Chapter XIV: Appendix: The Mad Duke of Naxos (4)

The mediæval importance of Monemvasia really dates from this retrocession to the Byzantine Emperor in 1262, when a Byzantine province was established in the south-east of the Morea. It not only became the seat of an Imperial governor, or κεφαλή, but it was the landing-place where the Imperial troops were disembarked for operations against the Franks, the port where the Tzakones and the _Gasmoûloi_, or half-castes, of the Peloponnese enlisted for service in the Greek navy. During the war which began in 1263 between Michael VIII and his late captive, we accordingly frequently find it mentioned; it was thither that the Genoese transports in the Imperial service conveyed the Greek troops; it was thither, too, that the news of the first breach of the peace was carried post-haste, and thence communicated to Constantinople; it was there that the Imperial generals took up their headquarters at the outset of the campaign; and it was upon the Monemvasiotes that the combatants, when they were reconciled, agreed to lay the blame for the war[296]. Under the shadow of the Greek flag, Monemvasia became, too, one of the most dangerous lairs of corsairs in the Levant. The great local families did not disdain to enter the profession, and we read of both the Daimonoyannai and the Mamonades in the report of the Venetian judges, who drew up a long statement in 1278 of the depredations caused by pirates to Venetian commerce in the Levant. On one occasion the citizens looked calmly on while a flagrant act of piracy was being committed in their harbour, which, as the port of shipment for Malmsey wine, attracted corsairs who were also connoisseurs[297]. Moreover, the Greek occupation of so important a position was fatal to the Venetian lords of the neighbouring islands, no less than to Venetian trade in the Ægean. The chief sufferers were the two Marquesses of Cerigo and Cerigotto, members of the great families of Venier and Viaro, who had occupied those islands after the Fourth Crusade. It would appear from a confused passage of the Italian Memoir on Cerigo, that the islanders, impatient at the treatment which they received from their Latin lord, the descendant, as he boasted, of the island-goddess Venus herself, sent a deputation to invoke the aid of the Greek governor of the new Byzantine province in the Morea[298]. At any rate, the famous cruise of Licario, the upstart Italian of Negroponte who went over to the Greeks, temporarily ended the rule of the Venetian Marquesses. A governor was sent to Cerigo from Monemvasia; but ere long Michael VIII conferred that island upon the eminent Monemvasiote _archon_, Paul Monoyannes, who is described in a Venetian document as being in 1275 “the vassal of the Emperor and captain of Cerigo.” Monoyannes fortified the island, where his tomb was discovered during the British protectorate, and it remained in the possession of his family till 1309, when intermarriage between the children of its Greek and Latin lords restored Cerigo to the Venieri[299].

Fig. 1. MONEMVASIA FROM THE LAND.

Fig. 2. MONEMVASIA. ENTRANCE TO KASTRO.]

Fig. 1. MONEMVASIA. Παναγία Μυρτιδιώτισσα.

Fig. 2. MONEMVASIA. Ἁγία Σοφία.]

The Byzantine Emperors naturally rewarded a community so useful to them as that of Monemvasia. Michael VIII granted its citizens valuable fiscal exemptions; his pious son and successor, Andronikos II not only confirmed their privileges and possessions, but founded the church of the Divine Wisdom which still stands in the castle. The adjoining cloister has fallen in ruins; the Turks after 1540 converted the church, like the more famous Santa Sophia of Constantinople, into a mosque, the _mihrab_ of which may still be traced, and smashed all the heads of the saints which once adorned the church—an edifice reckoned as ancient even in the days of the Venetian occupation, when a Monemvasiote family had the _jus patronatus_ over it (Plate III, Fig. 2). But a fine Byzantine plaque over the door—two peacocks and two lambs—still preserves the memory of the Byzantine connexion. Of Andronikos II we have, too, another Monemvasiote memorial—the Golden Bull of 1293, by which he gave to the Metropolitan the title of “Exarch of all the Peloponnese,” with jurisdiction over eight bishoprics, some, it is true, still _in partibus infidelium_, as well as the titular Metropolitan throne of Side, and confirmed all the rights and property of his diocese, which was raised to be the tenth of the Empire and extended, at any rate on paper, right across the peninsula to “Pylos, which is called Avarinos”—a convincing proof of the error made by Hopf in supposing that the name of Navarino arose from the Navarrese company a century later. The Emperor lauds in this interesting document, which bears his portrait and is still preserved in the National Library and (in a copy) in the Christian Archæological Museum at Athens, the convenience and safe situation of the town, the number of its inhabitants, their affluence and their technical skill, their seafaring qualities, and their devotion to his throne and person. His grandson and namesake, Andronikos III, in 1332 granted them freedom from market-dues at the Peloponnesian fairs[300]. But a city so prosperous was sure to attract the covetous glances of enemies. Accordingly, in 1292, Roger de Lluria, the famous admiral of King James of Aragon, on the excuse that the Emperor had failed to pay the subsidy promised by his father to the late King Peter, descended upon Monemvasia, and sacked the lower town without a blow. The _archontes_ and the people took refuge in the impregnable citadel, leaving their property and their Metropolitan in the power of the enemy[301]. Ten years later, another Roger, Roger de Flor, the leader of the Catalan Grand Company, put into Monemvasia on his way to the East on that memorable expedition which was destined to ruin “the pleasaunce of the Latins” in the Levant. On this occasion the Catalans were naturally on their good behaviour. Monemvasia belonged to their new employer, the Emperor Andronikos; it had been stipulated that they should receive the first instalment of their pay there; and Muntaner[302] tells us that the Imperial authorities gave them a courteous reception and provided them with refreshments, including probably a few barrels of the famous Malmsey.

Monemvasia fortunately escaped the results of the Catalan expedition, which proved so fatal to the Duchy of Athens and profoundly affected the North and West of the Morea. Indeed, in the early part of the fourteenth century the corsairs of the great rock seemed to have actually seized the classic island of Salamis under the eyes of the Catalan rulers of Athens, whose naval forces in the Saronic Gulf had been purposely crippled by the jealous Venetian Government. At any rate we find Salamis, which had previously belonged to Bonifacio da Verona, the baron of Karystos in Eubœa, and had passed with the hand of his daughter and heiress to Alfonso Fadrique, the head of the terrible Catalan Company in Attica, now paying tribute to the Byzantine governor of Monemvasia[303]. When, however, towards the end of the fourteenth century, the Greeks began to recover most of the Peloponnese, the city which had been so valuable to them in the earlier days of the reconquest of the Morea had to compete with formidable rivals. In 1397, when Theodore I Palaiologos obtained, after a desperate struggle, the great fortress of Corinth, which had been his wife’s dowry from her father, Nerio Acciajuoli, his first act was to restore the Metropolitan see of that ancient city, and the first demand of the restored Metropolitan was for the restitution to him by his brother of Monemvasia of the two suffragan bishoprics of Zemenos and Maina, which had been given to the latter’s predecessor after the Latin conquest of Corinth[304]. This demand was granted, and we are not surprised to hear that the Monemvasiotes were disaffected to the Despot, under whom such a slight had been cast upon their Church. The Moreote _archontes_ at this period were intensely independent of the Despot of Mistra, even though the latter was the brother of the Emperor. The most unruly of them all was Paul Mamonas of Monemvasia, who belonged to the great local family which had been to the fore in the days of Villehardouin. This man held the office of “Grand-Duke” or Lord High Admiral in the Byzantine hierarchy of officials and claimed the hereditary right to rule as an independent princelet over his native city, of which his father had been Imperial governor. When Theodore asserted his authority, and expelled the haughty _archon_, the latter did not hesitate to arraign him before the supreme authority of those degenerate days—the Sultan Bayezid I who ordered his immediate restoration by Turkish troops—a humiliation alike for the Greek Despot and for the sacred city of Hellenism[305]. Theodore had, indeed, at one time thought of bestowing so unruly a community upon a Venetian of tried merit; and, in 1419, after the death of Paul’s son, the Republic was supposed by Hopf to have come into possession of the coveted rock and its surroundings—then a valuable commercial asset because of the Malmsey which was still produced there[306]. But the three documents, upon which he relies for this statement, merely show that Venetian merchants were engaged in the wine-trade at Monemvasia.

It was at this period that Monemvasia produced two men of letters, George Phrantzes and the Monk Isidore. To the latter we owe a series of letters, one of which, addressed to the Emperor Manuel II on the occasion of his famous visit to the Morea in 1415, describes his pacification of Maina and his abolition of the barbarous custom of cutting off the fingers and toes of the slain, which the Mainates had inherited from the Greeks of Æschylus and Sophocles. He also alludes to the Greek inscriptions which he saw at Vitylo[307]. Of Phrantzes, the historian of the Turkish conquest, the secretary and confidant of the Palaiologoi, the clever if somewhat unscrupulous diplomatist, who, after a busy life, lies buried in the quiet church of Sts Jason and Sosipater at Corfù, it is needless to speak. In the opinion of the writer, Phrantzes should hold a high place in Byzantine history. His style is clear and simple, compared with that of his contemporary Chalkokondyles, the ornate Herodotus of the new Persian Conquest; he knew men and things; he was no mere theologian or rhetorician, but a man of affairs; and he wrote with a _naïveté_, which is as amusing as it is surprising in one of his profession. Monemvasia may be proud of having produced such a man, who has placed in his history a glowing account of his birthplace. We hear too in 1540 of a certain George, called “Count of Corinth” but a native of Monemvasia, who had a fine library, and among the many Peloponnesian calligraphists, the so-called “Murmures,” found later on in Italy, there were some Monemvasiotes[308].

We next find Monemvasia in the possession of the Despot Theodore II Palaiologos[309], who ratified its ancient privileges. All the Despot’s subjects, whether freemen or serfs, were permitted to enter or leave this important city without let or hindrance, except only the dangerous denizens of Tzakonia and Vatika, whose character had not altered in the two hundred years which had elapsed since the time of Villehardouin. The citizens, their beasts, and their ships were exempt from forced labour; and, at their special request, the Despot confirmed the local custom, by which all the property of a Monemvasiote who died without relatives was devoted to the repair of the castle; while, if he had only distant relatives, one-third of his estate was reserved for that purpose (Plate V, Fig. 1). This system of death duties (τὸ ἀβιωτίκιον, as it was called) was continued by Theodore’s brother and successor, Demetrios, by whom Monemvasia was described as “one of the most useful cities under my rule[310].” Such, indeed, he found it to be, when, in 1458, Mohammed II made his first punitive expedition into the Morea. On the approach of the great Sultan, the Despot fled to the rock of Monemvasia. It was the ardent desire of the Conqueror to capture that famous fortress, “the strongest of all cities that we know,” as the contemporary Athenian historian, Chalkokondyles[311], called it. But his advisers represented to him the difficult nature of the country which he would have to traverse, so he prudently desisted from the enterprise. Two years later, when Mohammed II visited the Morea a second time and finally destroyed Greek rule in that peninsula, Monemvasia again held out successfully. After sheltering Demetrios against an attack from his treacherous brother Thomas, the town gave refuge to the wife and daughter of the former. Demetrios had, however, promised to give his daughter in marriage to the great Sultan; and Isa, son of the Pasha of Üsküb, and Matthew Asan, the Despot’s brother-in-law, were accordingly sent to demand the surrender of the city and of the two princesses, whom it contained. The Monemvasiotes did, indeed, hand over the two Imperial ladies to the envoys of the Sultan and the Despot; but, relying on their immense natural defences, animated by the sturdy spirit of independence which had so long distinguished them, and inspired by the example of their governor, Manuel Palaiologos, they bade them tell Mohammed not to lay sacrilegious hands on a city which God had meant to be invincible. The Sultan is reported to have admired their courage, and wisely refrained from attacking the impregnable fortress of mediæval Hellenism. As Demetrios was the prisoner of the Sultan, the Governor proclaimed Thomas as his liege-lord; but the latter, a fugitive from Greece, was incapable of maintaining his sovereignty and tried to exchange it with the Sultan for another sea-side place[312]. A passing Catalan corsair, one Lope de Baldaja, was then invited to occupy the rock; but the liberty-loving inhabitants soon drove out the petty tyrant whom they had summoned to their aid, and, with the consent of Thomas, placed their city under the protection of his patron, the Pope. Pius II gladly appointed both spiritual and temporal governors of the fortress which had so long been the stronghold of Orthodoxy, and of that nationalism with which Orthodoxy was identical[313].

But the papal flag did not wave long over Monemvasia. The Orthodox Greeks soon grew tired of forming part of the Pope’s temporal dominion, and preferred the rule of Venice, the strongest maritime power interested in the Levant, whose governors were well known to be “first Venetians and then Catholics.” The outbreak of the Turco-Venetian War of 1463, and the appearance of a Venetian fleet in the Ægean, gave the citizens their opportunity. The Pope, as Phrantzes informs us, had no wish to give up the place; but he was far away, his representative was feeble, the flag of Venice was for the moment triumphant in Greek waters, and accordingly in 1463 or 1464, the inhabitants admitted a Venetian garrison. On September 21, 1464, the Senate made provision for the government of this new dependency. A _Podestà_ was to be elected for two years at an annual salary of 500 gold ducats, this salary to be paid every three months out of the revenues of the newly-conquered island of Lemnos. Six months later, it was decreed that in case there was no money available for the purpose at Lemnos, the _Podestà_ should receive his salary from the Cretan treasury[314]. From that time to 1540 Monemvasia remained a Venetian colony. Once, indeed, a plot was organised in the ancient city of the Palaiologoi for the purpose of wresting the place from the claws of the Lion of St Mark. Andrew Palaiologos, the still more degenerate son of the degenerate Thomas, had, in 1494, transferred all his Imperial rights and claims to King Charles VIII of France, then engaged in his expedition to Naples, in the Church of San Pietro in Montorio at Rome. In accordance with this futile arrangement his partisans at Monemvasia, where the Imperial name of Palaiologos was still popular, schemed to deliver the city to his French ally[315]. But the plans of Charles VIII, and with them the plot at Monemvasia, came to nought. Venice remained mistress of the Virgin fortress.

MONEMVASIA. KASTRO.]

Fig. 1. MONEMVASIA. TOWN WALLS AND GATE.

Fig. 2. MONEMVASIA. MODERN TOWN AT BASE OF CLIFF.]

Down to the peace of 1502-3, Monemvasia seems to have been fairly prosperous under Venetian rule. By the Turco-Venetian treaty of 1479 she had been allowed to retain the dependency of Vatika[316] in the neighbourhood of Cape Malea, which had been captured from the Turks in 1463, and where her citizens had long possessed property. But the territories of Monemvasia were terribly restricted after the next Turco-Venetian war: she had then lost her outlying castles of Rampano and Vatika, from which the ecclesiastical authorities derived much of their dues; and we find the inhabitants petitioning the Republic for the redress of their grievances, and pointing out that this last delimitation of their frontiers had deprived them of the lands which they had been wont to sow. The rock itself produced nothing, and accordingly all their supplies of corn had now to be imported through the Turkish possessions[317]. As for the famous vintage, which had been the delight of Western connoisseurs, it was no longer produced at Malvasia, for the Turks did not cultivate the vineyards which were now in their hands, and most of the so-called “Malmsey,” _nihil de Malfasia habens sed nomen_, as worthy Father Faber says, had for some time come from Crete or Modon[318], till the latter place, too, became Turkish. But, in spite of these losses, Monemvasia still remained what she had been for centuries—an impregnable fortress, the Gibraltar of Greece. The Venetians renewed the system, which had prevailed under the Despots of the Morea, of devoting one of the local imposts to the repair of the walls; the Venetian _Podestà_, who lived, like the military governor, up in the castle, seems to have been a popular official; and the Republic had wisely confirmed the special privileges granted by the Byzantine Emperors to the Church and community of this favoured city (Plate IV). Both a Greek Metropolitan and a Latin Archbishop continued to take their titles from Monemvasia, and the most famous of these prelates was the eminent Greek scholar, Markos Mousouros. It is interesting to note that in 1521 Pope Leo X had a scheme for founding an academy for the study of the Greek language out of the revenues of whichever of these sees first fell vacant, as Arsenios Apostoles, at that time Metropolitan, was a learned Greek and a Uniate, and in both capacities, a prime favourite of the classically cultured Pontiff. In 1524, however, despite the thunders of the Œcumenical Patriarch, the Greek and the Italian prelates agreed among themselves that the former should retain the see of Monemvasia and that the latter should take a Cretan diocese[319]. The connection between “the great Greek island” and this rocky peninsula was now close. The Greek priests of Crete, who had formerly gone to the Venetian colonies of Modon and Coron for consecration, after the loss of those colonies in 1500 came to Monemvasia; the Cretan exchequer continued to contribute to the expenses of the latter; and judicial appeals from the _Podestà_ of Malmsey lay to the colonial authorities at Candia, instead of being remitted to Venice; for, as a Monemvasiote deputation once plaintively said, the expenses of the long journey had been defrayed by pawning the chalices of the churches. Even now Monemvasia is remote from the world; in those Venetian days she was seldom visited, not only because of her situation, but because of the fear which ships’ captains had of her inhabitants[320].

The humiliating peace of 1540, which closed the Turco-Venetian war of 1537, closed also the history of Venice in the Morea till the brief revival at the close of the seventeenth century. This shameful treaty cost the Republic her two last possessions on the mainland of Greece—Nauplia and Monemvasia, both still uncaptured and the latter scarcely assailed by the Turkish forces[321]. Admiral Mocenigo was sent to break as best he could to her loyal subjects the sad news that the Republic had abandoned their homes to the Turks. The Venetian envoy, if we may believe the speech which Paruta puts into his mouth, repeated to the weeping people the ancient adage, _ubi bene, ibi patria_, and pointed out to them that they would be better off in a new abode less exposed than their native cities had been to the Turkish peril. In November a Venetian fleet arrived in the beautiful bay of Nauplia and off the sacred rock of Monemvasia to remove the soldiers, the artillery, and all the inhabitants who wished to live under Venetian rule. Then the banner of the Evangelist was lowered, the keys of the two last Venetian fortresses in the Morea were handed to Kassim Pasha, and the receipts for their transfer were sent to Venice[322].

The inhabitants of the two cities had been loyal to Venice, and Venice was loyal to them. The first idea of transporting the Monemvasiotes to the rocky island of Cerigo—then partly a Venetian colony and partly under the rule of the great Venetian family of Venier, which boasted its descent from Venus, the fabled goddess of Kythera—was abandoned, in deference to the eloquent protests of the Metropolitan, and lands were assigned to the exiles in the more fertile colonies of the Republic. A commission of five nobles was appointed to consider the claims, and provide for the settlement, of the _stradioti_, or light horsemen from Nauplia and Monemvasia, who had fought like heroes against the Turks; and this commission sat for several years, for the claimants were numerous and not all genuine[323]. Some, like the ancient local family of Daimonoyannes, formerly lords of Cerigo, received lands in Crete[324], where various members of the Athenian branch of the great Florentine family of the Medici, which had been settled for two hundred years at Nauplia, also found a home. Scions of the clan of Mamonas went to Zante and Crete, and are found later on at Corinth, Nauplia, Athens and Corfù. Others were removed to Corfù, where they soon formed an integral part of the Corfiote population and where the name of these _stradioti_ is still preserved in a locality of the island; while others again were transplanted to Cephalonia, Cyprus, or Dalmatia. Not a few of them were soon, however, smitten with home-sickness; they sold their new lands and returned to be Turkish subjects at Nauplia and Monemvasia[325].

The Venetian fortifications; the old Venetian pictures on the eikonostasis of the Ἑλκόμενος church; the quaint Italian chimneys, and the well-head up in the castle, which bears the winged lion of St Mark, two private coats of arms, the date MDXIV and the initials S R upon it, the latter those of Sebastiano Renier, _Podestà_ from 1510 to 1512 (to whom the first coat belongs, while the second is that of Antonio Garzoni, _Podestà_ in 1526 and again in 1538, when he was the last _Podestà_ before the Turkish conquest), still speak to us of this first Venetian occupation, when the ancient Byzantine city, after the brief vicissitudes of French and Papal government, found shelter for nearly eighty years beneath the flag of the Evangelist (Plate V, Fig. 2 and Text-fig. 2).