Part 29

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.

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 Castellis viz Cochinum, Mudrum et Paleocastrum que tempore pacis reddere solent ducatos circa xᵐ. 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 gubernandis 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 exemptionibus 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.

†De parte 474 De non 14 Non syncere 9

Die xvij Septembris mcccclxiiij in consilio di xlᵗᵃ.

De parte 26 De non 0 Non sync. 1

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.

†De 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 considerate quod mercantia huiusmodi vinorum hoc anno parvum vel nichil valuit, ob quod ipsi mercatores multa et maxima damna sustinuerunt, ob quibus (_sic_) nullo modo possunt ad terminum quatuor mensium sibi limitatum solvere eorum datia prout nobis supplicaverunt; 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 sufficientem pro ista prorogatione termini, quod comune nostrum sit securum de datio suo, solvendo ad terminum debitum.

De parte omnes.

(Archivio di State Venezia—Deliberazioni Senate Misti Reg. 53. c. 21.)

_Feb. 19, 1421._

_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 limitatum 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 0. Non sinceri 0.

(Archivio di State Venezia—Deliberazioni Senato Misti Reg. 53. c. 112.)

_Feb. 9, 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 1.

(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 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].