Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

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.

During the long and peaceful reign of his son Angelo, little occurred to disturb the progress of the Duchy. But its external relations underwent a change at this time, in consequence of the transference of the suzerainty over it from the weak Emperor of Romania to the powerful Prince of Achaia, Geoffroy II, as a reward for Geoffroy’s assistance in defending the Latin Empire against the Greeks. Angelo, too, equipped three galleys for the defence of Constantinople, and, after its fall, sent a handsome present to the exiled Emperor. Like his father, he was summoned to aid the Venetian Governor of Crete against the native insurgents, but on the approach of the Nicene fleet he cautiously withdrew. His son, Marco II, who succeeded him in 1262, found himself face to face with a more difficult situation than that which had prevailed in the times of his father and grandfather. The Greeks had recovered ground not only at Constantinople, but in the south-east of the Morea, and their successes were repeated on a smaller scale in the Archipelago. Licario, the Byzantine admiral, captured many of the Ægean islands, some of which remained thenceforth part of the imperial dominions. Besides the Sanudi, the dynasty of the Ghisi, lords of Tenos and Mykonos, alone managed to hold its own against the Greek invasion; yet even the Ghisi suffered considerably from the attacks of the redoubtable admiral. One member of that family was fond of applying to himself the Ovidian line, “I am too big a man to be harmed by fortune,” and his subjects on the island of Skopelos, which has lately been notorious as the place of exile of Royalist politicians, used to boast that, even if the whole realm of Romania fell, they would escape destruction. But Licario, who knew that Skopelos lacked water, invested it during a hot summer, forced it to capitulate, and sent the haughty Ghisi in chains to Constantinople. Marco II had to quell an insurrection of the Greeks at Melos, who thought that the time had come for shaking off the Latin yoke. Educated at the court of Guillaume de Villehardouin, Marco had imbibed the resolute methods of that energetic prince, and he soon showed that he did not intend to relax his hold on what his grandfather had seized. Aided by a body of Frank fugitives from Constantinople, he reduced the rebels to submission, and pardoned all of them with the exception of a Greek priest whom he suspected of being the cause of the revolt. This man he is said to have ordered to be bound hand and foot, and then thrown into the harbour of Melos.

Towards the orthodox clergy Marco II was, if we may believe the Jesuit historian of the Duchy, by no means so tolerant as his two predecessors[168]. There was, it seems, in the island of Naxos an altar dedicated to St Pachys, a portly man of God, who was believed by the devout Naxiotes to have the power of making their children fat. In the East fatness is still regarded as a mark of comeliness, and in the thirteenth century St Pachys was a very popular personage, whose altar was visited by loving mothers, and whose hierophants lived upon the credulity of the faithful. Marco II regarded this institution as a gross superstition. Had he been a wise statesman, he would have tolerated it all the same, and allowed the matrons of Naxos to shove their offspring through the hollow altar of the fat saint, so long as no harm ensued to his State. But Marco II was not wise; he smashed the altar, and thereby so irritated his Orthodox subjects that he had to build a fortress to keep them in order. But the Greeks were not the only foes who menaced the Duchy at this period. The Archipelago had again become the happy hunting-ground of pirates of all nationalities—Greek corsairs from the impregnable rock of Monemvasia or from the islands of Santorin and Keos, Latins like Roger de Lluria, the famous Sicilian admiral, who preyed on their fellow-religionists, mongrels who combined the vices of both their parents. The first place among the pirates of the time belonged to the Genoese, the natural rivals of the Venetians in the Levant, and on that account popular with the Greek islanders. No sooner was a Genoese galley spied in the offing than the peasants would hurry down with provisions to the beach, just as the Calabrian peasants have been known to give food to notorious brigands. The result of these visitations on the smaller islands may be easily imagined: thus the inhabitants of Amorgos emigrated in a body to Naxos from fear of the corsairs; yet, in spite of the harm inflicted by Licario and the pirates, we are told that the fertile plain of Drymalia, in the interior of Naxos, “then contained twelve large villages, a number of farm buildings, country houses and towers, with about 10,000 inhabitants.” Sometimes the remote consequences of the pirates’ raids were worse than the raids themselves. Thus, on one of these expeditions, some corsairs carried off a valuable ass belonging to one of the Ghisi. The ass, marked with its master’s initials, was bought by Marco II’s son, Guglielmo, who lived at Syra. The purchaser was under no illusions as to the ownership of the ass, but was perfectly aware that he was buying stolen goods. Seeing this, Ghisi invaded Syra, laid the island waste, and besieged Sanudo in his castle. But the fate of the ass had aroused wide sympathies. Marco II had taken the oath of fealty to Charles of Anjou, as suzerain of Achaia, after the death of his liege lord, Guillaume de Villehardouin, and it chanced that the Angevin admiral was cruising in the Archipelago at the time of the rape of the ass. Feudal law compelled him to assist the son of his master’s vassal; a lady’s prayers conquered any hesitation that he might have felt; so he set sail for Syra, where he soon forced Ghisi to raise the siege. The great ass case was then submitted to the decision of the Venetian bailie in Eubœa, who restored the peace of the Levant, but only after “more than 30,000 heavy soldi” had been expended for the sake of the ass!

After the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks, the policy of Venice towards the dukes underwent a change. As we have seen, neither the founder of the Duchy nor his son and grandson were vassals of the Republic, though they were all three Venetian citizens. But the Venetian Government, alarmed at the commercial privileges accorded to its great rivals, the Genoese, by the Byzantine Emperor, now sought to obtain a stronger military and commercial position in the Archipelago, and, if possible, to acquire direct authority over the Duchy. An excuse for the attempt was offered by the affairs of Andros. That island had been bestowed by Marco I as a sub-fief of Naxos upon Marino Dandolo. Marco II resumed immediate possession of it after the death of Dandolo’s widow, and refused to grant her half of the island to her son by a second marriage, Nicolò Quirini, on the plausible plea that he arrived to do homage after the term allowed by the feudal law had expired. But Quirini was a Venetian bailie, and accordingly appealed to Venice for justice. The Doge summoned Marco II to make defence before the Senate; but Marco replied that Venice was not his suzerain, that the ducal Court at Naxos, and not the Senate at Venice, was the proper tribunal to try the case, and that he would be happy to afford the claimant all proper facilities for pleading his cause if he would appear there. The question then dropped; Marco remained in possession of Andros, while the Republic waited for a more favourable opportunity of advancing its political interests in the Archipelago.

This opportunity was not long in coming. Towards the end of the thirteenth century a violent war broke out between Venice and her Genoese rivals, supported by the Byzantine Emperor. While the Genoese tried to undermine Venetian power in Crete, Venice let loose a new swarm of privateers on the islands of the Ægean, which Licario had recovered for the Byzantines. Then for the first time we meet with the word armatoloí, so famous in the later history of Greece, applied originally to the outfitters, or armatores, of privateers. The dispossessed Venetian lords were thus enabled to reconquer many of the possessions which they had then lost; Amorgos, the birthplace of Simonides, was restored to the Ghisi, Santorin and Therasia to the Barozzi, but only on condition that they recognised the suzerainty of the Republic. This arrangement was contested by the Duke of the Archipelago, on the ground that those islands had originally been sub-fiefs of his ancestors’ dominions. Guglielmo Sanudo, the purchaser of the ass, had now succeeded to the Duchy, and, as might have been inferred from that story, was not likely to be over-scrupulous in his methods. As one of the Barozzi declined to do him homage, he had him arrested by corsairs on the high seas, and threw him into the ducal dungeon at Naxos. This was more than Venice could stand, for this scion of the Barozzi had been Venetian governor of Candia. An ultimatum was therefore despatched to the Duke, bidding him send his captive to Eubœa within eight days, under pain of being treated as a pirate. This message had the desired effect. Guglielmo let his prisoner go, and it was seen that the name of Venice was more powerful than before in the Archipelago. But neither Venice nor the Duke could prevent the increasing desolation of the islands. The Catalans had now appeared in the Levant; in 1303 they ravaged Keos; after their establishment in the Duchy of Athens they organised a raid on Melos, from which, like the Athenians of old, they carried off numbers of the inhabitants as slaves. A Spaniard from Coruña, Januli da Corogna, occupied Siphnos, and two of the leading families in Santorin to-day are of Catalan origin. A member of one of them, Dr De Cigalla, or Dekigallas, as he is called in Greek, is a voluminous author, and a great authority on the eruptions of that volcanic island. Turkish squadrons completed the work of destruction; we hear of a new exodus from Amorgos in consequence of their depredations, but this time the frightened islanders preferred to seek refuge under the Venetian banner in Crete rather than in Naxos. The latter island was, indeed, no longer so secure as it had been. True, Duke Guglielmo had welcomed the establishment of the warlike knights of St John at Rhodes, and had helped them to conquer that stronghold, in the hope that they would be able to ward off the Turks from his dominions. Venice, too, had come to see that her wisest policy was to strengthen the Naxiote Duchy, and furnished both the next Dukes, Nicolò I and Giovanni I, with arms for its protection. But, all the same, in 1344 the dreaded Turks effected a landing on Naxos, occupied the capital, and dragged away 6000 of the islanders to captivity. This misfortune increased the panic of the peasants throughout the Archipelago. They fled in greater numbers than ever to Crete, so that Giovanni complained at Venice of the depopulation of his islands, and asked for leave to bring back the emigrants. Even the fine island of Andros, which had formerly produced more wheat and barley than it could consume, was now forced to import grain from Eubœa, while many of the proprietors in other parts of the Ægean had to procure labour from the Morea. In fact, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, such security as existed in the Levant was due solely to the presence of the Venetian fleet in Cretan and Eubœan waters, and to a policy such as that which conferred upon the historian, Andrea Dandolo, the islet of Gaidaronisi, to the south of Crete, on condition that he should fortify its harbour against the assaults of pirates. Naturally, at such a time, it was the manifest advantage of the Naxiote Dukes to tighten the alliance with Venice. Accordingly we find Giovanni I preparing to assist the Venetians in their war with the Genoese, when the latter suddenly swooped down upon his capital and carried him off as a prisoner to Genoa.

In 1361, a few years after his release, Giovanni I died, leaving an only daughter, Fiorenza, as Duchess of the Archipelago. It was the first time that this romantic State had been governed by a woman, and, needless to say, there was no lack of competitors for the hand of the rich and beautiful young widow. During her father’s lifetime Fiorenza had married one of the Eubœan family of Dalle Carceri, which is often mentioned in mediæval Greek history, and she had a son by this union, who afterwards succeeded her in the Duchy. Over her second marriage there now raged a diplomatic battle, which was waged by Venice with all the unscrupulousness shown by that astute Republic whenever its supremacy was at stake. The first of this mediæval Penelope’s suitors was a Genoese, one of the merchant adventurers, or maonesi, who held the rich island of Chios much as a modern chartered company holds parts of Africa under the suzerainty of the home Government. To his candidature Venice was, of course, strongly opposed, as it would have been fatal to Venetian interests to have this citizen of Genoa installed at Naxos. Fiorenza was therefore warned not to bestow her hand upon an enemy of the Republic, when so many eligible husbands could be found at Venice or in the Venetian colonies of Eubœa and Crete. At the same time, the Venetian bailie of Eubœa was instructed to hinder by fair means or foul the Genoese marriage. Fiorenza meekly expressed her willingness to marry a person approved by Venice, but soon afterwards showed a desire to accept the suit of Nerio Acciajuoli, the subsequent Duke of Athens. This alliance the Republic vetoed with the same emphasis as the former one; but Nerio was an influential man, who had powerful connections in the kingdom of Naples, and was therefore able to obtain the consent of Robert of Taranto, at that time suzerain of the Duchy. That Robert was Fiorenza’s suzerain could not be denied; but Venice replied that she was also a daughter of the Republic, that her ancestors had won the Duchy under its auspices, had been protected by its fleets, and owed their existence to its resources. What, it was added, have the Angevins of Naples done, or what can they do, for Naxos? Simultaneous orders were sent to the commander of the Venetian fleet in Greek waters to oppose, by force if necessary, the landing of Nerio in that island. The Venetian agents in the Levant had, however, no need of further instructions. They knew what was expected of them, and were confident that their action, if successful, would not be disowned. Fiorenza was kidnapped, placed on board a Venetian galley, and quietly conveyed to Crete. There she was treated with every mark of respect, but was at the same time plainly informed that if she wished ever to see her beloved Naxos again she must marry her cousin Nicolò Sanudo “Spezzabanda,” the candidate of the Republic and son of a large proprietor in Eubœa. The daring of this young man, to which he owed his nickname of “Spezzabanda,” “the disperser of a host,” may have impressed the susceptible Duchess no less than the difficulties of her position. At any rate she consented to marry him, the wedding was solemnised at Venice, the Republic pledged itself to protect the Duchy against all its enemies, and granted to Santorin, which had been reconquered by Duke Nicolò I, the privilege of exporting cotton and corn to the Venetian lagoons. Venice had won all along the line, and when the much-wooed Duchess died, “Spezzabanda” acted as regent for his stepson, Nicolò II dalle Carceri. He showed his gratitude to his Venetian patrons by assisting in suppressing the great Cretan insurrection of this period. He also defended Eubœa against the Catalans of Athens, showing himself ready to fight for the rights of young Nicolò whenever occasion offered.

Nicolò II was the last and worst of the Sanudi Dukes. From his father he had inherited two-thirds of Eubœa, which interested him more than his own Duchy, but at the same time involved him in disputes with Venice. Chafing at the tutelage of the Republic, he selected the moment when Venice was once more engaged in war with Genoa, to negotiate with the Navarrese company of mercenaries then in Central Greece for its aid in the conquest of the whole island of Eubœa. This attempt failed, and, so far from increasing his dominions, Nicolò diminished them in other directions. We have seen how Andros had been reunited with Naxos by Marco II. The new Duke now bestowed it as a sub-fief upon his half-sister, Maria Sanudo, thus severing its direct connection with his Duchy. Nor was he more cautious in his internal policy. He aroused the strongest resentment among his subjects, Greeks and Franks alike, by his extortion, and they found a ready leader in a young Italian who had lately become connected by marriage with the Sanudo family. This man, Francesco Crispo—a name which suggested to biographers of the late Italian Prime Minister a possible relationship—was a Lombard who had emigrated to Eubœa and had then obtained the lordship of Melos by his union with the daughter of Giovanni I’s brother Marco, who had received that island as a sub-fief of Naxos, and under whom it had greatly prospered. Crispo chanced to be in Naxos at the time when the complaints of the people were loudest, and he aspired to the fame, or at any rate the profits, of a tyrannicide. During one of the ducal hunting parties he contrived the murder of the Duke, and was at once accepted by the populace as his successor. Thus, in 1383, fell the dynasty of the Sanudi, by the hand of a Lombard adventurer, after 176 years of power.

Times had greatly changed since the conquest of the Archipelago, nor was a usurper like Crispo in a position to dispense with the protection of Venice. He therefore begged the Republic to recognise him as the rightful Duke, which the astute Venetians saw no difficulty in doing. He further strengthened the bond of union by bestowing the hand of his daughter upon the rich Venetian, Pietro Zeno, who played a considerable part in the tortuous diplomacy of the age. Crispo did not hesitate to rob Maria Sanudo of Andros in order to confer it upon his son-in-law, and it was not for many years, and then only after wearisome litigation, that it reverted to her son. She was obliged to content herself with the islands of Paros and Antiparos, and to marry one of the Veronese family of Sommaripa, which now appears for the first time in Greek history, but which came into the possession of Andros towards the middle of the fifteenth century, and still flourishes at Naxos. Sure of Venetian support, Crispo indulged in piratical expeditions as far as the Syrian coast, while he swept other and less distinguished pirates from the sea. His son-in-law seconded his efforts against the Turks; yet, in spite of their united attempts, they left their possessions in a deplorable state. Andros had been so severely visited by the Turkish corsairs that it contained only 2000 inhabitants, and had to be repopulated by Albanian immigrants, who are still very numerous there; Ios, almost denuded of its population, was replenished by a number of families from the Morea. Although the next Duke, Giacomo I, was known as “The Pacific,” and paid tribute to the Sultan on condition that no Turkish ships should visit his islands, he was constantly menaced by Bayezid I. In his distress, like the Emperor Manuel, he turned to Henry IV of England, whom he visited in London in 1404. Henry was not able to assist him, though he had at one time intended to lead an army “as far as to the sepulchre of Christ”; but, when Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, made a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1418, he was conveyed back to Venice on one of Pietro Zeno’s galleys. This was, so far as we have been able to discover, the only connection between England and the Duchy. In the same year Giacomo died at Ferrara, on his way to see the Pope, the natural protector of the Latins in the Levant.

During the greater part of the fifteenth century the history of the Archipelago presents a monotonous series of family feuds and Turkish aggression. The subdivision of the islands, in order to provide appanages for the younger members of some petty reigning dynasty, was a source of weakness, which recalls the mediæval annals of Germany, nor did there arise among the Dukes of this period a strong man like the founder of the Duchy. One of them was advised by Venice to make the best terms that he could with the Sultan, though complaints were made that he had failed to warn the Venetian bailie of Eubœa of the approaching Turkish fleet, by means of beacon-fires—an incident which takes us back to the Agamemnon of Æschylus. The fall of Constantinople, followed by the capture of Lesbos and Eubœa by the Turks, greatly alarmed the Dukes, who drew closer than ever to the Venetian Republic, and were usually included in all the Venetian treaties. Other misfortunes greatly injured the islands. The Genoese plundered Naxos and Andros, and the volcanic island of Santorin was the scene of a great eruption in 1457, which threw up a new islet in the port. A few years later, Santorin had suffered so much from one cause or another that it contained no more than 300 inhabitants. An earthquake followed this eruption, further increasing the misery of the Archipelago. But this was the age of numerous religious foundations, some of them still in existence, such as the church of Sant’ Antonio at Naxos, which was bestowed upon the Knights of St John, as their arms on its walls remind the traveller. It was about this time too that Cyriacus of Ancona, after copying inscriptions at Athens, visited Andros and other islands of the Ægean. The island rulers not only received him courteously, but ordered excavations to be made for his benefit—a proof of culture which should be set against their wanton destruction of ancient buildings, in order to provide materials for their own palaces—a practice of which the tower at Paros is so striking an example. When we remember that each petty lord considered it necessary to be well lodged, the extent of these ravages may be easily imagined.