Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

I give thee, Goth, to hold and raise.

Towards Elis, Franks, direct your motion;

Messene be the Saxon’s state:

The Norman claim and sweep the Ocean,

And Argolis again make great.

2. FRANKISH SOCIETY IN GREECE

We saw in the last essay, how at the beginning of the thirteenth century a small body of Franks conquered nearly the whole of Greece, and how, as the result of their conquests, a group of Latin states sprang into existence in that country—the Duchies of Athens and of the Archipelago, the principality of Achaia, the County Palatine of Cephalonia, the three baronies of Eubœa, and the Venetian colony of Crete, while at two points alone—in the mountains of Epeiros and on the isolated rock of Monemvasia, so well-known to our ancestors as the place whence they obtained their Malmsey wine—the Greek flag still waved. In the present essay, I would give some account of Frankish organisation, political and ecclesiastical, of Frankish society, and of Frankish literature.

The usual tendency of the desperately logical Latin intellect, when brought face to face with a new set of political conditions, is to frame a paper constitution, absolutely perfect in theory, and absolutely unworkable in practice. But the French noblemen whom an extraordinary accident had converted into Spartan and Athenian law-givers, resisted this temptation, nor did they seek inspiration from the laws of Solon and Lycurgus. They fortunately possessed a model, the Assizes of Jerusalem which had been drawn up a century before for that Kingdom, and which, under the name of the Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania—a work still preserved in a Venetian version of 1452 drawn up for the island of Eubœa—was applied to all the Frankish states in Greece. This feudal constitution, barbarous as it may seem to our modern ideas, seems to have worked well; at any rate, it was tried by the best test, that of experience, and lasted, with one small amendment, for 250 years. In Achaia, about which we have most information, a commission was appointed, consisting of two Latin bishops, two bannerets, and five leading Greeks, under the presidency of Geoffroy de Villehardouin, for the purpose of dividing the Morea into fiefs and of assigning these to the members of the conquering force according to their wealth and the numbers of their followers, and the book, or “register” as the Chronicler calls it, containing the report of this commission, was then laid before a Parliament, held at Andravida, or Andreville, in Elis, now a small village which the traveller passes in the train between Patras and Olympia, but then the capital of the principality of Achaia.

According to this Achaian Doomsday-book, twelve baronies, whose number recalls the twelve peers of Charlemagne, were created, their holders, with the other lieges, forming a High Court, which not only advised the Prince in political matters but acted as a judicial tribunal for the decision of feudal questions. In the creation of these twelve baronies due regard was paid to the fact that the Franks were a military colony in the midst of an alien, and possibly hostile, population, spread over a country possessing remarkable strategic positions. Later on, after the distribution of the baronies, strong castles were erected in each upon some natural coign of vantage, from which the baron could overawe the surrounding country. The main object of this system may be seen from the name of the famous Arcadian fortress of Matagrifon, a name given also to our Richard I’s castle at Messina[45], (“Kill-Greek,” the Greeks being usually called Grifon by the French chroniclers), built near the modern Demetsana by the baron of Akova, Gautier de Rozières, to protect the rich valley of the Alpheios. The splendid remains of the castle of Karytaina, the Greek Toledo, which dominates the gorge of that classic river, which the Franks called Charbon, still mark the spot where Hugues de Bruyères and his son Geoffroy built a stronghold out of the ruins of the Hellenic Brenthe to terrify the Slavs of Skorta, the ancient Gortys and the home of the late Greek Prime Minister, Delyannes. The special importance of these two baronies was demonstrated by the bestowal of 24 knights’ fees upon the former and of 22 upon the latter. The castle-crowned hill of Passavâ, so-called, not, as Fallmerayer imagined, from a Slavonic Passau, but from the French war-cry Passe Avant, still reminds us how Jean de Neuilly, hereditary marshal of Achaia and holder of four fiefs, once watched the restless men of Maina; and, if earthquakes have left no mediæval buildings at Vostitza, the classic Aigion, where Hugues de Lille de Charpigny received eight knights’ fees, his family name still survives in the village of Kerpine, now a station on the funicular railway between Diakophto and Kalavryta. At Kalavryta itself Othon de Tournay, and at Chalandritza to the south of Patras Audebert de la Trémouille, scion of a family famous in the history of France, were established, with twelve and four fiefs respectively. Veligosti near Megalopolis with four fell to the share of the Belgian Matthieu de Valaincourt de Mons, and Nikli near Tegea with six to that of Guillaume de Morlay. Guy de Nivelet kept the Tzakones of Leonidi in check and watched the plain of Lakonia from his barony of Geraki with its six fiefs—a castle which has been surveyed by the British School at Athens—and Gritzena, entrusted to a baron named Luke with four fiefs depending on it guarded the ravines of the mountainous region round Kalamata. Patras became the barony of Guillaume Aleman, a member of a Provençal family still existing at Corfù, and the bold baron did not scruple to build his castle out of the house and church of the Latin Archbishop. Finally, the dozen was completed by the fiefs of Kalamata and Kyparissia (or Arkadia, as it was called in the Middle Ages, when what we call Arcadia was known as Mesarea) which became the barony of Geoffroy de Villehardouin. In addition to these twelve temporal peers there were seven ecclesiastical barons, whose sees were carved out on the lines of the existing Greek organisation, and of whom Antelme of Clugny, Latin Archbishop of Patras and Primate of Achaia was the chief. The Archbishop received eight knights’ fees, the bishops four a piece, and the same number was assigned to each of the three great Military Orders of the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of St John, and the Templars. When, a century later, the Templars were dissolved, their possessions went to the Knights of St John. In Elis was the domain of the Prince, and his usual residence, when he was not at Andravida, was at Lacedæmonia, or La Crémonie, as the Franks called it.

After the distribution of the baronies came the assignment of military service. All vassals were liable to render four months’ service in the field, and to spend four months in garrison (from which the prelates and the three Military Orders were alone exempted), and even during the remaining four months, which they could pass at home, they were expected to hold themselves ready to obey the summons of the Prince. After the age of 60, personal service was no longer required; but the vassal must send his son, or, if he had no son, some one else in his stead. Thus the Franks were on a constant war footing; their whole organisation was military—a fact which explains the ease with which they held down the unwarlike Greeks, so many times their superiors in numbers. This military organisation had, however, as the eminent modern Greek historian Paparregopoulos has pointed out, the effect of making the Greeks, too, imbibe in course of time something of the spirit of their conquerors. It is thus that we may explain the extraordinary contrast between the tameness with which the Greeks accepted the Frankish domination, and their frequent rebellions against that of the Turks. All over the Levant and even in Italy the Frankish chivalry of Achaia became famous. They fought against the luckless Conradin at Tagliacozzo, and the ruse, which won that battle and which Dante has ascribed to Erard de Valéry, is attributed by the Chronicle of the Morea to Prince William of Achaia. Round the Prince there grew up a hierarchy of great officials with high-sounding titles, to which the Greeks had no difficulty in fitting Byzantine equivalents. The Prince himself bore a sceptre, as the symbol of his office, when he presided over the sessions of the High Court.