Part 16

Thenceforth, as is natural, the archives of Palermo contain far more frequent allusions to the duchies of Athens and Neopatras, whose inhabitants petition their royal duke for redress of grievances and for the appointment of suitable officials. But it is evident from the tenour of these documents that the Catalan state was rapidly declining. In addition to the Turkish peril and the menaces of the Venetians of Negroponte, the once united soldiers of fortune were divided into factions, which paralysed the central authority, and were aggravated by the prolonged absence of the vicar-general in Sicily. One party wished to place the duchies under the protection of Genoa, the natural enemy of Venice, while two bitter rivals, Roger de Lluria and Pedro de Pou, or Petrus de Puteo, the chief justice, an unjust judge and a grasping and ambitious official, both claimed the title of vicar of the absent vicar-general. Pou’s tyranny became so odious to Catalans and Greeks alike that the former rose against him and slew him and his chief adherents. The experiment of allowing the vicar-general as well as the duke to remain an absentee had thus proved to be a failure; Lluria, as the strongest man on the spot, was rewarded with the office of vicar-general as the sole means of keeping the duchies intact. So vulnerable did the Catalan state appear that the representatives of Walter of Brienne, the Baron of Argos and the Count of Conversano, renewed the attempt of their predecessor and, if we may believe the Aragonese _Chronicle of the Morea_, actually occupied for a time the city of Athens.

The fast approaching Turkish danger ought to have united all the Latin states of the Levant against the common foe, to whom they all eventually succumbed. An attempt at union was made by Pope Gregory XI, at the instance of the Archbishop of Neopatras; and a congress of the Christian rulers of the East was convened by him to meet at Thebes in 1373. We can well imagine how the ancient city, the capital of the Athenian duchy, was enlivened by the arrival of these more or less eminent persons, or their envoys; how the Archbishops of Neopatras and Naxos preached a new crusade against the infidel in the church of Our Lady; how every one applauded their excellent advice; and how personal jealousies marred the results of that, as of every subsequent congress on the Eastern question. Scarcely had the delegates separated, when Nerio Acciajuoli, Baron of Corinth, the boldest and astutest of them all, a worthy scion of that great Florentine family of bankers established for a generation in the principality of Achaia showed his appreciation of the value of unity by seizing Megara as the first step on the way to Athens. It is an interesting proof of the popularity of Catalan rule among those Greeks, at any rate, who held office under the Company, that one of the warmest defenders of Megara was a Greek notary, Demetrios Rendi, who afterwards rose to a position of importance at Athens. Such was the weakness of the once terrible Catalan state that the upstart Florentine’s attack remained unavenged. The fall of Catalan rule was now only a question of time.

The death of the royal Duke of Athens and Neopatras, Frederick III, in 1377, yet further injured his Greek duchies. The duke had bequeathed them to his young daughter Maria; but the succession was disputed by King Pedro IV of Aragon, brother-in-law of Frederick III, who appealed to the principle of the Salic law as laid down by that monarch’s predecessor, Frederick II. The Catalans of Attica were naturally disinclined to accept the government of a young girl at so critical a moment, when the Turk was at their gates. All the three archbishops and the principal barons and knights at once declared for the King of Aragon; but there was a minority in favour of Maria, headed by the Venetian Marquess of Boudonitza, who was eager to shake off the bond of vassalage to the vicar-general. The burgesses, anxious for security, supported the Aragonese party. At this moment, however, a third competitor appeared in the duchies in the shape of the Navarrese Company, which sought to repeat the exploits of the Catalans seventy years before. The researches of the learned historian of the Catalans and Navarrese, Don Antonio Rubió y Lluch, have thrown a flood of light upon this portion of the Athenian annals, and have explained much that was hitherto obscure. Employed originally by King Charles II of Navarre in his struggle with Charles V of France, the Navarrese mercenaries had found their occupation gone when those two rival sovereigns made peace in 1366. After many vicissitudes they found congenial service, fourteen years later, under the banner of Jacques de Baux, Prince of Achaia and the last titular Emperor of Constantinople, who thought the moment had come to recover his ancestors’ dominions.

Accordingly, early in 1380, they directed their steps towards Attica, under the command of Mahiot de Coquerel, chamberlain of the King of Navarre, and Pedro de Superan, surnamed Bordo, or the bastard[93]. These experienced leaders found valuable assistance in the chiefs of the Sicilian party; in the knights of St John who sallied forth from the Morea to pillage the distracted duchy; in the Count of Conversano, who seems to have now made a second attempt to regain his ancestors’ heritage; and in the mutual jealousies of Thebes and Athens, fomented by the characteristic desire of the Athenians to be independent of Theban supremacy. In Bœotia, one place after another fell before the adventurers from Navarre; the noble castle of Livadia, which still preserves the memory of its Catalan masters, was betrayed by a Greek from Durazzo; and the capital was surrendered by two Spanish traitors. But the fortress of Salona defied their assaults; and the Akropolis, thanks to the bravery of its governor, Romeo de Bellarbe, and to the loyalty of the ever useful notary, Demetrios Rendi, baffled the machinations of a little band of malcontents. These severe checks broke the force of the soldiers of Navarre; their appearance in Greece had alarmed all the petty potentates of the Morea and the islands; and they withdrew to Bœotia, whence, some two years later, they were finally dislodged. Thence they proceeded to the Morea, where they carved out a principality, nominally for Jacques de Baux, really for themselves.

The people of Athens and Salona, whose loyalty to the crown of Aragon had saved the duchies, were well aware of the value of their services, and were resolved to have their reward. Both communities accordingly presented petitions to King Pedro; and these capitulations, drawn up in the Catalan language, have fortunately been preserved in the archives of Barcelona. Both the Athenian capitulations and those of Salona are largely concerned with personal questions—requests that this or that faithful person should receive privileges, lands, and honours, especially his Majesty’s most loyal subject, the Greek, Demetrios Rendi. From the date of the Frankish conquest no member of the conquered race had ever risen to such eminence as this serviceable clerk, who now obtained broad acres, goods, and serfs in both Attica and Bœotia. But there were some clauses in the Athenian petition of a more general character. The Athenians begged the central authorities at Thebes for a continuance of their recently won independence, and for permission to bequeath their property and serfs to the Catholic Church. Both these prayers met with a blank refusal. King Pedro told the petitioners that he intended to treat the duchies as an indivisible whole, and that home-rule for Athens was quite out of the question. He also reminded them that the Catalans were only a small garrison in Greece, and that, if holy Church became possessed of their property, there would be no one left to defend the country. He also observed that there was no hardship in this, for the law of Athens was also that of his kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia. The soundness of his Majesty’s statesmanship was obvious in the peculiar conditions of the Catalan state; but this demand shows the influence of the Church, an influence rarely found in the history of Frankish Greece.

Of all the dukes who had held sway over Athens, Pedro IV was the first to express himself in enthusiastic terms about the Akropolis. The poetic monarch—himself a troubadour and a chronicler—described that sacred rock in eloquent language as “the most precious jewel that exists in the world, and such as all the kings of Christendom together would imitate in vain.” He had doubtless heard from the lips of Bishop Boyl of Megara, who was chaplain in the chapel of St Bartholomew in the governor’s palace on the Akropolis, a description of the ancient buildings, then almost uninjured, which the bishop knew so well. Yet he considered twelve men-at-arms sufficient defence for the brightest jewel in his crown.

Pedro now did his best to repair the ravages of the civil war; he ordered a general amnesty for all the inhabitants of the duchies, and showered rewards on faithful cities and individuals. Livadia, always a privileged town in the Catalan period, not only received a confirmation of its rights, but became the seat of the Order of St George in Greece, an honour due to the fact that the head of the saint was then preserved there. Most important of all for the future history of Greece, the king granted exemption from taxes for two years to all Albanians who would come and settle in the depleted duchies. This was the beginning of that Albanian colonisation of Attica of which so many traces remain in the population and the topography of the present day.

But the Albanian colonists came too late to save the Catalan domination. From the heights of Akrocorinth and from the twin hills of Megara, Nerio Acciajuoli, the Florentine upstart, had been attentively watching the rapid dissolution of the Catalan power. He saw a land weakened by civil war and foreign invasion; he knew that the titular duke was an absentee, engrossed with more important affairs; he found the ducal viceroys summoned away to Spain or Sicily, while the old families of the conquest were almost as extinct as the French whom they had displaced. He was a man of action, without scruples, without fear, and he resolved to strike. Hiring a galley from the Venetian arsenal at Candia, under pretext of sweeping Turkish corsairs from the two seas, he assembled a large force of cavalry, and sought an excuse for intervention. The pride of a noble dame was the occasion of the fall of Athens. Nerio asked the Dowager Countess of Salona to give her daughter’s hand to his brother-in-law, Pietro Saraceno, scion of a Sienese family long settled in Eubœa. The Countess, in whose veins flowed the Imperial blood of the Cantacuzenes, scornfully rejected the offer of the Florentine tradesman, and affianced her daughter to a Serbian princeling of Thessaly. Franks and Greeks at Salona were alike indignant at this alliance with a Slav; Nerio’s horsemen invaded the county and the rest of the duchy, while his galley went straight for the Piræus. In the absence of a guiding hand—for the vicar-general was away in Spain—the Catalans made no serious resistance; only the Akropolis and a few other castles held out. In vain the King of Aragon despatched Pedro de Pau to take the command; that gallant officer, the last Catalan governor of the noblest fortress in Europe, defended the “Castle of Athens” for more than a twelvemonth, till, on May 2, 1388, it too surrendered to the Florentine. In vain, on April 22, as a last resource, it had been offered to the Countess of Salona, if she could save it[94]. The new King of Aragon in vain promised the _Sindici_ of Athens to visit “so famous a portion of his realm,” and announced that he was sending a fleet to “confound his enemies.” We know not whether the fleet ever arrived; if it did, it was unsuccessful. The sovereigns of Aragon might gratify their vanity by appointing a titular vicar-general, or even a duke, of the duchies whose names they still included in their titles; once, indeed, the news of an expedition aroused alarm at Athens. But it proved to be merely the usual tall talk of the Catalans; the flag of Aragon never waved again from the ramparts of the Akropolis; the duchy passed to the Acciajuoli.

The Catalan Grand Company disappeared from the face of Attica as rapidly as rain from its light soil. Like their Burgundian predecessors, these soldiers of fortune conquered but struck no root in the land. Some took ship for Sicily; some, like Ballester, the last Catalan Archbishop of Athens, are heard of in Cataluña; while others, among them the two branches of the Fadrique family, lingered on for a time, the one at Salona, the other at Ægina, where we find their connections, the Catalan family of Caopena, ruling till 1451—a fact which explains the boast of a much later Catalan writer, Peña y Farel, that his countrymen maintained their “ancient splendour” in Greece till the middle of the fifteenth century. Thither the Catalans conveyed the head of St George, and thence it was removed to the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, when the Venetians succeeded the Caopena as masters of Ægina. Even to-day a noble family in Zante bears the name of Katalianos; and in the island of Santorin are three families of Spanish origin—those of Da Corogna, De Cigalla, and Delenda, to which last the recent Catholic Archbishop of Athens belonged. Besides the castles of Salona, Livadia, and Lamia, and the row of towers between Livadia and Thebes, the Catalans have left a memorial of their stay in Greece in the curious fresco of the Virgin and Child, now in the Christian Archæological Museum at Athens, which came from the church of the Prophet Elias near the gate of the Agora. Unlike their predecessors, they minted no coins; unlike them, they had no ducal court in their midst to stimulate luxury and refinement. Yet even in the Athens of the Catalans there was some culture. A diligent Athenian priest copied medical works; and we hear of the libraries belonging to the Catholic bishops of Salona and Megara.

The Greeks long remembered with terror the Catalan domination. A Greek girl, in a mediæval ballad, prays that her seducer may “fall into the hands of the Catalans”; even a generation ago the name of Catalan was used as a term of reproach in Attica and in Eubœa, in Akarnania, Messenia, Lakonia, and at Tripolitsa. Yet, as we have seen, the Greeks did not raise a finger to assist a French restoration when they had the chance, while there are several instances of Greeks rendering valuable aid to the Catalans against the men of Navarre. Harsher they may have been than the French, but they probably gained their bad name before they settled down in Attica, and became more staid and more tolerant as they became respectable. In our own time they have found admirers and apologists among their own countrymen, who are justly proud of the fact that the most famous city in the world was for two generations governed by the sons of Cataluña. And in the history of Athens, where nothing can lack interest, they, too, are entitled to a place.

AUTHORITIES

1. _I Libri Commemoriali._ Vols. I-VI. Ed. by R. Predelli. Venice: Reale Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, 1876-1903.

2. _Libro de las Fechos et Conquistas del Principado de la Morea._ Ed. by A. Morel-Fatio. Geneva, 1885.

3. _La Espedición y Dominación de los Catalanes en Oriente; Los Navarros en Grecia._ By D. Antonio Rubió y Lluch. Barcelona, 1887.

4. _Sul Dominio dei Ducati di Atene e Neopatria dei Re di Sicilia._ By F. Guardione. Palermo, 1895.

5. _Chronik des Edlen En Ramon Muntaner._ Ed. Karl Lanz. Stuttgart, 1844.

6. Οἱ Καταλάνοι ἐν τῇ Ἄνατολῇ (_The Catalans in the East_). By E. I. Stamatiades. Athens, 1869.

7. _Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum._ Ed. G. M. Thomas and R. Predelli. Venice, 1880-1899.

8. _De Historiæ Ducatus Atheniensis Fontibus._ By K. Hopf. 1852.

9. _Catalunya a Grecia._ By D. Antonio Rubió y Lluch. Barcelona, 1906.

10. Ἔγγραφα ἀναφερόμενα εἰς τὴν μεσαιωνικὴν Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν (_Documents relating to the Mediæval History of Athens_). Ed. Sp. P. Lampros. Athens, 1906.

And other works.

APPENDIX

THE FRANKISH INSCRIPTION AT KARDITZA

To students of Frankish Greece the church at Karditza in Bœotia is one of the most interesting in the country, because it contains an inscription referring to an important Frankish personage, Antoine le Flamenc, and dating from the fatal year 1311, which witnessed the overthrow of the Frankish Duchy of Athens in the swamps of the Bœotian Kephissos. Buchon had twice[95] published this inscription; but, as I was anxious to know in what condition it was and to have an exact facsimile of it, I asked Mr D. Steel, the manager of the Lake Copais Company, to have a fresh copy taken. Mr Steel kindly sent his Greek draughtsman to copy the inscription, and at the same time visited the church and took the photographs now published (Plate I, Figs. 1 and 2). Subsequently, in 1912, I visited the church with him and saw the inscription, which is painted on the plaster of the wall. Mr Steel informed me that, when he first saw the church about 1880, “the extension of the west end,” clearly visible in the photographs, “had not yet been made, while at that end there existed a sort of verandah set on pieces of ancient columns.”

On comparing the present copy (Text-fig. 1) with Buchon’s versions, it will be noticed that not only are there several differences of spelling, but that the French scholar omitted one important addition to the year at the end of the inscription—the indiction, which is rightly given as the 9th. This is a further proof that the date of the inscription is 1311, which corresponds with both the year 6819 and the 9th indiction. As the battle of the Kephissos was fought on March 15th of that year, and as Antoine le Flamenc is known to have survived the terrible carnage of that day, we may surmise, as I have elsewhere suggested, that the work commemorated in the inscription was “in pursuance of a vow made before he went into action.”

[Illustration: Fig. 1. INSCRIPTION ON THE CHURCH AT KARDITZA.]

Antoine le Flamenc, whose ancestors had settled in the Holy Land, is several times mentioned during the first decade of the fourteenth century. The _Livre de la Conqueste_[96] states that Guy II, Duke of Athens, appointed him his “bailie and lieutenant” in Thessaly in 1303, and describes him as _un des plus sages hommes de Romanie_ and _le plus sage dou duchame_. The same passage alludes also to Jean le Flamenc, his son, as receiving a post in Thessaly. Doubtless their experience of the Wallachs, who then, as now, wandered as winter approached from the Thessalian to the Bœotian Karditza, would specially commend these two distinguished men for such duties. Two years later we find Antoine as one of the witnesses of a deed[97] regarding the property of the Duchess of Athens, just come of age at Thebes, in her father’s land of Hainault. On April 2nd, 1309, both Antoine and Jean were present at the engagement of the then widowed Duchess with Charles of Taranto at Thebes[98]. On the 23rd of a certain month (? September) of 1308, a Venetian document[99] alludes to the intention of _Fiammengo Antonio_, together with Guy II, Rocaforte, and Bonifacio da Verona, to _tentar l’impresa di Negroponte_—in other words, to make an attempt upon that Venetian colony. On August 11th, 1309, another Venetian letter, this time addressed to _Egregio militi Antonio Fiammengo_, informs us that he had rented the property of Pietro Correr, an absent canon of Thebes, and bids him not to consign the rents to any but the rightful person. A second letter of the same day, addressed to the bailie and councillors of Negroponte, mentions him again in connection with this affair[100]. Finally, the list of Greek dignitaries, with whom the Republic was in correspondence, originally drawn up before the battle of the Kephissos and then corrected in 1313, mentions _Ser Antonius Flamengo miles_[101]. As his name is not followed by the word _decessit_ or _mortuus_, added to those who had fallen in the battle, he was one of the very few survivors.

To these certain facts Hopf[102] added the assumption, based on no evidence, that he was the “Frank settled in the East,” whom Isabella, Marchioness of Boudonitza, married, and who, in 1286, disputed the succession to that castle with her cousin.

As Buchon’s books are rare, I append his transcript of the inscription:

ΑΝΗΓΕΡΘΗ Ο ΘΥΙΩΣ ΚΕ ΠΝΣΕΠΤΟΣ ΝΑΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΙΠΟΥ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΜ.Τ ΓΕΩΡΓΙΟΥ ΔΗΑ ΣΙΝΕΡΓΙΑΣ ΚΕ ΠΟΘΟΥ ΠΟΛΛΟΥ ΤΟΥ ΘΕΩΣΕΒΕΣΤΑΤΟΥ ΚΑΒΑΛΑΡΙ ΜΙΣΕΡ ΑΝΤΟΝΙ ΛΕ ΦΛΑΜΑ ΟΔΕ ΤΕΛΟΣ ΗΛΙΦΕΝ ΠΟΛΩΝ ΜΑΡΤΥΡΩΝ ΟΔΕ ΤΕΛΟΣ ΕΥΡΕΝ ΗΣΤΟΡΗΑ ΑΥΤΑ ΠΑΡΑ ΓΕΡΜΑΝΟΥ ΙΕΡΟΜΟΝΑΧΟΥ ΚΕ ΚΑΘΕΓΟΥΜΕΝΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΝΙΚΟΔΕΜΟΥ ΙΕΡΟΜΟΝΑΧΟΥ ΤΟΝ ΑΥΤΑΔΕΛΦΩΝ ΤΟΥΣ ΑΝΑΚΕΝΕΣΑΝΤΑΣ ΤΟΝ ΗΚΟΝ ΤΟΥΤΟΝ. + ΕΤΙ. ϛωΙΘ. +

[Illustration: PLATE I

Fig. 1. THE CHURCH OF ST GEORGE AT KARDITZA, LOOKING TOWARDS THE END, WHICH IS MODERN

Fig. 2. THE CHURCH OF ST GEORGE AT KARDITZA, SHOWING OLD BELFRY AND BUTTRESSES SUPPORTING OLD PART OF THE BUILDING]

5. FLORENTINE ATHENS

The history of mediæval Athens is full of surprises. A Burgundian nobleman founding a dynasty in the ancient home of heroes and philosophers; a roving band of mercenaries from the westernmost peninsula of Europe destroying in a single day the brilliant French civilisation of a century; a Florentine upstart, armed with the modern weapons of finance, receiving the keys of the Akropolis from a gallant and chivalrous soldier of Spain—such are the tableaux which inaugurate the three epochs of her Frankish annals. In an earlier paper in the _Quarterly Review_ (January 1907) we dealt with the French and the Catalan periods; we now propose to trace the third and last phase of Latin rule over the most famous of Greek cities.

When, in the spring of 1388, Nerio Acciajuoli found himself master of “the Castle of Setines,” as the Franks called the Akropolis, his first care was to conciliate the Greeks, who formed by far the largest part of his subjects, and who may have aided him to conquer the Athenian duchy. For the first time since the day, nearly two centuries before, when Akominatos had fled from his beloved cathedral to exile at Keos, a Greek Metropolitan of Athens was allowed to reside in his see, not, indeed, on the sacred rock itself, but beneath the shadow of the Areopagos. We may be sure that this remarkable concession was prompted, not by sentiment, but by policy, though the policy was perhaps mistaken. The Greek hierarchy has in all ages been distinguished for its political character; and the presence of a high Greek ecclesiastic at Athens at once provided his fellow-countrymen with a national leader against the rulers, whom they distrusted as foreigners and he hated as schismatics. He was ready to call in the aid of the Turks against his fellow-Christians, just as in modern Macedonia a Greek bishop abhorred the followers of the Bulgarian Exarch far more than those of the Prophet. Thus early in Florentine Athens were sown the seeds of the Turkish domination; thus, in the words of the Holy Synod, “the Athenian Church seemed to have recovered its ancient happiness such as it had enjoyed before the barbarian conquest[103].”