Part 19

Within the last sixteen years a great deal of new material has been published on the subject of Frankish Athens. The late Professor Lampros[128] not only translated into Greek the _Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter_ of Gregorovius, but added some most valuable notes, and more than a whole volume of documents, some of which had never seen the light before, while others were known only in the summaries or extracts of Hopf, Gregorovius, or Signor Predelli. He also issued a review, the Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, devoted to mediæval Greek history, of which thirteen volumes have appeared. The French have gone on printing the _Regesta_ of the thirteenth-century popes, which contain occasional allusions to Greek affairs. Don Antonio Rubió y Lluch, the Catalan scholar, has issued a valuable pamphlet, _Catalunya a Grecia_[129], besides contributing a mass of documents from the archives at Palermo to the collection of Professor Lampros; and the essay on the “Eastern Policy of Alfonso of Aragon,” published by Signor Cerone in the _Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane_[130], contains many hitherto unknown documents dealing 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 conquest 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[131].”

As was only to be expected, very little fresh light has been thrown on the Burgundian period. We learn however, from a Greek manuscript in the Vatican library, how Leon Sgouros, the _archon_ of Nauplia, 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[132].” We find too, in a letter from Honorius III to Othon de la Roche, dated February 12, 1225, 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 litteratura 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[133].

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 (probably a relative of the Ludovico da Prato who was the first Florentine archbishop of Athens), dated Patras, May 9, 1388, announces that Nerio Acciajuoli _ebe adi 2 di questo lo chastello di Settino_[134]. Thus Don Antonio Rubió y Lluch[135] 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, dated November 16, 1387, held out in the Akropolis 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[136]. Don Antonio Rubió 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 lives—as Peter de Puig[137]. 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[138]; 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[139].” We find too that the castle of Zeitoun or Lamia (_turrim Griffinam_) belonged to him[140]. Roger de Lluria, who was at this time marshal of the duchies[141], is already officially styled as vicar-general[142] on August 3, 1366, though the formal commission removing Matteo de Moncada and appointing Roger de Lluria in his place was not made out till May 14 of the following year[143]. The new vicar-general held till his death, which must have taken place before March 31, 1370, when his successor was appointed[144], the two great offices[145], 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 hereditary in the family of De Novelles, and Gregorovius[146] pointed out that Ermengol de Novelles 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[147]; 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 published three documents[148] from the Vatican 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 (afterwards the anti-pope Clement VII), who occupied that see from October 11, 1368, to June 6, 1371. The _dominus Anghia_, 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 child, 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 still living 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 Franciæ_, disappeared when I examined the original document in the Vatican library and found that the last two words were _regie fameie_, that is, _familiæ_. Possibly the allusion may be to Pedro the Cruel of Castile, who was slain in 1369. The letters then disclose a matrimonial alliance 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 Rubió y Lluch has published two letters[149] 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 traveller Nicolò da Martoni made out a list sixteen years later[150]. 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[151]. 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 list of fiefs in 1391, in Nerio Acciajuoli’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[152]. 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 therefore requests him to hand over the two duchies of Athens and Neopatras to the Marquess of Gerace, his emissary[153].

Lastly, to our knowledge of the Florentine period Professor Lampros has contributed three letters[154] of the Athenian priest and copyist Kalophrenas, which show that the attempts of the council of Florence for the union of the eastern and western churches found an echo in Florentine Athens. Professor Lampros was puzzled to explain the allusion to τοῦ ἀφεντὸς τοῦ μπαὴλου in one of the letters. He thinks it alludes to the Venetian bailie at Chalkis, who however had no jurisdiction 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 Acciajuoli 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 baily” was the official who governed Athens till Nerio II came back. Professor Lampros has also published a letter[155] 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, written not long before his murder, Franco offers his services as a _condottiere_ 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 Neapolitan court[156].

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 Akropolis, 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[157], 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[158], the _Chronicon Breve_[159], and the _Historia Patriarchica_[160]. But the best evidence in favour of June is the following document of 1458, to which allusion was made by Gaddi[161] in the seventeenth century, but which has never been published. 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.

Magnifici et potentes domini domini priores artium et vexillifer iustitie populi et comunis Florentie Intellecta expositione facta pro parte Loysii Neroczi Loysii de Pictis[162] 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 nomine 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 habitaverunt 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 mense iunii anni millesimi quadringentesimi quinquagesimi sexti prout fuit voluntas Dei 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 quinque feminis expulsus fuit et omnibus suis bonis privatus et ita se absque ulla 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 nubiles 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 predicti optarent posse vendere domos predictas ut de pretio illarum possint partim victui succurrere partim providere dotibus alicuius puellarum predictarum[163].

The petitioners in the document are all well known. Nerozzo Pitti and his wife Laudamia owned the castle of Sykaminon, near Oropos, which had belonged to her father, Franco Acciajuoli[164]. 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 Florentiæ_[165], a century later. According to the contemporary chronicler, Benedetto Dei[166], the Athenian Pitti were compelled to become Mohammedans when Bœotia 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 Catholic religion of their Italian ancestors, in the midst of ruined palaces and castles, built by the mediæval lords of the Archipelago out of ancient Hellenic temples. But of the Duchy of Naxos little 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 literary gifts; he could not write, he could only read, and his researches lie buried in a ponderous encyclopædia. So this delightful Duchy, whose whole story is one long romance, still awaits the hand of a novelist to make it live again.

The origin of this fantastic State of the blue Ægean 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 Constantinople, 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 Ægean, and live on friendly terms with the Republic. 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 undertaking. 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 filling 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 Ægean, 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 Ægean: poets have placed there the beautiful myth of Ariadne and Dionysos; Herodotos describes it as “excelling the other islands in prosperity[167]”; 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 filibuster, 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 later date to be the most important of all the Cyclades. True 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 formally 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 still be seen; to improve the harbour by the construction of a mole; and to fortify the town with solid masonry, of which one fragment stands to-day, a monument, like 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 fully 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 the Catholic 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 buildings, 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 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 typical 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 cleverness counts for more than heroic simplicity of character.