Essays on the Latin Orient

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, like the more famous Santa Sophia of Constantinople, into a mosque, the mihrab 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 Monemvasiote family had the jus patronatus over it (Plate III, Fig. 2). But a fine 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 Monemvasiote 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 still preserved in the National Library and (in a copy) in the Christian Archæological 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[300]. 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 their property and their Metropolitan in the power of the enemy[301]. 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[302] 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 expedition, 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 Eubœa, 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[303]. 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 earlier 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 Acciajuoli, his first act was to restore the Metropolitan 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[304]. This demand was granted, and we are not surprised to hear that the Monemvasiotes were disaffected to the Despot, under whom such a slight had been cast upon their Church. The Moreote archontes at this period were intensely 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[305]. 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 Republic 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[306]. But the three documents, upon which he relies for this statement, 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 pacification of Maina and his abolition of the barbarous custom of cutting off the fingers and toes of the slain, which the Mainates had inherited from the Greeks of Æschylus and Sophocles. He also alludes to the Greek inscriptions which he saw at Vitylo[307]. 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 life, lies buried in the quiet church of Sts Jason and Sosipater at Corfù, 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, compared with that of his contemporary Chalkokondyles, the ornate Herodotus of the new Persian Conquest; he knew men and things; he was no mere theologian or rhetorician, but a man of affairs; and he wrote with a naïveté, which is as amusing as it is surprising in one of his profession. Monemvasia may be proud of having produced such a man, 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 library, and among the many Peloponnesian calligraphists, the so-called “Murmures,” found later on in Italy, there were some Monemvasiotes[308].

We next find Monemvasia in the possession of the Despot Theodore II Palaiologos[309], 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 Villehardouin. 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. 1). This system of death duties (τὸ ἀβιωτίκιον, 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[310].” 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 Monemvasia. 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[311], called it. But his advisers represented 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 Üsküb, 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 sturdy spirit of independence 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 mediæval Hellenism. As Demetrios was the prisoner of the Sultan, the Governor proclaimed Thomas as his liege-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[312]. A passing Catalan corsair, one Lope de Baldaja, was then invited to occupy the rock; but the liberty-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 nationalism with which Orthodoxy was identical[313].

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 well known to be “first Venetians and then Catholics.” The outbreak of the Turco-Venetian War of 1463, and the appearance of a Venetian fleet in the Ægean, 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 Podestà 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 Podestà should receive his salary from the Cretan treasury[314]. From that time to 1540 Monemvasia remained a Venetian colony. Once, indeed, a plot was organised 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 still more degenerate son of the degenerate Thomas, had, in 1494, transferred all 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 still popular, schemed to deliver the city to his French ally[315]. 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[316] 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 delimitation 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 supplies of corn had now to be imported through the Turkish possessions[317]. As for the famous vintage, which had been the delight 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-called “Malmsey,” nihil de Malfasia habens sed nomen, as worthy Father Faber says, had for some time come from Crete or Modon[318], till 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 Podestà, who lived, like 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 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 had 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 Metropolitan, 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 Œcumenical 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[319]. 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 Podestà 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[320].

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 still uncaptured and the latter scarcely assailed by the Turkish forces[321]. 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 Nauplia and off the sacred rock of Monemvasia to remove the soldiers, the artillery, and all the inhabitants who wished to live 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[322].

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 Metropolitan, 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 provide for the settlement, of the stradioti, or light horsemen from Nauplia 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[323]. Some, like the ancient local family of Daimonoyannes, formerly lords of Cerigo, received lands in Crete[324], where various members of the Athenian branch of the great Florentine 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 Corfù. Others were removed to Corfù, 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 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 Monemvasia[325].

The Venetian fortifications; the old Venetian pictures on the eikonostasis of the Ἑλκόμενος 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, Podestà from 1510 to 1512 (to whom the first coat belongs, while the second is that of Antonio Garzoni, Podestà in 1526 and again in 1538, when he was the last Podestà 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 Evangelist (Plate V, Fig. 2 and Text-fig. 2).

APPENDIX
TWO VENETIAN DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE ACQUISITION OF MONEMVASIA IN 1464

I.—Regina fol. 52.

II.—Regina fol. 56.

THREE VENETIAN DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE WINE-TRADE AT MONEMVASIA

(I have altered the Venetian dates to Modern Style):

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 literal sense of the term—wardens of the Greek Marches—and they maintained their responsible position on the outskirts of the Duchy of Athens until after the establishment 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[326]. This was the vigorous personality who, in the eyes of his conquering chief, seemed peculiarly suited to watch over the pass of Thermopylæ, whence the Greek archon, Leon Sgouros, had fled at the mere sight of the Latins in their coats of mail. Accordingly, he invested him with the fief of Boudonitza, and ere long, on the Hellenic substructures of Pharygæ, rose the imposing fortress of the Italian 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 called, lies at a distance of three and a half hours on horseback from the baths of Thermopylæ and nearly an hour and a half from the top of the pass which leads across the mountains to Dadi at the foot of Parnassos. The castle, which is visible for more than an hour as we approach from Thermopylæ, stands on a hill which bars the valley and occupies a truly commanding position (Plate VI, Figs. 1 and 2). The Warden of the Marches, in the Frankish times, could watch from its battlements the blue Maliac Gulf with the even then important town of Stylida, 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 Eubœa with the bright streak which marks the baths of Ædepsos, and the little island of Panaia, or Canaia, between Eubœa 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. Landwards, the view is bounded by vast masses of mountains, but the danger was not yet from that quarter, while 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 France” 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[327]; his territory extended down to the sea, upon which later on his successors 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”)[328]. 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 Champlitte, or the more probable story of the elder Sanudo, that the Emperor Baldwin II gave it to Geoffroy II de Villehardouin[329], it is certain that later on the Marquess was one of the twelve peers of Achaia[330], and in 1278 Charles I of Naples, in his capacity of Prince of Achaia, accordingly notified the appointment of a bailie of the principality to the Marchioness of that day[331]. It was only during the Catalan period that the Marquess came to be reckoned as a feudatory of Athens[332]. Within his dominions was situated a Roman Catholic episcopal see—that of Thermopylæ, 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 built an oratory at Boudonitza. Even there, however, the pirates penetrated and killed 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[333]. 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[334].

Guido, first Marquess of Boudonitza, the “Marchesopoulo,” as his Greek subjects called him, played a very important part in both the political 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 rebellion against the Latin Emperor Henry in 1209; he obstinately refused to attend the first Parliament 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 Bœotian plain—then, as now, the shortest route from Boudonitza to the Bœotian capital[335], and 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[336].

As one of the leading nobles of the Latin kingdom of Salonika, Guido continued to be associated with its fortunes. In 1221 we find him acting as bailie 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[337]. His territory became the refuge of the Catholic Archbishop of Larissa, upon whom the bishopric of Thermopylæ was temporarily conferred by Honorius III, when the Greeks of Epeiros drove him from his see. And when the ephemeral kingdom had fallen before them, the same Pope, in 1224, ordered Geoffroy II de Villehardouin of Achaia, Othon de la Roche of Athens, and the three Lombard barons of Eubœa 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 William of Montferrat[338]. Guido was still living on May 2, 1237, when he made his will. Soon after that date he probably died; Hopf[339] 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 Frankish fiefs, the veritable “March” of Latin Hellas.

Guido had married a Burgundian lady named Sibylle, possibly a daughter of the house of Cicon, lately established 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 cousin, the “Great Lord” of Athens, in the fratricidal war between those prominent Frankish rulers, which culminated in the defeat of the Athenians at the battle of Karydi in 1258, 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 established Byzantine province in the Morea, the Marquess of Boudonitza was once more summoned to his aid[340]. The revival of Greek power in Eubœa at this period, and the frequent acts of piracy in the Atalante channel were of considerable detriment to the people of Boudonitza, whose food supplies were at times intercepted by the corsairs[341]. 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[342].

After the death of Ubertino, the Marquisate, like so many Frankish 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 notifying to them the appointment of Galeran d’Ivry as the Angevin vicar-general in the principality. 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 bailie[343]. 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 Pallavicini 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 bailie 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[344].

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 call of Philip’s namesake and successor, Philip of Taranto, in 1307[345]. Four years later he fell, at the great battle of the Kephissos, fighting against the Catalans beneath the lion banner of Walter of Brienne[346], who by his will a few days before had bequeathed 100 hyperperi to the church of Boudonitza[347].

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 Eubœan 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 Marquisate was divided in equal shares between his widow and his infant daughter, Guglielma. Maria did not, however, long remain unconsoled; indeed, political 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-born 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 Cornaro, a Venetian of good family, a great personage in Crete, and Baron of Skarpanto. Cornaro thus, in 1312, received, by virtue of his marriage, his wife’s moiety of Boudonitza[348], 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 establish a dynasty in the Morea[349].

Cornaro now came to reside in Eubœa, 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 ambition of Fadrique 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[350]. 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 considered 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 bailie. Accordingly, she begged the Republic to give her one of its nobles as her consort, and promised dutifully to accept whomsoever the Senate might choose. The choice fell upon Nicolò Giorgio, or Zorzi, to give him the Venetian form of the name, who belonged 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 line, once more ruled over the castle of the Pallavicini[351].

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, Nicolò I came to terms with them, probably by agreeing to pay that annual tribute of four fully 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[352]. He espoused, too, the Eubœan claims of his wife; but Venice, which had an eye upon the strong castle of Larmena, diplomatically referred the legal question to the bailie of Achaia, of which both Eubœa and Boudonitza were technically still reckoned as dependencies. The bailie, in the name of the suzeraine Princess of Achaia, Catherine of Valois, decided against Guglielma, 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, Marulla, 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 Pallavicini, 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. Pallavicini insulted the Marquess, his feudal superior; the latter threw him into prison, whereupon the prisoner attempted the life of his lord. As a peer of Achaia, the Marquess enjoyed the right of inflicting capital punishment. He now exercised it; Pallavicini was executed, and the assembled burgesses of Boudonitza, if we may believe 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 lips to what the burgesses had said. But she worked upon their feelings of devotion to her family, which had ruled so long over them; they rose against the foreign Marquess at their Lady’s instigation; and Nicolò was forced to flee across to Negroponte, leaving his little son Francesco and all 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 deliver up his property. In the event of her refusal, the bailie of Negroponte was instructed to break off all communications between Boudonitza and that island and to sequestrate her daughter’s money still lying in the Eubœan bank. In order to isolate her still 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 principality of 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 instructions, confiscated the funds deposited in the bank, and paid Nicolò 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 Thermopylæ, she could easily find an adviser who dissuaded her from forgiveness[353]. So Nicolò never returned to Boudonitza; he served the Republic 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 ruling as Marquess at Boudonitza, included him and his mother in its treaties with Athens, and when Guglielma died, in 1358, after a long and varied career, her son received back the confiscated property of his late half-sister[354].

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 establishment 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[355]. The Turkish peril, which was destined to swallow up the Marquisate in the next generation, was, however, already threatening Catalans, Serbs, and Italians alike, 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[356] on October 1, 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 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 bailie of Negroponte, begging him to prevent his fellow-countryman 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 policy of the victors was doubtless extended to him. But in 1388 the final overthrow of the Catalan rule by Nerio Acciajuoli made the Marquisate independent of the Duchy of Athens[357]. In feudal lists—such as that of 1391—the Marquess continued to figure as one of the temporal peers of Achaia[358], 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[359]. 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 little 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[360]. Still, even in Suleyman’s time, such was his sense of insecurity, that he obtained leave from Venice to send his peasants and cattle over to the strong castle of Karystos in Eubœa, of which his brother Nicolò had become the lessee[361]. He figured, too, in the treaty of 1405, which the Republic concluded with Antonio I Acciajuoli, the new ruler of Athens, and might thus consider himself as safe from attack on the south[362]. Indeed, he was anxious to enlarge his responsibilities, 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[363].

The death of Suleyman 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 fell, like another Leonidas, bravely defending the mediæval Thermopylæ 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 still 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 sailing 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 lives 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 Nicolò to the Sultan’s Court at Adrianople[364].

Considerable confusion prevails 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 Nicolò. 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 procure at the same time the release of the late Marquess’s son. Accordingly, in the peace of 1411, Musa promised, for love of Venice and seeing that he passed as a Venetian, to harass him no more, on condition that he paid the tribute established. Not only so, but the Marquess’s ships and merchandise were allowed to enter the Turkish dominions on payment of a fixed duty[365]. Thus temporarily restored, the Marquisate remained in the possession of the uncle, from whom the nephew, even after his release, either could not, or cared not to claim it. He withdrew to Venice, and, many years later, received as the reward of his father’s heroic defence of Boudonitza, the post of châtelain of Pteleon, near the mouth of the Gulf of Volo, the last Venetian outpost on the mainland of North-Eastern Greece—a position which he held for eight years[366].

Meanwhile, his uncle, the Marquess, had lost all but his barren title. Though the Turks had evacuated Boudonitza, and the castle had been repaired, he felt so insecure that he sent his bishop as an emissary to Venice, begging for aid in the event of a fresh Turkish invasion and for permission to transport back to Boudonitza the serfs whom he had sent across to Karystos a few years before[367]. His fears proved to be well founded. In vain the Republic gave orders that he should be included in her treaty with the new Sultan, Mohammed I. On June 20, 1414, a large Turkish army attacked and took the castle, and with it many prisoners, the Marquess, so it would seem, among them—for in the following year we find his wife, an adopted daughter of the Duke of Athens, appealing to Venice to obtain his release from his Turkish dungeon[368]. He recovered his freedom, but not his Marquisate. In the treaty of 1416, Boudonitza was, indeed, actually assigned to him in return for the usual tribute; but nine years later we find Venice still vainly endeavouring to obtain its restitution[369]. He continued, however, to hold the title of Marquess of Boudonitza with the castle of Karystos, which descended to his son, the “Marchesotto,” and his son’s son[370], till the Turkish conquest of Eubœa in 1470 put an end to Venetian rule over that great island. Thence the last titular Marquess of Boudonitza, after governing Lepanto, retired to Venice, whence the Zorzi came and where they are still largely represented.

Of the castle, where for two hundred years Pallavicini and Zorzi held sway, much has survived the two Turkish sieges and the silent ravages of five centuries. Originally there must have been a triple enclosure, for several square towers of the third and lowest wall are still standing in the village and outside it. Of the second enceinte the most noticeable fragment is a large tower in ruins, while the innermost wall is strengthened by three more. In the centre of this last enclosure are the imposing remains of the large square donjon (Plate VII, Fig. 1), and adjoining this is the most interesting feature of the castle—the great Hellenic gateway (Plate VII, Fig. 2), which connects one portion of this enclosure with the other, and which Buchon has described so inaccurately[371]. It is not “composed of six stones,” but of three huge blocks, nor do “the two upper stones meet at an acute angle”; a single horizontal block forms the top. Buchon omits to mention the Byzantine decoration in brick above this gateway. Of the brick conduit which he mentions I could find no trace, but the two cisterns remain. The large building near them is presumably the Frankish church of which he speaks; but the window which he found there no longer exists. Possibly, when the new church in the village was erected, the builders took materials from the chapel in the castle for its construction. At any rate, that very modern and commonplace edifice contains several fragments of ancient work. Thus, the stone threshold of the west door bears three large roses, while on the doorway itself are two stars; and the north door is profusely decorated with a rose, two curious creatures like griffins, two circles containing triangles, and a leaf; above this door is a cross, each arm of which forms a smaller cross. As usually happens in the Frankish castles of Greece—with the exception of Geraki—there are no coats of arms at Boudonitza, unless this composite cross is an allusion to the “three crosses,” said to have been originally borne by one branch of the Pallavicini. The “mediæval seal” in the possession of a local family dates from the reign of Otho! But there exists a genuine seal of the monastery of the Holy Virgin of Boudonitza, ascribed by M. Schlumberger[372] to the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century. The Marquesses have left behind them neither their portraits—like the Palatine Counts of Cephalonia of the second dynasty—nor any coins—like the French barons of Salona, to whom they bear the nearest resemblance. One of their line, however, the Marquess Alberto, figures in K. Rhanghaves’s play, The Duchess of Athens, and their castle and their ofttimes stormy lives fill not the least picturesque page of that romance which French and Italian adventurers wrote with their swords in the classic sites of Hellas.

APPENDIX

I
1335 DIE XVI JANUARIJ.

Capta. Quod vir nobilis Ser Nicolaus Georgio, cum sua familia et levibus arnesiis possit ire cum galeis nostris unionis. Et committatur Capitaneo, quod eum conducat Nigropontum, et si poterit eum facere deponi ad Bondenizam, sine sinistro armate faciat inde sicut ei videbitur.—Omnes de parte.

Misti, XVI. f. 97tᵒ.

II
1345 DIE 21 JULIJ.

Capta. Cum dominacio ducalis ex debito teneatur suos cives in eorum iuribus et honoribus cum justicia conservare et dominus Nicolaus Georgio, Marchio Bondanicie, sit iniuriatus ut scitis, et Marchionatu suo per eius uxorem indebite molestatus, et dignum sit, subvenire eidem in eo quod cum honore dominacionis comode fieri potest, ideo visa et examinata petitione ipsius marchionis, et matura et diligenti deliberatione prehabita, consulunt concorditer viri nobiles, domini, Benedictus de Molino et Pangracius Justiniano; quod committatur consiliario ituro Nigropontum, quod postquam illuc applicuerit vadat ad dominam Marchisanam, uxorem dicti domini Nicolay pro ambaxatore, exponendo eidem, quomodo iam diu ipsam ad dominacionem misit suos procuratores et ambaxatores petens sibi per dominacionem de uno nobilium suorum pro marito provideri, et volens dominacio suis beneplacitis complacere, consensit quod ipse dominus Nicolaus carus civis suus ad eam iret, quem ipsa domina receptando, ostendit id habere multum ad bonum. Et quoniam ob hoc semper Ducale Dominium promtum et favorabilem se exhibuit ad omnia que suam et suorum securitatem respicerent et augumentum, treuguas quamplurimas confirmando et opportuna alia faciendo. Sed cum nuperrime per relacionem ipsius domini Nicolay viri sui ad ducalis magnificentie audienciam sit deductus de morte cuiusdam Pallavesini inopinatus casus occursus qui mortuus fuit in culpa sua, sicut postmodum extitit manifestum, quia dum ipse Marchio coram omnibus burgensibus congregatis, de velle et consensu dicte domine exponeret rei geste seriem, ab ipsis habuit in responsum quod ipse Palavesin dignam penam luerat propter foliam suam, et melius erat, quod ipse, qui vaxallus erat mortuus fuisset quam dicto suo domino iniuriam aliquam intulisset, quod ecciam ipsa domina in presencia dictorum burgensium ratificavit. Unde consideratis predictis vellit amore dominij, ipsum dominum Nicolaum honori pristino restituere, quod si fecerit, quamquam sit iustum et honestum nobis plurimum complacebit, et erimus suis comodis stricius obligati. Verum si dicta domina dubitaret de recipiendo ipsum dicat et exponat ambaxator prefatus, quod firmiter dominacio hanc rem super se assumpsit et taliter imposuit civi suo quod minime poterit dubitare. Que omnia si dicta domina acetabit bene quidem, si vero non contentaretur et ipsum recipere non vellet, procuret habere et obtinere omnia bona dicti Marchionis que secum scripta portet antedictus ambaxator et si ipsa ea bona dare neglexerit, dicat quod bona sua et suorum ubicumque intromitti faciemus, et protestetur cum notario, quem secum teneatur ducere, quod tantam iniuriam, quam dominacio suam propriam reputat, non poterit sustinere, sed providebit de remediis opportunis sicuti honori suo et indenitati sui civis viderit convenire, firmiter tenens quod sicut semper dominacio ad sui conservacionem et suorum exhibuit se promtam favorabilem et benignam, sic in omnibus reperiet ipsam mutatam, agravando factum cum hijs et alijs verbis, ut viderit convenire. Et rediens Nigropontum omnia, que gexerit, fecerit et habuerit, studeat velociter dominacioni per suas literas denotare. Verum si dictus consiliarius iturus tardaret ire ad regimen suum, quod baiullus et consiliarij Nigropontis determinent quis consiliariorum de inde ad complendum predicta ire debebit.

Et scribatur baiullo et consiliarijs Nigropontis, quod si habebunt post redditum dicti ambaxatoris, quod ipsa domina stet dura nec vellit ipsum dominum Nicolaum recipere, quod possint si eis videbitur facere et ordinare quod homines Bondanicie non veniant Nigropontum et quod homines Nigropontis non vadant Bondaniciam.

Item prefati baiullus et consiliarij sequestracionem factam de aliqua pecunie quantitate que pecunia est damiselle Marulle filie dicte domine firmam tenere debeant, donec predicta fuerint reformata, pacificata vel diffinita, vel donec aliud sibi mandaretur de hinc.

Et scribantur litere illis de la compagna, quas dominus bayullus et consiliarij presentent vel presentari fatiant, cum eis videbitur, rogando dictos de compagna, quod cum alique discordie venerint inter virum nobilem dominum Nicolam Georgio et eius uxorem Marchisanam se in aliquo facto dicte domine intromittere non vellint quod posset civi nostro contrariare ad veniendum ad suam intentionem.

De non 14—Non sinceri 13.—Alij de parte.

Misti, XXIII. f. 26.

III
1345 DIE V AUGUSTI.

Capta. Quod respondeatur domine Marchisane Bondinicie ad suas litteras substinendo ius civis nostri Nicolai Georgio, cum illis verbis que videbuntur sequendo id quod captum fuit pridie in hoc consilio in favorem civis nostri.