more intellectual than a Christian. The old gods, deposed from their thrones, seemed to favour their last champion; so, when the statue of Athena was removed from the Akropolis, the goddess appeared to the philosopher in a dream and told him that henceforth his house would be her home. The famous BcEthius, whose Consolation of Philosophy was translated by our King Alfred, is thought to have studied at Athens in the last years of Proklos, and earUer in the fifth century the charming H5T)atia, whom Kingsley has immortalised for Enghsh readers, may be numbered among the ladies who at that time sought higher education at Athens and softened by their presence the rough manners of the masculine students. But, with the death of Proklos, the cause of polytheism and the prosperity of the university declined yet more. The shrewd young Greeks saw that there was no longer a career for pagans; even the rich benefactor of Athens, Theagenes, was converted to Christianity. Justinian dealt the university its death-blow in 529 by decreeing that no one should teach philosophy at Athens, and by confiscating the endowments of the Platonic school. Seven philosophers, of whom the most celebrated was Simplikios, the Aristotelian commentator, resolved to seek imder the benevolent despotism of Chosroes, King of Persia, that freedom of speech which was denied to them by Justinian. They believed at a distance that the barbarian monarch had realised the ideal of Plato — a philosopher on the throne; they went to his court and were speedily disillusioned. Home-sick and heart-broken, they begged their new patron to let them return to die in Greece. Chosroes, who was at the time engaged in negotiating a treaty of peace with Justinian, inserted a clause allowing the unhappy seven "to pass the rest of their days without persecution in their native land," and Simplikios was thus enabled, in the obscurity of private life, to compose those commentaries which are still studied by disciples of Aristotle^. Thus perished the University of Athens, and with it paganism vanished from Greece, save where, in the mountains of Laconia, it lingered on till beyond the middle of the ninth century. The ancient name of "Hellenes" was now exclusively apphed to the remnant which stiU adhered to the old religion, so much so that Constantine Porphyrogenitus* in the tenth century called the Peloponnesian Greeks "Graikoi," because "Hellenes" would have still meant idolaters. All the subjects of Justinian were collectively described as "Romans," while those who inhabited Greece came gradually to be specified as " Helladikoi." 1 Agathias, II. chs. 30, 31. » iii. 217 (ed. Bonn). BYZANTINE GREECE 33 The reign of Justinian marked the annihilation of the ancient hfe in other ways than these. He disbanded the provincial militia, to which we have several times alluded, and which down to his time furnished a guard for the Pass of Thermopylae. This garrison proved, however, unable to keep out ihe Huns and Slavs who invaded Greece in 539, and, like the Persians of old, marched through the Pass of Anopaia into the rear of the defenders. The ravages of these barbarians, who devasted Central Greece and penetrated as far as the Isthmus, led Justinian to repair the fortifications of Thermopylae, where he placed a regular force of 2000 men, maintained out of the revenues of Greece. He also re-fortified the Isthmus, and put such important positions as Larissa, Pharsalos, Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, with the Akropohs, in a state of proper defence. But these mihtary measures involved a large expenditure, which Justinian met by appropriating the municipal funds. The effect of this measure was to deprive the municipal doctors and teachers of their means of UveUhood, to stop the municipal grants to theatres and other entertainments, to make the repair of public buildings and the maintenance of roads — the greatest of aU needs in a country with the geographical configuration of Greece— most difficult. The old Greek life had centred in the municipality, so that from this blow it never recovered; fortunately, the Church was now sufficiently well organised to take its place, and henceforth that institution became the depository of the national traditions, the mainstay in each successive century of the national existence. Yet another loss to Greece was that of the monuments, which were taken to Constantinople to make good the ravages of the great conflagration, caused by the Nika sedition. The present church of Sta Sophia, which Justinian raised out of the ashes of the second, was adorned with pillars from Athens as well as marble from the Greek quarries, and thus once agsdn, as St Jerome had said, other cities were "stripped naked" to clothe Constantinople. Earthquakes, which shook Patras, Corinth, and Naupaktos to their foundations, completed the destruction of much that was valuable, and the bubonic plague swept over the country, recaUing those terrors of which Thucydides and Lucretius had left such a striking description in their accounts of the pestilence at Athens in the days of Perikles. The King of the Ostrogoths, Totila, after twice taking Rome, sent a fleet to harry Corfu and the opposite coast of Epeiros, plundered Nikopolis and the ancient shrine of Dodona. It was in consequence of this and similar raids that the Corfiotes finally abandoned their old city and took refuge in the present citadel, called later on in the tenth century from its twin peaks {Kopv(pol,) Corfu, instead of Corcyra. The M. 3 34 BYZANTINE GREECE Bulgarians, a few years later, made a fresh raid as far as Thermopylae, where they were stopped by the new fortifications. In short, the ambitious foreign policy of Justinian, the powers of nature, and the increasing boldness of the barbarians, contrived to make this period fatal to Greece. Yet the Emperor bestowed one signal benefit upon that country. By the importation of silkworms he gave the Greeks the monopoly, so far as Christendom was concerned, of a valuable manufacture, which was not infringed till the Norman invasion six centuries later. The history of Greece becomes very obscure after the death of Justinian, and the historian must be content to piece together from the Byzantine writers such stray allusions as those chroniclers of court scandals make to the neglected fatherland of the Greeks. The salient fact of this period is the recurrence of the Slav invasions of Justinian's time. We learn that in 578 or 581 an army of 100,000 Slavonians "ravaged HeUas" and Thessaly^; in 589, under the Emperor Maurice, the Avars, according to the contemporary historian, Evagrios, "con- quered all Greece, destroying and burning everything 2." This passage has given rise to a famous controversy, which at one time convulsed not only the learned, but the diplomatic world. In 1830 a German scholar. Professor FaUmerayer, published the first volume of a History of the Peninsula Morea during the Middle Ages, in which he advanced the astounding theory that the inhabitants of modem Greece have "not a single drop of genuine Greek blood in their veins." "The Greek race in Europe," he wrote, "has been rooted out. A double layer of the dust and ashes of two new and distinct human species covers the graves of that ancient people. A tempest, such as has seldom arisen in human history, has scattered a new race, allied to the great Slav family, over the whole surface of the Balkan peninsula from the Danube to the inmost recesses of the Peloponnese. And a second, perhaps no less important revolution, the Albanian immigration into Greece, has completed the work of destruction." The former of these two foreign settlements in the Peloponnese, that of the Slavs and Avars, was supposed by FaUmerayer to have taken place as the result of the above-mentioned invasion of 589, and his supposition received plausible confirmation from a mediaeval dociunent. The Patriarch Nicholas, writing towards the end of the eleventh century to the Emperor Alexios I Comnenos, alludes to the repulse of the Avars from before the walls of Patras in 807, and adds that they "had held possession of the Peloponnese for 218 years {i.e. from 589), and had so completely ' Menander in Hist. Gr. Min. 11. 98. * Hist. Eccles. vi. lo. BYZANTINE GREECE 35 separated it from the Byzantine Empire that no Byzantine official dared to set his foot in it^." A similar statement from the Chronicle of Monemvasia^ — a late and almost worthless compilation — ^was also unearthed by the zealous FaUmerayer, who accordingly believed that he had proved the existence of a permanent settlement of the Pelopon- nese by the Slavs and Avars between 589 and 807, "in complete independence of the Byzantine governors of the coast." It was in the coast-towns alone and in a few other strongholds, such as Mt Taygetos, that he would allow of any survival of the old Greek race, and he triumphantly pointed to the famous name of " Navarino " as containing a fresh proof of an Avar settlement, while in many places he found Slavonic names, corresponding to those of Russian villages. Another evidence of this early Slavonic settlement seemed to be provided by the remark of the very late Byzantine writer, Phrantzes, that his native city of Monemvasia on the south-east coast, which used to supply our ancestors' cellars with malmsey, was separated from the diocese of Corinth and raised to the rank of a metropolitan see about this identical time, presumably because many Greeks had taken refuge there from the Slavs, and were cut off from Corinth. Finally, a nun, who composed an account of the pilgrimage of St WUIibald, the Anglo- Saxon Bishop of Eichstatt, in 723, stated that he "crossed to Monem- vasia in the Slavonian land," an expression which FaUmerayer hailed as a proof that at that period the Peloponnese was known by that name. It need not be said that Fallmerayer's theory was as flattering to Panslavism as it was unpleasant to PhUhellenes. But it is no longer accepted in its full extent. No one who has been in Greece can fail to have been struck by the similarity between the character of the modem and the ancient Greeks. Many an island has its "Odysseus of many wiles " ; every morning and evening the Athenians are anxious to hear "some new thing"; and the comedies of Aristophanes contain many personal traits which fit the subjects of the present king. Nor does even the vulgar language contain any considerable Slavonic element, although there are a certain number of Slavonic place-names to be found on the map, including perhaps Navarino. Moreover, the con- temporary historian, Theophylact Simokatta, makes no mention of the invasion of 589, though he minutely describes the wars of that period. Yet, as we shall see later, there is no doubt that at one time there was a great Slavonic immigration into Greece, but it took place about 746, instead of in 589, and the incoming Slavs, so far from ^ Leunclavius, Jus GreBCO-Romanum, i. 278. ' The latest study of this Chronicle is by N. A. Bees in Bvt^avHs, I. 57-io5- 3—2 36 BYZANTINE GREECE annihilating the Greeks, were gradually assimilated by that persistent race, as has happened to conquering peoples elsewhere. But Falhnerayer was not content with wiping out the Greeks from the Peloponnese. He next propounded the amazing statement that the history of Athens was a blank for four centuries after the time of Justinian, and explained this strange phenomenon by a Slavonic inundation in that Emperor's reign. In consequence of this invasion, the Athenians were said to have fled to Salamis, where they remained for 400 years, while their city was abandoned to olive groves and utterly neglected. These "facts," which the learned German had culled from the chronicle of the Anargyroi Monastery 1, which, however, distinctly says "three years," and not 400, and refers to Albanians, not Slavs, have since been disproved, not only by the obviously modem date of that compilation, which is now assigned to the nineteenth century, and which refers to the temporary abandonment of Athens after its capture by Morosini in 1687, but by the allusions which may be found to events at Athens during this period of supposed desertion. Thus, we hear of an heretical bishop being sent there towards the end of the sixth century, and we have the seal of the orthodox divine who was Bishop of Athens a hundred years later^. An eloquent appeal was made by the Byzantine historian, Theophylact Simokatta, to the city to put on mourning for the Emperor Maurice, who died in 602, and sixty years later another Emperor, Constans II, landed at the Piraeus on his way to Sicily, spent the winter at Athens, and collected there a con- siderable force of soldiers. Even some few traces of culture may be found there in the century which foUowed Justinian's closing of the university. St Gislenus, who went as a missionary to Hainault, and a learned doctor, named Stephen, were both born at Athens, and the former is stated to have studied there. Finally, in the middle of the eighth century, the famous Empress Irene first saw the light in the city, which had already given one consort to an Emperor of the East. Thus, if comparatively obscure, Athens was not a mere collection of ruins in an oUve grove, but a city of living men and women which had never (as Zygomalas wrote to Crusius in the sixteenth century) "remained desolate for about 300 years." The attacks of the Slavs and of the newly-founded Arabian power marked the course of the seventh century. In 623 the Slavs made an incursion into Crete, and that island, of which we have heard little under the Imperial rule, was also visited by the Arabs in 651 and 674. 1 Kampouroglos, 'Icrropia tQv 'ABrivalav, i. 36-72; Myri/ieia, 1. 41-46. ' Schlumberger, Sigillographie de I'Emptre Byzantin, 172. BYZANTINE GREECE 37 But though the Cretans were forced to pay tribute to the Cahph, Moawyah, they were treated with kindness by the poUtic conqueror. About the same time as this second Arab invasion, and while the main Arab force was besieging Constantinople, a body of Slavs seized the opportunity to settle in the rich plain of Thessaly, and it is from one of their tribes that the present town of Velestino, so often mentioned in the war of 1897, received its name. Yet this tribe soon became so friendly that it assisted the Greeks in the defence of Salonika against a Slavonic army— a further proof of the readiness with which the Slavs adopted the Greek point of view. It is clear also that the command of the Imperial troops in Greece was regarded as an important post, for we find it entrusted to Leontios, who made himself Emperor. The Greek islands were still used as places of detention for prisoners of position. Thus Naxos was chosen as the temporary exile of Pope Martin I by the Emperor Constans II, and the future Emperor Philip- picus was banished to Cephalonia. A new era opened for the Empire with the accession of Leo the Isaurian in 716. In the first place, that sovereign completed the reform of the system of provincial administration, which had lasted more or less continuously since the time of Constantine. In place of the old provincial divisions, the Empire was now parcelled out into military districts, called Themes — a name originally apphed to a regiment and then to the place at which the regiment was quartered. The choice of such a title indicates the essentially military character of the new arrangement, which implied the maintenance of a small division of troops in each district as a necessary defence against the Avars, Slavs, and Arabs, whose depredations had menaced provinces seldom exposed to attack in the old times. Six out of the twenty-eight Themes com- prised Greece, as she was before the late Balkan wars. The Peloponnese, with its capital of Corinth, formed one; Central Greece, including Euboea, formed another, under the name of Hellas, but its capital was Thebes, not Athens; Nikopohs, which comprised ^EtoUa and Akarnania, and Cephalonia (the latter created a separate Theme later on, and including all the Ionian Islands) were two more; the ^EgeanSea, popularly known as the Dodekannesos, or "twelve islands," composed one of the Asian Themes, and Thessaly was a part of the Theme of Macedonia. Both the military and civil authority in each Theme was vested in the hands of a Commander, known as strategos, except in the case of the .iEgean Islands, where the post was filled by an Admiral, called droungdrios. Under the strategos were the protonotdnos or "judge," who was a judicial and administrative authority, and two mihtary 38 BYZANTINE GREECE personages, one of whom, the kleisour arches, was so-called because he watched the mountain passes, like the later Tiukish derben-aga. So far as Greece is concerned, the eclipse of Athens by Thebes, perhaps owing to the silk industry for which the latter city was famous in the Middle Ages, is a very noticeable feature of the new adminis- tration. Another reform of Leo the Isaurian aroused the intense indignation of the inhabitants of Greece. We have seen that the spread of Chris- tianity in that coimtry had been facilitated by the assimilation of pagan forms of worship in the new ritual. It was natural that a race, which had been accustomed for centuries to connect art with religion and to seek the noblest statuary in the temples of the gods, should have regarded with peculiar favour the practice of hanging pictures in churches. When therefore Leo, whose Armenian origin perhaps made him personally unsympathetic to the Greeks, issued an edict against image-worship, his orders met with the most bigoted resistance in Greece. It may be that a more searching census for the purposes of the revenue had already rendered him unpopular; but to those who know how strong is the influence of the Church in the East, and what fierce disputes an ecclesiastical question kindles there, the edict of the Emperor wiU seem ample ground for the Greek rising of 727. An eruption at the volcanic island of Santorin was interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure at the doings of the iconoclast sovereign; while Pope Gregory II addressed two violent missives to the Emperor, and probably encouraged the agitation in Greece, which still acknowledged him as spiritual head of the Church. The "HeUadikoi," as they were now caUed, and the seamen of the Cyclades fitted out a fleet under the leadership of a certain Stephen ; and, with the co-operation of Agallianos, one of the Imperial military officials, set up an orthodox Emperor, named Kosmas, and boldly set sail for Constantinople — a proof of the resources of Greece at this period. But the result of this naval undertaking was very different from that which Greece had equipped on behalf of Constantine. A battle was fought under the walls of the capital between the two fleets. The Emperor Leo, availing himself of the terrible invention of the Greek fire, which had been used with such deadly effect in the recent Saracen siege of Constantinople, annihilated his opponents' vessels. Agallianos, seeing that all was lost, leaped into the sea; Stephen and Kosmas fell by the axe of the execu- tioner. We are not told what punishment was meted out to the Greeks, but, in consequence of the strong attitude of opposition which the Papacy had taken up to the Emperor, Leo in 732 deprived the Pope BYZANTINE GREECE 39 of all jurisdiction over Greece, and placed that country under the ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. The next important event in the history of Greece was the great plague, which broke out at Monemvasia in 746 and spread all over the Empire. The political consequences of this visitation were far- reaching. For not only was the population of Greece diminished by the increased mortaUty there, but it was further lessened by emigration to Constantinople, where there were openings for plasterers and other skilled workmen, and where great numbers had died of the epidemic. The place of these emigrants in the Peloponnese was taken by Slav colonists, and this is the true explanation of the Slavonic colonisation, which FaUmerayer placed so much eariier. In the celebrated words of the Imperial author, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, "AU the open country was Slavonised and became barbarous, when the plague was devouring the whole world^." It seems from the phrase " open country," that such Greeks as remained behind crowded into the towns, and that the rural districts were thus left free for the Slavs to occupy. And this is confirmed by the Epitome of Strabo's Geography, compiled apparently about the end of the tenth century, which states that at that time " AU Epeiros and a large part of Hellas and the Peloponnese and Macedonia were inhabited by Scythian Slavs." The memory of this Slavonic occupation has been preserved by the Slavonic names of places, which Colonel Leake was the first to notice. That the Slavs excited the alarm of the Byzantine government is clear from the fact that in 783 Staurakios was despatched by the Empress Irene to crush their efforts at independence. The Empress was actuated by love of Greece as well as by motives of policy, for she was a native of Athens, like her predecessor, Eudokia. At the age of seventeen she had been selected by the Emperor Constantine Copron5mios as the wife of his son, Leo IV, and the premature death of her husband left her the real mistress of the Empire, which she governed, first as Regent for her son and then as sole ruler, for over twenty years. One of the earliest acts of her Regency was to send the expedition against the Slavs. Those in Thessaly and Central Greece were forced to pay tribute; those in the Peloponnese yielded a rich booty to the Byzantine commander. But the Slavs were not permanently subdued, as was soon evident. Irene, for the greater security of her throne, had banished her five brothers- in-law to Athens, which was, of course, devoted to her, and was at that time governed by one of her kinsmen. But the five prisoners managed to communicate with Akamir, a Slav chieftain who lived ^ in- 53- 40 BYZANTINE GREECE at Velestino, and a plot was formed for the elevation of them to the throne. The plans of the conspirators fell into the hands of Irene's friends, and the prisoners were removed to a safer place. Irene, however, was dethroned a httle later by Nikephoros I, and banished to Mitylene, where she died. In spite of her appalling treatment of her son, whom she had dethroned and blinded in order to gratify her greed of power, tradition states that she showed her piety and patriotism by the foimdation of several churches at Athens. Some of her foundations disappeared in the storm and stress of the War of Independence; others were removed to make way for the streets of the modem town ; but the Church of the Panagia Gorgoepekoos, or so-called old Metropolis^, which still stands, is ascribed to her, and the ruins of the monastery which she built and where she at one time lived strew the beautiful island of Prinkipo. Even with her death her native city did not lose its connection with the Byzantine Court. Among her surviving relatives at Athens was a beautiful niece, Theophano, who was married to a man of position there. Nikephoros, anxious, no doubt, Uke all usurpers, to connect his famUy with that of the Sovereign whom he had deposed, resolved that the fair Athenian should become the consort of his son, Staurakios. He accordingly snatched her from the arms of her husband and brought her to Constantinople, where her second marriage took place. But this third Athenian Empress did not long enjoy the reward of her infidehty to her first husband. Staurakios survived his father's death at the hands of the Bulgarians a very few months, and his consort, like Eudokia and Irene, ended her Ufe in a monastery. The Slavs of the Peloponnese beUeved that their chance of obtaining independence had come during the troubled reign of Nike- phoros, when the Saracens under Haroun Al Rashid and the growing power of the Bulgarians menaced the Byzantine Empire. They accordingly rose, and, after plundering the houses of their Greek neighbours, laid siege in 807 to the fortress of Patras, which was the principal stronghold of the old inhabitants in the north-west of the country. The Slavs blockaded the city from the land side, while a Saracen fleet prevented the introduction of supphes by sea. The besieged, knowing that the fate of Hellenism in the Peloponnese depended on their efforts, held out against these odds in the hope that they would thus give the Imperial commander at Corinth time to relieve them. At last, when all hope of dehverance seemed to have disappeared, they sent out a horseman to one of the hills in the direction of Corinth to see if the longed for army of relief was in sight. His orders were to 1 Neroutsos, XpunaviKal 'ASijvaL in AeXrlov rijs 'Io-t. Kal 'EffK. 'BTaipios, in. 30. BYZANTINE GREECE 41 gallop back as soon as he caught a glimpse of the approaching Imperialists and to lower the flag which he carried, so that his comrades in Patras might have the glad news at once. But his eyes in vain searched the road along the Gulf of Corinth for the gleam of weapons or the dust that would announce the march of soldiers. Sadly he turned his horse towards Patras, when, at a spot where he was in full view of the walls, his steed stumbled and the flag fell. The besieged, beUeving that help was at hand, were inspired with fresh courage, and, sallying from the gates, inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Slavs, which was followed up after the arrival of the reheving force three days later by the restoration of the Imperial authority along the west coast. At that age so great a victory was naturally ascribed to super- human aid. St Andrew, the patron-saint of Patras, who, as we have seen, was beheved to have suffered martjnrdom there, and whose relics were then preserved there, had caused the scout's horse to stumble and had been seen on a milk-white steed leading the citizens in their successful onslaught on the Slavs^. The gratitude, or policy, of the government showed itself in the dedication of the spoil and captives to the service of the church of St Andrew, and the Slavonic peasants of the neighbourhood became its tenants and paid it a yearly rent. The Archbishop of Patras, who had hitherto been dependent upon Corinth, was raised by Nikephoros to the rank of a Metropolitan, and Methone, Korone and Lacedaemon, were placed under his immediate jurisdiction. The poUtical object and result of this step, which was ratified by later Emperors, was to heUenise the vanquished Slavs by means of the Greek clergy. Moreover, the policy of Nikephoros in organising Greek military colonies round the Slav settlements in Greece, tended to check Slavonic raids. PubUc lands were bestowed on these colonists whose establishment contributed much to the ultimate fusion of the two races. Thus, the defeat of the Slavs before Patras and the wise measures of Nikephoros prevented the Peloponnese from becoming a Slavonic State, like Servia or Bulgaria, and from that date the tide, which had at one time threatened to submerge the Greek nationality there, began to ebb. Of this phenomenon we shall be able to watch the progress. A generation elapsed without a renewal of the Slav agitation in the Peloponnese; but about 849 a fresh rising took place. On this occasion the appearance of a Byzantine commander in the field soon caused the collapse of the rebels. Two Slavonic tribes, however, the Melings and Ezerits, which inhabited the slopes to the west, and the 1 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in. 217-20. 42 BYZANTINE GREECE plain to the east of Mount Taygetos, were enabled by the strength of their geographical position to make terms with the Byzantine government, and agreed to pay a small tribute which was assessed according to their respective means^- The Church continued the work of the soldiers by building monasteries in the Slavonic districts, and from the middle of the ninth century the Greek element began to recover lost ground. Nearly all the Slavs and the last of the Hellenic pagans in the south of Taygetos were then converted, and the adoption of Christianity by the Bulgarians cannot have failed to affect the Slavonic settlers in the Byzantine Empire. Of the revived prosperity of Greece we have two remarkable proofs. In 823 that country raised a fleet of 350 saU for the purpose of intervening in the civil war then raging between the Emperor Michael the Stammerer and a Slavonic usurper, and this implies the possession of considerable resources. Still more striking is the story of the rich widow, Danielis of Patras. About the time of the Byzantine expedition against the Slavs of Taygetos, the future Emperor, Basil I, then chief groom in the service of a prominent courtier, was at Patras in attendance on his master, who had been sent there on political business. One day, as the comely groom was entering the church of St Andrew, a monk stopped him and told him that he should become Emperor. Shortly afterwards he fell ill of a fever, which, by detaining him at Patras after his master's departure, proved to be a blessing in disguise. Moved by philanthropy or the prophecy of the monk, Daniehs took the sick groom into her house, bade him be a brother to her son, and, when he had recovered from his illness, provided him with a train of thirty slaves to accompany him to Constantinople, and loaded him with costly presents. When, in 867, the monk's forecast was fulfilled, and Basil mounted the Imperial throne, he did not forget his benefactress. He not only promoted her son to a high position in his court, but invited the aged lady to Constantinople. In spite of her age and infirmities, Daniehs travelled in a litter, accompanied by 300 slaves, who took in turns the duty of carrying their mistress. As a gift to the Emperor, she brought 500 more, as well as 100 maidens, chosen for their skill in embroidery, 100 purple garments, 300 hnen robes, and 100 more of such fine material that each piece could easily be packed away in a hoUow cane. Every kind of gold and silver vessel completed the Ust of presents, which would not have disgraced a brother sovereign. When she arrived, she was lodged like a queen and addressed as "mother" by her grateful protege. BasU's gratitude was rewarded by ' Ibid. III. 220-24. BYZANTINE GREECE 43 fresh favours. Danielis called for a notary and made over to the Emperor and her own son a part of her landed estates in the Pelopon- nese. Finding that Basil had tried to atone for the murder of his predecessor, which had given him the throne, by the erection of a church, she had a huge carpet manufactured by her own workmen to cover the splendid mosaic floor. Once again, on the death of her favourite, she journeyed to Constantinople to greet his son and suc- cessor. Her own son was by that time dead, so she devised the whole of her property to the young Emperor Leo VI. At her request, a high official was sent to the Peloponnese to prepare an inventory of her effects. Even in these days a sovereign would rejoice at such a windfall. Her loose cash, her gold and silver plate, her bronze ornaments, her wardrobe, and her flocks and herds represented a princely fortune. As for her slaves, they were so numerous that the Emperor, in the embcirrassment of his riches, emancipated 3000 of them and sent them as colonists to Apulia, then part of the Byzantine Empire. Eighty farms formed the real property of this ninth century millionairess, whose story throws light on the position of the Pelopormesian landed class, or archontes, at that period. Danielis was, doubtless, exceptionally rich, and Patras was then, as now, the chief commercial town in the Peloponnese. But the existence of such an enormous fortune as hers presupposes a high degree of civilisation, in which many others must have participated. Even learning was still cultivated in Greece, for the distinguished mathematician Leo, who was one of the ornaments of the Byzantine Court, is expressly stated to have studied rhetoric, philosophy and science under a famous teacher, Michael Psellos, who lectured at a college in the island of Andros, where his pupU's name is not yet forgotten^. But while the Greeks had thus triumphed in the Peloponnese, they had lost ground elsewhere. Availing themselves of the disorders in the Byzantine Empire, when the Greek ships were all engaged in the civil war of 823, a body of Saracens, who had emigrated from the south of Spain to Alexandria, descended on Crete, at that time recovering from the effects of an earthquake, but still possessing thirty cities. Landing at Suda Bay, they found the islanders mostly favourable, or at any rate indifferent, to a change of masters. Reinforced by a further batch of their countrymen, the Saracens resolved to settle there. A Cretan monk is said to have shown them a strong position where they could pitch their camp; so they burnt their ships and estabUshed themselves at the spot indicated, the site of the present * Kedrenos (ed. Bonn), 11. 170, 44 BYZANTINE GREECE town of Candia, which derives its Venetian name from the Chandak or "ditch" surrounding it. The conquest of the island was soon aecom- pUshed— a clear proof of the islanders' apathy when we remember the heroic defence of the Cretans in more recent times. ReUgious toleration reconciled many to the sway of the Saracens; in the course of years a number of the Christians embraced the creed of their conquerors, helping to man their fleets and sharing the profits of that nefarious traffic in slaves of which Crete, as in former days Delos, became the centre. One district, which we may identify with Sphakia, was per- mitted to enjoy autonomy. For Greece the rule of the Saracens in Crete was a serious misfortune. Cretan corsairs ably led by Christian renegades, in quest of booty and slaves, ravaged the Cyclades and the Ionian Islands, and menaced the coast towns of the mainland, whither the terrified inhabitants of iEgina and similarly exposed spots migrated in the hope of safety. The efforts of the Byzantine government to recover "the great Greek island," which was now a terror to the whole Levant, were for more than a century unsuccessful, and during 138 years Crete remained in the possession of the Saracens. Occasionally their fleet was annihilated, as in the reign of Basil I, when the Byzantine admiral, hearing that they meditated a descent upon the west coast of Greece, conveyed his ships across the Isthmus in the night by means of the old tram-road, or diolkos, which had been used by the contem- poraries of Thucydides, and has even now not entirely disappeared. By this brilliant device he took the enemy by surprise in the Gulf of Corinth, and destroyed their vessels. But new fleets arose as if by magic, and Basil was obhged to strengthen the garrisons of the Peloponnese. His successor, aroused to action by their daring attacks upon Demetrias and Salonika, both flourishing cities which they devastated and plundered, equipped a naval expedition, to which the Greek Themes contributed ships and men, with the object of recapturing Crete. But neither that nor the subsequent armada despatched by the Imperial author, Constantine Porphjnrogenitus, was destined to succeed. At last, in 961, the redoubtable commander, Nikephoros Phokas, restored Crete to the Byzantine Empire. But even at that early period, Candia began to establish the reputation which it so nobly increased during the Turkish siege seven centuries later. Its strong fortifications for seven long months resisted the Byzantine general; but he patiently waited for a favourable moment, and at last took the place by storm. The most drastic measures were adopted for the complete reduction of the island. The broad brick walls of Candia were pulled down; a new fortress called Temenos was erected on the height of Rhoka some BYZANTINE GREECE 45 miles inland, to overawe the inhabitants. Some of the Saracens emigrated, others sank into a state of serfdom. As usual the missionary followed the Byzantine arms, and the island attracted many Greek and Armenian Christians; the name of the latter still lingers in the Cretan village of Armeni ; among the former were some distinguished Byzantine families, whose descendants furnished leaders to the insur- rections later on. In the conversion of the Cretan apostates back to Christianity, an Armenian monk called Nikon, and nicknamed "Repent Ye" from the frequency of that phrase in his sermons, found a fine field for his labours. The Christian churches, for which Crete had once been famous, rose again, and the reconquest of the island gave to Nikephoros Phokas the Imperial diadem, to the deacon Theodosios the subject for a long iambic poem, and to Nikon the more lasting dignity of a saint. But, in spite of his efforts, not a few Arabs retained their religion, and the Cretan Mussulmans of Amari are still reckoned as their descendants. The tenth century witnessed not only the recovery of Crete for the Byzantine Empire and for the Christian faith, but also the spread of monasteries over Greece. When Nikon had concluded his Cretan mission he visited Athens, where he is said by his biographer to have enchanted the people with his sennons, penetrated as far as Thebes, and then returned to Sparta, where he founded a convent and established his headquarters. Thence he set out on missionary journeys among the Slavonic tribes of the Mehngs and Ezerits, who had again risen against the Imperial authority and had again been reduced to the payment of a tribute. Those wild clans continued, however, to harry the sur- rounding country, and the monastery of St Nikon was only protected from their attacks by the awe which the holy man's memory inspired. Long after his death he was adored as the guardian of Sparta, where his memory is stUl green, and the Peloponnesian mariner, caught in a storm off Cape Matapan, would pray to him, as his ancestors had prayed to Castor and PoUux. For Central Greece the career of the blessed Luke the younger was as important as that of St Nikon for the South. The parents of this remarkable man had fled from . repeated in Achaia what the Catalans, seventy years earlier, had achieved in Attica and Bceotia. Conquering nominally in the name of Jacques de Baux, a scion of the house of Taranto, but really for their own hands, the soldiers of Navarre rapidly occupied one place after another. Androusa, in Messenia, at that time the capital of the Frankish principality, fell before them; and at "sandy Pylos," the home of Nestor, then called Zonklon, they made such a mark that the spot was believed by Hopf to have derived its name of Navarino from the castle which they held there. In 1386 their captain, Pedro Bordo de San Superan, styled himself Vicar of the principality, a title which developed into that of prince. Meanwhile another Western Power, and that the most cunning and persistent, had taken advantage of these troublous times to gain M. 7 98 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE a footing in the Peloponnese. Venice, true to her cautious commercial policy, had long been content with the two Messenian stations of Modon and Koron, and had even refused a tempting offer of some desperate barons to hand over to her the whole of Achaia. During the almost constant disturbances which had distracted the rest of the peninsula since the death of Guillaume de ViUehardouin, the two Venetian ports had enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity. The high tariffs which the Frankish princes had erected round their own havens had driven trade to these Venetian harbours, so conveniently situated for trade with the great Venetian island of Crete as well. The documents which Sathas has published from the Venetian archives are fuU of allusions to these two now almost forgotten places. But at last, towards the end of the fourteenth century, Venice resolved on expansion. She accordingly bought Argos and Naupha, the old fiefs which the first French Lord of Athens had received from the first of the ViUehardouins, and which lingered on in the hands of the representatives of the fallen Athenian duke. A Uttle later Lepanto, the old Naupaktos, gave the Venetians a post on the Corinthian Gulf. As the Byzantine Empire dwindled before the incursions of the Turks, the Greek province of Mistra assumed more importance in the eyes of the statesmen at Constantinople. In 1415 the Emperor Manuel II, with an energy which modem sovereigns of Greece would do well to imitate, resolved to see for himself how matters stood, and arrived in the Morea. He at once set to work to re-erect the six-mile rampart, or "Hexamihon," across the Isthmus, which had been fortified by Xerxes, Valerian, Justinian, and, in recent times, by the last Despot of Mistra, Theodore I Palaiologos. Manuel's wall followed the course of Justinian's; and, in the incredibly short space of twenty-five days, forced labourers, working under the imperial eye, had erected a rampart strengthened by no less than 153 towers. But the Emperor saw that it was necessary to reform the Morea from within as well as to fortify it without. We have from the pen of a Byzantine satirist, Mazaris, who has written a Dialogue of the Dead in the manner of Lucian, a curious, if somewhat highly-coloured account of the Moreotes as they were, or at any rate seemed to him to be, at this time'. In the Peloponnese, he tells us, are " Lacedeemonians, Italians, Peloponnesians (Greeks), Slavonians, Illyrians (Albanians), Egyptians (gypsies), and Jews, and among them are not a few half- castes." He says that the Lakonians, who "are now called Tzakones," have "become barbarians" in their language, of which he gives some ^ Mazaiis apud Boissonade, Anecdota Graca, in. 164-78. THE PRINCES OF THE PELOPONNESE 99 specimens. He goes on to make the shrewd remark, true to-day of all Eastern countries where the Oriental assumes a veneer of Western civilisation, that "each race takes the worst features of the others," the Greeks assimilating the turbulence of the Franks, and the Franks the cunning of the Greeks. So insecure was Ufe and property that arms were worn night and day — a practice obsolete in the time of Thucydides. Of the Moreote archontes he has nothing good to say; they are "men who ever deUght in battles and disturbances, who are for ever breathing murder, who are full of deceit and craft, barbarous and pig-headed, unstable and perjured, faithless to both Emperor and Despots." Yet a Venetian report — and the Venetians were keen observers — sent to the government a few years later, depicts the Morea as a valuable asset. It contained, writes the Venetian commissioner, 150 strong castles; the soil is rich in minerals; and it produces silk, honey, wax, com, raisins, and poultry. Even in the midst of alarms an eminent philosopher — to the surprise of the elegant Byzantines, it is true — ^had fixed his seat at Mistra. George Gemistos Plethon beUeved that he had found in Plato a cure for the evils of the Morea. Centuries before the late Mr Henry George, he advocated a single tax. An advanced fiscal reformer, he suggested a high tariff for all articles which could be produced at home; a paper strategist, he had a scheme which he submitted, together with his other proposals, to the Emperor, for creating a standing army; an anti- clerical, he urged that the monks should work for their Uving, or discharge pubhc functions without pay. The philosopher, in tendering this advice to the Emperor, modestly offered his own services for the purpose of carrjdng it out. Manuel II was a practical statesman, who knew that he was Uving, as Cicero would have said, "non in Platonis repubUca, sed in feece Lycurgi." The offer was rejected. At last the long threatened Turkish peril, temporarily delayed by the career of Timour and the great Turkish defeat at Angora, was at hand. The famous Ottoman commander, Evrenos Beg, had already twice entered the peninsula, once as the ally of the Navarrese prince against the Greek Despot, once as the foe of both. In 1423 a still greater captain, Turakhan, easily scaled the HexamUion, leaving behind him at Gardiki, as a memorial of his invasion, a pyramid of eight hundred Albanian skulls. But, by the irony of history, just before Greeks and Franks alike succumbed to the aU-conquering Turks, the dream of the Byzantine court was at last realised, and the Frank principality ceased to exist. The Greek portion of the Morea was at this time in the hands of 7—2 100 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE the three brothers of the Emperor John VI Palaiologos — Theodore II, Thomas, and Constantine — the third of whom was destined to die on the walls of Constantinople as last Emperor of the East. Politic marriages and force of arms soon extinguished the phantom of Frankish rule; and the Genoese baron, Centurione Zaccaria, nephew of Bordo de San Superan, who had succeeded his uncle as last Prince of Achaia, was glad to purchase peace by giving his daughter's hand to Thomas Palaiologos with the remaining fragments of the once famous principahty, except the family barony and the princely title, as her dowry. Thus, when Centurione died in 1432, save for the six Venetian stations, the whole peninsula was once more Greek. Unhappily, the union between the three brothers ended with the disappearance of the common enemy. Both Theodore and Constantine were ambitious of the imperial diadem; and, while the former was pressing his claims at Constantinople, the latter was besieging Mistra, having first sent the historian Phrantzes, his confidential agent in these dubious transactions, to obtain the Sultan's consent. Assisted by his brother Thomas and a force of Frank mercenaries, Constantine was only induced to keep the peace by the intervention of the Emperor; till, in 1443, Theodore removed this source of jealousy by carr3dng out his long-cherished scheme of retiring from public hfe. He accordingly handed over the government of Mistra to Constantine and received in exchange the city of Seljonbria on the Sea of Marmora, where he afterwards died of the plague. The Morea was now partitioned between Constantine, who took possession of the eastern portion, embracing Lakonia, Argohs, Corinth, and the southern shore of the Corinthian Gidf as far as Patras, and Thomas, who governed the western part. With all his faults Constantine was a man of far greater energy and patriotism than the rest of his family, and he lost no time in developing a national pohcy. His first act was to restore the Hexamihon; his next, to attempt the recovery of the Athenian duchy from the AcciajuoU family for the Greek cause, which he personified. Nine years earher, on the death of Duke Antonio, he had sent Phrantzes to negotiate for the cession of Athens and Thebes. Foiled on that occasion, he now invaded the duchy and forced the weak Duke Nerio II to do homage and pay tribute to him . The Albanians and Koutso-Wallachs of Thessaly rose in his favour; the Serbs promised to aid him in defending the Isthmus against the Turks; it seemed for the moment as if there were at last some hope of a Christian revival in the Near East. But the battle of Varna soon put an end to these dreams. Murad II, accompanied by the Duke of Athens, set out in 1446, at the head of a large army, for the Isthmus. The two Despots THE PRINCES OF THE PELOPONNESE loi had assembled a considerable force behind the ramparts of the Hexa- milion, which seemed so imposing to the Sultan that he remonstrated with his old military counsellor, Turakhan, for having advised him to attack such apparently impregnable lines so late in the season. But the veteran, who knew his Greeks and had taken the Hexamihon twenty-three years before, rephed that its defenders would not long resist a determined attack. A Greek of&cer, who had been sent by Constantine to reconnoitre the Turkish position, came back so terrified at the strength of the enemy that he urged his master to retreat at once to the mountains of the Morea. The Despot ordered his arrest as a disciphnary measure, but he was so greatly struck by what he had heard that he sent the Athenian Chalkokondyles, father of the historian, to offer terms of peace to the Sultan. Murad scornfully rejected the proposals, arrested the envoy, and demanded, as the price of his friendship, the destruction of the Hexamilion and the payment of tribute. This was too much for the high-spirited Despot, and the confhct began. For three whole days the excellent Turkish artillery played upon the walls of the rampart. Then a general assault was ordered, and, after a brave defence by the two Despots, a young Serbian janissary cUmbed to the top of the wall and planted the Turkish flag there in full view of the rival hosts. The towers on either side of him were soon taken by his comrades, the gates were forced in, and the Turks streamed through them into the peninsula. The Greeks fled; the two Despots among them; Akrocorinth surrendered, and a band of 300, who had thought of "making a new Thermopylee" at Kenchreae, were soon forced to lay down their arms. Together with 600 other captives, they were beheaded by the Sultan's orders. Then the Turkish army was divided into two sections; one^ under old Turakhan, penetrated into the interior; the other, commanded by the Sultan in person, followed the coast of the Corinthian Gulf, burning the mediseval town which had arisen on the ruins of Sikyon. Aigion shared the same fate; but most of the in- habitants of Patras had escaped over the Gulf before Murad arrived there. The old Prankish citadel defied all the efforts of the besiegers, for the besieged knew that they had nothing to hope from surrender. A breach was made in the walls, but the defenders poured boiling resin on to the heads of the janissaries and worked at the rampart tUl the breach was made good. The season was by this time very far advanced, so the Sultan and his lieutenant withdrew to Thebes, dragging with them 60,000 captives, who were sold as slaves. The Despots were glad to obtain peace and a quaUfied independence by 102 FRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE paying a capitation tax, and by sending their envoys to do homage to the Sultan in his headquarters at Thebes. The Greeks ascribed their misfortunes to their Albanian and Prankish mercenaries, the former of whom had begun to feel their power, while the latter had espoused the cause of Centurione's illegitimate son at the moment when the Despots were engaged in the defence of the country. On the death of the Emperor in 1448 the Despot Constantine suc- ceeded to the imperial title; and it is a picturesque fact that the last Emperor of Constantinople was crowned at Mistra, where his wife still hes buried, near that ancient Sparta which had given so many heroes to HeUas. His previous government was bestowed on his youngest brother Demetrios, with the exception of Patras, which was added to the province of Thomas. The new partition took place in Constantinople, where the two brothers solemnly swore before God and their aged mother to love one another and to rule the Morea in perfect unanimity. But no sooner had they arrived at their respective capitals of Mistra and Patras than they proceeded to break their oaths. Thomas, the more enterprising of the two, attacked his brother; Demetrios, destitute of patriotism, called in the aid of the Turks, who readily appeared under the leadership of Turakhan, made Thomas disgorge most of what he had seized, and on the way destroyed what remained of the HexamiUon. The object of this was soon obvious. As soon as the new Sultan, Mohammed II, was ready to attack Constantinople, he ordered Turakhan to keep the two Palaiologoi busy in the Morea, so that they might not send assistance to their brother the Emperor. The old Pasha once again marched into the peninsula; but he found greater resistance than he had expected on the Isthmus. He and his two sons, Achmet and Omar, then spread their forces over the country, plundering and burning as they went, till the certainty of Constantinople's fall rendered their presence in the Morea no longer necessary. But as Achmet was retiring through the Pass of Dervenaki, that death-trap of armies, between Argos and Corinth, the Greeks fell upon him, routed his men and took him prisoner. Demetrios, either from gratitude for Turakhan's recent services to him, or from fear of the old warrior's revenge, released his captive without ransom. It was the last ray of light before the darkness of four centuries descended upon Greece. The news that Constantinople had fallen and that the Emperor had been slain came hke a thunderbolt upon his wretched brothers, who naturally expected that they would be the next victims. But Mohammed was not in a hurry; he knew that he could annihilate them when he THE PRINCES OF THE PELOPONNESE 103 chose; meanwhile he was content to accept an annual tribute of 12,000 ducats. The folly of the greedy Byzantine officials, who held the chief posts at the petty courts of Patras and Mistra, had prepared, however, a new danger for the Despots. The Albanian colonists had multiplied while the Greek population had diminished; and the recent Turkish devastations had increased the extent of waste land where they could pasture their sheep. Fired by the great exploits of their countryman, Skanderbeg, in Albania, they were seized by one of those rare yearnings for independence which meet us only occasionally in Albanian history. The official mind seized this untoward moment to demand a higher tax from the Albanian lands. The reply of the shepherds was a general insurrection in which 30,000 Albanians followed the lead of their chieftain, Peter Bona, " the lame." Their object was to expel the Greeks from the peninsula; but this, of course, did not prevent other Greeks, dissatisfied, for reasons of their own, with the rule of the Despots, from throwing in their lot with the Albanians. A Cantacuzene gained the support of the insurgents for his claims on Mistra by taking an Albanian name; the bastard son of Centurione emerged from prison and was proclaimed as Prince of Achaia. Both Mistra and Patras were besieged; and it soon became clear that nothing but Turkish interven- tion cordd save the Morea from becoming an Albanian principality. Accordingly, the aid of the invincible Turakhan was again solicited; and, as Mohammed beUeved in the policy — long followed in Macedonia by his successors — of keeping the Christian races as evenly balanced as possible, the Turkish general was sent to suppress the revolt without utterly destroying the revolted. Turakhan carried out his instructions with consummate skill. He soon put down the insurgents, but allowed them to retain their stolen cattle and the waste lands which they had occupied, on payment of a fixed rent. He then turned to the two Despots and gave them the excellent advice to live as brothers, to be lenient to their subjects, and to be vigilant in the prevention of dis- turbances. Needless to say, his advice was not taken. The power of the Palaiologoi was at an end; and the Greek archontes and Albanian chiefs did not hesitate to put themselves in direct com- munication with the Sultan when they wanted the confirmation of their privileges. But the Despots might, perhaps, have preserved the forms of authority for the rest of their Uves had it not been for the rashness of Thomas, who seemed to be incapable of learning by experience that he only existed on sufferance. In 1457, emboldened by the suc- cesses of Skanderbeg, he refused to pay his tribute. Mohammed II was not the man to submit to an insult of that sort from a petty 104 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE prince whom he could crush whenever he chose. In the spring of the following year the great Sultan appeared at the Isthmus; but this time the noble fortress of Akrocorinth held out against him. Leaving a force behind him to blockade it, he advanced into the interior of the peninsula, accompanied by the self-styled Albanian leader in the late revolt, Cantacuzene, whose influence he found useful in treating with the Arnauts. The Greeks, whom he took, were despatched as colonists to Constantinople; the Albanians, who had broken their parole, were punished by the breaking of their wrists and ankles — a horrible scene long commemorated by the Turkish name of "Tokmak Hissari," or "the castle of the ankles." Mouchli, at that time one of the chief towns in the Morea, near the classic ruins of Mantinea, offered considerable resistance; but lack of water forced the defenders to yield, and then the Sultan returned to Corinth. His powerful cannon soon wrecked the bakehouse and the magazines of the citadel; provisions fell short; and the fact was betrayed by the archbishop to the besiegers. At last the place surrendered, and its gallant commander was deputed by Mohammed to bear his terms of peace to Thomas. The latter was ordered to cede the country as far south as Mouchh, and as far west as Patras; this district was then united with the PashaUk of Thessaly, the governor of the whole province being Turakhan's son Omar, who remained with 10,000 soldiers in the Morea. The other Despot, Demetrios, was com- manded to send his daughter to the Sultan's harem. Thomas at once complied with his conqueror's demands; but his ambition soon revived when Mohammed had gone. Fresh victories of Skanderbeg suggested to him the flattering idea that a Palaiologos could do more than a mere Albanian. Divisions among the Turkish officers in his old dominions increased his confidence — a quality in which Greeks are not usually lacking. Early in 1459 he raised the standard of revolt; but, at the same time, committed the folly of attacking his brother's possessions. Phrantzes, who, after having been sold as a slave when Constantinople fell, had obtained his freedom and had entered the service of Thomas, has stigmatised in forcible language the wickedness of those evil counsellors who had advised his master to embark on a civil war and to " eat his oaths as if they were vegetables." Most of Thomas' successes were at the expense of his brother, for, of all the places lately annexed by the Turks, Kalavryta alone was recovered. But the Albanians did far more harm to the country than either the Greeks or the Turkish garrison by plundering both sides with absolute impartiality and deserting from Thomas to Demetrios, or from Demetrios to Thomas, on the shghtest provocation. Meanwhile THE PRINCES OF THE PELOPONNESE 105 the Turks attacked Thomas at Leondari, at the invitation of his brother; and the defeat which he sustained induced the miserable Despot to go through the form of reconciliation with Demetrios, under the auspices of Holy Church. This display of brotherly love had the usual sequel — a new fratricidal war; but Mohammed II had now made up his mind to put an en'd to the Palaiologoi, and marched straight to Mistra. Demetrios soon surrendered, and humbly appeared in the presence of his master. The Sultan insisted upon the prompt per- formance of his former command, that the Despot's daughter should enter the seragUo, and told him that Mistra could no longer be his. He therefore ordered him to bid his subjects surrender all their cities and fortresses — an order which was at once executed, except at Menem vasia. That splendid citadel, which had so long defied the Franks at the zenith of their power, and boasted of the special pro- tection of Providence, now scorned to surrender to the infidel. The daughter of Demetrios, who had been sent thither for safety, was, indeed, handed over to the Turkish envoys, and Demetrios himself was conducted to Constantinople; but the Monemvasiotes proclaimed Thomas as their Uege lord, and he shortly afterwards presented Monemvasia to the Pope, who appointed a governor. Having thus wiped the province of Demetrios from the map, Mohammed turned his arms against Thomas. Wherever a city resisted, its defenders were punished without mercy and in violation of the most solemn pledges. The Albanian chiefs who had defied the Sultan at Kastritza were sawn asunder; the Albanian captain of Kalavryta was flayed alive; Gardiki was once more the scene of a terrible massacre, ten times worse than that which had disgraced Turakhan thirty-seven years before. These acts of cruelty excited very different feeUngs in the population. Some, especially the Albanians, were inspired to fight with the courage of despair; others preferred slavery to an heroic death. From the neighbourhood of Navarino alone 10,000 persons were dragged away to colonise Constantinople; and a third of the Greeks of Greveno, which had dared to resist, were carried off as slaves. The castles of Glarentza and Santameri were surrendered by the descendants of Guillaume de ViUehardouin's Turks, who experienced, Uke the Albanians, the faithless conduct of their conquerors. Meanwhile Thomas had fled to Navarino, and, on the day when the Sultan reached that place, set sail with his wife and family from a neighbouring harbour for Corfii. There the faithful Phrantzes joined him and wrote his history of these events — the swan-song of free Greece. Another Palaiologos, however, Graitzas by name, showed a heroism io6 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE of which the Despot was incapable. This man, the last defender of his country, held out in the castle of Sahnenikon between Patras and Aigion till the following year, and, when the town was taken, stiU defied all the efforts of the Turks, who allowed him to withdraw, with all the honours of war, into Venetian territory at Lepanto. In the autumn of 1460 Mohammed left the Morea, after having appointed Zagan Pasha as mihtary governor, with orders to instal the new Turkish authorities and to make arrangements for the collection of the capitation tax and of the tribute of children. Thus the Morea fell under Turkish rule, which thenceforward continued for an almost unbroken period of three hundred and fifty years. Save at Monemvasia, where the papal flag still waved, and at Naupha, Argos, Thermisi, Koron, Modon, and Navarino, where Venice still retained her colonies, there was none to dispute the Sultan's sway. The fate of the Palaiologoi deserves a brief notice. Demetrios Uved ten years at jEnos in Thrace in the enjoyment of the pension which Mohammed allowed him, and died a monk at Adrianople in 1470. His daughter, whom the Sultan never married after aU, had predeceased him. Thomas proceeded to Rome with the head of St Andrew from Patras as a present for the Pope, who received the precious rehc with much ceremony at the spot near the Ponte MoUe, where the little chapel of St Andrew now commemorates the event, and assigned to its bearer a pension of 300 ducats a month, to which the cardinals added 200 more, and Venice a smaller sum. He died at Rome in 1465, leaving two sons and two daughters. One of the latter died in a convent on the island of Santa Maura; the other married, first a Caracciolo of Naples and then the Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia, by whom she had a daughter, afterwards the wife of Alexander JageUon of Poland. With this daughter the female line became extinct. Of Thomas' two sons, the elder, Andrew, married a woman off the streets of Rome, ceded all his rights, first to Charies VIII of France, and then to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and died in 1502 without issue. The younger son, Manuel, escaped from papal tutelage to the court of Mohammed II, who gave him an estabUshment and allowed him a daily sum for its maintenance. He died a Christian; but of his two sons (the elder of whom died young), the younger became a Mussulman, took the name of Mohammed, and is last heard of in the reign of Sulei- man the Magnificent. Though the family would thus appear to have long been extmct, a Cornish antiquary announced in 1815 that the church of Landulph contained a monument to one of Thomas' des- cendants. A few years ago a lady residing in London considered herself THE PRINCES OF THE PELOPONNESE 107 to be the heiress of the Palaiologoi and aspired to play a part in the Eastern question^. But neither of these claims is genealogically sound ; for there is no historical proof of the existence of the supposed third son of Thomas, mentioned in the Landulph inscription. But, after all, the world has not lost much by the extinction of this race, nor would the future of Constantinople or Greece be affected by its revival. APPENDIX THE NAME OF NAVARINO Ever since Hopf published his history of mediaeval Greece writers on that subject have followed his opinion that the name of Navarino was derived from the Navarrese Company, which entered the Morea in 1381 to support the claims of Jacques de Baux, titular emperor of Constantinople and prince of Achaia, and which estabUshed its head- quarters at the classic Pylos. Hopf adduces no evidence in support of this derivation, which he thrice repeats^, except that of the French traveller De Camnont, who saw at Pylos in 1418 ung chasteau hault sur une montaigne que se nomme chasteau Navarres^. But his opinion, mainly formed in order to controvert the anti-HeUenic theory of Fallmerayer, has been followed, also without proof, by Hertzberg*, Tozer^, and more tentatively by Paparregopoulos®. The name of Navarino, however, seems to have existed long before the Navarrese ^ Finlay, iv. 267; Ersch und Gruber, Lxxxvr. 131-33; Rev. F. Vjrvyan Jago in the Archceologia, xviii. 83 sqq. I am indebted to the courtesy of the Rev. S. Gregory, the present rector of Landulph, for the following copy of the brass plate there: Here lyeth the body of Theodoro Paleologus of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperyall lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece, being the Sonne of Camilio ye Sonne of Prosper the Sonne of Theodoro the Sonne of John ye Sonne of Thomas, second brother to Constantine Paleologus the 8th of that name, and last of 3rt lyne yt raygned in Constantinople until sub- dewed by the Turkes ; who married with Mary ye daughter of WiUiam Balls of Hadlye in Souffolke gent, and had issue 5 children: Theo- doro, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy & de- parted this lyfe at Clyfton ye 21st January, 1636. 2 GescMchte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelcdters, in Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie, lxxxv. 212, 321, lxxxvi. 24. ' Voyaige d'Oultremer, p. 89. * GescMchte Griechenlands, 1. 138. ^ Finlay, i. 338, note. ' 'lAAAAA OAE TEAOZ HAInN TOY- Z ANAKENEZANTAS TON HKON TOYTON. + ETI. rCOIG. -I- ^ Lettere di Collegia (ed. Giomo), p. 66. " Hopf, Chroniques gr6co-romanes, 178. » Idem, apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopadie. Lxxxv ^21 160 Cf. /. H. S. xxviii. 238. ye, O.J PLATE I Fig. The Church of St Gec'ROe at Karditza, lookixg ToWARri' END, WHICH IS IKHJERX Fig. 2. The Church of St C'.ECiROE ai ICarditza, showixi; old BELFRV AXD BUTTRESSES SUI'PORTIXC. OLD PART OF THE BUILDIXG FLORENTINE ATHENS 135 5. FLORENTINE ATHENS The history of mediaeval Athens is full of surprises. A Burgundian nobleman founding a dynasty in the ancient home of heroes and philosophers; a roving band of mercenaries from the westernmost peninsula of Europe destroying in a single day the brilliant French civilisation of a century; a Florentine upstart, armed with the modern weapons of finance, receiving the keys of the Akropolis from a gallant and chivalrous soldier of Spain — such are the tableaux which inaugurate the three epochs of her Frankish annals. In an earlier paper in the Quarterly Review (January 1907) we dealt with the French and the Catalan periods; we now propose to trace the third and last phase of Latin rule over the most famous of Greek cities. When, in the spring of 1388, Nerio Acciajuoli found himself master of "the Castle of Setines," as the Franks caUed the Akropolis, his first care was to conciliate the Greeks, who formed by far the largest part of his subjects, and who may have aided him to conquer the Athenian duchy. For the first time since the day, nearly two centuries before, when Akominatos had fled from his beloved cathedral to exile at Keos, a Greek Metropolitan of Athens was allowed to reside in his see, not, indeed, on the sacred rock itself, but beneath the shadow of the Areo- pagos. We may be sure that this remarkable concession was prompted, not by sentiment, but by policy, though the policy was perhaps mis- taken. The Greek hierarchy has in aU ages been distinguished for its poUtical character; and the presence of a high Greek ecclesiastic at Athens at once provided his fellow-countrymen with a national leader against the rulers, whom they distrusted as foreigners and he hated as schismatics. He was ready to call in the aid of the Turks against his fellow-Christians, just as in modern Macedonia a Greek bishop abhorred the followers of the Bulgarian Exarch far more than those of the Prophet. Thus early in Florentine Athens were sown the seeds of the Turkish domination; thus, in the words of the Holy Synod, "the Athenian Church seemed to have recovered its ancient happiness such as it had enjoyed before the barbarian conquest^." Nor was it the Church alone which profited by the change of dynasty. Greek for the first time became the official language of the Government ; Nerio and his accomplished daughter, the Countess of Cephalonia, used it in their public documents; the Countess, the most masterful woman of the Latin Orient, proudly signed herself, in the cinnabar ink of * Miklosich und Mviller, Acta et Diplomata Grcsca Medii Mvi, ii. i66. 136 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Byzantium, "Empress of the Romans"; even Florentines settled at Athens assumed the Greek translation of their surnames. Thus, a branch of the famous Medici family was transplanted to Athens, became completely HeUenised under the name of latros, and has left behind it a progeny which scarcely conceals, beneath that of latropoulos, its connection with the mediaeval rulers of Florence. There is even evidence that the "elders" of the Greek community were allowed a share in the municipal government of Florentine, no less than in that of Turkish, Athens. Hitherto the career of Nerio AcciajuoU had been one of unbroken success. His star had guided him from Florence to Akrocorinth, and from Akrocorinth to the Akropohs; his two daughters, one famed as the most beautiful, the other as the most talented woman of her time, were married to the chief Greek and to the leading Latin potentate of Greece — to Theodore Palaiologos, Despot of Mistra, and to Carlo Tocco, the Neapolitan noble who ruled over the County Palatine of Cephalonia. These alliances seemed to guard him against every foe. He was now destined, however, to experience one of those sudden turns of fortune which were peculiarly characteristic of Prankish Greece. He was desirous of rounding off his dominions by the acquisition of the castles of Naupha and Argos, which had been appendages of the French Duchy of Athens, but which, during the Catalan period, had remained loyal to the family of Brienne and to its heirs, the house of Enghien. In 1388, Marie d'Enghien, the Lady of Argos, left a young and helpless widow, had transferred her Argive estates to Venice, which thus began its long domination over the ancient kingdom of Agamemnon. But, before the Venetian commissioner had had time to take possession, Nerio had instigated his son-in-law, the Despot of Mistra, to seize Argos by a coup de main. For this act of treachery he paid dearly. It was not merely that the indignant Repubhc broke off all commercial relations between her colonies and Athens, but she also availed herself of the Navarrese Company, which was now estabhshed in the Morea, as the fitting instrument of her revenge. The Navarrese commander accordingly invited Nerio to a personal conference on the question of Argos; and the shrewd Florentine, with a childhke simplicity remarkable in one who had Uved so many years in the Levant, accepted the invitation, and deliberately placed himself in the power of his enemies. The opportunity was too good to be lost ; the law of nations was mere waste-paper to the men of Navarre; Nerio was arrested and imprisoned in a Peloponnesian prison. At once the whole AcciajuoU clan set to work to obtain the release of their distinguished relative; the Archbishop of Florence FLORENTINE ATHENS 137 implored the intervention of the Pope; the Florentine Government offered the most Uberal terms to Venice; a message was despatched to Amedeo of Savoy; most efficacious of all, the aid of Genoa was invoked on behalf of one whose daughter was a Genoese citizen. Nerio was released; but his ransom was disastrous to Athens. In order to raise the requisite amount, he stripped the silver plates off the doors of the Parthenon and seized the gold, silver and precious stones which the piety of many generations had given to that venerable cathedral. Nerio was once more free, but he was not long allowed to remain undisturbed in his palace on the Akropolis. The Sicilian royal family now revived its claims to the Athenian duchy, and-even nominated a phantom vicar-general^; and, what was far more serious, the Turks, under the redoubtable Evrenos Beg, descended upon Attica. The over- throw of the Serbian Empire on the fatal field of Kossovo had now removed the last barrier between Greece and her future masters; and Bayezid, "the Thunderbolt," fell upon that unprotected land. The blow struck Nerio's neighbour, the Dowager Countess of Salona, the proud dame who had so scornfully rejected his suit nine years before. Ecclesiastical treachery and corruption sealed the fate of that ancient fief of the Stromoncourts, the Deslaurs, and the Fadriques, amid tragic surroundings, which a modern Greek drama has endeavoured to depict^. The Dowager Countess had allowed her paramour, a priest, to govern in her name; and this petty tyrant had abused his power to wring money from the shepherds of Pamassos and to debauch the damsels of Delphi by his demoniacal incantations in the classic home of the supernatural. At last he cast his eyes on the fair daughter and full money-bags of the Greek bishop ; deprived of his child and fearing for his gold, the bishop roused his flock against the monster and begged the Sultan to occupy a land so well adapted for his Majesty's favourite pastimes of hunting and riding as is the plain at the foot of Pamassos. The Turks accepted the invitation ; the priest shut himself up in the noble castle, slew the bishop's daughter, and prepared to fight. But there was treachery among the garrison; a man of Salona murdered the tyrant and offered his head to the Sultan; and the Dowager Countess and her daughter in vain endeavoured to appease the conqueror with gifts. Bayezid sent the young Countess to his harem; her mother he handed over to the insults of his soldiery, her land he assigned to one of his heutenants. Her memory still cUngs to the "pomegranate" cliff (poid) at Salona, whence, ' Lampros, 'Ey-ypa^a (Documents), pp. 305, 324-27. ' Lampros, '0 TeXevratos /ciyuTjs tuv Xa\iivav {The Last Count of Salona). 138 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE according to the local legend, repeated to the author on the spot, " the princess " was thrown. Nerio feared for his own dominions, whence the Greek MetropoUtan had fled — so it was alleged — to the Turkish camp, and had promised the infidels the treasures of the Athenian Church in return for their aid. For the moment, however, the offer of tribute saved the Athenian duchy; but its ruler hastened to implore the aid of the Pope and of King Ladislaus of Naples against the enemies of Christendom, and at the same time sought formal recognition of his usurpation from that monarch, at whose predecessors' court the fortunes of his family had originated, and who still pretended to be the suzerain of Achaia, and therefore of its theoretical dependency, Athens. Ladislaus, nothing loth, in 1394 rewarded the self-seeking Florentine for having recovered the Duchy of Athens "from certain of His Majesty's rivals," with the title of duke, with remainder — as Nerio had no legitimate sons — to his brother Donato^ and the latter's heirs. Cardinal Angelo Acciajuoli, another brother, was to invest the new duke with a golden ring; and it was expressly pro- vided that Athens should cease to be a vassal state of Achaia, but should thenceforth own no overlord save the King of Naples. The news that one of their clan had obtained the glorious title of Duke of Athens filled the Acciajuoli with pride — such was the fascination which the name of that city exercised in Italy. Boccaccio, half a century before, had familiarised his countrymen with a title which Walter of Brienne, the tyrant of Florence, had borne as of right, and which, as applied to Nerio Accia- juoli, was no empty flourish of the herald's college. The first Florentine Duke of Athens did not, however, long survive the realisation of his ambition. On September 25 of the same year he died, laden with honours, the tjT^e of a successful statesman. But, as he lay on his sick-bed at Corinth, the dying man seems to have perceived that he had founded his fortunes on the sand. Pope and King might give him honours and promises; they could not render effective aid against the Turks. It was under the shadow of this coming danger that Nerio drew up his remarkable wiU. His first care was for the Parthenon, Our Lady of Athens, in which he directed that his body should be laid to rest. He ordered its doors to be replated with silver, its stolen treasures to be bought up and restored to it; he provided that, besides the twelve canons of the cathedral, there should be twenty priests to say masses for the repose of his soul; and he bequeathed to the Athenian minster, for their support and for the maintenanceof itsnoble fabric, the city of Athens, with its dependencies, and all the brood-mares of his valuable stud. Seldom has a church FLORENTINE ATHENS 139 received such a remarkable endowment ; the Cathedral of Monaco, built out of the earnings of a gaming-table, is perhaps the closest parallel to the Parthenon maintained by the profits of a stud-farm. Nerio made his favourite daughter, the Countess of Cephalonia, his principal heiress; to her he bequeathed his castles of Megara, Sikyon, and Corinth, while to his natural son, Antonio, he left the government of Thebes, Livadia, and aU beyond it. To the bastard's mother, Maria Rendi, daughter of the ever-serviceable Greek notary who had been so prominent in the last years of the Catalan domination, and had retained his position under the new dynasty, her lover granted the full franchise, with the right to retain aU her property, including, perhaps, the spot between Athens and the Piraeus which still preserves the name of her family. Finally, he recommended his land to the care of the Venetian Repubhc, which he begged to protect his heiress and to carry out his dispositions for the benefit of Our Lady of Athens. Donato Acciajuoli made no claim to succeed his brother in the Duchy of Athens. He was Gonfaloniere of Florence and Senator of Rome; and he preferred those safe and dignified positions in Italy to the glamour of a ducal coronet in Greece, in spite of the natural desire of the family that one of their name should continue to take his title from Athens^. But it was obvious that a conflict would arise between the sons-in-law of the late duke, for Nerio had practically disinherited his elder daughter in favour of her younger but abler sister. Carlo Tocco of Cephalonia at once demanded the places bequeathed to his wife, occupied Megara and Corinth, and imprisoned the terrified executors in his island tiU they had signed a document stating that he had carried out the terms of his father-in-law's will. Theodore Palaiologos, who contended that Corinth had always been intended to be his after Nerio's death, besieged it with a large force, till Tocco, calling in a still larger Turkish army, drove his brother-in-law from the Isthmus^. Meanwhile, the Greeks of Athens had followed the same fatal pohcy of invoking the common enemy as arbiter of their affairs. It was not to be expected that the Greek race, which had of late recovered its national consciousness, and which had ever remained deeply attached to its religion, would quietly acquiesce in the extraordinary arrangement by which the city of Athens was made the property of the Catholic cathedral. The professional jealousy and the odium theologicum of the two great ecclesiastics, Makarios, the Greek Metropolitan, and Ludovico da Prato, the Latin archbishop, envenomed the feehngs of the people. ^ Gregorovius, Briefe, pp. 309, 310. ^ "Nicolai de Marthono Liber," in Revue de I'Orient Latin, iii. 657. 140 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE The Greek divine summoned Timourtash, the Turkish commander, to rid Athens of the filioque clause ; and his strange ally occupied the lower town. The castle, however, was bravely defended by Matteo de Montona, one of the late duke's executors, who despatched a messenger in hot haste to the Venetian colony of Negroponte, offering to hand over Athens to the Republic if the governor would promise in her name to respect the ancient franchises and customs of the Athenians. The bailie of Negroponte agreed, subject to the approval of the home Government, and sent a force which dispersed the Turks, and, at the close of 1394, for the first time in history, hoisted the Uon-banner of the Evangelist on the ancient castle of Athens. The Repubhc decided, after mature consideration, to accept the offer of the Athenian commander. No sentimental argument, no classical memories, weighed with the sternly practical statesmen of the lagoons. The romantic King of Aragon had waxed enthusicistic over the glories of the Akropolis; and sixty years later the greatest of Turkish Sultans contemplated his conquest with admiration. But the sole reason which decided the Venetian Government to annex Athens was its proximity to the Venetian colonies, and the consequent danger which might ensue to them if it fell into Turkish or other hands. Thus Venice took over the Akropohs in 1395, not because it was a priceless monument, but because it was a strong fortress ; she saved the Athenians, not, as Caesar had done, for the sake of their ancestors, but for that of her own colonies, " the pupil of her eye." From the financial point of view, indeed, Athens could not have been a valuable asset. The Venetians confessed that they did not know what its revenues and expenses were; and, pending a detailed report from their governor, they ordered that only eight priests should serve "in the Church of St Mary of Athens"— an act of economy due to the fact that some of Nerio's famous brood-mares had been stolen and the endowment of the cathedral consequently diminished. On such accidents did the maintenance of the Parthenon depend in the Middle Ages. We are fortunately in a better position than was the Venetian Government to judge of the contemporary state of Athens. At the very time when its fate was under discussion an Italian notary spent two days in that city; and his diary is the first account which any traveller has left us, from personal observation, of its condition during the Prankish period!- " The city," he says, " which nestles at the foot of the castle hill, contains about a thousand hearths" but not a single inn, so that, like 1 The earlier fourteenth-century traveller, Ludolf von Suchem, who mentions Athens, did not actually visit it. FLORENTINE ATHENS 141 the archaeologist in some country towns of modem Greece, he had to seek the hospitaUty of the clergy. He describes "the great haU" of the castle (the Propylaia), with its thirteen columns, and tells how the churchwardens personally conducted him over " the Church of St Mary," which had sixty columns without and eighty within. On one of the latter he was shown the cross made by Dionysios the Areopagite at the moment of the earthquake which attended our Lord's passion; four others, which surrounded the high altar, were of jasper and supported a dome, while the doors came — so he was told — from Troy. The pious Capuan was then taken to see the relics of the Athenian cathedral — the figure of the Virgin painted by St Luke, the head of St Makarios, a bone of St Denys of France, an arm of St Justin, and a copy of the Gospels written by the heind of St Elena — rehcs which the wife of King Pedro IV of Aragon had in vain begged the last Catalan archbishop to send her fifteen years before^. He saw, too, in a cleft of the waU, the light which never faUs, and outside, beyond the castle ramparts, the two pillars of the choragic monument of Thrasyllos, between which there used to be "a certciin idol" in an iron-bound niche, gifted with the strange power of drowning hostile ships as soon as they appeared on the horizon — an allusion to the story of the Gorgon's head, mentioned by Pausanias, which we find in later mediaeval accounts of Athens. In the city below he noticed numbers of fallen columns and fragments of marble; he alludes to the Stadion; and he visited the "house of Hadrian," as the temple of Olympian Zeus was popularly called. He completed his round by a pilgrimage to the so- called "Study of Aristotle, whence scholars drank to obtain wisdom" — the aqueduct, whose marble beams, commemorating the completion of Hadrian's work by Antoninus Pius, were then to be seen at the foot of Lykabettos, and, after serving in Turkish times as the lintel of the Boubounistra gate, now he, half buried by vegetation, in the palace garden. But the fear of the prowhng Turks and the feud between Nerio's two sons-in-law rendered travelling in Attica difficult; the notary traversed the Sacred Way in fear of his life, and was not sorry to find himself in the castle of Corinth, though the houses in that city were few and mean, and the total population did not exceed fifty families. The Venetian Government next arranged for the future administra- tion of its new colony. The governor of Athens was styled podestd and captain, and was appointed for the usual term of two years at an annual salary of £yo, out of which he had to keep a notary, an assistant, four * AeXrioy t^s 'la-TopiK^s Kal 'EdvoSoyiKTJi 'ETOipe/as (Report of the Historical and Ethnological Society), v. 827. 142 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE servants, two grooms, and four horses. Four months elapsed before a noble Wcis found ambitious of residing in Athens on these terms, and of facing the difficult situation there. Attica was so poor that he had to ask his Government for a loan; the Turkish corsairs infested the coast; the Greek Metropolitan, though now under lock and key at Venice, still found means of communicating with his former allies. Turkish writers even boast — and a recently pubUshed document confirms their state- ment — that their army captured " the city of the sages " in 1397 ; and an Athenian dirge represented Athens mourning the enslavement of the husbandmen of her suburb of Sepolia, who will no longer be able to till the fields of Patesia. The Turkish invaders came and went ; but another and more obstinate enemy ever watched the little Venetian garrison on the Akropolis. The bastard Antonio Acciajuoli fretted within the walls of his Theban domain, and was resolved to conquer Athens, as his father had done before him. In vain did Venice, alarmed by the reports of her successive governors, raise the numbers of the garrison to fifty-six men ; in vain did she order money to be spent on the defences of the castle ; in vain did she attempt to pacify the discontented Athenians, who naturally preferred the rule of an AcciajuoU who was half a Greek to that of a Venetian noble. By the middle of 1402 Antonio was master of the lower city; it seemed that, unless reUef came at once, he would plant his banner on the AkropoUs. The Senate, at this news, ordered the bailie of Negroponte to offer a reward for the body of the bold bastard, alive or dead, to lay Thebes in ashes, and to save the castle of Athens. That obedient official set out at the head of six thousand men to execute the second of these injunctions, only to fall into an ambush which his cunning enemy had laid in the pass of Anephorites. Venice, now alarmed for the safety of her most valuable colony far more than for that of Athens, hastily sent commissioners to make peace. But Antonio cahnly continued the siege of the Akropolis, till at last, seventeen months after his first appearance before the city, when the garrison had eaten the last horse, and had been reduced to devour the plants which grew on the castle rock, its gallant defenders, Vitturi and Montona, surrendered with the honours of war. The half-caste adventurer had beaten the great Repubhc. Venice attempted to recover by diplomacy what she had lost by arms. She possessed in Pietro Zeno, the baron of Andros, a diplomatist of unrivaUed experience in the tortuous politics of the Levant. Both he and Antonio were well aware that the fate of Athens depended upon the Sultan ; and to his Court they both repaired, armed with those pecuniary arguments which have usuaUy proved convincing to Turkish ministers. FLORENTINE ATHENS 143 The diplomatic duel was lengthy; but at last the Venetian gained one of Ihose paper victories so dear to ambassadors and so worthless to practical men. The Sultan promised to see that Athens was restored to the Repubhc, but he took no steps to perform his promise; while Antonio, backed by the Acciajuoh influence in Italy, by the Pope, and the King of Naples, held his ground. Venice wisely resigned herself to the loss of a colony which it would have been expensive to recover. To save appear- ances, Antonio was induced to become her vassal for "the land, castle, and place of Athens, in modem times called Sythines^," sending every year, in token of his homage, a silk pallium from the Theban manu- factories to the church of St Mark — a condition which he was most remiss in fulfilling. The reign of Antonio Acciajuoli — ^the longest in the history of Athens save that of the recent King of the Hellenes — ^was a period of prosperity and comparative tranquiUity for that city. While aU around him principaUties and powers were shaken to their foundations; while that ancient warden of the northern March of Athens, the Marquisate of Boudonitza, was swept away for ever; while Turkish armies invaded the Morea, and annexed the Albanian capital to the Sultan's empire; while the principahty of Achaia disappeared from the map in the throes of a tardy Greek revival, the statesmanlike ruler of Athens skilfully guided the poUcy of his duchy. At times even his experienced diplomacy failed to avert the horrors of a Turkish raid; on one occasion he was forced to join, as a Turkish vassal, in an invasion of the Morea. But, as a rule, the dreaded Mussulmans spared this half-Oriental, who was a past-master in the art of managing the Sultan's ministers. From the former masters of Athens, the Catalans and the Venetians, he had nothing to fear. Once, indeed, he received news that Alfonso V of Aragon, who never forgot to sign himself "Duke of Athens and Neopatras," intended to put one of his Catalan subjects into possession of those duchies. But Venice re- assured him with a shrewd remark that the Catalans usually made much ado about nothing. On her part the RepubUc was friendly to the man who had supplanted her. She gave Antonio permission, in case of danger, to send the valuable Acciajuoli stud — for, hke his father, he was a good judge of horse-flesh — to the island of Euboea; and she ordered her bailie to "observe the ancient commercial treaties between the duchy and the island, which he would find in the chancery of Negro- ponte." But when he sought to lay the foundations of a navy, and strove to prevent the fruitful island of ^gina, then the property of the Catalan family of Caopena, from falling into the hands of Venice, he met ^ Predelli, Commemoriali, in. 309. 144 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE with a severe rebuff. To the Florentine Duke of Athens .^gina, as a Venetian colony, might well seem, as it had seemed to Aristotle, the "eyesore of the Piraeus." With his family's old home, Florence, Antonio maintained the closest relations. In 1422 a Florentine ambassador arrived in Athens with instructions to confer the freedom of the great Tuscan Common- wealth upon the Duke; to inform him that Florence, having now, by the destruction of Pisa and the purchase of Leghorn, become a maritime power, intended to embark in the Levant trade; and to ask him, there- fore, for the benefit of the most-favoured-nation clause. Antonio gladly made aU Florentine ships free of his harbours, and reduced the usual customs dues in favour of all Florentine merchants throughout his dominions. Visitors from Tuscany, when they landed at Riva d'Ostia, on the Gulf of Corinth, must, indeed, have felt themselves in the land of a friendly prince, though his Court on the AkropoUs presented a curious mixture of the Greek and the Florentine elements. Half a Greek himself, Antonio chose both his wives from that race — the first the beautiful daughter of a Greek priest, to whom he had lost his heart in the mazes of a wedding-dance at Thebes; the second an heiress of the great Messenian family of MeUssenos, whose bees and beUs are not the least picturesque escutcheon in the heraldry of mediaeval Greece. As he had no children, numbers of the Acciajuoli clan came to Athens with an eye to the ducal coronet, which had conferred such lustre upon the steel- workers and bankers of Brescia and Florence. One cousin settled down at the castle of Sykaminon, near Oropos, which had belonged to the Knights of the Hospital, and served his kinsman as an ambassador; another became bishop of Cephalonia, the island of that great lady, the Countess Francesca, whom Froissart describes as a mediaeval Penelope, whose maids of honour made silken coverings so fine that there was none like them, and whose splendid hospitaUty deUghted the French nobles on their way home from a Turkish prison after the battle of NikopoUs. Two other AcciajuoU were archbishops of Thebes; and towards the close of Antonio's long reign a second generation of the family had grown up in Greece. With such names as Acciajuoli, Medici, Pitti, and Machiavelli at the Athenian Court, Attica had, indeed, become a Florentine colony. Antonio and his Florentine relatives must have led a merry hfe in their delectable duchy. In the family correspondence we find allusions to hawking and partridge shooting; and the ducal stable provided good mounts for the young Italians who scoured the plains of Attica and Bceotia in quest of game. The cultured Florentines were dehghted with Athens and the Akropolis. "You have never seen," wrote Nicol6 FLORENTINE ATHENS 145 Machiavelli to one of his cousins, " a fairer land nor yet a fairer fortress than this." It was there, in the venerable Propylaia, that Antonio had fixed his ducal residence. No great alterations were required to convert the classic work of Mnesikles into a Fiorentine palace. All that the AcciajuoU seem to have done was to cut the two vestibules in two so as to make four rooms, to fill up the spaces between the pillars with walls — removed so recently as 1835 — and to add a second storey, the joist- sockets of which are still visible, to both that building and the Pina- kotheke, which either then, or in the Turkish times, was crowned with battlements. To the Florentine dukes is also usually ascribed the construction of the square "Prankish tower," which stood opposite the Temple of Nike Apteros till it was pulled down in 1874 by one of those acts of pedantic barbarism which considers one period of history alone worthy of study, instead of regarding every historical monument as a precious landmark in the evolution of a nation. We can well believe that the Florentine watchman from the projecting turret daily swept sea and land in all directions, save where the massive cathedral of Our Lady shut out part of Hymettos from his view; and at night the beacon-fire kindled on the summit warned Akrocorinth of the approach of Turkish horsemen or rakish-looking galleys. Nor did the Itahans hmit their activity as builders to the castle-crag alone. Chalkokondyles expressly says that Antonio's long and peaceful administration enabled him to beautify the city. There is evidence that the dukes possessed a beautiful villa at the spring of Kalirrhoe, and that close by they were wont to pray in the church of St Mary's-on-the-rock, once a temple of Triptolemos. More than two centuries later a French ambassador heard mass in this church ; and one of his companions found the Hon rampant and the three lilies of the Florentine bankers, which visitors to the famous Certosa know so well, stiU guarding — auspicium melioris cBvi — the entrance of the Turkish bazaar 1. Of literary culture there are some few traces in Florentine Athens. It was in Antonio's reign that Athens gave birth to her last historian, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, the Herodotos of mediaeval Greece, who told the story of the new Persian invasion, and to his brother Demetrios, who did so much to diffuse Greek learning in Italy. Another of Antonio's subjects is known to scholars as a copyist of manuscripts' at Siena; and it is obvious that the two Itahan Courts of Athens and Joannina were regarded as places where professional men might find openings. A young Itahan writes from Arezzo to ask if either Antonio Acciajuoli or Carlo 1 Comelio Magni, Relazione, pp. 14, 49. M. 10 146 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Tocco could give him a chair of jurispradence, logic, medicine, or natural or moral philosophy^. Unfortunately, we are not told whether the modest request of this universal genius was granted or not. Thus, for a long period, the Athenian duchy enjoyed peace and prosperity, broken only by a terrible visitation of the plague and further diminished by emigration — that scourge of modern Greece. But the modem Greeks have not the twin institutions, serfdom and slavery, on which mediaeval society rested. Even the enhghtened Countess of Cephalonia presented a young female slave to one of her cousins, with fuU power to seU or otherwise dispose of her as he pleased. Antonio did all in his power to retain the useful Albanians, who had entered his dominions in large numbers after the capture of the Despotat of Epeiros by Carlo Tocco in 1418, and thus rendered a service to Attica, the results of which are felt to this present hour. It is to the wise policy of her last Aragonese and her second Florentine duke that that Albanian colonisa- tion is due which has given "the thin soil" of Attica numbers of sturdy cultivators, who still speak Albanian as well as Greek, and still preserve in such village names as Spata, Liosia, and Liopesi, the memory of the proud Albanian chieftains of Epeiros. Greek influence, too, grew steadily under a dynasty which was now half Hellenised. The notary and chancellor of the city continued to be a Greek ; and a Greek archon was, for the first time since the Prankish conquest, to play a leading part in Athenian politics 2. When one morning in 1435, after a reign of thirty-two years, Antonio's attendants found him dead in his bed, a Greek as well as an Italian party disputed the succession. The ItaUan candidate, young Nerio, eldest son of Pranco Acciajuoh, baron of Sykaminon, whom the late Duke had adopted as his heir, occupied the city. But the Duchess Maria Melissene and her kinsman, Chalkokondyles, father of the his- torian and the leading man of Athens, held the castle. Well aware, however, that the Sultan was the real master of the situation, the Greek archon set out for the Turkish Court to obtain Murad IFs consent to this act of usurpation. The Sultan scornfully rejected the bribes of the Athenian diplomatist, threw him into prison, and sent his redoubtable captain, Toxirakhan, to occupy Thebes. Even then the Greek Duchess did not abandon all hope of securing Athens for the national cause. Through the historian Phrantzes she made an arrangement with Constantine Palaiologos, the future Emperor, then one of the Despots of * Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 11. i. 276. 2 Michael Laskaris, the Athenian patriot of the fourteenth century, in K. Rhan- ghaves' play, The Duchess of Athens, is unhappily a poetic anachronism. . FLORENTINE ATHENS 147 the Morea, and the foremost champion of Hellenism, that he should become Duke of Athens, and that she should receive compensation near her old home in the Peloponnese. This scheme would have united nearly all Greece under the Imperial family ; but it was doomed to failure. There was a section of Greeks at Athens hostile to Chalkokondyles — for party spirit has always characterised Greek public Ufe — and this section joined the Florentine party, decoyed the Duchess out of the Akropolis, and proclaimed Nerio II. The marriage of the new Duke with the Dowager Duchess^ and the banishment of the family of Chalkokondyles secured the internal peace of the distracted city ; and the Sultan was well content to allow a Florentine princeling to retain the phantom of power so long as he paid his tribute with regularity. The weak and effeminate Nerio II was exactly suited for the part of a Turkish puppet. But, Uke many feeble rulers, the " lord of Athens and Thebes " seems to have made himself unpopular by his arrogance ; and a few years after his accession he was deprived of his throne by an intrigue of his brother, Antonio II. He then retired to Florence, the home of his family, where he had property, to play the part of a prince in exile, if exile it could be called. There he must have been Uving at the time of the famous Council, an echo of whose decisions we hear in distant Athens, where a Greek priest, of rather more learning than most of his cloth, wrote to the CEcumenical Patriarch on the proper form of public prayer for the Pope. A bailie — so we learn from one of his letters^ — was then administering the duchy, for Antonio had died in 1441; his infant son. Franco, was absent at the Turkish Court ; and his subjects had recalled their former lord to the Akropolis. There he was seen, three years later, by the first antiquary who ever set foot in Prankish Athens, Cyriacus of Ancona, the Pausanias of mediaeval Greece. That extraordinary man, like Schliemann, a merchant by profession but an archaeologist by inclination, had already once visited Athens. In 1436 he had stayed there for a fortnight as the guest of a certain AntoneUi Balduini; but on that occasion he was too much occupied copying inscriptions to seek an audience of the Duke. He, too, hke the Capuan notary, went to see "Aristotle's Study"; he describes the "house " or " palace of Hadrian " ; he alludes to the statue of the Gorgon on the south of the Akropolis. But of contemporary Athens, apart from the monuments, he tells us little beyond the facts that it possessed four gates and that it had "new walls" — a statement corroborated by that of another traveller thirty years later, which might indicate the so- '■ Sathas, Mvij/xeio 'BWiji/ik^s 'laropias (Memorials of Greek History), in. 427. ' Nios "EK\rivoiJ.vi)it,uv (Greek Remembrancer), new series, i. 55. 148 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE called wall of Valerian as the work of the Acciajuolii. Of the inhabitants he says nothing ; as living Greeks, they had for him no interest ; was he not an archaeologist? In February 1444 the worthy Cyriacus revisited Athens ; and on this occasion, accompanied by the Duke's cousin and namesake, he went to pay his respects to " Nerio Acciajuoli of Florence, then prince of Athens," whom he "found on the Akropolis, the lofty castle of the city^." Again, however, the archaeological overpowered the human interest; and he hastened away from the ducal presence to inspect the Propylaia and the Parthenon. His original drawing of the west front of the latter building has been preserved in a manuscript, which formerly belonged to the Duke of Hamilton, but is now in the BerUn Museum, and is the earliest known pictorial reproduction of that splendid temple*. Other Athenian sketches may be seen in the Barberini manuscript of 1465, now at the Vatican, which contains the diagrams of San GaUo; and it seems that the eminent architect, who took the explanatory text almost verbatim. from the note-books of Cyriacus, also copied the latter's drawings. The travels of the antiquary of Ancona in Greece demonstrate an interesting fact, which has too often been ignored, that the Latin rulers of the Levant were sometimes men of culture and taste. Crusino Sommaripa, the baron of Paros, took a pride in showing his visitor some marble statues which he had had excavated, and allowed him to send a marble head and leg to his friend Giustiniani-Banca, of Chios, a con- noisseur of art who composed Italian verses in his "Homeric" villa. So deeply was Cyriacus moved by Crusino's culture and kindness that he too burst out into an Italian poem, of which happily only one line hasbeen published. Dorino Gattilusio, the Genoese lord of Lesbos, aided him in his investigation of that island; the Venetian governor of Tenos escorted him in his state-gaUey to inspect the antiquities of Delos; and Carlo Tocco II, whom he quaintly describes as " King of the Epeirotes," gave him every facility for visiting the ruins of Dodona, and was graciously pleased to cast his royal eye over the manuscript account of the antiquary's journey*. Another of the Tocchi is known to have employed a Greek priest to copy for him the works of Origen and 1 The anonymous traveller ( PDomenico of Brescia) who describes Athens about 1466 speaks of the city as "ultimamente murata." (Mitteilungen des K. deuischen Arch. Instituts, xxiv. 74.) 2 Tozzetti, Relazione di alcuni viaggi fatti in...Toscana, v. 439, 440. This letter,, dated "Kj'riaceo die, iv Kal. Ap.," fixes the year of the second visit, because March 29 feU on a Sunday in 1444, and we know from another letter written before June 1444, that Cyriacus left Chalkis for Chios, where the letter about. Athens was written, on "v Kal. Mart." of that year. ' Jahrbuch der K. preussischen Kunstsammlungen, iv. 8i. * Studi e documenti di Storia e di Diriito, xv. 337. FLORENTINE ATHENS 149 Chrysostom; and in the remote Peloponnesian town of Kalavryta Cyriacus met a kindred soul, who possessed a large hbrary from which he lent the wandering archaeologist a copy of Herodotos. Thus, on the eve of the Turkish conquest, Greece was by no means so devoid of culture as has sometimes been too hastily assumed. It is clear, on the contrary, that her Prankish princes were by no means indifferent to their sur- roundings, and that the more enlightened of her own sons were conscious of her great past. The very year of the antiquary's second visit to Athens witnessed the last attempt of a patriotic and ambitious Greek to recover all Greece for his race. The future Emperor Constantine was now Despot of Mistra, the mediaeval Sparta; and he thought that the moment had at last come for renewing the plan for the annexation of the Athenian duchy which had failed nine years before. The Turks, hard pressed by the Hungarians and Poles, defeated by " the white knight of WaUachia " at Nish, defied by Skanderbeg in the mountains of Albania, and threatened by the appearance of a Venetian fleet in the iEgean, could no longer protect their creature at Athens. Ere long the last Constantine entered the gates of Thebes and forced Nerio II to pay him tribute. The Court of Naples heard that he had actually occupied Athens; and Alfonso V of Aragon, who had never forgotten that he was still titular Duke of Athens and Neopatras, wrote at once to Constantine demanding the restitution of the two duchies to himself, and sent the Marquess of Gerace to receive them from the conqueror's hands. Scarcely, however, had the letter been despatched when the fatal news of the great Turkish victory at Varna reached the writer. We hear nothing more of Gerace's mission, for all recognised that the fate of Athens now depended upon the will of the victorious Sultan. To Murad II the shadowy claims of the house of Aragon and the efforts of the house of Palaiologos were alike indifferent. Nerio's attitude at this crisis was pitiful in the extreme. The Turks punished him for having given way to Constantine. Constantine again threatened him for his obsequiousness in promising to renew his tribute to the Turks. But the Sultan, true to the traditional Turkish pohcy of supporting the weaker of two rival Christian nationahties, forced the Greek Despot to evacuate the Florentine duchy. Nerio had the petty satisfaction of accompanying his lord and master to the Isthmus and of witnessing the capture of the famous Six-mUe Rampart, in which the Greeks had vainly trusted, by the Serbian janissaries. Five years later, in 145 1, a Venetian despatch gives us a last and characteristic glimpse of the wretched Nerio, when the Venetian envoy to the new Sultan, 150 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Mohammed II, is instructed to ask that potentate if he will compel his vassal, "the lord of Sithines and Stives," to settle the pecuniary claims of two Venetians^. Nerio's death was followed by one of those tragedies in which the women of Prankish Greece were so often protagonists, and of which a modern dramatist might well avail himself. After the death of his first wife, Nerio II had married a passionate Venetian beauty, Chiara Zorzi, or Giorgio, one of the daughters of the baron of Karystos, or Castel Rosso, in the south of Euboea, who sprang from the former Marquesses of Boudonitza. The Duchess Chiara bore him a son, Prancesco, who was unfortunately still a minor at the time of his father's death. The child's mother possessed herself of the regency and persuaded the Porte, by the usual methods, to sanction her usurpation. Soon afterwards, however, there visited Athens on some commercial errand a young Venetian noble, Bartolommeo Contarini, whose father had been governor of the Venetian colony of NaupUa. The Duchess fell in love with her charming visitor, and bade him aspire to her hand and land. Contarini repUed that alas ! he had left a wife behind him in his palace on the lagoons. To the Lady of the Akropohs, a figure who might have stepped from a play of iEschylus, the Venetian wife was no obstacle. It was the age of great crimes. Contarini reahsed that Athens was worth a murder, poisoned his spouse, and returned to enjoy the embraces and the authority of the Duchess. But the Athenians soon grew tired of this Venetian domination. They complained to Mohammed II ; the great Sultan demanded explana- tions; and Contarini was forced to appear with his stepson, whose guardian he pretended to be, at the Turkish Court. There he found a dangerous rival in the person of Pranco AcciajuoU, only son of the late Duke Antonio II and cousin of Prancesco, a special favourite of Mohammed and a willing candidate for the Athenian throne. When the Sultan heard the tragic story of Chiara's passion, he ordered the deposition of both herself and her husband, and bade the Athenians accept Pranco as their lord. Young Prancesco was never heard of again. But the tragedy was not yet over. Pranco had no sooner assumed the government of Athens than he ordered the arrest of his aunt Chiara, threw her into the dungeons of Megara, and there had her mysteriously murdered. A picturesque legend current three centuries later at Athens makes Pranco throttle her with his own hands as she knelt invoking the aid of the Virgin, and then cut off her head with his sword 2; so deep Jorga in Revue de I'Orient Latin, viii. 78. ^ Kampouroglos, Wpnixela. (Memorials), in. 141. The legend places the m a stall more romantic spot than Megara-the monastery of Daphni, the leum of the French dukes. scene mauso- FLORENTINE ATHENS 151 was the impression which her fate made upon the popular imagina- tion. The legend tells us how her husband, " the Admiral," had come with many ships to the Piraeus to rescue her, but arrived too late. Unable to save, he resolved to avenge her, and laid the grim facts before the Sultan. Mohammed II, indignant at the conduct of his protege, but not sorry, perhaps, of a pretext for destroying the remnants of Prankish rule at Athens, ordered Omar, son of Tourakhan, the governor of Thessaly, to march against the city. The lower town offered no resistance, for its modem walls had but a narrow circumference, and its population and resources were scanty. Nature herself seemed to fight against the Athenians. On May 29, the third anniversary of the capture of Con- stantinople, a comet appeared in the sky; a dire famine followed, so that the people were reduced to eat roots and grass. On June 4, 1456, the town fell into the hands of the Turks^. But the Akropolis, which was reputed impregnable, long held out. In vain the Constable of Athens and some of the citizens offered the castle to Venice through one of the Zorzi family; the Repubhc ordered the bailie of Negroponte to keep the offer open, but took no steps to save the most famous fortress in Christen- dom; in vain he summoned one Latin prince after another to his aid. From the presence of an Athenian ambassador at the Neapohtan Court ^ we may infer that Alfonso V of Aragon, the titular "Duke of Athens," was among their number. The papal fleet, which was despatched to the .iEgean, did not even put into the Pirseus. Meanwhile Omar, after a vain attempt to seduce the garrison from its allegiance, reminded Franco that sooner or later he must restore Athens to the Sultan who gave it. "Now, therefore," added the Turkish commander, "if thou wilt surrender the Akropolis, His Majesty offers thee the land of Bceotia, with the city of Thebes, and will allow thee to take away the wealth of the Akropolis and thine own property." Franco only waited till Mohammed had confirmed the offer of his subordinate, and then quitted the castle of Athens, with his wife and his three sons, for ever. At the same time the last Catholic archbishop, Nicolo Protimo of Euboea, left the cathedral of Our Lady. It was not till 1875 that a Latin prelate again resided at Athens. The great Sultan, so his Greek biographer, Kritoboulos, tells us, was fiUed with a desire to see the city of the philosophers. Mohammed knew • A contemporary note in MS,, No. 103 of the Liturgical section of the National Library at Athens, fixes the date as "May 4, 1456. Friday"; but in that year June 4, not May 4, was on a Friday, which agrees with the date of June 1456 given by Phrantzes, the Chronicon breve, the Historia Patriarchica, and Gaddi. ' Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane, xxviii. 203. 152 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Greek, and had heard and read much about the wisdom and marvellous works of the ancient Athenians ; we may surmise that Cyriacus of Ancona had told him of the Athenian monuments when he was employed as reader to his Majesty during the siege of Constantinople i. This strange " Philhellene " — for so Kritoboulos audaciously describes the conqueror of Hellas — longed to visit the places where the heroes and sages of classic Athens had walked and talked, and at the same time to examine, with a statesman's eye, the position of the city and the condition of its harbours. In the autumn of 1458, on his return from punishing the Greek Despots of the Morea, he had an opportunity of achieving his wish. When he arrived at the gates (if we may believe a much later tradition^), the Abbot of Kaisariane, the monastery which still nestles in one of the folds of Hymettos, handed him the keys of the city. There is nothing improbable in the story, for the Greek MetropoUtan, Isidore, had fled to the Venetian Island of Tenos ; and the abbot may therefore have been the most important Greek dignitary left at Athens. The Sultan devoted four days to visiting his new possession, "of all the cities in his Empire the dearest to him," as the Athenian Chalkokondyles proudly says. But of all that he saw he admired most the Akropolis, whose ancient and recent buildings he examined " with the eyes of a scholar, a Philhellene, and a great sovereign." Like Pedro IV of Aragon before him, he was proud to possess such a jewel, and in his enthusiasm he exclaimed, " How much, indeed, do we not owe to Omar, the son of Tourakhan ! " The conquered Athenians were once again saved by their ancestors. Like his Roman prototype, Mohammed II treated them humanely, granted all their petitions, and gave them many and various privileges. So late as the seventeenth century there were Athenians who could show patents of fiscal exemption, issued to their forebears by the conqueror. If, however, the Greek clergy had hoped that the great cathedral would be restored to the Orthodox church, they were disappointed. The Parthenon, by a third transformation, was converted into a mosque; and soon, from the tapering minaret which rose above it, the muezzin summoned the faithful to the Ismaidi, or "house of prayer." A Uke fate befell the church which had served as the Orthodox cathedral during the Prankish domination, but which received, in honour of the Sultan's visit, the name of Fethijeh Jamisi, or "Mosque of the Con- queror," and which still preserves, amid the squaUd surroundings of the Military bakery, the traces of its former purpose. The anonymous treatise on "The Theatres and Schools of Athens," 1 De Rossi, Inscriptiones ChrisHancB Urbis Romes, 11. i. 374. ' Spon, Voyage, 11. 155, 172. FLORENTINE ATHENS 153 which was probably composed by some Greek at this moment, perhaps to serve as a guide-book for the distinguished visitor, gives us a last glimpse of Prankish Athens. The choragic monument of Lysikrates was still known as "the lantern of Demosthenes" ; the Tower of the Winds was supposed to be "the School of Sokrates"; the gate of Athena Archegetis was transformed in common parlance into "the palace of Themistokles"; the Odeion of Perikles was called "the School of Aristophanes"; and that of Herodes Atticus was divided into "the palaces of Kleonides and Miltiades." The spots where once had stood the houses of Thucydides, Solon, and Alkmaion were well known to the omniscient local antiquary, who unhesitatingly converts the Temple of Wingless Victory into "a small school of musicians, founded by Pytha- goras." On the fifth day after his arrival the heir of these great men left Athens for Thebes, the abode of his vassal Franco, who must have heaved a sigh of reUef when his terrible visitor, after a minute examina- tion of Bceotia, set out for Macedonia. For two years longer he managed to retain his Theban dominions, from which he received a revenue as large as that which he had formerly enjoyed, till, in 1460, Mohammed, after finally destroying the two Greek principaUties of the Morea, revisited Athens. There the Sultan heard a rumour that some Athenians had conspired to restore their Florentine lord. This decided Franco's fate. At the moment he was serving, as the man of the Turk, with a regiment of Boeotian cavalry in Mohammed's camp. His suzerain ordered him to join in an attack which he meditated upon the surviving fragments of the ancient county of Cephalonia, the domain of the Tocchi. Franco shrank from fighting against his fellow-countryman; and a curious letter has recently been pubhshed^ in which, for this very reason, he offered his services as a condottiere to Francesco Sforza of Milan for the sum of 10,000 ducats a year. But he was forced to obey; he did his pitiable task, and repaired to the headquarters of Zagan Pasha, the governor of the Morea, unconscious that the latter had orders to kiU him. The Pasha invited him to his tent, where he detained him in conversation tiU nightfall; but, as the unsuspecting Frank was on his way back to his own pavilion, the governor's guards seized and strangled him. Such was the sorry end of the last " Lord of Thebes." Mohammed annexed all Boeotia, and thus obhterated the last trace of the Duchy of Athens. Franco's three sons were enrolled in the corps of janissaries, where one of them showed mihtary and administrative abiUty of so high an ' N^os '^Wrjvoiirliiuav (Greek Remembrancer), new series, i. 216-18. 154 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE order as to win the favour of his sovereign. Their mother, a Greek of noble lineage and famed for her beauty, became the cause of a terrible tragedy which convulsed alike Court and Church. Amoiroutses, the former minister and betrayer of the Greek Empire of Trebizond, fell desperately in love with the fair widow, to whom he addressed im- peissioned verses, and swore, though he was already married, to wed her or die. The (Ecumenical Patriarch forbade the banns, and lost his beard and his office rather than jdeld to the Sultan. But swift retribution fell upon the bigamist, for he dropped down dead, a dice-box in his hand. Though the Acciajuoli dynasty had thus fallen for ever, members of that great family still remained in Greece. An AcciajuoH was made civil governor of the old Venetian colony of Koron, in Messenia, when the Spaniards conquered it from the Turks in 1532. When they abandoned it, he was captured by pirates but eventually ransomed, only to die in poverty at Naples, where his race had first risen to eminence. At the beginning of the last century the French traveller, PouqueviUe, was shown at Athens a donkey-driver named Neri, in whose veins flowed the blood of the Florentine Dukes; and the modem historian of Christian Athens, Neroutsos, used to contend that his family was descended from Nerozzo Pitti, lord of Sykaminon and uncle of the last Duke of Athens. In Florence the family became extinct only so recently as 1834; and the Certosa and the Lung' Arno AcciajuoH still preserve its memory there. In a Florentine gallery are two coloured portraits of the Dukes of Athens, which would seem to be those of Nerio I and the bastard Antonio I. In that case the Florentine Dukes of Athens are the only Prankish rulers of Greece, except the Palatine Counts of Cephalonia, whose likeness has been preserved to posterity^. Thus ended the strange connection between Florence and Athens. A titular Duke of Athens had become tyrant of the Florentines, a Florentine merchant had become Duke of Athens; but the age when French and Itahan adventurers could find an El Dorado on the poetic soil of Greece was over. The dull uniformity of Turkish rule spread over the land, save where the Dukes of the Archipelago and the Venetian colonies still remained the sole guardians of Western culture, the only rays of light in the once brilliant Latin Orient. 1 The portraits of the six Florentine Dukes of Athens in Fanelli's Atene Attica are unfortunately imaginary. On the other hand, the figure of Joshua in one of the frescoes at Geraki m Lakonia seems to be intended to portray one of the Prankish barons of that Castle. 10 FLORENTINE ATHENS 155 AUTHORITIES "'Eyypa^a dvaep6fi.fva fls ttjv jieaaiaviKrjv 'lv 'KQ-qvaiav [Memorials of the History of the Athenians). By Demetrios Gr. Kampouroglos. 2nd Edn. Athens, 1891-92. "lo-Topi'a Tav 'Adrjvaiav (History of the Athenians). By D. Gr. Kam- pouroglos. Athens, 1889-96. 'loTopia tS>v 'Adrjv&v fVi TovpKOKpaTias (History of Athens under the Turks). By Th. N. Philadelpheus. Athens, 1902. MvYifieia 'eXXt/kik^s 'Icrroplas (Memorials of Greek History). Edited by C. N. Sathas. Paris, 1880-90. Ne'os 'EXKrivonvrjuov (Greek Remembrancer). New Series. Vols, i-iii. Ed. by Sp. P. Lampros. Athens, 1904-17. Nouvelles Recherches historiques sur la principauti frangaise de Morie. By Buchon. Two vols. Paris, 1843. La politica Orientale di Alfonso di Aragona. By F. Cerone. In Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane. Vols, xxvii-xxviii. Naples, 1902-3. And other works. APPENDIX NOTES ON ATHENS UNDER THE FRANKS Within the last sixteen years a great deal of new material has been pubhshed on the subject of Prankish Athens. The late Professor Lampros'- not only translated into Greek the Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter of Gregorovius, but added some most valuable notes, and moire than a whole volume of documents, some of which had never seen the light before, while others were known only in the sum- maries or extracts of Hopf, Gregorovius, or Signor Predelli. He also issued a review, the Neo? "E\\r]vo/j,vn/j,o3v, devoted to mediaeval Greek history, of which thirteen volumes have appeared. The French have gone on printing the Regesfa of the thirteenth-century popes, which contain occasional allusions to Greek affairs. Don Antonio Rubio y Lluch, the Catalan scholar, has issued a valuable pamphlet, Catalunya a Grecia^, besides contributing a mass of documents from the archives at Palermo ' 'IffTop/a TTJs II6Xeciis 'kBiivQiv Kara toi)s n^aovs aluva!. ('Ev 'A0Tii>ats, K. Mir^K> 1904-6.) " Barcelona, VAvenf, 1906. Cf. Anuari de I' Institut d' Estudis Catalans (1907-8, 1911, 1913-14). Estudis Universitaris Catalans, vill. (1915)- 156 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE to the collection of Professor Lampros; and the essay on the "Eastern Policy of Alfonso of Aragon," published by Signer Cerone in the Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane^, contains many hitherto unknown documents deaUng with the last two decades of Greek history before the Turkish conquest. I propose in the present article to point out the most important additions to our knowledge of Athens under her western masters which have thus been obtained. Of the condition of the Parthenon — "Our Lady of Athens" — on the eve of the Frankish con- quest we have some interesting evidence. We learn from an iambic poem of Michael Akominatos, the Greek Metropolitan of Athens, that he "beautified the church, presented new vessels and furniture for its use, increased the number of the clergy, and added to the estates" of the great cathedral, as well as to the "flocks and herds" which belonged to it. Every year a great festival attracted the Greeks from far and near to the shrine of the "Virgin of Athens 2." As was only to be expected, very little fresh Hght has been thrown on the Burgundian period. We learn however, from a Greek manuscript in the Vatican Hbrary, how Leon Sgouros, the archon of NaupUa, who long held out at Akrocorinth against the Frankish conquerors, met his end. Rather than be taken captive "he mounted his horse and leapt from Akrocorinth, so that not a single bone in his body was left unbroken^." We find too, in a letter from Honorius III to Othon de la Roche, dated February 12, 1223, the last allusion to the presence of the Megaskyr in his Athenian dominions before his return to France; and we hear of two members of his family, William and Nicholas, both canons of Athens. The former had gravem in litieratura defectum, or else he would have been made archbishop of Athens ; the latter is probably the same person whose name has been found on the stoa of Hadrian*. The Catalan period receives much more illustration. We know at last the exact date at which it ended, for a letter of Jacopo da Prato (pro- bably a relative of the Ludovico da Prato who was the first Florentine archbishop of Athens), dated Patras, May 9, 1388, announces that Nerio AcciajuoH ebe adi 2 di questo lo chastello di Settino^. Thus Don Antonio Rubi6 y Llucho was right in his surmise that Don Pedro de Pau, who is mentioned as erroneously reported dead in a letter of John I of Aragon, 1 Vols. xxvn. 3-93, 380-456, 555-634- 771-852; XXVIII. 154-212. Lampros, op. cit., 11. 729; Xlapvaaab^, vii. 23. '' Cod. Palat. 226, f. 122; Lampros, op. cit., i. 421 note « Pressutti, Regesta Honorii III, 11. 304; Les Registres 'd'Urbain IV, ill. 426; AfXrio- T7,s laropiKijs ml Eei-oXoyiKij, 'EraipLas, II. 28; Les Registres de CUment IV, I. 214, 245. » Lampros, op. cit.. m. 119. . Catalunya a Grecia. pp. 42, 53. FLORENTINE ATHENS 157 dated November 16, 1387, held out in the Akropohs down to 1388. The Catalan scholar had shown that the brave commander of "the Castle of Athens " had sent an envoy to John I, who received him "in the lesser palace of Barcelona" on March 18, 1387, and who promised the sindici of Athens on April 26 to pay a speedy visit to his distant duchy 1. Don Antonio Rubi6 y Lluch also writes to me that Hopf was mistaken in translating Petrus de Puteo of the Sicilian documents— the official whose high-handed proceedings led to a revolution at Thebes in which he, his wife, and his chief followers lost their Uves — as Peter de Puig^. His name should really be Peter de Pou, and it is obvious from the documents that Hopf 's chronology of his career is also wrong. He is mentioned in a document of August 3, 1366, as already dead ^ ; we learn that his official title was "vicar of the duchies" — that is to say, deputy for Matteo de Moncada, the absent vicar-general — and he is spoken of as "having presided in the duchies as vicar-general," and as "having presided in the office of the vicariate*." We find too that the castle of Zeitoun or Lamia {turrim Griffinam) belonged to him^. Roger de Lluria, who was at this time marshal of the duchies^, is already officially styled as vicar-general^ on August 3, 1366, though the formal commission removing Matteo de Moncada and appointing Roger de Lluria in his place was not made out tiU May 14 of the following year^. The new vicar-general held tiU his death, which must have taken place before March 31, 1370, when his successor Wcis appointed', the two great offices '^'', and, I think, the facts above stated enable us to explain the reason why no more marshals were appointed after that date. The office of marshal had been here- ditary in the family of De Novelles, and Gregorovius^^ pointed out that Ermengol de NoveUes did not (as Hopf imagined) hold it till his death, but that Roger de Lluria was marshal before that event. I should suppose that Ermengol had been deprived of the office as a punishment for his rebellion against his sovereign ^^ ; that the conflict between Lluria and Pou proved that there was no room in the narrow court of Thebes for two such exalted officials as a vicar and a marshal ; and, as Lluria, when he became vicar, combined the two offices in his person, it was thought a happy solution of the difficulty. Professor Lampros has pubhshed three documents ^^ from the Vatican ^ Catalunya a Grecia, pp. 50, 91. * " Geschichte Griechenlands," in Ersch und Gruber's AUgemeine Encyklopddie, Lxxxvi. 18, 19; Chroniques greco-romanes, p. 475; Anuari (1911). ' Lampros, op. cit., p. 344. * Ibid., pp. 234-6, 238. ^ Ibid., p. 344. « Ibid., pp. 279, 350. ' Ibid., p. 335. ' Ibid., p. 283. 9 Ibid., p. 315. " Ibid., pp. 240, 282, 330. ^^ Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, 11. 156, note i. '^ Rubi6 y Lluch, Los Navarros en Grecia, p. 476. " Op. cit., pp. 82-8. 158 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE archives which refer to a mysterious scheme for the marriage of a Sicilian duchess of Athens. The documents have no date, except the day of the month, and in one case of the week, and one of them is partly in cypher. But I think that I have succeeded in fixing the exact date of the first to January 4, 1369, because in 1368, December 22 was on a Friday. This suits all the historical facts mentioned. The bishop of Cambrai, to whom the second letter is addressed, must be Robert of Geneva (after- wards the anti-pope Clement VII), who occupied that see from October II, 1368, to June 6, 1371. The dominus Angkia, whose death has so much disturbed the diocese, is Sohier d'Enghien, who was beheaded in 1367; the comes Litii is his brother Jean, count of Lecce, and the latter's nephew, whose marriage "with the young niece of the king of Sicily, daughter of a former Catalan duke of Athens," is considered suitable, is Gautier III, titular duke of Athens, who had inherited the claims of the Brienne family. The lady whose marriage is the object of all these negotiations must therefore have been one of the two daughters of John, Marquis of Randazzo and Duke of Athens and Neopatras, who died in 1348, and whose youngest chUd, Constance, may therefore have been XX annorum et ultra at this period, and is known to have been single. She was the niece of King Peter II and cousin of Frederick III of Sicily, one of whose sisters is described as too old for the titular duke, which would of course have been the case in 1369. The allusions to Philip II of Taranto as stiU Uving also fix the date as before the close of 1373, when he died. Moreover Archbishop Simon of Thebes is known to have been in Sicily in 1367, and may have remained there longer. What was apparently an insuperable chronological obstacle, the allusion to obitum domini regis FrancicB, disappeared when I examined the original docu- ment in the Vatican hbrary and found that the last two words were regie fameie, that is, familicB. Possibly the allusion may be to Pedro the Cruel of Castile, who was slain in 1369. The letters then disclose a matrimonial aUiance which would have reconciled the Athenian claims of the house of Enghien with the ducal dominion over Catalan Athens exercised by Frederick III of Sicily. Don Antonio Rubi6 y Lluch has pubhshed two letters^ of " the queen of Aragon," wife of Pedro IV (not, as assumed by K. Konstantinides, Maria, queen of Sicily and duchess of Athens), from the former of which, dated 1379 and addressed to Archbishop Ballester of Athens, we glean some curious information about the relics which the cathedral of Santa Maria de Setines (the Parthenon) then contained, and of which the Italian ' AeXrioK T^s'IoTopiK^s KaX"&dvo\oyi.K7)i"&Taipla.s, V. 824-7. FLORENTINE ATHENS 159 traveller Nicolo da Martoni made out a list sixteen years later 1. The Catalan scholar has shown too that some years after the Florentine conquest of Athens a certain Bertranet, un dels majors capitans del ducat d'Atenes, recovered a place where was the head of St George, that is to say, Livadia^. The personage mentioned is Bertranet Mota, whose name occurs in the treaty with the Navarrese in 1390, as a witness to another document in the same year, in the Ust of fiefs in 1391, in Nerio Acciajuoh's will, and in a letter of the bishop of Argos in 1394. He was a friend of Nerio's bastard, Antonio; he had obviously helped the latter to recover Livadia from the Turks in 1393, and we are thus able to reconcile Chalkokondyles, who says that Bayezid had already annexed Livadia, with the clause in Nerio's will leaving the important fortress to Antonio ^. More interesting still, as showing the tenacity with which the kings of Aragon clung to the shadow of their rule over Athens, is the letter of Alfonso V to the despot Constantine Palaiologos (afterwards the last emperor of Constantinople), dated November 27, 1444, in which the king says that he has heard that Constantine has occupied Athens, and there- fore requests him to hand over the two duchies of Athens and Neopatras to the Marquess of Gerace, his emissary*. Lastly, to our knowledge of the Florentine period Professor Lampros has contributed three letters^ of the Athenian priest and copyist Kalophrenas, which show that the attempts of the council of Florence for the imion of the eastern and western churches found an echo in Floren- tine Athens. Professor Lampros was puzzled to explain the allusion to Tov d(^evTo<: Tov /j.iraijXov in one of the letters. He thinks it alludes to the Venetian bailie at Chalkis, who however had no j urisdiction at Athens at that period. If however, as he supposes, the correspondence dates from 1441 the phrase presents no difficulty. In that year Antonio II AcciajuoU had died, leaving an infant son. Franco, then absent at the Turkish court, and Nerio II, the former duke, returned to Athens. We may therefore suppose that "the prince's baUy" was the official who governed Athens till Nerio II came back. Professor Lampros has also published a letter* of Franco, the last duke of Athens, to Francesco Sforza of Milan, dated 1460, from Thebes, which Mohammed II had allowed him to retain after the capture of Athens in 1456. In this letter, 1 Revue de I'Orieni Latin, ill. 647-53, 656. ^ Catalunya a Grecia, pp. 57, 63. * Predelli, Commemoriali, in. 206, 208; Hopf, Chroniques, p. 229; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 11. i. 257; Gregorovius, Briefe aus der " Corrispondenza Accia- joli," p. 308; Chalkokondyles, pp. 145, 213. * Archivio Stonco,per le province Napoletane, xxvii. 430-1. ' Op.cit., II. 747-52; N^s 'B\\i?>'0/io'i}/n«»', I. 43-56- ' Op. cit., III. 407-9; N^os "EK\rivoii.vi]ii.ijiv, I. 216-24. i6o PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE written not long before his murder, Franco offers his services as a con- dottiere to the duke of Milan. This was not his only negotiation with western potentates, for only a few days before the loss of Athens an ambassador of his was at the Neapohtan court ^. One mistake has escaped the notice of Professor Lampros, as of his predecessors. The date of the second visit of Cyriacus of Ancona to Athens, when he found Nerio II on the Akropohs, must have been 1444 and not 1447, because the antiquary's letter from Chios is dated Kyriaceo die iv. Kal. Ap. Now, March 29 fell on a Sunday in 1444, and we know from another letter of Cyriacus to the emperor John VI, written before June 1444, that he left Chalkis for Chios on v. Kal. Mart. of that year. THE TURKISH CAPTURE OF ATHENS The authorities differ as to the exact date of the capture of Athens by the Turks. A contemporary note in Manuscript No. 103 of the Liturgical Section of the National Library at Athens, quoted by Kampouroglos^, fixes it at "May 4, 1456, Friday"; but in that year June 4, not May 4, was a Friday, which agrees with the date of June 1456, given by Phrantzes^, the Chronicon Breve*, and the Historia Patriarchica^. But the best evidence in favour of June is the following document of 1458, to which allusion was made by Gaddi* in the seven- teenth century, but which has never been pubhshed. I owe the copy to the courtesy of the Director of the " Archivio di Stato" at Florence. Item dictis anno et indictione [1458 Ind. 7] et die xxvj octobris. Magnified et potentes domini domini priores artium et vexUlifer iustitie popuU et comunis Florentie Intellecta expositione facta pro parte Loysii Neroczi Loysii de Pictis' civis florentini exponentis omnia et singula infrascripta vice et nomine Neroczi eius patris et domine Laudomine eius matris et filie olim Franchi de Acciaiuolis absentium et etiam suo nomitie proprio et vice et nomine fratrum ipsius Loysii et dicentis et narrantis quod dictus Neroczus eius pater et domina Laudomina eius mater iam diu et semper cum eorum familia prout notum est multis huius civitatis habita- verunt in Grecia in civitate Athenarum in qua habebant omnia eorum bona mobilia et immobilia excepta tantum infrascripta domo Florentie posita et quod dictus Neroczus iam sunt elapsi triginta quinque anni vel circa cepit in uxorem dictam dominam Laudominam in dicta civitate Athenarum ubi per gratiam Dei satis honorifice vivebant. Et quod postea de manse iunii anni millesimi quadringentesimi quinquagesimi sexti prout f uit voluntas Dei ' Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane, xxviii. 203. ^ Mxij/iieta T^s 'laroplas tS>v 'ASr/i/aioiy, II. 153. ' P- 385- * p. 520. 6 p. 124. ° Elogiographus, 300-1. ' Loysii Neroczi de Pictis nomine Neroczi eius patris pro venditione cuiusdam domus. FLORENTINE ATHENS i6i accidit quod ipsa civitas Athenarum fuit capta a Theucris et multi christiani ibi existentes ab eisdem spoliati et depulsi fuerunt inter quos fuit et est ipse Neroczus qui cum dicta eius uxore et undecim filiis videlicet sex masculis et quiaque feminis expulsus fuit et omnibus suis bonis privatus et ita se absque uUa substantia reduxit in quoddam castrum prope Thebes in quo ad presens ipse Neroczus cum omni eius familia se reperit in paupertate maxima; et quod sibi super omnia molestum et grave est coram se videre dictas puellas iam nubUes et absque principio alicuius dotis et cum non habeant aliqua bona quibus possint succurrere tot tantisque eorum necessitatibus nisi solum unam domum cum una domuncula iuxta se positam Florentie in loco detto al Poczo Toschanelli quibus a primo, secundo et tertio via a quarto domus que olim fuit domine Nanne Soderini de Soderinis ipsi Nerozus et domina Laudomina et eorum filii predict! optarent posse vendere domos predictas ut de pretio illarum possint partim victui succurrere partim providere dotibus alicuius puellarum predictarum^. The petitioners in the document are all weU known. Nerozzo Pitti and his wife Laudamia owned the castle of Sykaminon, near Oropos, which had belonged to her father. Franco Acciajuoli ^. She was the aunt of the last two dukes of Athens. Pitti also possessed the island of Panaia, or Canaia, the ancient Pyrrha, opposite the mouth of the Maliac Gulf, and his "dignified tenure" of those two places is praised by Baphius in his treatise De Felicitate Urbis Florentice^ , a century later. According to the contemporary chronicler, Benedetto Dei*, the Athenian Pitti were compelled to become Mohammedans when Boeotia was annexed; but the late historian Neroutsos used to maintain his descent from Nerozzo. 6. THE DUCHY OF NAXOS Of all the strange and romantic creations of the Middle Ages none is so curious as the capture of the poetic "Isles of Greece" by a handful of Venetian adventurers, and their organisation as a Latin Duchy for upwards of three centuries. Even to-day the traces of the ducal times may be found in many of the Cyclades, where Latin families, descendants of the conquerors, still preserve the high-sounding names and the Cathohc rehgion of their Italian ancestors, in the midst of ruined palaces and castles, built by the mediaeval lords of the Archipelago out of ancient Hellenic temples. But of the Duchy of Naxos Uttle is generally known. Its picturesque history, upon which Finlay touched rather slightly in his great work, has since then been thoroughly explored by a laborious German, the late Dr Hopf; but that lynx-eyed student of archives had no Uterary gifts ; he could not write, he could only read, and his researches he buried in a ponderous encyclopsedia. So this delightful ' R. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Aul. della Repubblica, Balie, no. 29 c. 67. " Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 11. i. 292. ' P- 38. ' Apud Pagnini, Della Decima, 11. 251. i62 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Duchy, whose whole story is one long romance, stiU awaits the hand of a novehst to make it live again. The origin of this fantastic State of the blue iEgean is to be found in the overthrow of the Greek Empire at the time of the Fourth Crusade. By the partition treaty made between the Latin conquerors of Con- stantinople, Venice received the Cyclades among other acquisitions. But the Venetian Government, with its usual commercial astuteness, soon came to the conclusion that the conquest of those islands would too severely tax the resources of the State. It was therefore decided to leave the task of occupying them to private citizens, who would plant Venetian colonies in the Mgea-n, and Hve on friendly terms with the RepubKc. There was no lack of enterprise among the Venetians of that generation, and it so happened that at that very moment the Venetian colony at Constantinople contained the very man for such an under- taking. The old Doge, Dandolo, had taken with him on the crusade his nephew, Marco Sanudo, a bold warrior and a skilful diplomatist, who had signalised himself by negotiating the sale of Crete to the Republic, and was then filhng the post of judge in what we should now call the Consular Court at Constantinople. On hearing the decision of his Government, Sanudo quitted the bench, gathered round him a band of adventurous spirits, to whom he promised rich fiefs in the El Dorado of the JEgean, equipped eight galleys at his own cost, and sailed with them to carve out a Duchy for himself in the islands of the Archipelago. Seventeen islands speedily submitted, and at one spot alone did he meet with any real resistance. Naxos has always been the pearl of the ^gean : poets have placed there the beautiful myth of Ariadne and Dionysos; Herodotos describes it as " excelling the other islands in prosperity* " ; even to-day, when so many of the Cyclades are barren rocks, the orange and lemon groves of Naxos entitle it, far more than Zante, to the proud name of "flower of the Levant." This was the island which now opposed the Venetian fihbuster, as centuries before it had opposed the Persians. A body of Genoese pirates had occupied the Byzantine castle before Sanudo's arrival; but that shrewd leader, who knew the value of rashness in an emergency, burnt his galleys, and then bade his companions conquer or die. The castle surrendered after a five weeks' siege, so that by 1207 Sanudo had conquered a duchy which existed for 359 years. His duchy included, besides Naxos, where he fixed his capital, the famous marble island of Paros; Kimolos, celebrated for its fuller's earth; Melos, whose sad fortunes furnished Thucydides with one of the most curious passages in his history; and Syra, destined at a much 1 V. 28. THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 163 later date to be the most important of all the Cyclades. Trae to his promise, Sanudo divided some of his conquests among his companions ; thus, Andros and the volcanic island of Santorin became sub-fiefs of the Duchy. Sanudo himself did homage, not to Venice, but to the Emperor Henry of Romania, who formsdly bestowed upon him " the Duchy of the Dodekannesos," or Archipelago, on the freest possible tenure. Having thus arranged the constitution of his little State, he proceeded to restore the ancient city; to build himself a castle, which commanded his capital and which is now in ruins; to erect a Catholic cathedral, on which, in spite of its restoration in the seventeenth century, his arms may stiU be seen; to improve the harbour by the construction of a mole; and to fortify the town with sohd masonry, of which one fragment stands to-day, a monument, Uke the Santameri tower at Thebes, of Frank rule in Greece. As we might expect from so shrewd a statesman, the founder of this island-duchy was fuUy sensible of the advantages to be derived from having the Greeks on his side. Instead of treating them as serfs and schismatics, he allowed all those who did not intrigue against him with the Greek potentates at Trebizond, Nice, or Arta, to retain their property. He guaranteed the free exercise of their religion, nor did he allow tl;ie Cathohc archbishop, sent him by the Pope, to persecute the Orthodox clergy or their flocks. The former imperial domains were confiscated, in order to provide and maintain a new fleet, so necessary to the existence of islands menaced by pirates. That Marco I was a powerful and wealthy ruler is proved not only by his buUdings, but also by the value set upon his aid. When the Cretans had risen, as they so often did, against the Venetians, the Governor sent in hot haste to Naxos for Marco's assistance. The Duke was still a citizen of the Republic; but the Governor knew his man, and stimulated his patriotism by the offer of lands in Crete. Marco lost no time in appearing upon the scene, defeated the insurgents, and claimed his reward. The Governor was also a Venetian, and not over-desirous of parting with his lands now that the danger seemed to be over. But Marco knew his Greeks by this time, and readily entered into a plot with a Cretan chief for the conquest of the island. Candia was speedily his, while the Governor had to escape in woman's clothes to the fortress of Temenos. But, just as he seemed likely to annex Crete to his Duchy, Venetian reinforcements arrived. Unable to carry out his design, he yet succeeded by his diplomacy in securing an amnesty and pecuniary compensation, with which he retired to his island domain. But the failure of his Cretan adventure did not in the least damp his ardour. With only eight ships he boldly attacked i64 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE the squadron of the Emperor of Nice, nearly four times as numerous. Captured and carried as a prisoner to the Nicene Court, he so greatly impressed the Emperor by his courage and manly beauty that the latter ordered his release, and gave him one of the princesses of the imperial house in marriage. In short, his career was that of a tj^ical Venetian adventurer, brave, hard-headed, selfish, and unscrupulous; in fact, just the sort of man to found a dynasty in a part of the world where clever- ness counts for more than heroic simpUcity of character. During the long and peaceful reign of his son Angelo, httle occurred to disturb the progress of the Duchy. But its external relations under- went a change at this time, in consequence of the transference of the suzerainty over it from the weak Emperor of Romania to the powerful Prince of Achaia, Geoffroy II, as a reward for Geoffroy's assistance in defending the Latin Empire against the Greeks. Angelo, too, equipped three galleys for the defence of Constantinople, and, after its faU, sent a handsome present to the exiled Emperor. Like his father, he was summoned to aid the Venetian Governor of Crete against the native insurgents, but on the approach of the Nicene fleet he cautiously with- drew. His son, Marco II, who succeeded him in 1262, found himself face to face with a more difficult situation than that which had prevailed in the times of his father and grandfather. The Greeks had recovered ground not only at Constantinople, but in the south-east of the Morea, and their successes were repeated on a smaller scale in the Archipelago. Licario, the Byzantine admiral, captured many of the ^gean islands, some of which remained thenceforth part of the imperial dominions. Besides the Sanudi, the dynasty of the Ghisi, lords of Tenos and Mykonos, alone managed to hold its own against the Greek invasion; yet even the Ghisi suffered considerably from the attacks of the re- doubtable admiral. One member of that family was fond of applying to himself the O vidian hne, "I am too big a man to be harmed by fortune," and his subjects on the island of Skopelos, which has lately been notorious as the place of exile of Royalist politicians, used to boast that, even if the whole reahn of Romania fell, they would escape destruction. But Licario, who knew that Skopelos lacked water, invested it during a hot summer, forced it to capitulate, and sent the haughty Ghisi in chains to Constantinople. Marco II had to quell an insurrection of the Greeks at Melos, who thought that the time had come for shaking off the Latin yoke. Educated at the court of Guillaume de Villehardouin, Marco had imbibed the resolute methods of that energetic prince, and he soon showed that he did not intend to relax his hold on what his grandfather had seized. Aided by a body of Frank fugitives THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 165 from Constantinople, he reduced the rebels to submission, and pardoned all of them with the exception of a Greek priest whom he suspected of being the cause of the revolt. This man he is said to have ordered to be bound hand and foot, and then thrown into the harbour of Melos. Towards the orthodox clergy Marco II was, if we may beheve the Jesuit historian of the Duchy, by no means so tolerant as his two predecessors^- There was, it seems, in the island of Naxos an altar dedicated to St Pachys, a portly man of God, who was beUeved by the devout Naxiotes to have the power of making their children fat. In the East fatness is still regarded as a mark of comeliness, and in the thirteenth century St Pachys was a very popular personage, whose altar was visited by loving mothers, and whose hierophants lived upon the credulity of the faithful. Marco II regarded this institution as a gross superstition. Had he been a wise statesman, he would have tolerated it all the same, and allowed the matrons of Naxos to shove their offspring through the hoUow altar of the fat saint, so long as no harm ensued to his State. But Marco II was not wise ; he smashed the altar, and thereby so irritated his Orthodox subjects that he had to build a fortress to keep them in order. But the Greeks were not the only foes who menaced the Duchy at this period. The Archipelago had again become the happy hunting-ground of pirates of aU nationaUties — Greek corsairs from the impregnable rock of Monemvcisia or from the, islands of Santorin and Keos, Latins Uke Roger de Lluria, the famous Sicilian admiral, who preyed on their fellow-religionists, mongrels who combined the vices of both their parents. The first place among the pirates of the time belonged to the Genoese, the natural rivals of the Venetians in the Levant, and on that account popular with the Greek islanders. No sooner was a Genoese galley spied in the offing than the peasants would hurry down with provisions to the beach, just as the Calabrian peasants have been known to give food to notorious brigands. The result of these visitations on the smaller islands may be easily imagined : thus the inhabitants of Amorgos emigrated in a body to Naxos from fear of the corsairs; yet, in spite of the harm inflicted by Licario and the pirates, we are told that the fertile plain of Dr3Tiiaha, in the interior of Naxos, "then contained twelve large villages, a number of farm buildings, country houses and towers, with about 10,000 inhabitants." Sometimes the remote con- sequences of the pirates' raids were worse than the raids themselves. Thus, on one of these expeditions, some corsairs carried off a valuable ass belonging to one of the Ghisi. The ass, marked with its master's initials, was bought by Marco II's son, Gughelmo, who lived at Syra. ^ Sauger, Histoire nouueUe des anciens Dues, p. 65. i66 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE The purchaser was under no illusions as to the ownership of the ass, but was perfectly aware that he was bu3dng stolen goods. Seeing this, Ghisi invaded Syra, laid the island waste, and besieged Sanudo in his castle. But the fate of the ass had aroused wide sympathies. Marco II had taken the oath of fealty to Charles of Anjou, as suzerain of Achaia, after the death of his Uege lord, Guillaume de ViUehardouin, and it chanced that the Angevin admiral was cruising in the Archipelago at the time of the rape of the ass. Feudal law compelled him to assist the son of his master's vassal; a lady's prayers conquered any hesitation that he might have felt; so he set sail for Syra, where he soon forced Ghisi to raise the siege. The great ass case was then submitted to the decision of the Venetian bailie in Euboea, who restored the peace of the Levant, but only after "more than 30,000 heavy soldi" had been expended for the sake of the ass ! After the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks, the poUcy of Venice towards the dukes underwent a change. As we have seen, neither the founder of the Duchy nor his son and grandson were vassals of the RepubHc, though they were all three Venetian citizens. But the Venetian Government, alarmed at the commercial privileges accorded to its great rivals, the Genoese, by the Byzantine Emperor, now sought to obtain a stronger miUtary and commercial position in the Archipelago, and, if possible, to acquire direct authority over the Duchy. An excuse for the attempt was offered by the affairs of Andros. That island had been bestowed by Marco I as a sub-fief of Naxos upon Marino Dandolo. Marco II resumed immediate possession of it after the death of Dandolo's widow, and refused to grant her half of the island to her son by a second marriage, Nicolo Quirini, on the plausible plea that he arrived to do homage after the term allowed by the feudal law had expired. But Quirini was a Venetian bailie, and accordingly appealed to Venice for justice. The Doge summoned Marco II to make defence before the Senate ; but Marco repUed that Venice was not his suzerain, that the ducal Court at Naxos, and not the Senate at Venice, was the proper tribunal to try the case, and that he would be happy to afford the claimant all proper facihties for pleading his cause if he would appear there. The question then dropped; Marco remained in possession of Andros, while the Republic waited for a more favourable opportunity of advancing its poUtical interests in the Archipelago. This opportunity was not long in coming. Towards the end of the thirteenth century a violent war broke out between Venice and her Genoese rivals, supported by the Byzantine Emperor. While the Genoese tried to undermine Venetian power in Crete, Venice let loose a new swarm THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 167 of privateers on the islands of the iEgean, which Licario had recovered for the Byzantines. Then for the first time we meet with the word armatoloi, so famous in the later history of Greece, appUed originally to the outfitters, or armatores, of privateers. The dispossessed Venetian lords were thus enabled to reconquer many of the possessions which they had then lost ; Amorgos, the birthplace of Simonides, was restored to the Ghisi, Santorin and Therasia to the Barozzi, but only on con- dition that they recognised the suzerainty of the Republic. This arrange- ment was contested by the Duke of the Archipelago, on the ground that those islands had originally been sub-fiefs of his ancestors' dominions. GugUehno Sanudo, the purchaser of the ass, had now succeeded to the Duchy, and, as might have been inferred from that story, was not Ukely to be over-scrupulous in his methods. As one of the Barozzi dechned to do him homage, he had him arrested by corsairs on the high seas, and threw him into the ducal dungeon at Naxos. This was more than Venice could stand, for this scion of the Barozzi had been Venetian governor of Candia. An ultimatum was therefore despatched to the Duke, bidding him send his captive to Euboea within eight days, under pain of being treated as a pirate. This message had the desired effect. Guglielmo let his prisoner go, and it was seen that the name of Venice was more powerful than before in the Archipelago. But neither Venice nor the Duke could prevent the increasing desolation of the islands. The Catalans had now appeared in the Levant ; in 1303 they ravaged Keos ; after their estabhshment in the Duchy of Athens they organised a raid on Melos, from which, hke the Athenians of old, they carried off numbers of the inhabitants as slaves. A Spaniard from Corufia, Januh da Corogna, occupied Siphnos, and two of the leading families in Santorin to-day are of Catalan origin. A member of one of them, Dr De CigaUa, or Dekigallas, as he is called in Greek, is a voluminous author, and a great authority on the eruptions of that volcanic island. Turkish squadrons completed the work of destruction; we hear of a new exodus from Amorgos in con- sequence of their depredations, but this time the frightened islanders preferred to seek refuge under the Venetian banner in Crete rather than in Naxos. The latter island was, indeed, no longer so secure as it had been. True, Duke Gughelmo had welcomed the establishment of the warUke knights of St John at Rhodes, and had helped them to conquer that stronghold, in the hope that they would be able to ward off the Turks from his dominions. Venice, too, had come to see that her wisest policy was to strengthen the Naxiote Duchy, and furnished both the next Dukes, Nicolo I and Giovanni I, with arms for its protection. But, cdl the same, in 1344 the dreaded Turks effected a landing on Naxos, i68 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE occupied the capital, and dragged away 6000 of the islanders to captivity. This misfortune increased the panic of the peasants throughout the Archipelago. They fled in greater numbers than ever to Crete, so that Giovanni complained at Venice of the depopulation of his islands, and asked for leave to bring back the emigrants. Even the fine island of Andros, which had formerly produced more wheat and barley than it could consume, was now forced to import grain from Euboea, while many of the proprietors in other parts of the ^gean had to procure labour from the Morea. In fact, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, such security as existed in the Levant was due solely to the presence of the Venetian fleet in Cretan and Euboean waters, and to a pohcy such as that which conferred upon the historian, Andrea Dandolo, the islet of Gaidaronisi, to the south of Crete, on condition that he should fortify its harbour against the assaults of pirates. Naturally, at such a time, it was the manifest advantage of the Naxiote Dukes to tighten the alliance with Venice. Accordingly we find Giovanni I preparing to assist the Venetians in their war with the Genoese, when the latter suddenly swooped down upon his capital and carried him off as a prisoner to Genoa. In 136 1, a few years after his release, Giovanni I died, leaving an only daughter, Fiorenza, as Duchess of the Archipelago. It was the first time that this romantic State had been governed by a woman, and, needless to say, there was no lack of competitors for the hand of the rich and beautiful young widow. During her father's lifetime Fiorenza had married one of the Eubcean family of DaUe Carceri, which is often mentioned in mediaeval Greek history, and she had a son by this union, who afterwards succeeded her in the Duchy. Over her second marriage there now raged a diplomatic battle, which was waged by Venice with all the unscrupulousness shown by that astute RepubUc whenever its supremacy was at stake. The first of this mediaeval Penelope's suitors was a Genoese, one of the merchant adventurers, or maonesi, who held the rich island of Chios much as a modem chartered company holds parts of Africa under the suzerainty of the home Government. To his candi- dature Venice was, of course, strongly opposed, as it would have been fatal to Venetian interests to have this citizen of Genoa installed at Naxos. Fiorenza was therefore warned not to bestow her hand upon an enemy of the RepubUc, when so many eligible husbands could be found at Venice or in the Venetian colonies of Euboea and Crete. At the same time, the Venetian bailie of Euboea was instructed to hinder by fair means or foul the Genoese marriage. Fiorenza meekly expressed her willingness to marry a person approved by Venice, but soon afterwards THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 169 showed a desire to accept the suit of Nerio Acciajuoli, the subsequent Duke of Athens. This alliance the RepubUc vetoed with the same emphasis as the former one; but Nerio was an influential man, who had powerful connections in the kingdom of Naples, and was therefore able to obtain the consent of Robert of Taranto, at that time suzerain of the Duchy. That Robert was Fiorenza's suzerain could not be denied; but Venice rephed that she was also a daughter of the RepubUc, that her ancestors had won the Duchy under its auspices, had been protected by its fleets, and owed their existence to its resources. What, it was added, have the Angevins of Naples done, or what can they do, for Naxos? Simultaneous orders were sent to the commander of the Venetian fleet in Greek waters to oppose, by force if necessary, the landing of Nerio in that island. The Venetian agents in the Levant had, however, no need of further instructions. They knew what was expected of them, and were confident that their action, if successful, would not be disowned. Fiorenza was kidnapped, placed on board a Venetian galley, and quietly conveyed to Crete. There she was treated with every mark of respect, but was at the same time plainly informed that if she wished ever to see her beloved Naxos again she must marry her cousin Nicolo Sanudo " Spezzabanda," the candidate of the Repubhc and son of a large proprietor in Eubcea. The daring of this young man, to which he owed his nickname of "Spezzabanda," "the disperser of a host," may have impressed the susceptible Duchess no less than the difficulties of her position. At any rate she consented to marry him, the wedding was solemnised at Venice, the Repubhc pledged itself to protect the Duchy against all its enemies, and granted to Santorin, which had been recon- quered by Duke Nicolo I, the privilege of exporting cotton and corn to the Venetian lagoons. Venice had won all along the hne, and when the much-wooed Duchess died, "Spezzabanda" acted as regent for his stepson, Nicolo II dalle Carceri. He showed his gratitude to his Venetian patrons by assisting in suppressing the great Cretan insurrection of this period. He also defended Eubcea against the Catalans of Athens, showing himself ready to fight for the rights of young Nicolo whenever occasion offered. Nicolo II was the last and worst of the Sanudi Dukes. From his father he had inherited two-thirds of Eubcea, which interested him more than his own Duchy, but at the same time involved him in disputes with Venice. Chafing at the tutelage of the Repubhc, he selected the moment when Venice was once more engaged in war with Genoa, to negotiate with the Navarrese company of mercenaries then in Central Greece for its aid in the conquest of the whole island of Eubcea. This attempt lyo PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE failed, and, so far from increasing his dominions, Nicolo diminished them in other directions. We have seen how Andros had been reunited with Naxos by Marco II. The new Duke now bestowed it as a sub-fief upon his half-sister, Maria Sanudo, thus severing its direct connection with his Duchy. Nor was he more cautious in his internal policy. He aroused the strongest resentment among his subjects, Greeks and Franks alike, by his extortion, and they found a ready leader in a young Itahan who had lately become connected by marriage with the Sanudo family. This man, Francesco Crispo — a name which suggested to biographers of the late Itahan Prime Minister a possible relationship — ^was a Lombard who had emigrated to Eubcea and had then obtained the lordship of Melos by his union with the daughter of Giovanni I's brother Marco, who had received that island as a sub-fief of Naxos, and under whom it had greatly prospered. Crispo chanced to be in Naxos at the time when the complaints of the people were loudest, and he aspired to the fame, or at any rate the profits, of a tyrannicide. During one of the ducal hunting parties he contrived the murder of the Duke, and was at once accepted by the populace as his successor. Thus, in 1383, fell the dynasty of the Sanudi, by the hand of a Lombard adventurer, after 176 years of power. Times had greatly changed since the conquest of the Archipelago, nor was a usurper like Crispo in a position to dispense with the pro- tection of Venice. He therefore begged the Repubhc to recognise him as the rightful Duke, which the astute Venetians saw no difficulty in doing. He further strengthened the bond of union by bestowing the hand of his daughter upon the rich Venetian, Pietro Zeno, who played a considerable part in the tortuous diplomacy of the age. Crispo did not hesitate to rob Maria Sanudo of Andros in order to confer it upon his son-in-law, and it was not for many years, and then only after wearisome litigation, that it reverted to her son. She was obhged to content herself with the islands of Paros and Antiparos, and to marry one of the Veronese family of Sommaripa, which now appears for the first time in Greek history, but which came into the possession of Andros towards the middle of the fifteenth century, and still flourishes at Naxos. Sure of Venetian support, Crispo indulged in piratical expeditions as far as the Syrian coast, while he swept other and less distinguished pirates from the sea. His son-in-law seconded his efforts against the Turks; yet, in spite of their united attempts, they left their possessions in a deplorable state. Andros had been so severely visited by the Turkish corsairs that it contained only 2000 inhabitants, and had to be repopulated by Albanian immigrants, who are still very numerous there; los, ahnost THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 171 denuded of its population, was replenished by a number of families from the Morea. Although the next Duke, Giacomo I, was known as "The Pacific," and paid tribute to the Sultan on condition that no Turkish ships should visit his islands, he was constantly menaced by Bayezid I. In his distress, Uke the Emperor Manuel, he turned to Henry IV of England, whom he visited in London in 1404. Henry was not able to assist him, though he had at one time intended to lead an army " as far as to the sepulchre of Christ " ; but, when Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, made a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1418, he was conveyed back to Venice on one of Pietro Zeno's galleys. This was, so far as we have been able to discover, the only connection between England and the Duchy. In the same year Giacomo died at Ferrara, on his way to see the Pope, the natural protector of the Latins in the Levant. During the greater part of the fifteenth century the history of the Archipelago presents a monotonous series of family feuds and Turkish aggression. The subdivision of the islands, in order to provide appanages for the younger members of some petty reigning dynasty, was a source of weakness, which recalls the mediaeval annals of Germany, nor did there arise among the Dukes of this period a strong man like the founder of the Duchy. One of them was advised by Venice to make the best terms that he could with the Sultan, though complaints were made that he had failed to warn the Venetian bailie of Euboea of the approaching Turkish fleet, by means of beacon-fires — an incident which takes us back to the Agamemnon of iEschylus. The fall of Constantinople, followed by the capture of Lesbos and Euboea by the Turks, greatly alarmed the Dukes, who drew closer than ever to the Venetian Republic, and were usually included in aU the Venetian treaties. Other misfortunes greatly injured the islands. The Genoese plundered Naxos and Andros, and the volcanic island of Santorin was the scene of a great eruption in 1457, which threw up a new islet in the port. A few years later, Santorin had suffered so much from one cause or another that it contained no more than 300 inhabitants. An earthquake followed this eruption, further increasing the misery of the Archipelago. But this was the age of numerous religious foundations, some of them stiU in existence, such as the church of Sant' Antonio at Naxos, which was bestowed upon the Knights of St John, as their arms on its walls remind the traveller. It was about this time too that Cyriacus of Ancona, after copying in- scriptions at Athens, visited Andros and other islands of the .^gean. The island rulers not only received him courteously, but ordered excava- tions to be made for his benefit — a proof of culture which should be set against their wanton destruction of ancient buildings, in order to 172 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE provide materials for their own palaces — a practice of which the tower at Paros is so striking an example. When we remember that each petty lord considered it necessary to be well lodged, the extent of these ravages may be easily imagined. Towards the close of the fifteenth century the condition of the islanders had become intolerable, and matters came to a climax under the rule of Giovanni III. That despotic Duke incurred the displeasure not only of the Sultan, but also of his own subjects. The former com- plained that he had fallen into arrears with his tribute — for the Dukes had long had to purchase independence by the payment of baksMsk — and that he harboured corsairs, who plundered the Asian coast. The latter grumbled at the heavy taxes which the Duke pocketed without doing anything for the protection of his people. The Archbishop of Naxos made himself the mouthpiece of popular discontent, and wrote to Venice, in the name of the people of Naxos and Paros, offering to ac- knowledge the suzerainty of the RepubUc. Venice replied, authorising him to point out to the Duke and to Sommaripa, the lord of Paros, the utter hopelessness of their present position, and to offer them an assured income for the rest of their lives if they would cede their islands to a Venetian commissioner. But the negotiations failed ; the Naxiotes, driven to despair, took the law into their own hands, and in 1494 murdered their Duke. The Archbishop then proceeded to Venice, and persuaded the Senate to take over the Duchy, at least till the late Duke's son, Francesco, came of age. During the next six years Venetian Com- missioners administered the islands, which were, however, loyally handed over to Francesco III at the end of that time. The new Duke proved unfortunately to be a homicidal maniac, who killed his wife and tried to kiU his heir. As a consequence he was removed to Crete and a second brief Venetian occupation lasted during the rest of his successor's minority!. The long reign of his son, Giovanni IV, who, soon after his accession, was captured by Turkish pirates while on a hunting party, lasted till 1564 and witnessed the loss of many of the ^Egean islands. That great sovereign, Suleyman the Magnificent, now sat upon the Turkish throne, and his celebrated admiral, Khaireddtn Barbarossa, spread fire and sword through many a Christian village. In 1537 the classic island of jEgina, still under Venetian domination, was visited by this terrible scourge, who massacred all the adult male population, and took away 6000 women and children as slaves. So complete was the destruction of the .Eginetans that, when a French admiral touched at the island soon afterwards, he found it devoid of inhabitants. There, as 1 See The Mad Duke of Naxos. THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 173 usual, an Albanian immigration replenished, at least to some extent, the devastated sites, but ^gina was long in recovering some smaU measure of its former prosperity. Thence Barbarossa sailed to Naxos, whence he carried off an immense booty, compelling the Duke to purchase his further independence — if such it covld be called — ^by a tribute of 5000 ducats, and submitting him to the ignominy of seeing the furniture of his own palace sent on board the Admiral's flagship under his very eyes. The horrible scenes of those days would seem to have impressed them- selves deeply upon the mind of the wretched Duke, who gave vent to his feeUngs in a bitter letter of complaint to the Pope and other Christian princes. This curious document urged them to " apply their ears and hft up their eyes, and attend with their minds while their own interests were stiU safe," and reminded them of the evils caused by discord in the councils of Christendom. The Duke emphasised his admirable truisms, which might have been addressed to the Concert of Europe at any time during the last fifty years, by a well-worn tag from SaUust — Sallustius Crispus, "the author of our race." But neither his platitudes nor his allusion to his distinguished ancestry, which he might have had some difficulty in proving, availed him. The Turks went on in their career of conquest. Paros was annexed, Andros was forced to pay tribute, the Venetians lost Skiathos and Skopelos, and by the shameful treaty of 1540 forfeited the prestige which they had so long wielded in the Levant. The Duchy of Naxos had long existed by the grace of the Venetian Repubhc, and, now that Venice had been crippled, its days were numbered. The capture of Chios in 1566 was the signal for its dissolution. As soon as the news arrived in Naxos and Andros that the Turks had put an end to the rule of the joint-stock company of the Giustiniani in that fertile island, the Greeks of the Duchy complained to the Sultan of the exactions to which they were subjected by their Frank lords. There was some justification for their grievances, for Giacomo IV, the last of the Frank Dukes, was a notorious debauchee ; and the conduct of the Catholic clergy, by the admission of a Jesuit historian, had become a public scandal. But the main motive of the petitioners seems to have been that intense hatred of Catholicism which characterised the Orthodox Greeks during the whole period of the Frank rule in the Levant, and which, as we saw under Austrian rule in Bosnia, has not yet wholly disappeared. Giacomo was fully aware of the delicacy of his position, and he resolved to convince the Turkish Government, as force was out of the question, by the only other argument which it under- stands. He collected a large sum of money, and went to Constantinople 174 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE to reply to his accusers. But he found the ground already undermined by the artifices of the (Ecumenical Patriarch, who had warmly espoused the cause of the Orthodox Naxiotes, and was in the confidence of the Turkish authorities. Giacomo had no sooner landed than he was clapped into prison, where he languished for five months, while the renegade, Piali Pasha, quietly occupied Naxos and its dependencies and drove the Sommaripa out of Andros. But the Greeks of the Duchy soon discovered that they had made an indifferent bargain. One of the most important banking houses of the period was that of the Nasi, which had business in France, the Low Countries, and Italy, and lent money to kings and princes. The manager of the Antwerp branch was an astute Portuguese Jew, who at one time called himself Joao Miquez and posed as a Christian, and then reverted to Judaism and styled himself Joseph Nasi. A marriage with a wealthy cousin made him richer than before; he migrated to the Turkish dominions, where Jews were very popular with the Sultans, and became a prime favourite of Selim II. This was the man on whom that sovereign now bestowed the Duchy; and thus, by a prosaic freak of fortune, the lovely island of classical myth and mediaeval romance became the property of a Jewish banker. Nasi, as a Jew, knew that he would be loathed by the Greeks, so he never visited his orthodox Duchy, but appointed a Spaniard named Coronello to act as his agent, and to screw as much money as possible out of the inhabitants. In this he was very successful. As soon as Giacomo IV was released he set out for the west to procure the aid of the Pope and Venice for the recovery of his dominions, even pledging himself in that event to do homage to the Repubhc for them. But, in spite of the great victory of Lepanto, the Turks remained in undisturbed possession of the Duchy, except for a brief restoration of Giacomo's authority by Venice in 1571. On the accession of Murad III Giacomo had hopes of obtaining his further restoration through the good offices of the new Sultan's mother, a native of Paros, belonging to the distinguished Venetian family of Baffo. But though she promised her aid, and he went to plead his cause in person at Constantinople, the Sultan was inexorable. The last of the Dukes died in the Turkish capital in 1576, and was buried in the Latin church there. Three years later Joseph Nasi died also, whereupon the Duchy was placed under the direct administration of the Porte. But though Naxos and all the important islands had been annexed by the Turks, there stiU remained a few fragments of the Latin rule in the Levant. The seven islands of Siphnos, Thermia, Kimolos, PoUnos, Pholegandros, Gyaros, and Sikinos were retained by the Gozzadini THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 175 family on payment of a tribute until 1617, while Venice still preserved Tenos as a station^ in the Levant for a whole century more. Ever3nA'here else in the ^gean the crescent floated from the battlements of the castles and palaces where for three and a half centuries the Latin nobles had practised the arts of war. The occupation of the Greek islands by the Latins was unnatural, and, like most unnatural things, it was destined not to endure. But this strange meeting of two deeply interesting races in the classic seats of Greek lyric poetry can scarcely fail to strike the imagination. And to- day, when Italy is once more showing a desire to play a role in the near East, when Italians have officered the Cretan pohce, when Italian troops have occupied thirteen islands in the lower ^Egean since 1913, including the old Quirini fief of StampaUa, when the Aldobrandini's thirteenth century possession of Adalia is being revived, and the statesmen of Rome are looking wistfully across the Adriatic, it is curious to go back to the times when Venetian and Lombard families held sway among the islands of the Mgean, and the Latin galleys, flying the pennons of those petty princes, gUded in and out of the harbours of that classic sea. Even in her middle age Greece had her romance, and no fitter place could have been chosen for it than "the wave-beat shore of Naxos." APPENDIX THE MAD DUKE OF NAXOS Subsequent historians of the Duchy of Naxos have accepted without question Hopf's^ chronology and brief description of the reign of Francesco III Crispo, who was formally proclaimed duke, after a brief Venetian protectorate, in October 1500. According to the German scholar, who is followed by Count Mas Latrie^, Francesco III "quietly governed" his island domain down to 15 18, the only incident in his career being his capture by Turkish corsairs while hunting in 15 17. His wife, according to the same authorities, had already predeceased him, having died " before 1501." But a perusal of Sanuto's Diarii shows that all these statements are wrong. Francesco III, so far from "quietly governing" his subjects, was a homicidal maniac, who murdered his wife in 15 10 and died in the following year. We first hear of the duke's madness in 1509, when he and his brother- ' See The Last Venetian Islands in the Mgean. ' Geschichte Griechenlands , apud Ersch und Gruber, AUgemeine Encyklopadie, Lxxxvi. 166; Chroniques greco-romanes, p. 482; V eneto-Byzantinische Analekten, p. 414. ' Les Dues de I'Archipel, p. 13, in the Venetian Miscellanea, vol. iv. 176 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE in-law, Antonio Loredano, were on board the ducal galley, then engaged in the Venetian service at Trieste. The duke was put in custody at San Michele di Murano, but was subsequently released and allowed to return to Naxos ^. There, as we learn from two separate accounts, one sent to the Venetian authorities in Crete by the community of Naxos, the other sent to Venice by Antonio da Pesaro, Venetian governor of Andros, the duke had a return of the malady 2. On August 15, 1510, he was more than usually affectionate to his wife, Taddea Loredano, to whom he had been married fourteen years, and who is described by one of the Venetian ambassadors as " a lady of wisdom and great talent^." Having inveigled the duchess to his side "by songs, kisses, and caresses," he seized his sword and tried to slay her. The terrified woman fled, just as she was, in her nightdress, out of the ducal palace, and took refuge in the house of her aunt, Lucrezia Loredano, Lady of Nio. Thither, in the night of Saturday, August 17, her husband pursued her; he burst open the doors, and entered the bedroom, where he found the Lady of Nio and her daughter-in-law, to whom he gave three severe blows each. Mean- while, on hearing the noise, the duchess had hidden under a wash-tub ; a slave betrayed her hiding-place, and the duke struck her over the head with his sword. In the attempt to parry the blow, she seized the blade in her hands, and fell fainting on the ground, where her miserable assailant gave her a thrust in the stomach. She lived the rest of the night and the next day, while the duke fled to his garden, whence he was induced by the citizens to return to the palace. There, as he sat at meat with his son Giovanni, he heard from one of the servants that the people wished to depose him and put Giovanni in his place. In a paroxysm of rage, he seized a knife to kill his son; but his arm was held, and the lad saved himself by leaping from the balcony. The duke tried to escape to Rhodes, but he was seized, after a struggle in which he was wounded, and sent to Santorin. His son Giovanni IV was proclaimed duke, and as he could not have been more than eleven years old — ^his birth is spoken of as imminent* in May 1499— a governor of the duchy was elected in the person of Jacomo Dezia, whom we may identify with Giacomo I Gozzadini, baron of the island of Zia, who is mentioned as being present in the ducal palace at Naxos, in a document^ of 1500, whose family had a mansion there, and who had already been governor in 1507. From Santorin, Prancesco III was removed on a Venetian ship to Candia, where, as we learn from letters of August 15, 1511, he died of fever". • Sanuto, Diarii, viii. 328, 337, 355, 366. I Ibid., XI. 393, 394, 705. 8 Ibid., II. 701. 4 Ibid. '^ Hopf, Gozzadini, apud Ersch und Gruber, op. cit., lxxvi. 425; Lxxxvi. 166. * Sanuto, Diarii, xii. 22, 175, 503. THE DUCHY OF NAXOS 177 Meanwhile, on October 18, 15 10, it had been proposed at Venice that the mad duke's brother-in-law, Antonio Loredano, should be sent as governor to Naxos, with a salary of 400 ducats a year, payable out of the revenues, just as Venetian governors had been sent there during the minority of Francesco III. Loredano sailed on January 16, 1511, for his post, where he remained for four and a half years ^- Naxos, in his time, cannot have been a gloomy exile, for we hear of the "balls and festivals with the accompaniment of very poUshed female society " which greeted the Venetian ambassador *- We do not learn who governed the duchy between July 1515, when Loredano returned to Venice, and the coming of age of Duke Giovanni IV, which seems to have been in May 1517. On May 6 of that year he wrote a letter to the Cretan government, signed Joannes Crispus dux Egeo Pelagi, which Sanuto has preserved^ r and in the same summer il ducha di Nixia, domino Zuan Crespo, was captured by corsairs while hunting, and subsequently ransomed* — an adventure which Hopf, as we have seen, wrongly ascribed to Fran- cesco III. 7. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS ( I 204-1 669) Of all the Levantine possessions acquired by Venice as the result of the Fourth Crusade, by far the most important was the great island of Crete, which she obtained in August, 1204, from Boniface of Montferrat to whom it had been given 15 months earlier by Alexios IV, at the cost of 1000 marks of silver. At that time the population of the island, which in antiquity is supposed to have been a milUon, was probably about 500,000 or 600,000*. Lying on the way to Egypt and Syria, it was an excellent stopping-place for the Venetian merchantmen, and the immense sums of money expended upon its defence prove the value which the shrewd statesmen of the lagoons set upon it. Whether its retention was really worth the enormous loss of blood and treasure which it involved may perhaps be doubted, though in our own days the Concert of Europe has thought fit to spend about thrice the value of the island in the process of freeing it from the Turk. What distinguishes the medieval history of Crete from that of the other Frank possessions in the Near East is the almost constant insubordination of the Cretan population. While in the Duchy of Athens we scarcely hear of any • Sanuto, Diarii, xi. 450, 525, 748; xii. 175; xx. 354, 356, 376. " Ibid., XVII. 35. ' Ibid., xxiv. 380, 384, 387-8. * Ibid., xxiv. 467, 596, 645; XXV. 158, 185. ' Stavrakes, 'ZrananK^ tov ■wK-Qdvaii.ou rrj^KpriT-q^, 1S3 sqq.; Pashley, Travels in Crete, 11. 326. 178 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE restlessness on the part of the Greeks, while in the Principality of Achaia they gave comparatively Httle trouble, while in the Archipelago they seldom murmured against their Dukes — ^in Crete, on the other hand, one insurrection followed another in rapid succession, and the first i6o years of Venetian rule are little else than a record of insurrections. The masters of the island explained this by the convenient theory, appUed in our own time to the Irish, that the Cretans had a double dose of original sin, and the famous verse of Epimenides, to which the New Testament has given undying reputation, must have been often in the mouths of Venetian statesmen. But there were other and more natural reasons for the stubborn resistance of the islanders. After the reconquest of Crete by Nikephoros Phokas, the Byzantine Government had sent thither many members of distinguished military famiUes, and their descendants, the archontes of the island at the time of the Venetian invasion, furnished the leaders for these perennial revolts^- Moreover, the topography of Crete is adniirably suited for guerilla warfare; the combination of an insular with a highland spirit constitutes a double gage of independence, and what the Venetians regarded as a vice the modern Greeks reckon as a virtue. Even before the Venetians had had time to take possession of the island, their great rivals, the Genoese, had estabhshed a colony there, so that it was clear from the outset that Venice was not the only Latin Power desirous of obtaining Crete. The first landing of the Venetians was effected at Spinalonga, where a small colony was founded. But, before the rest of the island could be annexed, a Genoese citizen, Enrico Pescatore, Count of Malta, one of the most daring seamen of his age, had set foot in Crete in 1206 at the instigation of Genoa, and invited the Cretans to join his standard. He easily made himself master of the island, over which he endeavoured to strengthen his hold by the restoration or construction of fourteen fortresses, still remaining, although in ruins. A larger force was then despatched from Venice, which drove out the Maltese adventurer, who appealed to the Pope as a faithful servant of the Church, and continued to trouble the conquerors for some years more^. In 1207 Tiepolo had been appointed the first Venetian Governor, or Duke, as he was styled, of Crete; but it was not tUl the armistice with Genoa in 1212 that the first comprehensive attempt at colonisation was made, and the organisation of a Cretan Government was undertaken. According to the feudal principles then in vogue, 1 Paparregopoulos, 'Iffropta nO 'EXXtjvwoC "Efli-ous, v. 3. Cf. Gerland, Histoire de la Noblesse crUnise au Moyen Age. 2 Cf. Gerola, La dominazione genovese in Creia. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 179 which a century earUer had been adopted for the colonisation of the Holy Land, the island was divided into 132 knights' fiefs (a number subsequently raised to 200, and then to 230) and 48 sergeants' or foot soldiers' fiefs, and volunteers were invited to take them. The former class of lands was bestowed on Venetian nobles, the latter on ordinary citizens; but in both cases the fiefs became the permanent property of the holders, who could dispose of them by will or sale, provided that they bequeathed or sold them to Venetians. The nobles received houses in Candia, the Venetian capital (which now gave its name to the whole island), as well as pasture for their cattle, the State reserving to itself the direct ownership of the strip of coast in which Candia lay, the fort of Temenos and its precincts, and any gold or silver mines that might hereafter be discovered. The division of the island into six parts, or sestieri, was modelled, hke the whole scheme of administration, on the arrangements of the city of Venice, where the sestieri still survive. So close was the analogy between the colonial and the metropolitan divisions that the colonists of each sestiere in Crete sprang from the same sestiere at Venice — a system which stimulated local feeling. At the head of each sestiere an official known as a capitano was placed, while the government of the colony was carried on by a greater and a lesser Council of the colonists, by two Councillors representing the Doge, and by the Duke, who usually held office for two years. The first batch of colonists was composed of twenty-six citizens and ninety-four nobles of the Repubhc, the latter drawn from some of the best Venetian families. But it is curious that, while we stUl find descendants of Venetian houses in the Cyclades and at Corfu, scarcely a trace of them remains in Crete^- As for ecclesiastical matters, always of such paramount importance in the Levant, the existing system was adopted by the newcomers. Candia remained an archbishopric, under which the ten bishoprics of the island were placed; but the churches, with two temporary exceptions, were occupied by the Latin clergy, and that body was required, no less than the laity, to contribute its quota of taxation towards the defence of the capital^. Although we hear once or twice of a Greek bishop in Crete, the usual practice was to allow no orthodox ecclesiastic above the rank of a protopapds to reside at Candia, whUe Greek priests had to seek consecration from the bishops of the nearest Venetian colonies. But, as the Venetian colonists in course of time became Hellenised and embraced the Orthodox faith, the original organisation of the Latin church was ^ Hopf, in Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie, vol. 85, pp. 221-2, 241-3. 312-4; Papaixegopoulos, v. 52. ' Cf. Gerola, Per la Cronotassi dei vescovi cretesi all' epoca veneta; Monumenti veneli neW isola di Creta, Xl. 64, 67. i8o PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE found to be too large, so that, at the time of the Turkish conquest, the Latin Archbishop of Candia with his four suffragans represented Roman Cathohcism in the island, and outside the four principal towns there was scarcely a CathoHc to be found. The division of the island into fiefs naturally caused much bad blood among the natives, who objected to this appropriation of their lands. In I2I2, the same year which witnessed the arrival of the colonists, an insurrection broke out under the leadership of the powerful family of the Hagiostephanitai. The rising soon assumed such serious proportions that Tiepolo called in the aid of Duke Marco I of Naxos, whose duplicity in this connection was narrated in a previous essay. In addition to these internal troubles, the Genoese and Alamanno Costa, Count of Syracuse, an old comrade of the Count of Malta again became active; but the Venetians wisely purchased the acquiescence of the Genoese in the existing state of things by valuable concessions, the chief of which was the recognition of Genoa's former privileges of trade with the Empire of Romania, and imprisoned Costa in an iron cage. From that moment, save for two brief raids in 1266 and 1293, Genoa abandoned the idea of contesting her rival's possession of Crete. In the same year, however, only five years after the first rising, a fresh Cretan insurrection, due to the high-handed action of the Venetian officials, caused the proud Republic of St Mark to admit the necessity of conceding something to the islanders. The ringleaders received a number of knights' fiefs, and became Venetian vassals. But a further distribution of lands in the parts of the island hitherto unconfiscated kindled a new revolt. The rebels, seeing the growth of the Empire of Nice, offered their country to the Emperor Vatatzes if he would come and deliver them, while the Duke summoned the reigning sovereign of Naxos to his aid. The latter with- drew on the approach of the Nicene admiral, who managed to land a contingent in the island. Long after the admiral's departure these men held their own in the mountains, and it was eight years before the Venetians succeeded in suppressing the rising. On the death of Vatatzes, the Cretans seemed to have lost hope of external assistance, and no further attempt was made to throw off the Venetian yoke till after the fall of the Latin Empire of Romania. Meanwhile, in 1252, a fresh scheme of colonisation was carried out; ninety more knights' fiefs were granted in the west of the island, and the town of Canea, the present capital, was founded, on or near the site of the ancient Cydoniai; one half of the new ' See Pashley, 1. 11-17, on this point. He identifies the two places, like Gerola (Mon. ven. 1. 17), who derives the name of Canea from Xaxo^-id ("vegetable garden"), the first syllable being mistaken for the feminine of the article. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS i8i city was reserved to Venice, and the other half became the property of the colonists. After the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks, the value of the island became greater than ever to the Venetians. Three years after that event we find the Doge Zeno writing to Pope Urban IV that " the whole strength of the Empire " lay in Crete, while at the same time the revived of the Greek cause, both on the Bosporos and in the Morea, led to an attack upon it by the Byzantine forces. But Venice had less difficulty in coming to terms with the Emperor than in managing her unruly subjects. In 1268 the Venetian colonists rose under leaders who bore the honoured names of Venier and Gradenigo, demanding complete separa- tion from the mother country. The harsh policy of the Republic towards her colonies was an excuse for this outbreak ; but no further attempt of the kind was made for another hundred years, when the descendants of the Venier and the Gradenigo of 1268 headed a far more serious rebellion. Another Greek rising now followed, this time organised by the brothers Chortatzai, but the Venetians had now succeeded in winning over a party among the Cretans, including Alexios KaUerges, the richest of all the archontes. This man used all his local influence on the side of the Government ; yet even so the rebellion continued for several years, and at times threatened to gain the upper hand. One Venetian Governor was lured into the mountains, surprised, and slain; another was driven behind the walls of Candia, and only saved from capture by the fidelity of the Greek inhabitants of that district. At last adequate reinforce- ments arrived, the Chortatzai were banished from the island, and the castle of Selino was erected to overawe the rebels in their part of the country. Peace then reigned for a few years, and the conciliatory policy of the next Governor earned for him the title of "the good" Duke from the Cretan subjects of the Republic. But the calm was soon disturbed by a fresh outbreak. In 1283 the same Alexios KaUerges who had been so valuable an auxiliary of Venice in the last rising inaugurated a rebeUion which, arising out of the curtailment of his own family privileges, spread to the whole island and lasted for sixteen years. The home Government made the mistake of under-estimating the importance of this movement, which it neglected to suppress at the outset by the despatch of large bodies of men. As usual, the insurgents operated in the mountains, whence the Venetians were unable to dislodge them, while the Genoese laid Canea in ashes in 1293, and tried to establish relations with the insurrectionary chief. But KaUerges was not disposed to exchange the rule of one Itahan State for that of another, and, as he saw at last that he could not shake off the i82 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Venetian yoke single-handed, he came to terms with the Governor. His patriotic refusal of the Genoese offers had excited the admiration of the Venetians, who were ready to make concessions to one whom Genoa could not seduce. He was allowed to keep the fiefs which the Angeloi had granted in the Byzantine days to his family, he was created a knight, and his heirs received permission to intermarry with Venetians — a practice absolutely prohibited as a rule in Venetian colonies. It is pleasant to be able to record that both parties to this treaty kept their word. KaUerges on his death-bed bade his four sons remain true to Venice; one of his grandsons fought in her cause, and his descendants were rewarded with the title of patricians — at that time a rare dis- tinction. These frequent insurrections, combined with the horrors of plague and famine, do not seem to have permanently injured the resources of the island, nor were the ravages of corsairs, fitted out by the Catalans of Attica in the early part of the fourteenth century, felt much beyond the coast. At any rate, in 1320 such was the prosperity of the colony that the Governor was able to remit a large surplus to Venice after defraying the costs of administration. But the harsh policy of the Republic gradually alienated the colonists as well as the natives. A demand for ship-money caused a fresh rebellion of the Greeks in 1333, in which one of the KaUergai fought for, and another of them against, the Venetian Government. Eight years later a member of that famous Cretan family, forgetting the patriotic conduct of his great ancestor, entered into negotiations with the Turks ; but he was invited to a parley by the Venetian Governor, who had him arrested as a traitor and thrown in a sack into the sea. This act of cruelty and treachery had the effect of embittering and prolonging the Cretan resistance, so that the Venetians soon held nothing in the island except the capital and a few castles. At last the arrival of overwhelming reinforcements forced the rebel leader, Michael Psaromelingos, to bid his servant kill him, and the rebellion was over. The death of this chieftain has formed the subject of a modem Greek drama, for the Greeks of the mainland have always admired, and sometimes imitated, the desperate valour of their Cretan brethren. On the Venetians this revolt made so great an impression that the Duke was ordered to admit no Cretan into the Great Council of the island without the special permission of the Doge — an order due as much to the fears of the home Government as to the jealousy of the colonists. But the most significant feature of this insurrection was the apathy of the Venetian vassals in contributing their quota of horses and men for the defence of the island. Somewhat earher, the knights had been compelled, in spite of their vigorous protests, to pay the sum which, by CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 183 the terms of their feudal tenure, they were supposed to expend upon their armed followers, direct to the Exchequer, which took care to see that the money was properly apphed. Many of the poorer among them now found themselves unable to provide the amounts which the Government required, and so became heavily indebted to the Treasury. It was the opinion of Venetian statesmen that Crete should be self- supporting, but it at last became necessary to grant a httle grace to the impoverished debtors, some of whom had shown signs of coquetting with the Turks. Thus the discontented Venetian colonists, who had been bom and trained for the most part in an island which exercises a strong attraction on even foreign residents, found that they had more grievances in common with the Greeks than bonds of union with the city of their ancestors. More than a century and a half had elapsed since the first great batch of colonists had left the lagoons for the great Greek island. Redress had been stubbornly refused, and it only needed a spark to set the whole colony ablaze. In 1362 a new Duke, Leonardo Dandolo, arrived at Candia with orders from the Venetian Senate to demand from the knights a contribu- tion towards the repair of the harbour there. The knights contended that, as the harbour would benefit trade, which was the interest of the Repubhc, while their income was exclusively derived from agriculture, the expense should be borne by the home Government. As the Senate persisted, the whole body of knights rose under the command of two yoimg members of the order, Tito Venier, Lord of Cerigo — the island which afterwards formed part of the Septinsular Republic — and Tito Gradenigo, entered the Duke's palace, and put him and his Councillors in irons. Having arrested all the Venetian merchants whom they could find, the rebels then proclaimed the independence of Crete — how often since then has it not been announced! — appointed Marco Gradenigo, Tito's uncle, Duke, and elected four Councillors from their own ranks. In order to obtain the support of the Greeks they declared that the Roman Catholic ritual had ceased to exist throughout the island, and announced their own acceptance of the Orthodox faith. In token of the new order of things the Venetian insignia were torn down from all the public buildings, and St Mark made way for Titus, the patron saint and first bishop of Crete^. The theological argument was more than the Greeks could resist, and the descendants of Catholic Venetians and Orthodox archontes made common cause against Popery and the tax-collector. When the news reached Venice, it excited the utmost consternation. But, as no sufficient forces were available, the RepubUc resolved to try ^ Zinkeisen. Gesckichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, iv. 6u et sqq. i84 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE what persuasion could effect. A trusty Greek from the Venetian colony of Modon was sent to treat with the Greeks, while five commissioners proceeded to negotiate with the revolutionary Government at Candia. The commissioners were courteously heard ; but when it was found that they were empowered to offer nothing but an amnesty, and that only on condition of prompt submission to the Republic, they were plainly told that the liberty recently won by arms should never be sacrificed to the commands of the Venetian Senate. Nothing remained but to draw the sword, and the home Government had prudently availed itself of the negotiations to begin its preparations, both diplomatic and naval. AU the Powers friendly to Venice, the Pope, the Emperor Charles IV, the King of France, and the Queen of Naples, even Genoa herself, forbade their subjects to trade with the island, and the Pope, alarmed at the apostasy of the colonists, addressed a pastoral to the recalcitrant Cretans. But neither papal arguments nor an international boycott could bend the stubborn minds of the insurgents. It was not till the arrival of the Venetian fleet and army, the latter imder the command of Luchino dal Verme, the friend of Petrarch, who had warned him, with the inevitable allusions to the classic poets and to St Pa;ul, of the "untruthfulness," "craft," and "deceit" of the Cretans, that the movement was crushed. The armament was of considerable size. Italy had been ransacked for soldiers, the Duchy of the Archipelago and Euboea for ships, and Nicolo "Spezzabanda," the regent of Naxos, hastened to assist his Venetian patrons. Candia speedily fell, and then the commissioners who accompanied the miUtary and naval forces proceeded to mete out punishment to the chief insurgents without mercy. Marco GradenigO and two others were beheaded on the platform of the castle, where their corpses were ordered to remain, under penalty of the loss of a hand to any one who tried to remove them. The same bloody and brief assizes were held in Canea and Reth5mino; the most guilty were executed, the less conspicuous were banished. Tito Venier was captured by Venetian ships on the high sea, and paid for his treasonable acts with his head; his accomplice, Tito Gradenigo, managed to escape to Rhodes, but died in exile. The property of the conspirators was confiscated by the State. Great was the joy at Venice when it was known that the insurrection had been suppressed. Three days were given up to thanksgivings and festivities, at which Petrarch was present, and of which he has left an account. Foreign powers congratulated the Repubhc on its success, 'while in Crete itself the new Duke ordered the celebration of May lo CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 185 in each year — the anniversary of the capitulation of Candia — as a public holiday. But the peace, or perhaps we should say desolation, of the island was soon disturbed. Some of the banished colonists combined with three brothers of the redoubtable family of the KaUergai, who proclaimed the Byzantine Emperor sovereign of Crete. This time the Venetian Government sent troops at once to Candia, but hunger proved a more effective weapon than the sword. The inhabitants of Lasithi, where the insurgents had their headquarters, surrendered the ring- leaders rather than starve. Then followed a fresh series of savage sentences, for the RepubUc considered that no mercy should be shown to such constant rebels. While the chiefs were sent to the block, the whole plateau of Lasithi was converted into a desert, the peasants were carried off and their cottages puUed down, and the loss of a foot and the confiscation of his cattle were pronounced to be the penalty of any farmer or herdsman who should dare to sow corn there or to use the spot for pasture. This cruel and ridiculous order was obeyed to the letter; for nearly a century one of the most fertile districts of Crete was allowed to remain in a state of nature, tUl at last in 1463 the urgent requirements of the Venetian fleet compelled the Senate to consent to the recultiva- tion of Lasithi. But as soon as the temporary exigencies of the public service had been satisfied, Lasithi fell once more under the ban, until towards the end of the fifteenth century the plain was placed under the immediate supervision of the Duke and his Councillors. It would be hard to discover any more suicidal policy than this, which crippled the resources of the colony in order to gratify a feeling of revenge. But it has ever been the misfortune of Crete that the folly of her rulers has done everything possible to counteract her natural advantages. A long period of peace now ensued, a peace born not of prosperous contentment but of hopeless exhaustion. The first act of the Repubhc was to substitute for the original oath of fealty, exacted from the colonists at the time of the first great settlement in 1212, a much stricter formiila of obedience. The next was to put up to auction the vacant fiefs of the executed and banished knights at Venice, for it had been resolved that none of those estates should be acqmred by members of the Greek aristocracy. The bidding was not very brisk, for Crete had a bad character on the Venetian exchange, so that, some years later, on the destruction of the castle of Tenedos, the Republic transported the whole population to Candia. There they settled outside the capital in a suburb which, from their old home, received the name of Le Tenedee^. We hear little about Crete during the first half of the fifteenth ' Cornelius, Creta Sacra, 11. 355. i86 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE century, which was so critical a time for the Franks of the mainland. The principal grievance of the colonists at that period seems to have been the arrogance of the Jews, against whom they twice petitioned the Government. It was a Jew, however, who, together with a priest, betrayed to the Duke the plot which had been concocted by a leading Greek of Rethymno in 1453 for the murder of all the Venetian officials on one day, the incarceration of all other foreigners, and the proclama- tion of a Greek prince as sovereign of the island. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in that year, followed as it was by the flight of many Greek famihes to Crete, induced the Venetians to take more stringent precautions against the intrigues of their Cretan subjects. An order was issued empowering the Duke to make away with any suspected Cretans without trial or pubUc inquiry of any kind. We are reminded by this horrible ordinance of the secret commission for the slaughter of dangerous Helots which had been one of the laws of Lycurgus. Nothing could better show the insecurity of Venetian rule, even after two centuries and a half had passed since the conquest. Another incident, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, shows how savage was the punishment meted out to the insurgents, with the approval of the authorities. At that period the Cretans of SeUno, Sphakia, and the Rhiza, not far from the latter place united their forces against their Venetian masters under the leadership of the Pateropouloi clan. The three insurgent districts were formed into an independent RepubUc, of which a leading Greek was chosen Rector. The Venetians of Canea, under the pretext of a wedding feast at the villa of one of their country- men at the charming village of Alikianou, lured the Rector and some fifty of his friends to that place, seized the guests after the banquet, and hanggti or shot him, his son, and many others in cold blood. The remainder of the rebels were rigorously proscribed, and a pardon was granted to those alone who produced at Canea the gory head of a father, a brother, a cousin, or a nephew^. Nor were the foes of Venice only those of her own household. The Turkish peril, which had manifested itself in sporadic raids before the fall of Constantinople, became more pressing after the loss of the Morea. Appeals were made by the inhabitants for reinforcements and arms, and at last, when the capture of Euboea by the Turks had deprived them of that valuable station, the Venetians turned their thoughts to the protection of Crete, and resolved to restore the walls of Candia. Those who saw, Uke the author, those magnificent fortifications before the sea-gate was destroyed by the British troops in 1898, can estimate the strength of the town in the later Venetian period. ^ PasWey, 11. 150-156. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 187 Unfortunately, those ramparts, which afterw'ards kept the Turks at bay for twenty-four years, could not prevent the dreaded Barbarossa's ravages on other parts of the coast. In 1538 that great captain appeared with the whole Turkish fleet — then a very different affair from the wretched hulks of 1898 which were a terror only to their crews — ^landed at Suda Bay, laid all the adjacent country waste, and nearly captured Canea. Thirty years later, this raid was repeated with even greater success, for Rethymno was destroyed, and soon the loss of Cyprus deprived Crete of a bulwark which had hitherto divided the attention of the advancing Turk. Venice was, at length, thoroughly alarmed for the safety of her great possession, and she took the resolve of introducing drastic reforms into the island. With this object an experienced states- man, Giacomo Foscarini, was sent to Crete in 1574 as special commissioner, with full powers to inquire into, and redress, the grievances of the islanders. Foscarini, well aware that his task would be no easy one, endeavoured to excuse hiffiself on private grounds; but his patriotism prevailed over all other considerations, and he set out for Crete with the intention of increasing the resources of the island and at the same time protecting the inhabitants against the oppression of those placed over them. In accordance with this policy, he issued, as soon as he had landed, a proclamation, urging all who had grievances against any Venetian official to come without fear, either openly or in secret, before him, in the certainty of obtaining justice and redress. He then proceeded to study the condition of the country, and it is fortunate that the results of his investigation have been preserved in an official report, which throws a flood of hght on the state of Crete during the latter half of the sixteenth century^. At the time of Foscarini's visit the island was divided up into 479 fiefs, 394 of which belonged to Venetians, who were no longer sub- divided into the two original classes of knights and sergeants, or foot soldiers, but were all collectively known as knights. Of the remaining fiefs, thirty-five belonged to native Cretan famihes, twenty-five to the Latin Church, and twenty-five to the Venetian Government. None of these last three classes paid taxes or yielded service of any sort to the Republic, though a rent was derived from such of the State domains as were let. As might be guessed from the frequent repetition of Cretan insurrections, the condition of the native Cretan aristocracy was one of the most serious problems in the island. When Venice had adopted, somewhat reluctantly, the plan of bestowing fiefs on the Greek leaders, twelve prominent Cretan famihes had been selected, whose descendants, styled archonto- 1 Zinkeisen, iv. 629-723. i88 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE pouloi, or archontoromatoi, f onned a privileged class without obligations of any sort. As time went on, the numbers of these families had increased, till, shortly before Foscarini's visit, they comprised at least 400 souls. But, as the number of the fiefs at their disposal remained the same, a series of subdivisions became necessary, and this led to those continual quarrels, which were the inevitable result of the feudal system all over Greece. A hard and fast hne was soon drawn between the richer "sons of the archontes," who lived a life of idleness and luxury in the towns, and the poorer members of the clan, who sank into the position of peasants on their bit of land, without, however, losing their privileges and their pride of descent. The latter quality involved them in perpetual feuds with rival families equally aristocratic and equally penniless, and the celebrated district of Sphakia, in particular, had even then acquired the evil notoriety for turbulent independence which it preserved down to the end of the nineteenth century. Shortly before Foscarini appeared on the scene, a Venetian commissioner had paid a visit to that spot for the express purpose of chastising the local famUy of the Pateroi, whose hereditary feud with the family of the Papadopouloi of Rethymno had become a public scandal. Both the parties, the latter of whom still has a representative in an Ulustrious family resident at Venice, were of common stock, for both were branches of the ancient Cretan clan of the Skordiloi. But they hated one another with all the bitterness of near relatives; revenge was the most precious heritage of their race; the bloody garment of each victim was treasured up by his family, every member of which wore mourning till his murder had been wiped out in blood; and thus, as in Albania to-day, and in Corsica in the days of Merim6e, there was no end to the chain of assassinations. On this occasion the Sphakiotes, who could well maintain the classic reputation of the Cretan bowmen, were completely crushed by the heavily armed troops of Venice. Their homes were burned to the ground, those who resisted were slain; those who were captured were sent into exile at Corfu, where they mostly died of cruel treatment or home-sickness, the home-sickness which every true Cretan feels for his mountains. The survivors of the clan were forbidden to rebuild their dwellings or to approach within many miles of their beloved Sphakia. The inhospitable valleys and rough uplands became their refuge, and winter and lack of food had been steadily diminishing their numbers when Foscarini arrived at Sphakia to see for himself how things were in that notorious district. Sphakia lies on the south coast of the island, almost exactly opposite the Bay of Suda on the north. Foscarini describes it as consisting of CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 189 "a very weak tower," occupied by a Venetian garrison of eleven men, and a small hamlet built in terraces on the hills. The wildness of the scenery was in keeping, he says, with the wildness of the inhabitants, whose bravery, splendid physique, and agility in climbing the rocks he warmly praises. Their appearance suggested to him a comparison with "the wild Irish," and they have certainly vied with the latter in the trouble which they have given to successive Governments. Their long hair and beards, their huge boots and vast skirts, the dagger, sword, bow and arrows, which every Sphakiote constantly carried, and the unpleasant odour of goats, which was derived from their habit of sleeping in caves among their herds, and which clung to their persons, struck the observant Venetian in a more or less agreeable manner. Yet he remarked that, if they were let alone and not agitated by family feuds, they were a mild and gentle race, and the peasant spokesman of the clan seemed to him one of nature's noblemen. With this man Foscarini came to terms, promising the Pateroi a free pardon, their return to their homes, and the restoration of their villages, on condition that they should furnish men for the Venetian galleys, send a deputation twice a year to Canea, and work once annually on the fortifications of that town. The Sphakiotes loyally kept these conditions during the stay of Foscarini in the island, their district became a model of law and order, while their rivals, the Papadopouloi, were frightened into obedience by the threats of the energetic commissioner. He further organised all the native clans in companies for service in the miUtia under chiefs, or capitani, chosen by him from out of their midst and paid by the local government. This local militia was entrusted with the policing of the island, on the sound principle that a former brigand makes the best policeman. Disobedience or negligence was punished by degradation from the privileged class of free archontopouloi, and thus the military qualities of the Cretans were diverted into a useful channel, and a strong motive provided for their loyalty. Similarly since the union with Greece the Cretans have become excellent constables. The next problem was that of the Venetian knights. It had been the original intention of the Republic that none of their fiefs should pass into Greek hands. But as time went on many of the colonists had secretly sold their estates to the natives, and had gone back to Venice to spend the proceeds of the sale in luxurious idleness. When Foscarini arrived, he found that many even of those Venetians who remained in Crete had become Greek in dress, manners, and speech. More than sixty years earlier we hear complaints of the lack of Catholic priests and of the consequent indifference of the colonists to the reUgion of their fore- igo PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE fathers, so that we are not surprised to hear Foscarini deploring the numerous conversions of the Venetians in the country districts to the Orthodox faith through the want of Latin churches. In the town of Candia, where the nobles were better off, they stiU remained strict Cathohcs, and this difference of religion marked them off from the Orthodox people; but their wives had adopted Oriental habits, and Uved in the seclusion which we associate with the daily life of women in the East. In Canea, which was a more progressive place than the capital, things were a httle more hopeful, but even there education was almost entirely neglected. In the country, owing to the subdivision of fiefs, many of the smaller Venetian proprietors had sunk to the condition of peasants, retaining neither the language nor the chivalrous habits of their ancestors, but only the sonorous names of the great Venetian houses whence they sprang. All the old martial exercises, on which the Republic had reUed for the defence of the island, had long fallen into abeyance. Few of the knights could afford to keep horses ; few could ride them. When they were smnmoned on parade at Candia, they were wont to stick some of their labourers on horseback, clad in their own armour, to the scandal of the Government and the amusement of the spectators, who would pelt these improvised horsemen with bad oranges or stones. Another abuse arose from the possession of one estate by several persons, who each contributed a part of the horse's equipment which the estate was expected to furnish. Thus the net result of the feudal arrangements in Crete at this period was an impoverished nobihty and an utterly inadequate system of defence. Foscarini set to work to remedy these evils with great courage. He proceeded to restore the old feudal mihtary service, with such altera- tions as the times required. He announced that neglect of this public duty would be punished by confiscation of the vassal's fief; he abolished the combination of several persons for the equipment of one horse, but ordered that the small proprietors should each provide one of the cheap but hardy httle Cretan steeds, leaving the wealthier knights to furnish costlier animals. By this means he created a chivalrous spirit among the younger nobles, who began to take pride in their horses, and 1200 horsemen were at the disposal of the State before he left the island. He next turned his attention to the remedy of another abuse — the excessive growth of the native Cretan aristocracy owing to the issue of patents of nobihty by corrupt officials. StiU worse was the reckless bestowal of privileges, such as exemptions from personal service on the galleys and from labour on the fortifications, upon Cretans of humble origin, or even upon whole communities. The latter practice was specially objectionable. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS igt because the privileged communities exercised a magnetic attraction upon the peasants of other districts, who flocked into them, leaving the less favoured parts of the island almost depopulated. Quite apart from this cause, the diminution of the population, which at the time of the Venetian conquest was about half a miUion, but had sunk to 271,489 shortly before Foscarini's arrival, was sufiiciently serious. It is obvious that in ancient times , Crete with its ' ' ninety cities ' ' must have supported a large number of inhabitants; but the plagues, famines, and earth- quakes of the sixteenth century had lessened the population, already diminished by Turkish raids and internal insurrections. In 1524 no fewer than 24,000 persons died of the plague, and the Jews alone were an increasing body. Against them Foscarini was particularly severe; he regarded the fair Jewesses of Candia as the chief cause of the moral laxity of the young nobles; he absolutely forbade Christians to accept service in Jewish famiUes; and nowhere was his departure so welcome as in the Ghetto of Candia. The peasants, on the other hand, regarded him as a benefactor; for their lot, whether they were mere serfs or whether they tilled the land on condition of paying a certain proportion of the produce, was by no means enviable. The serfs, or fdroikoi, were mostly the descendants of the Arabs who had been enslaved by Nike- phoros Phokas, and who could be sold at the will of their masters. The free peasants were overburdened with compulsory work by the Govern- ment, as well as by the demands of their lords. In neither case was Foscarini sure that he had been able to confer any permanent benefit upon them. At least, he had followed the maxim of an experienced Venetian, that the Cretans were not to be managed by threats and punishments. He concluded his mission by strengthening the two harbours of Suda and Spinalonga, by increasing the numbers and pay of the garrison, by improving the Cretan fleet and the mercantile marine, and by restoring equilibrium to the budget. The Levantine possessions of Venice cost her at this period more than they brought in, and it was the desire of the Repubhc that Crete, should, at any rate, be made to pay expenses. With this object, Foscarini regulated the currency, raised the tariff in such a way that the increased duties feU on the foreign consumer, saw that they were honestly collected, and endeavoured to make the island more productive. But in all his reforms the commissioner met with stubborn resistance from the vested interests of the Venetian ofiicials and the fanaticism of the Orthodox clergy, always the bitterest foes of Venice in the Levant. In deaUng with the latter, Foscarini saw that strong measures were necessary; he persuaded his Government to banish the 192 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE worst agitators, and to allow the others to remain only on condition that they behaved weU. Then, after more than four years of labour, he returned to Venice, where he was thanked by the Doge for his eminent services. He had been, indeed, as his monument in the Carmehte church there says, " Dictator of the island of Candia " ; but even his heroic policy did "but skin and film the ulcerous place." Not ten years after his departure we find another Venetian authority, Giuho de Garzoni, writing of the tyranny of the knights and officials, the misery of the natives, the disorder of the administration, and the continued agitation of the Greek clergy among the peasantry. So desperate had the latter become that there were many who preferred even the yoke of the Sultan to that of the CathoHc Republic^- The population of the island, which Foscarini had estimated at 219,000, had sunk in this short space of time to about 176,000. Numbers of Cretans had emigrated to Constantinople since Foscarini left, where they formed a large portion of the men employed in the Turkish arsenal, and where the information which they gave to the Turks about the weakness of the Cretan garrison and forts filled the Venetian representatives with alarm. Yet Venice seemed powerless to do more for the oppressed islanders; indeed, she incKned rather to the Machiavellian policy of Fra Paolo Sarpi, who advised her to treat the Cretans hke wild beasts, upon whom humanity would be only thrown away, and to govern the island by maintaining constant ernnity between the barbarised colonists and the native barbarians. "Bread and the stick, that is all that you ought to give them." Such a policy could only prevail so long as Venice was strong enough to defend the colony, or wise enough to keep at peace with the Sultan. The latter poUcy prevailed for nearly three-quarters of a century after the peace between Venice and the Porte in 1573, and during that period we hear Uttle of Crete. The quaint traveller Lithgow^, who visited it in the first decade of the seventeenth century, alludes to a descent of the Turks upon Rethymno in 1597, when that town was again sacked and burned; and he remarks, as Plato had done in The Laws, that he never saw a Cretan come out of his house unarmed. He found a Venetian garrison of 12,000 men in the island, and reiterates the preference of the Cretans for Turkish rule, on the ground that they would have "more liberty and less taxes." But while he was disappointed to find no more than four cities in an island which in Homer's day had contained ninety, he tells us that Canea had "ninety-seven palaces," and he waxes eloquent over the great fertility of the country near Suda. ^ Pashley, 11. 285. " The Mall discourse (ed. 1906), pp. 70-83. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 193 It is curious to find, nearly three centuries ago, that Suda bay was eagerly coVeted by a foreign potentate, the King of Spain, of whose designs the astute Venetians were fully aware, and whose overtures they steadily dechned. The time had now arrived when the Cretans were to realise their desires, and exchange the Venetian for the Turkish rule. The Ottoman sultans had long meditated the conquest of the island, and two recent events had infuriated Ibrahim I against the Venetians. The Near East was at that time cursed with a severe outbreak of piracy, in which there was Uttle to choose between Christians and Mussulmans. While the Venetians had chased some Barbary corsairs into the Turkish harbour of Valona, on the coast of Albania, and had injured a minaret with their shots, they had allowed a Maltese squadron, which had captured the nurse of the Sultan's son, to sail into a Cretan harbour with its booty. The fury of the Sultan, whose affection for his son's nurse was well known, was not appeased by the apologies of the Venetian representative. Great preparations were made for an expedition against Crete, and Ibrahim constantly went down to the arsenals to urge on the workmen. AU over the Turkish empire the word went forth to make ready. The forests of the Morea were felled to furnish palisades, the naval stores of Chalkis were emptied to supply provisions for the troops. AU the time the Grand Vizier kept assuring the Venetian bailie that these gigantic efforts were directed not against the Republic, but against the knights of Malta. In vain the Mufti protested against this act of deception, and pleaded that, if war there must be against Venice, at least it might be open. The Capitan-Pasha and the war party sUenced any religious scruples of the Sultan, and the Mufti was told to mind his own business. As soon as the truth dawned upon the Venetians they lost no time in preparing to meet the Turks. Andrea Comaro, the new Governor of Crete, hastily strengthened the fortifications of Candia and of the island at the mouth of Suda bay, while the home Government sent messages for aid to every friendly State, from Spain to Persia, with but little result. The Great Powers were then at each other's throats; France was quarrelling with Spain, Germany was stiU in the throes of the Thirty Years' War, England was engaged in the struggle between King and ParUament, and it was thought that the English wine trade would benefit by the Turkish conquest of Crete. Besides, the downfall of the Levantine commerce of Venice was regarded with equanimity by our Turkey merchants, and the Venetians accused us of seUing munitions of war to the infidel. It was remarked, too, that Venice, of all States, was the least entitled to expect Christendom to arm in her defence, for no M. 13 194 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE other Government had been so ready to sacrifice Christian interests in the Levant when it suited her purpose. Only the Pope and a few minor States promised assistance. In 1645 the Turkish fleet sailed with sealed orders for the famous bay of Navarino. Then the command was given to arrest aU Venetian subjects, including the Repubhc's representative at Constantinople, and the Turkish commander, a Dalmatian renegade, set sail for Crete. Landing without opposition to the west of Canea, he proceeded to besiege that town, whose small but heroic garrison held out for two months before capitulating. The principal churches were at once converted into mosques; but the losses of the Turks during the siege, and the Uberal terms which their commander had felt bound to offer to the besieged, cost him his head. At Venice great was the consternation at the loss of Canea; enormous pecuniary sacrifices were demanded of the citizens, and titles of nobUity were sold in order to raise funds for carrying on the war. Meanwhile, an attempt to create a diversion by an attack upon Patras only served to exasperate the Turks, who became masters of Rethymno in 1646, and in the spring of 1648 began that memorable siege of Candia which was destined to last for more than twenty years. Even though Venice sued for peace, and offered to the Sultan Parga and Tenos^, as well as a tribute, in return for the restoration of Canea and Rethymno, the Turks remained obdurate, and were resolved at all costs to have the island, "even though the war should go on for a hundred years." And indeed it seemed likely to be prolonged indefinitely. The substitution of Mohammed IV for Ibrahim I as Sultan, and the consequent confusion at the Turkish capital, made it difficult for the Turks to carry on the struggle with the vigour which they had shown at the outset. The Venetian fleet waited at the entrance of the Dardanelles to attack Turkish convoys on their way to Crete, while the Ottoman provision- stores at Volo and Megara were burned. But these successes outside of the island delayed, without preventing, the progress of the Turkish arms. In fact, the Venetian forays in the Archipelago, notably at Paros and Melos, had the effect of embittering the Greeks against them, and, as a Cretan poet wrote, the islanders had to suffer, whichever side they took. In Crete itself, an ambitious Greek priest persuaded the Porte to have him appointed Metropohtan of the island, and to allow him to name seven suffragans. The Cretan mihtia refused to fight, and even the warlike Sphakiotes, under the leadership of a Kallerges, did little beyond cutting off a few Turkish stragglers. At last they yielded to the Turks. » Zinkeisen, iv. 789, 808. Like the British Government in 1819, the Turks did not know what Parga was. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 195 whose humane treatment of the Greek peasants throughout the island, combined with the unpopularity of the Latin rule, frustrated the attempt to provoke a general rising of the Cretans against the invaders. Nor was a small French force, which Cardinal Mazarin at last sent to aid the Venetians, more successful. Both sides were, in fact, equally hampered and equally unable to obtain a decisive victory; the Venetian fleet at the islet of Standia, and the Turkish army in the fortress of New Candia, which it had erected, kept watching one another, while year after year the wearisome war dragged on. Then, in 1666, a new element was introduced into the conflict. The Grand Vizier, Ahmed Koprili, landed in Crete, resolved to risk his head upon the success of his attempt to take Candia^. For two years and a half Koprili patiently besieged the town, with an immense expenditure of ammunition and a great loss of hfe. Worse and worse grew the condition of the garrison, which was commanded by the brave Francesco Morosini, who was destined later on to inflict such tremendous blows upon the Turks in the Morea. A ray of hope illumined the doomed fortress when, in June 1669, a force of 8000 French soldiers under the Due de Navailles, and fifty French vessels under the Due de Beaufort, arrived in the harbour, sent by Louis XIV, at the urgent prayer of Pope Clement IX, to save this bulwark of Catholicism. But these French auxiliaries met with no success. Four days after their arrival, the Due de Beaufort fell in a saUy outside the walls 2. His colleague, the Due de Navailles, soon lost heart, and sailed away to France, leaving the garrison to its fate. His departure was the turning- point in the siege. The houses were riddled with shots, the churches were in ruins, the streets were strewn with splinters of bombs and bullets, every day diminished the number of the defenders, and sickness was raging in the town. Then Morosini saw that it was useless to go on fighting. He summoned a council of war, and proposed that the garrison should capitulate. A few desperate men opposed his proposition, saying that they would rather blow up the place and die, as they had fought, like heroes among its ruins. But Morosini's opinion prevailed, the white flag was hoisted on the ramparts, and two plenipotentiaries — one of them an Englishman, Colonel Thomas Anand — ^were appointed to settle the terms of capitulation with the Grand Vizier, who was represented at the conference by a Greek, Panagiotes Nikouses, the first of his race who became Grand Dragoman of the Porte ^- KopriU insisted upon the 1 To this period belongs the fountain at Candia, described by Pashley (i. 203), and still standing. An inscription on it states that it was erected by Antonio Priuli in 1666, "when the war had been raging for four lustres." ^ Zinkeisen, iv. 992. ' Paparregopoulos, v. 552. 13 — 2 196 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE complete cession of Crete, with the exception of the three fortresses of Suda, Spinalonga, and Grabusa, with the small islands near them; but he showed his appreciation of the heroic defence of Candia by allowing the garrison to march out with all the honours of war. On September 27 the keys of the town were handed to him on a silver dish, and on the same day, the whole population, except six persons, left the place. There, at least, the Greeks preferred exile to Turkish rule, and one of KopriU's first acts was to induce fresh inhabitants to come to the deserted town by the promise of exemption from taxes for several years. The cost of this siege, one of the longest in history, "Troy's rival," as Byron called it^, had been enormous. The Venetians, it was calculated, had lost 30,985 men, and the Turks 118,754, and the Repubhc had spent 4,253,000 ducats upon the defence of this one city. Some idea of the miseries inflicted by this long war of a quarter of a century may be formed from the fact that the population of Crete, which had risen to about 260,000 before it began, was estimated by the Enghsh traveller Randolph, eighteen years after the Turkish conquest, at only 80,000, of whom 30,000 were Turks. Even before the siege it had been said that Crete cost far more than it was worth, and from the pecuniary stand- point the loss of the island was a blessing in disguise. But a cession of territory cannot be measured by means of a balance-sheet. The prestige of the Republic had been shattered, her greatest possession in the Levant had been torn from her, and once more the disunion of the Western Powers had been the Turk's opportunity. Both the parties to the treaty were accused of having concluded an unworthy peace. Every successful Turkish commander has enemies at home, who seek to undermine his influence; but Koprili was strong enough to keep his place. Morosini, less fortunate, was, indeed, acquitted of the charges of bribery and malversation brought against him, but he was not employed again for many years, untU he was called upon to take a noble revenge for the loss of Candia. Venice did not retain her three remaining Cretan fortresses indefinitely. Grabusa was betrayed by its venal commander to the Turks in 1691 ; Suda and Spinalonga were captured in 1715 during the Turco- Venetian War, and the Treaty of Passarovitz confirmed their annexation to Turkey". So, after 465 years, the Venetian domination came to an end. From the Roman times to the present day no government has lasted so long in that restless island; and the winged lion on many a buflding, the old 1 Childe Harold, TV. 14. " Von Hammer, Geschichte des osmanischen Retches, vi. 573, vii. 182; Tourne- fort. Voyage du Levant, 1. 62. CRETE UNDER THE VENETIANS 197 galley arches on the left of the port of Candia, and the chain of Venetian fortresses, of which Prof. Gerola has given a detailed description in his great work, Venetian Monuments in the island of Crete, remind us of the bygone rule of the great repubUc. But the traveller will inquire in vain for the descendants of those Venetian colonists whose names have been preserved in the archives at Venice. Rather than remain in Crete, most of them emigrated to Corfu or to the ^gean islands, or else returned to Venice — ^reluctantly, we may be sure, for Crete has ever exercised a strange fascination on all who have dwelt there. Now that Crete is once more emancipated from the Turk, it is possible to compare the Venetian and the Ottoman rule, and even Greeks themselves, no lovers of the Latins in the Levant, have done justice to the merits of the Republic of St Mark. The yoke of Venice was at times heavy, and her hand was relentless in crushing out rebellion. But a Greek writer of eminence has admitted that the Venetian administration in Crete was not exceptionally cruel, if judged by the low standard of humanity in that period^. Some persons, on the strength of certain striking instances of ferocious punishment inflicted on those who had taken part in the Cretan risings^, have pronounced the Venetians to have been worse than the Turks. But in our own day the Germans, who boast of their superior education, have exterminated the inhabi- tants of a South Sea island as vengeance for the murder of one missionary and have incited the Turks to massacre the Armenians. It should be reckoned to the credit of Venice that she, at least, did not attack the reUgion, or attempt to proscribe the language, of her Greek subjects, but sternly repelled the proselytising zeal of the Papacy, so that the Orthodox Church gained more followers than it lost. The permission accorded in Crete to mixed marriages tended to make the children of the Venetian colonists good Cretans and luke-warm Cathohcs, where they did not go over to the Orthodox creed. The Greeks were given a share in the administration, trade was encouraged, and many of the natives amassed large fortunes. At no time in the history of the island was the export of wine so considerable as during the Venetian occupation. So great was the wine trade between Crete and England that Henry VIII appointed in 1522 a certain merchant of Lucca, resident in the island, as first English Consul there — ^the beginning of our consular service. Various travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries allude to this traffic, and Ben Jonson, in his play of The Fox, talks of " rich Candian wine" as a special vintage. In return, we sent woollens to the islanders, till the French managed to supplant us* Nor was learning neglected * Stavrakes, 138 sqq. ' Pashley, ii. 150-156. ' Ibid. I. 54. 198 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE under the Venetians. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced many Cretans of distinction, among them Pope Alexander V. One became a famous engineer, two others gained renown as printers at Venice and Rome; a great Cretan artist, Domenicos Theotokopoulos, obtained undying fame at Madrid under the name of "El Greco"; one Cretan author edited the Moral Treatises of Plutarch; another, Joannes Bergikios, wrote a history of his native island in Itahan. We have two poems in Greek by the Cretans Bouniales and Skleros upon the war of Candia^- It was a Cretan of Venetian origin, Vincenzo Comaro, who wrote the romance of Erotokritos, which was "the most popular reading of the Levant from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century," and in which Herakles, "king of Athens," his lovely daughter Aretousa, and her lover Erotokritos are the principal figures, amidst a crowd of princelets obviously modelled on the Frankish dukes and marquesses of mediaeval Greece. Other noveUsts were produced by the island, but when Crete fell all the lettered Cretans left, and with their departure the romantic spirit in Kterature, which they had imbibed from the West, ceased^- A Greek school had been founded at Candia in 1550, and many young Cretans went to Italy for purposes of study^. Markos Mousouros, the Cretan scholar, was buried in Sta Maria della Pace in Rome in 15 17 ; another Cretan, Skouphos, pubhshed his Rhetoric at Venice, in 1681. Compared with the present day, when the island has just emerged from the deadening effect of 229 yeeirs of Turkish rule, its civilisation was materially more advanced in Venetian times. The Venetians made roads, bridges, and aqueducts; the Turks created nothing, and allowed the former means of communication to decay. Yet, as we have seen, Venice was never popular with the Cretans, and the reason is perfectly obvious to those who have observed the Greek character. Be the material advantages of foreign domination never so great, the Greek resents being governed by those of another race and creed, especially if that creed be Roman Catholicism. The history of the Ionian Islands under the British Protectorate, of Cyprus under the existing arrangement, of the Morea under the Venetians, of Athens and of Naxos under the Latin dukes, all point the same moral. The patriotic Greek would rather be free than prosperous, and most Greeks, though sharp men of business, are warm patriots. That is the lesson of Venetian rule in Crete— a lesson which Europe, after the agony of a century of insurrections, at last took to heart bygrantingtheCretans autonomy — now become union with Greece. 1 Sathas.'EXXi/i'i/toi'AK^/tSora, 11., TovpoKpaTovfiivti'EWas, 222-300; Kpr)TiK6v Qiarpov, which includes a comedy, a pastoral tragi-comedy, a tragedy and an imitation of Simeon's Zeno. 2 Paparregopoulos, v. 636-38. » Stavrakes, 139-41. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 199 8. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE On their way from Venice to Constantinople the soldiers of the fourth crusade cast anchor at Corfu, which (as modern Corfiote historians think) had lately been recovered from the Genoese pirate Vetrano by the Byzantine government, and was at that time, in the language of the chronicler ViUehardouin, "very rich and plenteous." In the deed of partition the Ionian islands were assigned to the Venetians ; but they did not find Corfu by any means an easy conquest. The natives, combining with their old master, Vetrano, ousted the Venetian garrison, and it was not tiU he had been defeated in a naval battle and hanged with a number of his Corfiote supporters that the Republic was able to occupy the island. Even then the Venetian government, finding it impossible to administer directly all the vast territories which had suddenly come into its possession, granted the island in fiefs to ten Venetian citizens on condition that they should garrison it and should pay an annual rent to the Republic. The rights of the Greek church were to be respected, and the taxes of the loyal islanders were not to be raised^. But this first Venetian domination of Corfu was of brief duration. When Michael I Angelos founded the Despotat of Epeiros the attraction of a neighbouring Greek state proved too much for the Corfiotes, who threw off the Latin yoke and willingly became his subjects. A memorial of his rule may still be seen in the splendidly situated castle of Sant' Angelo, whose ruins rise high above the waters of the Ionian Sea not far from the beautiful monastery of Palaiokastrizza^. Corfu prospered greatly under the Despots of Epeiros. They took good care to ratify and extend the privileges of the church, to grant exemptions from taxation to the priests, and to reduce the burdens of the laity to the smallest possible figure. In this they showed their wisdom, for the church became their warmest ally, and a Corfiote divine was one of the most vigorous advocates of his patron in the ecclesiastical and political feud between the rival Greek empires of Nice and Salonika. But after httle more than half a century of Orthodox rule the island passed into the possession of the Cathohc Angevins. Michael II of Epeiros, yielding to the exigencies of poHtics, had given his daughter in marriage to the iU-starred Manfred of Sicily, to whom she brought Corfu as a part of her dowry. Upon the death of Manfred at the battle of Benevento the powerful SicUian admiral Chinardo, who had governed it for his master, occupied the island until he was murdered by the inhabitants at the ^ Mustoxidi, Delle Cose Corciresi, pp. 399 and vi. * Ibid. p. 401. 200 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE instigation of Michael. The crime did not, however, profit the crafty Despot. The national party in Corfii endeavoured, indeed, to restore the island to the rule of the Angeloi; but Chinardo's soldiers, under the leadership of a baron named Aleman, successfully resisted the agitation. As the defeat of Manfred had led to the establishment of Charles of Anjou as king of Naples and Sicily, and as they were a small foreign garrison in the midst of a hostile population, they thought it best to accept that powerful prince as lord of the island. By the treaty of Viterbo the fugitive Latin emperor, Baldwin II, ceded to Charles any rights over it which he might possess, and thus in 1267 the Angevins came into possession of Corfu, though Aleman was allowed to retain the fortresses of the place until his deathi. For more than five centuries the Latin race and the CathoUc religion predominated there. The Angevin rule, as might have been anticipated from its origin, ». as especially intolerant of the Orthodox faith. Charles owed his crown to the Pope, and was anxious to repay the obligation by propagating CathoUcism among his Orthodox subjects. The Venetians, as we saw, had enjoined the tolerance of the Greek church during their brief period of domination, so that now for the first time the islanders learnt what religious persecution meant. The Metropolitan of Corfu, whose office had been so greatly exalted by the Despots of Epeiros, was deposed, and in his room a less dignified ecclesiastic, called "chief priest" {fieya<; ■n-pcoTOTraTrd'i), was substituted. The title of "Archbishop of Corfu" was now usurped by a Latin priest, and the principal churches were seized by the Cathohc clergy 2. In the time of the Angevins too the Jews, who stiU flourish there almost alone in Greece, made their first appearance in any numbers in Corfu, and first found protectors there; but the injunctions of successive sovereigns, bidding the people treat them well, would seem to show that this protection was seldom efficacious*. The government of the island was also reorganised. An official was appointed to act as viceroy with the title of captain, and the country was divided into four baihwicks. Many new fiefs were assigned, while some that already existed were transferred to Itahans and Proven9als. The Sicihan Vespers, which drove the house of Anjou from Sicily and handed that kingdom over to the rival house of Aragon, indirectly '■ Mustoxidi, p. 441. Aleman belonged to a family from Languedoc, which received the barony of Patras after the Frank conquest of the Morea, and whose name is stiU borne by the bridge near Thermopylae, the scene of the heroic fight of 1821. " Idromenos, XwoTTmii 'I(TTopia ttj^ KepKipas, p. 68. There is, however, a document of Philip II of Taranto in favour of the Greek clergy : Marmora, Delia Historia di Corfu, p. 223. ' Romanos, 'H '^§paCK^ Komdrrj^ t^s KepKupas, Mustoxidi, pp. 445-50. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 201 affected the fortunes of Corfu. The Corfiotes did not, indeed, imitate the SiciUans and massacre the French; but their connexion with the Angevins now exposed them to attack from the Aragonese fleets. Thus the famous Roger de Lluria burnt the royal castle and levied blackmail upon the inhabitants. Another Roger, the terrible Catalan leader, De Flor, ravaged the fertile island in one of his expeditions; yet, in spite of these incursions, we find the condition of Corfu half a century later to have been far superior to that of the neighbouring lands. The fact that the dfligent research of the local historians has brought to Hght so little information about the Angevin period in itself proves that, in that generally troubled time, Corfu enjoyed tranquillity. Beyond the names of its sovereigns, Charles II of Naples, PhUip I, Robert, and Phihp II of Taranto, Catherine of Valois and Marie de Bourbon, we know httle about the island from the time when Charles II, reserving to himself the overlordship, transferred it as a fief in 1294 to his fourth son, the first of those princes, down to the death of Philip II in 1373. It then experi- enced the evils of a disputed succession, and, as it espoused the cause of Queen Joanna I of Naples, it was attacked by the Navarrese mercenaries, who were in the pay of the rival candidate, Jacques de Baux, and who afterwards played so important a part in the Morea. When Joanna lost her crown and hfe at the hands of Charles III of Durazzo, the latter obtained Corfu, and, with the usual kindness of usurpers insecure on their thrones, he confirmed the fiscal privileges which the Angeloi had granted to the Corfiotes in the previous century 1. But after his violent death four years later, in 1386, the dechne of the Angevin dynasty and the unsettled condition of the east of Europe caused the islanders to turn their eyes in the direction of the only power which could protect them. Venice indeed had never forgotten her brief possession of Corfu: she had long been scheming how to recover so desirable a naval station, and her consul encouraged the Venetian party in the island. There was also a Genoese faction there, but its attempt to hold the old castle failed, and on May 28, 1386, the Corfiotes hoisted the standard of St Mark. Six envoys — one of them, it is worth noting, a Jewish representative of the considerable Hebrew community — ^were appointed to offer the island to the Republic upon certain conditions, the chief of which were the confirmation of the privileges granted by the Angevins, a declaration that Venice would never dispose of the place to any other power, and a promise to maintain the existing system of fiefs. On June 9 a second document was drawn up, reiterating the desire of the islanders, " or the greater and saner part of them," to put themselves under the shelter ' Mustoxidi, p. 452. 202 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE of the Republic. Since the death of Charles III, they said, "the island has been destitute of aU protection, while it has been coveted by jealous neighbours on every, side and almost besieged by Arabs and Turks." Wherefore, " considering the tempest of the times and the instabihty of human affairs," they had resolved to elect Miani, the Venetian admiral, captain of the island, and he had entered the city without the least disturbance. The castle of Sent' Angelo held out for a time in the name of Ladislaus, king of Naples; but the transfer of the island was effected practically without bloodshed. On its side the Venetian government readily agreed to the terms of the six Corfiote envoys, but thought it prudent to purchase the acquiescence of the king of Naples in this transaction. Accordingly in 1402 the sum of 30,000 gold ducats was paid to him for the island, and the Venetian title was thus made doubly sure^- For 411 years the Hon of St Mark held unbroken possession of Corfu. Meanwhile the fate of the other Ionian islands had been somewhat different, and they only gradually passed beneath the Venetian sway. Paxo, the baronial fief of the successive families of Malerba, Sant' Ippolito and AltavUla, was, indeed, joined politically with Corf 11, from which it is so short a distance, but Cephalonia, Zante, and Ithake had fallen about the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople into the hands of a roving crusader or pirate — the terms were then identical — named Majo, or Matthew, a member of the great Orsini clan and son-in-law of the Sicilian Admiral Margaritone, who styled himself count palatine of the islands, though he recognised the supremacy of Venice. Stricken with pangs of conscience for his sins, he atoned for them by placing his possessions under the protection of the Pope, who made short work of the Orthodox bishops and put the islands under a single Latin ecclesiastic. Majo did fealty to Geoffroy I de Villehardouin of Achaia, and the islands were thenceforth reckoned as a vassal state of that principahty. His- torians have narrated the horrible crimes of the descendants of Count Majo in describing the stormy history of Epeiros, and so terrible was the condition of the islands when John of Gravina set out to claim the principahty of Achaia that he had no difficulty in occupying them as dependencies of that state. A few years later, in 1333, an arrangement was made by which they were united with Achaia and Corfu under the Angevin sceptre. But Robert of Taranto subsequently separated them in 1357 from the latter island by conferring them upon Leonardo Tocco of Benevento, who also became in 1362 duke of Santa Maura, an island whose history during the thirteenth and part of the fourteenth centuries ' Mustoxidi, pp. 456-64, Ix-lxxii. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 203 is buried in the deepest obscurity. It appears to have belonged to the Despots of Epeiros down to a httle before the year 1300, when it is mentioned as a part of the county of Cephalonia. Captured by young ' Walter of Brienne in his expedition to Greece in 1331, it was by him bestowed on the Venetian family of Zorzi in 1355. The Turks took the four islands of Cephalonia, Ithake, Zante, and Santa Maura from the Tocchi in 1479, and the attempt of Antonio Tocco to recover his brother's dominions ended in his murder at the hands of the lonians. By arrangement with the Sultan the Venetians, who had expelled Antonio's forces, handed Cephalonia over to the Turks in 1485, but kept Zante, which thus, from 1482 onwards, was governed by them, on payment of an annual tribute of 500 ducats to the Turkish treasury^. This tribute ceased in 1699, when the treaty of Carlovitz formally ceded the island, free of payment, to the RepubHc. The Venetians invited colonists to emigrate thither, in order to fill up the gaps in the population; for the Turks had carried off many of the inhabitants to Constantinople, for the purpose of breeding mulatto slaves for the seragUo by intermarriage with negroes. As there were many homeless exiles at the time, in consequence of the Turkish conquests in the Levant, there was no lack of response to this invitation, and Zante soon became a flourishing community. Its wealth was further increased, in the sixteenth century, by the introduction of the currant from the neighbourhood of Corinth, so that at that period it merited its poetic title of "the flower of the Levant." Cephalonia did not long remain in Turkish hands. After two futile attempts to take it the Venetians succeeded, in 1500, with the aid of the famous Spanish commander, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, in capturing the island, and at the peace of 1502-3 the RepubHc was finally confirmed in its possession, which was never afterwards disturbed. Ithake seems to have followed the fate of its larger neighbour. Santa Mamra^, however, though taken two years after Cephalonia, was almost at once restored to the Turks, and did not become Venetian till its capture by Morosini in 1684, which was ratified by the treaty of Carlovitz fifteen years later. It had long been a thorn in the side of the Venetians, as it was, under the Turkish 1 Finlay, v. 62; Sathas, M.vrifii.eia"E\\TivLKTJs 'la-roplas, i. 315. ^ This mediasval name, "the black saint," applied first to a fortress, then to a chapel on the site of the fortress, then (like Negroponte) to the whole island, is said by Saint-Sauveur ( Voyage Historique, Littiraire et Pitioresque, 11. 339) to have come in with the Tocchi, and to be derived from the black image of the Virgin in the cathedral at Toledo. It occurs, however, in a Neapolitan document of 1343, a Venetian document of 1355, and a Serbian golden bull of 1361 and is mentioned in the French version of the Chronicle of the Morea, probably written between 1333 and 1341. It has now been officially superseded by the classic Levkas. 204 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE rule, a dangerous nest of pirates, against whom the Corfiotes more than once fitted out punitive expeditions. When Santa Maura was reluctantly given back to the Sultan in 1503, part of the population emigrated to Ithake, then almost desolate^, and at the same time Cephalonia received an influx of Greeks from the Venetian possessions on the main- land which the Turks had just taken. Kythera, or Cerigo, which is not geographically an Ionian island at all, and is no longer connected with the other six, was the property of the great Venetian family of Venier, which traced its name and origin from Venus, the goddess of Kythera, from 1207, with certain interruptions and modifications, down to the fall of the Republic. These Venetian Marquesses of Cerigo were ousted by the Greeks under Licario after the restoration of Byzantine rule in the South of the Peloponnese in 1262. The Emperor bestowed the island upon Paul Monoyannes, a member of one of the three great Monem- vasiote famihes, but in 1309 intermarriage between the children of the Greek and Latin lords restored it to the Venieri, who divided it up into twenty-four shares. But the participation of the Venieri in the Cretan insurrection of 1363 led to the transformation of their island into a Venetian colony. Thirty years later, however, thirteen out of the twenty- four shares were restored to them, while the Venetian Governor was dependent upon the Cretan administration, so long as Crete remained Venetian, and upon the Government of the Morea during the Venetian occupation in the early part of the eighteenth century. After the peace of Passarovitz he became the subordinate of the provveditore generate del Levante at Corfu, and the former "eye of Crete" was thenceforth treated as one of the seven Ionian Islands for the remainder of the Venetian rule. Besides the seven islands Venice also acquired, at different periods after her occupation of Corfu, several dependencies on the mainland opposite. Of these, owing to its dramatic history in the days of the British protectorate, the most interesting was Parga, first taken in 14012. As the landing-place for the famous rock of SuU, with which in a famous Une Byron has connected it, it was a place of some importance, and was fortified by the Venetians as an outpost against the Turks. But the Repubhc ultimately found that it cost more than it was worth, and several times in vain urged the inhabitants to emigrate over the narrow channel to Anti-Paxo, or to settle in Corfu. But then, as in 1819, the Pargians showed a touching, if inconvenient, attachment to their ancient home, perhaps not unmixed with the desire to continue the 1 Hopf, in Erscli und Gruber's AUgemeine Encyklopadie , Lxxxvi. 168. ' Marmora, Delia Historia di Corfit, p. 253. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 205 lucrative traffic of selling the munitions of war, sent from Venice for their own defence, to the neighbouring Turks. Butrinto, opposite the northern end of Corfu, had voluntarily surrendered to the Venetians soon after their final occupation of that island, and, like Parga, was fortified with works, of which the remains may stiU be seen. During the Venetian rule of the Ionian Islands Butrinto, well known to sportsmen for its duck-shooting, and to scholars for the allusion in the Mneid^, was several times captured and recaptured. The fisheries in the lakes there, which had once been the property of Cicero's friend Atticus, were of considerable value to the Venetians 2, as they are stiU to the present proprietors; and the place became definitely assured to the Repubhc in 1718, at which date Vonitza inside, and Prevesa at the entrance of, the Ambrakian Gulf, the latter a stronghold of corsairs and an important military position which resisted the Greek bombardment during the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, were also confirmed to Venice. The value set by the Venetians upon these continental dependencies may be judged from the fact that they were called "the eyes and ears of the Republic on the mainland." The administration of the islands during the Venetian period was modelled on that of the Repubhc. In Corfu, the first occupied and most important of the seven, the chief Venetian functionary was known as the bailie, who was subsequently assisted by two noble Venetian councillors, and by a third official, called provveditore e capitano, who was in command of the garrison and resided in the fortress. The strong castle of Sant' Angelo, on the west coast, which was never taken though often besieged, was entrusted to a special officer. But the power of the bailie was soon overshadowed by that of the commander of the fleet, which was soon stationed at Corfu, and for which the arsenal at Govino, of which large and imposing ruins still remain, was buUt. This naval authority was the provveditore generate del Levante ; he was usually appointed for three years, and exercised very important functions at the time when Venice was StiU a first-class eastern power. Strict orders were issued to all these officials that they should respect the rights of the natives, and spies, known as "inquisitors over the affairs of the Levant," were sent from time to time to the islands for the purpose of checking the Venetian administration and of ascertaining the grievances of the governed, who had also the privilege, which they often exercised, of sending special missions to Venice to lay their complaints before the home government. * "Celsam Buthroti accedimus urbem," lii. 293. ^ Cicero ad Atticum, iv. 8 a; Marmora, p. 431. 2o6 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Ionian historians, after due deduction is made for the strong Venetian bias of the privileged class from which they sprang, are agreed that redress was almost invariably granted, though the abuses of which the natives complained were apt to grow up again. Thus when, in the early part of the seventeenth century, the Corfiotes sent envoys to point out the excesses committed by the sailors of the fleet the Venetian govern- ment forbade the men to land on the island^- Not long afterwards we find the "inquisitors" ordering the removal of all statues and epitaphs erected to the Venetian officials at Corfu, in order to prevent this slavish practice, which had descended to the Greeks from the Roman days^ And somewhat later the exactions of the Venetian officials were stopped. A large share in the local administration was granted to the inhabitants, or rather to those of noble birth, for Corfiote society was divided into the three classes of nobles, burghers, and manual labourers. At first the so-caUed national council was a much more democratic body, including many foreigners and local tradesmen. But the latter and their children were gradually excluded from it, the entrance of the former was restricted, and in 1440 the functions of the national council were strictly limited to the annual election of a smaller body, the communal, or city, council — a body composed at the outset of seventy, and, half a century later, of 150 members, a total which was maintained till the last years of Venetian rule, when the numbers were reduced to sixty. For the pur- poses of this annual election the members of the national council met in a quaint old house, decorated with pictures of Nausikaa welcoming Odysseus, and of other scenes from the early history of Corcyra, and situated between the old fortress and the town. This interesting memorial of Venetian rule has long since been swept away. The coimcil of 150, which thus became the governing body of the island, was composed of Greeks as weU as Latins, and formed a close oligarchy. Once only, during the crisis of the Candian war, it was resolved to add to it those citizens who would pay a certain sum towards the expenses of that costly struggle^. It had the right of electing every year certain officials, called syndics (o-vvSikol) , at first four in number- two Greeks and two Latins— and at a later period, when the numbers of the Latins had declined, only three. These syndics were required to be more than thirty-eight (at another period thirty-five) years of age, and were regarded as the special representatives of the community of Corfu. Those who felt themselves wronged looked to them for redress, and, in accordance with the economic heresies of that age, they regulated prices 1 Marmora, p. 387. 2 Ibid. p. 396; Saint-Sauveur, i. 345. ' Marmora, p. 420. ^ THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 207 in the markets — a curious interference with the usual Levantine practice of bargaining. The council of 150 also elected three judges, of whom one must always be a Latin; but these officials possessed no more than a consultative vote, and the real decision of cases rested with the bailie and his two councillors. No local offices — and there were many in Venetian days — ^were held for more than a year; most of them were purely honorary, and all were in the gift of the council of 150. One of the most important was that of trierarch, or captain of the Corfiote war galleys, an official whom the Venetians wisely allowed these experienced seamen, worthy descendants of the seafaring Phaiakians of the Odyssey, to elect. Two campaigns entitled a Corfiote of&cer to the rank of captain in the Repubhcan fleet, and it would have been well if the British had followed in this respect the example of their predecessors*, and thus opened a naval career to the lonians. The Corfiote nobles also commanded the town mihtia, composed of about 500 artisans, and called "ap- prentices," or scolari, who received immunity from taxation in lieu of pay and exercised on Sundays alone. Each vQlage provided a certain number of rural police. In imitation of the similar record at Venice a Golden Book was estabhshed, containing the names of the Corfiote nobles. When the latter were much diminished in numbers by the first great siege of the island by the Turks in 1537 new famiUes were added to the hst from the burgher class, and Marmora gives the names of 112 noble families existing at the time when he wrote his history, in 1672 ^. The Golden Book was burned as the symbol of hated class distinction in the first enthusiasm for hberty, equality, and fraternity after the French repubUcans took possession of Corfu. The Venetians had found the feudal system already in existence when they took over the island, where it had been introduced in Byzantine days, and they had promised to maintain it. We are told by Marmora that there were twenty-four baronies there in former times, and later on the total seems to have been a dozen. In the last century of Venetian rule there were fifteen^. Occasionally the Venetians created a new fief, such as that of the gipsies, to reward pubUc services. The 'Adiyyavoi, or gipsies, who were about 100 in number, were subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the baron, upon whom their fief had been bestowed, "an office," as Marmora says, " of not a httle gain and of very great honour." They had their own miHtary commander, and every year on May i they marched under his leadership to the sound of drums and fifes, bearing ' Viscount Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, I. 28. * Marmora, p. 312. ' Lounzes, Ilepi r-ijs 7ro\iTi/f^s /caraiTTOffews TTjs"EiVTav'i](Tov iTTl''E,veTav,T^^. 188-90; Hopf, ^ibi supra, Lxxxvi. 186. 2o8 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE aloft their baron's standard and carrying a maypole, decked with flowers, to the square in front of the house where the great man lived. There they set up their pole and sang a curious song in honour of their lord^, who provided them with refreshment and on the morrow received from them their dues. Every feudatory was compelled to keep one horse for the defence of the island, and was expected to appear with it on May Day on parade. The peasants were worse off under this feudal system than their fellows on the mainland under Turkish rule. They had no political rights whatever; they were practically serfs, and were summed up in the capitulations at the time of the Venetian occupation together with "the other movable and immovable goods" of their lords 2. A decision of the year 1641 that no one should vote in the council who had not a house in the city must also have tended to produce absenteeism, still one of the evils of Corfu, where at the present day only four landed proprietors hve on their estates. A distaste for country life, always a marked feature of Greek society, may thus have been increased, and the concentration of aU the nobles and men of position in the town, which is now ascribed at Corfu to the lucrative posts and gaieties of the capital during the British protectorate, would seem to have begun much earUer. Occasionally we hear of a peasants' rising against their oppressors. Thus in 1652 a movement of the kind had to be put down by force; but the Venetian government, engaged at the time in the Candian war, did not think it desirable to punish the insurgents. Somewhat earher a demo- cratic agitation for granting a share in the local administration was vetoed by the Repubhc. Marmora remarks in his time that "the peasants are never contented; they rise against their lords on the smallest provocation*." Yet, until the last century of her rule, Venice had httle trouble with the inhabitants. She kept the nobles in good humour by granting them pohtical privileges, titles, and the entrance to the Venetian navy, and, so long as the Turk was a danger, she was compelled, from motives of prudence, to pay a due regard to their wishes. As for the other two classes of the population they hardly entered into the calculations of Venetian statesmen. No foreign government can govern Greeks if it is harsh to the national church and clergy, and the shrewd Venetians, as might have been anticipated, were much less bigoted than the Angevins. While, on the one hand, they gave, as Catholics, precedence to the Cathohc Church, they never forgot that the interests of the Repubhc were of more importance than those of the Papacy. Accordingly, in the Ionian islands • The words are quoted in the 'OSrryos rrji vijo-ou KepKipas (1902). ' Mustoxidi, p. Ixvi. s Marmora, pp. 394, 419, 445. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 209 no less than in Crete, they studiously prevented any encroachments on the part of either the (Ecumenical Patriarch or the Pope. Their ecclesi- astical poUcy is well expressed in an official decree, "that the Greeks should have hberty to preach and teach the holy word, provided only that they say nothing about the repubhc or against the Latin rehgion^." Mixed marriages were allowed; and, as the children usually became Orthodox, it is not surprising to learn that twenty years before the close of the Venetian occupation there were only two noble Latin families in Corfu which stUl adhered to the Catholic faith, while at Cephalonia Cathohcism was almost exclusively confined to the garrison^. The Venetians retained, however, the externals of the Angevin system. The head of the Orthodox Church in Corfu was stUl csdled "chief priest" {fieya<; irpfOToira'ira'i), whUe the coveted title of Archbishop was reserved for the chief of the CathoUc clergy. The "chief priest" was elected by the assembled urban clergy and 30 nobles, and held office for five years, at the end of which he sank into the ranks of the ordinary popes, from whom he was then only distinguished by his crimson sash. Merit had, as a rule, less to do with his election than his relationship to a noble family and the amount of the pecuniary arguments which he appUed to the pockets of the electors, and for which he recouped himself by his gains while in office. In each of the four bailiwicks into which Corfu was then divided, and in the island of Paxo, there was a irpwTo-rra-ira'i, under the jurisdiction of the "chief priest," who was dependent upon no other ecclesiastical authority than that of the (Ecumenical Patriarch, with whom, however, he was only allowed to correspond through the medium of the Venetian bailie at Constantinople. Two Uberal Popes, Leo X and Paul III, expressly forbade any inter- ference with the reUgious services of the Greeks on the part of the Latin Archbishop; and upon the introduction of the Gregorian calendar it was specially stipulated by Venice^ that in the Ionian islands Latins as weU as Greeks should continue to use the old method of reckoning, in order to avoid the confusion of two Easters and two Christmasses in one and the same community. When we consider how strong, even to-day, is the opposition of the Orthodox Church to the new style, we can understand how gratifying this special exemption must have been to the Greeks of that period. From these causes there was less bitterness than in most other places between the adherents of the two churches. The CathoUcs took part in the rehgious processions of the Orthodox. When the body of St Spiridion was carried round the town the Venetian authorities and many of the * Lounzes, p. loi. ^ Saint-Sauveur, ii. 15-21. ^ Marmora, p. 369. M. 14 210 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE garrison paid their respects to the sacred relics; twenty-one guns were fired from the Old Fortress, and the ships in the harbour saluted; and the enUghtened Cathohc Archbishop, Quirini, author of a work on the antiquities of Corfu, actually went in full state to the Greek church of St Spiridion on the festival of that saint ^- The Orthodox clergy recipro- cated these attentions by meeting the CathoHcs in the church of St Arsenics, a tenth-century bishop and first Metropolitan of Corfu, where the discordant chanting of Greeks and Latins represented their theological concord, and by praying for the Pope and the Latin Archbishop at the annual banquet at the latter's palace. They were ready, also, to ex- communicate refractory villages at the bidding of the government, and this practice, which filled. the superstitious people with terror, was one of the greatest social abuses of Corfu. It was put into force against individuals on the least provocation, and we are told that the same priest was quite willing to provide a counter-excommunication for a consideration ^ The position of the Corfiote Jews, though far less favourable than that of the Orthodox, was much better than that of the Hebrew colonies in other parts of the Venetian dominions. In the very first days of the Venetian occupation an order was issued to the officials of the RepubUc, bidding them behave well to the Jewish community and to put no heavier burdens upon them than upon the rest of the islanders. Many of the Venetian governors found it convenient to borrow not only money, but furniture, plate, and hveries from them. That they increased — owing to the Jewish immigration from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and from Naples and Calabria half a century later — ^in numbers under the Venetians may be inferred from Marmora's statement that in 1665 there were about 500 Jewish houses in Corfu, and the historian, who shared to the full the natural dishke for the Hebrew race which is so characteristic of the Greeks and so cordially reciprocated by the Jews, naively remarks that the Corfiote Jews would be rich if they were let alone^. A century later they had monopolised aU the trade as middlemen, and the landed proprietors were in their debt. They paid none of the usual taxes levied on Jewish banks at Venice, and when, by the decree of 1572, the Jews were banished from Venetian territory, a special exemption was granted to those of Corfu. They were aUowed to practise there as advocates, with permission to defend Christians no less than members of their own race. They had their own councH and elected their own officials, and a law of 1614 prohibits the practice of digging up their dead bodies, under pain of hanging. At the same time they had to submit to some degrading 1 Idromenos, p. 87. 2 Saint-Sauveur, 11. 22-31. 3 Marmpra, p. 430. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 211 restrictions. They were compelled to wear a yellow mark on the breast, or a yellow hat, as a badge of servitude, and an ordinance of 1532 naively remarks that this was " a substitute for the custom of stoning, which does so much injury to the houses." True, a money payment to the treasury secured a dispensation from the necessity of wearing these stigmas; but there was no exception to the rule which enjoined upon all Jews residence in a separate part of the city, where they were divided into two groups, each with its own synagogue. Even to-day the Jewish quarter in the town of Corfu is known as the Hehraikd. Absurd tales were current about them. Travellers were told that one of them was a hneal descendant of Judas, and it was rumoured that a young Jewish girl was about to give birth to a Messiah. They were not allowed to possess real property or to take land or villas on lease, with the exception of one house for the personal use of the lessee. But the effect of this enactment was nullified by means of mortgages; and if a Jew wanted to invest money in houses he had no difficulty in finding a Christian who would purchase or rent them with borrowed Jewish capital. They were expected to offer a copy of the law of Moses to a new Latin Archbishop, who sometimes dehghted the Corfiotes by lecturing them on their shortcomings, and sometimes, like Quirini, was tolerant of their creed. Finally, they were forbidden to indulge in pubhc processions — an injunction perhaps quite as much in their own interest as in that of the pubUc peace^. The Venetian government did practically nothing for education during the four centuries of its rule in the Ionian islands. No pubhc schools were founded, for, as Count Viaro Capodistria informed the British parhament much later, the Venetian senate never allowed such institutions to be established in the Ionian islands 2. The administration was content to pay a few teachers of Greek and Itahan in Corfu and one in each of the other islands. There was also some private instruction to be had, and the promising young men of the best famUies, eager to be doctors or lawyers, were sent to complete their education at the university of Padua. But the attainment of a degree at that seat of learning was not arduous, for by a special privilege the lonians could take their degree without examination. And the Ionian student after his return soon forgot what he had learned, retaining only the varnish of culture. There were exceptions, however, to this low standard. It was a Corfiote who ' Lounzes, pp. 178-82; Romanos, 'H'EjSpaiV^; koo'o'tijs ttis KepKipas; Pinkerton's Collection of Travels, ix. 4; Marmora, pp. 255, 286, 370, 430, 437. The last writer approvingly says about the Jews, loro nan conviene di stabile, che il sepolcro. ' Viaro Capodistria, Remarks respectfully submitted to the Consideration of the British Parliament, p. 64. 14 — 2 212 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE founded at Venice, in 1626, the Greek school, called Flangineion, after the name of its founder, Flangines, which did so much for the improve- ment of Greek education^; while it was a Cephalonian, Nikodemos Metaxas, who about the same time set up the first Greek printing press in Constantinople, which he had purchased in England^- But even in the latest Venetian period there were few facUities for attaining know- ledge in Corfu. We are told that at that time reading and writing — the highest attainments of the average Greek pope — could be picked up in one of the monasteries, and Latin in the school of some CathoUc priest, but that there were no other opportunities of mental cultivation there. The historian Mario Fieri, himself a native of Corfu, remarks that towards the close of the eighteenth century, when he was a boy, there were no public schools, no library, no printing press, and no regular bookseller in the island, and the only literature that could be bought there consisted of a grammar and a Latin dictionary, displayed in the shop of a chemist^. No wonder that the Corfiotes were easier to manage in those days than in the more enlightened British times, when news- papers abounded and some of the best pens in southern Europe were ready to lampoon the British protectorate. Yet, even under the Venetians, that love of literature which has always characterised the Greeks did not become whoUy extinct. Jacobo Triboles, a Corfiote resident at Venice, published in the sixteenth century in his native dialect a poem, the subject of which was taken from Boccaccio, called the History of the King of Scotland and the Queen of England. Another literary Corfiote, author of a Lament for the Fall of Greece, was Antonios Eparchos, a versatile genius, at once poet, Hellenist, and soldier, upon whom the fief of the gipsies was conferred for his services*. Several other Corfiote bards sang of the Venetian victories, while, in 1672, Andrea Marmora, a member of a noble family still extant in Corfu, pubhshed in ItaUan the first history of his country from the earhest times to the loss of Crete by the Venetians. Subsequent writers have criticised Marmora's effusive style, his tendency to invent details, his intense desire to glorify the most serene Repubhc^. But his work is quaintly written and he thoroughly reflects the feelings of his class and 1 Marmora, p. 433; Paparregopoulos, 'lo-ropia roO "EXXtjukoO 'ESvous (4tli ed.), V. 644. * Ibid. V. 530. 3 Idromenos, Svi-oittikt) 'laropla t^s Ke/)/ci5pas, p. 90, and the same author's essay nepl Tijs iv Tali 'lopiois f^ffois iKiraiSeiaeut. • Paparregopoulos, V. 635; Sathas, lovpKOKpa.Tovy.ivn-'EKk&s, p. 127; N«eXXi;i'«<, ^iKoXoyla, pp. 138, 165. ' Quirini, Primoydia Corcyrce. pp. 167, 168; Mustoxidi, Illustrazioni Corciresi. I. 10, II. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 213 era. In 1725 Quirini, whom we have already mentioned as Latin Arch- bishop of Corfu, issued the first edition of a Latin treatise on the antiquities of his see, which was followed, thirteen years later, by a second and enlarged edition. In 1656 an academy of thirty members, known as the Assicurati, was founded at Corfu^, and only succumbed amid the dangers of the Turkish siege of 1716. A second literary society was started about the same time, and a third saw the Hght in 1732. Of the other islands Cephalonia produced in the seventeenth century a priest of great oratorical gifts in the person of Elias Meniates. In short, the Frankish influence, which had practically no literary result on the mainland, was much more felt in the intellectual development of the lonians. But this progress was gained at the expense of the Greek language, which, under the Venetians, became solely the tongue of the peasants. Even to-day Greek is almost the only language understood in the country districts of Corfu, while ItaUan is readily spoken in the town. In the Venetian times the Venetian dialect was the conversational medium of good society, and the young Corfiote, fresh from his easy- won laurels at Padua, looked down with contempt upon the noblest and most enduring of all languages. Yet it will never be forgotten in Corfu that in the resurrection and regeneration of Greek two Corfiotes of the eighteenth century, Eugenios Boulgaris and Nikephoros Theotokes, played a leading part. The former in particular was the pioneer of Greek as it is written to-day, the forerunner of the more celebrated Koraes, and he dared to write, to the disgust of the clergy, in a language which the people could understand. But, as his best work was done at Joannina, then the chief educational centre of the Greek race, it concerns the general history of Greece under the Turks rather than that of the seven islands^. Ionian commerce was hampered by the selfish colonial policy then prevalent in Europe, which aimed at concentrating all colonial trade in the metropoUs, through which the exports of the islands had to pass. This naturally led to a vast amount of smuggUng, even now rampant in the Greek Archipelago, in which the British gained an unenviable pre-eminence and for which they sometimes paid with their lives. The oil trade, the staple industry of Corfu, was, however, greatly fostered by the grant of 360 drachmai for every plantation of 100 olive trees, and we find that, in the last half-century of the Venetian rule, there were nearly two miUions of these trees in that island, which exported 60,000 barrels of oil every second year. The taxes consisted of a tithe of the oil, the ' Marmora, p. 425. ' Finlay, v. 284-5; Idromenos, SwoTrn/cT) 'laropia t^s Kepxipas, pp. 91-3; Papar- regopoulos, v. 645-7. 214 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE crops, and the agricultural produce, and a money payment on the wine, a " chimney tax " on each house, and an export duty of 15 per cent, on the oU, 9 per cent, on the salt, and 4 per cent, on other articles. There was also an import duty of 6 per cent, on Venetian and of 8 per cent, on foreign, goods. The revenue of Zante was so greatly benefited by the introduction of the currant industry that it increased more than forty- fold in the space of thirty years during the sixteenth century, and a hundred years later the traveller Spon said it deserved the name of the " island of gold " and called it " a terrestrial paradise." But the wholesale conversion of corn fields into currant plots caused such alarm that the local authorities apphed to Venice for permission to root up the currant bushes by force. The Republic replied by allowing the currants to remain, but at the same time levying a tax upon them, the proceeds of which were devoted to the purchase and storage of bread stuffs. The currant industry of that island was injured by further duties, and was thus placed at a disadvantage as compared with the hghtly taxed currants of the Morea. But in the eighteenth century such numbers of English ships came to Zante to load currants that the place had an EngKsh consul, two English of&ces, and an EngUsh cemetery, while our countrymen were very popular there^. One of the Enghsh families, attracted thither by the currant trade, that of Sergeant, still flourishes there. These pubhc granaries were also instituted at Corfu, which continued, however, to suffer severely from famines. At the time when Zante was so prosperous Corfu was less productive, and we accordingly hear that the Venetians obtained permission from the Pope to levy a tithe on the goods of the Cathohc clergy, in order to defray the costs of maintenance. The salt pans of Levkimo, at the south of the island, formed a government monopoly, and the importation of foreign salt was punished by banishment 2. In order, perhaps, to counteract the excessive usury of the Corfiote Jews, the government established an official pawnshop*, where money was lent at a moderate rate of interest — 6 per cent. The administration of the other six islands was on similar fines to that of Corfu. The nearest of them, Paxo, with its dependency, Anti- Paxo, was treated as part of that island, and, as we have seen, the Corfiote "chief priest" had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over it, just as nowadays the Greek Archbishop of Corfii is also styled "of the Paxoi." In 1513, however, Paxo, together with the taxes which it paid, was sold by the Venetians to the heirs of a Corfiote noble, who * Saint-Sauveur, in. 112, 140, 199, 260, 268, 277. » Jervis, History of the Island of Corfii. p. 125. » Marmora, p. 389. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 215 treated its inhabitants so badly that many of them fled to Turkish territory. At last the provveditore generate del Levante, under whose province the affairs of these islands came, interfered, fixed the taxes of Paxos at a certain sum, and appointed a native with a title of capitano to govern it as the representative of the provveditore e capitano at Corfii. Zante was administered during the first half-century of Venetian rrde by a single provveditore; but when the population had considerably increased the Zantiotes, hke the Cephalonians, had need of further officials — ^two councillors and a secretary, all Venetian nobles — ^who assisted the provveditore, and, like him, were appointed for two years. In both Cephalonia and Zante there were a general council, composed of the nobles, and a smaller council, whose numbers were finally fixed in Zante at 150. The character of these two islands, separated by such a narrow channel of sea, was, how- ever, widely different. Zante was much more aristocratic in its ideas, though the feudal system, against which the popular rising of 1628 was directed, prevailed in both islands ahke, where it had been intro- duced by the Latin counts, Zante having twelve fiefs and Cephalonia six^. But Cephalonia, owing to its purer Hellenic population, was actuated by the democratic sentiments engrained in the Greek character. The meetings of the Cephalonian council were remarkable for their turbulence, of which the authorities frequently complained, and a retiring governor of that island drew up a report to the home govern- ment in 1754 in which he described in vivid colours the tendency of the strong to tyrannise over the weak, which he had found common to all classes, and which caused annoyance to the government and frequent disturbances of the public peace 2. British officials had in turn a similar experience, and Mr Gladstone discovered that the vendetta was not extinct in the wild mountainous regions of Cephalonia when he visited the ' Ionian islands on his celebrated mission. Venice fostered the quarrels between the various parties at Argostoli, and governed the unruly Cephalonians by means of their own divisions. In Zante the number of the noble famihes, at first indefinite, was finally fixed at ninety-three; and if any became extinct the vacancy was filled by the ennoblement of a family of burghers. Once a year the provveditore generate del Levante paid a visit of inspection to these islands; his arrival was the greatest event of the whole calendar, and etiquette prescribed the forms to be observed on his landing. He was expected to kiss first the cross presented to him by the Latin bishop, and then the copy of ^ Hopf, ubi supra, Lxxxvi. i86. Sathas, Mn^/teia, IV. p. xxxvii; "KWrpuKvi. 'AviKSora, I. 157-93. " Quoted by Lounzes, p. 63 n. 2i6 . PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE the Gospels offered to him by the spiritual head of the Orthodox com- munity. Leonardo Tocco had restored the Greek episcopal throne in Cepha- lonia, and m the Venetian times, promoted to the rank of an archbishopric, it continued to exist with jurisdiction over the Greeks at Zante and Ithake, which was often disputed by the "chief priest" (Tr/jtoroTraTraf) of Zante, where a Latin bishop also resided. This dispute was at last settled by a decree of the senate that the Cephalonian clergy should retain the right to elect their prelate on condition of choosing a Zantiote on every third vacancy^. In Zante, as in Corfu, the Jews were a con- siderable factor; at the close of the Venetian rule they numbered about 2000, and hved in a separate quarter of the city, walled in and guarded; and the island was remarkable for the violent anti-Semitic riots of 1712 2, arising out of the usual fiction of the slaughtered Christian child, which found their counterpart at Corfu in our own time. But the greatest evil in these less important islands was that their provveditori, being chosen from the poorer Venetian aristocracy, the so-called harnahotti, and receiving small salaries, made up for their lack of means by corruption, just as the Turkish officials do now. The efforts of the home government to check the abuse of bribery, by forbidding its officials to receive presents, were not always successful. The discontent of the lesser islands found vent in the embassies which they had the right to send to Venice, and we occasionally hear of their provveditori being detected in taking bribes. More rarely the provveditore generate himself was degraded from his high office for malversation. Accordingly the most recent Greek historian of the fiscal administration of the islands under the Venetians, considers that it was fortunate for them to have been taken, and lost, by Venice when they were'. Anything which concerns the supposed home of Odysseus must necessarily be of interest, and fortunately we have some facts about the government of Ithake at this period. We first hear of a Venetian governor there in 1504, when the island had been repeopled by emigrants from Santa Maura, and this official was assisted by two local magnates, called "elders of the people" {S'r)fioyepovTe<;). In 1536 a Ufe governor was appointed, and upon his death, in 1563, a noble from Cephalonia, appointed by the council of that island, was sent to ' Saint-Sauveur, in. 8, gi. When, in the sixteenth century, the Cephalonians claimed precedence over Zante, they quoted to the Venetians, in support of their claim, the fact that in the Homeric catalogue the people of Zakynthos are only cited as the subjects of Odysseus (Sathas, Myr/^uefo, iv. p. iv). ' Hopf, ubi supra, Lxxxvi. 186; Saint-Sauveur, in. 201. » Andreades, Ilepi t^s okopo/xiK^s 5io«i}crew! T7jt"ETrTav^iTov iwl BeveroKparLas (I9I4)- THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 217 administer it with the two "elders," subject to the approval of the provveditore generate, who visited Ithake every March. The Ithakans twice successfully complained to Venice of their Cephalonian governors, who were accused of extortion and of improper interference in local affairs. Accordingly in 1697 the office was aboUshed, and thenceforth the two Ithakan " elders " held sway alone, while every year the principalmen of the island met to elect the local officials. Small as it is, Ithake formed one feudal barony^, of which the Galati were the holders, and its popu- lation at the close of the Venetian period was estimated at about 7000. Santa Maura was more democratic in its constitution than most of the islands; for when Morosini took it from the Turks he permitted the inhabitants to decide how they would be governed. Accordingly the general council came in course of time to be largely composed of peasants; but when, towards the close of the eighteenth century, the Venetian government sent a special commissioner to reform the con- stitutions of the seven islands he created a second and smaller council of fifty at Santa Maura, to which the election of the local officials was transferred. Venice was represented there by two provveditori, one of whom had jurisdiction over the continental dependencies of Prevesa and Vonitza, subject, however, to the supreme authority of the commander of the fleet at Corfu 2. Parga and Butrinto were entrusted to two officers sent from the seat of the Ionian government; the former had its own council, its own local officials, and paid neither taxes nor duties. All its inhabitants were soldiers, and many of them pirates, and they were known to imprison a Venetian governor, just as the Albanians of our time besieged a Turkish vcdi, till they could get redress^. Finally the distant island of Kythera was administered by a Venetian noble sent thither every two years. WhUe it was a dependency of Crete Kythera fell into a very bad state ; its chief men indulged in constant dissensions; the government was arbitrary, the garrison exacting. In 1572 an attempt was made to remedy these evUs by the estabUshment of a council of thirty members, elected on a property qualification, with the power of electing the local authorities. A Golden Book was started, and the natives were granted the usual privilege of appeal to the Venetian government, either in Crete or at the capital. All the islands shared with Corfi the right of electing the captains of their own galleys, and they on more than one occasion rendered valuable services to the Republic at sea. • Lounzes, pp. 83-5; Hopf, ubi supra, Lxxxvi. 160, 186; Grivas, 'luropia ttjs vqirov 'Ifld/cijs. * Lounzes, p. 77; Saint-Sauveur, 11. 351. ' Saint-Sauveur, 11. 239-48. 2i8 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE There had been, as we have noticed, a Genoese party at Corfu when, the fate of the island lay in the balance, and the commercial rivals of Venice did not abandon all hope of obtaining so desirable a possession until some time after the estabhshment of the Venetian protectorate. Twice, in 1403 and again in 1432, they attacked Corfu, but on both occasions without success. The first time they tried to capture the impregnable castle of Sant' Angelo, which was courageously defended by a Corfiote noble. The second attempt was more serious. The invaders effected a landing, and had already ravaged the fertile island, when a sudden sally of the townsfolk and the garrison checked their further advance. Many of the Genoese were taken prisoners, while those who succeeded in escaping to their vessels were pursued and severely handled by the Venetian fleet. The further attempts of Genoese privateers to waylay merchantmen on their passage between Corfu and Venice were frustrated, and soon the islanders had nothing to fear from these Christian enemies of their protectors. Although the Turks were rapidly gaining grovmd on the mainland, they were repulsed in the attack which they made upon Corfu in 1431, and did not renew the attempt for another century. Meanwhile, after the faU of Constantinople and the subsequent coUapse of the Christian states of Greece, Corfii became the refuge of many distinguished exiles. Thomas Palaiologos, the last Despot of the Morea, and the historian Phrantzes fled thither; the latter wrote his history at Corfu at the instance of some noble Corfiotes, and Ues buried in the church of Sts Jason and Sosipater, where Caterina Zaccaria, wife of Thomas Palaio- logos, also rests. About the same time the island obtained a relic which had the greatest influence upon its religious hfe. Among the treasures of Constantinople at the moment of the capture were the bodies of St Theodora, the imperial consort of the iconoclast emperor Theophilos, and St Spiridion, the latter a Cypriote bishop who took a prominent part at the council of Nice and whose remains had been transferred to Constantinople when the Saracens took Cyprus. A certain priest, Kalochairetes by name, now brought the bodies of the two saints to Corfii, where they arrived in 1456. Upon the priest's death his two eldest sons became proprietors of the male saint's remains, and his youngest son received those of the female, which he bestowed upon the community. The body of St Spiridion ultimately passed to the dis- tinguished family of Boulgaris, to which it still belongs, and is preserved in the church of the saint, just as the body of St Theodora reposes in the metropohtical church. Four times a year the body of St Spiridion is carried in procession, in commemoration of his alleged services in having THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 219 twice delivered the island from plague, once from famine, and once from the Turks. His name is the most widespread in Corfu, and the number of boys called "Spiro" is legion^. During the operations against the Turks at this period the Coriiotes distinguished themselves by their active co-operation with their protectors. We find them fighting twice at Parga and twice at Butrinto; we hear of their prowess at the Isthmus of Corinth and beneath the walls of Patras in 1463, when Venice, alarmed for the safety of her Pelo- ponnesian stations, called the Greeks to arms ; and they assisted even in the purely Italian wars of the Republic. It seems, indeed, as if, at that period, the words of Marmora were no mere servile phrase: "Corfu was ever studjdng the means of keeping herself a loyal subject of the Venetians^." At last, after rather more than a century of almost complete freedom from attack, the island was destined to undergo the first of the two great Turkish sieges which were the principal events in its annals during the Venetian occupation. In 1537 war broke out between the RepubHc and Suleyman the Magnificent, at that time engaged in an attack upon the Neapolitan dominions of Charles V. During the transport of troops and material of war across the channel of Otranto the Turkish and Venetian fleets came into hostile collision, and though Venice was ready to make amends for the mistakes of her of&cials the Sultan resolved to punish them for the insults to his flag. He was at Valona, on the Albanian coast, at the time, and, removing his camp to Butrinto, despatched a force of 25,000 men, under the command of the redoubtable Barbarossa, the most celebrated captain in the Turkish service, to take possession of the island. The Turks landed at Govino, destroyed the village of Potamo, and marched upon the capital, which at that time had no other defences than the old fort. That stronghold and the castle of Sant' Angelo were soon the only two points in the island not in the power of the invaders. A vigorous cannonade was maintained by Barbarossa from the site of the present town and from the islet of Vido, but the garrison of 4000 men, half ItaUans and half Corfiotes, under the command of Jacopo di NoveUo, kept up a brisk reply. The Greeks, it was said, could not have fought better had they been fighting for the national cause, and they made immense sacrifices in their determination never to yield. In order to economise food they turned out of the fortress the women, old men, and children, who went * Mrs Dawes, Saint Spiridion, translated from L. S. Brokines's work IXepi tZv ^Tijfffws TeKoviiiviav iv KepKipif Xiravawv toC ' A.-ylo\i Xirvpiduvos. See also Marmora, pp. 261-7. ' Ibid. p. 333. 220 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE to the Turkish lines to beg for bread. The Turkish commander, hoping to work on the feelings of the garrison, refused; so the miserable creatures, repudiated ahke by the besieged and besiegers, wandered about distractedly between the two armies, striving to regain admission to the fortress by showing their ancient wounds gained in the Venetian service, and at last, when their efforts proved unavaihng, lying down in the ditches to die. Their sufferings contributed largely towards the victory of the defenders, for while provisions held out in the fortress they began to faU in the camp. Sickness broke out among the half-starved Turks, and, after a stay of only thirteen days in the island, they re-embarked. But in that short time they had wrought enormous damage. They had ravaged the fair island with fire and sword, and they carried away more than 20,000 captives^- The population was so greatly reduced by this wholesale deportation that nearly forty years afterwards the whole island con- tained only some 17,500 inhabitants, and rather more than a century after this siege a census showed that the total was not more than 50,000 — a much smaller number than in classical days, when it is estimated to have been 100,000. In 1761 it had dechned to 44,333 ; at the end of the Venetian occupation it was put down at 48,000; a century later, in 1896, it was 90,872 2. At the census of 1907 it was 94,451. Butrinto and Paxo, less able to defend themselves than Corfu, fell into the hands of the Turks, who plundered several of the other Ionian islands. Great was the joy of Venice at the news that the invaders had abandoned Corfu, and public thanksgivings were offered up for the preservation of the island, even in the desolate condition in which the Turks had left it. A Corfiote, named Noukios, secretary of an Ambassador of Charles V and author of three books of travels, the second of which, relating to England, has been translated into English, wrote, with tears in his eyes, a graphic account of this terrible visitation. One result of this invasion was the tardy but systematic fortification of the town of Corfu, at the repeated request of the Corfiote council, which sent several embassies to Venice with that object. More than 2000 houses were puUed down in the suburb of San Rocco to make room for the walls, for which the old classical city, Palaiopolis, as it is still called, provided materials, and Venice spent a large sum on the erection of new bastions. Two plans are in existence showing the fortifications of the ' Marmora, pp. 301-12 ; M. Mustoxidi, 'luTopiKo. Kal OKoSoymh. 'AniXeKTa, 24-44, 83-97; Paparregopoulos, v. 667; Sathas, TovpKOKpaTovfiivri'EWas, pp. 112-18. * Idromenos, SwoTrrtKi) 'lo-roplo t^s KepKijpas, pp. 24, 80, 94; Marmora, p. 414; Anagrafi deW Isola di Corfii, 1761; Daru, Histoire de Venise, v. 213; Saint-Sauveur, n. 154. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 221 citadel and of the town about this period'^, and some parts of the present Fortezza Vecchia date from the years which followed this first Turkish siege. The stiU existing Fortezza Nuova was built between 1577 and 1588, when the new works were completed. Another result of the Turco- Venetian war was the grant of lands at Corfu to the Greek soldiers, or stradioti, who had formed the Venetian garrisons of Monemvasia and Nauplia, and for whom provision had to be made when, in 1540, the RepubUc ceded these two last of her Peloponnesian possessions to the sultan. The present suburb of Stratia still preserves the name of these soldiers. The loss of the Venetian stations in the Morea and the sub- sequent capture of Cyprus by the Turks naturally iacreased the numbers of the Greeks in Corfu. Shortly before the battle of Lepanto the Turks raided Kythera, Zante, and Cephalonia, and eigain landed in Corfu. But the memory of their previous failure and the fact that the garrison was prepared for resistance deterred them from undertaking a fresh siege. They accordingly contented themselves with plundering the defenceless villages, but this time did not carry off their booty with impimity. Their ships were routed; as they were departing many of them sank, and in Marmora's time the simken wrecks could still be seen when the sea was calm 2. In the battle of Lepanto 1500 Corfiote seamen took part on the Christian side, and four ships were contributed by the island and commanded by natives. One of these Corfiote captains was captured during the engage- ment and skinned alive, his skin being then fastened as a trophy to the rigging of one of the Turkish vessels. Another, Cristofalo Condocalli, captured the Turkish admiral's ship, which was long preserved in the arsenal at Venice, and he received as his reward a grant of land near Butrinto, together with the then rare title of cavaliere. The criticisms which Finlay, after his wont, has passed upon the Greeks at Lepanto, and which do not agree with the testimony of a contemporary Venetian historian, certainly do not affect the conduct of the lonians*. A little later, when the Turks again descended upon Corfu, they were easily repulsed, and the long peace which then ensued between Venice and the Porte put an end to these anxieties. Both the Corfiotes and the local militia of Zante did service about this time under the banner of St Mark in Crete; but the fearful losses of the Zantiotes, of whom eighty only out of 800 returned home alive from the Cretan mountains, made the peasants reluctant to serve again. ^ One plan is in Jervis, History of the Island of Corfit, p. 126, the other in Marmora, pp. 364-5. ' Marmora, p. 345. » Finlay, v. 85-6; Marmora, pp. 348-50. 222 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE There are few facts to relate of the Ionian islands during the peaceful period between the battle of Lepanto and the war of Candia. At Corfu the peace was utihsed for the erection of new buildings; the church of St Spiridion was finished, and the body of the saint transferred to it^. But the town did not strike the Venetian traveller Pietro della Valle, who visited it early in the seventeenth century, as a desirable residence. Both there and at Zante he thought the buildings were more hke huts than houses, and he considered the latter island barren and no longer deserving of its classical epithet of "woody 2." It was about this time that the Venetians introduced the practice of tournaments, which were held on the esplanade, and at which the Corfiote nobles showed considerable skill. Rather later the island was visited by the plague, which was stayed, according to the local belief, through the agency of their patron saint, who had on a previous occasion saved his good Corfiotes from famine by inspiring the captains of some com ships to steer straight for their port. The first two of the four annual processions were the token of the people's gratitude for these services*. When the Candian war broke out further fortifications were built at Corfij as a precautionary measure; but during the whole length of the struggle the Turks came no nearer than Parga and Butrinto. The Corfiotes were thus free to assist the Venetians, instead of requiring their aid. Accordingly the Corfiote mihtia was sent to Crete, and horses and money were given to the Venetian authorities for the conflict, while one Corfiote force successfully held Parga against the enemy, and another recaptured Butrinto. In fact the smallness of the population at the census of that period was attributed to the large number of men serving on the galleys or in the forts out of the island. When Crete was lost Corfii naturally became of increased importance to the repubUc, and in the successful war between Venice and Turkey, which broke out in 1684, the Ionian islands played a considerable part. They were used as winter quarters for the Venetian troops, and the huge mortars still outside the gate of the Old Fortress at Corfu bear the memorable date of 1684, while a monument of Morosini occupies, but scarcely adorns, the wall of the old theatre. That gallant commander now led a squadron, to which the three chief islands all contributed galleys, against the pirates' nest of Santa Maura. The countrymen of Odysseus are speciaUy mentioned among the 2000 Ionian auxiharies, and the warlike bishop of Cephalonia brought a contingent of over 150 monks and priests to the RepubUc's '■ Marmora, p. 370. ' Pinkerton's Collection of Travels, ix. 4. ' Marmora, pp. 389-91; Mrs Dawes, Saint Spiridion. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 223 standard^. Santa Maura feU after a sixteen days' siege; the capture of Prevesa followed; and though the latter was restored to the Sultan M^th dismantled fortifications by the treaty of Carlovitz, Santa Maura was never again, save for a few brief months during the next war, a Turkish island. The Venetians did not forget the lonians, who had co-operated with them so readily. Colonel Floriano, one of the Cephsilonian com- manders, was granted the two islets of Kalamos and Kastos, off the coast of Akarnania, famous in Homer as the abode of "the pirate Taphians." Thenceforth their inhabitants were bidden to pay to him and his heirs the tithes hitherto due to the Venetian government. In consequence of this he assumed the curious title of conte della Decima (" count of the Tithe ") , still borne by his descendants^. No wonder that Venice was popular with an aristocracy to which it gave employment and rewards. The occupation of the Morea by the Venetians in the early part of the eighteenth century secured the lonians from disturbance so long as the peace lasted; but when the Turks set about the re-conquest of the peninsula they became involved in that last struggle between Venice and Turkey. In 1715 the Turkish fleet took Kythera, the garrison of which refused to fight, and the Venetians blew up the costly fortifica- tions of Santa Maura and removed the guns and garrison to Corfu, in order that they might not faU into the hands of their foes^. Alarmed at the successes of the Turks, but unable in the degenerate condition of the commonwealth to send a capable Venetian to defend the remaining islands, the government, on the recommendation of Prince Eugene, engaged Count John Matthias von der Schulenburg to undertake the defence. A German by birth, and a brother of the duchess of Kendal, mistress of our George I, Count von der Schulenburg did not owe his career, strange as it may seem to us, to social influence or female intrigue. Entering the Polish service, he had compelled the admiration of his opponent, Charles XII of Sweden, and had afterwards fought with distinction under the eyes of the duke of Marlborough at the siege of Toumai and in the battle of Malplaquet. Armed with the rank of field- marshal, he set out for Corfu, where he rapidly put the unfinished fortifications into as good a condition as was possible in the time, and paid a hurried visit to Zante for the same purpose. The approach of the Turks hastened his return, for it was now certain that their objective was Corfu. They had requisitioned the Epeirotes to make a wide road • Paparregopoulos, v. 672. A Latin inscription of 1684 at Santa Maura bears Morosini's name. * Viscount Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, i. 29-30. ' Zinkeisen, GescMchie des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, v. 501-z. 224 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE from Thessaly down to the coast opposite that island, traces of which were in existence half a century ago^. Along this road Kara Mustapha Pasha marched with 65,000 men, and effected a junction at Butrinto with the Turkish fleet under Janum Khoja. In the narrow strait at the north end of the island, opposite the shrine of the virgin at Kassopo, which had taken the place of the altar of Jupiter Cassius, before which Nero had danced, a division of the Venetian fleet engaged the Turkish ships and cut its way through them into Corfu. But this did not prevent the landing of 33,000 Turks at Govino and Ipso, who encamped along the Potamo and made themselves masters of the suburbs of Mandoukio and Kastrades, on either side of the town. Meanwhile Schulenburg had armed all the inhabitants, including even the Jews, and we are specially told that one of the latter distinguished himself so much as to merit the rank of a captain^. But he wrote that he was "in want of everything," and his motley garrison of Germans, Italians, Slavs, and Greeks was at no time more than 8000 men. Even women and priests aided in the defence, and one Greek monk, with a huge iron crucifix in his hands, was a conspicuous figure as he charged the besiegers, invoking the vengeance of God upon their heads. The Turkish commander's first object was to occupy the two eminences of Mounts Abraham and San Salvatore, which commanded the town, but had been carelessly left without permanent fortifications. A first assault upon these positions was repulsed, but a second was successful, and the Turks now called on Schulenburg to surrender. The arrival of some reinforcements revived the spirits of the besieged, who had now withdrawn from the town into the citadel, while the Turkish artillery played upon the houses and aimed at the campanile of St Spiridion's church. The New Fortress was the point at which the enemy now directed all their efforts; one of the bastions was actually taken, and a poet has recorded that Muktar, grandfather of the famous Ah Pasha of Joannina, fought his way into the castle and hung up his sword on the gate^; but Schulenburg, at the head of his men, drove out the Turks with enormous loss. He said himself that that day was the most dangerous of his fife; but his reckless daring saved Corfu. It was expected that the Turks would renew the assault three days later; but when the fatal morning broke, lo! they were gone. On the evening ' Jervis, History of the Island of CorfU, p. 132. ' A recent Greek writer in the 'OStjy^s t^s kiJo-ou Kcp«:i5pas states, I know not on what authority, that, as a reward for their bravery, Schulenburg called Mt Abraham at Corfii after the patriarch. The name occurs in Marmora long before Schulenburg's time. ' Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, 1. 464. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 225 before, one of those terrific showers of rain to which Corfu is Uable about the end of August descended upon the Turkish camp. The storm swept away their baggage into the sea, and the panic-stricken Turks — so the story ran — saw a number of acolytes carrying lighted candles, and an aged bishop, who was identified with St Spiridion, pursuing the infidels staff in hand. The murmurs of the janissaries and the news of a great Turkish defeat on the Danube may have had more to do with the seraskier's hasty departure than the miraculous intervention of the saint. But the Venetians, with true statesmanship, humoured the popular behef that St Spiridion had protected the Corfiotes and them- selves in their hour of need. We can stUI see hanging in the church of St Spiridion the sUver lamp which the senate dedicated to the saint "for having saved Corfu," and a companion to which was provided by the Corfiote nobles in memory of the safe arrival of the two divisions of the fleet. The islanders stUl celebrate on August 11 (o.s.), the anniversary of the Turkish rout in 1716, the solemn procession of the saint, which Pisani, the Venetian admiral, instituted in his honour^. The siege had lasted for forty-eight days, and the losses on both sides had been very great. The lowest estimate of the Turkish dead and wounded was 8000. Schulenburg put down his own casualties at 1500. Moreover the Turks had left their artillery behind them, and in their own hurried re-embarkation some 900 were drowned. The Venetian fleet, under Pisani, whose indolence was in striking contrast to the energy of Schulenburg, did not succeed in overtaking the foe; but Schulenburg retook Butrinto, to which he attached much importance, and personally superintended the re-fortification of Santa Maura, which another Latin inscription stUl commemorates. The extraordinary honours paid to him were the measure of Corfu's value to the Repubhc. In his favour, as in that of Morosini, an exception was made to the rule forbidding the erection of a statue to a Uving person. Before the Old Fortress, which he so gallantly defended, there still stands his image. Medals were struck in his honour, and foreign sovereigns wrote to congratulate him. Nor did his services to the lonians end here. The fear of a fresh attack brought him to Corfu again in the following year. From thence he made a successful attack upon Vonitza and Prevesa, and those places, together with Butrinto, Cerigo, and the islet of Cerigotto, or Antikythera, were finally confirmed to the Repubhc at the peace of Passarovitz. After the peace he drew up a systematic plan for the defence of the islands, which ^ Leben und Denkwiirdigkeiten Johann Mathias Reichsgrafen von der Schulen- burg, 11; Zinkeisen, op. cit. v. 520-31; Dam, Histoire de Venise, v. 145-53; Greek chronicle of Epeiros printed by Pouqueville, Voyage de la Grice, v. 294-9; Idro- menos, SwoTrnjcrj 'IdTopla, pp. 81-6. M. 15 226 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE considerations of expense prevented the Republic from carrying out as fully as he wished. One restoration was imperative — that of the citadel of Corfu, which was blown up by a flash of hghtning striking the powder magazine only two years after the great siege. Pisani and 1500 men lost their lives in this accident; several vessels were sunk and much damage done. Under Schulenburg's directions these works were repaired. At the same time, warned by the experience of the late siege, he strongly fortified Mounts Abraham and San Salvatore and coimected them with subterranean passages 1. To pay for these improvements a tax of one- tenth was imposed upon the wine and oil of the island^. Large sums were also spent in the next few years upon the defences of Zante, Santa Maura, and the four continental dependencies of the islands. But the Repubhc, having lost much of her' Levant trade, could no longer keep them up, and Corfu was again damaged by a second explosion in 1789. About the middle of the eighteenth century there was a huge deficit in the Ionian accounts, and the islands became a burden to the dechning strength of the Venetian commonwealth. On Corfij in particular she spent twice what she got out of it. The peace of Passarovitz in 1718, which made the useless island of Cerigo the furthest eastern possession of Venice, practically closed the career of the Repubhc as an oriental power, and thenceforth of all her vast Levantine possessions the seven islands and their four dependencies alone remained under her flag. The decadence of Turkey preserved them to the Repubhc rather than any strength of her own, so that for the next seventy-nine years they were unmolested. Yet this immunity from attack by her old enemy caused Venice to neglect the welfare of the Ionian islands, which were always best governed at the moment when she feared to lose them. The class of officials sent from the capital during this last period was very inferior. Poor and badly paid, they sought to make money out of the islanders, and at times defrauded the home government without fear of detection. M. Saint-Sauveur, who resided as French consul in the Ionian islands from 1782 to 1799, has given a grim account of their social and pohtical condition in the last years of Venetian rule; and, after due deduction for his obvious bias against the faUen Repubhc, there remains a large substratum of truth in his state- ments. At Zante the cupidity of the Venetian governors reached its height. Nowhere was so httle of the local revenue spent in the locaUty, nowhere were the taxes more oppressive or more numerous; nowhere • L ^^°J?'?",^; °"^ °^ *^^ ^'^S^' °"^ °f ^^^ w°'"ks executed by Schulenburg, are in the Bntish Museum, and are reproduced by Tervis pp icsq i4<; 2 Daru, V. 159, 171. ' ^^' ^^' ^^' THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 227 were the illicit gains of the Venetian officials larger. They were wont to lend money at usurious interest to the peasants, who frequently rose against their foreign and native oppressors — for the nobles and burgesses of that rich island were regarded by the tillers of the soil with intense hatred. Murders were of daily occurrence at Zante; most weU-to-do natives had bravi in their pay ; there was a graduated tariff for permission to wear wes^pons; and Saint-Sauveur was once an eye-witness of an unholy compact between a high Venetian official and a Zantiote who was desirous to secure in advance impunity for his intended crime ^. It is narrated how the wife of a Venetian governor of Zante used to shout with joy " Oil, oil ! " as soon as she heard a shot fired, in allusion to the oil warrants, the equivalent of cash, which her husband received for acquitting a murderer. Justice at this period was more than usually halting. The French consul could only remember three or four sentences of death during the whole of his residence in the islands, and when, a httle earher, the crew of a foreign ship was murdered in the channel of Corfu by some islanders under the leadership of a noble, only one scapegoat, and he a peasant, was punished. Pirates were not uncommon, Paxo being one of their favourite haunts. Yet after the peace of Passarovitz Corfu was the centre of the RepubUc's naval forces, and it was in the last years of Venetian rule that many of the present buildings were built at Govino, and a road was at last constructed from that point to the town^. During the Russo-Turkish war between 1768 and 1774 many lonians took part in the insurrectionary movement against the Turks on the mainland, in spite of the proclamations of the Venetian govern- ment, which was anxious, Uke the British protectorate fifty years later, to prevent its subjects from a breach of neutrahty^; but it could not even control its own officials, for a provveditore generate sold the ordnance and provisions stored at Corfu under his charge to the Russians. The sympathy of the lonians for Orthodox Russia was natural, especially as many Greeks from the Turkish provinces had settled in the islands without having forgotten their homes on the mainland. They took part in the sieges of Patras and Koron, while after the base desertion of the Greeks by the Russians the islands became the refuge of many defeated insurgents. These refugees were, however, delivered up by the Venetians to the Turks, and nothing but a vigorous Russian protest saved from punishment two Ionian nobles who had taken up arms on her side. ^ Saint-Sauveur, 11. 99, in. 251-3; Andreades, i. 278. ' Saint-Sauveur, 11. 148. I copied down the dates 1759 and 1778 from two of the ruins there. " Paparregopoulos, v. 586; Daru, v. 198-9; Jervis, p. 153. 15—2 228 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Russia foUowed up her protest by appointing Greeks or Albanians as her consuls in the three principal islands^; many Cephalonians emigrated to the new Russian province of the Crimea, and Cephalonian merchant- men began to fly her flag. During the next Russo-Turkish war— that between 1787 and 1792— the lonians fitted out corsairs to aid their friends, and a Russian general was sent to Ithake to direct the opera- tions of the Greeks. Two of the latter, Lampros Katsones of Livadia and the Lokrian Androutsos, father of the better known klepht Odysseus, were specially conspicuous. Lampros styled himself "king of Sparta," and christened his son Lycurgus. He estabhshed himself on the coast of Maina and plundered the ships of all nations— a patriot according to some, a pirate according to others. When a French frigate had put an end to his reign of terror he, hke Androutsos, fled to the Ionian islands. The Venetians caused a hue and cry to be raised for his followers, who were saved from the gallows by their Russian patrons; but Androutsos was handed over to the Turks, who left him to languish in prison at Constantinople. Katsones became the hero of a popular poem. The attacks of pirates from Barbary and Dulcigno upon Prevesa and Cerigo roused the Venetians to the necessity of punishing those marauders, and accordingly Angelo Emo was appointed "extra- ordinary captain of the ships" and sent to Corfu. After a vigorous attempt at reforming the naval estabhshment there, which had fallen into a very corrupt state, he chastised the Algerines and Tunisians, to the great reUef of the lonians. The Zantiotes " presented him with a gold sword, and struck a medal in his honour"; in Corfu a mural tablet still recalls his services against the Barbary corsairs, and his name ranks with those of Morosini and Schulenburg in the history of the islands'. The long peace of the eighteenth century had marked results upon the social hfe of the lonians. It had the bad effect, especially at Corfu, of increasing the desire for luxuries, which the natives could iU afford, but which they obtained at the sacrifice of more sohd comfort. Anxious to show their European culture, the better classes rehnquished the garb of their ancestors, and the women, who now for the first time emerged from the oriental seclusion in which they had been kept for centuries in most of the islands, deprived themselves of necessaries and neglected their houses in order to make a smart appearance on the esplanade — a practice not yet extinct at Corfu. Yet this partial emancipation of the Ionian ladies, due to the European habits introduced by the increasing 1 Paparregopoulos, v. 701 ; Saint-Sauveur, 11. 288. " Saint-Sauveur, 11. 150-3; Hazlitt, The Venetian Republic, 11. 311; Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, viii. 289-99; Legrand, Bibliothique grecque vulgaire, m. 332-6. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 229 number of Venetian officers who had married Corfiote wives, was a distinct benefit to society. Gradually ladies went to the theatre; at first they were screened by a grille from the pubUc gaze, then a mask was considered sufficient protection; finally that too was dropped^- The population of the islands and their dependencies in 1795 was put down at 152,722. But Corfu was already in the deplorable state of poverty into which it once more relapsed after the withdrawal of the British. In spite of its splendid chmate and its fertile soU the fruitful island of the Phaiakians at the end of the Venetian rule could not nourish its much smellier number of inhabitants for more than four or five months in the year. The fault did not he with the soil; but few of the proprietors had the capital to make improvements, and few of the peasants had the energy or the necessary incentives to labour. The lack of beasts of burden and of carriageable roads was a great drawback. One governor did at last, in 1794, construct five roads from the town into the country, by means of voluntary subscriptions and a tax on every loaded horse entering the streets". But it was not till the British time that either this or the scarcely less evil of want of water was remedied. The successors of the seafaring subjects of Alkinoos had scarcely any mercantile marine, while the Cephalonians, sons of a less beautiful island, voyaged all over the Levant in search of a hvelihood. An attempt to naturalise sugar, indigo, and coffee in a hollow of the Black Mountain was a failure^. Zante, less luxurious and naturally richer than either of her two other greater sisters, suffered during the Anglo-French war from the absence of EngUsh commerce; and repeated earthquakes, the predecessors of that of 1893, caused much damage there*. As might have been expected the Venetian system had not improved the character of the islanders, whose faults were admitted by their severest critics to be due to the moral defects of the government. If the Corfiotes of that day seemed to Saint- Sauveur to be ignorant and superstitious, poor and indolent, they were what Venice had made them. Yet, in spite of all her errors, the RepubUc had given to the seven islands a degree of civilisation which was lacking in Turkish Greece, and which, improved by our own protectorate, stUl characterises the lonians to-day. Corfii and Zante are still, after over fifty years of union with the Hellenic kingdom, in many respects more Italian than Greek. Even to-day the seal of Venice is upon them; not merely does the Hon of St Mark stiU stand out from their fortifications, but in the laws and the customs, in the survival of the Italian language and of Italian titles of nobihty here almost alone in Greece, we can trace ' Saint-Sauveur, ii. 199-206. ^ Romanin, ix. 134-8. ' Daru, V. 221; Saint-Sauveur, in. 38-49. * Daru, v. 30. 230 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE his long domination. But no Corfiote or Zantiote, for all that, desires to become Italian. The French Revolution had little immediate influence upon the Ionian islands, though there were some disturbances at Zante, and the citizens of Corfu petitioned Venice against the exclusive privileges of the nobles. Three years before the outbreak in Paris, the most serene Repubhc had sent a special commissioner to reform the constitution of the islands; but those reforms mainly consisted in reducing the numbers of the councils at Corfu and Santa Maura. Much greater hopes were formed in 1794 on the arrival of Widman, the last provvediiore generate whom Venice sent to Corfu. Widman had had a distinguished naval career; his benevolence was well known by report, and the Corfiotes, who had been plundered by his rapacious predecessor, gave him a reception such as had never fallen to the lot of any of their previous Venetian governors^. It was fortunate for him that he was so popular, for, after selling his own silver to meet the pressing needs of the administration, he had to appeal to the generosity of the lonians for funds to carry on the government. He did not appeal in vain; the inhabitants of the three chief islands subscribed money; the four continental dependencies, having no money, offered men, who could not, however, be accepted, as there were no uniforms available; the Jews gave him over £400 and armed a certain number of soldiers at their expense ; he was even reduced, as he could get nothing but promises from home, to use up the savings-bank deposits in the pubhc service. In the apology which he published two years after the loss of the islands he gave a black picture of the state of the fortifications, which contained scarcely enough powder for a single man-of-war. Under the circum- stances his sole consolation was the perusal of St Augustin. Such was the condition of the Ionian defences when the French troops entered Venice in 1797^. Venice was preparing to send commissioners with powers to estabhsh a democratic form of government at Corfu, when Bonaparte, fearing lest Russia should occupy the islands, ordered General Gentih to go thither at once, bidding him introduce some telling classical allusions in his proclamation to the islanders. In the guise of an ally of Venice, with Venetian forces mixed among his own, and flying the lion banner of St Mark at his mast-head, Gentih sailed into Corf 11 on July 11. He informed Widman that he had come to protect the islands, and asked that room might be found within the fortress for their new protectors; ^ Saint-Sauveur (an eye-witness), 11. 63 et sqq. " Romanin, x. 240-5; Rodocanachi, Bonaparte et les lies loniennes, pp. 24, 26. THE IONIAN ISLANDS UNDER VENETIAN RULE 231 he told the people in a trilingual proclamation that the French Republic, in alliance with the Venetians, would free this fragment of ancient Hellas, and revive the glories and the virtues of classic times. Catching the classical spirit of the general's proclamation, the head of the Orthodox church met him as he landed and presented him with a copy of the Odyssey. The islanders received the French as saviours. GentUi occupied the citadel, and Bonaparte wrote from Milan that they hoped "to regain, under the protection of the great French nation, the sciences, arts, and commerce which they had lost through oligarchical tyranny." 9. MONEMVASIA MONEMVASIA DURING THE PRANKISH PERIOD (1204-1540) There are few places in Greece which possess the combined charms of natural beauty and of historic association to the same extent as Monemvasia. The great rock which rises out of the sea near the ancient Epidauros Limera is not only one of the most picturesque sites of the Peloponnese, but has a splendid record of heroic independence, which entitles it to a high place in the hst of the world's fortresses (Plate II, Figs. I, 2). Monemvasia's importance is, however, wholly mediaeval; and its history has hitherto never been written; for the painstaking brochure of the patriotic Monemvasiote ex-deputy and ex-Minister K. Papamichalopoulos^, was composed before modern research rendered it possible to draw upon the original authorities at Venice and elsewhere. In the present chapter I have endeavoured to state briefly what, in the present state of Greek mediaeval studies, is known about this interesting city during the Frankish period. At the time of the Frankish Conquest of the rest of Greece, Monem- vasia was already a place of considerable importance. Even if we reject the statement of the fifteenth century historian, Phrantzes^ himself a native of the place, that the Emperor Maiuice had raised it to the rank of the 34th Metropolitan see — a statement contradicted by an ecclesi- astical document of 1397 — ^we know at least that it was even then the seat of a Greek bishopric, whose holder remained a suffragan of Corinth^ tiU the Latins captured the latter city in 1210. The Comneni had con- firmed the hberties of a community so favourably situated, and the local ^ HoXiopKia Kal aXcoffis ttjs Moi^e/AjSatrfas vird twv "EW'^vuv ti^ 1821. ' A&-^v7]ffiy 1874, " P- 398. " Miklosich und Miiller, Acta et Diplomata Grcsca Medii Mvi, 11. 287; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, BtjSXiov 'IcrropiKdv (ed. 1814), 397. 232 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE aristocracy of Monemvasia enjoyed the privilege of self-government. Thanks to the pubhc spirit of its inhabitants, the wisdom of the local magnates, and the strength of its natural defences, which made it in the Middle Ages the Gibraltar of Greece, it had repelled the attack of the Normans from SicUy in the middle of the twelfth century. Fifty years later it was a busy sea-port town, whose ships were seen at the Pireeus by Michael Akominatos, the last MetropoUtan of Athens before the Conquest, and whose great artistic treasure, the famous picture of Our Lord being "dragged," which has given its name to the 'EX/co/iei/o? church, attracted the covetousness of the Emperor Isaac 11^- As might have been expected from its position and history, Monem- vasia was the last spot in the Peloponnese to acknowledge the Prankish supremacy. Geoffroy I ViUehardouin had contented himself perforce with sending a body of troops to raid the country as far as the causeway, or fiovr) efx^aa-K;, which leads to the great rock-fortress and from which its name is derived^; and his son Geoffroy II seems to have meditated the conquest of the place*; but it was reserved for the third of the ViUehardouins, soldierly Prince William, to hoist the croix ancree of his family over the "sacred rock" of Hellenism, which was in un- interrupted communication by sea with the successor of Byzantium, the Greek Emperor of Nice*, and was therefore a constant source of annoy- ance to the Franks of the Peloponnese. The Prince, after elaborate preparations, began the siege not long after his accession in 1246. He summoned to his aid the great vassals of the PrincipaUty — Guy I of Athens, who owed him allegiance for NaupUa and Argos ; the three barons of Eubcea; Angelo Sanudo, Duke of Naxos.with the other lords of the Cyclades, and the veteran Count Palatine of Cephalonia, Matteo Orsini, ruler of the island-realm of Odysseus^. But the Prince of Achaia saw that without the naval assistance of Venice, which had taken care that his principaUty should not become a sea-power, he could never capture the place. He accordingly obtained the aid of four Venetian galleys, and then proceeded to invest the great rock-fortress by land and water. For three long years the garrison held out, "like a nightingale in its cage," as the Chronicler quaintly says — and the simile is most appropriate, for the place abounds with those songsters — till all suppHes were exhausted, and they had eaten the very cats and mice. Even then, however, they only surrendered on condition that they should be excused from all ' Lampros, M.irxfLijK'A.KOiuvaTov, II. 137; Niketas, 97, 581-92. ^ To 'K.poviKbv Tov Mopfus, 1. 2065. 3 Ibid. 11. 2630, 2644. 4 ihia. 11. 2765-9. s Ibid. U. 2891-6; Romanes, Tpariavhs Zwpfijs, 136. The French version of the Chronicle omits the Naxian and Cephalonian contingents. MONEMVASIA 233 feudal services, except at sea, and should even in that case be paid. True to the conciliatory policy of his family, William wisely granted their terms, and then the three archontes of Monemvasia, Mamonas, Daimono- yannes, and Sophianos, advanced along the narrow causeway to his camp and offered him the keys of their town. The conqueror received them with the respect of one brave man for another, loaded them with costly gifts, and gave them fiefs at Vatika near Cape Malea. A Prankish garrison was installed in the coveted fortress ; and a Latin bishop, Oddo of Verdun, at last occupied the episcopal palace there, which had been his (on paper) ever since Innocent III^ had organised the Latin see of Monemvasia as one of the suffragans of Corinth. The Prankish occupation lasted, however, barely fourteen years, and has left no marks on the picturesque town. Buchon, indeed, who spied the ViUehardouin arms on the Gorgoepekoos church at Athens, thought that he had discovered the famous croix ancree on one of the churches^. He apparently meant the 'E\K6fievo<; church, which the late SirT. Wyse called and Murray's Handbook still calls St Peter's — a name not now known in Monemvasia, but derived perhaps from an inscription to a certain Dominus Petrus, whose remains "lie in peace" hard by. One church in the town, " Our Lady of the Myrtle," bears, it is true, a cross with anchored work below, and four stars above the door. But this church, as I was informed and as the name impUes, was founded by people from Cerigo, whose patron saint is the Uavayla MvpTiSicoTicraa (Plate III, Pig. i). Thecapture of the town bythe Pranksis, however, stiU remembered at Monemvasia, and local tradition points out the place on the mainland where VUlehardouin left his cavalry. One pathetic event occurred at the rock during the brief Prankish period — the visit of the last Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II, in 1261, on his way from his lost capital to Italy*. In the following year Monemvasia was one of the castles ceded to his successor, the Emperor Michael VIII Falaiologos, as the ransom of Prince WiUiam of Achaia, captured by the Greeks three years earUer after the fatal battle of Pelagonia. The mediaeval importance of Monemvasia really dates from this retrocession to the Byzantine Emperor in 1262, when a Byzantine province was established in the south-east of the Morea. It not only became the seat of an Imperial governor, or Ke^aKri, but it was the landing-place where the Imperial troops were disembarked for opera- tions against the Pranks, the port where the Tzakones and the GasmoMoi, ^ Epistolcs, vol. II. p. 622; Les Registres d'Innocent IV, vol. ill. 306, 397. ' La Grice Continentale, p. 412; Sir T. Wyse, Excursion into the Peloponnesus, 1. 6. Cf. Tozer in J.H.S. iv. 233-6. ' T6 XpoviKiv ToO Mop^Ms, 1. 1306; Le Livre de la Conqueste, p. 27. 234 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE or half-castes, of the Peloponnese enlisted for service in the Greek navy. During the war which began in 1263 between Michael VIII and his late captive, we accordingly frequently find it mentioned; it was thither that the Genoese transports in the Imperial service conveyed the Greek troops; it was thither, too, that the news of the first breach of the peace was carried post-haste, and thence communicated to Constantinople; it was there that the Imperial generals took up their headquarters at the outset of the campaign; and it was upon the Monemvasiotes that the comba- tants, when they were reconciled, agreed to lay the blame for the war*. Under the shadow of the Greek flag, Monemvasia became, too, one of the most dangerous lairs of corsairs in the Levant. The great local families did not disdain to enter the profession, and we read of both the DaimonOyannai and the Mamonades in the report of the Venetian judges, who drew up a long statement in 1278 of the depredations caused by pirates to Venetian commerce in the Levant. On one occasion the citizens looked calmly on while a flagrant act of piracy was being committed in their harbour, which, as the port of shipment for Malmsey wine, attracted corsairs who were also connoisseurs^. Moreover, the Greek occupation of so important a position was fatal to the Venetian lords of the neighbouring islands, no less than to Venetian trade in the iEgean. The chief sufferers were the two Marquesses of Cerigo and Cerigotto, members of the great famihes of Venier and Viaro, who had occupied those islands after the Fourth Crusade. It would appear from a confused passage of the Italian Memoir on Cerigo, that the islanders, impatient at the treatment which they received from their Latin lord, the descendant, as he boasted, of the island-goddess Venus herself, sent a deputation to invoke the aid of the Greek governor of the new Byzantine province in the Morea^. At any rate, the famous cruise of Licario, the upstart ItaUan of Negroponte who went over to the Greeks, temporarily ended the rule of the Venetian Marquesses. A governor was sent to Cerigo from Monemvasia; but ere long Michael VIII conferred that island upon the eminent Monemvasiote archon, Paul Monoyannes, who is described in a Venetian document as being in 1275 "the vassal of the Emperor and captain of Cerigo." Monoyannes fortified the island, where his tomb was discovered during the British protectorate, and it remained in the possession of his family till 1309, when intermarriage 1 Le-: Regisires d'Urbain IV. 11. 100, 341; T6 Xpox-^w roC Mop^ws, U. 4534, 4547. 4580. 4584. 4643. 5026, 5569, 5576. Ponies Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. 11. B. xiv. 164, 192-3, 204, 215, 220. 226, 24S. = Antique Memorie di Cerigo. apud Sathas, m,,/ieTa.'E\\r,viKrj,'IaToplas, VI. 301. PLATE II .■' ' '?' '■'''A ^ ^.^-.j^Mte. '"^aMi*, •^..,^,„,^^iM^':::T"tSSX ^9HI mm. -^^-^..^rt ^^^^jj^Sh^^^^^^^^^^^H Fig. I. M0\EM\-ASIA FROM THE LAND. Fig. 2. MONEMVASIA. ENTRANCE TO KASTRO PLATE III Fig. I. MONEMVASIA. llavayia ilvpTiSiwTttraa. Fig. 2. MONEMVASIA 'Ayia Zoipia. MONEMVASIA 235 between the children of its Greek and Latin lords restored Cerigo to the Venieri^. The Byzantine Emperors naturally rewarded a community so useful to them as that of Monemvasia. Michael VIII granted its citizens valuable fiscal exemptions; his pious son and successor, Andronikos II not only confirmed their privileges and possessions, but founded the church of the Divine Wisdom which still stands in the castle. The adjoining cloister has fallen in ruins; the Turks after 1540 converted the church, hke the more famous Santa Sophia of Constantinople, into a mosque, the mihrdb of which may still be traced, and smashed all the heads of the saints which once adorned the church — an edifice reckoned as ancient even in the days of the Venetian occupation, when a Monem- vasiote family had the ^Ms^aiyoMaiMs over it (Plate III, Fig. 2). But afine Byzantine plaque over the door — two peacocks and two lambs — still preserves the memory of the Byzantine connexion. Of Andronikos II we have, too, another Moncmvasiote memorial — the Golden Bull of 1293, by which he gave to the Metropolitan the title of "Exarch of all the Peloponnese," with jurisdiction over eight bishoprics, some, it is true, still in partibus infidelium, as well as the titular Metropolitan throne of Side, and confirmed all the rights and property of his diocese, which was raised to be the tenth of the Empire and extended, at any rate on paper, right across the peninsula to " Pylos, which is called Avarinos " — a convincing proof of the error made by Hopf in supposing that the name of Navarino arose from the Navarrese company a century later. The Emperor lauds in this interesting document, which bears his portrait and is stiU preserved in the National Library and (in a copy) in the Christian Archjeological Museum at Athens, the convenience and safe situation of the town, the number of its inhabitants, their affluence and their technical skill, their seafaring qualities, and their devotion to his throne and person. His grandson and namesake, Andronikos III, in 1332 granted them freedom from market-dues at the Peloponnesian fairs^. But a city so prosperous was sure to attract the covetous glances of enemies. Accordingly, in 1292, Roger de Lluria, the famous admiral of King James of Aragon, on the excuse that the Emperor had failed to pay the subsidy promised by his father to the late King Peter, descended upon Monemvasia, and sacked the lower town without a blow. The archontes and the people took refuge in the impregnable citadel, leaving ^ Sanudo, Istoria del Regno, apud Hopf, Chroniques grico-romanes, 127; Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. 11. B. xiv. 181; Sansovino, Cronologia del Mondo, fol. 185; Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxv. 310. ^ Miklosich. und Miiller, op. cit. v. 155-61; Phrantzes, 399, 400; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, BipUov 'laropiKov, 400. 236 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE their property and their MetropoUtan in the power of the enemyi. Ten years later, another Roger, Roger de Flor, the leader of the Catalan Grand Company, put into Monemvasia on his way to the East on that memorable expedition which was destined to ruin "the pleasaunce of the Latins " in the Levant. On this occasion the Catalans were naturally on their good behaviour. Monemvasia belonged to their new employer, the Emperor Andronikos ; it had been stipulated that they should receive the first instalment of their pay there; and Muntaner^ tells us that the Imperial authorities gave them a courteous reception and provided them with refreshments, including probably a few barrels of the famous Malmsey. Monemvasia fortunately escaped the results of the Catalan expedi- tion, which proved so fatal to the Duchy of Athens and profoundly affected the North and West of the Morea. Indeed, in the early part of the fourteenth century the corsairs of the great rock seemed to have actually seized the classic island of Salamis under the eyes of the Catalan rulers of Athens, whose naval forces in the Saronic Gulf had been purposely crippled by the jealous Venetian Government. At any rate we find Salamis, which had previously belonged to Bonifacio da Verona, the baron of Karystos in Euboea, and had passed with the hand of his daughter and heiress to Alfonso Fadrique, the head of the terrible Catalan Company in Attica, now paying tribute to the Byzantine governor of Monemvasia*. When, however, towards the end of the fourteenth century, the Greeks began to recover most of the Peloponnese, the city which had been so valuable to them in the earher days of the reconquest of the Morea had to compete with formidable rivals. In 1397, when Theodore I Palaiologos obtained, after a desperate struggle, the great fortress of Corinth, which had been his wife's dowry from her father, Nerio AcciajuoU, his first act was to restore the MetropoUtan see of that ancient city, and the first demand of the restored Metropolitan was for the restitution to him by his brother of Monemvasia of the two suffragan bishoprics of Zemenos and Maina, which had been given to the latter's predecessor after the Latin conquest of Corinth*. This demand was granted, and we are not surprised to hear that the Monemvasiotes were disaffected to the Despot, under whom such a sUght had been cast upon their Church. The Moreote archontes at this period were intensely ^ Le Livre de la Conqueste, 363; Libro de los Fechos, 107; Muntaner, Cronaca, ch. 117; Bartholomseus de Neocastro and Nicolaus Specialis apud Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script, xiii. 1185; x. 959. ^ Chs. 199, 201. " Thomas, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, i. 127. ' Miklosich und Miiller, I.e. MONEMVASIA 237 independent of the Despot of Mistra, even though the latter was the brother of the Emperor. The most unruly of them all was Paul Mamonas of Monemvasia, who belonged to the great local family which had been to the fore in the days of Villehardouin. This man held the office of "Grand-Duke"' or Lord High Admiral in the Byzantine hierarchy of officials and claimed the hereditary right to rule as an independent princelet over his native city, of which his father had been Imperial governor. When Theodore asserted his authority, and expelled the haughty archon, the latter did not hesitate to arraign him before the supreme authority of those degenerate days — the Sultan Bayezid I who ordered his immediate restoration by Turkish troops — a humiliation alike for the Greek Despot and for the sacred city of Hellenism^. Theodore had, indeed, at one time thought of bestowing so unruly a community upon a Venetian of tried merit; and, in 1419, after the death of Paul's son, the RepubUc was supposed by Hopf to have come into possession of the coveted rock and its surroundings — then a valuable commercial asset because of the Malmsey which was still produced there^. But the three documents, upon which he relies for this state- ment, merely show that Venetian merchants were engaged in the wine- trade at Monemvasia. It was at this period that Monemvasia produced two men of letters, George Phrantzes and the Monk Isidore. To the latter we owe a series of letters, one of which, addressed to the Emperor Manuel II on the occasion of his famous visit to the Morea in 1415, describes his pacifica- tion of Maina and his aboUtion of the barbarous custom of cutting off the fingers and toes of the slain, which the Mainates had inherited from the Greeks of ^schylus and Sophocles. He also alludes to the Greek inscriptions which he saw at Vitylo^. Of Phrantzes, the historian of the Turkish conquest, the secretary and confidant of the Palaiologoi, the clever if somewhat unscrupulous diplomatist, who, after a busy Ufe, hes buried in the quiet church of Sts Jason and Sosipater at Corfvi, it is needless to speak. In the opinion of the writer, Phrantzes should hold a high place in Byzantine history. His style is clear and simple, com- pared with that of his contemporary Chalkokondyles, the ornate Herodotus of the new Persian Conquest; he knew men and tilings; he was no mere theologian or rhetorician, but a man of affairs ; and he wrote with a naiveti, which is as amusing as it is surprising in one of his profession. Monemvasia may be proud of having produced such a man, * Phrantzes. 57; Manuel Palaiologos, Thcodori Despoti Laiidatio Funebris, aptid Migne, Patrdogia Grmca, CLVI. 2^8-9; Chalkokondyles, 80. " Hopf, op. cit. LX.xxvi. 79: see Appendix. " N^os'E\\7)i'o/ii/)J;u(i«', I. 269; II. i8i 238 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE who has placed in his history a glowing account of his birthplace. We hear too in 1540 of a certain George, called " Count of Corinth " but a native of Monemvasia, who had a fine hbrary, and among the many Peloponnesian calligraphists, the so-called "Murmures," found later on in Italy, there were some Monemvasiotes^- We next find Monemvasia in the possession of the Despot Theodore II Palaiologos^, who ratified its ancient privileges. All the Despot's subjects, whether freemen or serfs, were permitted to enter or leave this important city without let or hindrance, except only the dangerous denizens of Tzakonia and Vatika, whose character had not altered in the two hundred years which had elapsed since the time of ViUehardouin. The citizens, their beasts, and their ships were exempt from forced labour; and, at their special request, the Despot confirmed the local custom, by which all the property of a Monemvasiote who died without relatives was devoted to the repair of the castle; while, if he had only distant relatives, one-third of his estate was reserved for that purpose (Plate V, Fig. i). This system of death duties (to d^icoTiKiov, as it was called) was continued by Theodore's brother and successor, Demetrios, by whom Monemvasia was described as "one of the most useful cities under my rule^." Such, indeed, he found it to be, when, in 1458, Mohammed II made his first punitive expedition into the Morea. On the approach of the great Sultan, the Despot fled to the rock of Monem- vasia. It was the ardent desire of the Conqueror to capture that famous fortress, " the strongest of all cities that we know," as the contemporary Athenian historian, Chalkokondyles*, called it. But his advisers repre- sented to him the difficult nature of the country which he would have to traverse, so he prudently desisted from the enterprise. Two years later, when Mohammed II visited the Morea a second time and finally destroyed Greek rule in that peninsula, Monemvasia again held out successfully. After sheltering Demetrios against an attack from his treacherous brother Thomas, the town gave refuge to the wife and daughter of the former. Demetrios had, however, promised to give his daughter in marriage to the great Sultan; and Isa, son of the Pasha of Uskub, and Matthew Asan, the Despot's brother-in-law, were accordingly sent to demand the surrender of the city and of the two princesses, whom it contained. The Monemvasiotes did, indeed, hand over the two Imperial ladies to the envoys of the Sultan and the Despot; but, relying on their immense natural defences, animated by the sturdyspiritof independence 1 Montfaucon, Palceographia Grtsca, 81, 89; 'E\\t}vo/i.v^/iwi/, 336-46. 2 Miklosich und Miiller, v. 171-4; Uapvaa-aSi, vil. 472-6. 3 Ibid. III. 258. * P. 447. MONEMVASIA 239 ■which had so long distinguished them, and inspired by the example of their governor, Manuel Palaiologos, they bade them tell Mohammed not to lay sacrilegious hands on a city which God had meant to be invincible. The Sultan is reported to have admired their courage, and wisely refrained from attacking the impregnable fortress of mediaeval Hellenism. As Demetrios was the prisoner of the Sultan, the Governor proclaimed Thomas as his hege-lord; but the latter, a fugitive from Greece, was incapable of maintaining his sovereignty and tried to exchange it with the Sultan for another sea-side place*. A passing Catalan corsair, one Lope de Baldaja, was then invited to occupy the rock; but the Uberty- loving inhabitants soon drove out the petty tyrant whom they had summoned to their aid, and, with the consent of Thomas, placed their city under the protection of his patron, the Pope. Pius II gladly appointed both spiritual and temporal governors of the fortress which had so long been the stronghold of Orthodoxy, and of that natioucdism with which Orthodoxy was identical^. But the papal flag did not wave long over Monemvasia. The Orthodox Greeks soon grew tired of forming part of the Pope's temporal dominion, and preferred the rule of Venice, the strongest maritime power interested in the Levant, whose governors were weU known to be "first Venetians and then Cathohcs." The outbreak of the Turco- Venetian War of 1463, and the appearance of a Venetian fleet in the .^gean, gave the citizens their opportunity. The Pope, as Phrantzes informs us, had no wish to give up the place; but he was far away, his representative was feeble, the flag of Venice was for the moment triumphant in Greek waters, and accordingly in 1463 or 1464, the inhabitants admitted a Venetian garrison. On September 21, 1464, the Senate made provision for the government of this new dependency. A Podesta was to be elected for two years at an annual salary of 500 gold ducats, this salary to be paid every three months out of the revenues of the newly-conquered island of Lemnos. Six months later, it was decreed that in case there was no money available for the purpose at Lemnos, the Podesta should receive his salary from the Cretan treasury^. From that time to 1540 Monem- vasia remained a Venetian colony. Once, indeed, a plot was organised 1 Chalkokondyles, 476, 485; Phrantzes, 396-7; Spandugino (ed. 1551). 4475- ^ Magno, Annali Veneti, apud Hopf, Chroniques grico-romanes, 203-4; -P" ^I- Commentayi, 103—4. * Phrantzes, 415; Magno, 204; Sathas, vi. 95; Chalkokondyles, 556. Regina, fol. 52, 56 (for a copy of which I am indebted to Mr Horatio F. Brown: see Appendix). The actual date is uncertain; Phrantzes and Magno give 1464, and the Venetian document above quoted points to that year; but Malatesta's secretary in his account of the war (Sathas, I.e.) puts it in 1463, before the siege of Corinth. 240 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE in the ancient city of the Palaiologoi for the purpose of wresting the place from the claws of the Lion of St Mark. Andrew Palaiologos, the stiU more degenerate son of the degenerate Thomas, had, in 1494, transferred aU his Imperial rights and claims to King Charles VIII of France, then engaged in his expedition to Naples, in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio at Rome. In accordance with this futile arrangement his partisans at Monemvasia, where the Imperial name of Palaiologos was stiU popular, schemed to deliver the city to his French ally^. But the plans of Charles VIII, and with them the plot at Monemvasia, came to nought. Venice remained mistress of the Virgin fortress. Down to the peace of 1502-3, Monemvasia seems to have been fairly prosperous under Venetian rule. By the Turco- Venetian treaty of 1479 she had been allowed to retain the dependency of Vatika^ in the neighbourhood of Cape Malea, which had been captured from the Turks in 1463, and where her citizens had long possessed property. But the territories of Monemvasia were terribly restricted after the next Turco- Venetian war: she had then lost her outlying castles of Rampano and Vatika, from which the ecclesiastical authorities derived much of their dues; and we find the inhabitants petitioning the Republic for the redress of their grievances, and pointing out that this last dehmitation of their frontiers had deprived them of the lands which they had been wont to sow. The rock itself produced nothing, and accordingly all their supphes of com had now to be imported through the Turkish pos- sessions^. As for the famous vintage, which had been the dehght of Western connoisseurs, it was no longer produced at Malvasia, for the Turks did not cultivate the vineyards which were now in their hands, and most of the so-caUed " Malmsey," nihil de Malfasia habens sed nomen, as worthy Father Faber says, had for some time come from Crete or Modon*, tUl the latter place, too, became Turkish. But, in spite of these losses, Monemvasia still remained what she had been for centuries — an impregnable fortress, the Gibraltar of Greece. The Venetians renewed the system, which had prevailed under the Despots of the Morea, of devoting one of the local imposts to the repair of the walls; the Venetian Podesid, who lived, hke the military governor, up in the castle, seems to have been a popular official; and the Republic had wisely confirmed the special privileges granted by the Byzantine Emperors to the Church and ^ Sanudo, Diarii, i. 703. 2 Predelli, CommemonaU, v. 228-30, 238-9, 241 ; Miklosich und Muller, op. cit, m. 293-309. ' Sathas, Mj-rj/ieia 'EWtji/iic^ 'lo-ropias, IV. 230; Sanudo, Diarii, xxix. 482. • Feyerabend, Reyssbuch des Heyligen Lands, fol. 182 ; Faber, Evagatorium, ill. 314. The name was so long preserved that a wine-shop in Venetian dialect was called "Malvasia." PLATE IV MONEMVASIA KaSIRO PLATE V o H z MONEMVASIA 241 community of this favoured city (Plate IV). Both a Greek Metropolitan and a Latin Archbishop continued to take their titles from Monemvasia, and the most famous of these prelates was the eminent Greek scholar, Markos Mousouros. It is interesting to note that in 1521 Pope Leo X nad a scheme for founding an academy for the study of the Greek language out of the revenues of whichever of these sees first fell vacant, as Arsenios Apostoles, at that time MetropoUtan, was a learned Greek and a Uniate, and in both capacities, a prime favourite of the classically cultured Pontiff. In 1524, however, despite the thunders of the (Ecu- menical Patriarch, the Greek and the Italian prelates agreed among themselves that the former should retain the see of Monemvasia and that the latter should take a Cretan diocese^. The connection between " the great Greek island " and this rocky peninsula was now close. The Greek priests of Crete, who had formerly gone to the Venetian colonies of Modon and Coron for consecration, after the loss of those colonies in 1500 came to Monemvasia ; the Cretan exchequer continued to contribute to the expenses of the latter; and judicial appeals from the Podesta of Malmsey lay to the colonial authorities at Candia, instead of being remitted to Venice; for, as a Monemvasiote deputation once plaintively said, the expenses of the long journey had been defrayed by pawning the chalices of the churches. Even now Monemvasia is remote from the world; in those Venetian days she was seldom visited, not only because of her situation, but because of the fear which ships' captains had of her inhabitants 2. The humiliating peace of 1540, which closed the Turco- Venetian war of 1537, closed also the history of Venice in the Morea till the brief revival at the close of the seventeenth century. This shameful treaty cost the Republic her two last possessions on the mainland of Greece — Nauplia and Monemvasia, both stiU uncaptured and the latter scarcely assailed by the Turkish forces^. Admiral Mocenigo was sent to break as best he could to her loyal subjects the sad news that the Republic had abandoned their homes to the Turks. The Venetian envoy, if we may believe the speech which Paruta puts into his mouth, repeated to the weeping people the ancient adage, ubi bene, ibi -patria, and pointed out to them that they would be better off in a new abode less exposed than their native cities had been to the Turkish peril. In November a Venetian fleet arrived in the beautiful bay of Naupha and off the sacred rock of ' Sanudo, Diarii, vii. 714; xxiii. 536; xxrv. 669; xxv. 64; xxix. 402; xxxi. 227; XXXV. 363; XLIV. 475; LV. 296; "Sioi "EWrivoiwrilJiOlv, III. 56. * Sanudo, Diarii, xi. 349; xxxiii. 366; Sathas, iv. 224, 227, 229, 234; Lamansky, Les Secrets de I'Btat de Venise, p. 059; Feyerabend, op. cit. fol. 112. ' Predelli, Commemoriali, vi. 236, 238. M. 16 242 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE Monemvasia to remove the soldiers, the artillery, and aU the inhabitants who wished to Uve under Venetian rule. Then the banner of the Evangelist was lowered, the keys of the two last Venetian fortresses in the Morea were handed to Kassim Pasha, and the receipts for their transfer were sent to Venice^. The inhabitants of the two cities had been loyal to Venice, and Venice was loyal to them. The first idea of transporting the Monemvasiotes to the rocky island of Cerigo— then partly a Venetian colony and partly under the rule of the great Venetian family of Venier, which boasted its descent from Venus, the fabled goddess of Kythera— was abandoned, in deference to the eloquent protests of the MetropoUtan, and lands were assigned to the exiles in the more fertile colonies of the Republic. A commission of five nobles was appointed to consider the claims, and f^J~K3] Fig. 2. Arms on Well-Head in the Castle. provide for the settlement, of the stradioti, or Hght horsemen from NaupUa and Monemvasia, who had fought like heroes against the Turks; and this commission sat for several years, for the claimants were numerous and not all genuine^. Some, Uke the ancient local family of Daimono- yannes, formerly lords of Cerigo, received lands in Crete^, where various members of the Athenian branch of the great Plorentine family of the Medici, which had been settled for two hundred years at Nauplia, also found a home. Scions of the clan of Mamonas went to Zante and Crete, and are found later on at Corinth, Nauplia, Athens and Corfu. Others were removed to Corfu, where they soon formed an integral part of the Corfiote population and where the name of these stradioti is still preserved in a locality of the island ; while others again were transplanted 1 Paruta, Historia Veneiiana, i. 451-3. " Lami, Delicics Eruditorum, xv. 203; Sathas, op. cit. viil. 310-3, 320-1, 335, 344. 377-8. 441-3- 3 Ibid. 342, 413, 450, 454. MONEMVASIA 243 to Cephalonia, Cyprus, or Dalmatia. Not a few of them were soon, however, smitten with home-sickness; they sold their new lands and returned to be Turkish subjects at Nauplia and Monemvasiai. The Venetian fortifications; the old Venetian pictures on the eikonostasis of the 'EXko/msvo'; church; the quaint Italian chimneys, and the well-head up in the castle, which bears the winged lion of St Mark, two private coats of arms, the date MDXIV and the initials S R upon it, the latter those of Sebastiano Renier, Podestd from 15 10 to 15 12 (to whom the first coat belongs, while the second is that of Antonio Garzoni, Podestd in 1526 and again in 1538, when he was the last Podestd before the Turkish conquest), still speak to us of this first Venetian occupation, when the ancient Byzantine city, after the brief vicissitudes of French and Papal government, found shelter for nearly eighty years beneath the flag of the EvangeUst (Plate V, Fig. 2 and Text-fig. 2). APPENDIX TWO VENETIAN DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE ACQUISITION OF MONEMVASIA IN 1464 I. — Regina fol. 52. MccccLxiiij indictione xij. Die xxi Septembris. Cum per gratiam omnipotentis Dei acquista sit in partibus grecie insula Staliminis dives et opulenta in qua sunt tres terre cum CasteUis viz Cochinum, Mudrum et Paleocastrum que tempore pacis reddere sclent ducatos circa x™. Item etiam Civitas Malvasie sita in Amorea. Ad quorum locorum bonam gubernationem et conservationem sub obedientia nostri Dominii providendum est de rectoribus et camerariis e venetiis mittendis tam pro populis regendis et jure reddendo quam pro introitibus earum bene gubemandis et non perdendis sicut hucusque dicitur esse factum .... Eligatur per quattuor manus electionum in maiori consilio unus potestas Malvasie cum salario ducatorum V. auri in anno, sit per duos annos tantum; et habeat salarium liberum cum prerogativis et exemp- tionibus rectoris Staliminis et similiter in contumacia sua. Debeat habere duos famulos et tres equos et recipiat salarium suum ab insula Staliminis de tribus mensibus in tres menses ante tempus. •fDe parte ... . 474 De non ... .14 Non syncere . ... 9 Die xvij Septembris mcccclxiiij in consilio di xl'*. De parte . . . . 26 De non ...... o Non sync. . . i ^ Sathas, op. cit. vill. 396; Meliarakes, OlKoyiveia. Ha/iuva- 1 5 — 2 244 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE II. — Regina fol. 56. Die iij Marcii 1465. Captum est in maiori Consilio: Quod Rector monouasie elegendus de tribus in tres menses habere debeat salarium suum a loco nostro stalimnis et quum facile accidere posset per magnas impensas quas idem stalimnis locus habet quod inde salarium ipsum suum habere non posset. . . . Vadit pars quod in quantum idem rector noster monouasie a Stalimnis insula salarium ipsum suum habere non posset juxta formam presentis electionis sue a camera nostra crete illud percipere debeat sicuti conueniens et honestum est de tribus in tres menses juxta formam presentis ipsius. fDe parte 573 De non ...... 39 Non syncere , .... 42 THREE VENETIAN DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE WINE-TRADE AT MONEMVASIA (I have altered the Venetian dates to Modern Style) : Jan. 9, 1420. Capta. Attenta humili et devota supplicatione fidelium civium nostrorum mercatorum Monavaxie et Romanie et considerato quod mercantia huiusmodi vinorum hoc anno parvum vel nichil valuit, ob quod ipsi mercatores multa et maxima damna sustinuerunt, ob quibus [sic) nuUo modo possunt ad terminum quatuor mensium sibi Umitatum solvere eorum datia prout nobis suppUcaverunt ; Vadit pars quod ultra terminum quatuor mensium sibi concessum per terram ad solvendum datia sua pro suis monavasiis et romaniis, concedatur eisdem et prorogetur dictus terminus usque ad duos menses ultra predictos menses quatuor sibi statuitos per terram ut supra dando plezariam ita bonam et sufi&cientem pro ista prorogatione termini, quod comune nostrum sit securum de datio suo, solvendo ad terminum debitum. De parte omnes. (Archivio di Stato Venezia — Deliberazioni Senato Misti Reg. 53. c. 21.) Feb. 19, 142 1. Capta, Quod audita devota supplicatione fidelium civium nostrorum mercatorum Romanie et Monovasie Venetiis existentium, et intellectis damnis que receperunt iam annis tribus de ipsis vinis et maxime hoc anno quia per piratas accepte sibi fuerunt plures vegetes huiusmodi vinorum, et considerato quod ilia que habent non possunt expedire, propter que damna non possunt solvere sua datia ad terminum sibi Umitatum per ordines nostros. Et audita superinde responsione offitialium nostrorum datii vini ex nunc captum sit quod ultra dictum terminum sibi limitatum per ordines nostros elongetur terminus solvendi dicta datia ipsorum vinorum usque duos alios menses. De parte omnes. De non o. Non sinceri o. (Archivio di Stato Venezia — Dehberazioni Senato Misti Reg. 53. c. 112.) MONEMVASIA 245 Feb. o, 1428. In Consilio Rogatorum. Capta. Quod mercatoribus Monovaxie et Romanie, qui non potuerunt expedire vina sua propter novitates presentes elongetur terminus solvendi datia sua per unum mensem ultra terminum limitatum per ordines nostros. De parte omnes alii. De non 2. Non sinceri i. (Archivio di Stato Venezia — Deliberazioni Senato Misti Reg. 56. carte. 76to.) 10. THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA (1204-1414) Of all the feudal lordships, founded in Northern Greece at the time of the Frankish Conquest, the most important and the most enduring was the Marquisate of Boudonitza. Like the Venieri and the Viari in the two islands of Cerigo and Cerigotto at the extreme south, the lords of Boudonitza were Marquesses in the hteral sense of the term — ^wardens of the Greek Marches — and they maintained their responsible position on the outskirts of the Duchy of Athens untU after the estabUshment of the Turks in Thessaly. Apart, too, from its historic importance, the Marquisate of Boudonitza possesses the romantic glamour which is shed over a famous classical site by the chivalry of the middle ages. What stranger accident could there have been than that which made two noble Italian families the successive guardians of the historic pass which is for ever associated with the death of Leonidas ! Among the adventurers who accompanied Boniface of Montferrat, the new King of Salonika, on his march into Greece in the autumn of 1204, was Guido Pallavicini, the youngest son of a nobleman from near Parma who had gone to the East because at home every common man could hale him before the courts 1. This was the vigorous personality who, in the eyes of his conquering chief, seemed peculiarly suited to watch over the pass of Thermopylae, whence the Greek archon, Leon Sgouros, had fled at the mere sight of the Latins in their coats of mail. Accord- ingly, he invested him with the fief of Boudonitza, and ere long, on the Hellenic substructures of Pharygse, rose the imposing fortress of the ItaUan Marquesses. The site was admirably chosen, and is, indeed, one of the finest in Greece. The village of Boudonitza, Bodonitza, or Mendenitza, as it is now ^ Litta, Le famiglie celebri italiane, vol. v. Plate XIV. 246 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE called, lies at a distance of three and a half hours on horseback from the baths of Thermopylae and nearly an hour and a half from the top of the pass which leads across the mountains to Dadi at the foot of Pamassos. The castle, which is visible for more than an hour as we approach from Thermopyls, stands on a hUl which bars the valley and occupies a truly commandingposition(PIateVI,Figs.iand2).TheWardenoftheMarches, in the Prankish times, could watch from its battlements the blue Maliac Gulf with the even then important town of Styhda, the landing-place for Zetounion, or Lamia; his eye could traverse the channel up to, and beyond, the entrance to the Gulf of Almiro, as the Gulf of Volo was then called; in the distance he could descry two of the Northern Sporades— Skiathos and Skopelos— at first in the hands of the friendly Ghisi, then reconquered by the hostile Byzantine forces. The northernmost of the three Lombard baronies of Eubcea with the bright streak which marks the baths of ^Edepsos, and the little island of Panaia, or Canaia, between Eubcea and the mainland, which was one of the last remnants of Italian rule in this part of Greece, lay outstretched before him; and no pirate craft could come up the Atalante channel without his knowledge. Land- wards, the view is bounded by vast masses of mountains, but the danger was not yet from that quarter, whUe a rocky gorge, the bed of a dry torrent, isolates one side of the castle. Such was the site where, for more than two centuries, the Marquesses of Boudonitza watched, as advanced sentinels, first of "new Prance" and then of Christendom. The extent of the Marquisate cannot be exactly defined. In the early years after the Conquest we find the first Marquess part-owner of Lamia* ; his territory extended down to the sea, upon which later on his suc- cessors had considerable commercial transactions, and the harbour from which they obtained their supplies would seem to have been simply called the skala of Boudonitza. In 1332 Adam, the Archbishop of Antivari, alludes to the "castle and port of Boudonice {sic), through which we shall have in abundance grain of all kinds from Wallachia" {i.e. Thessaly, the "Great Wallachia" of the Byzantine historians and of the "Chronicle of the Morea")^- The Pallavicini's southern frontier marched with the Athenian seigneurie; but their feudal relations were not with Athens, but with Achaia. Whether or no we accept the story of the "Chronicle of the Morea," that Boniface of Montferrat conferred the suzerainty of Boudonitza upon Guillaume de Champhtte, or the more probable story of the elder Sanudo, that the Emperor Baldwin II ^ Epistolcs Innocentii III (ed. Baluze), 11. 477. 'Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. 11. B. xiv. 201, 213, 218, 222; Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Documents Arminiens, 11. 508. PLATE VI Fis. I. BouDONirzA. The Castle from the West. Fig. ^. BouDONiTzA. The Castle from the East. PLATE VII Fig. I. Bouno^'ITzA. The Keep and ite Hellenic Gateway. Fig. 2. BOLTDOMTZA. ThE HELLENIC ( NIC ( ,A I EWAY. THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 247 gave it to Geoffrey II de ViUehardouini, it is certain that later on the Marquess was one of the twelve peers of Achaia^, and in 1278 Charles I of Naples, in his capacity of Prince of Achaia, accordingly notified the appointment of a baihe of the principahty to the Marchioness of that day^. It was only during the Catalan period that the Marquess came to be reckoned as a feudatory of Athens*. Within his dominions was situated a Roman Catholic episcopal see — that of Thermopylae, dependent upon the metropolitan see of Athens. At first the bishop resided at the town which bore that name; on its destruction, however, during those troublous times, the bishop and canons buUt an oratory at Boudonitza. Even there, however, the pirates penetrated and kiUed the bishop, whereupon in 1209 the then occupant of the see, the third of the series, begged Innocent III to allow him to move to the abbey of " Communio " — perhaps a monastery founded by one of the Comneni — within the same district^. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, the bishop was commonly known by the title of "Boudonitza," because he resided there, and his see was then one of the four within the confines of the Athenian Duchy*. Guido, first Marquess of Boudonitza, the "Marchesopoulo," as his Greek subjects called him, played a very important part in both the pohtical and ecclesiastical history of his time — ^just the part which we should have expected from a man of his lawless disposition. The "Chronicle" above quoted represents him as present at the siege of Corinth. He and his brother, whose name may have been Rubino, were among the leaders of the Lombard rebeUion against the Latin Emperor Henry in 1209; he obstinately refused to attend the first Parhament of Ravenika in May of that year; and, leaving his castle undefended, he retreated with the still recalcitrant rebels behind the stronger walls of the Kadmeia at Thebes. This incident procured for Boudonitza the honour of its only Imperial visit; for the Emperor Henry lay there one evening — a certain Wednesday — on his way to Thebes, and thence rode, as the present writer has ridden, through the closure, or pass, which leads over the mountains and down to Dadi and the Boeotian plain — then, as now, the shortest route from Boudonitza to the Boeotian capital', and ^ Td XpoviKdv ToO Mop^ws, 11. 1559, 3187; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 102; Libra de los Fechos, 25, 26; Cronaca di Morea, apud Hopf, Chroniques grico-romanes, 424; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, Bi^Xiov 'ItrropLKov (ed. 1814), 461; Sanudo, Istoria del Regno di Romania, apud Hopf, op. cit. 100. ^ Canciani, Barbarorum Leges Antiqum, iii. 507; Muntaner, Cronaca, ch. 261. ' Archivio storico italiano, Ser. IV. i. 433. ' Rubi6 y Lluch, Los Navarros en Gvecia, 482. ° EpistolcB Innocentii III, 11. 265. " Rubio y Lluch, op. cit. 481. ' Caiiels apud Buchon, Histoire des ConquUes, 449; Henri de Valenciennes apud Buchon, Recherches et Matiriaux, 11. 203, 205-6. 248 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE at that time the site of a church of our Lady, Sta Maria de Clusurio, the property of the abbot and canons of the Lord's Temple. Like most of his fellow-nobles, the Marquess was not over-respectful of the rights and property of the Church to which he belonged. If he granted the strong position of Lamia to the Templars, he secularised property belonging to his bishop and displayed a marked unwillingness to pay tithes. We find him, however, with his fellows, signing the concordat which was drawn up to regulate the relations between Church and State at the second Parliament of Ravenika in May, 1210^. As one of the leading nobles of the Latin kingdom of Salonika, Guide continued to be associated with its fortunes. In 1221 we find him acting as baiUe for the Regent Margaret during the minority of the young King Demetrius, in whose name he ratified a convention with the clergy respecting the property of the Church 2. His territory became the refuge of the Catholic Archbishop of Larissa, upon whom the bishopric of Thermopylae was temporarily conferred by Honorius III, when the Greeks of Epeiros drove him from his see. And when the ephemeral kingdom had faUen before them, the same Pope, in 1224, ordered Geoffroy II de VUlehardouin of Achaia, Othon de la Roche of Athens, and the three Lombard barons of Eubcea to aid in defending the castle of Boudonitza, and rejoiced that 1300 hyperperi had been subscribed by the prelates and clergy for its defence, so that it could be held by "G. lord of the aforesaid castle," till the arrival of the Marquess WiUiam of Montferrat^. Guido was still Uving on May 2, 1237, when he made his will. Soon after that date he probably died ; Hopf * states in his genealogy, without citing any authority, that he was killed by the Greeks. He had survived most of his fellow-Crusaders; and, in consequence of the Greek reconquest of Thessaly, his Marquisate was now, with the doubtful exception of Larissa, the northernmost of the Prankish fiefs, the veritable "March" of Latin Hellas. Guido had married a Burgundian lady named Sibylle, possibly a daughter of the house of Cicon, lately estabUshed in Greece, and therefore a cousin of Guy de la Roche of Athens. By her he had two daughters and a son, Ubertino, who succeeded him as second Marquess. Despite the feudal tie which should have bound him to the Prince of Achaia, and which he boldly repudiated, Ubertino assisted his cousm, the "Great Lord" of Athens, in the fratricidal war between those prominent Prankish rulers, which culminated in the defeat of the ' Epistoltx Innocentii III, n. 261-2, 264, 477, 835-7 ; Honorii III Opera, iv. 414. ^ Raynaldi Annates Ecclesiastici (ed. 1747). i. 492. ' Regesta Honorii III, 11. 96, 167, 207, 333. « Chroniques grSco-romanes , 478; and apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklop&die, Lxxxv. 276. THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 249 Athenians at the battle of Karydi in 1238, where the Marquess was present, and whence he accompanied Guy de la Roche in his retreat to Thebes. In the following year, however, he obeyed the summons of the Prince of Achaia to take part in the fatal campaign in aid of the Despot Michael II of Epeiros against the Greek Emperor of Nice, which ended on the plain of Pelagonia; and in 1263, when the Prince, after his return from his Greek prison, made war against the Greeks of the newly estabUshed Byzantine province in the Morea, the Marquess of Boudo- nitza was once more summoned to his aid^. The revival of Greek power in Euboea at this period, and the frequent acts of piracy in the Atalante channel were of considerable detriment to the people of Boudonitza, whose food supphes were at times intercepted by the corsairs^- But the Marquess Ubertino profited by the will of his sister Mabilia, who had married Azzo VII d'Este of Ferrara, and bequeathed to her brother in 1264 her property near Parma^. After the death of Ubertino, the Marquisate, hke so many Prankish baronies, fell into the hands of a woman. The new Marchioness of Boudonitza was his second sister, Isabella, who is included in the above- mentioned circular note, addressed to all the great magnates of Achaia by Charles I of Anjou, the new Prince, and notif57ing to them the appointment of Galeran d'lvry as the Angevin vicar-general in the principahty. On that occasion, the absence of the Marchioness was one of the reasons alleged by Archbishop Benedict of Patras, in the name of those present at Glarentza, for the refusal of homage to the new baiUe*. So important was the position of the Marquisate as one of the twelve peerages of Achaia. The Marchioness Isabella died without children; and, accordingly, in 1286, a disputed succession arose between her husband, a Frank settled in the East, and the nearest male representative of the PaUa- vicini family, her cousin Tommaso, grandson of the first Marquess's brother, Rubino. The dispute was referred to Guillaume de la Roche, Duke of Athens, in his capacity of baihe of Achaia, before the feudal court of which a question relating to Boudonitza would legally come. Tommaso, however, settled the matter by seizing the castle, and not only maintained himself there, but transmitted the Marquisate to his son, Alberto^. * TA XpoviKbi' ToO Mop^ws, 11. 3196-3201, 3295-6, 4613; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 119, 160; Cronaca di Morea, 438-9; Libra de los Fechos, 56, 75. ' Pontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. 11. B. xiv. 201, 213, 218, 222. ' Litta, I.e. ' Ti XpoyiKii' tov Mop^as, 1. 7915 ; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 260. ' Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopadie, lxxxv. 321. The original document has now been rendered illegible by the damp. 250 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE The fifth Marquess is mentioned as among those summoned by Philip of Savoy, Prince of Achaia, to the famous Parliament and tournament on the Isthmus of Corinth in the spring of 1305, and as having been one of the magnates who obeyed the caU of Philip's name- sake and successor, Phihp of Taranto, in 1307^- Four years later he fell, at the great battle of the Kephissos, fighting against the Catalans beneath the Hon banner of Walter of Brienne^, who by his will a few days before had bequeathed 100 hyperperi to the church of Boudonitza^. The Marquisate, alone of the Frankish territories north of the Isthmus, escaped conquest by the Catalans, though, as at Athens, a widow and her child were alone left to defend it. Alberto had married a rich Euboean heiress, Maria dalle Carceri, a scion of the Lombard family which had come from Verona at the time of the Conquest. By this marriage he had become a hexarch, or owner of one-sixth of that great island, and is so officially described in the Venetian list of Greek rulers. Upon his death, in accordance with the rules of succession laid down in the Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania, the Mar- quisate was divided in equal shares between his widow and his infant daughter, GugUelma. Maria did not, however, long remain unconsoled; indeed, poHtical considerations counselled an immediate marriage with some one powerful enough to protect her own and her child's interests from the Catalans of Athens. Hitherto the Wardens of the Northern March had only needed to think of the Greek enemies in front, for all the territory behind them, where Boudonitza was most easily assailable, had been in the hands of Frenchmen and friends. More fortunate than most of the high-bom dames of Frankish Greece, the widowed Marchioness had avoided the fate of accepting one of her husband's conquerors as his successor. Being thus free to choose, she selected as her spouse Andrea Comaro, a Venetian of good family, a great personage in Crete, and Baron of Skarpanto. Comaro thus, in 13 12, received, by virtue of his marriage, his wife's moiety of Boudonitza*, while her daughter conferred the remaining half, by her subsequent union with Bartolommeo Zaccaria, upon a member of that famous Genoese race, which already owned Chios and was about to estabhsh a d5masty in the Morea^. Comaro now came to reside in Eubcea, where self-interest as well as patriotism led him to oppose the claims of Alfonso Fadrique, the new viceroy of the Catalan Duchy of Athens. His opposition and the natural ' Le Livre de la Conqueste, 465; Lihro de los Fechos, 114. 2 Ibid. 120; Hopf, Chroniques grico-yomanes, \t]; Sanudo, op. cit. 125. 3 D'Arbois de Jubainville, Voyage paUographique dans le Dipartement de VAube, 337- * Sanudo, I.e. » Archivio Veneto, xx. 87, 89. THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 251 ambition of Fadiique brought down, however, upon the Marquisate the horrors of a Catalan invasion, and it was perhaps on this occasion that Bartolommeo Zaccaria was carried off as a captive and sent to a Sicilian prison, whence he was only released at the intervention of Pope John XXII. It was fortunate for the inhabitants of Boudonitza that Venice included Cornaro in the truce which she made with the Catalans in 1319^. Four years later he followed his wife to the grave, and her daughter was thenceforth sole Marchioness. Guglielma Pallavicini was a true descendant of the first Marquess. Of all the rulers of Boudonitza, with his exception, she was the most self- willed, and she might be included in that by no means small number of strong-minded, unscrupulous, and passionate women, whom Frankish Greece produced and whom classic Greece might have envied as subjects for her tragic stage. On the death of her Genoese husband, she con- sidered that both the proximity of Boudonitza to the Venetian colony of Negroponte and her long-standing claims to the castle of Larmena in that island required that she should marry a Venetian, especially as the decision of her claim and even her right to reside in the island depended upon the Venetian baiUe. Accordingly, she begged the RepubUc to give her one of its nobles as her consort, and promised dutifully to accept whomsoever the Senate might choose. The choice feU upon Nicolo Giorgio, or Zorzi, to give him the Venetian form of the name, who be- longed to a distinguished family which had given a Doge to the Republic and had recently assisted young Walter of Brienne in his abortive campaign to recover his father's lost duchy from the Catalans. A Venetian galley escorted him in 1335 to the haven of Boudonitza, and a Marquess, the founder of a new Une, once more ruled over the castle of the Pallavicini^. At first there was no cause to regret the alliance. If the Catalans, now established at Neopatras and Lamia, within a few hours of Boudonitza, occupied several villages of the adjacent Marquisate, despite the recommendations of Venice, Nicolo I came to terms with them, probably by agreeing to pay that annual tribute of four fuUy equipped horses to the Vicar-General of the Duchy of Athens, which we find constituting the feudal bond between that state and Boudonitza in the time of his son*. He espoused, too, the Euboean claims of his wife; but Venice, which had an eye upon the strong castle of Larmena, diplo- matically referred the legal question to the bailie of Achaia, of which ' Raynaldi op. cit. v. 95; Thomas, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, i. I 20-1. * Archivio Veneto, I.e.; Misti, xvi. f. gyt". (See Appendix.) ^ Rubi6 y Lluch, l.c.; Qurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, 11. f. 537. 252 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE both Euboea and Boudonitza were technically still reckoned as depen- dencies. The bailie, in the name of the suzeraine Princess of Achaia, Catherine of Valois, decided against Gughelma, and the purchase of Larmena by Venice ended her hopes. Furious at her disappointment, the Marchioness accused her Venetian husband of cowardice and of bias towards his native city, while more domestic reasons increased her indignation. Her consort was a widower, while she had had a daughter by her first marriage, and she suspected him of favouring his own offspring at the expense of her child, Manilla, in whose name she had deposited a large sum of money at the Venetian bank in Negroponte. To complete the family tragedy played within the walls of Boudonitza there was only now lacking a sinister ally of the angry wife. He, too, was forthcoming in the person of Manfredo PaUavicini, the relative, business adviser, and perhaps paramour, of the Marchioness. As one of the old conqueror's stock, he doubtless regarded the Venetian husband as an interloper who had first obtained the family honours and then betrayed his trust. At last a crisis arrived. PaUavicini insulted the Marquess, his feudal superior; the latter threw him into prison, where- upon the prisoner attempted the Ufe of his lord. As a peer of Achaia, the Marquess enjoyed the right of inflicting capital punishment. He now exercised it; PaUavicini was executed, and the assembled burgesses of Boudonitza, if we may beheve the Venetian version, approved the act, saying that it was better that a vassal should die rather than inflict an injury on his lord. The sequel showed, however, that Guglielma was not appeased. She might have given assent with her Ups to what the burgesses had said. But she worked upon their feeUngs of devotion to her f amUy, which had ruled so long over them ; they rose against the foreign Marquess at their Lady's instigation; and Nicolo was forced to flee across to Negroponte, leaving his Uttle son Francesco and aU his property behind him. Thence he proceeded to Venice, and laid his case before the Senate. That body warmly espoused his cause, and ordered the Marchioness to receive him back to his former honourable position, or to deUver up his property. In the event of her refusal, the baiUe of Negroponte was instructed to break off aU communications between Boudonitza and that island and to sequestrate her daughter's money stiU lying in the Eubcean bank. In order to isolate her stiU further, letters were to be sent to the Catalans of Athens, requesting them not to interfere between husband and wife. As the Marchioness remained obdurate, Venice made a last effort for an amicable settlement, begging the Catalan leaders. Queen Joanna I of Naples, as the head of the house of Anjou, to which the principaUty of THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 253 Achaia belonged, and the Dauphin Humbert II of Vienne, then commanding the papal fleet against the Turks, to use their influence on behalf of her citizen. When this failed, the bailie carried out his in- structions, confiscated the funds deposited in the bank, and paid Nicolo out of them the value of his property. Neither the loss of her daughter's money nor the spiritual weapons of Pope Clement VI could move the obstinate Lady of Boudonitza, and in her local bishop, Nitardus of Thermopylae, she could easily find an adviser who dissuaded her from forgiveness^. So Nicolo never returned to Boudonitza; he served the RepubUc as envoy to the Serbian Tsar, Dushan, and as one of the Doge's Councillors, and died at Venice in 1354. After his death, the Marchioness at once admitted their only son, Francesco, the " Marchesotto," as he was called, now a youth of seventeen, to rule with her, and, as the Catalans were once more threatening her land, made overtures to the Republic. The latter, glad to know that a Venetian citizen was once more ruhng as Marquess at Boudonitza, included him and his mother in its treaties with Athens, and when GugUelma died, in 1358, after a long and varied career, her son received back the confiscated property of his late half-sister^. The peaceful reign of Francesco was a great contrast to the stormy career of his mother. His Catalan neighbours, divided by the jealousies of rival chiefs, had no longer the energy for fresh conquests. The estab- lishment of a Serbian kingdom in Thessaly only affected the Marquess in so far as it enabled him to bestow his daughter's hand upon a Serbian princelet^. The Turkish peril, which was destined to swallow up the Marquisate in the next generation, was, however, already threatening Catalans, Serbs, and Italians ahke, and accordingly Francesco Giorgio was one of the magnates of Greece whom Pope Gregory XI invited to the Congress on the Eastern question, which was summoned to meet at Thebes* on October i, 1373. But when the Athenian duchy, of which he was a tributary, was distracted by a disputed succession between Maria, Queen of Sicily, and Pedro IV of Aragon, the Venetian Marquess, chafing at his vassalage and thinking that the moment was favourable for severing his connexion with the Catalans, declared for the Queen. He was, in fact, the most important member of the minority which was in her favour, for we are told that " he had a very fine estate," and we know ' Misti, xvH. f. 71; xviii. f. 10; XX. fi. 371°, 40; xxiii. fi. 26, 3oto, 461°; xxiv. 53t°, 63, io2to, 103 (see Appendix); Predelli, Commemonali, 11. p. 153. * Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium, in. 160; Predelli, Commemonali, 11. 181; Misti, xxvii. f. 3; xxviii. f. 28. ' Orbini, Regno degli Slavi, 271. * Raynaldi op. cit. vii. 224; Jauna, Histoire ginirale des royaumes de Chypre, etc., 11. 882. 254 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE that he had enriched himself by mercantile ventures. Accordingly he assisted the Navarrese Company in its attack upon the duchy, so that Pedro IV wrote in 1381 to the Venetian baihe of Negroponte, begging him to prevent his fellow-countr3niian at Boudonitza from helping the King's enemies. As the Marquess had property in the island, he had given hostages to fortune. The victory of the Aragonese party closed the incident, and the generous poUcy of the victors was doubtless extended to him. But in 1388 the final overthrow of the Catalan rule by Nerio Acciajuoh made the Marquisate independent of the Duchy of Athens^. In feudal lists — such as that of 1391 — the Marquess continued to figure as one of the temporal peers of Achaia^ but his real position was that of a " citizen and friend " of Venice, to whom he now looked for help in trouble. Francesco may have lived to see this realisation of his hopes, for he seems to have died about 1388, leaving the Marquisate to his elder son, Giacomo, under the regency of his widow Euphrosyne, a daughter of the famous insular family of Sommaripa, which still survives in the Cyclades*. But the young Marquess soon found that he had only exchanged his tribute to the Catalan Vicar-General for a tribute to the Sultan. We are not told the exact moment at which Bayezid I imposed this payment, but there can be httle doubt that Boudonitza first became tributary to the Turks in the campaign of 1393-4, when "the Thunderbolt" fell upon Northern Greece, when the Marquess's Serbian brother-in-law was driven from Pharsala and Domoko, when Lamia and Neopatras were surrendered, when the county of Salona, founded at the same time as Boudonitza, ceased to exist. On the way to Salona, the Sultan's army must have passed within four hours of Boudonitza, and we surmise that it was spared, either because the season was so late — Salona fell in February, 1394 — or because the castle was so strong, or because its lord was a Venetian. This respite was prolonged by the fall of Bayezid at Angora and the fratricidal struggle between his sons, while the Marquess was careful to have himself included in the treaties of 1403, 1408, and 1409 between the Sultan Suleyman and Venice; a special clause in the first of these instruments released him from all obligations except that which he had incurred towards the Sultan's father Bayezid*. StiU, even in Suleyman's time, such, was his sense of inseciuity, that he obtained leave from Venice to send his peasants and cattle over to the strong castle of Karystos in Eubcea, of which his brother Nicol6 had become 1 Rubi6 y Lluch, op. cit. 436, 482; Qurita, I.e.; Misti, xxxiv. f. SSt". ^ Chroniques grico-romanes, 230. 3 Misti, XLi. f. 58. * Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, n. 292; Revue dt I'Orient latin, iv. 295, 302. THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 255 the lessee^. He figured, too, in the treaty of 1405, which the Repubhc concluded with Antonio I Acciajuoh, the new ruler of Athens, and might thus consider himself as safe from attack on the south 2. Indeed, he was anxious to enlarge his responsibiHties, for he was one of those who bid for the two Venetian islands of Tenos and Mykonos, when they were put up to auction in the following year. In this offer, however, he failed^. The death of Sule5Tnan and the accession of his brother Musa in 1410 sealed the fate of the Marquess. Early in the spring a very large Turkish army appeared before the old castle. Boudonitza was strong, and its Marquess a resolute man, so that for a long time the siege was in vain. "Giacomo," says the Venetian document composed by his son, "preferred, like the high-minded and true Christian that he was, to die rather than surrender the place." But there was treachery within the castle walls; betrayed by one of his servants, the Marquess feU, Uke another Leonidas, bravely defending the mediaeval Thermopylae against the new Persian invasion. Even then, his sons, "following in their father's footsteps," held the castle some time longer in the hope that Venice would remember her distant children in their distress. The Senate did, indeed, order the Captain of the Gulf to make inquiries whether Boudonitza stUl resisted and in that case to send succour to its gallant defenders — the cautious Government added — "with as little expense as possible." But before the watchmen on the keep could descry the Captain saiUng up the Atalante channel, all was over; both food and ammunition had given out and the Zorzi were constrained to surrender, on condition that their hves and property were spared. The Turks broke their promises, deprived their prisoners of their goods, expelled them from the home of their ancestors, and dragged young Nicolo to the Sultan's Court at Adrianople*. Considerable confusion prevcdls in this last act of the history of Boudonitza, owing to the fact that the two leading personages, the brother and eldest son of the late Marquess, bore the same name of Nicolo. Hopf has accordingly adopted two different versions in his three accounts of these events. On a review of the documentary evidence, it would seem that the brother, the Baron of Karystos, was not at Boudonitza during the siege, and that, on the capture of his nephew, he proclaimed himself Marquess. Venice recognised his title, and instructed her envoy to Musa to include him in her treaty with the Sultan and to ' Sathas, 'M.viiij.eta"EWriviKTJs'I. V 1348 DIE XI FEBRUARIJ PRIME INDICTIONIS. Capta. Quod possint scribi littere domino Pape et aUquibus CardinaUbus in recommendacione iuris domini Nicolai Georgio marchionis Bondinicie nostri civis in forma inferius anotata. Domino Pape. Sanctissime pater pro civibus meis contra Deum et iusticiam aggravatis, Sanctitati Vestre supplicationes meas porrigo cum reverentia special! : Unde cum nobilis vir Nicolaus Georgio Marchio Bondinicie honorabilis civis meus, lam duodeam annis matrimonii iura contraserit cum domina Marchionissa Bondmicie predicte et cum ea affectione maritali permanserit habens ex ea fthum legiptimum, qui est annorum undecim, ipsa domina Marchionissa in preiudicium amme sue, Dei timore postposito ipsum virum suum recusat recipere et castrum Bondinicie et aha bona spectantia eidem suo viro tenet THE MARQUISATE OF BOUDONITZA 261 iniuste et indebite occupata in grave damnum civis mei predict! et Dei iniuriam manifestam precipientis, ut quos Deus coniunxit homo non separet: Unde Sanctitati Vestre humiliter supplico quatenus Clementie Vestre placeat dictum civem meum habere in suo iure favorabiUter com- mendatum, ut dicta domina eum tanquam virum legiptimum recipiat et affectione maritali pertractet sicut iura Dei precipiunt, atque volunt, et salus animarum etiam id exposcit. Cum ipse civis meus sit paratus ex sua parte ipsam dominam pro uxore legiptima tractare pacifice et habere. Misti, XXIV. f. 63. Note. — ^The "Misti" are cited throughout from the originals at Venice; I have corrected the dates to the modern style. II. ITHAKE UNDER THE FRANKS In works descriptive of Greece it is customary to find the statement that the island of Odysseus was "completely forgotten in the middle ages," and even so learned a mediaeval scholar as the late Antonios Meliarakes, whose loss is a severe blow to Greek historical geography, asserts this proposition in his admirable pohtical and geographical work on the prefecture of Cephalonia^. But there are a considerable number of allusions to Ithake during the Frankish period, and it is possible, at least in outline, to make out the fortunes of the famous island under its western lords. The usual name for Ithake in Italian documents is Val di Compare, the earhest use of which, so far as I can ascertain, occurs in the Genoese historian CafEaro's Liberatio Orientis, written in the first half of the twelfth century^- According to K. Bergotes of Cephalonia this name was given to the island by an Italian captain, who was driven to anchor there one stormy night. Seeing a hght shining through the darkness, he landed, and found that it proceeded from a hut in which a child had lately been bom. At the request of the parents he accepted the office of godfather, or Kovfi,irdpo'o- mtunv, XI. 415. ITHAKE UNDER THE FRANKS 263 treaty of Viterbo, was suzerain of Achaia, and accordingly of Cephalonia, failed to carry out this promise. We next hear of Val di Compare in the above-mentioned Venetian document of 1320, in which Count John I's son, Nicholas, who had two years earher murdered his nephew, the last Despot of Epeiros of the house of the Angeloi, and had made himself Despot, is reminded that his ancestor Matthew had done homage, as he was now offering to do, for the three islands of Cephalonia, Zante, and Val di Compare to the Venetian republic. Although not mentioned by name Ithake doubtless followed the fortunes of Cephalonia and Zante when those islands were conquered from the Orsini by John of Gravina, prince of Achaia, in 1324. The "county of Cephalonia," of which the island of Odysseus had long formed a part, was thus under the direct authority of the Angevins, and was transferred by John of Gravina, together with the principaUty of Achaia, to Robert of Taranto in 1333, after which date the same Angevin officials held office in both Achaia and the insular county tiU Robert bestowed the latter in 1357 upon his friend Leonardo Tocco, a NeapoUtan courtier, whose famUy came from Benevento. In an ecclesiastical document '^ of 1389 the Greek bishop of Methone, writing about the archbishopric of Levkas, mentions "the duchess Franka (Francesca), lady of Levkas, Ithake, Zante and Cephalonia," the allusion being to the daughter of Nerio I Acciajuoli of Athens, who had in the previous year married Carlo I Tocco, count of Cephalonia and duke of Levkadia. A little earlier, in a Piedmontese document^ of 1387, we find Amedeo of Savoy, one of the claimants to the principality of Achaia, rewarding the zeal of one of his Greek supporters, Joannes Laskaris Kalopheros, with Cephalonia, Zante, Val di Compare, and other places as hereditary possessions — a gift which was, of course, never carried out, as the islands were not Amedeo's to bestow. Spandugino* specially mentions "Itaca," or "Val di Compare," as being part of the insular dominions of the Tocchi, and Carlo II Tocco is described in documents of 1430 and 1433, and by the annalist Stefano Magno, as comes palatinus Cephalonice, Ithaca, et Jacinti — a designation repeated in a document of 1458 after his death*. We find an allusion to it under both its classical and its mediaeval name in the Liber Insularum of Buondelmonti *, written in 1422, and the latter also occurs in a Venetian document of 1 Miklosich und Miiller, op. cit. ii. 139. ^ Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxvi. 48. ' DeW Origine dei Principi Turchi (ed. 1551), pp. 12, 26, 27, 62. * Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, 1. i. 319; 11. i. 351, 352; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques grdco-romanes, p. 196. ' p. 57 (ed. Sinner). 264 FRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE 1430, where Val di Compare^ is stated to belong to Carlo II. Six years later the archaeologist Cyriacus of Ancona, visiting the "king of the Epeirotes," as he calls that prince, mentions Itaci (sic) insula as opposite the mainland^. After Leonardo III lost practically all his continental possessions to the Turks in 1449 he still retained the islands, Ithake among them, under the protection of Venice, of which both he and his father were honorary citizens, and under the nominal suzerainty of the kings of Naples. From a document of 1558 we learn that it was in his time that the family of Galates — the only Ithakan family which enjoyed the privileges of nobility in the Venetian period, and which is still extant in the island — first received exemptions'. It was he too who revived the Orthodox see of Cephalonia and bestowed it, together with spiritual jurisdiction over Ithake, upon Gerasimos Loverdo*. When Mohammed II sent Achmet Pasha to conquer all that remained of Leonardo's dominions in 1479 we are told by Stefano Magno^ that the Turkish commander " ravaged also the island of Itacha {sic), called Valle di Compare, which belonged to the said lord," whom he also styles "palatine count of Cephalonia, Itaca {sic) and Zakynthos." Loredano, the Venetian admiral, thereupon sent some galleys to Ithake and rescued seven or eight persons — an act of which the pasha complained. This devastation of the island will account for the fact that, in 1504, the Venetian government, which then owned Cephalonia and Zante, took steps for repopulating "an island named Val di Compare, situated opposite Cephalonia, at present uninhabited, but reported to have been formerly fertile and fruitful." Accordingly lands were offered to settlers, free from aU taxes for five years, at the end of which time the colonists were to pay to the Treasury of Cephalonia the same dues as the inhabi- tants of that island «. Thenceforth down to 1797 Ithake remained beneath the sway of the Venetian republic. The offer of the senate seems to have been successful; among those who accepted it were the family of Boua Grivas, of Albanian origin, connected with the clan of Boua, which had formerly ruled over Arta and Lepanto and had played a part in the Albanian revolts of 1454 and 1463 in the Morea, that of Petalas, and that of Karavias, which in modem times produced a local historian of Ithake 7. In 1548 Antonio Calbo, the rdaxm^ proweditore of Cephalonia, ' Jorga, "Notes et Extraits pour servir h. I'Histoire des Croisades," in RevM de I'Orient latin, vi. 84. ^ Epigrammata reperia per Illvricum, p. v. ' Hopf. apud Ersch und Gruber, lxxxvi. i6o; Meliarakes, op. cit. 150. * Lunzi, Delia condizione pnlitica delle Isole lonie, p. igo. » Sathas, Mvr,iiua'E\\r,i,i.Kri^'\aTopla^, VI. 215-6; cf. Lunzi, op cil p 197 • Sathas, op. cit. v. 157; Meliarakes, op. cit. 191; Sanudo, Diarii v 883 1009 Karavias, 'Yarofla t^s vvffov 'ledxij? dTri tuv dpxcuorATuv xpovw /i^xpl ^81849 ITHAKE UNDER THE FRANKS 265 reported to the Venetian government, that "under the jurisdiction of Cephalonia there is another island, named Thiachi, very mountainous and barren, in which there are different harbours and especially a harbour called Vathi; in the island of Thiachi are three hamlets, in three places, inhabited by about sixty famihes, who are in great fear of corsairs, because they have no fortress in which to take refuge^." The three hamlets mentioned in this report are doubtless those of Paleo- chora, Anoe, and Exoe, which are regarded as the oldest in the island. The former counts of Ithake were till lately the only Latin rulers of Greece who still existed in prosperous circumstances. But in the seventeenth century they took the title of "prince of Achaia" — to which they were not entitled, although the counts of Cephalonia had once been peers of Achaia and Leonardo II and Carlo I had for a short time occupied Glarentza. The modern representative of the family was Carlo, Duke of Regina^ who succeeded his cousin Francesco Tocco in 1894. But he is now dead and his only son was killed in a motor accident. 12. THE LAST VENETIAN ISLANDS IN THE AEGEAN It has hitherto been asserted by historians of the Latin Orient that, after the capture of the Cyclades by the Turks in the sixteenth century, the two Venetian islands of Tenos and Mykonos remained in the possession of the RepubUc down to 1715. As to Tenos, this statement is unimpeachable; as to Mykonos, despite the assertions of Hopf^ and Hertzberg*, who quote no authorities for the fact, aU the evidence goes to show that it ceased to belong to Venice in the sixteenth century. The two islands, the only members of the Cyclades group under the direct rule of the Venetian government, were bequeathed to the RepubUc by George III Ghisi, their ancestral lord, upon whose death in 1390 they passed into its hands. The islanders implored Venice not to dispose of them; and, though there were not failing applicants for them among the Venetian princelets of the Levant, she listened to the petition of the inhabitants. At first an official from Negroponte was sent as an annual governor; then, in 1407, Venetian nobles who would accept the governor- ship of Tenos and Mykonos, with which Le Sdiles, or Delos, was joined, ' Sathas, op. cit. vi. 285. ^ De la Ville, Napoli Nobilissima (1900), xii. 180-1. ' Geschichte Griechenlands in Ersch und Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie , Lxxxvi. 170, 173, 177, and 179; Geschichte der Insel Andros, p. 128. • Geschichte Griechenlands, in. 26, 39, 190. 266 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE for a tenn of four years, paying a certain sum out of the revenues to Venice and keeping the balance for themselves, were invited to send in their names. One of them was appointed, still under the authority of the baihe of Negroponte^; and this system continued down to 1430, when a rector was sent out frorn Venice for two years, and the two islands were thenceforth governed directly by an official of the Republic. Mykonos remained united with Tenos imder the flag of St Mark till the first great raid of the Turkish fleet in the Cyclades under Khaireddin Barbarossa in 1537. Neither Andrea Morosini nor Paruta, nor yet Hajji Kahfeh, mentions its fate m their accounts of that fatal cruise; but Andrea Comaro in his Historia di Candia^ relates that, after taking the two islands of Thermia and Zia, Barbarossa went to Mykonos, many of whose inhabitants escaped to Tenos, while the others became his captives. After the Turkish admiral's departure the fugitives returned; but in the same year one of Barbarossa's Ueutenants, a corsair named Granvah, with eighteen ships, paid a second visit to Mykonos and carried off many of them. Accordingly the shameful treaty ^ between Venice and the Sultan, concluded in 1540, in both versions mentions Mykonos among the islands ceded to the Sultan, while Tenos was expressly retained. How, in the face of this, Hopf can have asserted that Mykonos still remained Venetian it is difficult to understand. Nor is this all. In adocument of 1545 the Repubhc orders her ambassador at Constantinople to obtain the restoration of the island*; in 1548 a certain Zuan Zorzo Muazzo, of Tenos, begs, and receives, from the Venetian government another fief in compensation for that which he had lost in Mykonos^. A petition from the inhabitants of Tenos to Venice in 1550 mentions the lack of ships "at the present time when Mykonos has been lost*." We have, too, the statement of Sanger', who becomes more trustworthy as he approaches his own time, that Duke Giovanni IV Crispo, of Naxos, bestowed the island of Mykonos (apparently in 1541) upon his daughter on her marriage with Giovanf rancesco Sommaripa, lord of Andros. There is nothing improbable in this. The Turks acquiesced at the same time in the action of the duke in turning the Premarini family out of their part of Zia, and bestowing that also upon his son-in-law; they may have had no objection to his dealing in the same manner with the devastated 1 Sathas, Mn//utio 'BXXijvociis 'lo-roplas, I. 14; 11. 145, 163, 168, 178; III. 181. Predelli, Commemoriali, 111. 278, 354. 2 Library of St Mark, Venice, MS. Ital. CI. vi. 286, vol. 11. ff. 94, 95. ' Predelli, Commemoriali, vi. 236, 238. ■» Lamansky, Secrets de I'Etat de Venise, p. 58. ^ Sathas, op. cit. viii. 451. e /jjj^ jy ^45. ' Histoire nouvelle des anciens Dues de I'Archipel, p. 296. THE LAST VENETIAN ISLANDS IN THE ^GEAN 267 island of Mykonos. At any rate the latter was no longer Venetian. The long and elaborate reports^ of the Venetian commissioners, who visited Tenos in 1563 and 1584, make no mention whatever of Mykonos, except that in the latter document we hear of a Grimani as Catholic bishop of Tenos and of the sister island; nor does Foscarini allude to it in his report on Cerigo and Tenos in 1577. More conclusive still, whUe the style of the Venetian governor is "rector of Tenos and Mykonos" down to 1593, from that date onwards the governor is officially described as " rector of Tenos" alone 2. Hopf^ is, therefore, wrong in giving us a long hst of rettori di Tinos e Myconos from 1407 to 1717. It seems probable that the latter island ceased to belong to Venice in 1537, but that the rector of Tenos continued to bear the name of Mykonos also, as a mere form, for rather more than half a century longer. Possibly it may have belonged to the Sommaripa of Andros from 1541 to 1566, when that dynasty was dethroned. These conclusions are confirmed by the travellers and geographers who wrote about the Levant between that date and the loss of Tenos. Porcacchi*, in 1572, mentions Mykonos, without saying to whom it belonged. One of the Argyroi, barons of Santorin, who, in 1581, gave Crusius the information about the Cyclades which he embodied in his Turco-GrcBcia^, had nothing to say about Mykonos, except that it contained one castle and some hamlets, whUe he specially mentioned that Tenos and Cerigo were "under Venice." Botero^, in 1605, giving a full list of the Venetian possessions in the Levant, includes the Ionian Islands and Tenos alone. Neither the French ambassador, Louis des Hayes', who visited Greece in 1630, nor the sieur du Loir 8, who sailed with him, is more exphcit, though both describe Crete, Cerigo, and Tenos as the sole Venetian islands in the iEgean. Thevenot', in 1656, and Boschinii", ten years later, tell us that Mykonos was "almost depopulated" because of corsairs, but are likewise silent as to its ownership. Baudrand, in his Geographia^^, remarked, however, that it had been sub dominio Turcarum a scBCulo et ultra, cum antea Venefis pareref, an account which appears to me to coincide with the real facts. But both Sponi2 and Wheler^^ censured the geographer for his statement that it had been Venetian, so completely had the Venetian tradition ' Lamansky, op. cit. pp. 641-2, 651 et sqq.; Sathas, op. cit. iv. 310-40. ^ M. C. ScruHnio alle voci, vols. vii. and viii. ' Chroniques gr^co-romanes, pp. 373-6. ' L'Isole le piiefamose del Mondo, p. 77. * P. 206. ' Relatione delta Rep. Venetiana, pp. 18-9. ' Voyage de Levant, pp. 348-9. * Viaggio di Levante (Ital. tr.), p. 3. ' Relation d'un Voyage, p. 196. '" L' Archipelago, p. 42. " Vol. i. p. 687. 12 Voyage, i. 145-7. " Journey into Greece, pp. 62-5. 268 PRANKISH AND VENETIAN GREECE faded at the time of their visit in 1675. At that period, as they inform us, the Sultan's galleys never failed to come there every year to collect the capitation tax, and the governor of the island was a Greek sent by the Turks from Constantinople. Both travellers surmised, however, that the island might perhaps have changed hands during the Candian war, when it was neglected. Their surmise is rendered probable by the remark of Sebastiani^, who visited it in 1666, during that long struggle. For he says that it was then ecclesiastically under the jurisdiction of the CathoUc bishop of Tenos, who had begged the Venetian admiral, Comaro, to give his deputy in Mykonos the old Venetian church of San Marco for the use of the twenty Latin inhabitants. Randolph^ confirms their story of its subjection to the Sultan, for he tells of a visit paid to the island by the Capitan Pasha in 1680. Piacenza* reiterates their criticism of Baudrand, and mentions that the atlases of the Mediterranean erroneously described it as insula altera hoc in tractu maritimo Reipublicce Venetce obsequium prastans, whereas it was really "under the Turkish yoke." Dapper* takes the same view. After mentioning that Tenos "is the last Venetian island in this quarter of the Levant" he adds that "there are authors who allege that Mykonos is in subjection to Venice." Finally, in 1700, Toumefort^ found the island dependent on the Capitan Pasha, to whom it paid the capitation tax, while in the last war it had been subject to the bey of Kos. Although, he says, it was conquered by Barbarossa, the Venetian governor of Tenos still continues to style himself provveditore of Mykonos also. But throughout the period of the Candian war and right down to the end of the Venetian occupation of Tenos the governor of the latter is always called simply Rettor a Tine in the official registers «. If further refutation were needed of Hopf's statement that Mykonos was captured from the Venetians in 1715, it may be added that Ferrari', the contemporary authority for the surrender of Tenos, never mentions it, nor does it figure in the peace of Passarovitz. 13. SALONIKA Salonika, "the Athens of Mediaeval Hellenism" and second to Athens alone in contemporary Greece, has been by turns a Mace- donian provincial city, a free town under Roman domination, a Greek 1 Viaggio all' Arcipelago, p. 68. ' The Present State of the Islands in the Archipelago, pp. 14-20. ^ L'Egeo Redivivo, pp. 331—2. ' Naukeurige Beschryving (French tr.), pp. 267, 354. "■ Voyage du Levant, i. 108. '« Vols. xv. to xvin. ' Delle Notizie Sforiche delta Lega, p. 41. SALONIKA 269 community second only to Constantinople, the capital of a short-lived Latin kingdom and of a brief Greek empire to which it gave its name, a Venetian colony, and a Turkish town^. There, in 1876, the murder of the consuls was one of the phases of the Eastern crisis; there, in 1908, the Young Turkish movement was bom ; there, in 1913, King George of Greece was assassinated; and there in 1916 M. Venizelos established his Provisional Government, in the city which served as a base for the AUies in their Macedonian campaign. Nor has Salonika's contribution to literature been inconsiderable. The historian Petros Patrikios in the sixth century; the essayist Demetrios Kydones, who wrote a "monody over those who fell in Salonika" in 1346, during the civil war between John Cantacuzene and John V Palaiologos; John Kameniates and John the Reader, the historians respectively of the Saracen and the Turkish sieges, and Theodore Gazes, who contributed to spread Greek teaching in the West, were natives of the place. Plotinos and John, hagiographers of the seventh century; Leo, the famous mathematician of the ninth; Niketas, who composed dialogues in favour of the union of the churches; Eustathios, the Homeric commentator, historian of the Norman siege and paneg37rist of St Demetrios; Nikephoros KaUistos Xanthopoulos, the ecclesiastical historian; Gregorios Palamas, NeUos, and Nicholas Kabasilas, the polemical theologians of the fourteenth century; and Symeon, the hturgical writer, who died just before the final Turkish capture of the city, were among those who occupied this important metropohtan see; while the rhetoricians, Nikephoros Choumnos and the grammarian Thomas Magistros, addressed to the Thessalonians missives on the blessings of justice and unity in the fourteenth century. And pre- cedents for the exUe of Abdul Hamid II at Salonika may be found in the banishment thither of Licinius, the rival of Constantine, of Anastasios II in 716, and of Theodore Studita during the Iconoclast controversy. ^ Greek mediasval scholars, owing to the disturbed political conditions, have scarcely had time since Salonika became Greek to continue the historical studies of Tafel, Papageorgiou, and Tafrali — for even the last composed his two valuable treatises on the topography of Salonika and its history in the fourteenth century early in 1912, therefore before the reconversion of the mosques into churches and while the city was still Turkish. But the well-known mediaevahst, Professor Adamantiou, has already written a handbook on Byzantine Thessalonika, 'H Bi/fai-- nvTi ee