Part 58

Such was the map of the Near East in 1450, on the eve of the accession of the greatest of the Sultans, Mohammed II. With his advent ancient Empires and mediæval Principalities disappeared as by magic, and a political earthquake shook the thrones of the Levant to their foundations. In 1453 the last Byzantine Emperor fell at his post on the walls of Constantinople; the oldest political institution in the world came to an end, and the Turkish capital was moved from Adrianople to the Bosporus. In 1456 Moldavia was made to pay tribute, the Gattilusj were driven from Ænos and the Acciajuoli from the city of Athens; in 1459 Serbia, in 1460 the Morea and the rest of the Duchy of Athens ceased to exist. Next year the Empire of Trebizond was incorporated with Turkey, the year following the Gattilusj no longer ruled over Lesbos. In 1463 the last native King of Bosnia was beheaded in the presence of the great Sultan on the meadow opposite the lovely city of Jajce; in 1468 the death of Skanderbeg deprived Albania of her brave defender. Two years later Venice lamented the loss of Eubœa, the greatest blow that had ever befallen the Republic. In 1479 the Tocchi were driven from their island county; by 1483 the Herzegovina was wholly Turkish. The rulers and nobles of most of these countries sought refuge in Rome, and thus the epilogue of the long and tragic drama of Balkan history was played here. Italy was their nearest land of refuge; it had been the cradle of many of their ancestors; and the Pope was the head of Western Christendom, to whom some of them had appealed in their distress.

The most notable of these distinguished exiles was the Despot Thomas Palaiologos, who sailed from Corfù for Ancona towards the end of 1460, accompanied by most of his magnates, and bearing the head of St Andrew, which had long been preserved at Patras. The relic was known to be a valuable asset in the dethroned Despot’s balance-sheet, although Amalfi already possessed a portion of the saint’s remains. Many Princes offered large sums for it, and its fortunate possessor had accordingly no difficulty in disposing of it to the Pope in return for an annuity. The precious relic was deposited for safety in the castle of Narni, while Thomas proceeded to Rome, where Pius II bestowed upon him the Golden Rose, the symbol of virtues which he had scarcely displayed in his long career of intrigue, a lodging in the Santo Spirito hospital, and an allowance of 300 gold pieces a month, to which the Cardinals added 200 more—a sum which his too numerous followers considered barely enough for his maintenance and certainly not for theirs. Venice, however, contributed a further sum of 500 ducats to his treasury, but the cautious Republic begged him not to return to Corfù or any of her other colonies, so as not to embarrass her then rather delicate relations with the Turks. Meanwhile, on April 12, 1462, the day after Palm Sunday, Pius II received the head of St Andrew at the Ponte Milvio, on the spot where the little chapel of that Apostle with its commemorative inscription now stands. A recent visit to the chapel, which has been completely isolated, and is now standing alone in a network of tramlines and roads, suggests the melancholy reflection that ere long it too may be sacrificed to that _civile progresso_, which has cost this city so many interesting mediæval monuments. Thomas’ fellow-countryman, the famous Cardinal Bessarion, handed the case containing the head to the Pope, who bade the sacred skull welcome among its relatives, the Romans, “the nephews of St Peter”—a ceremony depicted on the tomb of Pius II in Sant’ Andrea della Valle. Shortly afterwards, upon the death of his wife, whom he had left behind in Corfù, Thomas summoned his two sons, Andrew and Manuel, and his daughter Zoe to join him in Rome. But before they arrived, he died, on May 12, 1465, and was buried in the crypt of St Peter’s, where all efforts to find his grave have proved fruitless. But every visitor to Rome unconsciously gazes upon his features, for on account of his tall and handsome appearance he served as a model for the statue of St Paul, which still stands at the steps of St Peter’s.

Misfortunes make strange bedfellows, and a common disaster had brought together as exiles in Rome, condemned to live upon the papal charity, the former Greek Despot of the Morea and his enemy, the natural son of the last Frankish Prince of Achaia. After two centuries of conflict, the Greeks had succeeded, at the eleventh hour, in extinguishing the rule of the Franks in the peninsula, only to fall themselves before the all-conquering Turk. To consecrate the Greek conquest, Thomas Palaiologos had married the heiress of Centurione II Zaccaria, the last Frankish ruler, and the last legitimate descendant of a famous Genoese family, which had made a fortune out of the alum-mines of Phocæa on the coast of Asia Minor, become lords of the rich island of Chios in the days before the Chartered Company, and had at last attained to the throne of Achaia. But Centurione had left a natural son, Giovanni Asan, who had raised the standard of revolt against the Greeks. Imprisoned by Thomas in the splendid castle of Chlomoutsi, or Castel Tornese, the mint of the Morea, whose ruins still stand on a tortoise-shaped eminence which overlooks the fertile plain of Elis and the flourishing harbour of Zante, he had escaped a lingering death by hunger, rallied his old adherents, and actually received the congratulations of the King of Naples and the Venetian Republic upon his release and their recognition of his title. Thomas had, however, suppressed this rebellion with Turkish aid, and the pretender had fled first to one of the Venetian colonies, and thence to Naples, whence we find him writing for aid to the Bank of St George in his ancestral city of Genoa[910]. In 1459 a Genoese document reveals him begging the Genoese government to recommend him to the generosity of Pius II. Genoa was at that time under French rule, and the Duke of Calabria, who was the royal lieutenant, accordingly wrote to Pius II and to Cardinal Lodovico Scarampi, the Patriarch of Aquileia, who was the Pope’s Chamberlain, recommending to their notice “the magnificent lord Centurione Zaccaria, not long ago Prince of the Morea.” I think that there was a special reason for the activity of the Genoese government on the exile’s behalf. There is in the Cathedral of Genoa a splendid relic, known as “the cross of the Zaccaria,” and consisting of a piece of the true cross, encased in gold and studded with precious stones. This is said to have been brought by St John the Evangelist to Ephesus, captured by the Turks when they took that place, and pawned by them at Phocæa, which then belonged, as we saw, to the Zaccaria family. In 1307, in consequence of a quarrel between two of its members over the accounts of the alum-mines, Tedisio Zaccaria begged the famous Catalan chronicler, Ramon Muntaner, who was then encamped with the Catalan Grand Company at the Dardanelles, to assist him in sacking the town. Muntaner informs us that his share of the booty was this cross, and the problem has hitherto been to find when and how it was brought to Genoa. Now, as there is no mention of the cross at Genoa before 1466, I have no doubt whatever that it was this last scion of the Zaccaria who brought it from Greece, just as his brother-in-law, Thomas Palaiologos, had brought the head of St Andrew, and disposed of it to the city of Genoa for a valuable consideration, of which one portion was a letter of introduction to the Pope.

Until recently there was no trace of the “Prince of the Morea’s” sojourn in Rome. I noticed, however, in a book by a German scholar, Gottlob, on the subject of papal finance, an allusion to a certain “Prince of Sani.” There being no such place, it seemed to me that the learned German must have misunderstood the name of Giovanni Asani. Examination of the original documents in the “Archivio di Stato” proved this surmise to be correct. The _Liber depositarii Sancte Cruciate_ contains numerous entries of twenty florins a month paid to _domino Johanni Zaccarie olim Amoree principi_, beginning with September, 1464, and ending with December 31, 1468, after which there is no more mention of the pension, and the pensioner was therefore probably deceased. These sums, which Paul II, and after him Sixtus IV, gave to Oriental potentates in distress, were derived from the proceeds of the alum-mines, discovered at Tolfa in 1462 by another exile from the Near East, Giovanni de Castro, who had been engaged in the dyeing trade at Constantinople, had fled to Rome after the Turkish conquest, and had been appointed treasurer of the patrimony of the Church. Genoese workmen, formerly employed in the alum-mines of Phocæa, were summoned to Tolfa, the Pope declared that the discoverer deserved a statue, Court poets wrote more or less excellent verses in his honour, and Pius told the world that the alum of Tolfa had been given by Providence as the sinews of war against the Infidels, and bade all good Christians deal exclusively with the papal alum factory. Thus, by a curious coincidence, the last of the Zaccaria kept body and soul together by a pittance derived from the sale of that mineral, which had formed in happier days the foundation of his forefathers’ fortunes.

In 1461 another very distinguished relative of the dethroned Imperial family of Constantinople arrived in Rome—Queen Charlotte of Cyprus. There are few more remarkable figures even in the romantic history of the Latin Orient than this brave and masculine woman, the offspring of France and Byzantium. Queen Charlotte was the only daughter and heiress of King Jean II de Lusignan by his marriage with Helen daughter of Theodore II Palaiologos, Despot of Mistra, and she was therefore grand-niece of Thomas Palaiologos. Succeeding to the throne of Cyprus in 1458, at the age of 18, she was already both an orphan and a widow—for her first husband, a son of the King of Portugal, was dead—and she therefore hastened to conclude a second marriage with her cousin, Louis, Count of Geneva, second son of Louis, Duke of Savoy. Her consort had already been engaged to a daughter of Robert III of Scotland, and those of us who are of Scottish descent will learn with a flush of pride that our business-like ancestors demanded a huge sum as damages for this breach of promise. Possibly the young scion of the House of Savoy would have done better to establish himself in Scotland rather than Cyprus; for his Cypriote bride in the year after her marriage was driven from the greater part of her realm by her late father’s illegitimate son James, aided by the Sultan of Egypt. The castle of Cérines, or Kyrenia, however, which overlooks the sea to the north of the island, and of which a full description has recently been published by the British authorities, held out; and there the royal pair took refuge. During an interval in the siege, the intrepid Queen and her feeble husband journeyed to Rhodes on board a galley of the Knights, which lay in the harbour, to ask for aid. The Grand Master, Jacques de Milly, received them politely; but their journey had no practical results, beyond the gift of some money, corn and cannon, and after their return the Queen accordingly resolved to leave her husband at Cérines, and seek assistance in the West. On this journey, however, between Cyprus and Rhodes, her galley was stopped and pillaged by the Venetians, while some Mameluke prisoners, who were on board, cut the rigging and nearly murdered the Queen. Even thirty years later the Republic had not paid the damages due for this high-handed act of piracy[911]. At last, under the escort of Sor de Naves, the Sicilian governor of Cérines, the Queen arrived at Ostia in the second half of October, 1461, and proceeded up the Tiber till she reached St Paul-outside-the-walls. There she landed, and was met by the Cardinals, who escorted her to the city, where she took up her temporary residence at San Ciriaco[912], the church mentioned by the British visitor of 1450, Capgrave, recently introduced to our notice, and which was the predecessor of Sta Maria degli Angeli in the Baths of Diocletian. We have in the _Commentaries_[913] of Pius II an interesting description of the royal suppliant on the occasion of her first audience with the Pope. She appeared to be twenty-four years of age, she was of a mediocre height, and dressed like a Frenchwoman, her eyes sparkled with fire, and her tongue was “like a torrent.” It seems possible, however, that the Holy Father may have exaggerated her volubility, owing to the fact that she spoke in a language which was not his own. For to the end of her days, Queen Charlotte, although she could write French, Italian, and perhaps Latin, was unable to speak French and always used Greek, the language of her mother. Indeed, in the most important business transactions of her life, she resorted to an interpreter, whom we may be surprised to find a man of English extraction—not the last occasion, I fear, on which treaties relating to the Eastern question have been negotiated by persons imperfectly acquainted with the language in which they were negotiating. The Queen humbly kissed the Pope’s feet, and on the next day delivered a set speech to him through the medium of a translator. She began by firing off a well-worn tag from the _Æneid_, which doubtless tickled the palate of the classical Æneas Sylvius, whom she saw before her. “My first husband,” she said, “is dead; my second is besieged: whether he be alive or dead, I do not know. Cérines is our only refuge; on the way hither the Venetians have robbed me. I can stand no more voyages by sea; I have neither horses nor money for a journey by land.”

The Pope, who had refused to receive officially the envoys of her rival, bade the Queen be of good cheer, for he would not desert her. “You are expiating,” he replied, “the faults of your father-in-law, who declined to offer Us aid against the Turks, and of your husband, who would not even take the trouble to meet Us when We were at Mantua. So We said, ‘the House of Savoy despises the Church’”—a remark which might have been taken from a clerical newspaper of our own day. Pius II concluded by the promise of horses and money for the journey to her father-in-law’s Court in Savoy. She remained on this occasion some ten days more in Rome, until she had seen the chief churches and had had four or five audiences with the Pope, who gave her much corn and wine for revictualling Cérines and twelve horses and 200 ducats for her journey. On November 5 she wrote from San Ciriaco to the Florentine Republic, stating that her business with the Pope was terminated, and asking for a passport for the dominions of Florence. On the 20th she reached Bologna, where she was lodged gratis at the “Osteria del Leone[914],” and whence she proceeded by way of Venice and Milan to Savoy. The Duke of Milan and the Council of Geneva gave her a good reception; but her father-in-law told her plainly that the connection with Cyprus had “exhausted” his Duchy, and complaint was afterwards made of the expense of entertaining her for nearly four months at Lausanne and Thonon, where the Court then was. Her appeals to the King of Aragon and to Pierre-Raymond Zacosta, the new Grand Master, were in vain; so, after bequeathing the Crown of Cyprus to the House of Savoy in the event of her death without heirs, the indomitable Queen returned in September of 1462 to her island, and shut herself up once more in the royal apartments at Cérines. Having obtained so little from the Christian Powers, she sent the Count of Jaffa to ask the aid of Mohammed II, offering to pay tribute and to surrender a city of the island to the Turks—a fact, which is probably the origin of the erroneous statement of the Greek historian, Phrantzes[915], that Mohammed II rendered Cyprus tributary. The Sultan’s reply was to order her envoy to be sawn asunder. Meanwhile, her craven husband had abandoned Cérines and fled to Rhodes, whence he returned to Savoy in 1464. At last, when the garrison of Cérines was reduced to eat the cats that prowled along the battlements, the Queen likewise sought refuge in Rhodes, whither many of her knights and vassals accompanied her. Sor de Naves surrendered the castle to her relentless enemy, who thus, in October, 1463, was King of all Cyprus, save where the Banca di San Giorgio still held Famagosta.

The heroic Queen did not despair of recovering her Kingdom. She wrote from Rhodes a year later to her husband, urging him to send assistance, and telling him that her poverty alone prevented her from reconquering it. But Louis had had enough of both his consort and his castles, as the Italian chronicler[916] tells us, and remained for the rest of his life, which ended in 1482, in his native land, without occupying himself with either. Queen Charlotte continued to reside for several years in Rhodes, whence she could watch Cypriote politics and where she received a monthly allowance from the Order. The Holy See continued to recognise her as lawful sovereign of Cyprus; and in 1471, when the usurper sent the Archbishop of Nicosia to Rome to ask the Pope to crown him King and to give him in marriage the hand of Princess Zoe, daughter of Thomas Palaiologos and then a young widow, living there under the care of Cardinal Bessarion, His Holiness refused both requests. This is the version of the contemporary Greek chronicler; but the Italian annalist cynically remarks that the Pope agreed to crown him if he would marry the Holy Father’s niece, but that when the King of Cyprus saw the lady’s portrait and heard her habits, he declined the crown on such terms. Instead, he married the famous Catherine Cornaro, who in 1489 brought the Kingdom of Cyprus to Venice.