The Landscape of Medieval Greece

chapter 10 The Landscape of Medieval Greece Maria Georgopoulou The dissolution of the Byzantine Empire after the Fourth Crusade of 1204 and the advent of the Latin crusaders, Venetians and Franks, had a tremendous impact on the political and physical landscape of medieval Greece. The new political divisions created on Greek soil following the breakup of the Byzantine Empire, including Venetian Crete and the islands of the Aegean Archipelago, Frankish Peloponnese, and the Despotate of Epirus, resulted in separate regional cultural developments.1 The different western Europeans who settled on Greek lands used Latin as their official language, spoke a variety of vernacu- lar languages, and followed the Latin Catholic rite, which set them apart from the local Greeks who were Orthodox Christians.2 It is primarily the shared cultural heritage of the “Latins” that allows us to consider Greece as a unit in this chapter. This essay offers an overview of the architecture and urban environment of Latin-ruled towns in medieval Greece. It focuses on monuments on Crete, the Peloponnese, and the Aegean islands and surveys their general characteristics and form within their historical context. The Byzantine provinces of Greece were conquered by foreign lords who managed to establish their presence for centuries. The architectural landscape that resulted from this encounter is dominated by large public buildings sponsored by Latin overlords and religious structures built by monastic orders (mostly Cistercians) and the mendicant fri- ars, which brought to Greece western European (sometimes referred to as “crusader”) architectural forms, whereas the local traditions continued to flourish 1 For the division of Romania see Antonio Carile, “Partitio terrarum Imperii Romanie,” Studi Veneziani 7 (1965), 125–305; William Miller, The Latins in the Levant: A History of Frankish Greece (1204–1566) (London, 1908); Peter Lock, The Franks in the Aegean, 1204–1500 (London, 1995); David Jacoby, “The Encounter of Two Societies: Western Conquerors and Byzantines in the Peloponnese after the Fourth Crusade,” The American Historical Review 78 (1973), 873–906, repr. in idem, Recherches sur la Méditerranée orientale du xiie au xve siècle: Peuples, sociétés, économies (London, 1979), ii; Angeliki E. Laiou, “Observations on the Results of the Fourth Crusade; Greeks and Latins in Port and Market,” Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984), 47–60. 2 The most complete treatment of the subject is Giorgio Fedalto, La chiesa latina in Oriente, 3 vols. (Verona, 1973–81). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�84�04_0�� The Landscape of Medieval Greece 327 albeit in smaller foundations. I will start with a short section on historiography followed by an analysis of the evidence in the urban centres, churches, fortifi- cations, and the rural landscape. The chapter will conclude with an analysis of local realities and how these shaped the landscape of medieval Greece. Although there was no political or cultural unity in the new Latin states that were shaped after 1204 on Greek soil, they shared several characteristics. The number of foreign settlers was relatively small and although politically they had the upper hand, they remained a minority vis-à-vis the locals even in the case of Crete, which remained under Venetian control until 1669. The term Outremer—Oltremare stressed the distance between France and the crusader states of the Levant,3 Venice and its Mediterranean colonies along the coast of the Adriatic (Zara/Zadar, Ragusa/Dubrovnik), the Ionian Sea (Corfu/Kerkyra from 1386 onward, Cephalonia, Zante/Zakynthos), the southern coast of the Peloponnese (Modon/Methone, Coron/Korone), the Aegean Sea (Cyclades, Negroponte/Euboea, Cerigo/Cythera, Crete), and eventually Cyprus. The pro- longed presence of Franks and Venetians in Greece covered the geographical distance as it created polities that lived longer than the crusader states in the Holy Land. Moreover, as in every mixed society there were many instances of intermarriage and intra-cultural mingling as the term “gasmoulos” (progeny of a Greek and Frank) indicates.4 Several questions and assumptions on which this essay is based need to be addressed from the outset. Why think of Greece as a unit at this juncture in its history? Is it legitimate to group together Venetians and Franks when we think of the architectural environment of Frankish Greece? What is the best way to frame the encounter between Latin and Byzantine architectural culture in the 13th century: as a question of continuity and break, or of tradition and innova- tion? How to appreciate and evaluate the new styles imported from western Europe and their relationship with indigenous materials, traditions, and work- force? How to interpret the meaning of the new artistic forms brought onto Greek soil? Despite the many differences apparent in the background of Frankish settlers on Greek soil, the geo-morphological position of the new Latin states in Greece that were created as a consequence of the crusades along with their 3 It is important, however, to note that the Franks did not use the term for the Peloponnese. 4 Johannes Koder, “Latinoi—The Image of the Other in Greek Sources,” in Bisanzio, Venezia e il mondo franco-greco (xiii–xv secolo): atti del colloquio internazionale organizzato nel cente- nario della nascita di Raymond-Joseph Loenertz o.p. Venezia, 1–2 dicembre 2000, ed. Chryssa A. Maltezou and Peter Schreiner (Venice, 2002), pp. 25–40. See also Teresa Shawcross, The Chronicle of Morea: Historiography in Crusader Greece (Oxford, 2009), pp. 190–202..

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