Barely twenty years after the Norman capture, Salonika became the capital of a Latin kingdom. Boniface, marquess of Montferrat, was the leader of the crusaders who, with the help of the Venetians, overthrew the Greek empire in 1204, and partitioned it into Latin states. Of these the most important after the Latin empire, of which Constantinople became the capital, was the so-called Latin kingdom of Salonika, of which Boniface was appointed king, and which, nominally dependent upon the Latin Emperor, embraced Macedonia, Thessaly, and much of continental Greece, including Athens. Of all the artificial creations of the Fourth Crusade, which should be a warning to those who believe that nations can be partitioned permanently at congresses of diplomatists, the Latin kingdom of Salonika was the first to fall. From the outset its existence was undermined by jealousy between its king and the Latin Emperor, whose suzerainty he and his proud Lombard nobles were loath to acknowledge. For this reason Boniface, whose wife, Margaret of Hungary, was widow of the Greek Emperor, Isaac II, endeavoured to cultivate his Greek subjects. But, in 1207, he was killed by the Bulgarians, who would have taken Salonika, had not a traitor (or, as the pious believed, St Demetrios) slain their tsar.
Boniface’s son, although born in the country and named after Salonika’s patron-saint (whose church was, however, the property of the chapter of the Holy Sepulchre while a Latin archbishop occupied the see), was then barely two years old. His mother was regent, but the real power was wielded by her bailie, the ambitious count of Biandrate, whose policy was to separate the kingdom from the Latin empire and draw it closer to the Italian marquisate. His quarrels with the Emperor Henry were viewed with joy by the Greeks; and, after his retirement, and in the absence of the young king in Italy, the kingdom was easily occupied, in 1223, by Theodore Angelos[441], the vigorous ruler of Epeiros, where, as at Nice, the city of the famous council, Hellenism, temporarily exiled from its natural capital, had found a refuge. The Greek conqueror exchanged the more modest title of “Despot of Epeiros” for that of “Emperor of Salonika,” while the exiled monarch and his successors continued to amuse themselves by styling themselves titular kings of Salonika for another century. But the separate Greek empire of Salonika was destined to live but little longer than the Latin kingdom. The first Greek Emperor, by one of those sudden reverses of fortune so characteristic of Balkan politics in all ages, fell into the hands of the Bulgarians; and, after having been reduced to the lesser dignity of a Despotat, the empire which he had founded was finally annexed, in 1246, to the stronger and rival Greek empire of Nice, which, in 1261, likewise absorbed the Latin empire of Constantinople. No coins of the Latin kingdom exist; but we have a seal of Boniface, with a representation of the city walls upon it. Of the Greek empire of Salonika there are silver and bronze pieces, bearing the figure of the city’s patron-saint; while a tower contains an inscription to “Manuel the Despot,” identified by Monsignor Duchesne[442] with Manuel Angelos (1230-40), the Emperor Theodore’s brother and successor, but locally ascribed to a Manuel Palaiologos, perhaps the subsequent Emperor Manuel II, Despot and governor of Salonika in 1369-70.
Salonika, restored to the Byzantine empire, enjoyed special privileges, second only to those of the capital. Together with the region around it, it was considered as an appanage of one of the Emperor’s sons (e.g. John VII, nephew, and Andronikos, son of Manuel II). It was sometimes governed by the Empresses, two of them Italians, Jolanda of Montferrat, wife of Andronikos II, a descendant of the first king of Salonika, and Anne of Savoy, wife of Andronikos III, who was commemorated in an inscription over the gate of the castle, which she repaired in 1355. The court frequently resided there: we find Andronikos III coming to be healed by the saint, and the beauteous Jolanda, when she quarrelled with her husband, retired to Salonika and scandalised Thessalonian society with her accounts of her domestic life. As in our own day, Salonika was the favourite seat of opposition to the imperial authority. During the civil wars of the fourteenth century, such as those between the elder and the younger Andronikos and between John V Palaiologos and John Cantacuzene, it supported the candidate opposed to Constantinople, so that we may find precedents in its mediæval history for its selection as the headquarters of the Young Turkish movement. It enjoyed a full measure of autonomy, had its own “senate,” elected its own officials, was defended by its own civic guard, and administered by its own municipal customs. It even sent its own envoys abroad to discuss commercial questions. Its annual fair on the festival of St Demetrios still attracted traders from all the Levant to the level space between the walls and the Vardar. Jews, Slavs, and Armenians, as well as Greeks, crowded its bazaars; scholars from outside frequented its high schools, and Demetrios Kydones[443] compared it with Athens at its best.
The fourteenth century was, indeed, the golden age of Salonika in art and letters. The erection of the churches of the Twelve Apostles and St Catherine continued the tradition of the much earlier churches of St George, St Sophia, and St Demetrios. The clergy followed in the footsteps of the learned Eustathios, and the beauty, wit, and reading of a Thessalonian lady, Eudokia Palaiologina, turned the head of a son of Andronikos II, when governor of Salonika, “that garden of the Muses and the Graces,” as one of the literary archbishops of the fourteenth century called it. The intellectual activity of the place led to intense theological discussion, and at this period the “Orthodox” city par excellence was agitated by the heresy of the “Hesychasts,” or Quietists, who believed that complete repose would enable them to see a divine light flickering round their empty stomachs, while the so-called “Zealots,” or friends of the people, with the cross as their banner, practised in Salonika the doctrines of Wat Tyler and Jack Cade in mediæval England. The exploitation of the poor by the rich and the tax-collectors, and the example of the recent revolution at Genoa, caused this republican movement, which led to the massacre of the nobles in 1346 by hurling them from the castle walls into the midst of an armed mob below. The “Zealots,” like the Iconoclast Emperors, have suffered from the fact that they have been described by their enemies, and notably by Cantacuzene[444], to whose aristocratic party they were opposed. Yet even an archbishop publicly advocated so drastic a measure as the suppression of some of the monasteries, in order to provide funds for the better defence of the city; nor was there anything very alarming in their preference for direct taxation. Thus, Salonika was from 1342 to 1349, under their auspices, practically an independent republic, till they succumbed to the allied forces of the aristocracy and the monks.
Salonika, indeed, continued to have urgent need of its walls, which still remain, save where the Turks completely dismantled them on the sea side in 1866, a fine example of Byzantine fortification. Andronikos II strengthened them by the erection of a tower, which still bears his initials, in the dividing wall between the Akropolis and the rest of the city. Thanks to them it escaped pillage by the Catalan Grand Company at a time when they sheltered two Byzantine Empresses. Even during the greatest expansion of the Serbian empire under Stephen Dushan, Salonika alone remained a Greek islet in a Serbian Macedonia. But a far more serious foe than either Catalan or Serb was now at hand. The Turks entered Europe shortly after the middle of the fourteenth century, and advanced rapidly in the direction of Salonika. At least twice[445] before the end of that century—in 1387 and from 1391 to 1403, when Suleyman handed it back—they occupied it, and at last the inhabitants came to the conclusion that, in the weak condition of the Greek empire, their sole chance of safety was to place themselves under the protection of a great maritime power. Accordingly, in 1423, pressed by famine and by continual Turkish attacks, the Greek notables sent a deputation to Venice offering their city to the republic, whether their sickly Despot Andronikos, son of the Emperor Manuel II, consented or no. The Venetians, we are told, “received the offer with gladness, and promised to protect, and nourish, and prosper the city and to transform it into a second Venice.” The Despot, whose claims were settled by a solatium of 50,000 ducats, made way for a Venetian duke and a captain; for seven years Salonika was a Venetian colony[446].
The bargain proved unsatisfactory alike to the Venetians and the Greeks. Their brief occupation of Salonika cost the republic 700,000 ducats—for, in 1426, in addition to the cost of administration and repairs to the walls, she agreed to pay a tribute to the Sultan. Nor was it popular with the natives, especially the notables, many of whom the government found it desirable to deport to the other Venetian colonies of Negroponte and Crete, or even to Venice itself, on the plea that there was not food for them at Salonika. Others left voluntarily for Constantinople to escape the “unbearable horrors” and the Venetian slavery. The Turkish peril was ever present, and when envoys solicited peace from the Sultan Murad II, he replied: “The city is my inheritance, and my grandfather Bayezid took it from the Greeks by his own right hand. So, if the Greeks were now its masters, they might reasonably accuse me of injustice. But ye being Latins and from Italy, what have ye to do with this part of the world? Go, if you like; if not, I am coming quickly.” And in 1430 he came.
Two misfortunes preceded the fall of Salonika—the death of the beloved metropolitan, and an earthquake. There was only one man to defend every two or three bastions, and the Venetians, distrusting the inhabitants, placed a band of brigands between themselves and the Greeks, so that, even if the latter had desired to accept the liberal offers which Murad made them, they dared not do so. Chalkokondyles hints at treachery, and a versifying chronicler[447] makes the monks of the present Tsaoush-Monastir near the citadel urge the Sultan to cut the conduits from the mountain, which supplied the city with water, and ascribes to their treason their subsequent privileges. But even the wives of the Greek notables joined in the defence, until a move of the Venetian garrison towards the harbour led the Greeks to believe that they would be left to their fate. On March 29, the fourth day of the siege, a soldier scaled the walls at the place near the castle known as “The Triangle,” and threw down the head of a Venetian as a sign that he was holding his ground. The defenders fled to the Samareia tower[448] on the beach—perhaps the famous “White Tower,” or “the Tower of Blood” as it was called a century ago, which still stands there and which some attribute to the Venetian period, or at least to Venetian workmen—only to find it shut against them by the Venetians, who managed to escape by sea.
In accordance with his promise, Murad allowed his men to sack the city, and great damage was inflicted on the churches in the search for treasure buried beneath the altars. The tomb of St Demetrios was ravaged, because of its rich ornaments and to obtain the healing ointment for which it was famous, while the relics of St Theodora were scattered, and with difficulty collected again. Seeing, however, the wonderful situation of Salonika, the Sultan ordered the sack to cease, and began to restore the houses to their owners, contenting himself with converting only two of the churches, those of the Virgin and of St John Baptist, into mosques. It is pleasant to note that George Brankovich, the Despot of Serbia and one of the richest princes of that day, ransomed many prisoners. Two or three years afterwards, however, the Sultan adopted severer measures towards the captured city. He took all the churches except four (including that of St Demetrios, which, as the tomb of Spantounes shows, was not converted into a mosque till after 1481), built a bath out of the materials of some of the others, and transported the Turks of Yenidjé-Vardar to Salonika, which thus for 482 years became a Turkish city. Chalkokondyles[449] was not far wrong when he described its fall as “the greatest disaster that had yet befallen the Greeks.”
When, on St Demetrios’ day, 1912, the victorious Greeks recovered Salonika, all those churches, sixteen in number, which had existed before the Turkish conquest were reconverted into Christian edifices; and when I was there in 1914, it was curious to see the two dates, 1430 and 1912, the former in black, the latter in gold, on the eikonostasis of the Divine Wisdom, the church which was perhaps founded before the more famous St Sophia of Constantinople. Almost the last acts of the Young Turks before they surrendered Salonika were to destroy not only the “Gate of Anna Palaiologina,” but also the “New Gate,” which bore the inscription recording the Turkish capture.
Transcriber’s Note: click map for larger version