Essays on the Latin Orient

VII Miscellanea From the Near East

1. Valona

The late Italian occupation of Valona has drawn attention to what has been called one of the two keys of the Adriatic. It may, therefore, be of interest to trace the history of this important strategic position, which has been held by no less than twelve different masters.

The name αὐλών, “a hollow between hills,” was applied to various places in antiquity, and from the accusative of this word comes the Italian form “Valona,” or, as the Venetians often wrote it, “Avalona.” In antiquity there were, however, few allusions to this particular αὐλών, the probable date of its foundation being, therefore, fairly late, although the pitch-mine of Selenitza, three hours to the east, was worked by the Romans in the time of Ovid801, and Pliny the Elder802 knew the now famous island of Saseno, to which both Lucan803 and Silius Italicus804 allude, as a pirate resort. But there is no mention of Valona till the second half of the second century A.D., when Ptolemy805 describes it as “a city and harbour.” It subsequently occurs several times in the Antonine, Maritime and Jerusalem Itineraries806, and in the Synekdemos of Hierokles807; whereas Kanina, the little town on the hill above it, which may have been its akropolis, was “built,” according to Leake808, “upon a Hellenic site,” and identified by Pouqueville809 with Œneus, the fortress taken by Perseus during the third Macedonian war, and probably destroyed by Æmilius Paullus, which would thus explain its long disappearance from history.

Despite the importance of its position as a port of transit between Rome and Constantinople, Valona is rarely named even by Byzantine historians before the eleventh century. Bishops of Valona, who were at different times suffragans of Durazzo or Ochrida, are mentioned in 458, in 553, and in 519, when the legates sent by Pope Hormisdas to Constantinople were received by the then occupant of the See[810]. It was there that Peter, Justinian’s envoy, met those of Theodatus, the two Roman Senators, Liberius and Opilio, and learnt what had befallen Amalasuntha, the prisoner of Bolsena811. Constantine Porphyrogenitus812 merely enumerates it as one of the cities comprised in the Theme of Dyrrachium. Possibly it was one of the Byzantine harbours between Corfù and the Drin, which escaped temporary absorption in the Bulgarian Empire of Symeon (c. 917). But Kanina was included in that of the other great Bulgarian Tsar Samuel (976-1014), until Basil II, “the Bulgar-slayer,” overthrew that powerful monarch813, and it is, therefore, probable that Valona too was for a brief space a Bulgarian port. The Sicilian expeditions against Greece in the eleventh and twelfth centuries naturally brought Valona into prominence as a landing-place for troops. Anna Comnena814 frequently mentions it. Thus, in 1081, Bohemund, son of Robert Guiscard, took and burnt Kanina, Valona, and Jericho, as the ancient harbour of Eurychos (the Porto Raguseo of the Italians) was then called; Robert was nearly shipwrecked in a storm off Cape Glossa, and later on spent two months in the haven of Jericho. When he left Albania in 1082 he bestowed Valona upon Bohemund, and when he made his second and fatal expedition in 1084 it was to Valona that he crossed from Otranto. Trade privileges at Valona (renewed by subsequent Emperors in 1126, 1148 and 1187) formed part of the price which the Emperor Alexios I paid for the assistance of the Venetian fleet in this contest815. It was there that the Greek Admiral Kontostephanos watched for Bohemund’s return, and shortly afterwards we find Michael Kekaumenos, Imperial governor of Valona, Jericho and Kanina. In 1149, after the capture of Corfù, Manuel II went to Valona, and encamped there several days before sailing for Sicily to punish King Roger for his attack upon Greece. He landed on the islet of Aeironesion (identified by Pouqueville and Professor Lampros with Saseno); but storms prevented his “punitive expedition,” so he left Valona by land for Pelagonia816.

The fourth crusade, which led to the dismemberment of the Greek Empire, consequently affected the Adriatic coast. The partition treaty of 1204 assigned to Venice the province of Durazzo, which included Valona, as well as Albania, and in the following year the Venetian podestà at Constantinople formally transferred these possessions to the Republic, which sent Marino Valaresso with the title of “Duke” to govern Durazzo. But meanwhile Michael I Angelos had established in western Greece the independent Hellenic principality known as the Despotat of Epeiros, which included both “Old” and “New” Epeiros (in the latter of which was Valona), extending from Naupaktos to Durazzo, and which he agreed in 1210 to hold as a nominal fief of Venice, from the river Shkumbi, south of Durazzo, to Naupaktos, paying a yearly rent, and promising to grant to the Venetian merchants a special quarter in every town of his dominions, freedom from taxes, and assistance in case of need against the Albanians817. Thus Valona for fifty-three years formed an integral part of the Greek Despotat of Epeiros.

The mutual rivalry of the two Greek states which had arisen out of the ruins of the Byzantine Empire—the Empire of Nicæa and the Despotat of Epeiros—suggested to the ill-fated Manfred of Sicily that he might recover the ephemeral conquests of the Sicilian Normans on the eastern shores of the Adriatic. In 1257, while Michael II of Epeiros was at war with the Nicene troops, he occupied Valona, Durazzo, Berat, the Spinarza hills (near the mouth of the Vojussa, or perhaps Svernetsi on the lagoon of Valona), and their appurtenances; and Michael, desirous of securing Manfred as an ally against his Greek rival, made a virtue of necessity by conferring these places together with the hand of his daughter Helen upon the King of Sicily on the occasion of their marriage818 in 1259. Manfred wisely appointed as governor of his trans-Adriatic possessions a man with experience of the East, Filippo Chinardo, a Cypriote Frank, and his High Admiral. Indeed, when Manfred fell in battle at Benevento, fighting against Charles I of Anjou, in 1266, Chinardo, who married Michael II’s sister-in-law and received Kanina as her dowry, continued to hold his late master’s Epeirote dominions, but later in the same year was assassinated at the instigation of the crafty Despot819. The latter had doubtless hoped, now that his son-in-law was no more, to re-occupy the places which had been his daughter’s and his sister-in-law’s dowries. But a new claimant now appeared upon the scene. The fugitive Latin Emperor of Constantinople, Baldwin II, by the treaty of Viterbo in 1267 ceded to Charles I of Anjou “all the land which the Despot Michael gave, handed over and conceded as dowry or by whatsoever title to his daughter Helen, widow of the late Manfred, formerly Prince of Taranto, and which the said Manfred and the late Filippo Chinardo (who acted as Admiral of the said realm) held during their lives820.” The Sicilian garrisons of Valona, Kanina and Berat held out, however, against both Michael II and Charles I, the latter of whom was for some years too much occupied with Italian affairs to intervene actively beyond the Adriatic. Accordingly, a devoted follower of Chinardo, Giacomo di Balsignano (near Bari), remained independent as castellan of Valona; but in 1269 Charles, having made this man’s brother a prisoner in Italy, declined to release him at the request of Prince William of Achaia, unless Valona were surrendered. Although he actually named one of his own supporters to take Balsignano’s place, that officer held out at Valona for four years more, when he handed over Valona, but was at once re-appointed castellan of both Valona and Kanina by Charles. Thus, in 1273, began the effective rule of the Angevins over Valona. In the following year, the Italian castellan received fiefs in Southern Italy in exchange for Valona and Kanina, and a Frenchman, Henri de Courcelles, was appointed in his stead821. Chinardo’s heirs, who had at first been allowed to live on at Valona, were imprisoned at Trani.

The Angevins attached considerable importance to Valona, especially from a military point of view. Frequent mention is made of the castle in the Angevin documents; Greek fire was deposited there, its well is the subject of several inquiries, and it served as a base for Charles I’s designs upon the Greek Empire, which were cut short by the Sicilian Vespers. The chief Angevin officials were a castellan (usually a Frenchman, e.g. Dreux de Vaux), a treasurer, and more rarely a “captain” of the town, who was subordinate to the castellan, who was in his turn under the Captain and Vicar-General of Albania. The garrison sometimes consisted of Saracens from Lucera, and its fidelity could not always be trusted, for a commission was on one occasion sent over to inquire whether it had sold munitions to the Greek enemies of the Angevins. Nor was the harbour, which the Venetians frequented, free from pirates822. After the death of the vigorous Despot Michael II, it was not so much from his feeble successor, Nikephoros I of Epeiros, as from the able and energetic Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos, that the Angevins had to fear attacks upon Valona, especially after the defeat of their army and the capture of its commander at Berat in 1281. There is no documentary evidence of the presence of any Angevin governor after 1284 at Valona, which, between that date and 1297, when we find a certain “Calemanus” described as “Duke” of the Spinarza district, and, therefore, almost certainly of Valona also, must have been occupied by the Byzantines823. Nevertheless, the Angevins continued to regard the Epeirote lands of Manfred and Chinardo as theirs on paper. They are mentioned in the ratification of the treaty of Viterbo by the titular Latin Empress Catherine in 1294, by which they were confirmed to King Charles II, who in the same year transferred them to his son Philip of Taranto824, then about to marry Thamar, daughter and heiress of the Despot Nikephoros I of Epeiros.

The Byzantines evidently attached considerable importance to Valona and its district, for the successive Byzantine governors were men of family and position: Andronikos Asan Palaiologos, subsequently governor of the Byzantine province in the Morea, who was son of the Bulgarian Tsar, John Asên III, connected with the reigning imperial family, and father-in-law of the future Emperor John Cantacuzene; Constantine Palaiologos, son of Andronikos II; and a Laskaris825. Under these exalted personages were minor officials, such as George Ganza, a friend of the Despot Thomas of Epeiros, and his son Nicholas, who successively held the office of Admiral of Valona for over twenty years, while the latter on one occasion grandiloquently styles himself protosevastos et protovestiarius et primus camerlengus of the Emperor; the sevastos Theodore Lykoudas, and Michael Malagaris, prefect of the castle of Kanina826. During this second Byzantine period, when Valona was civitas Imperatoris Grecorum (as a document styles it), there was a considerable trade with both Ragusa and Venice, and a colony of resident Venetian merchants there. Occasionally, however, serious quarrels arose between the Ganza family and the Ragusans and Venetians, who demanded satisfaction from the Emperor, and on one occasion Ganza’s son was killed. That there was likewise traffic with the opposite Italian coast is clear from King Robert of Naples’ repeated orders to his subjects to export nothing to a place which belonged to the hostile Byzantine Empire, and to which the Angevins still maintained their claims. For as late as 1328 Philip of Taranto named a certain Raimond de Termes commander of Berat and Valona827, and death alone prevented him and his brother, John of Gravina, who in 1332 received the kingdom of Albania with the town of Durazzo in exchange for the principality of the Morea, from prosecuting the Angevin claims. The Albanians, however, rose and attacked Berat and Kanina in 1335, but were speedily suppressed by Andronikos III, the first Emperor who had visited Albania since Manuel I828.

But a more formidable enemy than Angevins or Albanians now threatened Valona. The great Serbian Tsar, Stephen Dushan, was now making Serbia the dominant power of the Balkan peninsula, and the value of the harbour of Valona and the castle of Kanina could scarcely escape the notice of that remarkable man. An entry in a Serbian psalter informs us that the Serbs took Valona and Kanina829 in the last four months of 1345 or in the early months of 1346, and Serbian they remained till the Turkish conquest. Dushan, like the Byzantines, showed his appreciation of these places by appointing as governor of Valona, Kanina and Berat his brother-in-law, John Comnenos Asên, brother of the Bulgarian Tsar, John Alexander. This Serbian governor, a Bulgar by birth, married Anna Palaiologina, widow of the Despot John II of Epeiros, and mother of the last Despot of Epeiros, Nikephoros II, and became so far Hellenised as to take the name of Comnenos (borne by the Greek Despots of Epeiros, whose successor he pretended to be, and whose title of “Despot” he adopted), and to sign his name in Greek in the two Slav documents which he has bequeathed to us830. Although, like his predecessors, he preyed upon Venetian and other shipping at Valona, for which the mighty Serbian Tsar paid compensation, he became a Venetian citizen831, and was allowed to obtain weapons in Venice for the defence of Cheimarra and its port of Palermo from Sicilian pirates832. After the death of Dushan and in the confusion which ensued he embraced the cause of the latter’s half-brother, the Tsar Symeon, who had married his step-daughter, Thomais, against Dushan’s son, and he is last mentioned in 1363, when nearly all the Venetians at Valona died of the plague, and he perhaps with them833. Alexander, perhaps his son, followed him as “Lord of Kanina and Valona,” and allied himself with Ragusa834, of which he became a citizen. The name of Porto Raguseo (Pasha Liman of the Turks), at the mouth of the Dukati valley on the bay of Valona, still preserves the memory of this connection, and was the harbour of the “argosies” of the South Slavonic Republic, whose merchants had their quarters half-way between Valona and Kanina.

In 1371 those places came into the possession of the family of Balsha, of Serbian origin, which a few years earlier had founded a dynasty in what is now Montenegro. Balsha II, who with his two brothers had already taken Antivari and Scutari (“their principal domicile”), killed a certain George, perhaps Alexander’s son—for Alexander is thought to have perished by the side of Vukashin at the battle of the Maritza in 1371—and in a Venetian document of the next year is described as “Lord of Valona.” In consequence of his usurpation the inhabitants of Valona fled for refuge to the islet of Saseno in the bay, and placed themselves under the protection of Venice835. Under Balsha II Valona formed part of a considerable principality, for on the death of his last surviving brother, in 1378, the “Lord of Valona and Budua” had become sole ruler of the Zeta—the modern Montenegro—and then, by the capture of Durazzo from Carlo Topia, “Prince of Albania,” assumed the title of “Duke” from that former Venetian duchy. By his marriage with Comita Musachi, he became connected with a powerful Albanian clan836; but his ambition caused his death, for Carlo Topia begged the Turks to restore him to Durazzo, while Balsha, like other Christian rulers of his time, instead of concentrating all his forces against the Turkish peril, wasted them in fighting against Tvrtko I, the great King of Bosnia, for the possession of Cattaro. Consequently, when the Turks marched against him, he could raise only a small army to oppose them; he fell in battle on the Vojussa in 1385, and his head was sent as a trophy to the Sultan.

Upon his death his dominions were divided; Valona with Kanina, Saseno, Cheimarra, and “the tower of Pyrgos837” alone remained to his widow. Left with only a daughter, Regina, she felt unable to defend all these places from the advancing Turks; so, in 1386, she offered “the castle and town of Valona” to Venice on “certain conditions838.” The cautious Republic replied that her offer would be accepted, if she would hand over freely “the castle of Kanina with its district and the town of Valona with its district.” This shows that the Venetians, like their recent Italian representatives, realised that Valona required Kanina for its defence, as well as a certain Hinterland. The reply went on to add that, in case she declined to accept this condition, Venice would be content to take over these places, paying her half their rents for her life, while she paid half their expenses. Under those circumstances, she could remain at Valona, or come to Venice, as she chose. But, if she would accept neither proposition, then Venice would be willing to take Kanina and the other places, giving her all the rents for her life, on condition that she paid all the expenses of their maintenance. Nothing came of this negotiation; but in 1389 her envoy agreed to furnish three rowers annually to the captain of the Venetian fleet in recognition of Venetian dominion over the islet of Saseno, which commanded the bay. Thus Venice, like the late Admiral Bettòlo, considered that the occupation of that islet was sufficient. In 1393 Dame Comita Balsha made Venice a second offer of Valona. But, in the meantime, the battle of Kossovo had been fought; the Serbian Empire had fallen, and it was obvious that the Turks had become the most powerful Balkan state. Thus, although Comita was ready to give Venice the men whom she had promised in recognition of Venetian rights over “the towers of Pyrgos and Saseno,” and disposed to cede Valona, her offer was declined with thanks, because “we Venetians prefer our friends to remain in their own dominions and govern them rather than we.” Two years later her envoy, the Bishop of Albania, made a third offer of all the four places which she held: Valona, Kanina, Cheimarra, and the tower of Pyrgos, provision being made for her and her son-in-law that they might go where they liked and live honourably there. This meant in cash 7000 ducats for their lives out of the 9000 which the bishop estimated as the total revenue of the above places. The Venetians ordered their Admiral to inquire into the state of the places and the amount which they produced, before deciding, and ere that Comita died839.

She was succeeded by her son-in-law, “Marchisa” (or Merksha) Jarkovich, “King of Serbia,” a near relative of her own by blood and a cousin of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II. He must, therefore, have been a relative of the latter’s Serbian wife, who was a daughter of Constantine Dragash, Despot of part of Macedonia840. He at once, in 1396, offered to cede Valona, Cheimarra, Berat, and the tower of Pyrgos to Venice, but was told that his offer could not be accepted till the Venetians had accurate information about them. He then turned to Ragusa, of which he became an honorary citizen with leave to deposit all his property there for safety. In 1398 he again applied to Venice, because he did not see how he could defend his lands against the Turks. Venice thought it undesirable that they should become Turkish, but decided first to send her Admiral to inquire into their revenues, cost, and condition, expressing a preference for leaving them in their present ruler’s hands. In 1400, as this inquiry had not yet been made, another envoy was sent from Valona to Venice, only to receive the same answer. Upon Merksha’s death, his widow sent yet another envoy to Venice in 1415, with a like result, and was reminded of her late husband’s and her subjects’ debts to the Republic. Then the end came; a document of July 21, 1418, informs us that Valona had fallen into the hands of the Turks841. Consequently, lest they should attack the Venetian colony of Corfù or passing Venetian ships, the Venetian bailie, who was about to proceed to Constantinople, was instructed to endeavour to obtain its restitution with that of Kanina and its other appurtenances to Regina Balsha, whose husband had been, like herself, a Venetian citizen. If the Sultan refused, then the bailie was authorised to offer up to 8000 ducats for Regina’s former possessions, and another offer was made in 1424842. The Turks, however, retained Valona continuously for 273 years, and, with one brief interval, for 495.

There is little record of its history in the Turkish period. In June, 1436, Cyriacus of Ancona spent two days there, and copied a Greek inscription which he found on a marble base at the Church of Georgios Tropæophoros843. In 1466 Venice was alarmed at the repairs executed there by its new masters, which endangered Venetian interests owing to its proximity to the Republic’s colonies in that part of the world—Corfù and its dependencies, in the south, and Durazzo, Alessio, Dulcigno, Antivari, Dagno, Satti, Scutari and Drivasto, in the north—and to the quantity of wood for shipbuilding which it could furnish. Accordingly, the Republic suggested to Skanderbeg to attack it with his own forces, and with Venetian and colonial troops844. Nothing came of this suggestion, but in 1472 a Corfiote, John Vlastos, offered to consign Valona and Kanina to Venice on condition of receiving a fixed sum down and an annuity; and the Republic instructed the Governor of Corfù to enter into negotiations with him845. This also failed, and Valona, in Turkish hands, became, as had been feared, a base for attack against the Ionian Islands and even Italy. Thence, in 1479, the Turks moved against the remaining possessions of Leonardo III Tocco, Count of Cephalonia; thence, in the following year, they sailed to take Otranto846. In 1501, during the Turco-Venetian war, Benedetto Pesaro entered the bay of Valona with a flotilla of light vessels, but a sudden hurricane caused the death by drowning of all his men except those taken prisoners by the Turks847. In 1518 the Governor of Valona, a renegade Cheimarriote, succeeded, with the aid of Sinan Pasha, the Turkish Admiral, in compelling Cheimarra to accept Turkish suzerainty by the concession of large privileges. Sinan was so greatly pleased with Valona that he became its governor. In the same year two Turkish subjects attempted from Valona a coup de main upon Corfù, and it was there that the former of the two great Turkish sieges of that island, that of 1537, was decided upon by Suleyman I848. In 1570 a further descent was made from Valona, where the Turks had established a cannon-foundry, upon Corfù849. In 1638 the attack by the Venetian fleet upon certain Tunisian and Algerian ships off Valona nearly provoked war with Turkey, and led to a temporary prohibition of trade between the inhabitants of that and of other Turkish possessions and Venice850.

The Turco-Venetian war towards the close of the seventeenth century led at last to the Venetian occupation of Valona, then a place of 150 houses surrounded by a low wall. The motives were the fertility of the district and the desire to expel the Barbary corsairs. Morosini’s successor, Girolamo Cornaro, accompanied by many Greeks, after being delayed two days by a storm off Saseno, landed at Kryoneri, a little to the south of the town, early in September, 1690, where he was joined by 500 Cheimarriotes and Albanians. A Turkish attempt to prevent his landing was repulsed; Kanina, weakly fortified by crumbling walls, was forced to surrender, and its fall had as a natural consequence the capitulation of Valona without a blow. Cornaro, leaving Giovanni Matteo Bembo and Teodoro Cornaro as provveditori of Valona and Kanina, proceeded to attack Durazzo, but was forced by a storm to return to Valona, where, on October 1, he died851. Venice intended at first to keep these two acquisitions. Carlo Pisani was ordered to remain at “Uroglia” (Gervolia opposite Corfù) with four galleys for their defence, while the fortifications of Kanina were repaired and cisterns made. But when the Capitan Pasha encamped on the banks of the Vojussa to intimidate the Albanians, many of whom wished to join Venice, the garrisons began to suffer from lack of food and consequent desertions. Thereupon, Domenico Mocenigo, the new Venetian Captain-General, proposed and carried out the demolition of Kanina by mines, and wrote to the home government advocating the destruction of Valona on the ground that its preservation would cripple the campaign in the Morea. A debate upon its fate followed in the Senate. Francesco Foscari urged its retention on account of its geographical position at the mouth of the Adriatic and on a fine bay, well supplied with fresh water from Kryoneri (or “Acqua Fredda”). He alluded to the valuable oak forests in the neighbourhood, whose acorns furnished the substance known by the topical name of valonea to dyers, to the ancient pitch-mines, the salt-pans, and the fisheries. To these material considerations he added the loss of prestige involved in the surrender of a place whose capture had been celebrated with joy by Pope Alexander VIII and announced as an important event to the King of Spain, because it signified the destruction of the corsairs, so long the terror of the Papal and Neapolitan coast of the Adriatic. Besides, “Valona,” he concluded, “opens for us the door into Albania.” To him Michele Foscarini replied, proposing to leave the decision to the naval council, and this proposal was adopted. Mocenigo’s first idea had always been to abandon the place, and his resolve was confirmed by the advance of the Turkish troops under Chalil Pasha; but General Charles Sparre, a Swedish baron, who was sent to execute his orders, found that the rapid approach of the enemy made such an operation too dangerous. The Venetians accordingly burnt the suburb, but prepared to defend the town. But at the outset both Bembo and Sparre were killed by the Turkish artillery fire, and, though the garrison made a successful sortie, the Captain-General repeated his order to blow up Valona. Four cannon and one mortar were left there to deceive the Turks, and on March 13, 1691, after a siege of forty days, they too were removed and Valona evacuated and destroyed. The Turks offered no opposition to the retreating Venetians, and the opinion was freely expressed that the place could have been defended. Thus, after six months, ended the Venetian occupation of Valona852. When Pouqueville853 visited it rather more than a century later, he saw the remains of the two forts blown up by the Venetians, and found that one street with porticoes recalled their former residence. In his time the population was 6000, including a certain number of Jews banished from Ancona by Paul IV. The place was then, as now, very unhealthy in summer, but he foretold a brilliant future for it, if the marshes were once drained.

The Turks neglected Valona, as they neglected all their Albanian possessions. Sinan Pasha had been so good and popular a governor that, although a native of Konieh, he was nicknamed “the Arnaut,” and his descendants long held the appointment as almost a family fief; indeed, as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, the natives of Valona besieged and cut to pieces a certain Ismail Pasha, who had endeavoured to wrest the governorship of the town from one of Sinan’s descendants854. A generation later, however, a sanguinary feud, which broke out between the members of this governing family, led the other notables of Valona to invoke the intervention of the famous Ali Pasha of Joannina, who had already cast covetous eyes on the place, then ruled by Ibrahim Pasha. But the treacherous “Lion of Joannina” carried off not only Ibrahim but also the notables of Valona to the dungeons of his lake-fortress, where they were subsequently put to death. Ibrahim, however, lingered on, and was forced to address a petition to the Turkish government begging it, in consideration of his age and infirmities, to bestow the governorship of Valona and Berat upon his gaoler’s eldest son, Mouchtar Pasha, who appointed a Naxiote Christian, Damirales, as his representative in the former town. In 1820 the Turkish authorities, resolved to crush the too-powerful satrap of Joannina, easily induced the people of Valona to drive out Mouchtar’s partisans. But the population repeatedly gave the Turks cause for alarm, and in 1828 Rechid Pasha treacherously executed a powerful Bey of Valona, who had come to pay his respects to him at Joannina. Nevertheless the local people continued to resist any obnoxious Turkish authority855.

During the first Balkan war, on November 28, 1912, Albanian independence was proclaimed at Valona, and an Albanian government formed, of which Ismail Kemal Bey was President856. But when an Albanian principality was created in the following year, and Prince William of Wied was chosen as its ruler, Valona recognised Durazzo as the capital. Meanwhile, Italy had intimated that she could not consent to the inclusion of Valona, to which she attached special importance, within the new Greek frontier; and insisted on the islet of Saseno, which had formed part of the Hellenic kingdom since 1864, being ceded to the Albanian principality. Greece complied with this demand, and on July 15, 1914, the Greek garrison abandoned Saseno at the order of the Venizelos Cabinet. When the European war broke out, Italy took the opportunity, on October 30, to occupy Saseno by troops under the command of Admiral Patris, who found it inhabited by twenty-one persons, and re-christened the highest point “Monte Bandiera” from the Italian flag which was hoisted there857. She had sent a sanitary mission to Valona itself and, on December 25, occupied that town. Then, as in 1690 and as in the days of Manfred and his successors, Kanina was likewise in Italian hands, while for the first time in its long history Valona has been connected with Great Britain, for the new jetty there was the work of the British Adriatic Mission, sent to rescue the retreating Serbian army. But, by the Tirana agreement of August 3, 1920, Italy renounced Valona (assigned to her by the treaty of London in 1915), and now holds Saseno alone.

Rulers of Valona

Byzantine Empire		-1081
Normans of Sicily		1081-4
Byzantine Empire		1084-1204
Despotat of Epeiros		1204-57
Manfred		1257-66
Chinardo		1266
Giacomo di Balsignano		1266-73
Angevins of Naples		1273-(?)97
Byzantine Empire	(?)	1297-1345/6
Serbs		1345/6-1417
Turks		1417-1690
Venetians		1690-1
Turks		1691-1912
Albanians		1912-14
Italians	Dec. 25, 1914-Aug. 3, 1920
Albanians		1920-

2. The Mediæval Serbian Empire

The late Professor Freeman once remarked during a great crisis in the Balkans, that it was the business of a Minister of Foreign Affairs “to know something of the history of foreign countries.” The demand, however unreasonable it may seem, derives special importance from the fact, that recent events have signally justified the forecasts of the eminent historian and signally falsified those of the Minister whom he was criticising. For in the Balkans, and especially in Greece and Serbia, history is not, as it is apt to be in some western countries, primarily a subject for examinations, but is, thanks to the popular ballads, an integral part of the national life and a powerful factor in contemporary politics. The glories of the Byzantine Empire exercise a continual fascination upon the Greeks; the conquests of the Tsar Stephen Dushan in Macedonia have been invoked as one of the Serbian claims to that disputed land; whereas no Englishman of to-day has been known to demand a large part of France on the ground that it belonged to the English Crown in the reign of Dushan’s contemporary, Edward III.

But there is a further reason for the study of Balkan history by practical men. Our judgments of the Balkan peoples are often harsh and unjust, because we do not realise the historic fact that they stepped straight out of the fifteenth century into the nineteenth (and in some cases into the twentieth), like Plato’s cave-dwellers who emerged suddenly from darkness into the full light of day. For the centuries of Turkish rule, interrupted in the case of Northern Serbia by the twenty-one years of Austrian rule between the treaties of Passarovitz and Belgrade in the eighteenth century, left them much as it found them—with their material resources undeveloped, their roads reduced to mule-tracks, their harbours undredged, their education neglected. Consequently, it was manifestly unfair to expect those who were practically contemporaries of our Wars of the Roses to enter the nineteenth century with the same ideas and the same culture as the gradually evolved states of Western Europe. The wonder rather is that so much progress has been accomplished in so short a time, especially when we remember that the eminent personages who direct the affairs of this world are apt to regard the Balkan peoples, with their deeply-rooted historical traditions and aspirations, and their extraordinarily keen sense of nationality, immensely stimulated by the victories of 1912-13, as pawns in a game, to be moved about the board as its exigencies demand. Let us Western Europeans, then, who have had no personal experience of Turkish rule, be less censorious of those who have lived under it for nearly four centuries at Semendria and for five at Skopje.

In the following pages I propose to give a general sketch of mediæval Serbian history, emphasising those points which may help us to understand the events of the last few years, and referring those who desire further details to the great (if unpolished and unfinished) work of the late Constantin Jireček, who for the first time has placed the history of the Serbs in the Middle Ages upon the impregnable rock of contemporary documentary evidence.

The Serbs, like the Bulgars, are not original inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula, where, at the dawn of history, we find three principal races—the Greeks, the Illyrians (who are perhaps the ancestors of the Albanians), and the Thracians. But a continuous residence of thirteen centuries qualifies the Serbs to be considered a Balkan people. The usually received account of their entry into the peninsula is that given by the Byzantine Emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, in his treatise “De Administrando Imperio,” written some three centuries later. He tells us that the Emperor Herakleios (610-41) gave them the territory which was later called “Serblia”—a country bounded in the time of Porphyrogenitus by Croatia on the north, Bulgaria on the south, the river Rashka near Novibazar on the east, and the present Herzegovina on the west. But a chain of historical facts proves that Herakleios merely gave to the Serbs what they had already taken. About a century before his time the Slavs, whose oldest home was in Poland, had begun to cross the Danube, and about 578 had actually appeared before Salonika. Herakleios, occupied with the war against the Persians in the East, could not defend the Western Balkans. So he made a virtue of necessity, just as, in our own day, governments have granted autonomy to lost provinces which they could no longer protect. The Danubian principalities, Bulgaria, Eastern Roumelia, Crete, and the Lebanon are examples.

This arrangement suited both parties. The Byzantine Court could keep up a formal suzerainty, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus could point in proof of it to the quite unscientific etymology of the word “Serboi” from the Latin servi, because they had become the “slaves” of the Byzantine Emperor. This national name, which first occurs in the ninth century, when we find Eginhard, the biographer of Charlemagne, describing in 822 the “Sorabi” as “said to occupy a large part of Dalmatia,” is still applied not only to the Balkan Serbs but to those of Saxony, whose language, however, is so different that a Serb of Bautzen cannot understand a Serb of Belgrade. The later Byzantine historians, full of classical lore, sometimes call the Serbs Τριβαλλοί after the Thracian tribe, which occupied in antiquity part of modern Serbia, and the king of which is brought on the stage and made to talk broken Greek in the Birds of Aristophanes. Yet, despite this false etymology of their name, Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself admits what was doubtless the fact, that the Croats and Serbs were “subject to none.” “Thus,” in the words of Finlay858, “the modern history of the eastern shores of the Adriatic commences with the establishment of the Sclavonian colonies in Dalmatia.” Of the two pre-existing elements in the population, the Romans, as Constantine Porphyrogenitus says, retired into the coast-towns, while the Illyrian aborigines were pushed southward into the country which since the eleventh century has borne the name of Albania from the district of Albanon near Kroja. Under the name of Ἀρβανῖται the Albanians are first mentioned in 1079.

The history of mediæval Serbia falls naturally into three sections: (1) from the entry of the Serbs into the Balkan peninsula to the close of the twelfth century—a period during which the Byzantine Empire, after finally crushing the Bulgarians, dominated the Near East, and the Serbs, divided into two separate states, played a subordinate but restive part; (2) from the rise of the Nemanja dynasty towards the close of the twelfth century to the battle of Kossovo in 1389—a period which saw Serbia rise to be for a brief space by far the greatest state in the peninsula; (3) the decline, when Danubian Serbia existed at the pleasure of the Turks, till in 1459 she received her death-blow.

During the first of these periods the only serious resistance to the Byzantine hegemony of the Balkan peninsula was offered by the Bulgarians—a Finnish, or, according to others, Tartar tribe, which entered it in 679, and became gradually absorbed in the Slavonic population, which it had conquered. The vanquished imposed their language upon the victors, but the victors, like the Angles in England, imposed their name upon the vanquished. Two powerful Bulgarian monarchs, Krum and the Tsar Symeon, in 813 and 913 threatened the very existence of Constantinople, as did the Tsar Ferdinand in 1913; and Krum was wont to pledge his nobles out of the silver-set skull of the Greek Emperor Nikephoros I, whom he had slain in battle. The Serbs, however, maintained friendly relations with these powerful neighbours till about the middle of the ninth century, when history registers the first of the long series of Serbo-Bulgarian wars, of which we have seen three in our own time. When the Serbs were united, they were able to defeat the Bulgars. But the rivalry of the hereditary princes, whom we find ruling over them at this period, led to the formation of pro-Bulgar and pro-Byzantine parties, so that the native ruler tended to become a Bulgarian or Byzantine nominee, while there was a pretender in exile at Prêslav or Constantinople only awaiting the opportunity to be restored by foreign aid. About 924, however, the Bulgarian Tsar Symeon, instead of placing a puppet of his own on the throne, carried away almost the whole Serbian people captive into Bulgaria. Serbia thus remained barren; and when, after Symeon’s death, the Serbian prince, Tchaslav, escaped from the Bulgarian court to Serbia, he found there only fifty men, and neither women nor children. By submitting to the Byzantine Emperor and with the latter’s help, he restored the scattered Serbs to their own country.

For the rest of the tenth century Serbian history is a blank, save for the survival of the leaden seal with a Greek inscription belonging to a Prince of Diokleia, the country called after the town of Doclea, whose ruins still stand near Podgoritza. This was the time of the great Bulgarian Tsar Samuel, under whom Bulgaria stretched to the Adriatic; and Durazzo, the key of the Western Balkans, as Byzantine statesmen considered it, became a Bulgarian port. In his days there lived on the lake of Scutari a saintly Serbian prince, John Vladimir. Samuel carried off this holy man to his own capital on the lake of Prespa. But the Tsar’s daughter, according to the story, was so greatly moved by his pious speeches and his beauty while engaged in washing his feet, that she begged her father to release him. The saint escaped prison but not matrimony; he married the love-sick Bulgarian princess; but not long after was murdered as he was leaving church by an usurper of the Bulgarian throne. His remains repose in the monastery of St John near Elbassan; his cross is still preserved in Montenegro and carried every Whitsunday in procession at dawn.

The complete destruction of the first Bulgarian Empire by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, “the Bulgar-slayer,” in 1018, removed the danger of a Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans, and made the Danube again the frontier of the Byzantine dominions, which surrounded on three sides the Serbian lands. Manuel I added Σερβικός to the Imperial style; Serbian pretenders were kept ready at Constantinople or Durazzo, in case the Serbian rulers showed signs of independence, while high-sounding court titles rewarded their servility. The internal condition of the Serbian people favoured Byzantine policy. For them, as in our own day, there were two Serb states, and two national dynasties, one ruling over the South Dalmatian coast, the present Herzegovina, and Dioklitia, modern Montenegro, with Scutari and Cattaro for its capitals; the other governing the more inland districts from a central point in the valley of the Rashka (near Novibazar), whence Serbia obtained the name of “Rassia,” by which she was largely described in the West of Europe during the Middle Ages. Of these two dynasties the former assumed the royal title—Hildebrand addressed a letter to “Michael, King of the Slavs”—but the latter became the more important, although its head contented himself with the more modest designation of “Great jupan,” that is, the first among the jupani, or Counts (Serbian jupa = county).

Whenever opportunity offered, however, the Serbs endeavoured to emancipate themselves from Byzantium. Kedrenos informs us that “after the death of the Emperor Romanos III (in 1034) Serbia threw off the yoke of the Greeks”; Stephen Vojislav, ruler of Dioklitia, not only seized a cargo of gold, which was thrown up on the Illyrian coast, but saw a Byzantine army perish in the difficult passes of his country. A second Imperial invasion, which started from Durazzo, met with the same fate as that which befell the Austrian “punitive expedition” in December 1914. The Serbs allowed the invaders to penetrate into the Zeta valley, occupied the heights and utterly routed them as they returned, laden with booty, through a narrow gorge. Michael, Vojislav’s son, made peace with the Emperor, and received the title of protospathários, or “sword-bearer,” at the Byzantine court, while he assumed at home the title of king. But, after the crushing defeat of the Byzantines by the Seljuks in Asia at the battle of Manzikert in 1071, the temptation to rise was too strong for the Balkan Slavs to resist. Accordingly, at the invitation of the Bulgarians, Michael sent them a leader in the person of his son, Constantine Bodin, who was proclaimed at Prizren “Peter, Emperor of the Bulgarians.” Bodin was, however, captured by the Byzantines, but escaped and married the daughter of a citizen of Bari—the first example but not the last of a Serbo-Italian union. At his request Pope Clement III confirmed the rights of the Archbishopric of Antivari, the ancient See, which is mentioned as an Archbishopric so early as 1067, and on the holder of which Leo XIII in 1902 conferred the title of “Primate of Serbia.” But Bodin, bellicose and crafty as Anna Comnena describes him, fell again into the power of the Byzantines. Our countryman, Ordericus Vitalis, describes him as “treating in a friendly fashion” the Crusaders who passed through his territory. Usually, however, the Crusaders had difficulty with the Serbs; and William of Tyre tells how at Nish, then a “fortified town, filled with a valiant and numerous population,” certain “Germans, sons of Belial,” set fire to the mills, thus provoking the retaliation of the natives.

The excellent Archbishop, who was sent in 1168 on an embassy to Monastir, remarks that Serbia was a country “of difficult access”; and that the Serbs, whose name he also derives from their supposedly original state of servitude, were “an uncultured and undisciplined people, inhabiting the mountains and forests, and not practising agriculture, but possessed of much cattle great and small.... Sometimes their jupani obey the Emperor: at other times all the inhabitants quit their mountains and forests... to ravage the surrounding countries.” Yet the oldest piece of Serbian literature—a book of the Gospels in Cyrillic letters859—dates from this very period; and a priest of Antivari composed in Latin a history of the rulers of Diokleia, who were gradually ousted by the “Great jupani” of Rascia, who in their turn were forced to submit to the chivalrous Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I. A court poet of the period, Theodore Prodromos, represents the Serbian rivers Save and Tara, red with blood and laden with corpses, addressing the conqueror, and the Serbian jupani trembling at the roar of the lion from the Bosporus.

The death of Manuel I, in 1180, freed the Southern Slavs from Byzantine rule; and the following decade saw the foundation of the great Serbian state, which reached its zenith in the middle of the fourteenth century, and then fell before the all-conquering Turk. As has usually happened in Balkan history, this national triumph was the work of one man—Stephen Nemanja, the first great name in Serbian history.

The founder of the Serbian monarchy was a native of what is now Podgoritza, whence he built up a compact Serbian state, comprising the Zeta (modern Montenegro), and the Land of Hum (the “Hill” country, now the Herzegovina), Northern Albania and the modern kingdom of Serbia, with a sea-frontage on the Bocche di Cattaro, whose municipality in 1186 passed a resolution describing him as “Our Lord Nemanja, Great jupan of Rascia.” Of the Serbian lands Bosnia alone evaded his sway, forming a separate state, which, first under bans, and then under kings, survived the Serbian monarchy till it, too, fell before the Turks; while in the land of Hum he set up his brother, Miroslav, as prince. Thus, he substituted for the aristocratic Serbian federation a single state, embraced the Orthodox faith, which was that of the majority of his people, and strove to secure its religious as well as ecclesiastical union by extirpating the heresy of the Bogomiles, or Babuni (whence the name of the Babuna pass near Monastir, so famous in the fighting of 1915), then rife in the Balkans. At the same time he sent presents to St Peter’s in Rome and St Nicholas’ at Bari.

When Frederick Barbarossa stopped at Nish on the third Crusade in 1189, Nemanja met him with handsome gifts; but we may doubt the statement of a German chronicler that he did homage for his lands to the Teutonic ruler. No German Emperor ever set foot in Nish again till the recent visit of the Kaiser to King Ferdinand, when a modern chronicle, the Wolffbureau, revived the memory of Barbarossa’s presence there. In 1195 Nemanja retired from the world, at the instigation of his youngest son, who is known in Serbian history as St Sava; and he died in 1200 as the monk Symeon in the monastery of Chilandar on Mount Athos. He, too, received the honours of a saint; his tomb is still revered in the monastery of Studenitza, which he founded; and his life was written by his eldest son and successor Stephen, and by Stephen’s brother St Sava—the beginning of Serbian historical biography.

Nemanja had never assumed the title of king, continuing to style himself as “Great jupan”; but Stephen won for himself the title of “the first-crowned king,” by obtaining, in 1217, a royal crown from Pope Honorius III. There were diplomatic reasons for the assumption of this title. The Byzantine Empire had now fallen before the Latin Crusaders; Frankish principalities had arisen all over the Near East; and the Latin ruler of Salonika had assumed the royal style. Bulgaria had arisen again, and her sovereigns had revived the ancient title of Tsar; and the King of Hungary had presumed to call himself king of “Rascia” also. To show his connection with the former kings of Diokleia, Stephen added that country to his style; to complete the independence of his kingdom, he obtained through his saintly and diplomatic brother from the Œcumenical Patriarch at Nice the recognition of a separate Serbian Church under Sava himself as “Archbishop of all the Serbian lands.” Sava was buried in the monastery of Mileshevo in the old sandjak of Novibazar, whence his remains were removed and burned by the Turks near Belgrade in 1595. Many a pious legend has grown up around the name of the founder of the national Church; but, through the haze of romance and beneath the halo of the saint, we can descry the figure of the great ecclesiastical statesman, whose constant aim it was to benefit his country and the dynasty to which he himself belonged, and to identify the latter with the national religion.

While Stephen’s successor was a feeble character, the second Bulgarian Empire reached its zenith under the great Tsar John Asên II, who boasted in a still extant inscription in his capital of Trnovo, then the centre of Balkan politics, that he had “conquered all the lands from Adrianople to Durazzo.” The next Serbian King Vladislav was his son-in-law; St Sava died as his guest. But the hegemony of Bulgaria disappeared at his death in 1241; there, too, the national resurrection had been the work of one man. The Greeks regained their influence in Macedonia, and in 1261 recaptured Constantinople from the Latins.

We have an interesting description of life at the Serbian court in the time of the next King, Stephen Urosh I860 (c. 1268), from the Byzantine historian Pachymeres. There was a project for a marriage between a daughter of the Greek Emperor, Michael VIII Palaiologos, and a son of Stephen Urosh. First, however, two envoys were sent to report, and the Empress specially charged one of them to let her know what sort of a family it was into which her daughter was about to marry. The pompous Byzantines were horrified to find “the great King,” as he was called, living the simple life in a way which would have disgraced a modest official of Constantinople, his Hungarian daughter-in-law working at her spindle in an inexpensive gown, and his household eating like a pack of hunters or sheep-stealers. The lack of security for travellers deepened the unfavourable impression of the envoys, and the marriage was broken off. Stephen Urosh II (1281-1321), surnamed Milutin (“the child of grace”), greatly increased the importance of Serbia. We have different pictures of this monarch from his Serbian and his Greek contemporaries. One of the former extols his qualities as a ruler, one of the latter portrays him as anything but an exemplary husband. But these characters are not incompatible, as we know from the case of Henry VIII, whom Stephen Urosh II resembled not only in the number of his wives, but in his opportunist policy. His chief object was to enlarge his dominions at the expense of Byzantium; he occupied Skopje, and established his capital there—the Serbian residence had hitherto fluctuated between Novibazar, Prishtina and Prizren—and so greatly impressed the Emperor Andronikos II with his advance towards Salonika that the latter sacrificed his only daughter, Simonis, to the already thrice-divorced monarch, giving as her dowry the territories which his son-in-law had already taken from him. Simonis, however, when she grew up—she was only a child at the time of her engagement—preferred Constantinople to the society of her husband; and nothing but his threat to come and take her by force induced her to return.

Behind this marriage of convenience there lay the project of uniting the Greek and Serbian dominions under a Serbian sceptre—a project to which the national party was resolutely opposed. At the same time, he not only had—what all Serbian rulers have coveted—an outlet on the sea, but actually occupied for a few years the port of Durazzo, that much-debated spot, which during the Middle Ages was alternatively Angevin, Serbian, Albanian and Venetian, till in 1501 it became Turkish. Nor was this astute ruler only a diplomatist and a politician; he offered the Venetians to keep open and guard the great trade route which traversed his kingdom, and led across Bulgaria to the Black Sea. A munificent founder of churches, his generosity is evidenced in Italy by the silver altar, bearing the date 1319, which he gave to St Nicholas’ at Bari, and on which he described himself as ruling from the Adriatic to the Danube; but his name is better known by the verses of Dante, who has given him a place in the Paradiso among the evil kings for his issue of counterfeit Venetian coin861—a common offence in the Levant during the Middle Ages:

    e quel di Rascia
Che male ha visto il conio di Vinegia.

A disputed succession soon ended in the enthronement of the late King’s illegitimate son, Stephen Urosh III, known in history by the epithet “Detchanski” from the famous monastery of Detchani which he founded. He had been blinded for conspiring against his father; but on his father’s death he recovered his sight, which perhaps he had never entirely lost. His reign is one of the most dramatic in Serbian history, for it affords an example of those sudden alternations of triumph and disaster characteristic of the Balkans, alike in the Middle Ages and in our own day. On June 28, 1330, he utterly routed the Bulgarians at Velbujd, as Köstendil was then called. Bulgaria became a vassal state of Serbia, which had thus won the hegemony of the Balkan peninsula. Next year, he was dethroned by his son, the famous Stephen Dushan, and strangled in the castle of Zvetchan near Mitrovitza. A contemporary, Guillaume Adam, Archbishop of Antivari, has left a description of Serbia during this period. The palaces of the King and his nobles were of wood, and surrounded by palisades; the only houses of stone were in the Latin coast-towns. Yet “Rassia” was naturally a very rich land, producing plenty of corn, wine and oil; it was well watered; its forests were full of game, while five gold mines and as many of silver were constantly worked.

The reign of Stephen Urosh IV, better known as Stephen Dushan (1331-55), marks the zenith of Serbia. As a conqueror and as a lawgiver, he resembled Napoleon; and his Empire, like that of Napoleon, crumbled to pieces as soon as its creator had disappeared. In the former capacity, he aimed at realising the dream of his grandfather, Stephen Urosh II, of forming a great Serbian Empire on the ruins of Byzantium. The civil war between the young Emperor John V Palaiologos, aided by his Italian mother, Anne of Savoy, and the ambitious John Cantacuzene, whose history is one of the most interesting sources for this period, was Dushan’s opportunity. Both parties in the struggle made bids for his support at the unfortified village of Prishtina, which had been the Serbian capital. His price was nothing less than the whole Byzantine Empire west of Kavalla, or, at least, of Salonika. Anne of Savoy, less patriotic than her rival, offered him what he asked, if he would send her Cantacuzene, then his guest, either alive or dead. But the Council of twenty-four great officers of state, whom the Serbian Kings were wont to consult, acting on the Queen’s advice, repudiated the suggestion of assassinating a suppliant. Dushan allowed the rival Byzantine factions to exhaust themselves; and, while they fought, he occupied one place after another, till all Macedonia, except Salonika, was his.

With little exaggeration he wrote from Serres to the Doge of Venice, which had conferred her citizenship upon him, styling himself “King of Serbia, Diokleia, the land of Hum, the Zeta, Albania and the Maritime region, partner in no small part of the Empire of Bulgaria, and lord of almost all the Empire of Romania.” But for the ruler of so vast a realm the title of King seemed insignificant, especially as his vassal, the ruler of Bulgaria, bore the great name of Tsar. Accordingly, on Easter Sunday 1346, Dushan had himself crowned at Skopje, whither he had transferred his capital, as “Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks.” Shortly before, he had raised the Archbishop of Serbia to the dignity of Patriarch with his seat at Petch; and the two Slav Patriarchs, the Bulgarian of Trnovo and the Serbian of Petch, placed the crown upon his head. At the same time, on the analogy of the Western Empire with its “King of the Romans,” he had his son, Stephen Urosh V, proclaimed King. Byzantine emblems and customs were introduced into the brand-new Serbian Empire; the Tsar assumed the tiara and the double-eagle, and wrote to the Doge, proposing an alliance for the conquest of Constantinople. In the papal correspondence with Serbia we read of a Serbian “Sebastocrator,” a “Great Logothete,” a “Cæsar,” and a “Despot”; the governors of important Serbian cities, such as Cattaro and Scutari, were styled “Counts”; those of minor places, like Antivari, “Captains.” Thus it is easy to see why the whole Serbian world was thrilled when, in the first Balkan war of 1912, the Crown Prince Alexander entered Skopje, the coronation-city of Dushan—at the invitation of the Austrian Consul, “to restore order”!

Dushan next extended his Empire to the south by the annexation of Epeiros and Thessaly; and assigned Ætolia and Akarnania to his brother, Symeon Urosh, and Thessaly and Joannina to the “Cæsar” Preliub. His dominions now stretched to the Corinthian Gulf, and he thought that it only remained to annex the independent Serb state of Bosnia, and to capture Constantinople, establishing what a poetic Montenegrin ruler of our day has called an “Empire of the Balkans.” This would have embraced all the races of the variegated peninsula, and perhaps kept the Turks—who, in 1353, had made their first permanent settlement in Europe, by crossing the Dardanelles and occupying the castle of Tzympe—beyond the Bosporus, and the Hungarians beyond the Save. On St Michael’s day, 1355, he assembled his nobles, and asked whether he should lead them against Byzantium or Buda-Pesth. To their answer, that they would follow him, whithersoever he bade them, his reply was “to Constantinople.” But on the way he fell ill of a fever, and at Diavoli, on Dec. 20, he died, aged 48. No Serbian ruler had ever approached so near the Imperial city; had he succeeded, and had another Dushan succeeded him, the Turkish conquest 98 years later might have been averted.

Great as were his conquests, the Serbian Napoleon was no mere soldier. His code of law, the “Zakonik,” like the “Code Napoléon,” has survived the vast but fleeting Empire of its author. Dushan’s law-book is, indeed, largely based on previous legislation, such as the canon law of the Greek Church, the statutes of Budua and other Adriatic coast-towns, and, in the case of trial by jury, on an enactment of Stephen Urosh II. For us, however, its chief value is the light which it throws upon Serbia’s political and social condition in the golden age of the Empire.

Mediæval Serbia resembled neither of the Serb states of our day. It was not, even under Dushan, an autocracy, like Montenegro before 1905, nor yet a democratic monarchy, like the modern Serbian kingdom; but the powers of the monarch were limited by the influence of the great nobles—a class stamped out at the Turkish conquest and never since revived. Society consisted of the Sovereign; the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ranging from the Patriarch to the village priest; the greater and lesser nobles; the peasants, some free, others serfs bound to the soil; slaves, servants for hire; and, at Cattaro and in a few inland places, small communities of burghers. But the magnates were the dominant section; on two occasions even Dushan had to cope with their rebellions, and they formed a privy council of twenty-four, which he consulted before deciding important questions of public policy. Their lands were hereditary; and they enjoyed the privilege of killing their inferiors with comparative impunity, for a graduated tariff (as in Saxon England) regulated the punishment for wilful murder—hanging for that of a priest or monk, burning for parricide, fratricide, or infanticide, the loss of both hands and a fine for that of a noble by a commoner, a simple fine for that of a commoner by a noble. But the law secured to the peasant the fruits of his labour; no village might be laid under contribution by two successive army-corps; but, if the peasant organised or even attended a public meeting, he lost his eyes and was branded on the face, while for theft or arson, the culprit’s village was held collectively responsible. Next to the nobles the Orthodox Church was the most influential class; indeed, the early Archbishops of Serbia were drawn from junior members of the Royal family, and their interests were consequently identical with those of the Crown, of which they were the apologists in literature, like the “official” journals of to-day.

While the great Serbia of Dushan, like the smaller Serbia of our days, was pre-eminently an agricultural state, it possessed the enormous advantage of a coastline, which facilitated trade. Dushan allowed foreign merchants to circulate freely, and showed special favour to those of Ragusa whose argosies (or ragusies) were welcomed in his ports. He allowed a Saxon colony to work the silver-mines of Novo Brdo, and to burn charcoal. His bodyguard was composed of Germans, whose captain, Palmann, obtained great influence with him. He sent missions to foreign countries to obtain information; with Venice, of which he was a citizen, his relations were particularly close—as those of Italians and Serbs ought by nature to be; while foreign ambassadors were favourably impressed with his hospitality by receiving free meals in every village through which they passed. Already—so Nikephoros Gregoras tells us—the Serbs had begun to commemorate the great deeds of their champions in their national ballads, which attained their full development after the fatal battle of Kossovo and have inspired the Serbian soldiers in their three last wars. We hear, too, of architects from Cattaro, which was the Serbian mint in the reigns of Dushan and his son. The Queen of Italy possesses a collection of the coinage of the mediæval Serbian monarchy.

Dushan’s Empire crumbled away at his death. Like that of Napoleon, it had been made too fast to weld together the four races which it contained—Serbs, Greeks, Albanians and Koutso-Wallachs. The creation of a Serbian Patriarchate alienated the Greek Church, just as the creation of a Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 sowed the seeds of disunion between Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia. Thus to the four different races there were added four different creeds—the Serbian Patriarchists, the Greek Patriarchists, the Albanian Catholics, and the Bogomile heretics, these last always ready to invoke a foreign invader against domestic persecution, even though that foreigner were a Mussulman. Even this strongest of Serbian monarchs, whose foot every one who entered his presence must kiss and who was “of all men of his time the tallest, and withal terrible to look upon,” as the papal legate called him, was barely equal to the task of checking the great nobles; and it was doubtless distrust of them which led him to surround himself with a foreign guard. The eminent Serbian historian and statesman, the late M. Novakovich, sums up the failure of Dushan to found a permanent state in the judgment: “Everything about his Empire was personal; the Serbian creations were only personal.”

The dying Tsar had made his nobles swear to maintain the rights of his son, Stephen Urosh V, then a boy of nineteen. But the lad’s uncle, Symeon Urosh, the viceroy of Akarnania and Ætolia, disputed the succession; some nobles supported him, while others, availing themselves of the family quarrel, set up as independent princes in their particular satrapies. Symeon made Trikkala the capital of a brief Greco-Serbian Empire; and his son ended as abbot of the famous monastery of Meteoron. After four decades Serbian sway over Thessaly and Epeiros ceased to exist. An inscription at Trikkala and a church at Meteoron are now almost its only memories. Of the independent satraps the most important were the brothers Balsha (by some erroneously connected with the French house of Baux), who established themselves in the Zeta, the present Montenegro, with a seaboard on the Adriatic at Budua and Antivari, and with Scutari as their “principal residence”—“principale eorum domicilium,” as a Latin document of 1369 says. This is the historical basis of the Montenegrin claim to Scutari, where the Balsha family remained till (in 1396) it sold that city to Venice. The rest of Albania was occupied by native chiefs, the most famous of them being Carlo Topia at Durazzo, who boasted his descent from the Angevins—a fact commemorated by the French lilies on his still extant tomb near Elbassan—and from whom Essad Pasha Toptani derived his origin.

Still more famous was Vukashin, guardian and cup-bearer of the young Tsar, who drove his master from the throne in 1366, and assumed the title of king, with the government of the specially Serbian lands and Prizren as his capital. A later legend makes the usurper murder his sovereign during a hunting-party on the plain of Kossovo. But it has now been proved that Stephen Urosh V survived his supposed murderer, who fell by the hand of his own servant, fighting against the Turks at the battle of the Maritza in 1371—the first great blow that Serbia received from her future conqueror. His son, Marko Kraljevich, “the King’s son, Marko,” that great hero of South Slavonic poetry, whose exploits were portrayed by M. Meshtrovich in the Serbian pavilion of the Rome exhibition in 1911, retained Prilip; and it is recorded that, when in 1912 the Serbian army attacked that place, their officers appealed to them in the name of the national hero to liberate his residence from the Turks. Two months after Vukashin Stephen Urosh V died also, and Lazar Grbljanovich, a connection of the Imperial family, ascended the throne of an Empire so diminished that he preferred the style of “Prince” to that of Tsar, which was conferred upon him in the ballads. Serbia was no longer the leading Slav state of the peninsula—for the great Bosnian ruler Stephen Tvrtko I (1353-91) had won the hegemony of the Southern Slavs, and in 1376 had himself crowned on the grave of St Sava at Mileshevo as “King of the Serbs, and of Bosnia, and of the coast.” To secure the latter, he founded the present fortress of Castelnuovo at the entrance of the Bocche di Cattaro; and in 1385 Cattaro itself was his.

Meanwhile the nation destined to destroy both the Serbian and the Bosnian Kingdoms was rapidly advancing. The Turks took Nish in 1386, and in 1389 Lazar set out, attended by all his paladins, from his capital of Krushevatz—for the Serbian royal residence had receded within the limits of Danubian Serbia—to do battle with Murad I on the fatal field of Kossovo.

A Serbian ballad tells how on the eve of the battle the prophet Elijah in the guise of a falcon flew with a letter from the Virgin into Lazar’s tent, offering him the choice between the Empire of this world and the Heavenly kingdom, and how he chose the latter. The armies met on St Vitus’ day, June 15 (O.S.), 1389. Seven nationalities composed that of the Christians; at least one Christian vassal helped to swell the smaller forces of the Turks. While Murad was arraying himself for the fight, a noble Serb, Milosh Kobilich862, presented himself as a deserter and begged to have speech of the Sultan. His request was granted, he entered the royal tent, and stabbed Murad to the heart, paying with his own life for this act, but gaining thereby immortality in Serbian poetry. None the less, the Turks went undismayed into battle. At first, the Bosniaks drove back one Turkish wing; but Bayezid I, the young Sultan, held his own on the other, and threw the Christians into disorder. A rumour of treachery increased their confusion; whether truly or no, it is still the popular tradition that Vuk Brankovich, Lazar’s son-in-law, betrayed the Serbian cause at Kossovo. Lazar was taken prisoner, and slain in the tent where the dying Murad lay, and with him fell the Serbian Empire.

At first Christendom believed that the Turks had been defeated. A Te Deum was sung in Paris to the God of battles; Florence wrote to congratulate the Bosnian king, Tvrtko, on the supposed victory. But Lazar’s widow, Militza, as a ballad beautifully tells the tale, soon learnt the truth in her “white palace” at Krushevatz from the crows that had hovered over the battlefield. The name of Kossovo is remembered throughout the Serbian lands, as if it had been fought but yesterday. Every year the anniversary is kept, in 1916, for the first time in England; and it was the fact that the late Archduke Franz Ferdinand chose this day of all days to make his entry into Sarajevo, which perhaps contributed to his assassination. Although the battle of Kumanovo in 1912 avenged Kossovo, yet the Montenegrins still wear a black band on their caps in sign of mourning for it; in many a lonely village the minstrel sings to the sound of the gusle the melancholy legend of Kossovo. On the field itself Murad’s heart is still preserved, while the Hungarian Serbs treasure in the monastery of Vrdnik the shroud of Lazar.

A diminished Serbian principality lingered on for another seventy years. Bayezid recognised the late ruler’s eldest son, Stephen Lazarevich, with the title of “Prince” (exchanged in 1404 for that of “Despot,” thenceforth borne by the Serbian princes) on condition that he paid tribute and came every year with a contingent to join the Turkish troops, and gave him the hand of his youngest sister; while Vuk Brankovich received the reward of his treachery by holding the old capital of Prishtina as a vassal of the Sultan. For a time the Turkish defeat at Angora by the Tartars in 1402 enabled the Serbian Despot to play off one Turkish pretender against another, while he purchased domestic peace by making Brankovich’s son George his heir. Thus he could devote himself to organising his country and patronising literature in the person of Constantine “the Philosopher,” who repaid his hospitality by writing his biography. He appointed a species of Cabinet, with which he discussed affairs of state, founded the monastery of Manassia, obtained Belgrade by diplomacy from the Hungarians, fortified it and adorned it with churches. In his time Venice began her colonies in Albania and what is now Montenegro—at Durazzo in 1392, Alessio in 1393, Drivasto and Scutari in 1396, Antivari and Dulcigno in 1421 (the former, however, not definitely till 1444), while in 1420 Cattaro placed herself under the protection of the Lion of St Mark, then master of most of the Dalmatian coast, save where the Ragusan Republic formed an enclave in his territory.

Serbia under George Brankovich, who succeeded as “Despot” in 1427, was thus practically a Danubian principality. The new Despot, a man of sixty years, was an experienced diplomatist; but there are times in the Balkans when force is more valuable than the subtlest diplomacy. A warlike Sultan, in the person of Murad II, sat on the Turkish throne; and he soon showed his intentions by demanding the whole of Serbia, and invading that country. Brankovich had to move his capital from Krushevatz to the bank of the Danube, where at Semendria he built the fine castle with the red brick cross in its walls which is still a memorial of Serbia’s past, while in order to secure himself an eventual refuge in Hungary, he handed over Belgrade to the Hungarian monarch, notwithstanding the protests and tears of its citizens. Brankovich in vain tried to purchase peace by giving his daughter with a regal outfit to the Sultan. Ere long, however, the Sultan, incited by a fanatic who accused him of sinning against Allah by allowing the Serbian unbeliever to bar the way to Hungary and Italy, demanded the surrender of Semendria. Brankovich fled to Hungary, thence to his last maritime possessions of Antivari and Budua, and thence to Ragusa; but the victories of John Hunyady, “the white knight of Wallachia,” induced Murad in 1444 to restore to the Despot the whole of Serbia, on payment of half its annual revenue.

Brankovich by his “enlightened egoism” managed to maintain a precarious autonomy till after the capture of Constantinople (1453). Then, Mohammed II resolved to end what remained of Serbian independence, and to capture the famous silver mines of Novo Brdo, which, as his biographer, Kritoboulos, remarked, had not only largely contributed to the splendour of the Serbian Empire, but had also aroused the covetousness of its enemies. Indeed, the picture which the Imbrian writer draws of Serbia on the eve of the Turkish conquest is almost idyllic, with her “cities many and fair,” her “strong forts on the Danube,” her “productive soil, swine and cattle, and abundant breed of goodly steeds.” But the flower of the Serbian youth had been drafted into the corps of Janissaries to fight against their fellow-Christians, the prince was a man of ninety and a fugitive, while Mohammed, like the Germans of to-day, had marvellous artillery. Still Belgrade, then a Hungarian fortress, resisted, thanks to the skill of Hunyady and the fiery eloquence of the Franciscan Capistrano. But the nonagenarian Despot was wounded in a quarrel with the Hungarian governor, and on Christmas-eve, 1456, died. Of his sons the two elder had been blinded by the late Sultan, so that his third son, Lazar III, succeeded him. His speedy death resulted, at this eleventh hour of Serbian history, in the union of both Serbia and Bosnia by the marriage of one of his daughters with the Bosnian Crown Prince, Stephen Tomashevich—an arrangement which even Dushan, in all his glory, had never achieved. The Bosnian Despot of Serbia took up his abode at Semendria; but the inhabitants, regarding their new master with disfavour, as a Catholic and a Hungarian nominee, opened their gates to the Turks; before the summer of 1459 was over, all Serbia had become a Turkish pashalik, except Belgrade, which remained a Hungarian fortress till 1521. Four years after the fall of Serbia her last Despot, then King of Bosnia, was beheaded at Jajce, and his kingdom annexed by the Turks. Twenty years after Bosnia, the Duchy of St Sava, the modern Herzegovina, met with the same fate.

Thus the history of mediæval Serbia was closed. But members of the Brankovich family continued to bear the title of Despot in their Hungarian exile, whither many of their adherents had followed them, till the extinction of their house two centuries ago; the Serbian Patriarchate, abolished in 1459, but revived by the Turks in 1557, existed till 1767; but from the time of Mohammed II to that of Black George in 1804, when Danubian Serbia rose from her long enslavement, the noblest representatives of the Serbs maintained their freedom in the Republics of Ragusa, “the South Slavonic Athens,” and Poljitza, “the South Slavonic San Marino,” and among the barren rocks of free Montenegro.

Authorities

1. Geschichte der Serben. Von Constantin Jireček, Erster Band (Bis 1371); Zweiter Band, erste Hälfte (1371-1537). Gotha: Perthes, 1911, 1918.

2. Serbes, Croates et Bulgares. Par Louis Leger. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1913.

3. Les problèmes serbes. Par Stojan Novakovich. In Archiv für slavische Philologie, Bände XXXIII.-IV. Berlin, 1912.

4. Listine. By S. Ljubich. In Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium. Eleven vols. Agram, 1868-93.

5. Acta et Diplomata Res Albaniæ mediæ ætatis illustrantia. Ed. L. de Thallóczy, C. Jireček, E. de Sufflay. Vol. I. (344-1343); Vol. II. (1344-1406). Vindobonæ, 1913-18.

6. Poésies populaires serbes. Tr. by A. Dozon. Paris, 1877.

Appendix — The Founder of Montenegro

The parentage of Stephen Crnojevich, the founder of the like-named Montenegrin dynasty, has hitherto rested merely on conjecture. The two oldest writers on South Slavonic history, Orbini863 and Luccari864, identified him with Stefano Maramonte, an adventurer from Apulia, who is known from Venetian sources865 to have been a totally different person. Subsequent writers, such as Ducange866, Fallmerayer867, Milakovich868, and Lenormant869, have usually adopted without question this identification; while the first native historian of Montenegro, the Vladika Vasilj Petrovich870, made him the son of a certain John Crnojevich, who was descended from the Serbian royal family of Nemanja. According to these respective theories, he first appeared in Montenegrin history in 1419, 1421 or 1423. Hopf871, and Count de Mas Latrie872, who were far nearer the truth, asserted him to have been a son of Raditch Crnoje, who is described as “lord of the Zeta and Budua and of the other parts of Slavonia” in 1392, as “baron of the parts of the Zeta” in 1393, and as having fallen in battle in 1396, after having been a “very powerful man” and an honorary citizen of Venice873.

The Venetian documents, published by Ljubich, prove beyond all doubt that Stephen Crnojevich was the son of George Jurash, or Jurashevich—a name first mentioned874 in a Ragusan document of 1403. Three years later George Jurashevich and his brother Alexius dominated the Upper Zeta; in 1420 they were “barons of the Zeta” and were promised the possession of Budua875—the very same places that Raditch Crnoje had held. These facts might have suggested that they were his next-of-kin, not, as Hopf876 and Miklosich877 supposed, members of a distinct clan. The identity of the two families is proved by a document878 of 1426, which mentions for the first time Stefaniza fiol del Zorzi Juras, while subsequent documents prove conclusively that this Stefaniza was none other than Stephen Crnojevich. He had three brothers, one “lately dead” in 1443, and in the next year mention is made of the three survivors as Jurassin, Stefanice, et Coicini, fratrum de Zernoievich879.

The exact relationship of Stephen’s father, George Jurashevich, to Raditch Crnoje can only be surmised. We know however that Raditch had several brothers880; if we assume that one was called George, or Jurash, this man’s son would then be called Jurashevich; thus Stephen would be Raditch’s grand-nephew—a degree of relationship which would correspond with his death881 in 1466, two generations after that of his great-uncle. As the legitimate heirs of Raditch, the Jurashevich naturally reverted to the more distinguished surname of Crnojevich, a name found in that region in 1351, while Crnagora, the Serb name for Montenegro, occurs in a Ragusan document882 of 1362. There is a tradition883 that the family came originally from Zajablje in the Herzegovina.

3. Bosnia Before the Turkish Conquest884

I. The History of Bosnia Down to 1180

The earliest known inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina belonged to that Illyrian stock which peopled the western side of the Balkan peninsula at the close of the fifth century B.C. At that period we find two Illyrian tribes, the Ardiæi and the Autariatæ, in possession of those lands. The former occupied West Bosnia, while the latter extended to the south and gave their name to the river Tara, which forms for some distance the present frontier between Montenegro and the Herzegovina. Few characteristics of these remote tribes have been preserved by the Greek and Roman writers, but we are told that the Ardiæi were noted even among the Illyrians for their drunken habits, and that they were the proprietors of a large body of slaves, who performed all their manual offices for them. Of the Autariatæ we know nothing beyond the fact of their power at that epoch.

But the old Illyrian inhabitants had to acknowledge the superiority of another race. About 380 B.C. the Celts invaded the peninsula, and, by dint of continual pushing, ousted the natives of what is now Serbia, and so became neighbours of the Ardiæi. Their next step was to drive the latter southward into the modern Herzegovina, and to seize their possessions in North Bosnia. Instead of uniting against the Celtic invaders the Illyrian tribes fell to quarrelling among themselves over some salt springs, which were unfortunately situated at the spot where their confines met. This fratricidal struggle had the effect of so weakening both parties that they fell an easy prey to the common foe. The victorious Celts pursued their southward course, and by 335 B.C. both Bosnia and the Herzegovina were in their power, and the Illyrians either exiles or else subject to the Celtic sway. This is the first instance of that fatal tendency to disunion which has throughout been the curse of these beautiful lands. The worst foes of Bosnia and the Herzegovina have been those of their own household.

The Celtic supremacy left few traces behind it. While in the south a powerful Illyrian state was formed, which offered a stubborn resistance to Rome herself, the Celtic and Illyrian inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina remained in the happy condition of having no history. But when the South Illyrian state fell before the Romans, in 167 B.C., and the legionaries encamped on the river Narenta, upon which the present Herzegovinian capital stands, the people who dwelt to the north felt that the time had come to defend themselves. One of their tribes had already submitted to the Romans, but the others combined in a confederation, which had its seat at Delminium, a fortress near the modern town of Sinj, in Dalmatia, from which the confederates took the common name of Dalmatians. The first struggle lasted for nearly a century, in spite of the capture and destruction of Delminium by Scipio Nasica in 155 B.C., and it was reserved for Caius Cosconius in 78 B.C. to subdue the Dalmatian confederates and bring Bosnia and the Herzegovina for the first time beneath the Roman sway. Those lands were then merged in the Roman province of Illyricum, which stretched from the Adriatic to the western frontier of modern Serbia and from the Save into North Albania. But the spirit of the brave Dalmatians was still unbroken, and they never lost an opportunity of rising against their Roman masters. Aided by their winter climate, they resisted the armies of Cæsar’s most trusted lieutenants, and the Emperor Augustus was twice wounded in his youthful campaign against them. One of their revolts in the early years of the Christian era was, in the words of Suetonius, “the greatest danger which had threatened Rome since the Punic wars.” Under their chiefs Bato and Pines they defied the legions of Tiberius for four long years, and it was only when their last stronghold had fallen, and Bato had been taken captive, that they submitted. Their power as an independent nation was broken for ever, their country was laid waste, and in A.D. 9 finally incorporated with the Roman Empire. North Bosnia became part of the province of Pannonia; the Herzegovina and Bosnia south of a line drawn from Novi through Banjaluka and Doboj to Zvornik, were included in the province of Dalmatia. The Romans divided up the latter in their usual methodical manner into three districts, grouped round three towns, where was the seat of justice, and whither the native chieftains came to confer with the Roman authorities. Thus Salona, near Spalato, once a city half as large as Constantinople, but now a heap of ruins, was made the centre of government for South Bosnia, while the Herzegovina fell within the jurisdiction of Narona, a fortress which has been identified with Vid, near Metkovich.

The Roman domination, which lasted till the close of the fifth century, has left a permanent mark upon the country. The interior, it is true, never attained to such a high degree of civilisation as the more accessible towns on the Dalmatian coast, and no such magnificent building as the palace at Spalato in which Diocletian spent the evening of his days adorned the inland settlements. But the conquerors developed, much as the Austrians have done in our own time, those natural resources which the natives had neglected. Three great Roman roads united Salona and the sea with the principal places up country. One of these highways skirted the beautiful lake Jezero, traversed the now flourishing town of Banjaluka, which derives its modern name, “the Baths of St Luke,” from the ruins of a Roman bath, and ended at Gradishka, on the Save. Another connected Salona with the plain of Sarajevo, even then regarded as the centre of the Bosnian trade, and the valley of the Drina, while a branch penetrated as far as Plevlje, in the sandjak of Novibazar, then a considerable Roman settlement. The third, starting also from Salona, crossed the south of the Herzegovina, where traces of it may still be seen. Then, too, the mineral wealth of Bosnia was first exploited—the gold workings near the source of the river Vrbas and the rich deposits of iron ore in the north-west. The natives, hitherto occupied in fighting or farming, were now forced to work at the gold diggings. Roman authors extolled the Bosnian gold, the “Dalmatian metal” of Statius, of which as much as 50 lbs. were obtained in a single day, and a special functionary presided at Salona over the administration of the Bosnian gold mines. The salt springs of Dolnja Tuzla, now a busy manufacturing town, were another source of wealth, and the numerous coins of the Roman period discovered up and down the country show that a considerable amount of money was in circulation there. Many a Roman colonist must have been buried in Bosnian soil, for numbers of tombstones with Latin inscriptions have been found, and the national museum at Sarajevo is full of Roman cooking utensils, Roman vases, and Roman instruments of all kinds. Most important of all, it was during the Roman period that the first seeds of Christianity were sown in these remote Balkan lands. The exact date of this event, which was to exercise paramount influence for evil as well as good upon the future history of Bosnia, is unknown, but we may safely assume that the Archbishopric of Salona was the seat of the new doctrine, from which it rapidly spread throughout the Dalmatian province. Several bishoprics, which are mentioned as subordinate to the archiepiscopal See of Salona in the sixth century, are to be found in Bosnia, and one in particular, the bishopric of Bistue, lay in the very heart of that country.

But the power of Rome on the further shore of the Adriatic and in the mountains behind it did not long survive the break-up of the Western Empire in 476. Bosnia and the Herzegovina experienced the fate of the provinces of Pannonia and Dalmatia, of which they had so long formed a part. Twenty years earlier Marcellinus, a Roman general, had carved out for himself an independent principality in Dalmatia, and his nephew and successor, Julius Nepos, maintained his independence there for a short space after the fall of the Empire. But Odoacer soon made himself master of the old Roman province, and in 493 the Ostrogoths under Theodoric overran the country, and for the next forty years Bosnia and the Herzegovina owned their sway. This change of rulers made little difference in the condition of the people. The Ostrogoths did not interfere with the religious institutions which they found already in existence. Under their government two ecclesiastical councils were held at Salona, and two new bishoprics founded, bringing the total number up to six. Theodoric, like the Romans before him, paid special attention to the mineral wealth of Bosnia, and a letter is extant in which he appoints an overseer of “the Dalmatian iron ore mines.” But in 535 began the twenty years’ war between the Ostrogoths and the Emperor Justinian. These lands at once became the prey of devastating armies, the battle-field of Gothic and Byzantine combatants. In the midst of the general confusion a horde of new invaders appeared, probably at the invitation of the Gothic King, and in 548 we hear of the Slavs for the first time in the history of the country. Further Slavonic detachments followed in the next few years, and before the second half of the sixth century was far advanced there was a considerable Slav population in the western part of the Balkan peninsula. Even when the war had ended with the overthrow of the Gothic realm, and Bosnia and the Herzegovina had fallen under the Byzantine sway, the inroads of the Slavs did not cease. Other savage tribes came too, and the Avars in particular were the terror of the inhabitants. This formidable race, akin to the Huns, whom they rivalled in ferocity, soon reduced the once flourishing province of Dalmatia to a wilderness. During one of their marches through Bosnia they destroyed nearly forty fortified places on the road from the Save to Salona, and finally reduced that prosperous city to the heap of ruins which it has ever since remained, while the citizens formed out of Diocletian’s abandoned palace the town which bears the name of Spalato, or the Palace, to this day. But the Avars were not to have an unchallenged supremacy over the country. In the first half of the seventh century the Emperor Herakleios summoned to his aid two Slavonic tribes, the Croats and Serbs, and offered them the old Illyrian lands as his vassals if they would drive out the Avars. Nothing loth they at once accepted the invitation, and, after a fierce struggle, subdued the barbarians, whose hands had been as heavy upon the Slavonic as upon the Roman settlers. The Croats, who came somewhat earlier than the Serbs, took up their abode in what is still known as Croatia, and in the northern part of Dalmatia, as far as the river Cetina; the Serbs occupied the coast line from that river as far south as the present Albanian town of Durazzo, and inland the whole of modern Serbia (as it was before 1912), Montenegro, Bosnia, the Herzegovina, and the sandjak of Novibazar. From that time onwards these regions have, under various alien dominations, never lost their Slavonic character, and to this day even the Bosniaks who profess the faith of Islâm, no less than their Orthodox brothers, are of Serbian stock.

The history of Bosnia and the Herzegovina from this Slavonic settlement in the first half of the seventh down to the middle of the tenth century is very obscure. We have few facts recorded, and nothing is gained by repeating the names of mythical rulers, whose existence has been disproved by the researches of critical historians. But it is possible to form some general idea of the state of the country during this period of transition. Nominally under the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire, much in the same sense as modern Bulgaria was till 1908 under that of the Sultan, Bosnia and its neighbouring lands were practically independent and formed a loose agglomeration of small districts, each of which was called by the Slavonic name of jupa and was governed by a headman known as a jupan. The most important of these petty chiefs was awarded the title of great jupan, and the various districts composed a sort of primitive confederation under his auspices. Two of the districts received names which attained considerable importance in subsequent history. The Slavonic settlers in the valley of the Upper Bosna adapted the Latin designation of that river, Basante, to their own idiom by calling the stream Bosna and themselves Bosniaks, and the name of the river was afterwards extended to the whole country, which from that time onwards was known as Bosnia—a term first found in the form “Bosona,” of Constantine Porphyrogenitus885. Similarly Mount Hum, above the present town of Mostar, gave its name to the surrounding district, which was called the Land of Hum, or Zahumlje, until in the middle of the fifteenth century it was re-christened the “Land of the Duke,” or the Herzegovina, from the German Herzog. These derivations are much more probable than the alternatives recently offered, according to which Bosnia means the “land of salt” in Albanian, and the Herzegovina means the “land of stones” in Turkish886.

The Slavs, with the adaptability of many other conquerors, soon accepted the religion which they found already established in these countries. The Serbs, who settled at the mouth of the Narenta, alone adhered to paganism, and erected on the ruins of the old Roman town of Narona a shrine of their god Viddo, from whom the modern village of Vid derives its name. Here heathen rites were celebrated for more than two hundred years, and as late as the beginning of the last century the inhabitants of Vid cherished ancient idols, of which the original significance had long passed away.

The political history of Bosnia was determined for many generations by its geographical position on the boundary line between the Croatian and Serbian settlements. It was here that these two branches of the Slavonic race met, and from the moment when two rival groups were formed under Croatian and Serbian auspices Bosnia became the coveted object of both. That country accordingly submitted to Croatian and Serbian rulers by turns. Early in the tenth century it seems to have acknowledged the sway of Tomislav, first King of the Croats, and was administered as a dependency by an official known as a ban, the Croatian name for a “governor,” which survived to our own day. A little later the Serbian Prince Tchaslav incorporated it in the confederation which he welded together, and defended it against the Magyars, who now make their first appearance in its history. Under a chieftain named Kés these dangerous neighbours had penetrated as far as the upper waters of the river Drina, where the Serbian Prince inflicted a crushing defeat upon them. But, in his zeal to carry the war into the enemy’s country, he perished himself, and with his death his dominions fell asunder, and Bosnia became for a brief period independent. But Kreshimir, King of the Croats, recovered it in 968, and for the next half-century it belonged to the Croatian crown. But about 1019 the Emperor Basil II restored for a time the dormant Byzantine sovereignty over the whole Balkan peninsula. After the bloody campaigns which earned him the title of “the Bulgar-slayer” and ended in the destruction of the first Bulgarian Empire, he turned his arms against the Serbs and Croats, forcing the latter to receive their crown from Constantinople and reducing Bosnia to more than nominal subjection to his throne.

Meanwhile the Herzegovina, or the “Land of Hum,” as it was then called, had had a considerable history of its own. Early in the tenth century, at the time when the Croatian King Tomislav was extending his authority over Bosnia, we hear of a certain Michael Vishevich, who ruled over the sister land and held his court in the ancient fortress of Blagaj, above the source of the river Buna. Vishevich was evidently a prince of considerable importance. The Pope addressed him as “the most excellent Duke of the people of Hum”; the Byzantine Emperor awarded him the proud titles of “proconsul and Patrician.” The Republic of Ragusa paid him an annual tribute of thirty-six ducats for the vineyards of her citizens which lay within his territory. His fleet, starting from the seaport of Stagno, then the seat of a bishopric as well as an important haven, ravaged the Italian coast opposite, and made the name of “Michael, King of the Slavs,” as a chronicler styles him, a terror to the inhabitants of Apulia. The great Bulgarian Tsar Symeon was his ally, and on two occasions during his struggle with the Byzantine Empire he received aid or advice from him. We find him seconding Tomislav’s proposal for summoning the famous ecclesiastical council which met at Spalato in 925 and prohibited the use of the Slavonic liturgy. In short, nothing of importance occurred in that region during his reign in which he had not his say887. But after his death his dominions seem to have been included, like Bosnia, in the Serbian confederation of Tchaslav; and, when that collapsed, they were annexed by the King of Dioklitia, whose realm derived its name from the town of Doclea in what is now Montenegro, and took its origin in the valley of the Zeta, which divides that kingdom in two. About the end of the tenth century however, the powerful Bulgarian Tsar Samuel established his supremacy over the Kingdom of Dioklitia, and the treacherous murder of its King a few years later completed the incorporation of Dioklitia, and consequently of the Herzegovina, in the Bulgarian Empire. But its connexion with Bulgaria was short-lived. When Basil “the Bulgar-slayer” destroyed the sovereignty of the Bulgarian Tsars he added the Herzegovina as well as Bosnia to his own domains. Thus the twin provinces fell at the same moment beneath the Byzantine sway, and from 1019 remained for a space parts of that Empire, governed sometimes by imperial governors, sometimes by native princes acting as imperial viceroys. Bosnia was the first to raise the standard of revolt, and no sooner was the Emperor Basil II dead than it regained its independence under bans of its own, who raised it to an important position among the petty states of that time. The Herzegovina, less fortunate, only exchanged the sovereignty of the Emperor at Constantinople for that of the King of Dioklitia, who in 1050 made himself master of the land. For exactly a century it remained an integral portion of that kingdom, and had therefore no separate history. Even Bosnia succumbed a generation later to the monarchs of Dioklitia, for about 1085 all the three neighbouring lands, Serbia, Bosnia and the Herzegovina, had to accept governors from King Bodin of the Zeta, and thus a great Serb state existed under his sceptre.

But in the early years of the twelfth century a new force made itself felt in South Slavonic lands, a force which even in our own day has till lately exercised a powerful influence over the fortunes of the Balkan peninsula. Since their unsuccessful incursion in the time of Tchaslav the Hungarians had never abandoned their cherished object of gaining a foothold there. But it was not till the union of Croatia in 1102, and of Dalmatia in 1105, with the Hungarian Crown by Koloman, that this object was attained. The Hungarian Kings thus came into close contact with Bosnia, and were not long in extending their authority over that country. So far from meeting with opposition they were regarded by the people as valuable allies in the common struggle against the Byzantine Emperors of the family of the Comnenoi, who aimed at restoring the past glories and dimensions of their realm. Accordingly in 1135 we find an Hungarian King, Béla II, for the first time styling himself “King of Rama”—the name of a river in Bosnia, which Magyar chroniclers applied first to the surrounding district and then to the whole country. From that time onward, whoever the actual possessors of Rama, or Bosnia, might be, it was always included among the titles of the Hungarian monarchs, and, till our own time, the Emperor Francis Joseph in his capacity of King of Hungary called himself also “King of Rama.” In his case the phrase had certainly a more practical significance than it possessed in earlier centuries.

The precise manner in which this close connexion between Hungary and Bosnia was formed is obscure. According to one theory Béla received the country as the dowry of his Serbian wife; according to another the Bosnian magnates, seeing the increasing power of Hungary and the revived pretensions of the Byzantine Emperors, decided to seek the protection of the former against the latter. At any rate a little later Béla assigned Bosnia as a duchy to his second son, Ladislaus, leaving, however, the actual government of that land in the hands of native bans. It is now that we hear the name of one of these rulers for the first time. Hitherto the Bosnian governors have been mere shadowy figures, flitting unrecognised and almost unnoticed across the stage of history. But ban Borich, who now comes into view, is a man of flesh and blood. In the wars between the Emperor Manuel Comnenos and the Hungarians he was the staunch ally of the latter, and when a disputed succession to the Hungarian throne took place he aspired to play the part of a king-maker and supported the claims of Ladislaus, the titular “duke” of Bosnia. But he made the mistake of choosing the losing side and, after being conquered by the troops of the successful candidate, disappeared mysteriously in 1163. Short, however, as was his career, he had extended the eastern borders of Bosnia to the river Drina, and we learn from the contemporary Greek historian Cinnamus888 that his country was “independent of Serbia and governed in its own fashion.” Three years after his disappearance from the scene Bosnia shared the fate of Croatia and Dalmatia, and fell into the hands of Manuel Comnenos. But upon the death of that powerful Emperor in 1180 the fabric which he had laboriously erected collapsed; the Balkan peoples had nothing more to fear from the Byzantine Empire, and Bosnia under her famous ban Kulin attained to greater freedom and prosperity than she had yet enjoyed. But the same period which witnessed this political and material progress witnessed also the development of that ecclesiastical schism which was one day destined to cause the loss of all freedom and the suspension of all progress by facilitating the Turkish conquest of the land.

II. The Great Bosnian Bans (1180-1376)

Kulin is the first great figure in Bosnian history. By nature a man of peace, he devoted his attention to the organisation of the country, which in his time was a ten days’ journey in circumference, the development of its commerce, and the maintenance of its independence. He allowed foreigners ready access to his dominions, employed two Italian painters and goldsmiths at his court, and gave liberal mining concessions to two shrewd burghers of Ragusa, which during the middle ages was the chief emporium of the inland trade. He concluded in 1189 a treaty of commerce with that city—the earliest known Bosnian document—in which he swore to be its “true friend now and for ever, and to keep true peace and genuine troth” with it all his life. Ragusan merchants were permitted to settle wherever they chose in his territory, and no harm was to be done them by his officials. Agriculture flourished under his rule, and years afterwards, whenever the Bosnian farmer had a particularly prosperous year, he would say to his fellows, “The times of Kulin are coming back again.” Even to-day the people regard him as a favourite of the fairies, and his reign as a golden age, and to “talk of ban Kulin” is a popular expression for one who speaks of the remote past, when the Bosnian plum-trees always groaned with fruit and the yellow corn-fields never ceased to wave in the fertile plains. Kulin’s position was strengthened too by his powerful connections; for his sister was the wife of Miroslav, Prince of the Herzegovina, which, as we have seen, had formed part of the Kingdom of Dioklitia down to 1150, when it was conquered by the Serbian great jupan, Desa. Some twenty years later Stephen Nemanja made his brother Miroslav its prince, and thus was closely connected with Kulin. The latter, like Nemanja in Serbia, threw off all ties of allegiance to the Byzantine Empire on the death of Manuel Comnenos, and at the same time ignored the previous relations which had existed between the Kings of Hungary and the Bosnian bans.

But it was Kulin’s ecclesiastical policy which rendered his reign most memorable in the after history of Bosnia. In the tenth century there had appeared in Bulgaria a priest named “Bogomil,” or the “Beloved of God,” who preached a mystical doctrine, peculiarly attractive to the intellect of a Slavonic race. From the assumption that there existed in the universe a bad as well as a good deity the Bogomiles, as his disciples were called, deduced a complete system of theology, which explained all phenomena to their own satisfaction. But the Bogomiles did not content themselves with metaphysics alone. They descended from the serene atmosphere of abstract reasoning to the questions of ritual and the customs of society. Appropriating to themselves the title of “good Christians,” they regarded the monks as little short of idolators, set at naught the authority of bishops, and defied the thunders of the popes. Their worship was characterised by extreme simplicity and often conducted in the open air, while in their lives they aimed at a plain and primitive ideal. A “perfect” Bogomile, one who belonged to the strictest of the two castes into which they were divided, looked upon marriage as impure and bloodshed as a deadly sin; he despised riches, and owned allegiance to no one save God alone, while he had the quaker’s objection to an oath. No wonder that popes, trembling for their authority, branded them as heretics and pursued them with all the horrors of fire and sword; no wonder that potentates found them sometimes intractable subjects, and sometimes useful allies in a struggle against ecclesiastical pretensions.

The Bogomiles appear to have entered Bosnia about the middle of the twelfth century, and speedily gained a hold upon the country. Kulin at first remained uninfluenced by their teachings. Thus, in 1180, we find the papal legate writing to him in the most courteous terms, and addressing him as the “noble and powerful man, the great ban of Bosnia.” The legate sends him a letter and the Holy Father’s blessing, and begs him to give him in return, as a token of his devotion, “two servants and marten skins.” But Kulin found it politic later on to secede from the Roman Church. For some time past the rival Archbishoprics of Spalato and Ragusa had striven for ecclesiastical supremacy over Bosnia. Béla III, King of Hungary, who had now time to devote to his ambitious schemes against that country, warmly supported the claims of the See of Spalato, to which he had appointed a creature of his own. Kulin was naturally on the side of Ragusa, and was encouraged by his sister, whose late husband, Miroslav, Prince of the Herzegovina, had had a similar contest with the Archbishop of Spalato, and had concluded a treaty with the Ragusans. The Pope took the part of Spalato, and Kulin retorted by defying him, as Miroslav had done before. The latter had probably been a Bogomile for some time before his death; the former now formally abandoned the Roman Church, with his wife, his sister, his whole family, and ten thousand of his subjects. The force of so potent an example was at once felt. The Bogomile or Patarene heresy, as it was called by the Bosniaks of other creeds, now spread apace, not only over Bosnia, but in the neighbouring lands. The two Italian painters, whom we have mentioned as residing at Kulin’s court, carried it to Spalato, where it extended to the other Dalmatian coast towns; and the destruction of Zara by the crusaders in 1202 was regarded by pious chroniclers as a judgment upon that city for its heretical opinions.

King Béla III was not slow to make Kulin’s defection the excuse for posing as defender of the true faith. But his death and the quarrels between his heirs gave Kulin a little breathing space, and it was not till 1200 that he was in actual danger. By that time Béla’s sons, Emerich and Andrew, had established themselves respectively as King of Hungary and Duke of the Herzegovina, and accordingly threatened Bosnia from two sides. Emerich, following his father’s policy, endeavoured to induce the Pope to preach a crusade against the Bosnian heretics, and Innocent III, who then occupied the chair of St Peter, hailed the King of Hungary as overlord of Bosnia, and bade him summon Kulin to recant, or if the latter remained obdurate invade Bosnia and occupy it himself. Thus menaced by a combination of the spiritual and the temporal power, Kulin bowed before the storm. He felt that at all costs Hungarian intervention must be avoided, so he made the rather lame excuse that he had “regarded the Patarenes not as heretics, but as Catholics,” and begged the Pope to send him some safe adviser, who should guide his erring feet into the right way. Innocent, pleased at Kulin’s submission, sent two ecclesiastics to Bosnia to inquire into the religious condition of the country and to bring back its ruler to the true fold. The mission was temporarily successful. Early in the spring of 1203 the ban, his great nobles, and the heads of the Bogomile community met in solemn assembly in the “white plain,” or Bjelopolje, on the river Bosna, confessed their errors, and drew up a formal document embodying their recantation. “We renounce the schism of which we are accused”—so runs the deed—“we promise to have altars and crosses in all our churches, to receive the sacrament seven times a year, to observe the fasts ordained by the church, and to keep the festivals of the saints. Henceforth we will no more call ourselves ‘Christians,’ but ‘brothers,’ so as not to cast a slur upon other Christians.” The oath thus taken was renewed by representatives of the Bogomiles in the presence of the King of Hungary, who bade Kulin observe his promises for the future. The cloud had passed away, but with its disappearance Kulin too disappears from the scene. An inscription, said to be the oldest in the country and ascribed to the year 1203-04, which was found in 1898 at Muhashinovichi, on the river Bosna, refers to a church erected by him to prove the sincerity of his re-conversion, and prays God to grant health to him and his wife, Voyslava. We hear no more of him after 1204; but his memory was not soon forgotten889. Two centuries later a Bosnian King desired to have confirmed to him all the “customs, usages, privileges and frontiers, which existed in the time of Kulin,” and the rich Bosnian family of Kulenovich of our own time (whose ancestral castle of Jaskopolje may be seen near Jajce, almost on the spot where, in 1878, the great fight between the Austrians and the insurgents took place) is said to derive its name and lineage from him.

But the recantation of Kulin did not check the growth of the Bogomile heresy. Under his successor, Stephen, the numbers of the sect increased, and the efforts of Pope Honorius III and his legate to preach a crusade against the heretics remained fruitless. The Holy Father might exclaim that “the unbelievers in Bosnia, just as witches in a cave nourish their offspring with their bare breasts, publicly preach their abominable errors, to the great harm of the Lord’s flock”; but even this mixture of metaphors failed to stimulate the flagging zeal of the Hungarian Catholics. Even when the King of Hungary had pacified his rebellious nobles by the golden bull, and was therefore able to turn his attention to Bosnian affairs, the proposed crusade fell flat. The King worked upon the cupidity of the Archbishop of Kalocsa by granting him spiritual authority over Bosnia; but the only result was to stiffen the backs of the recalcitrant Bosniaks. Imitating their neighbours in the Herzegovina, who had lately made a Bogomile their Prince, they deposed the weak-kneed Stephen and put Matthew Ninoslav, a Bogomile by birth and education, in his place. The new ban proved, however, more pliant than his poorer subjects. Alarmed at the threatening attitude of the King of Hungary, he recanted, as Kulin had done before him, and placed his country under the protection of St Peter. But the conversion of their Prince had little effect upon the masses. The monks of the Dominican order might boast that they had converted, if not convinced, Ninoslav, but it was felt that stronger measures must be taken against his people. In 1234 a crusade was at last organised, and for the next five years the Bogomiles of Bosnia experienced all those horrors of fire and sword which their fellows, the Albigenses, had suffered in the south of France. Under different names and in widely different spheres the two bodies of heretics had adopted similar doctrines. Indeed, the Albigenses had looked to the Bogomile “pope,” or primate, of Bosnia for spiritual instruction and advice, and accepted their “vicar” at his hands. But while historians and poets of renown have cast lustre upon the struggles and sufferings of the martyrs of Provence the probably equally heroic resistance of the Bosnian Bogomiles has made little impression upon literature. Yet it is clear that they possessed all the stubborn valour of our own puritans. In spite of the conquest of both Bosnia and the Herzegovina in 1237 by the Hungarian King’s son, Koloman, who received the former country from the King and the Pope as the reward of his labours, in spite of the erection of forts and a Catholic Cathedral to keep the unruly passions and heretical inclinations of the people in order, the spirit of the Bogomiles remained unbroken. Ninoslav, furious at the arbitrary substitution of Koloman for himself, once more appeared as their champion, and the great defeat of the Hungarians by the Tartars in 1241 not only rid him of his rival, Koloman, but freed his land from all fear of Hungarian intervention for some time to come. Even the incursion of the Tartars into Bosnia was a small disadvantage as compared with the benefits which that country had derived from their previous victory over its foes. Ninoslav now felt himself strong enough to assist Spalato in its struggle against the King of Hungary and to offer an alliance to Ragusa against the growing power of the Serbian monarchy. A second crusade in Bosnia in 1246 was not more successful than the first, and the Pope in placing the Bosnian See under the authority of the Archbishop of Kalocsa, expressly gave as his reason “the utter hopelessness of a voluntary conversion of that country to the true faith.” Even the papal permission to use the Slavonic tongue and the Glagolitic characters in the Catholic service did not win over the Bogomiles to Rome. Crusades and concessions had alike failed890.

Ninoslav passes out of sight in 1250, and the next two generations are, with the exception of the Turkish supremacy, the gloomiest period of Bosnian history. Religious differences and a disputed succession made the country an easy prey to the ambitious designs of the Hungarian monarchs, who, after a brief support of Ninoslav’s relative, the Catholic Prijesda I, in 1254 subdued not only Bosnia but the Herzegovina beneath their sway. While the latter about 1284 fell under Serbian influence the former was split up into two parts. The Upper, or hill-country, Bosnia properly so-called, was allowed to retain native bans—Prijesda I and his sons891, Prijesda II and Stephen Kotroman, till 1302; Lower Bosnia, i.e. the “salt” district of Soli (the modern Tuzla) with Usora, for the sake of greater security, was at first entrusted to Hungarian magnates, and then combined with a large slice of northern Serbia, known as Matchva, in a compact duchy, which was conferred upon near relatives of the Hungarian King. During this period the history of this distracted land is practically a blank. Beyond the names of its successive rulers we have little handed down to us by the chroniclers. “A sleep as of death,” in the words of a Croatian writer, “had fallen upon the country. The whole national and religious life of Bosnia had perished beneath the cold blasts of the wind from beyond the Save.” Now and again we come upon traces of the old Bogomile spirit and the old zeal of the persecutors. Stephen Dragutin, who had been driven by lameness from the Serbian throne and had become under Hungarian auspices Duke of Matchva and Bosnia in 1284, was specially noted for his “conversion and baptism of many heretics,” and it was in answer to his request that the Franciscans, who have since played such an important part in Bosnian history, settled in the country. But still the Pope complained that “the churches were deserted and the priesthood uprooted.” Meanwhile two powerful families began to make their influence felt, the Croatian clan of Shubich and the race of Kotromanich, whose legendary founder (according to Orbini), a German knight, had entered Bosnia in the Hungarian service and was the ancestor of the Bosnian Kings. We now know, however, from a document of the great Tvrtko892, quoted by Pope Gregory XI, that Tvrtko’s uncle, Stephen Kotromanich, was grandson of “the great” Prijesda I. The latest authority on the subject893 accordingly believed the Kotroman family to have sprung from Upper Bosnia and to have been very probably related to Borich and Kulin. The legend of its German, or Gothic, origin arose out of its matrimonial connections with great families of Central Europe. The family of Shubich was at first in the ascendant, and became lords of part and then the whole of the land. In fact Paul Shubich, in 1299, styled himself “lord of Bosnia” and early in the fourteenth century his son, Mladen, ruled, under the title of “ban of the Croats and all Bosnia,” a vast tract of territory extending from the Save to the Narenta and from the Drina to the Adriatic. But in 1322 he fell before a combination of rivals, and young Stephen Kotromanich, who had been his deputy in Bosnia, became independent and united both Upper and Lower Bosnia under his sway894.

Stephen Kotromanich proved himself to be the ablest ruler whom Bosnia had had since Kulin, and laid the foundations upon which his successor built up the Bosnian kingdom. His reign of over thirty years was marked by a series of successes. He began in 1325 by annexing the Herzegovina, which, as we have seen, had been under Serbian authority for the last two generations, as well as the sea-coast from the river Cetina as far south as the gates of Ragusa. Thus, for the first time in its history, Bosnia had gained an outlet on the sea, and was not entirely dependent upon foreigners for its imports. The Dalmatian coast with its fine harbours is the natural frontage of the country behind, which even under the Austrians touched the sea at only two small points. But in the first half of the fourteenth century Bosnia had gained a considerable coast-line. Kotromanich even coveted the islands as well, and specially Curzola, then under the overlordship of Venice. But here his plans failed, although the Ragusans were ready to lend him ships for the purpose. He rewarded them by confirming all their old trading rights in his country and granting them some territorial concessions near the mouth of the Narenta. He took an active, if somewhat insidious, part in the operations which King Charles Robert of Hungary and his successor, Louis the Great, conducted for the restoration of their authority in Croatia and Dalmatia. Charles Robert, who had bestowed upon Kotromanich a relative of his own wife in marriage, found him a useful ally; but in the war between Louis the Great and the Venetians for the possession of Zara the Bosnian ruler was desirous of standing well with both sides. At the famous siege of Zara in 1345 and the following year he went, at the bidding of Louis, to rescue the town from its Venetian besiegers. But the crafty Venetians knew their man. They gave him a heavy bribe, and offered him a much heavier one if he would persuade Louis to abandon the relief of the beleaguered city. The money was well spent. At a critical moment of the siege, when it had been arranged that the Hungarian and Bosnian army should support the besieged in a sally from the gates, Kotromanich and his Bosniaks hung back and the Venetians won the day. The quaint chronicle of this famous siege expressly ascribes the defeat of the allies to the perfidy of “that child of Belial, Stephen, ban of Bosnia,” and it was largely owing to his subsequent mediation that Zara ultimately surrendered to Venice. But Kotromanich soon found that he required the good offices of Venice himself. While he had been engaged in the west of the Balkan peninsula there had grown up in the east under the mighty auspices of Stephen Dushan the great Serbian Empire, which threatened at one moment to swallow up Constantinople itself. Dushan is the greatest name in the whole history of the peninsula, a name cherished to this day by every patriotic Serb. But just as the restoration of Dushan’s Empire, the daydream of Serbian enthusiasts, jeopardised the existence of Austrian Bosnia, so the conquests of the great Serbian Tsar alarmed the Bosnian ruler of that day. For the first half of his reign Dushan was too much occupied with his eastern conquests and his law reforms to interfere with his western neighbour. But he had not forgotten that the Herzegovina, which Kotromanich had annexed, had once belonged to the Serbian monarchy, and, as soon as he had leisure, he pressed his claims. Both parties accepted the mediation of Venice, and for a time peace was preserved. But in 1349 Kotromanich assumed the offensive, invaded Dushan’s dominions, and penetrated as far south as the beautiful town of Cattaro, at that time part of the Serbian Empire and now at last restored to its natural owners, the Southern Slavs. Dushan retaliated next year by descending upon Bosnia and laying siege to the strong castle of Bobovatz, the residence of many Bosnian rulers. As has usually happened in the history of the country, the persecuted Bogomiles flocked to the standard of the invader, and Bosnia seemed to be at his feet. But the walls of Bobovatz, behind which lay the lovely daughter of the ban, whom Dushan had demanded in marriage for his son, resisted his attacks, and he marched away southward through the Herzegovina to Cattaro. Next year the hostilities ceased, and as a further security Kotromanich found a husband for his daughter in King Louis the Great of Hungary, his old ally.

The internal condition of Bosnia was less fortunate, however, in the hands of Kotromanich than its external relations. The power of the Bogomiles had greatly increased before his accession; they had a complete organisation—a spiritual head called djed, or “grandfather,” with a seat at Janjichi, and twelve “teachers” under him—while there was not a single Catholic bishop living in the country. Moreover the rival orders of Dominicans and Franciscans had begun to fight for the exclusive privilege of applying the tortures of the Inquisition to the Bosnian heretics—a conflict which naturally favoured the growth of that heresy. Under these circumstances Kotromanich began his reign by openly favouring the Bogomiles, who formed the bulk of his armies and were his best bulwark against foreign aggression so long as he was their protector. But in 1340, on the persuasion of the King of Hungary, he committed the political blunder of embracing the Catholic faith and thus making his Bogomile subjects look upon Stephen Dushan as their legitimate champion. The evil results of his ecclesiastical policy were apparent when the great Serbian Tsar invaded his dominions.

Stephen Kotromanich, whose memory is preserved by his seal, the earliest Bosnian coins and seven documents issued in his name895, died in 1353, and his nephew Tvrtko succeeded him. Tvrtko is the greatest name in Bosnian history, and his long reign of nearly forty years, first as ban and then as first King of Bosnia, marks the zenith of that country’s power. Beginning his career under circumstances of great difficulty, and even driven at one moment from his throne, he lived to make himself King not merely of Bosnia, but of Serbia, Croatia and Dalmatia as well, and to unite beneath his sceptre a vast agglomeration of territory, such as no other Bosnian ruler has ever governed.

The first seventeen years of his reign were spent in a desperate but successful struggle for the mastery of his own house. He was a mere boy at the death of his uncle, and his mother, who acted as regent, was too weak to cope with the disorders of the time. The magnates, many of whom were zealous Bogomiles, were contemptuous of one who was both a child and a Catholic, while they would have welcomed the great Serbian Tsar Dushan, had he found time to repeat his invasion of Bosnia. But the death of that monarch on his way to the siege of Constantinople in 1355 broke up the Serbian Empire for ever and removed all fear of a Serbian occupation of Bosnia. But with the removal of this danger another arose. Louis the Great of Hungary had welcomed the growth and independence of Bosnia so long as the Serbian Empire existed as a menace to his own dominions; but, as soon as that Empire fell, he revived the ambitious designs of his predecessors upon the Bosnian realm. As the son-in-law of the late ban he had some claims to the succession, and accordingly set to work to humiliate Tvrtko and reduce him to a position of dependence upon the Hungarian crown. He compelled him to surrender the Herzegovina, as far as the Narenta, as the dowry of the Hungarian queen, and to take a solemn oath that he would persecute the Bogomiles, that he would support Hungary in war, and that either he or his younger brother Stephen Vuk would always reside at the Hungarian court. In return he allowed him to remain Bosnian ban—a mere puppet without power. But the crafty Louis, in his desire to be absolute master of Bosnia overreached himself. Determined to be doubly sure of his vassal, he incited the Bosnian magnates to revolt against their chief. But those proud nobles, who had never regarded their ban as anything more than the first of their order, had no intention of exchanging his easy sway for the iron hand of the Hungarian King. Louis saw his mistake, and supported Tvrtko against the barons and the Bogomiles. But the rebels would not recognise the authority of one who relied upon Hungarian swords to enforce it. Aided by his brother they deposed and drove out Tvrtko in 1365, and it cost him a desperate struggle to recover his power. Bosnia was given up to all the horrors of civil war, and, to crown all, a terrible conflagration, the like of which had never been seen before, broke out and destroyed everything that came in its way. “At that time,” writes a chronicler, “the highest mountains, with the stones, birds, and beasts upon them, were consumed with fire, so that the hills became plains, where new corn is sown and many a village stands. And in these villages dwell Bogomiles, who boast that God set these mountains ablaze for their sake.” At last Tvrtko prevailed, and in 1370 he was undisputed master of the country and his brother an exile.

Freed from all fear of Louis, whose eyes were turned northward to Poland, and master of his rebellious barons, Tvrtko began to extend his dominions. The decline of the Serbian Empire gave him the opportunity which he sought. Lazar, perhaps the most unfortunate name in Serbian history, governed a remnant of that realm, which was threatened by dissensions from within and the Turks from without. Tvrtko aided him against his domestic rivals and received in return large portions of Serbian territory, including a strip of coast as far as Cattaro and the famous castle and monastery of Mileshevo, in the modern sandjak of Novibazar, where lay the remains of St Sava, the apostle of the Serbs. In virtue of this territory, he considered himself the legitimate successor of the Serbian monarchs, and while Lazar contented himself with the modest title of knez, or “prince,” Tvrtko had himself crowned in 1376 on the grave of St Sava at Mileshevo with two diadems, that of Bosnia and that of Serbia. Henceforth he styled himself “Stephen Tvrtko, King of the Serbs and of Bosnia and of the coast.” All his successors retained the Serbian title which he could claim as great-grandson of Stephen Dragutin, and, like the Serbian monarchs, invariably adopted, as Tvrtko had done, the royal name of Stephen. Not a voice was raised against this assumption of kingly power. Ragusa, ever anxious to be on good terms with those in authority, was the first to recognise him as the legal successor of the Serbian sovereigns, and promptly paid him the annual tribute which she had rendered to them on the feast of St Demetrios, as well as a sum for trading privileges in Bosnia. Venice followed suit and addressed him as “King of Serbia,” and the King of Hungary was too busy to protest. Tvrtko proceeded to live up to his new dignities. He moved his residence from Srebrenik to Sutjeska and the strong castle of Bobovatz, the picturesque ruins of which still testify to the past glories of the first Bosnian King. Here Tvrtko organised a court on the Byzantine model, as the rulers of Serbia had done before him. Rough Bosnian barons held courtly offices with high-sounding Greek names, and privileges and honours were distributed from the throne. Hitherto Bosnian coins had been scarce, and Ragusan, Hungarian and Venetian pieces had fulfilled most purposes of trade. But now money, of which excellent specimens still exist, was minted bearing the proud title of “king” instead of that of ban, and displaying a visored helmet surmounted by a crown of fleurs-de-lis with a hop blossom above. Tvrtko took his new office very seriously as a King by the grace of God, animated, as he once wrote, “with the wish to raise up that which is fallen and to restore that which is destroyed896.”

III. The Kings of Bosnia (1376-1463)

Tvrtko’s first care was to provide himself with an heir to his kingdom, and he chose a Bulgarian princess as his queen, by whom he had a son, afterwards King Stephen Tvrtko II. But, not content with the dignity and the territory which he now possessed, the Bosnian monarch aspired to found a sea power. He had, as we have seen, already gained a long strip of seaboard from the mouth of the Cetina up to the walls of Cattaro. But Ragusa, with its harbour Gravosa, the gem of the whole coast, was not, and never seemed likely to be, his. He accordingly resolved, as he could not capture Ragusa, to found at the entrance of the lovely Bocche di Cattaro a new station, which should become its rival and the outlet of all the inland trade. The picturesque little town of Castelnuovo stands on the spot to-day, a place over which for a brief period in the last century there floated the British flag. Tvrtko next obtained from Venice an Admiral for his future fleet, and ordered galleys to be built there. And, amidst the confusion which followed the death of Louis the Great of Hungary, he obtained from the little Queen Maria, as the price of his friendship, the ancient city of Cattaro, which, after having enjoyed the protection of the Serbian Tsars, had lately acknowledged the Hungarian rule. The finest fiord in Southern Europe was in his hands.

But Tvrtko did not rest here. True to his policy of making profit out of the misfortunes of others, he availed himself of the disturbances which now broke out in Croatia to take the side of the Croats against their Queen and his friend Maria. Croatia was soon in his hands, and the Dalmatian towns began to surrender. Spalato and Traù, unable to obtain help from Hungary, agreed to submit to him by a certain day; but when that day arrived Tvrtko was occupied elsewhere. For on the same day on which Spalato was to have opened its gates, June 15, 1389, the battle of Kossovo was fought, that battle which decided for five centuries the fate of the Balkan peninsula. In that memorable conflict, the name of which will never be forgotten by the Southern Slavs, a Bosnian contingent aided the Serbian army against the Turks. It was not the first time that the Bosniaks had faced their future masters in battle. Two years earlier they had helped Prince Lazar to rout a Turkish force, and they hoped for the same result on the plain of Kossovo. Tvrtko himself was not present at the fight; but his trusty lieutenant Vlatko Hranich inflicted heavy losses on the left wing of the Turkish host, which was commanded by the Sultan’s second son. But, according to the traditional account, when the Serbian traitor Vuk Brankovich rode off the field the faithful Bosniaks gave way. All was lost, and the Turkish supremacy was assured. Tvrtko at first believed that his army had been successful. There is extant a letter in which the city of Florence congratulated him on the glad tidings of victory which he had sent. “Happy the kingdom of Bosnia,” says this document, “to which it was granted to fight so famous a fight, and happiest of all your majesty, for whom, as the victor, the true and eternal glory of the heavenly kingdom is appointed897.”

Even when he had discovered the terrible truth Tvrtko continued his Dalmatian campaign instead of concentrating all his energies upon the defence of his realm against the Turks. He used the brief respite which they gave his land to press on with his operations in the west. Here he was speedily successful. All the Dalmatian coast towns, except Zara and Ragusa, surrendered to him, as well as the large islands of Brazza, Lesina and Curzola. Overjoyed at their submission, he confirmed the privileges which they had previously enjoyed, and treated them with the utmost consideration. Master of Dalmatia and Croatia in all but the name, he assumed in 1390 the title of King of those countries, just as fourteen years earlier he had proclaimed himself King of Bosnia and Serbia. Tvrtko had now reached the summit of his power. He had achieved the difficult feat of uniting Serbs and Croats under one sceptre; he had made Bosnia the centre of a great kingdom, which possessed a frontage on the Adriatic, from the Quarnero to Cattaro, save for the enclaves of Zara and Ragusa, which embraced the territory inland as far as the river Drina and included part of the modern sandjak of Novibazar, as well as other originally Serbian territories. The beginnings of a sea power had been formed under his auspices, and Dalmatia in union with Bosnia was no longer “a face without a head.” Even now Tvrtko’s ambition was not appeased. He was anxious to conclude a political alliance with Venice and a matrimonial alliance—for his wife had just died—with the great house of Habsburg. But death prevented the accomplishment of his designs. On March 23, 1391, the great Bosnian monarch expired without even being able to secure the succession for his son.

It has been the fortune of each of the various Balkan races to produce some great man, who for a brief space has made himself the foremost figure of the peninsula. Bulgaria can point to her mighty Tsars Symeon and Samuel, Serbia cherishes the memory of Stephen Dushan, the Albanians have found a national hero in Skanderbeg, Bosnia attained her zenith under Tvrtko I. But in each case with the death of the great man the power which he had rapidly acquired as rapidly waned. Tvrtko’s realm was no exception to this rule. Its founder had not lived long enough to weld his conquests into an harmonious whole, to combine Catholic Croats with Orthodox Serbs, Bosnian Slavs with the Latin population of the Dalmatian coast towns, Bogomile heretics with zealous partisans of Rome. The old Slavonic law of succession, which did not recognise the custom of primogeniture, added to the difficulties by multiplying candidates; and thus foreign princes found an excuse for intervention and the great barons an excuse for independence. Deprived of his authority, the King was unable to cope with an enemy like the Turk, whose vast hosts were absolutely united in their obedience to the rule of one man, and the Kings of Hungary, instead of assisting their brothers of Bosnia against the common foe, turned their forces against a country which might have been the bulwark of Christendom.

The evil effects of Tvrtko’s death were soon felt. His younger brother, or cousin898, Stephen Dabisha, who succeeded him, felt himself too feeble to govern so large a kingdom, and in 1393 ceded the newly won lands of Dalmatia and Croatia to King Sigismund of Hungary. The two monarchs met at Djakovo, in Slavonia, and concluded an agreement by which Sigismund recognised Dabisha as King of Bosnia, while Dabisha bequeathed the Bosnian crown after his death to Sigismund. A combination of Bosnian magnates and Croatian rebels, however, refused to accept these terms, and Dabisha himself broke the treaty which he had made. An Hungarian invasion of his Kingdom and the capture of the strong fortress of Dobor, on the lower Bosna, at once reduced him to submission, and a battle before the walls of Knin, in Dalmatia, finally severed the brief connection between that country and the Bosnian throne. To complete Dabisha’s misfortunes, the Turks, who had been in no undue haste to make use of their victory at Kossovo, invaded Bosnia for the first time in 1392, and gave that country a foretaste of what was to come.

On Dabisha’s death in 1395 the all-powerful magnates, disregarding the treaty of Djakovo, made his widow, Helena Gruba, regent for his son. But they retained for themselves all real power, governing their domains as almost independent princes, maintaining their own courts and issuing charters, coining their own money and negotiating on their own account with foreign states, such as the Republics of Venice and Ragusa. One of their number, Hrvoje Vuktchich, towered above his fellows, and his career may be regarded as typical of his troublous times. For the next quarter of a century Bosnian history is little else than the story of his intrigues, and the neighbouring lands of Dalmatia and Croatia felt his heavy hand. Even Sigismund, King of Hungary, and his Neapolitan rival, Ladislaus, were bidding against one another for his support, and at the end of the fourteenth century he was “the most powerful man between the Save and the Adriatic, the pillar of two Kings and Kingdoms.” The shrewd Ragusans wrote to him that “whatsoever thou dost command in Bosnia is done”; the documents of the period style him regulus Bosnensis, or “Bosnian kinglet”; he called himself “the grand voivode of the Bosnian Kingdom and vicar-general of the most gracious sovereigns King Ladislaus and King Ostoja, the excellent lord, the Duke of Spalato.” The three great islands of Brazza, Curzola, and Lesina, and the city of Cattaro owned his overlordship, and his name will always be connected with the lovely town of Jajce, at the confluence of the Pliva and the Vrbas, the most beautiful spot in all Bosnia. Here, above the magnificent waterfall on the hill, for which in olden times the Bosnian bans and the Croatian Kings had striven, Hrvoje bade an Italian architect build him a castle. Whether the town of Jajce, “the egg,” derives its name from the shape of the hill or from the fact that the castle was modelled on the famous Castello dell’ Uovo at Naples, is doubtful. But he is now regarded as the founder of the catacombs, which still bear his arms and were intended to serve as his family vault899. For his capital of Spalato he even issued coins, which circulated in Bosnia as freely as the currency of the puppet kings whom he put on the throne. What Warwick the king-maker is in the history of England, what the mayors of the palace are in the history of France, that is Hrvoje in the annals of mediæval Bosnia. An ancient missal has preserved for us the features of this remarkable man, whose gruff voice and rough manners disgusted the courtly nobles of the Hungarian court. But the uncouth Bosniak took a terrible revenge on his gentle critics. When a wit made fun of his big head and deep voice by bellowing at him like an ox, the company laughed at Hrvoje’s discomfiture. But when, a little later, the fortune of war put the jester in his power, Hrvoje had him sewn into the skin of an ox and thrown into the river, with the words, “Thou hast once in human form imitated the bellowing of an ox, now therefore take an ox’s form as well.”

The great Turkish invasion, which took place in 1398 and almost entirely ruined Bosnia, convinced the great nobles that a woman was unfitted to rule. Headed by Hrvoje, they accordingly deposed Helena Gruba, and elected Stephen Ostoja, probably an illegitimate son of Tvrtko, as their King. So long as Ostoja obeyed the dictates of his all-powerful vassal he kept his throne. Under Hrvoje’s guidance he repulsed the attack of King Sigismund of Hungary, who had claimed the overlordship of Bosnia in accordance with the treaty of Djakovo, and endeavoured to recover Dalmatia and Croatia for the Bosnian crown under the pretext of supporting Sigismund’s rival, Ladislaus of Naples. But the latter showed by his coronation at Zara as King of both those lands that he had no intention of allowing them to become Bosnian possessions, as in the days of Tvrtko. Ostoja at this changed his policy, made his peace with Sigismund, and recognised him as his suzerain. But he had forgotten his maker. Hrvoje, aided by the Ragusans, laid siege to the royal castle of Bobovatz, where the crown was preserved, and when Sigismund intervened on behalf of his puppet summoned an “assembly” or “congregation of the Bosnian lords” in 1404 to choose a new King. This great council of nobles, at which the djed, or primate of the Bogomile church, and his suffragans were present, is frequently mentioned at this period, and contained in a rude form the germs of those representative institutions which in our own country sprang from a like origin. Hrvoje easily persuaded the council to depose Ostoja and elect Tvrtko II, the legitimate son of Tvrtko I, in his place. But Sigismund was not so lightly convinced. After a first futile attempt he sought the aid of the Pope in a crusade against “the renegade Arians and Manichæans” and marched into Bosnia in 1408 at the head of a large army. Tvrtko II met him beneath the walls of Dobor, on the same spot where, fourteen years before, another great battle had been fought. Once again the Bosnian forces were defeated. Sigismund took Tvrtko as his prisoner to Buda-Pesth, after beheading 126 captive Bosnian nobles and throwing their bodies into the yellow waters of the Bosna. The victory had decisive results. Hrvoje humbled himself before the King of Hungary, and Ladislaus of Naples sold all his rights to Dalmatia to the Venetians in despair. But the national party in Bosnia was not so easily dismayed. Nothing daunted by the defeat of Tvrtko and the desertion of Hrvoje, they restored Ostoja to the throne. Utter confusion followed. Sigismund dismembered the country, placing Usora and Soli again under Hungarian bans, bestowing the valuable mining district of Srebrenitza upon the Despot of Serbia to be an apple of discord between the two Serb states, and leaving Ostoja the Herzegovina and South Bosnia alone, while even there every one did what was right in his own eyes, and members of the royal family lived by highway robbery. Well might the Ragusans complain that “our people travel among the Turks and other heathen, yet nowhere have they met with so much harm as in Bosnia.” Yet one step lower was Ostoja to fall. Hard pressed by the Hungarians and his released rival Tvrtko, he summoned in 1415 the Turks to his aid, and thus set an example which was ultimately fatal to his country.

Since their great invasion in 1398 the Turks had not molested Bosnia. Their struggle with Timour the Tartar in Asia and the confusion which followed his great victory at Angora had temporarily checked their advance in Europe, and it was not till their reorganisation under Mohammed I that they resumed their plans. They were accordingly free to accept the invitation of Ostoja and Hrvoje, who was now in opposition to the Hungarian court, and aided them to drive out the Hungarian army. The decisive battle was fought near the fortress of Doboj, the picturesque ruins of which command the junction of the rivers Bosna and Spretcha. A stratagem of the Bosniaks, who cried out at a critical moment, “The Magyars are fleeing,” won the day. But they could not rid themselves of their Turkish allies so easily. In the very next year Mohammed appointed his general Isaac governor of the castle of Vrhbosna (“the source of the Bosna”), which stood in the heart of the country, on the site of the present capital of Sarajevo, and even great Bosnian nobles were not ashamed to hold their lands by grace of the Sultan and his governor. Under Ostoja’s son, Stephen Ostojich, who succeeded as King in 1418, the country obtained a brief respite from the Turkish garrison, which quitted Vrhbosna. But three years later the restoration of Tvrtko II, after further years of exile, gave the Sultan another opportunity for intervention. For Tvrtko’s title was disputed by Ostoja’s bastard son, Radivoj, who called in the Turks to his aid, and was seen by the traveller, De la Brocquière900 as a suppliant of the Sultan at Adrianople in 1433. Tvrtko purchased a temporary peace by the surrender of several towns to them; but the fatal secret had been divulged that the Sultan was the arbiter of Bosnia, and to him two other enemies of the King turned, the Despot of Serbia and Sandalj Hranich, a great Bosnian magnate of the house of Kosatcha, who was all-powerful in the Herzegovina, so that Chalkokondyles calls it “Sandalj’s country901.” The two partners bought the Bosnian Kingdom from the Sultan for hard cash, and Tvrtko was once more an exile. In 1436 the Turks again occupied Vrhbosna, which from that time became a place of arms, from which they could sally forth and ravage the land, and when Tvrtko returned in the same year it was as a mere tributary of the Sultan Murad II, who received an annual sum of 25,000 ducats from his vassal, and issued charters as the sovereign of the country. Soon Murad overran Serbia, and occupied the former Bosnian towns of Zvornik and Srebrenitza, which the Serbian Despot still held, so that it seemed as if the independence of Bosnia was over. Tvrtko knew not which way to turn. He implored the Venetians, who twenty years before had taken the former Bosnian haven of Cattaro under their protection, and were now masters of nearly all Dalmatia, to take over the government of his Kingdom too. But the crafty Republic declined the dangerous honour with many complimentary phrases. With Ladislaus IV of Hungary he was more fortunate. He did not, indeed, survive to see the fulfilment of the Hungarian King’s promise, for he was murdered by his subjects in 1443. But the help of John Hunyady, the great champion of Christendom, enabled his successor to stave off for another twenty years the final blow which was to annihilate the Bosnian Kingdom.

With Tvrtko II the royal house of Kotromanich was extinct, and the magnates elected Stephen Thomas Ostojich, another bastard son of Ostoja, as their King. Ostojich, whose birth and humble marriage diminished his influence over his proud nobles, came to the conclusion that it would enhance his personal prestige, and at the same time strengthen his Kingdom against the Turks, if he embraced the Roman Catholic faith. His father and all his family had been Bogomiles, like most Bosnian magnates of that time, but Tvrtko II was a Catholic and a great patron of the Franciscans, who had suffered severely from the Turkish inroads. The conversion of Ostojich was full of momentous consequences for his Kingdom; for, although he was personally disinclined to persecute the sect to which he had belonged, and which had practically become the established church of the land, the pressure of his protector Hunyady, the Franciscans, and the Pope soon compelled him to take steps against it. He was convinced that by so doing he would drive the Bogomiles, who formed the vast majority of the people, into the arms of the Turks, and the event justified his fears. But he had little choice, for the erection of Catholic churches did not satisfy the zeal of the Franciscans. Accordingly in 1446 an assembly of prelates and barons met at Konjitza, the beautiful town on the borders of the Herzegovina, through which the traveller now passes on the railway from Sarajevo to Mostar. The document embodying the resolutions of this grand council has been preserved, and bears the name and seal of the King902. It provided that the Bogomiles “shall neither build new churches nor restore those that are falling into decay,” and that “the goods of the Catholic Church shall never be taken from it.” No less than 40,000 of the persecuted sect emigrated to the Herzegovina in consequence of this decree, and found there a refuge beneath the sway of the great magnate Stephen Vuktchich, of the house of Kosatcha, who had succeeded his uncle Sandalj in 1435, made himself practically independent of his liege lord of Bosnia and was at the same moment on good terms with the Turks and a strong Bogomile. Thus the old Bosnian realm was practically divided in two; Stephen Vuktchich, by posing as a defender of the national faith, received a considerable accession of subjects, and the Emperor Frederick III bestowed upon him in 1448 the title of Herzog, or Duke, of St Sava, from which his land gradually derived its present name of Herzegovina903. But both Bosnia and the sister land were soon to feel the hand of the Turk.

The accession of Mohammed II to the Turkish throne in 1451 was the beginning of a new era for the Balkan peoples. Since the battle of Kossovo the Sultans had been content to allow the Serbs the shadow of independence under Despots of their own, while Bosnia had bought off invasion by a tribute, more or less regularly paid, according to the vicissitudes of the Ottoman power. But the new Sultan resolved to bring the whole peninsula under his immediate sway, and lost no time in putting his plans into execution. The capture of Constantinople startled the whole of Christendom, and the great victory of Hunyady before the walls of Belgrade was small compensation for that hero’s death. There was no one left to champion the cause of the Balkan Christians, who were still occupied with their own miserable jealousies. Bosniaks and Serbs were disputing the possession of the frontier towns, which the Kings of Hungary had long ago made an apple of discord between them, and Duke Stephen of the Herzegovina was invoking the aid of the Turks at the very moment when all religious and racial enmities should have been silenced in the presence of the common foe. But it has been the misfortune of the Balkan peoples to have, like the Bourbons, learnt nothing and forgotten nothing in their centuries of suffering. They have never, save during the Balkan war of 1912-13, learnt the lesson of their mutual jealousies, and have never forgotten their historic aspirations from which those jealousies spring.

The King of Bosnia in this extremity sought aid from the west of Europe. As an obedient son of the Roman Church, he had a right to expect the help of the Pope; as a friend of the Venetians, he felt entitled to the support of the Doge. But he met with little response to his appeals. Venice, selfish as ever, was not anxious to embroil herself in Bosnian affairs, and the Pope contented himself with proclaiming a new crusade, addressing the King as the “warrior of Christ,” and promising him “a glorious victory,” in which no one else seemed desirous to share. Under these circumstances Ostojich had no alternative but to pay the tribute, which he had refused in the first flush of Hunyady’s victory at Belgrade. The one bright speck on the dark horizon was the possibility of the union of Bosnia and Serbia under one ruler by the marriage of Stephen Tomashevich, eldest son of Ostojich, with the eldest daughter of the Serbian Despot904. On the latter’s death in 1458, the King of Hungary acknowledged Stephen Tomashevich as Despot of all Serbia as far as the river Morava, and it seemed for the moment as if the ancient jealousies of the two neighbouring States had been finally settled and a new bulwark erected against the Turks. But the aggrandisement of the Bosnian royal family only increased its responsibilities. The important town of Semendria, which the Despot George Brankovich had founded on the Danube years before as a refuge from his enemies, and the two-and-twenty square towers of which still stand out defiant of all the ravages of Turks or Time, was strongly fortified, but its inhabitants regarded their new master, a zealous Catholic and a Hungarian nominee, as a worse foe than the Sultan himself. It is not, therefore, necessary to assume, with Pope Pius II and the King of Hungary, that Bosnian treachery betrayed them. When Mohammed II arrived at their gates they surrendered without a blow. The other Serbian towns followed the example of Semendria, and in 1459 Serbia had ceased to exist as a State and became a Pashalik of the Turkish Empire. It was the turn of Bosnia next. But Ostojich was spared the spectacle of his country’s fall. Two years later he fell in an obscure quarrel in Croatia by the hands of his brother Radivoj and his own son, Stephen Tomashevich, who succeeded to the sorry heritage of the Bosnian throne, of which he was to be the last occupant.

Stephen, son of Thomas, lost no time in seeking the aid of the Pope against the impending storm. “I was baptized as a child,” he said through the mouths of his envoys, “and have learnt to read out of Latin books. I wish, therefore, that thou wouldst send me a crown and holy bishops as a sign that thou wilt not forsake me. I pray thee also to bid the King of Hungary to go with me to the wars, for so alone can Bosnia be saved. For the Turks have built several fortresses in my kingdom and are very friendly to the peasants, to whom they promise freedom; and the limited understanding of the peasant observes not their deceit, for he believes that this freedom will last for ever. And Mohammed’s ambition knows no bounds; after me, he will attack Hungary and the Dalmatian possessions of Venice, and then march by way of Carniola and Istria into Italy, which he means to subdue; even of Rome he ofttimes speaks, and yearns to have it. But I shall be his first victim. My father foretold to thy predecessor and the Venetians the fall of Constantinople, and now I prophesy that if ye help me I shall be saved; but if not, I shall fall, and others with me.” To this eloquent appeal, which so exactly depicted the position of affairs, the Pope replied by sending his legates to the coronation—the first and last instance of a Bosnian King receiving his crown from Rome. The ceremony took place in the lovely citadel of Jajce, Hrvoje’s ancient seat, whither the new King had transferred his residence from Bobovatz for greater security. The splendour of that day and the absolute unanimity of the great nobles in support of their lord cast a final ray of light over the last page of Bosnia’s history as a Kingdom. Tomashevich made peace with all his own and his father’s enemies—with the King of Hungary, with his stepmother, Queen Catherine, and with her father, the proud Duke Stephen Vuktchich of the Herzegovina, now seriously alarmed at the advance of the Turks, who had placed a governor at Fotcha and had carved what was called the “Bosnian province” out of the district round it. The King assumed all the pompous titles of his predecessors—the sovereignty of Serbia, Dalmatia and Croatia—at a time when he could not defend his own land, and made liberal grants of privileges to Ragusa at the moment when he was imploring the Venetians to grant him a castle on the coast as a place of refuge.

The storm was not long in breaking. Mohammed II, learning that Tomashevich had promised the King of Hungary to refuse the customary tribute to the Turk, sent an envoy to demand payment. The Bosnian monarch took the envoy into his treasury and showed him the money collected for the tribute. “I do not intend,” he said, “to send the Sultan so much treasure and so rob myself of it. For should he attack me, I shall get rid of him the easier if I have money; and, if I must flee to another land, I shall live more pleasantly by means thereof905.” So the envoy returned and told his master, and his master vowed vengeance upon the King. In the spring of 1463 he assembled a great army in Adrianople for the conquest of Bosnia. Alarmed at the result of his own defiant refusal Tomashevich sent an embassy at the eleventh hour to ask for a fifteen years’ truce. Konstantinovich, a Serbian renegade, who was an eye-witness of these events, has fortunately preserved the striking scene of Mohammed’s deceit. Concealed behind a money-chest in the Turkish treasury, he heard the Sultan’s two chief advisers decide upon the plan of campaign. “We will grant the truce,” said one of them, “and forthwith march against Bosnia, else we shall never take it, for it is mountainous, and besides, the King of Hungary and the Croats and other princes will come to its aid.” So Mohammed granted the envoys the truce which they desired, and they prepared to return and tell the good news to the King. But early next day the eavesdropper went and warned them that in the middle of the next week the Turkish army would follow on their heels. But they laughed at his tale, for they believed the word of the Sultan. Yet, sure enough, four days after their departure, Mohammed set out. One detachment of his army he sent to the Save to prevent the King of Hungary from effecting a junction with the Bosniaks, while the rest he led in person to Sjenitza, on the Bosnian frontier. His march had been so rapid and so secret that he encountered little or no resistance, until he reached the ancient castle of Bobovatz, which had stood so many a siege in Bosnia’s stormy history. The fate of this old royal residence was typical of that of the land. Its governor, Prince Radak, had been converted by force from the Bogomile faith to Catholicism. He could have defended the fortress for years even against the great Turkish army, if his heart had been in the cause. But he was, like so many of his countrymen, a Bogomile first and a Bosniak afterwards. On the third day of the siege he opened the gates to Mohammed, who found among the inmates the two envoys, whom he had so lately duped. Radak met with the fitting reward of his treachery. When he claimed from Mohammed the price for which he had stipulated, the conqueror asked him how he could keep faith with a Turk when he had betrayed his Christian master, and had him beheaded. The giant cliff of Radakovitza served as the scaffold, and still preserves the name, of the traitor.

The fall of the virgin fortress filled the Bosniaks with dismay. At the news of Mohammed’s invasion, Stephen Tomashevich had withdrawn with his family to his capital of Jajce, hoping to raise an army and get help from abroad while the invader was expending his strength before the walls of Bobovatz. But its surrender left him no time for defence. He fled at once towards Croatia, closely followed by the van of Mohammed’s army. At the fortress of Kljuch (rightly so-called, as being a “key” of Bosnia) the pursuers came up with the fugitive. The secret of the King’s presence inside was betrayed to the Turks; and their commander, anxious to avoid a lengthy siege, promised Tomashevich in writing that, if he surrendered, his life should be spared. The King relied upon the pardon and gave himself up to Mohammed’s lieutenant, who brought him as his prisoner to the Sultan at Jajce. Meanwhile, the capital, like the King, had thrown itself upon the mercy of the conqueror, and thus, almost without a blow, the three strongest places in Bosnia had fallen. Tomashevich himself helped the Sultan to complete his conquest. He wrote, at his captor’s direction, letters to all his generals and captains, bidding them surrender their towns and fortresses to the Turk. In a week more than seventy obeyed his commands, and before the middle of June, 1463, Bosnia was a Turkish Pashalik, and Mohammed, with the captive King in his train, set out for the subjection of the Herzegovina. But the “heroic Herzegovina” offered greater obstacles to the invader than “lofty Bosnia.” Against those bare limestone rocks the Turkish cavalry was useless, while the natives, accustomed to every cranny of the crags, harassed the strangers with a ceaseless guerilla warfare. Duke Stephen and his son, Vladislav, who in better days had wasted their energies in civil war, now joined hands against the common foe, and Mohammed, after a fruitless attempt to capture his capital of Blagaj, withdrew to Constantinople. But before he left he resolved to rid himself of that encumbrance, the King of Bosnia, who could now be no longer of use to his conqueror. Mohammed was bound by the solemn promise of his lieutenant to spare his prisoner’s life. But, as soon as his wishes were known, a legal excuse was invented for his inexcusable act of treachery. A learned Persian in his camp, Ali Bestami by name, pronounced the pardon to be invalid because it had been granted without the previous consent of the Sultan. Mohammed thereupon summoned Tomashevich to his presence on the “Emperor’s meadow,” near Jajce, whereupon the lithe Persian drew his sword, and, with a spring in the air, cut off the head of the last Bosnian King. According to another version, Tomashevich was first flayed alive. By the command of the Sultan, the fetva, in which Ali Bestami had composed the captive monarch’s sentence, was carved on the gate of Jajce, where as late as the middle of the last century could be read the words, “The true believer will not allow a snake to bite him twice from the same hole,” an allegory by which the pliant Persian strove to excuse his master’s treachery by representing his victim as the traitor. The body of Tomashevich was buried by order of the Sultan at a spot only just visible from the citadel of Jajce. In 1888 Dr Truhelka, the distinguished archæologist and custodian of the museum of Sarajevo, discovered on the right bank of the river Vrbas the skeleton of the King, the skull severed from the trunk just as history had said, with two small silver Hungarian coins, current in Bosnia in the fifteenth century, on the breast-bones. When the present writer visited Jajce, he found the skeleton set up in the Franciscan church there—a sad memorial of Bosnia’s past greatness. His portrait adorns the Franciscan monastery of Sutjeska. His uncle, Radivoj, and his cousin were executed after him; his half-brother and half-sister carried off as captives, and his widow, Maria, became the wife of a Turkish official906.

Thus, after an existence of eighty-seven years, fell the Bosnian Kingdom. Mainly by the faults of her people and the mistakes of her rulers, mediæval Bosnia lost her independence. The country is naturally strong, and under the resolute government of one man, uniting all creeds and all classes beneath his banner, might have held out, like Montenegro, against the Turkish armies. But the jealousies of the nobles, and the still fiercer rivalries of the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, prepared the way for the invader, and when he came the persecuted heretics welcomed him as a deliverer, preferring “the mufti’s turban to the cardinal’s hat.” This lesson of Bosnia’s fall is full of meaning for our own time, and those who meditate on her future destinies should not forget her past mistakes. She is perhaps the best and the saddest example of what boundless mischief religious persecution can accomplish.

Bosnia had entered upon her four centuries of submission to the Turks. Her King was dead, his consort and his step-mother, Queen Catherine, in exile, and his people at the mercy of the conqueror. Many of them were enlisted in the Turkish corps of Janissaries; many more fled to Croatia, Istria and the Dalmatian towns; a few took to the mountains, like the more or less mythical hero Toma, the Robin Hood of the Bosnian ballads, and lived as brigands and outlaws; most of the Bogomiles embraced the faith of Islâm, and became in the course of generations more fanatical than the Turks themselves. It seemed as if they would be left in sole possession of the land, but the earnest appeal of a Franciscan monk induced Mohammed to grant the Christians the free exercise of their religion and thus stay the tide of emigration from the country. But, though Bosnia could not defend herself, the Turks were not allowed undisturbed possession. Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, had been outwitted by the rapid march of Mohammed, but in the autumn of the very year in which Bosnia fell he set out to her rescue. The campaign was successful, and, aided by Duke Stephen’s eldest son Vladislav907, and a Herzegovinian contingent, the Hungarians recovered Jajce, Banjaluka, and about twenty-five other towns. Even the return of Mohammed in the next spring failed to secure the second surrender of Jajce. Such was the terror of the Hungarian arms that the mere report of the King’s approach made him throw his cannon into the Vrbas and raise the siege. Matthias Corvinus now organised the part of Bosnia which he had conquered from the Turks into two Duchies or banats, one of which took its name from Jajce and the other from Srebrenik. Over these territories, which embraced all Lower Bosnia, he placed Nicholas of Ilok, a Hungarian magnate, with the title of King. Thus, under Hungarian rule, two portions of the old Bosnian Kingdom remained free from the Turks for two generations more, serving as a “buffer State” between the Ottoman Power and the Christian lands of Croatia and Slavonia.

The Herzegovina, which had repulsed the conqueror of Bosnia, did not long survive the sister state. The great Duke Stephen Vuktchich died in 1466 and his three sons Vladislav, Vlatko and Stephen, divided his possessions between them. The eldest, however, whose quarrels with his father had wrought such infinite harm to his country, did not long govern the northern part of the Herzegovina, which fell to his share. He entered the Venetian service, and thence emigrated to Croatia, where he died. The second brother, Vlatko, assuming the title of Duke of St Sava re-united for a time the remains of the Duchy under his sole rule, relying now on Venetian, now on Neapolitan aid, but only secure as long as Mohammed II allowed him to linger on as a tributary of Turkey. In 1481 he ventured to invade Bosnia, but was driven back to seek shelter in his stronghold of Castelnuovo. Two years later Bayezid II annexed the Herzegovina, whose last reigning Duke died on the island of Arbe. The title continued, however, to be borne by Vladislav’s son, Peter Balsha, as late as 1511. The youngest embraced the creed and entered the service of the conqueror. Under the name of Ahmed Pasha Herzegovich908, or, “the Duke’s son,” he gained a great place in Turkish history, and after having governed Anatolia and commanded the Ottoman fleet, attained to the post of Grand Vizier. His name and origin are still preserved by the little Turkish town of Hersek, on the Gulf of Ismid, near which he was buried.

All Bosnia and the Herzegovina, with the exception of the two newly formed banats of Jajce and Srebrenik, were now in the hands of the Turks. On the death of Nicholas of Ilok the meaningless title of “King of Bosnia” was dropped, and his successors contented themselves with the more modest name of ban, which had already been so familiar in Bosnian history. But the Turks did not allow the Hungarian viceroys undisturbed possession of their lands. Jajce became the great object of every Turkish attack, and against its walls the armies of Islâm dashed themselves again and again in vain. But after the capture of the banat of Srebrenik in 1520, it was clear that the doom of Jajce could not be long delayed. Two great feats of arms, however, shed lustre over the last years of the royal city. Usref, the Turkish governor of Bosnia, who will always be remembered as the founder of the noble mosque which is the chief beauty of Sarajevo, had vowed that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. So he collected a large army and invested Jajce. But, finding force useless, he pretended to raise the siege, so as to take the place unawares. But Peter Keglevich, who was at that time its ban, easily outwitted his crafty assailant. He bade the wives and daughters of the garrison sally forth and dance and sing—for it was the eve of a festival—on the “King’s meadow” outside the walls. Deceived by this feint, the Turks made a night attack upon the town. As they came near, they heard the sound of the gusle and saw the feet of the maidens dancing in the moonlight on the green sward. The sight was more than they could bear. Casting their scaling ladders aside, they rushed upon the damsels instead of climbing the walls. At that moment Keglevich charged at the head of his men, while at the sound of the cannon a second detachment, which he had sent out into the woods, attacked the besiegers in the rear. Even the women bore their part in the fight, and not a Turk left the field alive. Once again Keglevich held his capital against the foe. Usref reappeared with a new army and laid siege to the city for a year and a half. Hunger began to make its appearance, even horse-flesh was unprocurable, and one mother threw her child into the Vrbas rather than see it die a lingering death; it seemed as if the garrison must surrender or starve. But Keglevich managed to despatch a trusty messenger to Buda-Pesth, where, in Count Frangipane he found a ready listener. Backed up by King Louis II of Hungary and the Pope, he raised an army and relieved the town, after a great battle. Frangipane received from the delighted King the title of “Defender and Protector of the Kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia” in return for this signal service. But next year King Louis fell in the fatal battle of Mohács at the hands of the Turks, and from that moment Hungary was unable to protect her Bosnian outpost. Keglevich, weary of warfare and old in years, gave up the banat of Jajce to King Ferdinand I, who put a German garrison into the capital. But the German soldiers had had no experience of Turkish warfare, and their new commanders lacked the spirit of old Keglevich. Usref saw that the moment had come to redeem his former failures. Hungary and Croatia were in the throes of civil war, and not a hand was stretched out to save the doomed city. A ten days’ siege by the allied forces of Usref and his colleague, the Vizier of Serbia, was sufficient to make Jajce surrender. Banjaluka held out a little longer, and its brave governor set fire to the town rather than give it up to the enemy. With its fall, in 1528, all Bosnia was in the possession of the Turks, and for the next 170 years the German Emperors, who were now also Kings of Hungary, could make no effort to substantiate the old Hungarian claims to the lands south of the Save. Bosnia served as the starting-point from which Turkish armies ravaged their adjoining territories, and until the Ottoman power began to wane at the end of the seventeenth century, the Habsburgs had quite enough to do in defending their own land.

Left to themselves, the Turks organised the conquered provinces, without interfering with the feudal system, which had struck its roots so deep in Bosnian soil. A Turkish governor, called at first by the title of sandjak beg and then by those of Pasha and Vali, represented the majesty of the Sultan, and moved his residence according to the requirements of Turkish policy. In the early days his seat was at Vrhbosna, round which the city of Sarajevo grew up; but, as the Turkish arms advanced further, Banjaluka was chosen as the official capital, while, when they receded at the close of the seventeenth century, the Pasha moved to Travnik, whence he issued his proclamations as “Vali of Hungary.” But, however high-sounding his titles, the Turkish governor was often, as the Bosnian Kings had been, the mere figure-head, while all real power was in the hands of the great nobles, who gradually became hereditary headmen or capetans of the forty-eight divisions of the province. So strong was their influence that they long resisted all attempts to transfer the Turkish headquarters from Travnik back to Sarajevo, and permitted the Pasha to visit the present capital only on sufferance and to remain there no more than forty-eight hours. It was not till 1850 that Omar Pasha put down all resistance and re-established the seat of government at Sarajevo, where it has since remained. But throughout the Turkish period the native aristocracy of Bosnia merely tolerated the Sultan’s representatives, of whom there were no less than 214 in 415 years, or an average of one every twenty months, and at times even flatly refused to obey orders from Constantinople itself. In a word, Bosnia under the Turks was an aristocratic republic, with a titular foreign head.

The social condition of the country changed, indeed, very little with the change of government. The Bogomiles, who had formed the bulk of the old Bosnian aristocracy, hastened to embrace the faith of Islâm upon the Turkish invasion. They had preferred to be conquered by the Sultan than converted by the Pope; and, when once they had been conquered, they did not hesitate to be converted also. The Mussulman creed possessed not a few points of resemblance with their own despised heresy. It conferred, too, the practical advantage upon those who embraced it of retaining their lands and their feudal privileges. Thus Bosnia presents us with the curious phenomenon of an aristocratic caste, Slav by race yet Mohammedan by religion. Hence the country affords a striking contrast to Serbia. There the Mohammedans were never anything more than a foreign colony of Turks; here the Mohammedans were native Slavs, men of the same race as the Christians, whom they despised. But, while the Bosnian nobles, henceforth styled begs or agas according as they were of greater or less distinction, never forgot that they were Bosniaks, they displayed the customary zeal of converts, and out-Ottomaned the Ottomans in their religious fanaticism. On the one hand, they carefully preserved the heirlooms of their Bogomile forefathers, the Serb speech, and the old Glagolitic script; on the other, they were keener in the cause of Islâm than the Commander of the Faithful himself. The iron of papal persecution had entered into their ancestors’ souls, and the legacy thus inherited influenced the whole future of Bosnia. The Turks were not slow to recognise the merits of these new allies. It soon became a maxim of state that “one must be the son of a Christian renegade to attain to the highest dignities of the Turkish Empire.” In the long list of Pashas of Bosnia, we notice several who were called “the Bosniak” from their race. As early as 1470 we find mention of a native governor, Sinan Beg, who built the mosque at Tchajnitza, his birth-place. Just a century later a Herzegovinian renegade became Grand Vizier, and his successor was a member of the famous Bosnian family of Sokolovich, to whom tradition ascribes the foundation of Sarajevo. The natural aptitude of the Bosniaks for managing their own countrymen led the Sultans to choose their representatives from among them; for, in a highly aristocratic community like Bosnia, the head of an old family enjoyed far more respect, even though he were poor, than an upstart foreigner, who had nothing to commend him but his ostentation and his office. Now and again we hear of a Turkish governor like Usref, the conqueror of Jajce, whose word is supreme, and whose religious endowments are “richer than those in any other province of the Empire.” But the general rule is that the native nobles are the repositories of power, while the Sultan’s representative is a mere fleeting figure, here to-day and gone to-morrow.

While most of the Bogomiles had gone over to Islâm, there still remained some who adhered to the ancient doctrines of that maligned sect. The question has been much discussed as to the existence of these sectaries in Bosnia to-day. That some of them were still to be found in the beginning of the seventeenth century is clear from the report of a traveller of that period. A century and a half later the Franciscans asserted that the sect was extinct. This sweeping assertion does not, however, accord with later discoveries. There are parts of the Herzegovina, almost inaccessible till the construction of the railway from Sarajevo to Mostar, where traditions of the Bogomiles still linger. Thus, in the neighbourhood of Jablanitza, a region covered with Bogomile tombstones, the women, although Mohammedans, go unveiled—a custom all the more remarkable because the Mussulmans of Bosnia are, as a rule, far more particular about veiling than their co-religionists at Constantinople. It is, therefore, thought that this may be an old Bogomile observance, and it is stated by a recent ecclesiastical historian that only a few years before the Austrian occupation a family named Helej, living near Konjitza, abandoned the “Bogomile madness” for the Mohammedan faith.

Bosnia, “the lion that guards the gates of Stambûl,” as the Turkish annalists called her, had to bear the full brunt of the struggle between Christendom and Islâm, as soon as the power of the Turks was beaten back from before the walls of Vienna, and driven out from within the walls of Buda-Pesth. The tide of Ottoman invasion began to ebb at the close of the seventeenth century from Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia, and the rivers Save and Una once more formed the boundaries between the domains of the Crescent and the Cross. Not without reason did the Bosniaks talk of “going to Europe” when they traversed the Save.

And now, after more than a century and a half of forgetfulness, the House of Habsburg remembered the ancient claims of the Hungarian Crown to the old Bosnian Kingdom. Henceforth, from being the starting-point of every Turkish attack upon the Hungarian dominions, Bosnia became the object of every expedition from beyond the Save and the Una. Ten times did the Imperial troops enter the country without permanent results, until at last in our own days the Austro-Hungarian forces occupied it with the consent of Europe. The first expedition, led by Prince Louis of Baden in 1688, entered Bosnia from the east, captured Zvornik, but collapsed before the strong fortifications of Banjaluka. Two years later an Imperial general beat the Turks near Dolnja Tuzla, and took back a number of Catholic Bosniaks with him to Croatia. In that year, indeed, the condition of the country was most miserable. Famine and pestilence raged unchecked, and the quaint old Franciscan monk who wrote a chronicle of that time, tells us how “blood-red snow fell upon the mountains,” and how the devil went about with bow and arrows to slay the people. One memorial of that année terrible still remains in the shape of a Turkish copper coin, which was minted in Sarajevo to defray the expenses of the Turkish army, and is almost the only example of a separate Turkish currency for Bosnia. A third invasion from the side of Croatia in 1693, although fairly successful, pales beside the daring exploit of Prince Eugène in 1697. This twenty days’ campaign has never been forgotten, and it is all the more interesting, because the dashing Prince of Savoy took the same route which was followed by the main body of the Austro-Hungarian army in 1878. Crossing the Save at Brod with 6000 men, the Prince went straight up the valley of the Bosna, along the course of the present railway to Sarajevo, capturing on his way Doboj, Maglaj, Jeptche and the picturesque Vranduk, rightly named in Turkish “the gate” of the country. Sarajevo itself seemed at his mercy, but the Bosnian Christians did not respond to his appeals, there was no rising of the rajah in his favour, and he retired with an immense booty and 40,000 Christian refugees, whom he settled in Slavonia. The peace of Carlovitz two years later ratified the old boundaries of the Turk and Christendom.

But the war between the Emperor and the Sultan, which broke out in 1716, and was terminated by the peace of Passarovitz, had favourable, if only temporary, results for Bosnia as well as for Serbia. The military efforts of the Imperial troops in Bosnia were unsuccessful, but at the peace, just as Belgrade and half Serbia were rescued from the Turk, so also north Bosnia was transferred to the Emperor in his capacity of King of Hungary and Croatia. But the disastrous peace of Belgrade in 1739 restored all that had been gained at Passarovitz in 1718. The strategy of the Duke of Hildburghausen and Baron Raunach, the Imperial commanders in Bosnia, utterly failed before Ostrvitza and Banjaluka, and the Save and the Una once more became the frontiers. No Imperial army crossed them again for half a century, and even then it merely crossed to return empty-handed. The peace of Sistova in 1791 ratified that of Belgrade, and Bosnia remained, in spite of Austrian victories, a Turkish province, in fact till 1878, in name till 1908.

4. Balkan Exiles in Rome

Those of us who are students of Punch may remember a caricature, which appeared in 1848, the year of almost universal revolution. Two distinguished foreigners were represented as arriving at Claridge’s Hotel and asking for accommodation. “I regret,” replied the manager, “that I cannot oblige you; my hotel is entirely occupied by dethroned monarchs, all except one single-bedded room, and that I am reserving, in case of necessity, for His Holiness the Pope!” What London was to the royal refugees of western Europe in 1848, that was Rome to the Balkan exiles of the second half of the fifteenth century. The Pope was then their generous host, and the Borgo their Claridge’s Hotel. In the words of Pius II’s biographer, “he summoned to Rome almost all those whom the Turks had ejected from their homes, and contributed money for their maintenance909.”

There has never been a period in the history of the Near East, when such a clean sweep has been made of principalities and powers. When Pope Nicholas V celebrated the mid-century Jubilee, the Balkan peninsula and the Levant were still largely occupied by a long series of Christian States, which had existed there for well-nigh 250 years. The romantic Duchy of Athens was still standing under the Acciajuoli of Florence; the Morea was divided between the two brothers Thomas and Demetrios Palaiologos; their more famous brother, the Emperor Constantine, had just left his Peloponnesian palace at Mistra, the Sparta of the Middle Ages, to ascend the throne of all the Cæsars at Constantinople. The Italian family of Crispo, from whom the greatest Italian statesman of our time traced his descent, still ruled from their castle at Naxos over the far-flung Duchy of the Archipelago. Another Italian clan, the Gattilusj of Genoa, in whose veins flowed both the Imperial blood of the Greek Emperors and that of the House of Savoy, were still governing the island of Lesbos and the city of Ænos in Thrace, with their respective dependencies. A Genoese syndicate, the Maona of the Giustiniani, the forerunner of the Chartered Companies of our time, managed the rich mastic-plantations of the island of Chios. The picturesque Kingdom of Cyprus, with which were united the long-empty titles of King of Jerusalem and King of Armenia, was still in the hands of the French family of Lusignan, to which our Richard Cœur-de-Lion had sold it more than two-and-a-half centuries earlier; but the most important Cypriote harbour, that of Famagosta, where the Lusignans had been wont to be crowned Kings of Jerusalem, had passed into the possession of the Genoese Bank of St George, that famous institution, whose palace, lately restored, is now the seat of the Genoese Harbour Board. The family of Tocco, whose ancestors had migrated to Greece from Benevento, had just lost almost the last fragment of its possessions on the Greek mainland, but still retained the County Palatine of Cephalonia, which embraced four of the Ionian Islands and included the mythical realm of Odysseus. Venice was still the Queen of the Adriatic. The whole of the Dalmatian coast was Venetian, save where the commercial Republic of Ragusa maintained that independence, of which the recently erected statue of Orlando was the symbol and still is the memorial. From the southern extremity of Dalmatia, a chain of Venetian harbours—Antivari, Dulcigno and Durazzo—names familiar to modern diplomacy—united the northern territories of Venice with her colony of Corfù. Far to the south she held Crete; off the east coast of Greece she occupied the long island of Eubœa. In the north of the Balkan peninsula, Serbia was still a Christian Principality, and the riches of its Prince, derived from the Serbian mines, were almost fabulous. Montenegro, under the first of its “Black Princes,” had started on its career of independence; Albania was still largely unconquered, owing to the heroic resistance of the great national hero, Skanderbeg; while its capital, Scutari, was still a Venetian colony. The mediæval Kingdom of Bosnia with its elaborate feudal system, still survived; the sister-land of the Herzegovina, then known as Hum, was ruled by a great Slav magnate, Stephen Vuktchich, who had lately received the title of Duke of St Sava, from which, in its German form of Herzog, his former Duchy to-day retains the name of the Herzegovina. Beyond the Danube, the two Roumanian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were, the former still independent, the latter, if tributary, still restive. And far away on the shores of the Black Sea, the Greek Empire of Trebizond still lingered under the family of Grand-Komnenos—whose Princesses were the most beautiful women, whose Princes the most tragic figures of their time.

Such was the map of the Near East in 1450, on the eve of the accession of the greatest of the Sultans, Mohammed II. With his advent ancient Empires and mediæval Principalities disappeared as by magic, and a political earthquake shook the thrones of the Levant to their foundations. In 1453 the last Byzantine Emperor fell at his post on the walls of Constantinople; the oldest political institution in the world came to an end, and the Turkish capital was moved from Adrianople to the Bosporus. In 1456 Moldavia was made to pay tribute, the Gattilusj were driven from Ænos and the Acciajuoli from the city of Athens; in 1459 Serbia, in 1460 the Morea and the rest of the Duchy of Athens ceased to exist. Next year the Empire of Trebizond was incorporated with Turkey, the year following the Gattilusj no longer ruled over Lesbos. In 1463 the last native King of Bosnia was beheaded in the presence of the great Sultan on the meadow opposite the lovely city of Jajce; in 1468 the death of Skanderbeg deprived Albania of her brave defender. Two years later Venice lamented the loss of Eubœa, the greatest blow that had ever befallen the Republic. In 1479 the Tocchi were driven from their island county; by 1483 the Herzegovina was wholly Turkish. The rulers and nobles of most of these countries sought refuge in Rome, and thus the epilogue of the long and tragic drama of Balkan history was played here. Italy was their nearest land of refuge; it had been the cradle of many of their ancestors; and the Pope was the head of Western Christendom, to whom some of them had appealed in their distress.

The most notable of these distinguished exiles was the Despot Thomas Palaiologos, who sailed from Corfù for Ancona towards the end of 1460, accompanied by most of his magnates, and bearing the head of St Andrew, which had long been preserved at Patras. The relic was known to be a valuable asset in the dethroned Despot’s balance-sheet, although Amalfi already possessed a portion of the saint’s remains. Many Princes offered large sums for it, and its fortunate possessor had accordingly no difficulty in disposing of it to the Pope in return for an annuity. The precious relic was deposited for safety in the castle of Narni, while Thomas proceeded to Rome, where Pius II bestowed upon him the Golden Rose, the symbol of virtues which he had scarcely displayed in his long career of intrigue, a lodging in the Santo Spirito hospital, and an allowance of 300 gold pieces a month, to which the Cardinals added 200 more—a sum which his too numerous followers considered barely enough for his maintenance and certainly not for theirs. Venice, however, contributed a further sum of 500 ducats to his treasury, but the cautious Republic begged him not to return to Corfù or any of her other colonies, so as not to embarrass her then rather delicate relations with the Turks. Meanwhile, on April 12, 1462, the day after Palm Sunday, Pius II received the head of St Andrew at the Ponte Milvio, on the spot where the little chapel of that Apostle with its commemorative inscription now stands. A recent visit to the chapel, which has been completely isolated, and is now standing alone in a network of tramlines and roads, suggests the melancholy reflection that ere long it too may be sacrificed to that civile progresso, which has cost this city so many interesting mediæval monuments. Thomas’ fellow-countryman, the famous Cardinal Bessarion, handed the case containing the head to the Pope, who bade the sacred skull welcome among its relatives, the Romans, “the nephews of St Peter”—a ceremony depicted on the tomb of Pius II in Sant’ Andrea della Valle. Shortly afterwards, upon the death of his wife, whom he had left behind in Corfù, Thomas summoned his two sons, Andrew and Manuel, and his daughter Zoe to join him in Rome. But before they arrived, he died, on May 12, 1465, and was buried in the crypt of St Peter’s, where all efforts to find his grave have proved fruitless. But every visitor to Rome unconsciously gazes upon his features, for on account of his tall and handsome appearance he served as a model for the statue of St Paul, which still stands at the steps of St Peter’s.

Misfortunes make strange bedfellows, and a common disaster had brought together as exiles in Rome, condemned to live upon the papal charity, the former Greek Despot of the Morea and his enemy, the natural son of the last Frankish Prince of Achaia. After two centuries of conflict, the Greeks had succeeded, at the eleventh hour, in extinguishing the rule of the Franks in the peninsula, only to fall themselves before the all-conquering Turk. To consecrate the Greek conquest, Thomas Palaiologos had married the heiress of Centurione II Zaccaria, the last Frankish ruler, and the last legitimate descendant of a famous Genoese family, which had made a fortune out of the alum-mines of Phocæa on the coast of Asia Minor, become lords of the rich island of Chios in the days before the Chartered Company, and had at last attained to the throne of Achaia. But Centurione had left a natural son, Giovanni Asan, who had raised the standard of revolt against the Greeks. Imprisoned by Thomas in the splendid castle of Chlomoutsi, or Castel Tornese, the mint of the Morea, whose ruins still stand on a tortoise-shaped eminence which overlooks the fertile plain of Elis and the flourishing harbour of Zante, he had escaped a lingering death by hunger, rallied his old adherents, and actually received the congratulations of the King of Naples and the Venetian Republic upon his release and their recognition of his title. Thomas had, however, suppressed this rebellion with Turkish aid, and the pretender had fled first to one of the Venetian colonies, and thence to Naples, whence we find him writing for aid to the Bank of St George in his ancestral city of Genoa910. In 1459 a Genoese document reveals him begging the Genoese government to recommend him to the generosity of Pius II. Genoa was at that time under French rule, and the Duke of Calabria, who was the royal lieutenant, accordingly wrote to Pius II and to Cardinal Lodovico Scarampi, the Patriarch of Aquileia, who was the Pope’s Chamberlain, recommending to their notice “the magnificent lord Centurione Zaccaria, not long ago Prince of the Morea.” I think that there was a special reason for the activity of the Genoese government on the exile’s behalf. There is in the Cathedral of Genoa a splendid relic, known as “the cross of the Zaccaria,” and consisting of a piece of the true cross, encased in gold and studded with precious stones. This is said to have been brought by St John the Evangelist to Ephesus, captured by the Turks when they took that place, and pawned by them at Phocæa, which then belonged, as we saw, to the Zaccaria family. In 1307, in consequence of a quarrel between two of its members over the accounts of the alum-mines, Tedisio Zaccaria begged the famous Catalan chronicler, Ramon Muntaner, who was then encamped with the Catalan Grand Company at the Dardanelles, to assist him in sacking the town. Muntaner informs us that his share of the booty was this cross, and the problem has hitherto been to find when and how it was brought to Genoa. Now, as there is no mention of the cross at Genoa before 1466, I have no doubt whatever that it was this last scion of the Zaccaria who brought it from Greece, just as his brother-in-law, Thomas Palaiologos, had brought the head of St Andrew, and disposed of it to the city of Genoa for a valuable consideration, of which one portion was a letter of introduction to the Pope.

Until recently there was no trace of the “Prince of the Morea’s” sojourn in Rome. I noticed, however, in a book by a German scholar, Gottlob, on the subject of papal finance, an allusion to a certain “Prince of Sani.” There being no such place, it seemed to me that the learned German must have misunderstood the name of Giovanni Asani. Examination of the original documents in the “Archivio di Stato” proved this surmise to be correct. The Liber depositarii Sancte Cruciate contains numerous entries of twenty florins a month paid to domino Johanni Zaccarie olim Amoree principi, beginning with September, 1464, and ending with December 31, 1468, after which there is no more mention of the pension, and the pensioner was therefore probably deceased. These sums, which Paul II, and after him Sixtus IV, gave to Oriental potentates in distress, were derived from the proceeds of the alum-mines, discovered at Tolfa in 1462 by another exile from the Near East, Giovanni de Castro, who had been engaged in the dyeing trade at Constantinople, had fled to Rome after the Turkish conquest, and had been appointed treasurer of the patrimony of the Church. Genoese workmen, formerly employed in the alum-mines of Phocæa, were summoned to Tolfa, the Pope declared that the discoverer deserved a statue, Court poets wrote more or less excellent verses in his honour, and Pius told the world that the alum of Tolfa had been given by Providence as the sinews of war against the Infidels, and bade all good Christians deal exclusively with the papal alum factory. Thus, by a curious coincidence, the last of the Zaccaria kept body and soul together by a pittance derived from the sale of that mineral, which had formed in happier days the foundation of his forefathers’ fortunes.

In 1461 another very distinguished relative of the dethroned Imperial family of Constantinople arrived in Rome—Queen Charlotte of Cyprus. There are few more remarkable figures even in the romantic history of the Latin Orient than this brave and masculine woman, the offspring of France and Byzantium. Queen Charlotte was the only daughter and heiress of King Jean II de Lusignan by his marriage with Helen daughter of Theodore II Palaiologos, Despot of Mistra, and she was therefore grand-niece of Thomas Palaiologos. Succeeding to the throne of Cyprus in 1458, at the age of 18, she was already both an orphan and a widow—for her first husband, a son of the King of Portugal, was dead—and she therefore hastened to conclude a second marriage with her cousin, Louis, Count of Geneva, second son of Louis, Duke of Savoy. Her consort had already been engaged to a daughter of Robert III of Scotland, and those of us who are of Scottish descent will learn with a flush of pride that our business-like ancestors demanded a huge sum as damages for this breach of promise. Possibly the young scion of the House of Savoy would have done better to establish himself in Scotland rather than Cyprus; for his Cypriote bride in the year after her marriage was driven from the greater part of her realm by her late father’s illegitimate son James, aided by the Sultan of Egypt. The castle of Cérines, or Kyrenia, however, which overlooks the sea to the north of the island, and of which a full description has recently been published by the British authorities, held out; and there the royal pair took refuge. During an interval in the siege, the intrepid Queen and her feeble husband journeyed to Rhodes on board a galley of the Knights, which lay in the harbour, to ask for aid. The Grand Master, Jacques de Milly, received them politely; but their journey had no practical results, beyond the gift of some money, corn and cannon, and after their return the Queen accordingly resolved to leave her husband at Cérines, and seek assistance in the West. On this journey, however, between Cyprus and Rhodes, her galley was stopped and pillaged by the Venetians, while some Mameluke prisoners, who were on board, cut the rigging and nearly murdered the Queen. Even thirty years later the Republic had not paid the damages due for this high-handed act of piracy911. At last, under the escort of Sor de Naves, the Sicilian governor of Cérines, the Queen arrived at Ostia in the second half of October, 1461, and proceeded up the Tiber till she reached St Paul-outside-the-walls. There she landed, and was met by the Cardinals, who escorted her to the city, where she took up her temporary residence at San Ciriaco912, the church mentioned by the British visitor of 1450, Capgrave, recently introduced to our notice, and which was the predecessor of Sta Maria degli Angeli in the Baths of Diocletian. We have in the Commentaries913 of Pius II an interesting description of the royal suppliant on the occasion of her first audience with the Pope. She appeared to be twenty-four years of age, she was of a mediocre height, and dressed like a Frenchwoman, her eyes sparkled with fire, and her tongue was “like a torrent.” It seems possible, however, that the Holy Father may have exaggerated her volubility, owing to the fact that she spoke in a language which was not his own. For to the end of her days, Queen Charlotte, although she could write French, Italian, and perhaps Latin, was unable to speak French and always used Greek, the language of her mother. Indeed, in the most important business transactions of her life, she resorted to an interpreter, whom we may be surprised to find a man of English extraction—not the last occasion, I fear, on which treaties relating to the Eastern question have been negotiated by persons imperfectly acquainted with the language in which they were negotiating. The Queen humbly kissed the Pope’s feet, and on the next day delivered a set speech to him through the medium of a translator. She began by firing off a well-worn tag from the Æneid, which doubtless tickled the palate of the classical Æneas Sylvius, whom she saw before her. “My first husband,” she said, “is dead; my second is besieged: whether he be alive or dead, I do not know. Cérines is our only refuge; on the way hither the Venetians have robbed me. I can stand no more voyages by sea; I have neither horses nor money for a journey by land.”

The Pope, who had refused to receive officially the envoys of her rival, bade the Queen be of good cheer, for he would not desert her. “You are expiating,” he replied, “the faults of your father-in-law, who declined to offer Us aid against the Turks, and of your husband, who would not even take the trouble to meet Us when We were at Mantua. So We said, ‘the House of Savoy despises the Church’”—a remark which might have been taken from a clerical newspaper of our own day. Pius II concluded by the promise of horses and money for the journey to her father-in-law’s Court in Savoy. She remained on this occasion some ten days more in Rome, until she had seen the chief churches and had had four or five audiences with the Pope, who gave her much corn and wine for revictualling Cérines and twelve horses and 200 ducats for her journey. On November 5 she wrote from San Ciriaco to the Florentine Republic, stating that her business with the Pope was terminated, and asking for a passport for the dominions of Florence. On the 20th she reached Bologna, where she was lodged gratis at the “Osteria del Leone914,” and whence she proceeded by way of Venice and Milan to Savoy. The Duke of Milan and the Council of Geneva gave her a good reception; but her father-in-law told her plainly that the connection with Cyprus had “exhausted” his Duchy, and complaint was afterwards made of the expense of entertaining her for nearly four months at Lausanne and Thonon, where the Court then was. Her appeals to the King of Aragon and to Pierre-Raymond Zacosta, the new Grand Master, were in vain; so, after bequeathing the Crown of Cyprus to the House of Savoy in the event of her death without heirs, the indomitable Queen returned in September of 1462 to her island, and shut herself up once more in the royal apartments at Cérines. Having obtained so little from the Christian Powers, she sent the Count of Jaffa to ask the aid of Mohammed II, offering to pay tribute and to surrender a city of the island to the Turks—a fact, which is probably the origin of the erroneous statement of the Greek historian, Phrantzes915, that Mohammed II rendered Cyprus tributary. The Sultan’s reply was to order her envoy to be sawn asunder. Meanwhile, her craven husband had abandoned Cérines and fled to Rhodes, whence he returned to Savoy in 1464. At last, when the garrison of Cérines was reduced to eat the cats that prowled along the battlements, the Queen likewise sought refuge in Rhodes, whither many of her knights and vassals accompanied her. Sor de Naves surrendered the castle to her relentless enemy, who thus, in October, 1463, was King of all Cyprus, save where the Banca di San Giorgio still held Famagosta.

The heroic Queen did not despair of recovering her Kingdom. She wrote from Rhodes a year later to her husband, urging him to send assistance, and telling him that her poverty alone prevented her from reconquering it. But Louis had had enough of both his consort and his castles, as the Italian chronicler916 tells us, and remained for the rest of his life, which ended in 1482, in his native land, without occupying himself with either. Queen Charlotte continued to reside for several years in Rhodes, whence she could watch Cypriote politics and where she received a monthly allowance from the Order. The Holy See continued to recognise her as lawful sovereign of Cyprus; and in 1471, when the usurper sent the Archbishop of Nicosia to Rome to ask the Pope to crown him King and to give him in marriage the hand of Princess Zoe, daughter of Thomas Palaiologos and then a young widow, living there under the care of Cardinal Bessarion, His Holiness refused both requests. This is the version of the contemporary Greek chronicler; but the Italian annalist cynically remarks that the Pope agreed to crown him if he would marry the Holy Father’s niece, but that when the King of Cyprus saw the lady’s portrait and heard her habits, he declined the crown on such terms. Instead, he married the famous Catherine Cornaro, who in 1489 brought the Kingdom of Cyprus to Venice.

Upon the death of the bastard in 1473, we find Queen Charlotte renewing her attempts to recover the island. She then waited at Rhodes, and endeavoured to negotiate with the Sultan of Egypt, who arrested her envoy, and with the Venetian Admiral then in the Levant, who plainly told her that he marvelled at her ignorance of the fact that kingdoms were obtained by might not by right, and that Catherine Cornaro was the adopted daughter of his government. A plot to deliver Cérines to her failed; and, although there was a party in the island favourable to her, most of the Cypriotes preferred the Venetians, as being better able to protect them. Venice ordered her exclusion from the coveted kingdom, many of her followers abandoned her, when they found that all chance of a restoration was over, and in 1475 she settled at Rome in the Palazzo Spinola, or dei Convertendi, in the Piazza Scossa Cavalli, where from September, 1476, Sixtus IV gave her a monthly allowance of 200 ducats. But in her Roman exile she did not abandon her schemes for the recovery of Cyprus. She had adopted Alonzo, son of Ferdinand I, King of Naples, and her plan was to proceed to Cairo on a Genoese galley, and thence, with the aid of the Sultan of Egypt, to recapture her throne. The Sultan actually invested her with the crown, and Venice was so much alarmed that a Venetian envoy was authorised to proceed to Rome, and offer her an annuity of 5000 ducats, if she would consent to reside on Venetian territory. Her schemes failed; she returned to Rome in 1482, and continued to be the honoured pensioner of the Pope. Such was the honour which he showed her, that in November, 1483, on the occasion of an audience, she was granted a seat “neither less distinguished nor lower than the chair of the Pontiff”—a mark of attention, so the contemporary diarist917 remarks, “which was not approved by some.” On February 25, 1485, she ceded the Kingdom of Cyprus to her nephew Charles, Duke of Savoy, whose descendants, the present Italian dynasty, have thus inherited from her the titles of Kings of Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia. This document was executed in the presence of several Cardinals, of her Cypriote confessor, and of her councillor, James Langlois, who acted as interpreter. In return for this act of cession, the Duke agreed to pay to his aunt, as long as she remained in Rome, an annual pension of 4300 florins and to provide her with a residence worthy of her rank. A subsequent deed charged this pension upon the rates of Nice. The Queen did not long enjoy this annuity; on July 16, 1487, she died at her Roman residence of paralysis, and was buried in St Peter’s “near the chapel of St Andrew and St Gregory,” and not far from the spot, where, eleven years before, her faithful Chamberlain, Hugh Langlois, lord of Beirût, had been laid to rest. Eleven Cardinals were present at the mass held in St Peter’s for the repose of her soul; but her body was not allowed to rest permanently where it had been placed. In 1610, at the time of the destruction of the old basilica by Paul V, her tomb was opened, when it was found to contain the remains of a woman of moderate height, a few pieces of black silk, and some gilded buckles918. These remains were then re-interred in their present resting-place in the crypt of St Peter’s, where a slab in the pavement bears the simple inscription: “Karola Hierlm̅ Cipri et Armenie Regina obiit XVI Julii an D. MCCCCLXXXVII.” Other memorials of the exiled Queen of Cyprus still exist in Rome. One of the pictures (no. XXXI) in the Santo Spirito hospital represents her as kneeling before Sixtus IV, and the inscription below describes how “Charlotte, Queen of Cyprus, despoiled of her kingdom and her fortune, flees as a suppliant to Sixtus IV, and is received by him with the utmost benignity and munificence.” Torrigio adds, that on this occasion the voluble Queen felt unequal to the task of expressing her admiration for and gratitude to her benefactor. I think it is possible to identify the personages who are depicted behind the kneeling Queen. The two divines are probably John Chafforicios, her confessor, and Lodovico Podochatoro, a member of a well-known Cypriote family, who became secretary of Alexander VI and a Cardinal, and whose monument is still admired in Sta Maria del Popolo. The laymen are, I would suggest, Hugh Bousat and his wife, Charlotte Cantacuzene de Flory, daughter of the Count of Jaffa, who were her pensioners and who were in receipt of a small papal allowance as late as 1513, and Philip Langlois, who lived about 40 years in Rome, and was granted an annuity of 15 ducats from Julius II, increased to 20 in that year. The vestments, altar cloths, and the four lbs. of silver, which the Queen bequeathed to St Peter’s, have disappeared, but another proof of her piety is to be found in her entry, recorded in Latin by her own hand, into the Confraternity of the Santo Spirito on March 27, 1478. An example of the seal, which she used in Rome, is preserved in Turin, and reproduces the streamers of the Cypriote Order of the Sword, while her two rare coins are, I believe, in the King of Italy’s collection. Her little band of courtiers lingered on for many years here; Innocent VIII recommended them to the charity of the Duke of Savoy as distinguished by lineage and virtue; and one of them, Giorgio Flatro, by marrying his daughter to Pietro Aldobrandini, became the ancestor of Clement VIII. As late as January 1520, Leo X assigned 70 ducats out of the alum-mines of Tolfa to two other Cypriotes of the lineage of Lusignan—Eugène and John, natural sons of Queen Charlotte’s rival, whom the cautious Venetian Republic had removed from Cyprus with their mother and sister in 1477, and had imprisoned in the castle of Padua, lest they should embarrass Catherine Cornaro919. This is another example of papal generosity, which contrasts with the selfish conduct of the Venetian Republic, and incidentally disproves the statement of Count Mas Latrie920, that the two illegitimate sons of James II died at Padua, where their sister is buried.

Another exiled Queen was living in Rome at the same time as Charlotte of Cyprus, and, like her, died and was buried here. Most visitors to this city have seen the tomb of the Queen Dowager Catherine of Bosnia in Ara Cœli; but perhaps her story is less familiar, because the very interesting history of Bosnia is little known. Queen Catherine was the daughter of Stephen Vuktchich, the Duke of St Sava, from whom the Herzegovina derives its name, and boasted her descent through her mother Helen from the mediæval Princes and Tsars of Serbia. Like her father and most of the Bosnian rulers and nobles of the fifteenth century, she belonged to the Bogomile or Patarene heresy, which corresponded with the Albigensian heresy of Provence, which coloured several centuries of Bosnian history, largely contributed to the Turkish conquest of that country, and survived there in the case of one family down to the memory of persons still living. Owing, however, to the efforts of the papal legate, the young Princess was converted to Catholicism probably at the time of her marriage in 1445, or 1446, to King Stephen Thomas of Bosnia. A Slav poet has commemorated her beauty and sung of her wedding; but her fate was hard, and many a tragedy was in store for her. To marry her, Stephen Thomas had put away his first wife, a woman of obscure birth, whom his proud barons would not accept as their Queen, and it was the discarded consort’s son, Stephen Tomashevich, who murdered him to obtain the crown on July 10, 1461, assassination or abdication being the usual alternative of Balkan monarchs. Thus, at the age of 37, Catherine was left a widow, with two children of her own, Sigismund and Catherine. In view, however, of the political situation, the stepmother and the stepson agreed to bury the past, and the Queen Dowager remained in Bosnia till the fall of the Kingdom in 1463. Both her children were then captured by the Turks and forced to embrace Islâm, while she managed to escape to the Republic of Ragusa, where the authorities offered her an annual rent for the land and houses of her late husband, and where she presented “marvellous choral books,” destroyed by fire in 1667, to the Franciscan convent. Thence she crossed the Adriatic and came to Rome, where we find her in receipt of a monthly pension of 100 ducats from 1466. In addition to this, Pope Paul II paid to one Jacopo Mentebone, a Roman citizen, a sum of 20 ducats a month from October, 1467, “for the rent of a house let with all the necessary utensils to the Queen of Bosnia.” At the time of her death, she was residing “near the Church of San Marco de Urbe in the Rione Pigna,” surrounded by a considerable court of faithful Slavs, and she was a personage of importance, figuring for example at the wedding of Zoe Palaiologina in 1472. She had, however, bitter disappointments. Her father, the Duke of St Sava, who died in 1466, cut her out of his will; the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, whom she begged to lend her money for ransoming her children, declined to assist her. After a twelve years’ residence here, she felt her end approaching, and on October 20, 1478, made her last testament, a very curious document of great political interest. After directing that she should be buried in the church of Ara Cœli, she expressed the hope, that one day the Kingdom of Bosnia would once more submit to Christian rule—an aspiration accomplished in October, 1908. Meanwhile, mindful of the munificence of the Holy See and of the benefits which she had received from Paul II and Sixtus IV, who had always treated her hospitably, helping her according to her royal dignity with an annual pension and provision sufficient for her necessities, she bequeathed her kingdom in trust to the Holy See, until such time as her son or her daughter should return “from the vomit of Mahomet” to the true faith. Should they, however, remain Mohammedans, then Bosnia was to be at the absolute disposition of the Pope and his successors. It was this clause which prompted a well-known Slavonic journalist in Rome to announce immediately after the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia in 1908, that the Emperor Francis Joseph would receive the Bosnian crown, as the last native King of Bosnia had received it, from the hands of the Pope. Having thus disposed of her phantom kingdom, Catherine proceeded to bequeath the rest of her real and personal property to the three faithful ladies-in-waiting, Paola Mirkovich, Helena Sempovich and Maria Misglenovich, who had shared her Roman exile. To the first she also left a legacy of 50 ducats, a dress of black satin lined with squirrel, and another of black cloth lined with lynx; to the second 25 ducats and a long gown of black cloth with a lining of marten-skin; to the third 30 ducats and a long, simple gown of black cloth. To her major-domo, Radich Klesich, she left 50 ducats, a scimitar inlaid with silver, and a Turkish dress of red silk woven with gold, as well as a sum of 38 ducats, which she had borrowed from him; to her servants, George Zubravich and Abraham Radich, respectively 50 and 30 ducats. To her son Sigismund she bequeathed his father’s sword, inlaid with silver; but, if he remained an infidel, the precious heirloom was to pass to her nephew Balsha, whom we find thirty years later as titular “Duke of St Sava.” To both her children she also left a silver dagger, two cups and two tankards of silver, with lids inlaid with emeralds. To the church of Ara Cœli she devised her royal mantle of cloth of gold and a silk dossal of divers colours for the altar, which had been used in her private chapel; to the hospital of San Gerolamo degli Schiavoni all the furniture and sacred vessels of the latter. The relics in her possession she bequeathed to the Franciscan church of St Catherine at Jajce—a church in which she had always been deeply interested. In 1458, at her request, and again in 1462, Pius II had granted indulgences to all who visited this church, which was believed to contain the body of St Luke, brought thither from the castle of Rogus in Epeiros921, and of which a beautiful Italian campanile still remains. Finally, after naming her executors, she directed that her will, together with the royal sword, should be presented to the Cardinal bishop of Porto, the vice-chancellor of the Church, then Rodrigo Borgia, afterwards Pope Alexander VI.

Five days later the testatrix died, and was buried in Ara Cœli, as she had directed. It is said that over her grave was placed a Slavonic inscription, which ran as follows: “To the Bosnian Queen Catherine, daughter of Stephen, Duke of St Sava, and of the race of Helen of the house of Tsar Stephen, and wife of the Bosnian King Thomas, who lived 54 years and died in Rome October 25, 1478, this Monument was erected by her own written orders.” This Slavonic inscription has, however, long ago disappeared. It was fortunately copied by Palatino922 in 1535 as an example of Slavonic writing from the monument in Ara Cœli, with an accurate Latin version. Casimiro Romano923, the historian of that church, states that the monument of Queen Catherine, with that of Cardinal Alibret, was moved from the floor of the presbytery in front of the high altar in 1590 to its present position on a pillar behind an ambon to the left as one faces the altar. The Slavonic inscription was probably then lost and the present Latin inscription substituted. This latter corresponds with neither the Slavonic text nor the truth; for it describes how “To Catherine, the Bosnian Queen, sister of Stephen, Duke of St Sava, born of the race of Helen and of the house of Prince Stephen, wife of Thomas, King of Bosnia, who lived 54 years and fell asleep at Rome on October 25, 1478, this monument was erected by her own written orders.” This inscription was obviously composed by someone ignorant of her genealogy, for she was the daughter, not the “sister” of Duke Stephen, and the word sorori is probably a misunderstanding of the Slav poroda (“race”). On either side of her head is a coat of arms, that of her husband and that of her father. The latter is so greatly worn, that it can no longer be distinguished, but the former, which I examined from a ladder, still shows, on a close inspection, the two crowns and the two horsemen, but not the mailed arm with the sword, which was in the centre, as may be seen from the representation of this monument in Ciacconius’ Lives and Acts of the Popes and Cardinals. The two crowns in the quarterings are those of Bosnia and Serbia, for from 1376 the Bosnian Kings always styled themselves also Kings of Serbia; the arm with the sword represents Primorje, or “the Coastland”—also a part of the Bosnian royal title; the two horsemen are the Kotromanich emblem. Considering the worn appearance of the actual monument, and the sharply cut lettering of the Latin inscription, I think that the latter can never have been placed on the floor of the church, but was a later addition, cut at a time when the Slavonic inscription was misunderstood, or perhaps even mislaid. It is said by Luccari924, the old historian of Ragusa, that another portrait of Queen Catherine exists in Rome, and is to be found in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican, where a woman in the foreground may perhaps be the Queen.

The Pope did not forget the household of the testatrix. From the next month after her death her three ladies, Paola, Helena, and Maria, with a fourth named Praxina, received 14 ducats monthly from the papal treasury. Her will did not, however, prevent him from recognising another person as King of Bosnia. One of the paintings (No. 27) in the Santo Spirito hospital represents the visit of “the King of Bosnia and Wallachia” to the Pope, and the inscription adds how this monarch “although exhausted by age visits the thresholds of the Apostles and submissively venerates Sixtus IV by kissing his feet.” It does not seem to have occurred to anyone to ask who this mysterious personage was, although the last native King of Bosnia had been killed eight years before the accession of Sixtus IV, and the conjunction of the crowns of Bosnia and Wallachia is curious. It is not difficult, however, to identify this sovereign. One of the old books, which alludes to the picture, calls him “N.” which is the initial of Nicholas of Ilok on the Danube (the place where Prince Odescalchi’s Hungarian castle is situated). This great magnate, when the Hungarians temporarily captured Jajce from the Turks, received from Matthias Corvinus in 1471 the title of “King of Bosnia”—by which he is described in papal documents925 of 1475-6. As he was also voivode of Transylvania, whose inhabitants were Wallachs, he is called also “King of Wallachia” in the inscription. His visit to Rome may be fixed from a letter of Sixtus IV, dated May 2, 1475, in which he is stated as having been “lately present.” Doubtless, he came for the Jubilee of that year, and this is the explanation of Wadding’s erroneous statement, that Queen Catherine did not come to Rome till 1475.

Another Slavonic sovereign sought refuge in Rome. This was Stephen Brankovich, Despot of Serbia, who had been blinded by Murad II years before, and who, after the fall of his country had sought a refuge with Skanderbeg, the heroic champion of the Albanians. There he married Angelina, sister-in-law of Skanderbeg and daughter of Giorgio Arianiti, a great Albanian chieftain. As the struggle in Albania became more and more desperate, Skanderbeg, at the end of 1465, came to Rome to ask the aid of Paul II, who received him with extraordinary honours, due to one who was “the first soldier of Jesus Christ.” A memorial of his stay here is the Vicolo Scanderbeg, where the house, No. 116, bears his portrait over the door with the following inscription: “Geor. Castriota A. Scanderbeg Princeps Epiri ad fidem iconis rest. an. Dom. MDCCCXLIII.” Thence, at the end of January, 1466, he returned to defend his fortress of Kroja, where two years later he died, and Albanian independence with him. Before that event the Serbian Despot had left him for Rome, for from December, 1467, he was drawing a papal pension of 40 ducats a month, continued to his widow from December, 1479. Here, too, her brother Costantino Arianiti found a living, becoming protonotary apostolic under Sixtus IV, who gave him a monthly pension of 32 ducats from October, 1476, increased to 40 from November, 1479—not, indeed, much to keep up the position of one who styled himself “Prince of Macedonia.”

The Turkish annexation of the County Palatine of Cephalonia in 1479 brought another band of Oriental exiles to Rome. The Tocco family, however, which had ruled over the dominions of Ulysses for more than a century, had gone from Benevento to Greece, and Leonardo III was, therefore, merely returning to the land of his forebears. On February 29, 1480, he arrived in Rome with his son Carlo and his brothers Giovanni and Antonio. A man so well connected was sure of a good reception—for he had married a niece of King Ferdinand of Naples, while the Pope’s nephew had married his sister-in-law, and he was himself related to the Imperial houses of both Byzantium and Serbia. Accordingly, the Cardinals’ servants met him outside the Lateran Gate and escorted him to the house which he had hired between the Via Pellicciaria and the Botteghe Oscure. Sixtus IV, whose predecessor had already given him periodical sums of 1000 to 1200 ducats from 1466, gave him 1000 gold pieces and promised him 2000 a year—an event commemorated by another of the paintings in the Santo Spirito hospital, where we are shown how the Pope “nourished with his royal bounty the rulers of the Peloponnese and of Epeiros, Andrew Palaiologos and Leonardo Tocco.” After staying rather more than a month here, he returned to Naples, leaving his natural son, Ferdinando, behind him—a spirited youth, who once said in the hearing of the diarist, Volaterranus, “though we have lost our rings, we have still got our fingers entire.” Leonardo received valuable fiefs in the south of Italy, but died in Rome under the pontificate of Alexander VI owing to the collapse of his house. His son Carlo III lived in the Via S. Marco, where, after enjoying a monthly pension, he died under Leo X, and we find that Pope paying monthly pensions of 60 and 32 ducats respectively to two other members of the family, Carlo’s sister Raymunda, Contessa de Mirandola, and his son and heir (Giovanni) Leonardo IV, Despot of Arta, and a small sum to Giovanni’s widow, Lucrezia926. The family of Tocco has only lately become extinct by the deaths of the Duca della Regina in 1908 and of his only son, the Duca di S. Angelo, in the motor accident near Cassino in 1907. At Naples in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele may still be seen a collection of the family portraits in the fine old Palazzo del Santo Piede (now Troise) so-called, from the foot of St Anna, which Leonardo III brought with him from Greece.

The heirs of the Palaiologoi were less fortunate than those of Leonardo Tocco. Upon the death of Thomas, Cardinal Bessarion drew up a scheme of education for his children, to whom the Pope continued his allowance. He laid it down, that they must not have an expensive retinue, like their father, but that they must be brought up by Latin priests as Latins. They were allowed a Greek doctor, one Kritopoulos, but were to dress like Franks and to show the utmost reverence to the Cardinals. They were to be taught to walk with dignity, to speak in a soft voice, not to stare about them, not to boast of their Imperial lineage but to remember that they were exiles and strangers, forced to live on charity. They were to learn by heart a humble address to the Pope, to talk little, never to laugh, and to acquire the art of kneeling with elegance. In short, they were to be perfect prigs. The result of Bessarion’s educational programme was what might have been expected. Zoe, or Sophia, indeed, soon escaped his tutelage by marrying a Caracciolo, after being regarded as a suitable bride for James II of Cyprus. The historian Phrantzes, an old and tried friend of the family, who was then in Rome on a visit, speaks with enthusiasm of the generosity of the bridegroom. Soon left a widow, and again wooed by the Cypriote King, she married by proxy in St Peter’s in 1472 the Grand Duke Ivan III of Russia—a ceremony commemorated by the above-mentioned painting in the Santo Spirito hospital, in which, besides relieving Leonardo Tocco, Sixtus IV is described as presenting “Sophia, daughter of Thomas Palaiologos, married to the Duke of the Ruthenians, with a dowry of 6000 gold pieces and other gifts927.” These latter included 4400 ducats for her travelling expenses to Russia, whither many of the family’s retainers followed her, and where, in consequence of her Imperial origin, her husband took the title of Tsar. But her brother Andrew, who remained all his life a hanger-on of the papal court, profited little by Bessarion’s precepts. Falling into dissolute habits, he married a disreputable woman named Catherine; his garments moved the pity or contempt of the Romans; his allowance was reduced, he was relegated to a back seat at papal functions; and, after ceding all his rights to Charles VIII of France at San Pietro in Montorio, he died at Rome in 1502 in such misery that his widow had to beg his funeral expenses from the Pope. His portrait is supposed to be represented in a lunette of the third room of the Borgia apartments, where is also that of the Turkish Prince Djem, younger son of Mohammed II, and so long the prisoner of the Vatican. Thus the son of the conqueror of Constantinople and the nephew of its gallant defender are both depicted in the same room.

Besides these exiled Princes, a number of Greek authors found a permanent or temporary home in Rome, whither their famous fellow-countryman, Bessarion of Trebizond, had preceded them. Created a Cardinal in 1439 for his services to the Union of the Churches, he had shortly afterwards settled in a house to the right of the church of the SS. Apostoli, which gave him his title, and his abode became a literary centre, where Greeks and Italians alike congregated. Theodore Gazes of Salonika, George of Trebizond, and Nicholas Saguntino of Eubœa frequented his house, and another Greek man of letters, Andronikos Kallistos, lived with him, till poverty forced him to migrate to Florence and thence to England, where he died. But with the exception of Bessarion, who rose to be titular Archbishop of Nice and Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, as well as bishop of Tusculum, and who narrowly missed being elected Pope on the death of Paul II, these learned fugitives met with the usual fate of scholars. Sometimes their misfortunes were their own fault. Thus George of Trebizond, a man who could not endure criticism, quarrelled with his patron over the rival merits of Plato and Aristotle, with Gazes over their respective translations of the maestro di color che sanno, and with Valla over the pre-eminence of Cicero over Quintilian; at last, this cantankerous old man, the scourge of all authors except Aristotle, crept about Rome in rags supported by a stick, till he found near his humble abode a rest in the church of Sta Maria sopra Minerva, where the inscription on his tomb has long been illegible. His adversary Gazes, for whom Bessarion had obtained a benefice in Magna Græcia, retired thither in disgust, because Sixtus IV paid him only 50 gold pieces for his translation of Aristotle’s Natural History of Animals. Of Bessarion we have still several memorials: the tomb which he erected during his lifetime in the monastery of the SS. Apostoli, the cup which now belongs to the Greek monastery of Grottaferrata, of which he was Abbot commandatory; the beautiful little house, called the casino di Bessarione on the Via Appia within the city near the church of SS. Nereus and Achillios. This “vineyard within the walls of the city in loco qui dicitur S. Cæsarii in Turri sub proprietate ejusdem monasterii S. Cæsarii928,” he bequeathed in 1467 with his property at “Cecchignola nova extra portam Appii,” on the right of the Via Ardeatina, to the chapel of S. Eugenia in the SS. Apostoli. When the Zona archeologica was being made in 1910, it was proposed to destroy this picturesque house, then an inn, but now deserted; but it was happily spared, after a protest. Argyropoulos, the translator of Aristotle, who died here in 1486, has been immortalised by Ghirlandajo in the Sistine Chapel, where he is the original of the bearded old man in the scene of the calling of the first disciples, and also in the Cancelleria929. The list of these literary wanderers may fitly close with Janus Laskaris, the Greek grammarian, founder of a Greek school at the foot of the Quirinal, whose tomb lies not far from the heart of O’Connell in S. Agata in Subura, where a touching epitaph expresses the mingled joys and sorrows of a Roman exile.

5. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099-1291

No event of the late war was so dramatic, or has made such a powerful appeal to the imagination, as the liberation of Jerusalem on December 9, 1917, after a Moslem occupation of 673 years. While the name of Athens is full of meaning for the cultured alone, and many excellent citizens are not quite sure “whether the Greeks or the Romans came first,” that of Jerusalem is known in every peasant’s cottage of Christendom and represents the aspirations of an ancient race scattered all over the globe. But to us Anglo-Saxons the redemption of the Holy City has special significance, because a British general at the head of a force gathered from every part of the British Empire, and aided by our French and Italian allies, has repeated the achievement of Godfrey of Bouillon and the Crusaders, among them a brother of the King of England, and Edgar Etheling, the descendant of our Saxon line, in 1099, and has accomplished what even our lion-hearted monarch failed to do in 1192, and our soldierly Prince Edward in 1271. Thus the aspiration of the poet of Gerusalemme Liberata,

Sottrare i Cristiani al giogo indegno;
Fondando in Palestina un novo regno (I. 23),

has been realised by Britons from lands whose very existence was unknown at the time of the Crusades.

The present essay is not intended to be a drum-and-trumpet history of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and its almost constant wars, but an account of the organisation and social life of the Crusading kingdom. First, as to its extent. The Kingdom of Jerusalem attained its zenith at the end of the reign of Baldwin II in 1131, when it stretched from the Egyptian frontier at El-ʿArîsh, “the river of Egypt” of the Book of Numbers, on the south-west, and from Aila, the modern ʿAkaba (on the gulf of the same name), the Eloth of the First Book of Kings, and the site of Solomon’s Red Sea naval station, on the south-east, to the stream now called Nahr Ibrahîm, which flows into the sea between Beirût and Giblet, the modern Jebeil—about 300 miles as the crow flies. To the east the kingdom rarely overstepped the Jordan except at the triangle of Banias, the ancient Cæsarea Philippi; indeed, in the north it was only thirteen miles broad, but in the Dead Sea region it attained a breadth of 100 miles. This did not, however, comprise the whole of the Latin territory. To the north of the above-mentioned stream stretched the county of Tripolis, of which the foundations were laid by Count Raymond of Toulouse in 1102, to the rivulet, now called Wâdi-Mehika, between Maraclée and Valénia (the modern Bâniyâs), which flowed at the foot of the castle of Margat—a further distance of about 100 miles. From that rivulet began the Principality of Antioch, whose first Prince was, in 1098, Bohemond of Taranto, and which at one time extended almost to Aleppo in the east and embraced a large slice of the Kingdom of Armenia almost as far west as Tarsus, but latterly extended no farther north than a little beyond Alexandretta. On the north-east it was bounded until 1144 by the County of Edessa, the modern Urfa, founded by Baldwin I in 1098, which began at the forest of Marris and extended eastward beyond the Euphrates; but, owing to the permanent state of war, in which the forty-six years of its existence were passed, it never had any fixed boundaries. Thus, a Syrian writer could truly say that, in 1129, “everything was subject to the Franks, from Mardîn and Schabachtana to El ʿArîsh,” far more than the “Dan to Beersheba” of the Israelites930.

The first diminution of the Crusading States was the loss of the County of Edessa in 1144. In 1170, at the other extremity, they were cut off from the Red Sea by the capture of Aila. Jerusalem and most of the kingdom, except Tyre and a few fortresses, fell before Saladin in 1187, after the battle of Hattin, which the Crusaders identified with the site of the Sermon on the Mount, and the greater part of the Principality of Antioch and of the County of Tripolis in the next year. By the treaty of 1192, the Christians obtained the coast from Tyre to Jaffa; and Frederick II, by the so-called “bad peace” of 1229, recovered the Holy City, except two mosques, the two other towns—Bethlehem and Nazareth—most closely associated with the life of our Lord, and all the chief pilgrimage roads. Fifteen years later, however, the Kharezmians, a Turkish tribe, finally captured Jerusalem, murdered the Latin Christians, and desecrated the Holy Sepulchre and the tombs of the Latin Kings. Saladin, in 1187, had treated Jerusalem as an English gentleman would; the Kharezmians treated it in the German fashion.

The battle of Gaza completed the disaster of 1244. From that time the recovery of Jerusalem was manifestly impossible. The Crusade of the saintly Louis IX was a failure; that of our Prince Edward was weakly supported, ended in a separate peace, concluded by the people of Acre against his will, and was only remarkable for one of the most beautiful stories of conjugal devotion in English history. Meanwhile Antioch had fallen in 1268 before Beibars, the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt; and Jaffa had entered upon the long captivity from which our armies at last redeemed it on November 17, 1917. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was thenceforth a mere phantom of its former self. Kings of Cyprus were crowned Kings of Jerusalem at Tyre, with all the pomp and splendour of the Middle Ages; Acre continued to be, as it had been since its recapture by Cœur-de-Lion, the capital of Frankish Palestine, where even on the eve of its fall, as a traveller931 tells us, dwelt “the richest merchants under Heaven, gathered from all nations, where resided the King of Jerusalem and many members of his family, the Princes of Galilee and Antioch, the lords of Tyre, Tiberias and Sidon, the Counts of Tripolis and Jaffa, all walking about the squares with their golden coronets on their heads.”

There, too, were the headquarters of the Military Orders, the Templars, the Knights of St John, the Brothers of the German House, and the Masters and Brothers of St Thomas of Canterbury. But the end of this carnival of Kings and Princes in exile was at hand. Since the second capture of Jerusalem, the kingdom had been slowly but surely dying, as its inhabitants knew full well. Signs and wonders foretold to the pious the coming catastrophe; shrewd business men hastened to sell their property in the doomed country. Tripolis followed the fate of Antioch in 1289; Acre, Tyre, Sidon and Beirût were taken by Melik-el-Aschraf, the Sultan of Egypt, in 1291; and, with the fall of the last two strongholds of the Templars, Tortosa and Château Pèlerin, ended the rule of the Franks in Palestine. In Gibbon’s phrase, “A mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the world’s debate.”

Let us now see how Frankish Palestine was organised. At the head of the Latin Kingdom stood the King. During the first three reigns the monarchy was elective; and it was not till 1131 that it became hereditary, as Baldwin II was the first sovereign who left progeny. When the Crusaders entered Jerusalem, the election of their first ruler was by means of an examination, from which few of us would emerge unscathed. The electors questioned the servants of the various candidates about their masters’ morals and characters. Godfrey’s attendants stated that their master’s chief defect was, that he would linger on in church, after the service was over, asking questions about the images and pictures, and thereby making his household late for meals, “which thus lost all their relish932.” But this interest in ecclesiastical archæology, which seemed such a drawback to the hungry men-at-arms, was counted as a recommendation by the pious electors, and Godfrey was elected. He declined, however, to take the title of King, preferring that of “Protector of the Holy Sepulchre,” and refusing to wear a golden crown in the city where Our Lord had worn a crown of thorns933. His modesty was also probably due to a tactful desire to disarm the opposition of the clergy, who had desired that Jerusalem should not have a lay ruler. He died, however, next year, and Baldwin I, Count of Edessa, his brother, who was elected his successor, then took the title of King, but salved his conscience by being crowned not in Jerusalem, but at Bethlehem. Baldwin II’s daughter, Mélisende, and her husband, Fulk, were the first to be crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, where was also the royal mausoleum. Adelaide, Baldwin I’s Queen, is buried at Patti. During the Moslem occupation of Jerusalem the King was crowned at Tyre; and, when the whole of the Holy Land was lost, the Kings of Cyprus, who were titular Kings of Jerusalem, assumed the former crown at Nicosia and the latter at Famagosta. From Queen Charlotte of Cyprus, in 1485, the title passed to Duke Charles of Savoy, and thus to the present Italian dynasty.

The Latin sovereigns of Jerusalem were mostly above the average in character and intelligence. Bravery and piety were essential to their position as chiefs of a crusading colony in the midst of a hostile country. Godfrey “excelled his contemporaries in the handling of arms and in all the exercises of chivalry”; Baldwin I was described in his epitaph as “a second Judas Maccabæus”—a comparison confirmed by his warlike achievements; of Baldwin II we are told, that “his memory was blessed by all, because of the excellence of his faith and the glorious deeds which ennobled his reign.” Baldwin III was also a lover of literature and a graceful speaker, of whom a Moslem rival said that “there was not such another king in the world.” His brother, Amaury I, prompted Archbishop William of Tyre to compose his valuable history, and both these sovereigns possessed considerable legal knowledge. The Archbishop’s pupil, Baldwin IV, was unfortunately a leper, and Baldwin V died in his boyhood. Fulk was generous and experienced in warfare, but signally lacked the common royal faculty of remembering faces. Queen Mélisende, who was the real ruler in her husband’s lifetime, was an excellent woman of business, of whom it was said that “she had in her bosom the heart of a man934”; indeed, so masterful was she, that on one occasion her son had to besiege her in the Tower of David. Unfortunately, Guy de Lusignan, who was King at the moment of Saladin’s fatal attack, was notoriously inferior to the task of saving his wife’s kingdom. Had he not been so good-looking and so irresistible to Princess Sibylla, the fall of Jerusalem might have been at least postponed.

Society was constructed by the crusaders on feudal lines. According to the thirteenth century edition of the Assises de la Haute Cour, by Jean d’Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, one of Godfrey’s first acts was to appoint a commission to enquire from men of various nationalities then in Jerusalem the usages of their respective countries. From the report of this commission were drawn up the usages and assizes of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including a High Court, presided over by the King, for the nobility; a “Court de la Borgesie,” presided over by an officer styled the “Vicomte,” for the middle class; and a third court, under an official, called “rays,” for the Syrians. As time went on, these usages were modified; and, at the arrival of each large batch of new crusaders, the King used to assemble the Patriarch and other notables at Acre, and enquire from the newcomers about their laws, while occasionally special missions of investigation were sent abroad. The written original of the Assises was called the Letres dou Sepulcre, because it was deposited in a large chest in the Holy Sepulchre; and, whenever a moot point arose, this chest was opened in the presence of nine persons, including the King, or his deputy, and the Patriarch, or the Prior of the Holy Sepulchre935. The Assizes of Jerusalem, of which the Assises de la Cour des Bourgeois have also been preserved, are the most endurable monument of the Franks in Palestine, and not in Palestine alone; for they formed the basis of the Assizes of Cyprus, and of the feudal organisation of the Principality of Achaia.

William of Tyre expressly tells us936 that the Counts of Tripolis were always lieges of the King of Jerusalem. But the Princes of Antioch (which had its own code) and the Counts of Edessa seem to have merely recognised him as primum inter pares by virtue of his possession of the Holy City, and the Princes of Antioch, beginning with Bohemond himself, were at times reluctantly forced to confess themselves vassals of the Greek Emperor. Thus, the existence of four practically independent states, instead of one centralised government, and the consequent lack of what the Italians would call a fronte unico against the Infidels, formed one cause of the collapse of Frankish rule, notably in the case of Edessa, sacrificed to the jealousy of the Prince of Antioch. Moreover, feudal regulations impeded the exercise of the royal power. Not only were the lieges not obliged to perform military service outside the realm; not only had the King to consult a great council of magnates on all important questions—for we hear of Parliaments held in the Patriarch’s palace at Jerusalem, in a church at Acre, and at Tyre, Nâbulus and Bethlehem—but Baldwin I was forced to revoke an ordinance for the cleaning of the streets of Jerusalem, because he had omitted to ask the consent of the citizens. Thus, Frankish Jerusalem was a limited monarchy, and its King really only the first of the barons—a system unsuited to a state of almost constant war.

The kingdom proper contained four great baronies—the County of Jaffa and Ascalon, which comprised the fertile plain of Sharon; the seigneurie of Krak and Montréal, which lay in the biblical land of Moab to the east and south-east of the Dead Sea, and dominated the caravan-route from Syria to Egypt; the Principality of Galilee, of which the capital was Tabarie (the Tiberias of St John); and the seigneurie of Sidon, or Sagette. Besides these great baronies, upon which in turn smaller tenures depended, it also included twelve lesser fiefs, likewise directly dependent on the Crown, of which the most curious was that of St Abraham, the mediæval name of Hebron, and the most important that of Toron, founded by a member of the great crusading family of St Omer, which succeeded Tancred in the Principality of Galilee, but played an even more conspicuous part in Frankish Greece than in Frankish Palestine. The romantic title of Prince of Galilee survived at the Cypriote Court after the loss of the Holy Land; and a Lusignan bearing that scriptural name intervened in the tortuous politics of the Morea in the fourteenth century. Nazareth was naturally included in the Principality of Galilee; it was the See of an Archbishop, and was governed by a “Viscount.”

As in Greece, the Latin barons erected castles over the country; and the remains of some of these, particularly Krak de Montréal and Krak des Chevaliers, are among the finest specimens extant of mediæval military architecture, while others, notably that of the famous family of d’Ibelin at Beirût, were decorated with paintings and mosaics by Syrian and Greek artists. We may infer from the description of the castle of St Omer at Thebes in the Chronicle of the Morea, that the subject of these paintings may sometimes have been the Frankish Conquest of the Holy Land, in which the baronial family had taken part.

Each great feudatory presided over the high court of justice of his fief; and the Assizes enumerate twenty of them, besides the King and the Archbishop of Nazareth, who possessed the right of coinage. M. Schlumberger has published a number of these coins, among them those of Jerusalem, bearing a representation of the Holy Sepulchre, the Tower of David, or the Cupola of the Temple. The inscriptions on the coins of Edessa and on some of those of Antioch are in Greek—a proof of the preponderance of the Greek population there. Ecclesiastically, the Latin states of Syria were organised under two Patriarchs—those of Jerusalem and Antioch; and the first Archbishop of the kingdom was he of Tyre, whose function it was to crown the King in the Patriarch’s absence.

The Salic law did not obtain in the Holy Land; and as, by some mysterious law of population, common also to Frankish Greece, many noble families consisted of daughters only, women played an important part in the crusading states. On two occasions, the election of the Patriarch of Jerusalem (Amaury in 1159 and Heraclius in 1180) was due to female influence, and, on the second occasion the personal predilection of the Queen-Mother Agnes prevailed (to the great detriment of Church and State alike) over the disinterested advice of William of Tyre, who urged the election of a candidate from beyond the sea, and recalled an old prophecy that, as the Emperor Heraclius had brought the true cross to Jerusalem, so in the time of another Heraclius would it be lost—a prophecy verified at the battle of Hattin937. This was the Patriarch who visited London in 1185 to seek aid from Henry II, and consecrated the Priory of St John of Jerusalem at Clerkenwell, where a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the Holy City was recently held.

The competition for the hands of noble heiresses was another result of the extinction of families in the male line, and frequently caused serious political complications and encouraged penniless adventurers, like Guy de Lusignan, whose success aroused the jealousy of less fortunate rivals. Thus, the great disaster of Hattin, which led to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187, was indirectly due to the revenge of an Englishman, Girard de Rideford, for his failure as a suitor. He had come to the Holy Land as a knight-errant to make his fortune; and Count Raymond II of Tripolis had promised him the hand of his ward, the wealthy heiress of Boutron. A rich Pisan, however, arrived with a weighing-machine, placed the lady (probably an opulent beauty) in one scale and his money-bags in the other, and gave the Count her weight in gold. The baffled Briton became a Templar and rose to be Seneschal and Master of the Order, but never forgot how he had been cheated938, and persuaded the weak monarch to reject Raymond’s strategy on the eve of Hattin.

An even more romantic but equally fatal example was that of Renaud de Châtillon, who, coming to Palestine as a younger son to seek his fortune in the suite of Louis VII of France at the time of the second crusade, married the widowed Princess-Regent of Antioch, and governed the Principality for his stepson. Local gossips, and especially the Patriarch, criticised this mésalliance, whereupon the audacious Frenchman had the Patriarch stripped, smeared with honey, and exposed, a feast for the flies, during a long summer day. A born soldier of fortune, he put his sword at the disposal of the Greek Emperor for an attack on an Armenian baron, and when a little difference arose as to the payment of the costs of the expedition, paid himself by ravaging the then Greek province of Cyprus. We next find him begging the Emperor’s pardon in his shirt-sleeves, with a rope round his neck. Then he was captured by the Saracens in the course of a cattle-lifting expedition, and kept for fifteen years a prisoner at Aleppo. Finding, on his liberation, that his wife was dead and his stepson reigning at Antioch, he looked out for a second heiress, and found one in the widowed baroness of Montréal. There, in the land beyond Jordan, he was in his element. His next enterprise was, indeed, a bold one. He constructed a flotilla at Krak—“the stone of the Desert,” as it was picturesquely called—conveyed it on camel-back to the Gulf of ʿAkaba, and sailed down into the Red Sea with the object of plundering Mecca and Medina, and conquering the Hedjaz and the Yemen. For this daring attempt, and for intercepting, in time of peace, the Moslem caravan, Saladin swore twice to kill him with his own hand. The second of these acts provoked the invasion which led to the capture of Jerusalem, and in Saladin’s tent, as a captive after the battle of Hattin, the adventurous Frenchman, who declared that, to Princes, treaties were “scraps of paper,” was beheaded. His seal with the gateway of Krak upon it still survives as a memorial of his strange career. The love affairs of the nobles were also sometimes fatal to the interests of the state. Thus the charms of a beautiful Armenian were partly responsible for the loss of Edessa, and an attractive Italian widow was a prominent figure in the last days of Jerusalem.

The middle class was a far more important body than in either the England or the France of that day. Palestine during the Crusades was not visited exclusively for religious or military reasons. Besides being a goal of pilgrimage, it was also what California or Australia was in the middle of the last century—a place where shrewd men of business could make money rapidly. Long before the first Crusade, there had been an Italian colony from Amalfi at Jerusalem, in the capture of which a Genoese detachment had assisted; colonies from Venice, Genoa, Pisa and Marseilles followed; in the monastery of La Cava is a deed of Baldwin IV, granting the ships of the monks access to the Syrian coast; we even find an “English quarter” at Acre939. Owing to the small numbers of the nobility, and the constant need of recruiting its ranks after its losses in battle, it was easy for the wealthy members of the middle class to enter the aristocracy, while, from the nature of its occupations, it was thrown into much closer contact with the natives. Mixed marriages were consequently commoner among the bourgeoisie, although Baldwin I and II and Josselin I of Edessa married Armenians, and Baldwin III and Amaury I Greeks.

The issue of these mixed marriages was known as the Poulains940. These half-castes, who corresponded to the Γασμοῦλοι of Frankish Greece, are not depicted in flattering terms by contemporary writers. Jacques de Vitry941, the Bishop of Acre, describes them as “nourished in delights, soft and effeminate, more accustomed to baths than to battles, given to uncleanliness and luxury, dressed in soft garments like women, slothful and idle, cowardly and timid, little esteemed by the Saracens,” with whom they were ready to make peace, and from whom they were prone to accept assistance against their fellow Christians in their internecine quarrels. They were, alike by nature and interest, opposed to the arrival of fresh bodies of Crusaders, because war interfered with their business and interrupted their commercial relations with the Moslems, whose family life they imitated, veiling their wives, shutting them up in Oriental seclusion, and allowing them to go out thrice a week to the baths, but only once a year to church. This undue preference of cleanliness to godliness had disastrous effects, for it led the ladies to intrigue all the more to get out.

The worthy Bishop, speaking doubtless from personal experience, adds that the Poulains swindled the ingenuous pilgrims by overcharges at inns, by exorbitant prices in shops, and by giving them poor exchange. Worse still, they despised these Christian “boxers” and exiles, calling them fatuous idiots for their pains—for to the Poulains the Holy Land had no halo. They wore flowing robes, as even the first King of Jerusalem had done, while a coin of Tancred of Antioch represents him with a turban; and their whole outlook was Oriental rather than European. Indeed, Foucher, Baldwin I’s chaplain, remarked quite early how soon the Westerner became an Easterner in Palestine, and how the Crusader who married an Armenian or a Syrian soon forgot the land of his birth, adopting the comfortable maxim—“ubi bene, ibi patria.” Hence the marked contrast between the Frankish residents, and still more the Poulains, and the newly-arrived Crusaders. Hence, too, the often far too harsh judgments passed by the latter, especially after the second crusade in 1148. Like the Philhellenes, who went to Greece in the War of Independence, expecting to find the Peloponnese peopled by the superhuman heroes of Plutarch, instead of by men like themselves, they did not realise that poor human nature, even under conditions far more favourable, could not have possibly shone resplendent in the tremendous setting of the Holy Land. Consequently, they were often disillusioned, whereas men like William of Tyre, born and living in the country, were far fairer in their judgments, because they measured the Holy Land by the standard of other and more prosaic lands and not by the unattainable perfection of the greatest figure in all history, with whom it must ever be associated.

Society in the Crusading States was, it must be remembered, even apart from the Poulains, an extraordinary mixture of races. Even an Austrian army did not contain so many nationalities as the Crusaders. The Franks, as they were generically called, included Normans (at first the dominant race), French (who ousted the Normans, and thenceforth maintained their influence, culture and language, as they did nearly two centuries later at the Court of Athens), English, Welsh, Irish, Scots, Flemings, Italians, Germans (these not very numerous), and Scandinavians. Jacques de Vitry considered the Italians as the most satisfactory. He describes them as “prudent, temperate in eating and drinking, ornate and prolix in speaking, but circumspect in counsel, diligent in managing their own public affairs, and a very necessary element in the country, not only in battle, but at sea and in business, especially in the import trade. Since they are sober in food and drink, they live longer than other Western nations in the East”; and “they would be very formidable to the Saracens, if they would cease fighting among themselves.” Unfortunately, the rivalries between Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans were even more serious than the feuds between the Normans and the French; and the possession of the Church of St Saba at Acra (two pillars of which are now outside St Mark’s Venice) led to an Italian colonial war, in which we may find one cause of the final loss of the Holy Land. These Italian colonies, indeed, formed practically an imperium in imperio. Their respective quarters in the Syrian towns were the property of their governments, which appointed their officials (called “Consuls” in the Genoese and Pisan colonies, “Bailies” in the Venetian), often from among the most celebrated families of the Venetian Republic. Venice had also what we should call a Consul-General, a “Bailie” for all Syria; and both she and Genoa received a large portion of the harbour dues at Tyre and Acre. The Italian colonies had their own tribunals, like the consular courts in Turkey in our own day. Thus, Italian interests in the Holy Land were considerable and mainly commercial. To Venice and Genoa foreign affairs were—the affairs of their merchants.

The French and the English settlers were “less composed and more impetuous, less circumspect in action and more full of superfluity in food and drink, more lavish in expense and less cautious in talk, hasty in counsel, but more fervent in almsgiving, and more vehement in battle, and most useful for the defence of the Holy Land, and very formidable to the Saracens.”

Besides these various elements among the Crusaders, Palestine contained a large variety of indigenous races. Of these the native Christians of Arab speech, collectively known as Syrians, were the most favoured. Baldwin I gave them marked privileges at Jerusalem, and they could give evidence on oath. But they were of little use in war, except as archers; and are accused by Jacques de Vitry of betraying the secrets of the Christians to the Saracens, whose customs they largely imitated. The Maronites of the Lebanon were, however, noted for their military prowess and for the help which they rendered to the Franks.

Next to the Syrians came the Armenians, reckoned the best fighters of the Orientals, who, from the proximity of the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia to the County of Edessa, often assisted the Frank Counts, and copied their feudal arrangements. It is noticeable that the Assizes of Antioch have come to us through the Armenian, and that the Court of Sis, like that of Jerusalem, had its seneschal, its marshal, and its constable. The Greeks were regarded as opponents of the Latins; and, when Saladin took Jerusalem, he allowed them to remain. But we could scarcely expect them to view with sympathy the annexation of the Greek states of Edessa (still governed by a Greek official at the time of the Latin conquest) and Antioch, which only fourteen years before had been nominally a part of the Greek Empire. And Anna Comnena describes her father’s alarm at the march of large armies of foreigners across his rich and peaceful dominions who might (and in 1204 did) say with the Roman centurion: Hic manebimus optime!

Historians of the Moslem Arabs admit that, except in war time, Christians and Moslems lived together in harmony. There are examples of friendship, and even of adopted brotherhood, between Frank barons and Moslem emirs, who used to grant each other mutual permits to hunt. Every reader of The Talisman knows of the mutual courtesies between Richard I and Saladin, who sent medical aid to a sick opponent, but even more curious was the action of Guy de Lusignan, whose first act, on exchanging the Kingdom of Jerusalem for that of Cyprus, was to ask his former captor how to keep the island. Many Franks spoke Arabic; and it was even found necessary for commercial purposes to coin money bearing in Arabic characters the name of Mohammed and the date of the Moslem era! The merchants of Tyre and Acre, where these heretical coins were minted, protested that “business is business”; but the Papal Legate, who accompanied Louis IX on the sixth crusade, was so scandalised that he reported the matter to Pope Innocent IV, who excommunicated all who coined them. The wily merchants, however, circumvented his prohibition by minting similar coins with Christian inscriptions and the year of our Lord, both in Arabic, and with a cross in the centre of the coin. Of this hybrid currency, which began in 1251, there are several specimens. Like Frederick II in Sicily, the later Princes of Antioch and Counts of Tripolis had Saracen guards; and, under the name of Turcoples, given originally to Turks born of Greek mothers, Moslems entered the Christian armies as light cavalry. Of actual Turks there were few, for they had overrun Syria too short a time before the Crusades to take root in Palestine. Like the Franks, and like the Turks in the Balkans, they were only a garrison.

Special interest attaches to the Jews, at this period only a small section of the population, and, as usual, exclusively urban. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Palestine about 1173, found two hundred Jews in the ghetto at Jerusalem beneath the Tower of David, where they had a monopoly of the dyeing trade, and twelve, all dyers, at Bethlehem. The largest Jewish colonies were, as was natural, in the great commercial towns, Tyre and Acre; and the total in the whole of the Latin states was only 7000 to 8000. They could not hold land, and were classed below the Moslems, but practised successfully as doctors and bankers, and had their own judges. Many had come from the south of France. A few Samaritans still survived at Nâbulus, the biblical Shechem, and at Cæsarea.

Below all these freemen came the slaves, including Christians, partly prisoners of war and partly imported. The Assizes of Jerusalem contain special regulations for the slave-trade (largely in Venetian and Genoese hands), but the legislators felt some scruples about allowing a Christian slave to be sold to a Moslem. There was one other very undesirable element in the population—persons who had left their country for their country’s good; for it was not unusual to pardon criminals on condition that they made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and never returned. The Bishop of Acre complains of this practice of making the Holy Land a convict station, just as some of our colonies did in the first half of the last century; and he quotes the Horatian tag, that people, who cross the sea, change the climate, but not their character. Nor does he approve of the tourist, who came from mere curiosity and not from devotion.

Among this heterogeneous mass the smallness of the Frankish forces makes us marvel that the Latin Kingdom lasted for 99 years at Jerusalem and for nearly 200 at Acre. The Assizes942 inform us that the paper strength of the royal army was only 577 knights and 5025 foot-soldiers, to which we must add the contingents of the two great Military Orders and the Turcoples. At no time, in actual warfare, did the total armed forces of the four Crusading States much exceed 25,000; at Hattin—the Hastings of the Holy Land—Guy de Lusignan had only some 21,000 men under his command; Baldwin I crossed the Euphrates with only 80 knights to take Edessa; and some of the great battles of Tancred were fought by only 200 knights. William of Tyre943, writing a few years before the catastrophe of 1187, explains the greater success of the Franks in the earlier years of the kingdom by their piety and courage as contrasted with the immorality and diminished martial spirit of his contemporaries. Other causes were the lack of military skill of the Moslems of that generation, and the disunion of their chiefs. When, however, Saladin united Syria and Egypt in his strong hand, the fate of the little Frankish colony was sealed. Disunion of allies neutralised the splendid courage of our Richard I in his attempt to restore what had been lost; Frederick II was a Crusader malgré lui; and in the thirteenth century many Franks, realising that the end was at hand, left for the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus, or for Armenia, leaving as the most important factors in the Latin population the Italian colonies and the Religious Orders.

The Knights of St John, who originally took their name from St John the Merciful944, a Cypriote who became Patriarch of Alexandria, arose at the time of the conquest in connection with the hospital, founded at Jerusalem a generation earlier by a citizen of Amalfi. Their first aim was to tend and nourish the sick, then to guard pilgrims up from the coast, and next to fight against the Infidels. They never forgot their original object, and pilgrims were enthusiastic in their praise. Indeed, Saladin is said to have gained admission to their hospital at Acre as a patient to see whether all that he heard about their beneficence was true. Gradually, as the feudal barons found it harder to defend their castles, they handed them to the Knights, who specially chose difficult frontier positions. Margat, Krak des Chevaliers, Chastel-Rouge, Gibelin and Belvoir were their chief fortresses; and Mount Tabor was one of their possessions.

The Templars, founded in 1118 to protect the pilgrims on their way from the coast, enjoyed a less enviable reputation. William of Tyre945 remarks, that “for a long time they maintained their original object, but subsequently forgot the duty of humility.” They were accused of greed and selfishness, and of being too anxious to stand well with Moslem Princes, with whom they sometimes made a separate peace, to the detriment of Christendom. Thus they warned a Moslem chief of an intended raid by our Prince Edward. Their treachery to the sect of the Assassins scandalised the Court of Jerusalem and immensely damaged Christian interests. The chief of that terrible community, the “Old Man,” as he was called, whose territory was separated from the County of Tripolis by boundary stones, marked on the Christian side with a cross, on that of the Assassins with a knife, had sent an envoy to King Amaury I, offering to embrace Christianity, on condition that the Templars consented to forego the tribute paid to them by the Assassins. All had been arranged, and the diplomatist was on his way home, when the Templars assassinated the Assassin946.

The Templars’ vow of poverty contrasted ill with their immense wealth, which enabled them, in 1191, to buy Cyprus from Richard I, and to lend a large sum to our Henry III. They acted as bankers; and through their hands passed the money collected in the West for future crusades. They were suspected, too, of heretical opinions, and were accused of initiating their novices with pagan rites. They possessed eighteen fortresses, of which Tortosa was the most important; but the Order did not long survive the loss of the Holy Land, being abolished by Clement V in 1312.

Less important were the Teutonic Knights, the Brüder vom deutschen Hause of Freytag’s well-known historical novel—an off-shoot of the Hospitallers—because the Germans contributed little towards the foundation of the Frankish states, and their distinct Order was not founded till after the first capture of the Latin capital. Their principal sphere of activity was not in Palestine but in Prussia, where they laboured to civilise the barbarous Prussians—a task in which they do not appear to have been altogether successful. A lasting memorial of their activity is the former Prussian fortress of Thorn—a name said to be derived from the castle of Toron in the Holy Land, once their possession. To us a more interesting Order is that of the Hospital of “the Master and Brothers of St Thomas of Canterbury,” at Acre, founded in 1191, in which Edward I showed interest, and which was transferred after the fall of Acre to Cyprus, where it still existed in 1350. A hospital for poor British pilgrims was also founded at Acre in 1254947.

Palestine was a fruitful land during the Frankish period, although we hear much of the plagues of locusts and field-mice. Contemporary visitors wrote enthusiastically about the gardens of Jericho and the fertile plains of Jezreel and Tripolis, with its vineyards, its olive-yards, and its sugar plantations, whence the cane was taken to the factory at Tyre. The wines of Engaddi were as noted as in the Song of Solomon; and the vintages of Bethlehem and Jerusalem were highly esteemed. Jericho produced grapes so huge that “a man could scarcely lift a bunch of them”—a statement which shows that the vines had not degenerated since the days when the spies of Moses “cut down” from the brook of Eschcol “one cluster of grapes, and bare it between two upon a staff.” Even the silent waters of the Dead Sea were then traversed by fruit barges; and in the so-called “Valley of Moses” to the south of it the olive-trees formed “a dense forest.” There was more wood than now, and consequently more water, but corn had to be imported, for the harvests of Moab, Hebron, Bethlehem (“the house of bread”), and Jericho did not suffice to feed the population. The Sea of Galilee was as full of fish as in the time of Our Lord, and boats plied upon its waters. But, owing to the general insecurity of the open country, few of the cultivators of the soil were Franks; and, where we find Latin peasants, they are usually not far from the shelter of fortified towns. Of manufactures the most important were those of silk at Tripolis, Tiberias, and Tyre, dyeing, and pottery; the glass of Tyre is specially praised by its Archbishop, and the goldsmiths had a street all to themselves at Jerusalem.

Civilisation, so far as comfort was concerned, had reached a high level. Every castle had its baths; and minstrels and dancers appeared at the entertainments of the barons, while we read of theatrical performances at a coronation. A considerable amount of gambling went on in royal circles. Baldwin III was devoted to dice; the Prince of Antioch and the Count of Edessa were so busy with their dice-boxes during a campaign, that they demoralised many of their officers; the Count of Jaffa was so deeply engrossed in a game of dice that he was playing in the street of the Tanners at Jerusalem, that he allowed himself to be assassinated. Hunting with the falcon, and, in Arab fashion, with the cat-like animal known as the carable, were favourite amusements. It seems strange that nothing was done to encourage horse-breeding; and, as the Moslems were loth to sell horses to be used against themselves, the Franks usually imported their steeds from Apulia. Every spring it was the custom of the Frankish chivalry to take their horses to feed on the rich grass at the foot of Mt Carmel; and there, by the brook Kishon, where Elijah slew the prophets of Baal, tournaments were held, in which Saracen chiefs sometimes took part, and after which the combatants refreshed themselves with sherbet, made from the snows of Lebanon.

We must not expect a military colony, always fighting for its existence, to be very productive of literature. But perhaps the best specimen of mediæval history, the great work of William of Tyre, was produced by a Frank born in the Holy Land. The author possessed the two greatest qualities for writing the history of his own times: personal acquaintance with the principal actors in the drama by reason of his high official position, and at the same time fearless love of truth. He tells us that he was well aware of the perils to which he thus exposed himself; and, if it be true that he was poisoned in Rome by order of a rival whom he had denounced, his forebodings were only too accurate. Having been a diplomatist, a prelate, a royal tutor, and chancellor of the kingdom, he possessed an unrivalled experience of men and affairs; and, as is usual with such persons, he was much more moderate in his judgments of human frailty than purely literary or monastic chroniclers. The abrupt close of his work in 1183 has been ascribed to the desire of powerful enemies to suppress the facts about the last years of Jerusalem—a further proof of his dreaded influence.

A lesser luminary was Renaud, baron of Sagette, who amazed the pundits of Saladin by his Oriental scholarship; and the cult of French novels was diffused among the nobles of the Holy Land, whose legal knowledge was considerable. Philip of Navarre948, the celebrated pleader, who has left a treatise showing how to make the worse cause appear the better in the feudal courts, tells us that he owed his knowledge of legal practice to the accident of being appointed reader of romances to the Seneschal of Jerusalem, who in return taught him law. The pleader, who also composed a historical work, and a treatise on the four ages of man, and was an opponent of the higher education of women, is described by Florio Bustron, the Cypriote historian, as a “huomo universale.”

In estimating the architectural results of the Frankish rule, we must remember the short time available—so far as all but the coast towns were concerned. But a traveller, who visited the country in 1185, tells us that the Franks had done much for the mural decoration of their churches, of which, beginning with Tancred’s church on Mt Tabor in 1111, they erected a number down to the catastrophe of Hattin. William of Tyre specially mentions the munificence of Queen Mélisende in founding a church and convent at Bethany, of which her youngest sister was Superior, and her splendidly bound copy of the Gospels is in the British Museum. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and in the Cathedral and Castle of Tortosa, still linger traces of the Crusaders. It has been remarked that in their architecture more than in aught else the Franks of Palestine remained Westerners.

In conclusion we may ask how Frankish society in Palestine compares with Frankish society in Cyprus and in the Latin Principalities of the present Greek Kingdom. Very different from either Frankish Palestine or Frankish Greece was the condition of the Kingdom of Cyprus, created by a mere accident of the Crusades, which nominally continued the tradition of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. While the reason of the latter’s existence was war, Cyprus was essentially a commercial state, to which the loss of Acre was a blessing in disguise. So long as the Kings of Cyprus, in their capacity of Kings of Jerusalem, had territory on the opposite coast of Syria, they were necessarily involved in continental wars, and could not devote themselves to the development of their own island; as was the case of the Kings of England, so long as they held the damnosa hereditas of the Plantagenets in France. Cyprus was, like England, defended by the sea; like England, she became one of the marts of the world, in an age when the crusading spirit had died away, and trade was the attraction that led men to the East. The Popes, by prohibiting trade with the Saracens after the loss of the Holy Land, procured for Cyprus a monopoly; and Famagosta surpassed Constantinople, Venice and Alexandria. Moreover, warned by the example of Jerusalem, the Kings of Cyprus cut down the privileges of the nobles, who were denied the right of coinage and jurisdiction over the middle class. Consequently, the Cypriote monarchy was more independent, and continued to prosper until it allowed—and this should be to us a warning—foreign competitors, under the guise of commerce, to creep into its cities and ultimately to dictate its policy.

All the Latin states in the East, whether in Jerusalem, Cyprus, or Greece proper, presented examples of that difficult political experiment—the rule of a small alien minority over a large native majority of a different religion, an experiment worked most successfully in those states, like Lesbos under the Genoese Gattilusj, where the Latin rulers became assimilated with the ruled. But in Frankish Greece the feudal states were not commercial; and the Venetian and Genoese colonies were, except in Negroponte, quite distinct from them. The Frank conquerors of Greece did not go thither with the noble aims which led some of the leaders of the first Crusade to the Holy Land; on the contrary, they turned aside from the recovery of the Holy City to partition a Christian Empire. Yet the moral standard of the Franks in Greece was much higher than that of their predecessors in Palestine, or their contemporaries in Cyprus. Possibly, the reason was that they lived healthier lives, and had fewer temptations. Big maritime commercial towns, like Tyre and Acre, and Famagosta, did not exist, and country life was more developed. Certainly, the Chronicle of the Morea is more edifying reading than the Letters of Jacques de Vitry on the condition of Acre at the time of his appointment as its bishop in 1216. But in one respect Frankish Palestine and Frankish Greece present the same strange phenomenon—that union of antiquity with the Middle Ages, of the biblical and the classical with the romantic, which inspired the second part of Faust. To find the feudal system installed at Hebron and Athens, at Shechem and Sparta, at Tiberias and Thebes, to read of Princes of Galilee and of Princes of Achaia, causes surprise only surpassed by that which we should have felt in August, 1914, had we been told that before four Christmases had passed, Australians and New Zealanders would have shared in the taking of Jerusalem.

Authorities

1. Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Seventeen vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1841-1906.

2. Gesta Dei per Francos. Ed. J. Bongars. Two vols. Hanover, 1611.

3. Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem, 1100-1291. Von R. Röhricht. Innsbruck: Wagner, 1898.

4. Regesta Regni Hierosolimitani, 1097-1291, and Additamentum. Von R. Röhricht. Œniponti: Lib. Acad. Wagneriana, 1893-1904.

5. Les Colonies franques de Syrie aux xiiᵐᵉ et xiiiᵐᵉ siècles. Par E. Rey. Paris: Picard, 1883.

6. Numismatique de l’Orient Latin, avec Supplément. Par G. Schlumberger. Paris: Leroux, 1878-82.

7. Renaud de Châtillon, prince d’Antioche. Par G. Schlumberger. Paris: Plon, 1898.

8. Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzzüge. Von H. Prutz. Berlin: Siegfried, 1883.

9. Revue de l’Orient Latin. Eleven vols. Paris: Leroux, 1893-1908.

6. A Byzantine Blue Stocking: Anna Comnena

One of the differences between classical and modern literature is the rarity of female writers in the former and their frequency in the latter. While we have lady historians and poets in considerable numbers, while the fair sex has greatly distinguished itself in fiction, including that branch of it which is called modern journalism, ancient Greek letters contain the names of few celebrated women except Sappho; Myrtis and Corinna, the competitors of Pindar; Erinna, whose poetic fancy her mother strove to restrain by chaining her to her neglected spinning-wheel; and Elephantis, whose poetry was considered too realistic for display upon drawing-room tables. Novels were in those days chiefly written by bishops—a class of men not now usually associated with light literature. In Latin literature, although Juvenal has drawn a picture of the learned lady weighing in the critical balance the respective claims of Homer and Virgil, the poem attributed to Sulpicia is almost the sole surviving example of female composition. It has been reserved for Byzantine literature to present us with the rare phenomenon of a first-class lady historian—first-class, that is to say, according to the standards of that day—in the person of the Imperial Princess, Anna Comnena, a writer better known to the general public than are most Byzantine authors owing to the fact that Sir Walter Scott introduced her as one of the characters in Count Robert of Paris, and based one of the chief episodes of that novel upon a historical event recorded in her life of her father.

Since Scott’s time, novelists and dramatists have done something to popularise Byzantine history. Neale, in his Theodora Phranza, daughter of the last Byzantine historian, has described the capture of Constantinople by the Turks; Sardou produced on the stage a far more famous Theodora, the consort of Justinian, whom Prokopios so virulently besmirched in his Secret History. Mr Frederic Harrison has portrayed in Theophano the ambitious and unscrupulous wife and widow of the Emperors Romanos II and Nikephoros Phokas. Jean Lombard in Byzance depicted, with immense erudition, the games and ceremonial of the Imperial city and court in the time of the Iconoclast Emperor, Constantine V Copronymos, and endeavoured to solve the Balkan question by marrying and placing on the throne the Slav Oupravda and the Greek Eustokkia; while Marion Crawford gave us in Arethusa a story from a much later period, the year 1376, based upon the struggle at the Court of John V between the Venetian adventurer, Carlo Zeno, and the Genoese, for the possession of the isle of Tenedos, the key of the Dardanelles.

Anna Comnena was born in 1083 at an interesting moment in the history not only of the Greek Empire, but of Christendom. It was the time when the Mediæval West and the Mediæval East first met; when the Normans, after their recent conquest of England and Southern Italy, first crossed the Adriatic and Ionian seas to attack the Greek Empire, soon to be followed by the hosts of the First Crusade. Just as, with the accession of William the Conqueror fifteen years earlier, a new order of things had begun in Northern Europe, so with the accession of her father, the Emperor Alexios I Comnenos, in 1081, two years before her birth, a new era, and practically a new dynasty—though Alexios was not the first of the family to seize the throne—had begun at Byzantium. From 1025, the end of the long and glorious reign of Basil II, whom the Greeks of to-day still admire as the “Bulgar-slayer,” the destroyer of the first Bulgarian Empire on those self-same battlefields of Macedonia where King Constantine defeated the Bulgarians in the second Balkan war of 1913, the Byzantine throne had been occupied by no less than twelve sovereigns, whose consecutive reigns filled a period scarcely longer than that embraced by the single reign of the great Basil. After the death of his brother and successor, Constantine VIII, there began a period of palace intrigues and female influence, for Constantine’s two mature daughters, Zoe and Theodora, assigned the throne to whomsoever they chose; and the successive marriages of the elderly Zoe furnished Psellos with a chronique scandaleuse of the Imperial Court and boudoir, and MM. Schlumberger and Diehl with their brilliant modern paraphrases of the contemporary writer. When, with the death of Theodora, the Macedonian dynasty came to an end in the person of its last representative, revolution succeeded revolution. Every general of aristocratic birth was justified in believing that he carried in his baggage the red boots which were the peculiar mark of the Imperial dignity, and a female regency enabled the Empress Eudokia to bestow the Empire with her hand. At last, the ablest and astutest of the Byzantine commanders, Alexios Comnenos, deposed the feeble old voluptuary, Nikephoros Botaneiates, whose Slavonic ministers had discredited his authority by their “barbarous” pronunciation and foreign origin, and placed himself and his descendants upon the throne for 100 years.

These internal dissensions had naturally injured the external prestige of the Empire and contracted its frontiers. It was then that there came the final separation between the Eastern and the Western Churches; it was then, too, that, by the loss of Bari, Brindisi, and Otranto, the Byzantine Empire forfeited its last Italian possessions. Meanwhile, the advance of the Seljuk Turks in Asia Minor had pushed back the Greek frontier in a second continent close to the capital; and Anna Comnena949 declares that, on her father’s accession, “the Bosporus was the eastern, and Adrianople the western, limit of the Greek sceptre.” Alexios, she proudly adds, “widened the circle of the Empire, and made the Adriatic its western, the Euphrates and the Tigris its eastern, border.”

Yet, as she truly says, her father had to contend all the time against enormous difficulties, alike domestic and foreign. At the outset of his reign, his throne was surrounded with possible pretenders. Both his immediate predecessors were alive, although the one was a bishop, the other in a monastery, besides four sons of dethroned Emperors who had received the Imperial title during their fathers’ reigns, and several persons who had endeavoured unsuccessfully to seize and keep the crown. There were constant conspiracies against Alexios so long as he sat on the throne, while the eternal theological questions, which were the favourite mental distraction of Byzantium, caused him constant anxiety, for there, as in the Balkans to-day, theology and politics were inextricably mingled. From abroad there came, too, the menace of invasion on all sides—from the wild tribes of the Patzinaks and Cumans on the north, from the Normans on the west, from the Turks on the east. And, worse than all, the unhappy Alexios was suddenly called upon to cope with the hurricane of the First Crusade, and to find his Empire overrun by swarms of fierce warriors, whose motives he suspected and whose intentions he judged from their acts to be predatory.

Alexios owed his crown to a successful insurrection; but he was no vulgar upstart. He belonged to a rich family of Paphlagonia, where the Comnenoi held property at Kastamon, the modern Kastamouni, the place known in contemporary history as the exile for nearly thirty years of the late Mirdite Prince, Prenk Bib Doda. The Comnenoi had first come into prominence about a century earlier under Basil II; and one of the clan, the distinguished general, Isaac Comnenos, had occupied the throne from 1057 to 1059. Anna’s father was this man’s nephew, and, in spite of his uncle’s brief reign, the real founder of the dynasty. For the Emperor Isaac, in a moment of discouragement and disillusionment, not only abdicated but failed to induce his brother John, the father of Alexios, to accept the heavy burden of the crown. It was not, however, to his timorous and unambitious father, but to his energetic mother, Anna Dalassene, that Alexios owed his success. She was resolved that her son should be Emperor, and during four intervening reigns, she was waiting and intriguing for the diadem which her husband had allowed to go out of his family. A great lady herself, the daughter of an eminent official and soldier, whose skill in never failing to kill his man had earned him the nickname of “Charon,” she belonged, like the Comnenoi, to a powerful Asiatic family, one of whose members had been at first thought by Constantine VIII as worthy to succeed him, and had subsequently been regarded as a possible husband for the old Empress Zoe. Like many eminent Byzantine personages, she had known the reverses of fortune, and had at one time been exiled to Prinkipo. Such was the esteem which the Emperor Alexios felt for the mother, who had constantly encouraged and facilitated his ambition, that when, at the outset of his reign, he was compelled to leave his capital to fight against the Normans in Albania, he entrusted to her the absolute authority over the Empire during his absence. This is only one of many instances proving the influence of women in the Byzantine system. Thus, the mother of Alexios made history, his daughter wrote it; his mother made him Emperor, his daughter preserved the memory of his reign. Such were the origin and parents of the hero of the Alexiad. Let us now look at its author.

The literary Princess has given us in her history of her father a considerable amount of autobiographical information. Anna Comnena was not at all disposed to hide her light under a bushel, nor did she ever forget that she had been born in the purple chamber—the room to which an Empress was always removed when her confinement was imminent. Like most members of the reigning Imperial family, she received an excellent literary education. “I am not destitute of letters,” she writes in her preface, “but have thoroughly studied classical Greek”; and she adds that she had applied herself diligently to the mathematical quadrivium, to rhetoric, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the dialogues of Plato. In another passage she alludes to her knowledge of geometry. Her quotations show a wide range of reading. Her history contains citations from, or allusions to, Homer, Sappho, Sophokles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, the Tactics of Ælian, and the astronomer Eudoxos, while she repeats a whole sentence from Polybios and another from John of Epiphania, and shows, as Byzantine writers always do, great familiarity with the Bible. Niketas summed her up as “acquainted with every art.”

Nor need we, who have in our own history a similarly learned lady of royal lineage, Lady Jane Grey, wonder at the erudition of this Byzantine blue stocking. There had been a recrudescence of literary culture in the eleventh century at Byzantium950, as in the sixteenth century in London. Shortly before Anna’s birth the Imperial Court had been the scene of the many-sided activities of that remarkable man, Michael Psellos, “the Prince of Philosophers,” as he was called by his contemporaries, the Voltaire of mediæval Greek literature, at once philosopher, historian, lawyer, monk, courtier and prime minister, who demonstrated, as other learned statesmen have proved in our own time, that great intellectual attainments may coincide with a poor character and political ineptitude. Another writer, the historian Michael of Adalia, or Attaleiates, who had gained by his legal abilities the favour of successive sovereigns, dedicated his history of his own time to the Emperor Nikephoros Botaneiates, and made a sufficient fortune out of speculations in real estate to found an almshouse for his less fortunate fellows. But in the time of Psellos and Attaleiates learning had disciples on the throne, as well as in the lecture-hall. The Imperial family of Doukas was noted for its devotion to literature; the collection of genealogies of gods and heroes, known under the title of Ionia (or Violarium), has been by some ascribed to the ambitious Empress Eudokia, wife of Constantine X Doukas and of his successor; while the Emperor Michael VII Doukas, who had been a pupil of Psellos and is known in history by the nickname of “Parapinakes,” or the “Peck-filcher,” from his fraudulent manipulation of the corn-monopoly, spent his time in composing iambics and anapæsts quite in the fashion of our classically-educated eighteenth century statesmen, who lost us the American colonies and were stronger at Greek verses than at political economy. Even the old roué Botaneiates, was, if we believe his panegyrist Attaleiates, a lover of books. When Alexios succeeded him, he further encouraged literature; one of his physicians, Kallikles, was a writer of epitaphs, not always on his own patients; and the historian, John Skylitzes, who was a captain of the bodyguard, dedicated some legal treatises to this Emperor.

It was not, therefore, remarkable that Alexios’ daughter was highly educated, nor that her husband, Nikephoros Bryennios, was, like herself, a historian, although, like Julius Cæsar, he modestly described his work as merely supplying “the materials for those who wished to write history.” A soldier by profession, the son of the pretender of the same name who had revolted against Michael VII, and had been crushed by Alexios, he defended Constantinople against Godfrey of Bouillon in 1097, and fought against the Sultan of Ikonium in 1116. Taking Xenophon, another literary soldier, as his model, he possessed, like Attaleiates, a much simpler and more straightforward style than his learned consort, and his soldierly prose is, although a glorification of his father-in-law, pleasing to read.

But the cultured Anna, unlike her husband, had other besides literary ambitions, of which her distracted account of her father’s death-bed shows no trace. We learn, however, from the later historian, Niketas, of the mundane designs which agitated the bosoms of the Empress and her daughter at that solemn moment, of the efforts made by Irene to induce her expiring husband to disinherit his son in favour of his son-in-law, and how, when the dying Emperor lifted up his hands to heaven with a forced smile on his pallid cheeks, his wife bitterly reproached him with the words: “Husband, all thy life thou hast been versed in every kind of deceit, saying one thing and thinking another; and now that thou art dying, thou art true to thine old ways.” Gibbon has summed up the remark in the caustic sarcasm: “You die as you have lived—a hypocrite.” Nor was the virtuous Anna inclined to acquiesce in the accession of her brother John II. She had been, till his birth, the heiress-presumptive, and as such had been betrothed as a child to the son of the dethroned Emperor, Michael VII, the young Constantine Doukas, who died, however, before their marriage. She had thus missed the throne once, and was determined not to miss it again.

Scott, in his novel, has completely misrepresented the character of her husband by representing him as plotting to seize the throne, even during the lifetime of Alexios. Such a conception of the honest Bryennios is quite erroneous. For Anna’s plot was entirely frustrated by the sluggish indifference and greater humanity of her consort. So greatly annoyed was his wife at his reluctance to accept the crown by killing or blinding his brother-in-law, that she bitterly reproached nature in a phrase which must be left in the obscurity of the original language, for having made the mistake of creating her a woman and him a man. The conspiracy was discovered; but the Emperor treated his sister with more mercy than she deserved, contenting himself with bestowing her richly furnished palace upon his favourite and faithful minister. Even this punishment, at the instance of the minister himself, was rescinded; her palace was restored to the princess; her husband held office under the new Emperor and accompanied him in the Syrian campaign of 1137; but her pride was wounded by her brother’s magnanimity. She retired in Byzantine fashion to the convent of Our Lady of Grace, founded by her mother, the ex-Empress Irene, whose charter has been preserved.

At the age of thirty-five her career at Court was over; her old friends, courtier-like, turned away from her to worship the rising sun; her mother, her favourite brother, her husband, whom, despite his weakness of character and unwillingness to reign, she loudly praises in her history and regarded with obvious affection951, successively passed away. Their son, Alexios, who took his mother’s surname, held office under her nephew, the Emperor Manuel, as Lord High Admiral. She bitterly complains, with her customary rhetorical exaggeration, of her hard lot since her eighth year, when her brother John was associated with his father in the Imperial dignity; to enumerate her sufferings and her enemies, she exclaims, “requires the Siren eloquence of Isokrates, the deep voice of Pindar, the vehemence of Polemon, the muse of Homer, the lyre of Sappho.” For twenty-nine years she had not seen or spoken with any of her father’s friends, of whom many were dead, and many were afraid to visit her. She compares herself with Niobe, and introduces into her history transparent allusions to her treatment by “the great,” and to the folly of her father’s successors—both monarchs of distinction952. Under these circumstances, she endeavoured to console herself with the composition of her history—a work written mostly, as she tells us, under the reign of her nephew, Manuel I, who ascended the throne in 1143. By 1148, at the age of 65, she had finished her work; the date of her death is unknown.

The princess had set herself the filial task of writing a biography of her father from 1069 to his death in 1118, thus covering the whole of his reign and twelve years before it. Her history thus formed a continuation of those composed by Attaleiates and by her husband, the former of whom had narrated the events of the years 1034 to 1079, the latter those of the years 1070 to 1079. As it had been the object of the former to glorify the still living Botaneiates, so it was the aim of the latter to whitewash Alexios, representing him as a legitimate sovereign, who had merely renounced the throne, once occupied by his uncle.

She begins her history by describing her father’s exploits during the three previous reigns, the “three labours of Hercules953,” as she characteristically calls his suppression of the rebellions of Oursel Bailleul, or Russell Balliol, a member of the family which founded Balliol College (whom Scott has, by a pardonable anachronism, represented as a fellow-prisoner of Count Robert of Paris in the dungeon), and his victory over the two pretenders from Durazzo, her husband’s father, Nikephoros Bryennios, and Basilakios. She then proceeds to trace the career of the famous Norman leader, Robert Guiscard, and the causes of his war against the Byzantine Empire, the first attack of the Latin West against the Greek East and the forerunner of the Fourth Crusade. The second book is devoted to her father’s revolt against the Emperor Nikephoros Botaneiates and his seizure of the throne. With the third book begins his reign. She describes the Norman invasion, how Guiscard crossed the Adriatic, besieged and took Durazzo, the historic town which has played so large a part in the Balkan history of the last seven years, and which was then the western gate of the Byzantine Empire, just as in the days of Catullus and Plautus it had been the “tavern of the Adriatic.” In the sixth book we have Guiscard’s second expedition and death at the Cephalonian village, which, under the name of Phiskardo, still recalls the end of that famous Norman leader. Here is related the legend that in the opposite island of Ithake there was a ruined city, called Jerusalem; and thus was fulfilled the prophesy that Guiscard should die when he had reached Jerusalem. Similar prophecies were similarly accomplished in the case of Pope Silvester II, who died after celebrating mass in the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and in that of our King Henry IV, dying, as Shakespeare has narrated, in the Jerusalem chamber. Next follow the military operations in Asia Minor and against the Cumans, or “Scythians,” as the classically-educated writer calls them, in Europe. Then, after some account of the affairs of Crete and Cyprus and of the Dalmatian revolt, the tenth book treats of the heresy of Neilos, and introduces us to the First Crusade.

At this point the chief interest of this history for modern readers begins, for Anna Comnena is writing of a movement of world-wide importance, and her descriptions of the Crusading chiefs are those of an eyewitness. The eleventh book deals with the progress of the Crusaders in Asia—the capture of Nice, the foundation of the Principality of Antioch and of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the accession of Baldwin I, the quarrel of Alexios and Bohemond about Antioch and Laodicea, and Bohemond’s strangely contrived journey to Italy in a coffin with the odorous carcase of a dead cock. Books twelve and thirteen describe his second invasion of Albania, his siege of Durazzo, and his second pact of vassalage with Alexios, who gave him Antioch as a fief for life with the County of Edessa. The fourteenth book records his death, the siege of Tyre and the Turkish war, and gives an interesting account of the Bogomile heretics at Philippopolis. The last book is also partly occupied with their treatment by the Emperor, and ends with a somewhat mutilated description of the death of Alexios. Thus, as a later Greek epigram expressed it, the Alexiad ended when Alexios died.

As its name implies, the Alexiad is a biography rather than a history, with the Emperor as the central figure, placed in what his admiring daughter regarded as the most favourable light, but what, according to modern ideas, is sometimes quite the reverse. The Imperial biographer was well aware that she would be accused of partiality, and is at considerable pains to repudiate in advance the charge of filial prejudice. She specially pleads her unbiased judgment in dealing with her father’s career, declares that she does not like to praise her relatives or to repeat scandal, adapts Aristotle’s famous saying about Plato by averring that, if her father is dear to her, truth is dearer, and sums up her aim as “love of her father and love of truth954.” She admits that he had some defects, that he stammered955 and found difficulty in pronouncing the letter R; and she candidly avows that he was merely an instrument in the hand of his mother, Anna Dalassene, an excellent woman of business, when he first ascended the throne956. But she is apt to forget her precept of impartiality when she comes to describe his achievements. With characteristic exaggeration she exclaims that, “not even if another Demosthenes and all the chorus of the orators, not even if all the Academy and all the Stoic philosophers combined together to extol the services of Alexios, could they attain unto them”; and in another passage she asks, “what echo of Demosthenes or whirling words of Polemon, why, not all the muses of Homer, could worthily hymn his successes; I should say that not Plato himself, nor all the Porch and Academy combined together could have philosophised in a manner such as befitted his soul957.”

She tells us that her father hated not only lying but the appearance of lying; yet, she naïvely applauds his sharp practice in sending letters to Bohemond’s officers, in which he thanked them for letters to himself which they had never written, in order to compromise them with their chief; she acknowledges without a blush how he deceived the Crusaders at the taking of Nice; and she describes with admiration how he invited the Bogomile heretic, Basil, to a private colloquy, telling him that he admired his virtue and urging him to make a full statement of his doctrine, while all the time a secretary, concealed behind a curtain, took down the statements which fell from the unsuspecting heresiarch’s mouth and which were used as evidence against him to send him to the stake. Such tactics only evoke from the complaisant daughter the laudatory comment, that her father’s theological skill in dealing with heretics like the Manichæans should earn him the title of “the thirteenth apostle958.” Modern readers will agree with Finlay that “even Anna’s account makes the Bogomilian a noble enthusiast, and her father a mean traitor.”

Yet Alexios was, in spite of these moral defects, a brave soldier, who, however, usually followed the plan of gaining a victory by craft, if craft were possible. His character was a combination, not uncommon in the Near East, of courage and intrigue; he was no coward, but he was a born schemer, rather than a statesman. Like many Byzantine rulers, he had a weakness for theology—a dangerous taste in an autocrat—and his daughter describes with admiration how he lectured the heretic Neilos on the doctrine of the Trinity, and how he ordered a monk named Zygavenos to compile a list and refutation of all the heresies, under the title of “A Dogmatic Panoply.” He had the politician’s love for an immediate success, rather than for a lasting benefit, although he was, as his daughter tells us, fond of playing chess, in which immediate success counts for less than a far-seeing plan. Thus, to obtain the temporary advantage of securing the aid of the Venetian fleet against the Normans, he gave the Venetians enormous commercial concessions throughout his Empire, which were one of the causes, 120 years later, of the Latin capture of Constantinople. The policy of Alexios Comnenos has had disciples in Southern and South-Eastern Europe in our own day; but the most successful Greek statesman of our time attained his wonderful triumphs by frankness and honesty of purpose, to which the Byzantine Emperor was a stranger.

But Anna’s partiality is not limited to her father; it extends to other members of her family, except, of course, her brother, the Emperor John II, who was, in reality, an excellent sovereign. Although she despised her husband’s weakness in not seizing the throne, she praises in Homeric language his skill as an archer, and devotes a long passage to the learning and wisdom, the strength and physical beauty, which made “my Cæsar,” as she affectionately calls him, what Achilles was among the Homeric Greeks. Like Achilles, he was a fine soldier, but, like not a few soldiers of Byzantium, he was also a student and a writer, who composed his history at the command of that “most learned mind and intelligence” as he called his wife’s mother, the Empress Irene959. Of that lady her daughter writes with enthusiasm, comparing her with Athena, and praising her for her zealous study of the branch of science which was most appreciated at the Byzantine Court—dogmatic theology. The Empress, so her daughter tells us, did not like publicity; she preferred to stay at home and read religious books; and, when she was obliged to perform any Court function, she blushed like a girl960.

Of her fiancé, the young Constantine, the Princess writes with an enthusiasm which seems to come from the heart. She describes him as “a living statue,” and says that “if any one merely looked at him, he would speak of him as a descendant of the fabled age of gold”; and she confesses that after all these years the memory of this youth filled her eyes with tears. To the beauty of his mother, the Dowager-Empress Maria, by whom she was in part educated, she has dedicated a glowing passage, in which she likens her to a cypress in stature, with a skin white as snow—in short, a statue such as neither Phidias nor Apelles ever produced, “for such a harmony of all the members was never yet seen in any human body.” Thus, the Court circle of the reign of Alexios Comnenos, if we may believe his daughter, was a galaxy of that beauty which modern society journals assume to be the attribute of royal ladies.

It must not, however, be imagined that Anna Comnena, because she wrote like a Princess and a daughter, is not a valuable historian. She possessed a first-hand knowledge of the events of a large part of her father’s reign; and, as she tells us, she drew her information about the events, of which she had not been an eyewitness, largely from her father’s fellow-comrades in war, men like George Palaiologos, the defender of Durazzo, as well as from her father himself. Writing in the reign of Manuel I, when no one was interested in flattering the long-dead Alexios, she could claim, like Tacitus, that the time had arrived to describe his distant reign “sine irâ et studio.” From her birth and position, she possessed what mere scribes in all ages lack, an intimate acquaintance with the men who are really making history. She knew courts, and, a princess of the blood royal herself, she made the frank admission that even her father, against whom there were constant plots, was no exception to the rule that subjects usually dislike their sovereigns961.

She had access to State papers, which to the ordinary literary man would have remained inaccessible for generations. Thus, she gives us the ipsissima verba of the golden bull appointing the Empress-mother, Anna Dalassene, regent in the absence of her son, and the text of her father’s letter to the Emperor Henry IV, his “most Christian brother,” urging him to attack Guiscard in Southern Italy, offering him money, and suggesting a marriage between one of Henry’s daughters and his own nephew. These curious pieces are of interest as a specimen of the Byzantine Chancery’s epistolary style; and we note the care with which the Byzantine Emperor, who regarded himself as the sole heir of all the Cæsars, avoided giving the Imperial title to this Western “brother,” whom Anna describes by the Latinised form rex, while reserving for her father the more dignified title of basileús962. She gives, too, the full text of the lengthy agreement made between Alexios and Bohemond in 1108, which she probably had from her husband, who negotiated that treaty—a document of much value for the historical geography of the Holy Land during the Latin domination963. She has apparently used for her account of Guiscard a now lost Latin Chronicle, perhaps the work of the Archdeacon John of Bari, which was employed by William the Apulian as material for his Latin poem on that Norman chief, for she quotes the envoy of the Bishop of Bari as having described to her an incident in the campaign of Guiscard, at which he was present964.

She had access, also, to the simple and unvarnished memoirs of retired veterans, and was therefore well posted in military affairs. Her accurate use of technical military terms would do credit to a war-correspondent of the scientific school, while the glowing rhetoric of some of her descriptions would win the admiration of the modern descriptive writer, who, not being allowed to see anything of the operations, has to fall back upon the scenery. As examples of her military phraseology965 may be cited the words ἐξώπολον for the circle outside the camp, κοπός (or σκοπός) used in soldiers’ slang to designate their “fatigue parties,” and ἀρχοντόπουλοι, a term originally applied to the corps of soldiers’ sons first formed by her father, but extended in modern Greek to mean the children of any notables. She twice uses the technical term for a galley, and gives an elaborate description of the cross-bow, then an unknown weapon to the Greeks. More interesting still, she allows us to read, imbedded in her severely literary Greek, occasional specimens of the vulgar idiom used by the ordinary people in their conversation. Thus, she has preserved the popular lines about the successful conspiracy which placed her father on the throne; she cites a satiric verse about him during the Cuman war, and alludes to the comic song, sung in the vernacular, during the conveyance to execution of Michael Anemas, who had tried to kill him966. She so far forgets the dignity of historical narrative as to perpetrate two atrocious puns.

We find in her pages, too, some of the modern geographical names which had already, in popular speech, replaced the classical denominations for various Balkan mountains, rivers and towns. Thus, like her husband, she uses the modern name “Vardar” for the famous Macedonian river, instead of the classical “Axios”; she calls the Homeric “Ossa” by its present title of “Kissavos”; she describes the poetic “Peneios” as the “Salamvrias,” and uses the contemporary term “Dyrrachion” (whence comes the modern Italian “Durazzo” and the modern Serbian “Dratch”), as well as the older form “Epidamnos.” She apologetically asks no one to blame her for using such a vulgar name as “Vojussa,” with which the war has made us so familiar, for the classic river “Aoos967.”

As a rule she adopts an exaggeratedly lofty style. Just as it was said of Dr Johnson, that he would have made “little fishes talk like whales,” so the learned Princess makes a man address a crew of boatmen in the language of Homer968. Her contemporary, the annalist Zonaras, says of her that “she employed an accurately Attic Greek style,” and that “she had applied herself to books and to learned men and did not merely hold incidental converse with them.” But she frequently descends to quite every-day words, with which students of such mediæval Greek works as the Chronicle of the Morea and of the ordinary language of to-day are familiar. Thus, she describes an army, just as the Chronicler described it, as φοσσάτον; the French forms “liege” and “sergeants” are scarcely disguised under her Greek renderings λίζιος and σεργέντιοι. The classic word for “plains” (πεδία) becomes, in her prose, κάμπαι; the poetic τέμπη assume (as in Attaleiates) the guise of κλεισούραι, while κουλᾶ thrice displaces the classic ἀκρόπολις; φάμουσα, the vulgar word for “libels,” has crept into her pages; and πιγκέρνης has supplanted οἰνοχόος as the term for the court butler969. She remarks that those who led a nomadic life were called in “the common dialect, ‘Vlachoi’”; she quotes the popular Byzantine mot, that “the Scythians (i.e. Cumans) missed seeing May by a single day,” because they were defeated on April 29, and makes her father, when Bohemond at first rejected his presents, humorously apply to himself the current saying, “Let a bad thing return to its own master” (αὐθέντην)970.

One of the most interesting features of Anna Comnena’s history is the aspect which the First Crusade assumes in her pages. To Western historians the Crusades appeared as, on the whole, a great material benefit to Europe, quite apart from their religious and moral motives and results. But we learn from this Byzantine Princess, herself an eye-witness of the Crusaders’ arrival in her father’s capital, how this religious movement struck the Eastern Christians. The incursion of vast masses of more or less undisciplined soldiers into the Byzantine Empire naturally inspired alarm in the mind of its ruler, who feared—and the diversion of the Fourth Crusade from the redemption of the Holy Land to the capture of Constantinople three generations later justified his fears—that the pilgrims might be tempted to occupy his territories on the way. East and West rarely thoroughly understand one another; and the mutual reproaches of bad faith, which Greek historians have flung at the Crusaders and Latin historians at Alexios, were probably largely due, as is usually the case when two different nationalities quarrel, to a misunderstanding of one another’s mentality.

Alexios could scarcely feel reassured, when he heard that one of the Crusading chiefs was that same Bohemond who had fought against him in Thessaly, and whose father had sought a shadowy pretext to invade his Empire and capture Durazzo, “the Metropolis of Illyricum971.” Anna tells us what were the Emperor’s feelings when he first heard the news of the forthcoming Crusade and the approaching advent of vast Frankish armies. “He feared,” she wrote, “their attack, knowing their unrestrainable dash, their changeable and easily influenced minds, and all the other qualities, or concomitant attributes, of the French character.... For the French race is extremely hot-blooded and keen, and whenever it has once started on any course, impossible to check.” She accused the Crusaders of treating treaties like “scraps of paper” and of inordinate love of lucre; “for the Latin race,” she wrote, “is in other respects most devoted to money.” In her eyes these “barbarians,” as she called them in the contemptuous language of a highly cultivated Greek, were actuated by motives very different from the ostensible aim of freeing the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidels. “In appearance,” she remarked, “they were on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but in truth they wanted to oust the Emperor from his throne and seize the capital.” She noticed the sudden ups and downs of the French character, rapidly going from one extreme to the other, and pathetically described how one cause of her father’s rheumatism in his feet was the constant exertion to which they subjected that patient monarch, by worrying him with their requests all day and all night, so that he could not even find time to take his meals972!

In these circumstances, it was perhaps hardly to be expected that he should be very enthusiastic about taking an active part in the Crusade, although he more than once ransomed captured Crusaders. Nor was his enthusiasm increased by such acts of spoliation as the erection into a Latin County and a Latin Principality respectively of Edessa, still governed at the time of the Latin conquest by a Greek governor, and of Antioch, which only fourteen years earlier had been nominally a part of the Greek Empire. Again, no sovereign, and not least the ceremonious Emperor of Byzantium, could have been expected to put up with such an affront as that described by Sir Walter Scott after Anna Comnena, when a boorish Crusading noble seated himself on the Emperor’s seat. Yet Alexios took this unwarranted act of rudeness with great tact and dignity, even though it had been accompanied by an insulting remark about “a yokel remaining alone seated while so many nobles were standing in his presence.” Indeed, he not only deigned to ask who this unmannerly churl might be, but gave him some excellent advice, derived from long personal experience, of the safest way to wage war against the Turks. The arrogant Frank paid with his life at the battle of Dorylæum for his neglect of the Emperor’s well-meant warning973.

The literary Princess was not, however, so far led away by her national prejudices as to see no good in the Crusaders. She said of a very good Greek horseman, that “one would have thought him to be not a Greek, but of Norman origin,” so well did he ride. Indeed, the incapacity of the French to fight on foot struck her so forcibly that she remarked: “A Frenchman on horseback is unrestrainable and would ride through the walls of Babylon, but once dismounted he is at the mercy of the first comer.” For that reason her father bade his archers kill the horses of the Western cavaliers, for then the riders would be helpless974. She specially eulogises the honesty of the Comte de St Gilles, Isangeles, as she calls him, who “differed in all things from all the Latins, as much as the sun differs from the stars975.” While she expresses the horror felt by her fellow-countrymen at the Church militant as represented by the fighting Latin clergy, armed with shield and spear976, in her character of Guiscard, who did so much harm to her father, she praises his courage and strategic ability, and her description of Bohemond’s personal appearance is so detailed and so flattering that it may have been prompted by a very feminine motive. “No such man, whether barbarian or Greek,” she wrote of him, “was ever seen in the land of the Greeks (for he was a marvel to behold and a wonder to be narrated)977.” Of the warlike wife of Guiscard, Gaïta, she says with mixed admiration and alarm, that “she was a Pallas, but not an Athena,” skilled in battle but not in arts, and terrible when armed with her lance and piercing voice.

Students of Balkan geography are no less indebted to Anna Comnena than are historians of the First Crusade. Her pages are full of the names of places, rendered household words to us by the events of the last seven years. On this subject she had access to a very high authority, her father, who possessed a minute knowledge of both coasts of the Adriatic with their harbours, a list of which he sent to his Admiral, and with the prevailing winds of that turbulent sea. Alexios was, in fact, an Adriatic specialist, as he would be described in the jargon of to-day. No writer on the historical geography of Durazzo could afford to neglect our author, who minutely describes the origin, topography, and contemporary condition of that famous town. She tells us that at that time most of the inhabitants were colonists from Amalfi and Venice; and she describes the walls of that now squalid little Albanian town as at that time so broad that more than four horsemen could safely ride abreast along them, while there stood a bronze equestrian statue over the eastern gate. She talks of the old Bulgarian capitals of “Pliskova” and “Great Pristhlava” (Pliska and Prêslav); she narrates the origin of Philippopolis, where she herself had lived for some time; and she makes one interesting allusion to the comparatively recent Norman Conquest of England in the passage, in which she says that Bohemond was aided in his second invasion of Albania by men from “Thule” (Britain)978, which she also mentions as furnishing the Varangian guard. We know from a contemporary British historian how glad the English exiles were to fight in Greece against the Normans, and how Alexios built a town for them at Civetot, the modern Guemlek, on the Asiatic coast near Constantinople. We hear, too, how 300 of them defended Kastoria.

She uses the correct word jupan (or “count”) for the Serbian chieftains979, but designates both King Michael (who was the first ruler of Dioklitia to bear the royal title and whose dominions included Scutari, Montenegro, the Herzegovina and the coast), and his son and co-regent, Bodin, as Exarchs of the Dalmatians980. She mentions also the contemporary “great” jupan of the other and inland Serbian state of Rascia, the modern sandjak of Novibazar, Vukan, describing him as “wielding the entire authority over the Dalmatians,” of whom she says that, “although they were Dalmatians, still they were Christians.” It is interesting to find in this passage that one of his nephews already bore the name of Urosh, so famous in the later Serbian dynasty of Nemanja, which etymologists derive from the Magyar word úr, meaning “lord.” The identification of the Serbians with “Dalmatians” would tend to prove the predominantly Serbian character of Southern Dalmatia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She was acquainted, too, with the pirates, who infested the mouth of the river Narenta, and whom she twice mentions under the name of “Vetones.”

The name of the Albanians was known to Anna Comnena, as to her predecessors, Attaleiates and Skylitzes, the first Byzantine authors who applied it to that mysterious race. She notices the exclusive admiration felt by the Albanians, as by the modern British school-boy, for physical prowess, and remarks that in that country bodily strength and size were the principal requirements that made a man a suitable candidate for the purple and the diadem981. In the case, however, of that tall but inane guardsman, Prince William of Wied, gigantic size was not sufficient to ensure the loyalty of the Albanians. Anna Comnena is also the first writer who mentions the existence of the Wallachs982 in Thessaly, soon to be called “Great Wallachia” by her successor Niketas, and “Wallachia” by Benjamin of Tudela, at a place called Ezeva near Mount Ossa. Notices of this kind are what make her history valuable to us rather than the classical reminiscences, which to her and her contemporaries were doubtless its chief merit. She complained of having to insert “barbarous names983,” which “befouled” her historical style, in her polished narrative, just as some modern imitators of Cicero objected to employing words for recent inventions unknown to the Roman orator. She cited as an excuse the example of Homer, who disdained not to mention the Bœotians and certain barbarous islands for the sake of historical accuracy. Fortunately, the more plastic Greek language is usually quite equal to this difficulty, and even the uncouth names of French Crusaders and Serbian jupani are admitted to the honours of the Greek declensions by this skilled writer, of whom a contemporary said that, if the ancients had known her, “they would have added a fourth Grace and a tenth Muse.”

The time has come when it is no longer the fashion to decry Byzantine history and to deny the name of literature to the writings of the mediæval Greeks. Finlay rehabilitated the Byzantine Empire from the contempt which Gibbon had thrown upon it; in Greece a succession of modern writers, beginning with Paparregopoulos, in his great History of the Hellenic Nation, have reminded his countrymen that Greek history is a whole, and that contemporary Hellas owes as much, or more, to the great figures of the Middle Ages as to the heroes of classical antiquity; in France MM. Schlumberger and Diehl have combined, in truly French fashion, great erudition with great literary skill in dealing with the “Byzantine epic” of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and with the female figures that in various ages filled the Court of Constantinople. Of these Anna Comnena is perhaps the most curious. We are too much accustomed to regard Byzantine personages as merely so many stained-glass portraits, all decorations and angles, instead of men and women of like passions with ourselves. Anna Comnena was, in her loves and her dislikes, her vanities and her ambitions, very much a woman. Beneath her Attic prose, acquired by study and polished by art, there transpire the feminine feelings, which lend a peculiar turn to her history. Among the sovereigns, lawyers, statesmen, soldiers, and ecclesiastics who form the corpus of the Byzantine historians, she is the only woman.

Authorities

1. Nicephori Bryennii Commentarii. Bonn: Weber, 1836.

2. Michaelis Attaliotæ Historia. Bonn: Weber, 1853.

3. Annæ Comnenæ Porphyrogenitæ Alexias. Two vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1884.

4. Princesses Byzantines. Par Paul Adam. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1893.

5. Figures Byzantines. Par Charles Diehl. Deuxième Série. Paris: Armand Colin, 1908.

Footnotes

1 XL. 5.

2 Plutarch, Sulla, 13.

3 Two Athenian inscriptions (Böckh, C.I.G., I. 409) allude to this restoration.

4 Plutarch, Pompey, 28.

5 Epist. II. 2, 45.

6 Epistolæ ad Diversos, IV. 5, 4.

7 Paparregopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους (ed. 4), II. 440, inclines however to the view that their enfranchisement was of earlier date.

8 Juvenal, I. 73, X. 170. Tacitus, Annales, II. 53-55, 85; III. 38, 63, 69; IV. 13, 30, 43; V. 10.

9 Mustoxidi, Delle Cose Corciresi, pp. 403, 404, xi.

10 In 1888 an inscription, containing this proclamation, was found at the Bœotian Karditza. Karolides, note 31 to Paparregopoulos, op. cit. II. 448.

11 Suetonius, Nero, 19, 22-24.

12 Tacitus, Historiæ, II. 8, 9.

13 Pausanias, X. 34.

14 Ibid. VII. 20.

15 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. III. 4; IV. 23; Liber Pontificalis, I. 125, 131, 155.

16 The passages of Zosimos (I. 29), who says Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν τοῦ τείχους ἐπεμελοῦντο μηδεμιᾶς, ἐξότε Σύλλας τοῦτο διέφθειρεν, ἀξιωθέντος φροντίδος, and of Zonaras (XII. 23) seem to support Finlay’s view that this was not a new wall. Paparregopoulos, op. cit., II. 490, agrees with it.

17 Hertzberg: Die Geschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft der Römer, III. 79.

18 Ἄλλος μετά τινος σαφηνείας Θουκυδίδης, μάλιστά γε ἐν ταῖς Σκυθικαῖς ἱστορίαις.—Photios, Cod. 82.

19 Historici Græci Minores, I. 186-89.

20 Zonaras, XII. 26.

21 Trebellius Pollio, Gallien, 13.

22 Historici Græci Minores, I. 438-40.

23 A Greek inscription alluding to Jovian may still be read over the west door, but Mustoxidi (Delle Cose Corciresi, pp. 406-7) differs from Spon and Montfaucon in thinking that some other Jovian is meant.

24 In Eutropium, II. 212 et seq.

25 Procopios, De bello Vand., I. ch. 22.

26 Hertzberg thinks it was the bronze statue of Athena Promachos which was carried off. But Gregorovius’ view (Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, I. 49), that given in the text, seems more probable.

27 Agathias, II. chs. 30, 31.

28 III. 217 (ed. Bonn).

29 Menander in Hist. Gr. Min. II. 98.

30 Hist. Eccles. VI. 10.

31 Leunclavius, Jus Græco-Romanum, I. 278.

32 The latest study of this Chronicle is by N. A. Bees in Βυζαντίς, I. 57-105.

33 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, I. 36-72; Μνημεῖα, I. 41-46.

34 Schlumberger, Sigillographie de l’Empire Byzantin, 172.

35 III. 53.

36 Neroutsos, Χριστιανικαὶ Ἀθῆναι in Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστ. καὶ Ἐθν. Ἑταιρίας, III. 30.

37 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, III. 217-20.

38 Ibid. III. 220-24.

39 Kedrenos (ed. Bonn), II. 170.

40 Mustoxidi, Delle Cose Corciresi, 409.

41 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, III. 243.

42 The two large tombs in the crypt at Hosios Loukas are according to tradition those of Romanos II and Theophano who is known to English readers as the eponymous heroine of Mr Frederic Harrison’s novel. Leo Diakonos (p. 49) calls her “the Laconian”; some say she was of low origin, others of a noble family of Constantinople. I noticed a great number of Hebrew inscriptions at Mistra, near Sparta.

43 Kedrenos, II. 475, 482, 516, 529; Zonaras (ed. Leipzig), IV. 123; Early Travels in Palestine, 32.

44 An absolutely historical fact, because the Princes of Achaia claimed to be suzerains of the two Dukes of Athens and Naxos.

45 G. de Vinsauf, Itin. Ricc. I, II. 24.

46 Athenische Mitteilungen, XXXIV. 234-36.

47 Niketas Choniates (ed. Bonn), pp. 840-42.

48 Geoffroy de Villehardouin, La Conquête de Constantinople (ed. Bouchet), I. 226-32.

49 Pitra, Analecta sacra et classica, VII. 90, 93.

50 Marino Sanudo apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 101.

51 Μόνη ἔμβασις, Monemvasia.

52 Marino Sanudo apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 102.

53 The Chronicle of the Morea, p. 296.

54 Sanudo apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 108.

55 Βυζαντινὰ χρονικά, II. 427.

56 Μοῦλος is still Moreote Greek for “a bastard”; in the first part of the word we perhaps have the French gars.

57 Cantacuzene (ed. Bonn), bk. IV. ch. 13.

58 Mazaris apud Boissonade, Anecdota Græca, III. 164-78.

59 Finlay, IV. 267; Ersch und Gruber, LXXXVI. 131-33; Rev. F. Vyvyan Jago in the Archæologia, XVIII. 83 sqq. I am indebted to the courtesy of the Rev. S. Gregory, the present rector of Landulph, for the following copy of the brass plate there:
Here lyeth the body of Theodoro Paleologus
of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye Imperyall
lyne of ye last Christian Emperors of Greece,
being the Sonne of Camilio ye Sonne of Prosper
the Sonne of Theodoro the Sonne of John ye
Sonne of Thomas, second brother to Constantine
Paleologus the 8th of that name, and last of
yt lyne yt raygned in Constantinople until subdewed
by the Turkes; who married with Mary
ye daughter of William Balls of Hadlye in
Souffolke gent, and had issue 5 children: Theodoro,
John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy & departed
this lyfe at Clyfton ye 21st January, 1636.

60 Geschichte Griechenlands vom Beginn des Mittelalters, in Ersch und Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXV. 212, 321, LXXXVI. 24.

61 Voyaige d’Oultremer, p. 89.

62 Geschichte Griechenlands, I. 138.

63 Finlay, I. 338, note.

64 Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους, V. 300 (4th ed.).

65 Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, V. 155-61.

66 L. 8096.

67 P. 275.

68 L. 8469.

69 P. 160.

70 The form Abarinos does not occur in the French, Italian, and Aragonese versions of the Chronicle, because the Franks always called the place port de Junch, or Zonklon, from the rushes which grew there—a name very frequent, in a more or less corrupt form, in the Venetian documents of the thirteenth century, e.g. in that locus classicus for Frankish names the list of depredations by pirates in Greece drawn up in 1278 (Tafel und Thomas, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abth. II. B. XIV. 237).

71 Pp. 61, 66, 68 (ed. Burckhardt).

72 Geogr. III. 16.

73 Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea, I. 188.

74 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II. i. 332.

75 Ed. Predelli, II. 231, 248.

76 Tafel und Thomas, Fontes Rer. Austr. pt. II. vol. XII. 464-88.

77 Albericus Trium Fontium, Chronicon, II. 439.

78 A. Dandolo, Chronicon Venetum, apud Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XII. 335; L. de Monacis, Chronicon, p. 143; Magno, apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 179.

79 Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, III. 61.

80 Innocentii III Epistolæ, XI. 111-113, 238, 240, 252, 256.

81 Henri de Valenciennes (ed. Paulin Paris), ch. 35.

82 Sanudo, apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 136.

83 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, ll. 8071-8092.

84 Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient latin, p. 382.

85 Sathas in Annuaire des études grecques, vol. XIII. 122-133.

86 D’Arbois de Jubainville, Voyage paléographique dans le département de l’Aube, pp. 332-340.

87 Muntaner, ch. 240; Thomas, Diplomatarium, I. 111; Predelli, Commemoriali, I. 198.

88 Hist. de’ suoi Tempi, VIII. 50.

89 Raynaldi, Annales ecclesiastici, V. 22, 23.

90 Thomas, Dipiomatarium, I. 120-122.

91 Çurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, bk. X. ch. 30.

92 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, ll. 8086-8092; Le Livre de la Conqueste, pp. 1, 274.

93 Rubió y Lluch, Los Navarros en Grecia, p. 309, n. 2; a much more probable explanation, derived from the word bort (“bastard”), than that of Ducange (note to Cinnamus, p. 392), who says that he was so called because our Black Prince had conferred on him the freedom of Bordeaux.

94 Rubió in Anuari de l’Institut (1907), 253.

95 La Grèce continentale, 217; Recherches historiques, I. 409.

96 Ibid., I. 409-10.

97 St Genois, Droits primitifs... de Haynaut, I. 337.

98 Ibid., I. 215.

99 Mélanges historiques: choix de Documents, III. 240

100 Lettere di Collegio (ed. Giomo), p. 66.

101 Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 178.

102 Idem, apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXV. 321, 360. Cf. J. H. S. XXVIII. 238.

103 Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, II. 166.

104 Lampros, Ἔγγραφα (Documents), pp. 305, 324-27.

105 Lampros, Ὁ τελευταῖος κόμης τῶν Σαλώνων (The Last Count of Salona).

106 Gregorovius, Briefe, pp. 309, 310.

107 “Nicolai de Marthono Liber,” in Revue de l’Orient Latin, III. 657.

108 The earlier fourteenth-century traveller, Ludolf von Suchem, who mentions Athens, did not actually visit it.

109 Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορικῆς καὶ Ἐθνολογικῆς Ἑταιρίας (Report of the Historical and Ethnological Society), v. 827.

110 Predelli, Commemoriali, III. 309.

111 Cornelio Magni, Relazione, pp. 14, 49.

112 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II. i. 276.

113 Michael Laskaris, the Athenian patriot of the fourteenth century, in K. Rhanghaves’ play, The Duchess of Athens, is unhappily a poetic anachronism.

114 Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας (Memorials of Greek History), III. 427.

115 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων (Greek Remembrancer), new series, I. 55.

116 The anonymous traveller (?Domenico of Brescia) who describes Athens about 1466 speaks of the city as “ultimamente murata.” (Mitteilungen des K. deutschen Arch. Instituts, XXIV. 74.)

117 Tozzetti, Relazione di alcuni viaggi fatti in... Toscana, V. 439, 440. This letter, dated “Kyriaceo die, iv Kal. Ap.,” fixes the year of the second visit, because March 29 fell on a Sunday in 1444, and we know from another letter, written before June 1444, that Cyriacus left Chalkis for Chios, where the letter about Athens was written, on “v Kal. Mart.” of that year.

118 Jahrbuch der K. preussischen Kunstsammlungen, IV. 81.

119 Studi e documenti di Storia e di Diritto, XV. 337.

120 Jorga in Revue de l’Orient Latin, VIII. 78.

121 Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα (Memorials), III. 141. The legend places the scene in a still more romantic spot than Megara—the monastery of Daphni, the mausoleum of the French dukes.

122 A contemporary note in MS., No. 103 of the Liturgical section of the National Library at Athens, fixes the date as “May 4, 1456, Friday”; but in that year June 4, not May 4, was on a Friday, which agrees with the date of June 1456 given by Phrantzes, the Chronicon breve, the Historia Patriarchica, and Gaddi.

123 Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane, XXVIII. 203.

124 De Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianæ Urbis Romæ, II. i. 374.

125 Spon, Voyage, II. 155, 172.

126 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων (Greek Remembrancer), new series, I. 216-18.

127 The portraits of the six Florentine Dukes of Athens in Fanelli’s Atene Attica are unfortunately imaginary. On the other hand, the figure of Joshua in one of the frescoes at Geraki in Lakonia seems to be intended to portray one of the Frankish barons of that Castle.

128 Ἱστορία τῆς Πόλεως Ἀθηνῶν κατὰ τοὺς μέσους αἰῶνας (Ἐν Ἀθήναις, Κ. Μπὲκ’ 1904-6.)

129 Barcelona, L’Avenç, 1906. Cf. Anuari de l’Institut d’Estudis Catalans (1907-8, 1911, 1913-14). Estudis Universitaris Catalans, VIII. (1915).

130 Vols. XXVII. 3-93, 380-456, 555-634, 771-852; XXVIII. 154-212.

131 Lampros, op. cit., II. 729; Παρνασσός, VII. 23.

132 Cod. Palat. 226, f. 122; Lampros, op. cit., I. 421, note.

133 Pressutti, Regesta Honorii III, II. 304; Les Registres d’Urbain IV, III. 426; Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορικῆς καὶ Ἐθνολογικῆς Ἑταιρίας, II. 28; Les Registres de Clément IV, I. 214, 245.

134 Lampros, op. cit., III. 119.

135 Catalunya a Grecia, pp. 42, 53.

136 Catalunya a Grecia, pp. 50, 91.

137 “Geschichte Griechenlands,” in Ersch und Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXVI. 18, 19; Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 475; Anuari (1911).

138 Lampros, op. cit., p. 344.

139 Ibid., pp. 234-6, 238.

140 Ibid., p. 344.

141 Ibid., pp. 279, 350.

142 Ibid., p. 335.

143 Ibid., p. 283.

144 Ibid., p. 315.

145 Ibid., pp. 240, 282, 330.

146 Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, II. 156, note 1.

147 Rubió y Lluch, Los Navarros en Grecia, p. 476.

148 Op. cit., pp. 82-8.

149 Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορικῆς καὶ Ἐθνολογικῆς Ἑταιρίας, V. 824-7.

150 Revue de l’Orient Latin, III. 647-53, 656.

151 Catalunya a Grecia, pp. 57, 63.

152 Predelli, Commemoriali, III. 206, 208; Hopf, Chroniques, p. 229; Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II. i. 257; Gregorovius, Briefe aus der “Corrispondenza Acciajoli,” p. 308; Chalkokondyles, pp. 145, 213.

153 Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane, XXVII. 430-1.

154 Op. cit., II. 747-52; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, I. 43-56.

155 Op. cit., III. 407-9; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, I. 216-24.

156 Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane, XXVIII. 203.

157 Μνημεῖα τῆς Ἱστορίας τῶν Ἀθηναίων, II. 153.

158 p. 385.

159 p. 520.

160 p. 124.

161 Elogiographus, 300-1.

162 Loysii Neroczi de Pictis nomine Neroczi eius patris pro venditione cuiusdam domus.

163 R. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Aul. della Repubblica, Balie, no. 29 c. 67.

164 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II. i. 292.

165 p. 38.

166 Apud Pagnini, Della Decima, II. 251.

167 V. 28.

168 Sauger, Histoire nouvelle des anciens Ducs, p. 65.

169 See The Mad Duke of Naxos.

170 See The Last Venetian Islands in the Ægean.

171 Geschichte Griechenlands, apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXVI. 166; Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 482; Veneto-Byzantinische Analekten, p. 414.

172 Les Ducs de l’Archipel, p. 13, in the Venetian Miscellanea, vol. IV.

173 Sanuto, Diarii, VIII. 328, 337, 355, 366.

174 Ibid., XI. 393, 394, 705.

175 Ibid., II. 701.

176 Ibid.

177 Hopf, Gozzadini, apud Ersch und Gruber, op. cit., LXXVI. 425; LXXXVI. 166.

178 Sanuto, Diarii, XII. 22, 175, 503.

179 Sanuto, Diarii, XI. 450, 525, 748; XII. 175; XX. 354, 356, 376.

180 Ibid., XVII. 35.

181 Ibid., XXIV. 380, 384, 387-8.

182 Ibid., XXIV. 467, 596, 645; XXV. 158, 185.

183 Stavrakes, Στατιστικὴ τοῦ πληθυσμοῦ τῆς Κρήτης, 183 sqq.; Pashley, Travels in Crete, II. 326.

184 Paparregopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους, V. 3. Cf. Gerland, Histoire de la Noblesse crétoise au Moyen Age.

185 Cf. Gerola, La dominazione genovese in Creta.

186 Hopf, in Ersch und Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie, vol. 85, pp. 221-2, 241-3, 312-4; Paparregopoulos, V. 52.

187 Cf. Gerola, Per la Cronotassi dei vescovi cretesi all’ epoca veneta; Monumenti veneti nell’ isola di Creta, II. 64, 67.

188 See Pashley, I. 11-17, on this point. He identifies the two places, like Gerola (Mon. ven. I. 17), who derives the name of Canea from λαχανιά (“vegetable garden”), the first syllable being mistaken for the feminine of the article.

189 Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, IV. 611 et sqq.

190 Cornelius, Creta Sacra, II. 355.

191 Pashley, II. 150-156.

192 Zinkeisen, IV. 629-723.

193 Pashley, II. 285.

194 The totall discourse (ed. 1906), pp. 70-83.

195 Zinkeisen, IV. 789, 808. Like the British Government in 1819, the Turks did not know what Parga was.

196 To this period belongs the fountain at Candia, described by Pashley (I. 203), and still standing. An inscription on it states that it was erected by Antonio Priuli in 1666, “when the war had been raging for four lustres.”

197 Zinkeisen, IV. 992.

198 Paparregopoulos, V. 552.

199 Childe Harold, IV. 14.

200 Von Hammer, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, VI. 573, VII. 182; Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, I. 62.

201 Stavrakes, 138 sqq.

202 Pashley, II. 150-156.

203 Ibid. I. 54.

204 Sathas, Ἑλληνικὰ Ἀνέκδοτα, II., Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, 222-300; Κρητικὸν Θέατρον, which includes a comedy, a pastoral tragi-comedy, a tragedy and an imitation of Simeon’s Zeno.

205 Paparregopoulos, V. 636-38.

206 Stavrakes, 139-41.

207 Mustoxidi, Delle Cose Corciresi, pp. 399 and vi.

208 Ibid. p. 401.

209 Mustoxidi, p. 441. Aleman belonged to a family from Languedoc, which received the barony of Patras after the Frank conquest of the Morea, and whose name is still borne by the bridge near Thermopylæ, the scene of the heroic fight of 1821.

210 Idromenos, Συνοπτικὴ Ἱστορία τῆς Κερκύρας, p. 68. There is, however, a document of Philip II of Taranto in favour of the Greek clergy: Marmora, Della Historia di Corfù, p. 223.

211 Romanos, Ἡ Ἑβραϊκὴ κοινότης τῆς Κερκύρας, Mustoxidi, pp. 443-50.

212 Mustoxidi, p. 452.

213 Mustoxidi, pp. 456-64, lx-lxxii.

214 Finlay, V. 62; Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, I. 315.

215 This mediæval name, “the black saint,” applied first to a fortress, then to a chapel on the site of the fortress, then (like Negroponte) to the whole island, is said by Saint-Sauveur (Voyage Historique, Littéraire et Pittoresque, II. 339) to have come in with the Tocchi, and to be derived from the black image of the Virgin in the cathedral at Toledo. It occurs, however, in a Neapolitan document of 1343, a Venetian document of 1355, and a Serbian golden bull of 1361 and is mentioned in the French version of the Chronicle of the Morea, probably written between 1333 and 1341. It has now been officially superseded by the classic Levkas.

216 Hopf, in Ersch und Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXVI. 168.

217 Marmora, Della Historia di Corfù, p. 253.

218 “Celsam Buthroti accedimus urbem,” III. 293.

219 Cicero ad Atticum, IV. 8 a; Marmora, p. 431.

220 Marmora, p. 387.

221 Ibid. p. 396; Saint-Sauveur, I. 345.

222 Marmora, p. 420.

223 Viscount Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, I. 28.

224 Marmora, p. 312.

225 Lounzes, Περὶ τῆς πολιτικῆς καταστάσεως τῆς Ἑπτανήσου ἐπὶ Ἑνετῶν, pp. 188-90; Hopf, ubi supra, LXXXVI. 186.

226 The words are quoted in the Ὁδηγὸς τῆς νήσου Κερκύρας (1902).

227 Mustoxidi, p. lxvi.

228 Marmora, pp. 394, 419, 445.

229 Lounzes, p. 101.

230 Saint-Sauveur, II. 15-21.

231 Marmora, p. 369.

232 Idromenos, p. 87.

233 Saint-Sauveur, II. 22-31.

234 Marmora, p. 430.

235 Lounzes, pp. 178-82; Romanos, Ἡ Ἑβραϊκὴ κοινότης τῆς Κερκύρας; Pinkerton’s Collection of Travels, IX. 4; Marmora, pp. 255, 286, 370, 430, 437. The last writer approvingly says about the Jews, loro non conviene di stabile, che il sepolcro.

236 Viaro Capodistria, Remarks respectfully submitted to the Consideration of the British Parliament, p. 64.

237 Marmora, p. 433; Paparregopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους (4th ed.), V. 644.

238 Ibid. V. 530.

239 Idromenos, Συνοπτικὴ Ἱστορία τῆς Κερκύρας, p. 90, and the same author’s essay Περὶ τῆς ἐν ταῖς Ἰονίοις νήσοις ἐκπαιδεύσεως.

240 Paparregopoulos, V. 635; Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, p. 127; Νεοελληνικὴ Φιλολογία, pp. 138, 165.

241 Quirini, Primordia Corcyræ, pp. 167, 168; Mustoxidi, Illustrazioni Corciresi, I. 10, 11.

242 Marmora, p. 425.

243 Finlay, V. 284-5; Idromenos, Συνοπτικὴ Ἱστορία τῆς Κερκύρας, pp. 91-3; Paparregopoulos, V. 645-7.

244 Saint-Sauveur, III. 112, 140, 199, 260, 268, 277.

245 Jervis, History of the Island of Corfù, p. 125.

246 Marmora, p. 389.

247 Hopf, ubi supra, LXXXVI. 186. Sathas, Μνημεῖα, IV. p. xxxvii; Ἑλληνικὰ Ἀνέκδοτα, I. 157-93.

248 Quoted by Lounzes, p. 63 n.

249 Saint-Sauveur, III. 8, 91. When, in the sixteenth century, the Cephalonians claimed precedence over Zante, they quoted to the Venetians, in support of their claim, the fact that in the Homeric catalogue the people of Zakynthos are only cited as the subjects of Odysseus (Sathas, Μνημεῖα, IV. p. iv).

250 Hopf, ubi supra, LXXXVI. 186; Saint-Sauveur, III. 201.

251 Andreades, Περὶ τῆς οἰκονομικῆς διοικήσεως τῆς Ἑπτανήσου ἐπὶ Βενετοκρατίας (1914).

252 Lounzes, pp. 83-5; Hopf, ubi supra, LXXXVI. 160, 186; Grivas, Ἱστορία τῆς νήσου Ἰθάκης.

253 Lounzes, p. 77; Saint-Sauveur, II. 351.

254 Saint-Sauveur, II. 239-48.

255 Mrs Dawes, Saint Spiridion, translated from L. S. Brokines’s work Περὶ τῶν ἐτησίως τελουμένων ἐν Κερκύρᾳ λιτανειῶν τοῦ Ἁγίου Σπυρίδωνος. See also Marmora, pp. 261-7.

256 Ibid. p. 333.

257 Marmora, pp. 301-12; M. Mustoxidi, Ἱστορικὰ καὶ Φιλολογικὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, 24-44, 83-97; Paparregopoulos, V. 667; Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, 112-18.

258 Idromenos, Συνοπτικὴ Ἱστορία τῆς Κερκύρας, pp. 24, 80, 94; Marmora, p. 414; Anagrafi dell’ Isola di Corfù, 1761; Daru, Histoire de Venise, V. 213; Saint-Sauveur, II. 154.

259 One plan is in Jervis, History of the Island of Corfù, p. 126, the other in Marmora, pp. 364-5.

260 Marmora, p. 345.

261 Finlay, V. 85-6; Marmora, pp. 348-50.

262 Marmora, p. 370.

263 Pinkerton’s Collection of Travels, IX. 4.

264 Marmora, pp. 389-91; Mrs Dawes, Saint Spiridion.

265 Paparregopoulos, V. 672. A Latin inscription of 1684 at Santa Maura bears Morosini’s name.

266 Viscount Kirkwall, Four Years in the Ionian Islands, I. 29-30.

267 Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches in Europa, V. 501-2.

268 Jervis, History of the Island of Corfù, p. 132.

269 A recent Greek writer in the Ὀδηγὸς τῆς νήσου Κερκύρας states, I know not on what authority, that, as a reward for their bravery, Schulenburg called Mt Abraham at Corfù after the patriarch. The name occurs in Marmora long before Schulenburg’s time.

270 Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, I. 464.

271 Leben und Denkwürdigkeiten Johann Mathias Reichsgrafen von der Schulenburg, II; Zinkeisen, op. cit. V. 520-31; Daru, Histoire de Venise, V. 145-53; Greek chronicle of Epeiros printed by Pouqueville, Voyage de la Grèce, V. 294-9; Idromenos, Συνοπτικὴ Ἱστορία, pp. 81-6.

272 Two plans, one of the siege, one of the works executed by Schulenburg, are in the British Museum, and are reproduced by Jervis, pp. 139, 145.

273 Daru, V. 159, 171.

274 Saint-Sauveur, II. 99, III. 251-3; Andreades, I. 278.

275 Saint-Sauveur, II. 148. I copied down the dates 1759 and 1778 from two of the ruins there.

276 Paparregopoulos, V. 686; Daru, V. 198-9; Jervis, p. 153.

277 Paparregopoulos, V. 701; Saint-Sauveur, II. 288.

278 Saint-Sauveur, II. 150-3; Hazlitt, The Venetian Republic, II. 311; Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, VIII. 289-99; Legrand, Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire, III. 332-6.

279 Saint-Sauveur, II. 199-206.

280 Romanin, IX. 134-8.

281 Daru, V. 221; Saint-Sauveur, III. 38-49.

282 Daru, V. 30.

283 Saint-Sauveur (an eye-witness), II. 63 et sqq.

284 Romanin, X. 240-5; Rodocanachi, Bonaparte et les Îles Ioniennes, pp. 24, 26.

285 Πολιορκία καὶ ἄλωσις τῆς Μονεμβασίας ὑπὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων τῷ 1821. Ἀθήνησι, 1874.

286 p. 398.

287 Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, II. 287; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν (ed. 1814), 397.

288 Lampros, Μιχαὴλ Ἀκομινάτου, II. 137; Niketas, 97, 581-92.

289 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, l. 2065.

290 Ibid. ll. 2630, 2644.

291 Ibid. ll. 2765-9.

292 Ibid. ll. 2891-6; Romanos, Γρατιανὸς Ζώρζης, 136. The French version of the Chronicle omits the Naxian and Cephalonian contingents.

293 Epistolæ, vol. II. p. 622; Les Registres d’Innocent IV, vol. III. 306, 397.

294 La Grèce Continentale, p. 412; Sir T. Wyse, Excursion into the Peloponnesus, I. 6. Cf. Tozer in J.H.S. IV. 233-6.

295 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, l. 1306; Le Livre de la Conqueste, p. 27.

296 Les Registres d’Urbain IV, II. 100, 341; Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, ll. 4534, 4547, 4580, 4584, 4643, 5026, 5569, 5576.

297 Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. II. B. XIV. 164, 192-3, 204, 215, 220, 226, 248.

298 Antique Memorie di Cerigo, apud Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, VI. 301.

299 Sanudo, Istoria del Regno, apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 127; Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. II. B. XIV. 181; Sansovino, Cronologia del Mondo, fol. 185; Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, LXXXV. 310.

300 Miklosich und Müller, op. cit. V. 155-61; Phrantzes, 399, 400; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν, 400.

301 Le Livre de la Conqueste, 363; Libro de los Fechos, 107; Muntaner, Cronaca, ch. 117; Bartholomæus de Neocastro and Nicolaus Specialis apud Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. XIII. 1185; X. 959.

302 Chs. 199, 201.

303 Thomas, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, I. 127.

304 Miklosich und Müller, l.c.

305 Phrantzes, 57; Manuel Palaiologos, Theodori Despoti Laudatio Funebris, apud Migne, Patrologia Græca, CLVI. 228-9; Chalkokondyles, 80.

306 Hopf, op. cit. LXXXVI. 79: see Appendix.

307 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, I. 269; II. 181.

308 Montfaucon, Palæographia Græca, 81, 89; Ἑλληνομνήμων, 336-46.

309 Miklosich und Müller, V. 171-4; Παρνασσός, VII. 472-6.

310 Ibid. III. 258.

311 P. 447.

312 Chalkokondyles, 476, 485; Phrantzes, 396-7; Spandugino (ed. 1551), 44-5.

313 Magno, Annali Veneti, apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 203-4; Pii II. Commentari, 103-4.

314 Phrantzes, 415; Magno, 204; Sathas, VI. 95; Chalkokondyles, 556. Regina, fol. 52, 56 (for a copy of which I am indebted to Mr Horatio F. Brown: see Appendix). The actual date is uncertain; Phrantzes and Magno give 1464, and the Venetian document above quoted points to that year; but Malatesta’s secretary in his account of the war (Sathas, l.c.) puts it in 1463, before the siege of Corinth.

315 Sanudo, Diarii, I. 703.

316 Predelli, Commemoriali, V. 228-30, 238-9, 241; Miklosich und Müller, op. cit. III. 293-309.

317 Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, IV. 230; Sanudo, Diarii, XXIX. 482.

318 Feyerabend, Reyssbuch des Heyligen Lands, fol. 182; Faber, Evagatorium, III. 314. The name was so long preserved that a wine-shop in Venetian dialect was called “Malvasia.”

319 Sanudo, Diarii, VII. 714; XXIII. 536; XXIV. 669; XXV. 64; XXIX. 402; XXXI. 227; XXXV. 363; XLIV. 475; LV. 296; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, III. 56.

320 Sanudo, Diarii, XI. 349; XXXIII. 366; Sathas, IV. 224, 227, 229, 234; Lamansky, Les Secrets de l’État de Venise, p. 659; Feyerabend, op. cit. fol. 112.

321 Predelli, Commemoriali, VI. 236, 238.

322 Paruta, Historia Venetiana, I. 451-3.

323 Lami, Deliciæ Eruditorum, XV. 203; Sathas, op. cit. VIII. 310-3, 320-1, 335, 344, 377-8, 441-3.

324 Ibid. 342, 413, 450, 454.

325 Sathas, op. cit. VIII. 396; Meliarakes, Οἰκογένεια Μαμωνᾶ.

326 Litta, Le famiglie celebri italiane, vol. v. Plate XIV.

327 Epistolæ Innocentii III (ed. Baluze), II. 477.

328 Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. II. B. XIV. 201, 213, 218, 222; Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Documents Arméniens, II. 508.

329 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, ll. 1559, 3187; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 102; Libro de los Fechos, 25, 26; Cronaca di Morea, apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 424; Dorotheos of Monemvasia, Βιβλίον Ἱστορικόν (ed. 1814), 461; Sanudo, Istoria del Regno di Romania, apud Hopf, op. cit. 100.

330 Canciani, Barbarorum Leges Antiquæ, III. 507; Muntaner, Cronaca, ch. 261.

331 Archivio storico italiano, Ser. IV. I. 433.

332 Rubió y Lluch, Los Navarros en Grecia, 482.

333 Epistolæ Innocentii III, II. 265.

334 Rubió y Lluch, op. cit. 481.

335 Cairels apud Buchon, Histoire des Conquêtes, 449; Henri de Valenciennes apud Buchon, Recherches et Matériaux, II. 203, 205-6.

336 Epistolæ Innocentii III, II. 261-2, 264, 477, 835-7; Honorii III Opera, IV., 414.

337 Raynaldi Annales Ecclesiastici (ed. 1747), I. 492.

338 Regesta Honorii III, II. 96, 167, 207, 333.

339 Chroniques gréco-romanes, 478; and apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXV. 276.

340 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, ll. 3196-3201, 3295-6, 4613; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 119, 160; Cronaca di Morea, 438-9; Libro de los Fechos, 56, 75.

341 Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. II. B. XIV. 201, 213, 218, 222.

342 Litta, l.c.

343 Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως, l. 7915; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 260.

344 Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXV. 321. The original document has now been rendered illegible by the damp.

345 Le Livre de la Conqueste, 465; Libro de los Fechos, 114.

346 Ibid. 120; Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 177; Sanudo, op. cit. 125.

347 D’Arbois de Jubainville, Voyage paléographique dans le Département de l’Aube, 337.

348 Sanudo, l.c.

349 Archivio Veneto, XX. 87, 89.

350 Raynaldi op. cit. V. 95; Thomas, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, I. 120-1.

351 Archivio Veneto, l.c.; Misti, XVI. f. 97tᵒ. (See Appendix.)

352 Rubió y Lluch, l.c.; Çurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragon, II. f. 537.

353 Misti, XVII. f. 71; XVIII. f. 10; XX. ff. 37tᵒ, 40; XXIII. ff. 26, 30tᵒ, 46tᵒ; XXIV. 53tᵒ, 63, 102tᵒ, 103 (see Appendix); Predelli, Commemoriali, II. p. 153.

354 Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum meridionalium, III. 160; Predelli, Commemoriali, II. 181; Misti, XXVII. f. 3; XXVIII. f. 28.

355 Orbini, Regno degli Slavi, 271.

356 Raynaldi op. cit. VII. 224; Jauna, Histoire générale des royaumes de Chypre, etc., II. 882.

357 Rubió y Lluch, op. cit. 436, 482; Çurita, l.c.; Misti, XXXIV. f. 88tᵒ.

358 Chroniques gréco-romanes, 230.

359 Misti, XLI. f. 58.

360 Thomas and Predelli, Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, II. 292; Revue de l’Orient latin, IV. 295, 302.

361 Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, II. 210.

362 Predelli, Commemoriali, III. p. 310 (given in full by Lampros, Ἔγγραφα ἀναφερόμενα εἰς τὴν μεσαιωνικὴν Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, 399).

363 Sathas, op. cit. II. 145.

364 Revue de l’Orient latin, VI. 119; Sathas, op. cit. III. 431; Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum, IX. 90-91; Misti, XLVIII. ff. 143, 148.

365 Revue de l’Orient latin, IV. 513; Thomas and Predelli, op. cit. 203.

366 Revue de l’Orient latin, VI. 119; Sathas, op. cit. 430-1.

367 Sathas, op. cit. II. 270-1.

368 Sanudo and Navagero, apud Muratori, S.R.I. XXII. 890, XXIII. 1080; Cronaca di Amadeo Valier (Cod. Cicogna, N. 297), II. f. 259; Revue de l’Orient latin, IV. 546.

369 Sanudo and Navagero, ibid., XXII. 911, XXIII. 1081; Revue de l’Orient latin, V. 196.

370 Sathas, op. cit. III. 429-30; Hopf, Dissertazione documentata sulla storia di Karystos (tr. Sardagna, 91-5).

371 La Grèce continentale et la Morée, 286.

372 Sigillographie, 177.

373 Γεωγραφία τοῦ νομοῦ Κεφαλληνίας, pp. 153, 190.

374 Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ historica, XVIII. 46.

375 Gesta Regis Ricardi, Rolls Series, II. 197-200, 203-5.

376 Libro de los fechos (Aragonese version of “The Chronicle of the Morea”), pp. 53-4.

377 A. Dandolo apud Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. XII. 336; Misti, VI. fol. 17, quoted in Archivio Veneto, XX. 93.

378 Albericus Trium Fontium, II. 558.

379 Miklosich und Müller, Acta Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, V. 44.

380 Tafel und Thomas, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. II. B. XIV. p. 215.

381 Riccio, Saggio di Codice Diplomatico, Supplemento, pt I., p. 87; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, XI. 415.

382 Miklosich und Müller, op. cit. II. 139.

383 Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber, LXXXVI. 48.

384 Dell’ Origine dei Principi Turchi (ed. 1551), pp. 12, 26, 27, 62.

385 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, I. i. 319; II. i. 351, 352; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 196.

386 p. 57 (ed. Sinner).

387 Jorga, “Notes et Extraits pour servir à l’Histoire des Croisades,” in Revue de l’Orient latin, VI. 84.

388 Epigrammata reperta per Illyricum, p. v.

389 Hopf, apud Ersch und Gruber, LXXXVI. 160; Meliarakes, op. cit. 150.

390 Lunzi, Della condizione politica delle Isole Ionie, p. 190.

391 Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, VI. 215-6; cf. Lunzi, op. cit. p. 197.

392 Sathas, op. cit. V. 157; Meliarakes, op. cit. 191; Sanudo, Diarii, V. 883, 1009.

393 Karavias, Ἱστορία τῆς νήσου Ἰθάκης ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρχαιοτάτων χρόνων μεχρὶ τοῦ 1849.

394 Sathas, op. cit. VI. 285.

395 De la Ville, Napoli Nobilissima (1900), xii. 180-1.

396 Geschichte Griechenlands in Ersch und Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXVI. 170, 173, 177, and 179; Geschichte der Insel Andros, p. 128.

397 Geschichte Griechenlands, III. 26, 39, 190.

398 Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, I. 14; II. 145, 163, 168, 178; III. 181. Predelli, Commemoriali, III. 278, 354.

399 Library of St Mark, Venice, MS. Ital. Cl. VI. 286, vol. II. ff. 94, 95.

400 Predelli, Commemoriali, VI. 236, 238.

401 Lamansky, Secrets de l’État de Venise, p. 58.

402 Sathas, op. cit. VIII. 451.

403 Ibid. IV. 245.

404 Histoire nouvelle des anciens Ducs de l’Archipel, p. 296.

405 Lamansky, op. cit. pp. 641-2, 651 et sqq.; Sathas, op. cit. IV. 310-40.

406 M. C. Scrutinio alle voci, vols. VII. and VIII.

407 Chroniques gréco-romanes, pp. 373-6.

408 L’Isole le più famose del Mondo, p. 77.

409 P. 206.

410 Relatione della Rep. Venetiana, pp. 18-9.

411 Voyage de Levant, pp. 348-9.

412 Viaggio di Levante (Ital. tr.), p. 3.

413 Relation d’un Voyage, p. 196.

414 L’Archipelago, p. 42.

415 Vol. I. p. 687.

416 Voyage, I. 145-7.

417 Journey into Greece, pp. 62-5.

418 Viaggio all’ Arcipelago, p. 68.

419 The Present State of the Islands in the Archipelago, pp. 14-20.

420 L’Egeo Redivivo, pp. 331-2.

421 Naukeurige Beschryving (French tr.), pp. 267, 354.

422 Voyage du Levant, I. 108.

423 Vols. XV. to XVIII.

424 Delle Notizie Storiche della Lega, p. 41.

425 Greek mediæval scholars, owing to the disturbed political conditions, have scarcely had time since Salonika became Greek to continue the historical studies of Tafel, Papageorgiou, and Tafrali—for even the last composed his two valuable treatises on the topography of Salonika and its history in the fourteenth century early in 1912, therefore before the reconversion of the mosques into churches and while the city was still Turkish. But the well-known mediævalist. Professor Adamantiou, has already written a handbook on Byzantine Thessalonika, Ἡ Βυζαντινὴ Θεσσαλονίκη (Athens, 1914); M. Risal has popularised the story of this “Coveted City,” La Ville convoitée (3rd ed., Paris, 1917); K. Zesiou, the epigraphist, has examined the Christian monuments; the late Professor Lampros published “eight letters” of its Metropolitan Isidore, who flourished towards the end of the fourteenth century; and K. Kugeas has edited the note-book of an official of the archbishopric who was at Salonika between 1419 and 1425, a few years before its conquest by the Turks. See Πρακτικὰ τῆς... Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας τοῦ 1913, pp. 119-57; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, IX. 343-414; Byz. Zeitschr. XXIII. 144-63.

426 Migne, Patr. Gr., CXVI. 1116, 1169, 1173, 1185 (where “Maximian Herculius” of the text is corrected to Galerius, the younger Maximian).

427 Akropolites (ed. Teubner), I. 82.

428 Adamantiou, 49.

429 A History of the Eastern Empire, pp. 381-401, 485-8.

430 ii. 451.

431 Ibid., pp. 529, 531-2.

432 Migne, Patr. Gr., CX. 26.

433 Kameniates, pp. 491, 519; Theodore Studita, in Migne, Patr. Gr., XCIX. 917.

434 An inscription found in 1874 confirms Kameniates: Byz. Zeitschr. X. 151-4.

435 Schlumberger, Sigillographie, pp. 102-6.

436 Ellissen, Analekten, IV. 46-53.

437 Tafel, De Thessalonica, p. 474.

438 Eustathios (ed. Bonn), p. 449.

439 Eustathios, p. 452.

440 Niketas, pp. 384-401, 471.

441 Salonika was still Lombard in May 1223: Pitra, Analecta sacra et classica, VII. 335-8, 577.

442 Mission au Mont Athos, p. 64; Wroth, Catalogue of the Coins of the Vandals, pp. 193-203; Schlumberger, Mélanges d’Archéologie byzantine, I. 57.

443 Migne, Patr. Gr. CIX. 644.

444 II. 234, 393, 568-82; Nikephoros Gregoras, II. 673-5, 740, 795; Kydones, in Migne, Patr. Gr. CIX. 649; Sathas, Μνημεῖα, IV. pp. viii-xxxvi.

445 Müller, Byz. Analekten in Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie, IX. 394; Chalkokondyles, pp. 47, 174; Phrantzes, p. 47; Doukas, pp. 50, 199; Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, II. 291; Βυζαντίς, I. 234.

446 Doukas, p. 197; Phrantzes, pp. 64, 122; Chalkokondyles, p. 205; Sathas, Μνημεῖα, I. 133-50.

447 Sathas, Μεσαιωνικὴ Βιβλιοθήκη, I. 257.

448 Perhaps the name is a reminiscence of the bishop of Samaria, to whom Mount Athos belonged from 1206 to 1210: Innocent III, Epp. IX. 192.

449 p. 235; Anagnostes; Phrantzes, pp. 90, 155; Doukas, pp. 199-201; Byz. Zeitschr. XXIII. 148, 152; Ν. Ἑλλ., V. 369-91.

450 Nikephoros Gregoras, I. 29; Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata, I. 125.

451 Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, XVII. 227-9; XXVIII. 791-809; Dandolo, Chronicon, apud Muratori, R.I.S. XII. 370.

452 Ibid. 371; M. da Canal, La Cronique des Veneciens, in Archivio Storico Italiano, VIII. 488; Annales Januenses, apud Pertz, M.G.H. Script. XVIII. 245.

453 Atti, XXVIII. 500-4.

454 Ogerii Panis, Annales, apud Pertz, ibid. 119; Atti, XXVIII. 805.

455 Recueil des Historiens des Croisades. Documents Arméniens, II. 747; Lanfranci Pignolli, etc. Annales, apud Pertz, ibid. 249.

456 Pachymeres, I. 420; II. 558; Nikephoros Gregoras, I. 526; Sanudo, Istoria del Regno di Romania, apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 146; Atti, XXXI. ii. 37 n²; M. Giustiniani, La Scio Sacra del rito Latino, 7.

457 Doukas, 161-2; Friar Jordanus, Mirabilia descripta (tr. H. Yule), 57.

458 Genoese document of April 25, 1288, in Pandette Richeriane, fogliazzo II. fasc. 25, cp. Appendix.

459 Sanudo, apud Hopf, op. cit. 133; Documents Arméniens, II. 789; Carini, Ricordi del Vespro, II. 4; Ptolomæi Lucensis Historia Ecclesiastica, apud Muratori, R.I.S. XI. 1186.

460 J. Aurie Annales Januenses, apud Pertz, op. cit. XVIII. 307-8, 312, 315-8, 322-4, 336-7, 340, 344; Documents Arméniens, I. 745-54; II. 795-6, 801-2, 827; Liber Jurium Reipublicæ Genuensis, II. 275; Notices et extraits des Manuscripts de la Bibliothèque du Roi, XI. 41-52.

461 Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’Île de Chypre, II. 129.

462 J. a Varagine Chronicon Genuense; F. Pipini Chronicon; and R. Caresini Continuatio, apud Muratori, R.I.S. IX. 56, 743; XII. 406.

463 Sanudo, apud Hopf, op. cit. 146.

464 Raynaldi Annales Ecclesiastici (ed. 1749), IV. 319; Les Registres de Boniface VIII, III. 290-3.

465 Pachymeres, II. 436, 510, 558; Muntaner, Cronaca, ch. 117; Le Livre de la Conqueste, 362; Libro de los Fechos, 107; B. de Neocastro Historia Sicula, apud Muratori, R.I.S. XIII. 1186.

466 Cantacuzene, I. 370; N. Gregoras, I. 438.

467 Muntaner, op. cit. ch. 234; J. Aurie Annales, apud Pertz, M.G.H. XVIII. 315; Atti, XXXI. ii. p. xxxvii. n¹.

468 Atti, I. 73-5; XI. 322; Giornale Ligustico di Archeologia, Storia e Belle Arti, V. 361-2; B. Senaregae De Rebus Genuensibus Commentaria, apud Muratori, R.I.S. XXIV. 559.

469 Muntaner, l.c.; Pachymeres, II. 638; Giomo, Lettere di Collegio, p. 96.

470 Cantacuzene, I. 371.

471 G. Adae De modo Sarracenos extirpandi, in Documents Arméniens, II. 531-3, 537, 542, who makes them “sons of Paleologo”; Jean XXII, Lettres Communes, V. 302.

472 Secreta Fidelium Crucis and Epistolæ, apud Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, II. 30, 298.

473 Brocardus, Directorium ad passagium faciendum, in Documents Arméniens, II. 457-8, makes Martino “nephew of the late Benedetto.”

474 Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient latin, 413-5; Supplément, 16; Pls. XIV, XXI; P. Lampros, Νομίσματα τῶν ἀδελφῶν Μαρτίνου καὶ Βενεδίκτου Β’ Ζαχαρίων, δυναστῶν τῆς Χίου, 1314-1329, pp. 9-13; ibid. Μεσαιωνικὰ νομίσματα τῶν δυναστῶν τῆς Χίου, 6-11, Pl. I; Promis, La Zecca di Scio, 34-6, Pl. I.

475 Libro de los Fechos, 137.

476 Minieri Riccio, Saggio di Codice diplomatico. Supplemento, II. 75-7, where the year “MCCCXV” will not tally with “Indictionis octavæ” (= 1325). Gittio (Lo Scettro del Despota, 18) gives both correctly.

477 Raynaldi Annales Ecclesiastici, V. 95; Archivio Veneto, XX. 87, 89.

478 Schlumberger, op. cit. 326, 415-6, Pls. XII-XIII; Promis, La Zecca di Scio, 36-7, Pl. I; P. Lampros, Νομίσματα, 13-15; Μεσαιωνικὰ νομίσματα, 12-14, Pl. I; Ἀνέκδοτα νομίσματα καὶ μολυβδόβουλλα τῶν κατὰ τοὺς μέσους αἰῶνας δυναστῶν τῆς Ἑλλάδος, 31-2.

479 Cantacuzene, I. 370-91; N. Gregoras, I. 438-9; Phrantzes, 38; Chalkokondyles, 521-2; Friar Jordanus, op cit. 57; Ludolphi De Itinere Terræ Sanctæ, 23-4; Continuazione della Cronaca di Jacopo da Varagine, in Atti, X. 510; Brocardus, l.c.; Archives de l’Orient latin, I. 274.

480 Benoît XII, Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, I. 182-3; Ludolphi l.c.

481 Clément VI, Lettres closes, patentes et curiales, I. 150, 171, 182, 431-3.

482 Raynaldi op. cit. VI. 342-3.

483 Cantacuzene, II. 582-3; Caresini op. cit.; Cortusii Patavini duo; G. Villani, Historie Fiorentine, and Stellae Annales Genuenses, apud Muratori, R.I.S. XII. 417, 914; XIII. 918; XVII. 1081; Folieta, Clarorum Ligurum Elogia, 90.

484 Doukas, 162-3; Cantacuzene, I. 388-90, 476-95; N. Gregoras, I. 525-31, 534-5, 553; Phrantzes, 38; Chalkokondyles, 521; Friar Jordanus, op. cit. 57.

485 P. Lampros, Ἀνέκδοτα νομίσματα, 69-70, 72.

486 Jerosme Justinian, La Description et Histoire de l’Isle de Scios, ou Chios, part I. 19; part II. 166; Boschini, L’Arcipelago, pp. 72, 74; Piacenza, L’Egeo Redivivo, pp. 200, 216; Coronelli, Isola di Rodi, p. 360. To this occupation of Ikaria refers the ballad in Journal of Hellenic Studies, I. 293-300.

487 G. Stellae Annales Genuenses, apud Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script., XVII. 1086-90; Uberti Folietæ Historiæ Genuensis Libri xii (Genoa, 1585), fo. 137-8ᵛ; 313ᵛ; Ag. Giustiniani, Castigatissimi Annali della eccelsa & Illustrissima Republi. di Genoa (Genoa, 1537), CXXXIIⱽ-IVⱽ; P. Interiano, Ristretto delle Historie Genovesi (Genoa, s.a.), fo. 107ᵛ-8ᵛ; Documenti, apud Pagano, Delle Imprese e del Dominio dei Genovesi nella Grecia, pp. 261-70; Cantacuzene, II. 583-4; Nikephoros Gregoras, II. 765-7; Chalkokondyles, p. 522.

488 Comte de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’Île de Chypre, II. 366-70; Promis, La Zecca di Scio, 14 n². Atti della Società Ligure di Storia patria, XXXV. 52, 210; Rhodokanakes, Ἰουστινιάναι—Χίος I. 8-9, n. 15; J. Justinian, part II. 143; Araldica e Diritto (Jan. 1915), p. 46.

489 Documenti, apud Pagano, pp. 271-85; Liber Iurium Reipublicæ Genuensis, II. (Historiæ Patriæ Monumenta, IX.), 558-72, 1498-1512.

490 Promis, p. 39.

491 XIX. 140-1.

492 Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient latin, pp. 422 f. and Plate XIV, 19, 25.

493 Liber Iurium, II. 714-20; Documenti, apud Pagano, 285-91.

494 Stella, op. cit. pp. 1217-20; Folieta, op. cit. fo. 531; Ag. Giustiniani. op. cit. CLXXIIⱽ.

495 Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, II. 4.

496 Cantacuzene, III. 81-4; Nikephoros Gregoras, II. 842, 851.

497 Vlastos, Χιακά, 228-31.

498 G. Stella, p. 1091; Raphayni Caresini Continuatio Chronicorum Andreæ Danduli, apud Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script., XII. 420-1; Sanudo, Vite de’ Duchi di Venezia, ibid. XXII. 621-2; Matteo Villani, Istorie, ibid. XIV. 117-18.

499 Atti della Società Ligure di Storia patria, XIII. 198; J. Justinian, part II. 165; J. Stellae, Annales Ianuenses, in Rer. Ital. Script., XVII. 1307-8.

500 Chalkokondyles, p. 519.

501 Atti, VI. 20, 353-4; XIII. 222, 231, 260-2, 996-7; Doukas, p. 314.

502 Doukas, pp. 322-8.

503 Veneroso, Genio Ligure risvegliato, Prove, p. 30.

504 Atti, VII. part II. 94-6, 480-7; The Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua (transl. Bialloblotzky), p. 289.

505 Atti, XXVIII. 761, 767.

506 Annual of the Brit. School at Athens, XVI. (1909-10) 154-5; Χιακὰ Χρονικά. (Athens, 1914), II. 127.

507 Thuani, Historiarum sui temporis Libri cxxxviii. (ed. 1620), II. 368-70; Bosio, Dell’ Istoria della Sacra Religione et illᵐᵃ Militia di San Giovanni Gierosolimitano, III. 757-9; Luccari, Copioso Ristretto degli Annali di Rausa, p. 147; A. Mauroceni, Historia Veneta, p. 335; Rhodokanakes, facing I. 359.

508 Vlastos, Χιακά, 232-4.

509 Ann. of Brit. School at Athens, XVI. 146.

510 F. W. Hasluck, ibid. pp. 137-84.

511 J. Justinian, part III. 116-18.

512 P. Belon du Mans, Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables (Paris, 1588), pp. 185-7; N. de Nicolay, Les navigations, peregrinations et voyages, faicts en la Turquie (Antwerp, 1576), pp. 66-7.

513 Ibid. p. 76.

514 Belon, p. 186.

515 N. de Nicolay, p. 67.

516 Targioni Tozzetti, Relazione di alcuni viaggi fatti in diverse parti della Toscana (ed. 2), V. 436; J. Justinian, part II. 71-7.

517 Pp. 43-4.

518 Published by G. Porro-Lambertenghi in Miscellanea di Storia Italiana, VI. 541-8.

519 Tozzetti, V. 454.

520 Thevet in Ann. of Brit. School at Athens, XVI. 183-4.

521 J. Justinian, part I. 34-7; M. Giustiniani, La Scio Sacra del Rito Latino, pp. 15-16, 78-88; E. Alexandrides in Χιακὰ Χρονικά (Athens, 1911), I. 10-17; Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, II. 90-2.

522 Miklosich und Müller, III. 260-4; Atti, XXVIII. 563-8; J. Justinian, part II. 82.

523 J. Justinian, part I. 31-3; part II. 170-1; Thevet in Ann. of Brit. School at Athens, XVI. 183

524 Atti della Società Ligure di Storia patria, I. 296; II. 1, 396; XI. 343; XVII. 241-51; XXVIII. 522, 543, 545-50, 805-6; XXXIV. 157, 253, 268, 322, 326, 345; Les Registres de Boniface VIII, I. 222-3; Giornale Ligustico di Archeologia, Storia e Belle Arti, I. 218; IX. 3-13.

525 Doukas, 40-3, 46; Nikephoros Gregoras, III. 554; Chalkokondyles, 520; Kritoboulos: lib. II. c. 13; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VI. 39; M. Villani, Istorie, and G. Stellae, Annales Genuenses, apud Muratori, R.I.S., XIV. 447; XVII. 1094; Pii II Commentarii, 245; Ag. Giustiniano, Annali della Repubblica di Genova (ed. 1854), II. 95; P. Bizari, Senatus populique Genuensis... historiæ, 134; U. Folietæ, Historiæ Genuensium libri XII (ed. 1585), 141-2; Clarorum Ligurum Elogia (ed. 1573), 97-8.

526 Servion, Gestez et chroniques de la Mayson de Savoye, II. 138-9.

527 M. Villani, Istorie, apud Muratori, R.I.S., XIV. 447.

528 N. Gregoras, III. 503-4, 565.

529 Servion, op. cit. II. 138-9, 143.

530 Phrantzes, 48.

531 Misti, XXVIII. f. 73 (Doc. of Sept. 20, 1358).

532 Predelli, I Libri Commemoriali della Repubblica di Venezia, II. 266; Giornale Ligustico, I. 84-5.

533 Predelli, op. cit. III. 156 (Documents of Jan. 11, 14, 1382).

534 Raynaldi Annales ecclesiastici (ed. 1752), VII. 19, 172; Innocentii VI Epistolæ secretæ, IV. f. 164 (Reg. Vat. 238). Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, XII. 474-5.

535 Raynaldi op. cit. 224. The invitation to Francesco, otherwise practically identical with that to John V, contains the important variant, that the Turkish race “tam potenter tamque fortiter terram tuam... obsidet.” Gregorii XI Secret. Anno II. ff. 85-6 (Reg. Vat. 268). Jauna, Histoire générale des roiaumes de Chypre... etc. II. 882.

536 Raynaldi op. cit. VII. 249; Wadding, Annales Ordinis Minorum, VIII. 289; Gregorii XI Secret. Anno IV. f. 63 (Reg. Vat. 270).

537 Miklosich und Müller, Acta et diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, I. 433, 513, 531; II. 129-30, 159, 212, 250, 252-3, 255-6, 264-6.

538 Libri Bullarum, IV. (1365-6), f. 270ᵛ.

539 Chalkokondyles, 520-1; Kritoboulos, lib. II. c. 13

540 Giornale Ligustico, I. 86-7.

541 Hasluck in B.S.A., XV. 262; Conze, Reise auf der Insel Lesbos, 5; Newton, Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, I. 115.

542 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VI. 39-40, VII. 144, 344; Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour, at Samarkand, A.D. 1403-6 (tr. Markham), 23; Bondelmonti, Liber Insularum Archipelagi (ed. de Sinner), 115.

543 Atti, XIII. 169, 953-67.

544 Bauyn, Mémoires du voiage fait en Hongrie, f. 351-2; Froissart, Chroniques (ed. K. de Lettenhove), XV. 345, 347. The relationship was as follows:

545 Le Livre des faicts du bon Messire Jean le Maingre dit Boucicaut (ed. Paris, 1825), part I. ch. 28; Delaville le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIVᵉ siècle, II. 33 (Doc. of April 15, 1397).

546 Ibid. II. 34-5, 48, 91-3; Froissart, Chroniques, XVI. 38, 40, 261 (Doc. of June 24, 1397); Doukas, 52-3.

547 Bauyn, Mémoires du voiage, f. 35; Froissart, Chroniques, XVI. 41-2.

548 Le Livre des faicts, part I. ch. 28; Froissart, Chroniques, XVI. 46, 48-50. Le Roulx, op. cit. II. 43-5 (Doc. of Aug. 10, 1397).

549 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, X. 248-51.

550 Le Livre des faicts, part I. ch. 31; Narrative, 24.

551 Revue de l’Orient latin, IV. 93; Constantine the Philosopher, Life of Stephen Lazarevich in Glasnik, XLII. 279; Archiv für slavische Philologie, XVIII. 429.

552 Doukas, 75-6.

553 Narrative, 23-4; Mélanges historiques. Choix de documents, III. 174.

554 Le Livre des faicts, part II. chs. 14, 31; Le Roulx, op. cit. I. 484 n¹; II. 189.

555 Narrative, 22-3.

556 Gioffredo, Storia delle Alpi Marittime, in Monumenta Historiæ Patriæ, IV. 1001-2, 1077.

557 Giornale Ligustico, I. 89-90, 217.

558 Ibid. I. 219.

559 Bibliotheca Carmelitana, II. 943; Fontana, Sacrum Theatrum Dominicanum, 238; Sp. P. Lampros, Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts on Mount Athos, II. 305.

560 Miklosich und Müller, Acta, II. 140, 234, 338.

561 Noiret, Documents inédits pour servir à l’histoire de la domination vénitienne en Crète de 1380 à 1485, pp. 107, 127.

562 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VI. 40; VII. 341. From Giornale Ligustico, I. 219, it has been assumed that he was still alive on May 25, 1409; but the Greek is confirmed by Noiret, Documents, 161, where Nicolò is described as regent on April 4, 1405, and by Libri Bullarum, XXIV. (1409-16) f. 194ᵛ, where Jacopo is addressed as “lord of Mytilene” on April 12, 1409.

563 Bondelmonti, Liber Insularum, 115.

564 Noiret, Documents, p. 161; Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, II. 127; Revue de l’Orient latin, IV. 279-80, 282.

565 Innocent VII. Ann. I. Lib. Mist. ff. 53-4. Bened. XIII. Avin. t. XL. ff. 157-9.

566 Probably between April 12 and May 25. Giornale Ligustico, I. 217-9; Libri Bullarum, l.c.

567 Inscription at Ænos, B.S.A., XV. 251, 254: Χριστιανικῆς Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας Δελτίον, VIII. 16.

568 Lib. IV. c. 13.

569 Sathas, Μνημεῖα, I. 43-4; III. 24-5; Noiret, Documents, 230-1.

570 Revue de l’Orient latin, V. 176, 188, 315.

571 Libri Bullarum, XXIV. (1409-16).

572 Doukas, 106, 108; Sathas, Μνημεῖα, III. 118-20; Revue, IV. 574; V. 193.

573 Giornale Ligustico, I. 219-20.

574 Between March 13, 1426 (probably after May 11, 1428) and October 14, 1428. Giornale Ligustico, I. 219-20; II. 86-7. Hopf’s assumption that it was Jacopo who was killed in the fall of the tower must be wrong, because Bondelmonti, writing in 1422, speaks of that event as having occurred meis diebus. The allusion to the lord of Foglia Vecchia as a distinct person in the document of May 11, 1428, indicates that Jacopo was still alive.

575 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VI. 40, 492; VII. 95; Gioffredo, op. cit. 1077; Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la Maison de France, IV. 501.

576 Revue de l’Orient latin, V. 114.

577 Giornale Ligustico, V. 347; Bertrandon de la Brocquière, Le Voyage d’Outremer in Recueil de Voyages et de Documents (ed. Ch. Schefer), XII. 173-4.

578 B.S.A. XV. 258.

579 B.S.A. XV. 254-6; Χρ. Ἀρχ. Ἑτ. Δελτίον, VIII. 13, 16-7, 19-20, 29-30.

580 l.c.

581 Conze, Reise auf den Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres, 55-6; Pl. II. 7, 8; Athenische Mitteilungen, XXXIV. 26-7; Atti, XI. 341.

582 Tozzetti, Relazioni d’alcuni viaggi fatti in diverse parti della Toscana (ed. 1773), V. 452.

583 Joannis Canabutzæ magistri ad principem Æni et Samothraces in Dionysium Halicarnassensem commentarius, 2, 14; B.S.A. XV. 256.

584 Sathas, Μνημεῖα, I. 44.

585 Giornale Ligustico, I. 220-1; II. 86-9; III. 314-5; Revue de l’Orient latin, V. 371-2; VI. 96.

586 Documenti diplomatici tratti dagli Archivj Milanesi, III. 49 n¹.

587 Giornale Ligustico, II. 90-3, 292-6, 313-4, 316; Atti, XXIII. 265; Revue de l’Orient latin, VI. 112.

588 Chalkokondyles, 462; Pero Tafur, Andanças é viajes in Colleccion de libros españoles raros ó curiosos, VIII. 159, 187; Giornale Ligustico, II. 292-3; Lampros, Catalogue, II. 305. A Genoese document (Revue de l’Orient latin, VI. 67), proves that Alexios IV died in 1429, not, as usually assumed, c. 1445.

589 Phrantzes, 191.

590 Stefano Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 199.

591 Phrantzes, 193-5; Chalkokondyles, 306; Revue de l’Orient latin, VII. 75; Ekthesis Chronica, 7.

592 Description des Îles de l’Archipel (ed. Legrand), 92; Phrantzes, 96; Ath. Mitt. XXII. 119 n³.

593 Conze, Reise auf den Inseln, 37, Pl. III, 4; Libri Bullarum, XXXIV. (1432-3), f. 112.

594 Sathas, Μνημεῖα, III. 24-5; Tozzetti, Relazioni, V. 436.

595 Tozzetti, Relazioni, V. 449, 451; De Rossi, Inscriptiones Christianæ Urbis Romæ, II. part I. 372 n⁴; Atti, XIII. 983.

596 Tozzetti, Relazioni, V. 435-6, 447, 451-2; Pero Tafur, in op. cit. VIII. 134, 187.

597 Colucci, Delle Antichità Picene, XV. pp. cxxxiii, cxxxvii-cxli; Codex Vat. lat. 5250, ff. 11-13, 15-17 (mostly published in Ath. Mitt. XXII. 115-7); Ciriaci Anconitani codex (in Biblioteca Capitolare of Treviso), I. 138, f. 152ᵛ et seqq.

598 Ibid. f. 152 et sqq.; Colucci, Delle Antichità, XV. p. cxxxii; Tozzetti, Relazioni, V. 459; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VII. 341-2; De Rossi, Inscriptiones, II. part I. 370 n¹; Revue de l’Orient latin, VII. 53, 384.

599 Conze, Hauser und Niemann, Archaeologische Untersuchungen auf Samothrake, I. 1 n¹, 2, 16, Pls. IV-VIII, LXII; vol. II. Pl. IX; Conze, Reise auf den Inseln, 62, Pl. XII; Cod. Vat. lat. 5250, f. 14; Annali dell’ Instituto (1842), XIV. 141 and tav. d’agg. p. 3, where the date should be, ͵ϛϡξγʹ = 1454/5; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VII. 94; Ath. Mitt., XXXIV. 28.

600 Cod. Vat. lat. 5250, f. 11, published by Ziebarth, Eine Inschriftenhandschrift der Hamburger Stadtbibliothek, 15; Ath. Mitt., XVIII. 361; XXXI. 405-8; Conze, Reise auf den Inseln, 82, Pl. III, 5, 9, 13.

601 Tozzetti, Relazioni, V. 435; Moschides, Ἡ Λῆμνος, I. 168.

602 Leonardi Chiensis, De vera nobilitate, 55; Revue de l’Orient latin, VII. 427.

603 Ibid. VIII. 54; Giornale Ligustico, V. 347-9.

604 Chalkokondyles, 519. But Ænos was described in 1457 as semper in servitute Teucrorum (Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VII. 366).

605 Giornale Ligustico, II. 295-6; Revue, VIII. 43.

606 Giornale Ligustico, V. 350; Revue, VIII. 29, 65; Chalkokondyles, 519. Folietæ Clarorum Ligurum Elogia (ed. 1573), 97-8; B. Campofulgosi Exemplorum, hoc est, dictorum factorumque memorabilium... lib. IX (ed. Bâle), 328 (who makes her the wife of Luchino); Æneæ Sylvii, Opera... omnia, 355-6 (who calls the heroine a virgin, and who heard the story told in 1455 by the bishop of Caffa, who had heard it in Lesbos). Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VII. 317-8.

607 Atti, XIII. 247.

608 Phrantzes, 327.

609 Doukas, 266.

610 Kritoboulos, lib. I. cc. 74-5; Doukas, 314, 328; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 198-9.

611 Pp. 321-2.

612 Doukas, 326, 328-35; Kritoboulos, lib. II. c. 5; Campofulgosi Exemplorum, 526; Ἱστορία πολιτικὴ Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, 26; Ag. Giustiniani, Annali, II. 384; Giornale Ligustico, V. 354.

613 Giornale Ligustico, V. 349-50.

614 Kritoboulos, lib. II. cc. 11-16; III. 24; Doukas, 335; Chalkokondyles, 469; Ἱστορία πολιτικὴ, 25; Ecthesis Chronica, 17-18. Sa’d al-Dīn (tr. Bratutti), Chronica dell’ origine e progressi di casa Ottomana, II. 168; Hadji Khalfa, Cronologia historica (tr. Carli), 130; Hammer, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (ed. 1828), II. 20 nᵃ; Conze, Reise auf den Inseln, 82, Pl. III, 11.

615 Doukas, 335-7; Chalkokondyles, 469.

616 Giornale Ligustico, V. 353-5; Raynaldi Annales, X. 56, 59, 61-2; Reg. Vat. 443, f. 140.

617 Sathas, Μνημεῖα, I. 231.

618 Guglielmotti, Storia della Marina Pontificia, 260 n; Æneæ Sylvii Opera... omnia (ed. Bâle), 370.

619 Kritoboulos, lib. II. c. 23; Doukas, 338; Chalkokondyles, 469; the two last say that Imbros was also captured in 1456—a statement contradicted not only by Kritoboulos, but by the omission of Imbros from the list of papal islands in Atti, VI. 937-8 and in Raynaldi Annales, X. 88, which shows that the capture of the other three took place before Dec. 31, 1456. Pius II’s letter (Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, X. 113) shows that Imbros was “still under the rule of the infidels” in 1459.

620 Doukas, 338; Kritoboulos, lib. III. c. 10; Atti, VI. 800; Raynaldi, Annales, X. 111; Chalkokondyles, 519; Letter of Scarampi to Gaetani of Sept. 15, 1457, apud Guglielmotti, Storia della Marina Pontificia, II. 280; Reg. Vat. 443, f. 113.

621 Giornale Ligustico, III. 313-4.

622 Doukas, 346; Chalkokondyles, 520, 528; Kritoboulos, lib. IV. c. 2; Æneæ Sylvii, Opera... omnia (ed. Bâle), 355; Ag. Giustiniani, Annali, II. 384; Magno, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 201.

623 Giornale Ligustico, V. 363-4.

624 J. Paulides, Μαρία Γατελούζη in Ἡ Ἑλλὰς τὴν Βάρβιτον. Rhodokanakes, Ἰουστινιάναι—Χίος, I. 115 n. 101; II. 107.

625 Raynaldi Annales, X. 179-80.

626 Kritoboulos, lib. III. cc. 14, 15, 17, 18, 24; Chalkokondyles, 469-70, 483, 494; Æneæ Sylvii Opera, 370; Magno, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 200 (confused); Phrantzes, 413-4.

627 Raynaldi, Annales, X. 285-6; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, X. 113-5.

628 Giornale Ligustico, III. 180-1 n; V. 352-3, 355-61, 363; Atti, V. 429; Rymer, Fœdera, XI. 418, 441.

629 Atti, VII. part I. 77-8, 108; Giornale Ligustico, V. 364-6; Doukas, 341.

630 Βυζαντίς, II. 266; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VII. 342-3; VIII. 94-5, 361.

631 S. Cali (Καλή, the Greek equivalent of “Bonne”).

632 Leonardi Chiensis De Lesbo a Turcis capta, apud Hopf, Chroniques, 359-66 (an eye-witness); Magno, ibid. 201-2; Doukas, 345-6, 512; Chalkokondyles, 518-21, 523-9, 553; Kritoboulos, lib. IV. cc. 11-14; Phrantzes, 94; Malipiero, Annali Veneti, in Archivio Storico Italiano, VII. 11; Pii II Commentarii, 244; Atti, VII. part I. 159-60, 190; Giornale Ligustico, V. 366-7; Sabellici Historiæ Rerum Venetarum (ed. 1556), 867, 873; Cambini and Spandugino apud Sansovino, Historia Universale dell’ Origine et Imperio de’ Turchi (ed. 1573), ff. 156, 191; Ἱστορία πολιτικὴ, 26; Bosio, Dell’ Historia della sacra religione di San Giovanni, I. 196; The Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua (tr. Bialloblotzky), 289.

633 Atti, VII. part I. 227, 242, 244.

634 Sabellici op. cit. 883; Malipiero in Arch. Stor. It., VII. 28; Sathas, Μνημεῖα, VI. 93, 97; Magno apud Hopf, Chroniques, 204; Chalkokondyles, 565; Phrantzes, 415.

635 Sabellici op. cit. 885-6; Malipiero, l.c.; Sathas, Μνημεῖα, I. 244, VI. 98; Phrantzes, l.c.; Sanudo and Navagiero apud Muratori, R.I.S., XXII. 1170; XXIII. 1123, 1132; Kritoboulos, lib. V. c. 7; Sa’d al-Dīn, II. 223; Cepio, De P. Mocenigi rebus gestis, 30.

636 Sathas, op. cit. VI. 99; Malipiero, 37; Sabellicus, 890; Navagiero, 1125; Secreta, XXII. f. 186; Magno, 204.

637 Malipiero, 50; Sanudo and Navagiero in R.I.S., XXII. 1190, XXIII. 1128; Magno, 206; Phrantzes, 448.

638 Magno, 205, 208; Sathas, Μνημεῖα, V. 48; Malipiero, 50, 59, 67, 107, 121; Sanudo, 1190, 1210; Kritoboulos, lib. V. c. 15; Miklosich und Müller, Acta, III. 297; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VI. 299-318.

639 Malipiero, 44; Sabellicus, 895; Cambini apud Sansovino, f. 158; Phrantzes, 447; Sa’d al-Dīn, II. 244; Hammer, II. 98 nᵃ; Piacenza, L’Egeo Redivivo, 439.

640 Giornale Ligustico, V. 370-2.

641 Ibid. V. 367-70.

642 Gottlob, Aus der Camera Apostolica, 293.

643 Revue de l’Orient latin, I. 537-9.

644 Anonymous, Οἱ Γατελοῦζοι ἐν Λέσβῳ, 70 n¹.

645 Atti, XXXIV. 322, 326, 345.

646 P. 521.

647 Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient latin, 436-43; Supplément, 18-19; Pls XVI, XVII, XXI; Lampros, Catalogue, II. 305; Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, VI. 41, 491-2; VII. 87-8.

648 Fontana, Sacrum Theatrum Dominicanum, 81; Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum (ed. Echard), I. 816-7; Rovetta, Bibliotheca Provinciæ Lombardiæ Sacri Ordinis Prædicatorum, 76; Bullarium Ordinis Fr. Prædicatorum (ed. Bremond). III. 210-11, 236, 336.

649 De vera nobilitate, 53, 55, 82-3.

650 Reg. Vat. 443, ff. 111-2.

651 Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren, 449.

652 Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, III. 132, 319.

653 Hopf, in Ersch und Gruber’s Encyklopädie, LXXXVI. 189.

654 Rycaut in Knolles, Turkish History, II. 87 (ed. 1687).

655 Sathas, Μεσαιωνικὴ Βιβλιοθήκη, V. 339. Paparregopoulos, V. 575.

656 Finlay, VI. 11.

657 P. 308.

658 Historia Patriarchica, 102-7; Cobham, The Patriarchs of Constantinople; Paparregopoulos, op. cit. V. 502-36; Finlay, V. 130-49.

659 The Serb Patriarchate of Ipek was practically removed to Carlovitz in 1738, and ceased to exist even in name in 1766. The Bulgarian Patriarchate of Ochrida was formally abolished in 1767.

660 Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, p. 128.

661 Paparregopoulos, V. 471.

662 Rycaut, in Knolles, op. cit. II. 90. Ranke, Fürsten u. Völker von Süd. Europa, p. 69, says that it ceased between 1630 and 1650. Paparregopoulos (V. 471) puts the date of its abolition in 1638; Finlay (V. 163-4) at 1676.

663 Paparregopoulos says that “all but one” were Greeks; but he includes the Albanian family of Ghika and the Kallimachai, who came, as their latest biographer, M. Jorga, has shown, from Moldavia. See my notice in The English Historical Review, XVIII. 577. Blancard, Les Mavroyéni.

664 Finlay, V. 21, 31.

665 Zinkeisen, III. 360.

666 Paparregopoulos, V. 489.

667 Paparregopoulos, V. 494.

668 Sathas, Μνημεῖα, IV. pp. liv-lxi; and vols. VII.-IX., which contain documents relating to them from 1464 to 1570, some of their literary productions, and a picture of one of them fully armed.

669 Finlay, V. 122

670 Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, XIII. 273-317.

671 Θρήνος τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, l. 354 apud Ellissen, Analekten, III.

672 Gregorovius, Storia della Città di Roma nel medio evo [ed. 1901], III. 826; IV. 207, 240; Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste, II. 382; Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, 217.

673 Paruta, Storia della Guerra di Cipro, 79-80.

674 Op. cit. 294.

675 Memorie istoriche dei Monarchi Ottomani, 401.

676 Paruta, 299-300. Négociations de la France dans le Levant, III. 191.

677 pp. 212-214.

678 Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, p. 171.

679 Paruta, 391.

680 Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, p. 175, where the dates of their deaths, given in his Χρονικὸν Ἀνέκδοτον Γαλαξειδίου, p. 153, are corrected; Philadelpheus, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν ἐπὶ Τουρκοκρατίας, I. 40.

681 Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, III. 529.

682 Crusius, Turco-Græcia, VII. 10, 19; Laborde, Athènes aux xvᵉ, xviᵉ et xviiᵉ siècles, I. 55-60.

683 It is headed Περὶ τῆς Ἀττικῆς and has last been published and annotated by my friend K. Philadelpheus, in his excellent Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν ἐπὶ Τουρκοκρατίας, I. 189-92. He assigns to it the date 1628.

684 Philadelpheus, I. 202-8; Konstantinides, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν (ed. 2), pp. 447-50.

685 Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα τῆς Ἱστορίας τῶν Ἀθηναίων (ed. 2), I. 191, 336.

686 Konstantinides thinks his figures much too high (op. cit. 442-7).

687 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηναίων, II. 77-83. Konstantinides (pp. 421-2) relying on a statement of Sanuto that the governor of Athens, even before 1470, was styled only subashi, thinks that all the time down to 1610 Athens was merely a district of a sandjak. Philadelpheus (I. 287-90) agrees with the latter view, but extends the duration of this arrangement to 1621 or even later.

688 Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, pp. 178-9.

689 See the Greek history of Epeiros given in Pouqueville, Voyage dans la Grèce, V. 82-90.

690 Finlay, History of Greece, V. 57, 90-1, 94, 96, 101, 108.

691 Dapper, Description des Îles de l’Archipel, p. 224.

692 Spon, Voyage, II. 23 (ed. 1679).

693 Finlay, V. 108, 114.

694 Laborde, I. 67-70. An Austrian archæologist has suggested that the Hermes, Paris, or Perseus, of Antikythera, discovered some 20 years ago, and now at Athens, was part of the spoil of a vessel bound for England which foundered in 1640 off that island.

695 His genealogy is given in Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς, p. 197, n. 2.

696 Sathas, p. 209.

697 Ibid. pp. 197-210.

698 Nani, Istoria della R. Veneta, pt. II. p. 134.

699 Randolph, The Present State of the Morea, p. 9; Guillet, Athènes ancienne et nouvelle, pp. 28-38. It must be added, however, that the Capuchins of Athens, upon whose notes this book was based, may from theological bias have exaggerated the misdeeds of the Orthodox clergy. On this ground the local historian, Alexandrakos, in his Ἱστορία τῆς Μάνης, p. 18, indignantly rejects these accusations. But in 1894 I heard in Athens a similar story about a Thessalian priest, implicated in a celebrated case of brigandage.

700 Finlay, V. 116-7; Spon, I. 123; Sathas, pp. 308-10; Paparregopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους, V. 493; Leake, Travels in the Morea, III. 450.

701 Laborde, I. 63; Philadelpheus (I. 184, 187) puts his visit in 1621. The passage about Athens is in his Voyage de Levant (ed. 1645), pp. 473-5.

702 Laborde, I. 75, 201; Guillet, p. 223.

703 His Relation d’État présent de la ville d’Athènes is reprinted in full in Laborde’s book.

704 Laborde, I. 176; Finlay, V. 104, n. 2; Ray’s Collection of Curious Travels and Voyages, vol. II.; Randolph, The Present State of the Morea; Magni, Relazione della città d’Atene.

705 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, III. 135.

706 Laborde, II. 358, 363. The Venetian report, given in Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστ. καὶ Ἐθν. Ἑτ. V. 226, says the borgo in 1687 contained “4000 and more houses.”

707 Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, II. 417 n.

708 Ubi supra, II. 187.

709 There is a picture, taken from Stuart, of this Παναγία στὴν πέτρα in Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, II. 280. See his Μνημεῖα, I. 93. It was destroyed by Hadji Ali, to provide materials for the defences of Athens against the Albanians in 1778.

710 Laborde, I. 126 n.

711 In the third volume of Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία.

712 Spon, II. 180. Even now there is no synagogue in Athens.

713 E.g. the thief who pillaged the king’s study at Tatoi in 1902 was an Albanian from Markopoulo, between Athens and Laurion. Many of the names of the Attic villages—e.g. Tatoi, Liosia and Liopesi—are Albanian.

714 Printed by Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, II. 238-43.

715 Guillet, who tells the story, upon which Spon casts doubt, places this under Ahmed I. Spon says the boon was granted about 1645.

716 Ἄρχοντες, νοικοκυραῖοι, παζαρῖται, ξωτάρηδες.

717 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, II. 102.

718 The Present State of the Morea, p. 22.

719 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, III. 120.

720 Ἐπῆραν τὰ παιδιὰ ἀπὸ τὴν Ἀθήνα [sic] are the words. This chronicle, which is dated 1606, has been re-published by Kampouroglos in his Μνημεῖα, I. 89-90, and by Lampros, Ecthesis Chronica and Chronicon Athenarum, 85-6.

721 Spon, II. 103.

722 Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, I. 33; Paparregopoulos, V. 597.

723 The θρῆνος for him is published in Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, I. 7-27, and by Legrand, Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire, II. 123-47.

724 Laborde, I. 208.

725 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, II. 174.

726 Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, III. 120.

727 Vernon, in Ray’s Collection of Curious Travels and Voyages, II. 22.

728 Spon, II. 194; Paparregopoulos, V. 645. Philadelpheus has treated exhaustively of the Athenian schools in the Turkish period (II. ch. XIX.).

729 In Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, vol. III.

730 Kampouroglos, (Ἱστορία, II. 37) thinks that it had been the metropolitan church of Athens during the whole Frankish period. Philadelpheus (I. 178, 273, 312) agrees with him. When I visited it I could see not only that it had been a mosque, but that it might easily have been a church. There are old pillars inside it, a continuation of those in the Roman market outside.

731 Ἱστορία, II. 275, 304. Philadelpheus, I. 273. This identification is conclusively proved not only by tradition among very old Athenians, but by an entry in a Gospel found at Ægina with the words τοῦ Καθολικοῦ τῆς Ἀθήνας τοῦ Ἁγίου Παντελεήμονος. This church stood in the square where the public auctions are still held.

732 Spon, II. 155, 172. “Deli-Dagh” is a translation of “Monte Matto,” the Italian version of Hymettos. Kampouroglos, Ἱστορία, II. 50.

733 Babin in Laborde, I. 188 n.

734 Finlay, V. 100.

735 Spon, II. 192-4; Laborde, I. 163.

736 Laborde, I. 81, 198; Spon, II. 121.

737 Spon, II. 122.

738 Spon, II. 107-8; Laborde, I. 81.

739 Babin, in Laborde, I. 199.

740 Randolph, The Present State of the Islands in the Archipelago, p. 5.

741 Spon, II. 179.

742 The Greeks call any large beast a δράκος.

743 Spon, II. 211, 213, 220, 223, 230; Randolph, Present State of the Morea, p. 1.

744 Vernon, ubi supra, II. 22, 25.

745 Spon, II. 16, 23, 28, 41, 51, 57-62, 65, 73, 232, 246; Finlay, V. 100; Vernon, ubi supra, II. 27.

746 Paparregopoulos, V. 590.

747 Spon, II. 219, 270-3.

748 Randolph, The Present State of the Morea, p. 4.

749 Pègues, Histoire... de Santorin, 591-619.

750 Spon, I. 149.

751 Randolph, The Present State of the Islands in the Archipelago, 8-14.

752 Sanger, Histoire nouvelle des anciens Ducs, 305-24; Sathas, Νεοελληνικὴ Φιλολογία, 345; Dowling, Hellenism in England, 46-7, 80-5.

753 Hopf, ubi supra, LXXXVI. 172-3.

754 Hopf, Veneto-byzantinische Analekten, pp. 422-6; and in Ersch und Gruber, LXXXVI. 177.

755 Racconto historico della Veneta Guerra in Levante (Colonia, 1691), I. 62, 65.

756 Laborde, Athènes aux xvᵉ, xviᵉ et xviiᵉ siècles, II. 74-8.

757 Ἡμερολόγιον Μάτεση apud Sathas, Ἑλληνικὰ Ἀνέκδοτα, I. 198; Chiotes, Ἱστορικὰ Ἀπομνημονεύματα, III. 281, 318.

758 La Morea combattuta dall’ armi Venete (Venetia, 1686), pp. 180-2.

759 Locatelli, I. 151, 161, 167, 174, 213.

760 Mateses apud Sathas, I. 210; Jireček, Geschichte der Serben, II. i. 139; Locatelli, I. 263, 276.

761 Ibid. I. 338.

762 Journal d’Anna Akerhjelm, apud Laborde, II. 307.

763 Locatelli, I. 348.

764 Morosini’s dispatches apud Laborde, II. 121-31.

765 Locatelli, II. 3.

766 Laborde, I. 116-17.

767 Morosini’s dispatch apud Laborde, II. 158; Chandler, Travels in Asia Minor and Greece (ed. 1825), II. 111.

768 Apud Laborde, II. 277; Locatelli, II. 3; Ranke, “Die Venezianer in Morea,” in Sämmt. Werke, XLII. 297.

769 Locatelli, II. 8; Morosini’s dispatch apud Laborde, II. 162.

770 Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστ. καὶ Ἐθν. Ἑταιρίας, V. 222-7: Locatelli, II. 24-34.

771 Laborde, II. 358.

772 Ibid. II. 279.

773 Ibid. II. 279, 313.

774 Ibid. II. 179, 317.

775 Ibid. II. 150, 172, 176, 180, 182; Fanelli, Atene Attica, pp. 113, 308, 317.

776 Laborde, II. 90; Mateses apud Sathas, I. 216.

777 Atene Attica, p. 344.

778 Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, I. 43; Philadelpheus, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, II. 315; Δελτίον, V. 545.

779 Mateses, loc. cit.; Locatelli, II. 50; Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, I. 189, 296; Ἱστορία, I. 343; III. 256.

780 Δελτίον, V. 457; Lampros, Ἱστορικὰ Μελετήματα, p. 217.

781 Locatelli, II. 109, 164, 247; Garzoni, Istoria della Repubblica di Venezia (ed. 1720), I. 365.

782 Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, I. 34-6.

783 Ibid. I. 211; Philadelpheus, II. 62.

784 Kampouroglos, Μνημεῖα, II. 339; Konstantinides, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, p. 494, n. 1.

785 J. Benizelos, Ἱστορία τῶν Ἀθηνῶν apud Philadelpheus, II. 273.

786 Garzoni, I. 432-4, 509-10; Δελτίον, V. 525.

787 Garzoni, I. 622, 629; Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant, I. 141.

788 Authorities, the reports of the Venetian governors, used by Ranke for his essay “Die Venezianer in Morea” (Sämmt. Werke, XLII. 277-361), and by Zinkeisen (Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, V. 473-89), have since been published by the late Professor Lampros in his Ἱστορικὰ Μελετήματα, pp. 199-220, and in Δελτίον τῆς Ἱστορικῆς καὶ Ἐθνολογικῆς Ἑταιρίας, II. 282-317, 686-710; V. 228-51, 425-567, 605-823. For the campaign of 1715 Brue, Journal de la campagne; Diedo, Storia della Repubblica di Venezia, IV. 73-107; the Greek poem by Manthos of Joannina (an eye-witness), “Conquête de la Morée par les Turcs” in Legrand, Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire, III. 280-331; Ferrari, Delle notizie storiche della lega... contra... Acmet III, pp. 41-69; Chronique de l’expédition des Turcs en Morée, 1715, attribuée à Constantin Dioikétès.

789 Itinéraire (ed. 1826), I. 80-2; Lampros, p. 209.

790 Chroniques gréco-romanes, pp. 385-90.

791 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, II. i. 99, 102, which disprove the statement that it was introduced from Naxos about 1580.

792 French Consular dispatches apud Zinkeisen, V. 486, n. 2.

793 Voyages, I. 462.

794 IV. 83.

795 Lamprynides, Ἡ Ναυπλία, 230-40.

796 I. 138.

797 Δελτίον, V. 802; Ferrari, p. 44.

798 History of Modern Greece, I. 242 n.; Depellegrin, Relation du voyage dans la Morée, p. 14; Lamprynides, p. 284.

799 Philadelpheus, II. 69.

800 Zinkeisen, V. 499 n.; Gerola, Monumenti Veneti nell’ Isola di Creta, I. ii. 535.

801 Art. Am. II. 658; Epist. ex Ponto, IV. xiv. 45.

802 H. N. III. 26.

803 II. 627; V. 650.

804 VII. 480.

805 III. 12, § 2.

806 Ed. Wesseling, 323, 329, 332, 489, 497, 549, 608, 611-12.

807 Ed. Teubner, p. 13.

808 Travels in Northern Greece, I. 2.

809 Voyage dans la Grèce, I. 284.

810 Acta et Diplomata res Albaniæ mediæ ætatis illustrantia, I. 4, 5, 7.

811 Procopius (ed. Teubner), II. p. 23.

812 III. 56.

813 Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren, 167, 191, 202 n.

814 Ed. Teubner, I. 49-50, 126, 132, 137, 161, 177, 187, 193-94; II. 168-69, 189, 194, 197; Recueil des historiens des Croisades: Historiens occidentaux, III. 177.

815 Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, II. xii. 118, 184.

816 Niketas, 118-19.

817 Font. Rer. Aust. II. xii. 472, 570.

818 Miklosich und Müller, Acta et Diplomata Græca Medii Ævi, III. 240; M. Sanudo, ap. Hopf, Chroniques gréco-romanes, 107; Ughelli, Italia Sacra, VI. 774.

819 Del Giudice, Codice Diplomatico del Regno di Carlo Iᵒ e IIᵒ d’Angiò, I. 308; Pachymeres, I. 508.

820 Buchon, Recherches et Matériaux, I. 33.

821 Del Giudice, II. i. 239; Act. et Dip. Alb. I. 73, 84, 85, 93, 94.

822 Ibid. 106, 115, 117, 127, 139; Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. IV. ii. 355; Font. Rer. Aust. ii. xiv. 226, 243.

823 Act. et Dip. Alb. I. 146, 157.

824 Ducange, Histoire de l’Empire de Constantinople (ed. 1729), II. Recueil, 21, 22.

825 Act. et Dip. Alb. I. 159; Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum, I. 150, 233; Miklosich und Müller, III. 109.

826 Dip. Ven.-Lev. I. 135, 161; Act. et Dip. Alb. I. 214, 215, 220, 237; Archivio Veneto, XX. 94.

827 Dip. Ven.-Lev. I. 125, 130, 136-38, 147-49, 154, 159-62, 191; Arch. Ven. XX. 92; Act. et Dip. Alb. I. 217, 245.

828 Cantacuzene, I. 495.

829 Starine, IV. 29; Jireček, Geschichte der Serben, I. 385 (thus disproving Hopf’s statement, for which there is no authority, that Valona became Serbian in 1337).

830 Spomenik, XI. 29, 30.

831 Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, III. 176; Predelli, I Libri Commemoriali, III. p. 307.

832 Hopf apud Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXV. 458ᵇ.

833 Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer. IV. 58.

834 Ibid. XXVII. 264; Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica, 178.

835 Orbini, Il regno degli Slavi, 289; Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer. IV. 100-103. For the history of Saseno cp. Lampros in Νέος Ἑλληνομνήμων, XI. 57-93.

836 Ibid. VII. 145; Historia della casa Musachia ap. Hopf, Chroniques, 290.

837 From turri del Prego, turris Pirgi, Hopf has evolved Parga, which in 1320 formed part of the Despotat of Epeiros (Dip. Ven.-Lev. I. 170), and became Venetian in 1401. Pyrgos was at the mouth of the Semeni (Act. et Dip. Alb. II. 107, III).

838 Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer. IV. 226.

839 Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer. IV. 263, 266, 308, 349.

840 Miklosich und Müller, II. 230; Hopf, Chroniques, l.c.; Chalkokondyles, 251.

841 Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer. IV. 384, 412, 423; V. 81, 120; XII. 198, 199, 263; Gelcich, La Zedda e la Dinastia dei Balšidi, 204.

842 Sathas, Μνημεῖα Ἑλληνικῆς Ἱστορίας, I. 173.

843 Epigrammata reperta per Illyricum, p. XXI.

844 Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer. XXII. 372.

845 Hopf ap. Ersch und Gruber, LXXXVI. 159ᵃ.

846 Sathas, Μνημ. VI. 135, 137, 139, 173, 218.

847 Sathas, Μνημ. IX. 174.

848 A. Mauroceni, Historia Veneta (ed. 1623), 172.

849 Sathas, Μνημ. IX. 218; Paruta, Storia della guerra di Cipro, 225.

850 Predelli, Commem. VII. pp. 190-93.

851 Garzoni, Istoria della Repubblica di Venezia (ed. 1720), I. 365-71.

852 Ibid. 390-407; Epirotica, 254.

853 Voyage, I. 285.

854 Aravantinos, Χρονογραφία τῆς Ἠπείρου, I. 190-92, 248-49.

855 Ibid. I. 261, 288, 306, 311, 319, 328-29, 383, 400-1, 409-10.

856 Diplomatische Aktenstücke (Wien, 1914), p. 71.

857 Il Messaggero, Oct. 31, 1914.

858 I. 333.

859 Lost in 1903, but recently re-discovered at Corfù. See Morning Post, July 25, 1916.

860 Ur = “Prince” in Hungarian.

861 Justly, as Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer., I. 131 show.

862 Jireček (II. 120 n. 2) has shown that the form “Obilich” was substituted in the eighteenth century, because “Kobilich” (= “son of a mare”) was considered vulgar.

863 Il Regno degli Slavi, p. 294.

864 Copioso Ristretto degli Annali di Rausa, pp. 85, 132.

865 Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, XXI. 123.

866 Historia Byzantina, I. 347.

867 Abhandlungen der historischen Classe der k. bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, VIII. 698.

868 Istorija Crne Gore, p. 43.

869 Turcs et Monténégrins, pp. 20, 30, 33.

870 Istorija o Černoj Gorê, Italian translation by Ciàmpoli, pp. 23, 25, 29-30.

871 In Ersch und Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklopädie, LXXXVI. 101; Chroniques gréco-romanes, p. 534.

872 Trésor de Chronologie, p. 1773.

873 Mon. sp. hist. Slav. Merid. IV. 301, 305, 372, 377.

874 Gelcich, La Zedda e la Dinastia dei Balšidi, p. 226.

875 Mon. sp. hist. Slav. Merid. V. 68; XVII. 36.

876 Ersch und Gruber, LXXXVI. 42-3.

877 Die serbischen Dynasten Crnojević, p. 61.

878 Mon. sp. hist. Slav. Merid. XXI. 10.

879 Ibid. XXI. 164-5, 167-8, 202, 205, 382, 384.

880 Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica, p. 566.

881 Between May 2 and November 11: Mon. sp. hist. Slav. Merid. XXII. 364, 383.

882 Ibid. XXVII. 212.

883 Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen aus Bosnien und der Hercegovina, II. 229.

884 I have drawn largely for this essay from the Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen aus Bosnien und der Hercegovina, of which twelve volumes were published during the Austro-Hungarian occupation, and which throw new light on many points of Bosnian history. I have also visited all the chief places of historic interest in the occupied territory and the sandjak of Novibazar.

885 P. 159 (ed. Bonn).

886 Wiss. Mitth. I. 333, 434.

887 Constantine Porph. III. 156, 160.

888 Pp. 104, 131-32 (ed. Bonn).

889 Wiss. Mitth. VII. 215-20; Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica, 1; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta Slavorum Meridionalium historiam illustrantia, I. 6, 12-13, 15, 19-20, 22.

890 Miklosich, Mon. Serb., 24, 28-30, 32-34; Theiner, Vetera Monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, I. 31-32, 55-56, 72, 113, 120, 128-30, 133, 137, 147, 162-63, 168-73, 201-06; Thomas Archidiaconus in Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer., XXVI. 91, 103, 105, 113, 121, 195.

891 Wiss. Mitth. XI. 260, 262.

892 Ibid. XI. 278; Orbini, Il Regno degli Slavi, 350.

893 L. v. Thallóczy in Wiss. Mitth. XI. 268-73 (reprinted in his Studien zur Geschichte Bosniens und Serbiens im Mittelalter, 7-75).

894 Miklosich, Mon. Serb. 42, 44, 60, 69; Theiner, Mon. Hung. I. 230, 273-76, 303, 348, 359-60, 364, 375-78, 395, 403, 456, 458, 463; Mon. Slav. I. 135.

895 Wiss. Mitth. XI. 184, 235, 239-44; Miklosich, Mon. Serb. 101-03, 105-07; Thallóczy, op. cit., 273.

896 Wiss. Mitth. IV. 324-42; Miklosich, Mon. Serb. 187.

897 Makuscev, Monumenta historica Slavorum Meridionalium, I. 528; Doukas (Italian version), 354 (ed. Bonn).

898 Jireček, Geschichte der Serben, II. 126.

899 Wiss. Mitth. II. 94-124; IV. 390-93; VI. 284-90; Thallóczy, op. cit., 303.

900 Recueil de Voyages et de Documents (Paris, 1892), XII. 195; Thallóczy, op. cit., 79-109.

901 P. 249; Wiss. Mitth. II. 125-51.

902 Farlati, Illyricum Sacrum, IV. 68.

903 Another theory is that he received the ducal title from the Pope in 1449, when he turned Catholic, or the King of Aragon, or that he took it with the agreement of the Sultan. (Wiss. Mitth. III. 503-09; X. 103 n.; Thallóczy, Studien zur Geschichte Bosniens und Serbiens im Mittelalter, 146-59.) But he is styled dux terre Huminis as early as Aug. 23, 1445 (Mon. sp. hist. Slav. Mer. XXI. 226), “Duke of St Sava” in 1446 (Farlati, l.c.), and “Duke” in a dubious inscription of that year (Wiss. Mitth. III. 502).

904 Chalkokondyles, 459; Kritoboulos, III. ch. 2.

905 Chalkokondyles, 532; Kritoboulos, IV. ch. 15.

906 Wiss. Mitth. I. 496; III. 384; Hopf, Chroniques, 333; Historia Politica, 33; Chalkokondyles, 535-44; Makuscev, I. 309, 532; II. 25.

907 Kritoboulos, V. chs. 4-6.

908 Wiss. Mitth. IV. 395; Mon. sp. h. Sl. Mer., VI. 114, 126; XXV. 386; Orbini, 388.

909 Campani Vita Pii II, apud Muratori, R.I.S., III. pt ii. 981.

910 Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, VI. 648-9.

911 Mélanges historiques, IV. 395.

912 Her stay in Rome on this occasion may be dated approximately by two letters which she wrote there on October 23 and November 5 (Mon. Pat. Script. II. 115; Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III. 114). Capgrave, Ye Solace of Pilgrimes, 138.

913 P. 179 (Ed. 1614).

914 Cronaca di Bologna, apud Muratori R.I.S. XVIII. 742.

915 P. 94.

916 Mélanges historiques, V. 411.

917 Volaterranus apud Muratori, R.I.S. (ed. 1904), XXIII. 87, 127, 148.

918 Torrigio, Le sagre grotte Vaticane (ed. 1675), 285-6, 288-9, 299; J. Burchardi, Diarium (ed. 1883), I. 272-3.

919 Archivio storico italiano, Ser. III. iii. 226, 234-5.

920 Histoire de l’île de Chypre, III. 346-7, 408, 412-3.

921 Theiner, Vetera monumenta historica Hungariam sacram illustrantia, II. 318, 373-4.

922 Libro nel qual s’ insegna a scriver ogni sorte lettera (ed. 1578) f. 55; (ed. 1553) f. 54.

923 Memorie Istoriche della Chiesa e Convento di S. Maria in Araceli, 129, 148 (which give the Slavonic inscription, taken from Palatino).

924 Copioso ristretto degli Annali di Ragusa, 10; Thallóczy, op. cit., 110-20, 309-10.

925 Theiner, Vet. Mon. Hung. II. 442, 447, 452; Makuscev, Monumenta historica Slavorum Meridionalium, II. 95.

926 Arch. stor. ital. Ser. III. iii. 229; Gottlob, Aus der Camera Apostolica, 292-4.

927 Mas Latrie, Histoire, III. 174; Sathas, Μεσαιωνικὴ Βιβλιοθήκη, II. 474.

928 Migne, Patrologia Græca, CLXI. pp. lxxxvi-vii.

929 Steinmann, Die Sixtinische Kapelle, I. 386; Abb. 25; Schrader, Mon. Ital. IV. 216.

930 William of Tyre, Bk XVI. 29; Jacques de Vitry (ed. Bongars), 1068-9, Röhricht, Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem, 191.

931 Ludolphi, De Itinere Terræ Sanctæ, 40-1.

932 William of Tyre, Bk IX. 2.

933 Recueil des Hist., Lois, I. 22; Jacques de Vitry, 1116.

934 William of Tyre, Bk XVII. 1.

935 Recueil des Hist., Lois, I. 22-26.

936 Bk XI. 10.

937 Recueil des Hist., Hist. Occid., II. 47, 58; Morning Post, Jan. 11, 1918.

938 Ibid. II. 36, 50; Archives de l’Orient Latin, I. 663-8.

939 Röhricht, Regesta Regni Hieros., pp. 285, 321, 325.

940 From pullus, a “colt,” and probably of the same origin as the Moreote termination -όπουλος.

941 Pp. 1088-9.

942 Lois, I. 426-7.

943 Bk XXI. 7.

944 Jacques de Vitry, p. 1082.

945 Bk XII. 7.

946 William of Tyre, Bk XX. 29-30; Jacques de Vitry, p. 1063.

947 Radulfus de Diceto, II. 80-1; Annales de Dunstapliâ, 126; Röhricht, Regesta, pp. 321, 361; Geschichte, 965; Mas Latrie, Hist. de l’Île de Chypre, II. 81-2, 213.

948 Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’Île de Chypre, I. 200, 256.

949 I. 214-5.

950 Ibid. I. 178-82; II. 54.

951 Ibid. I. 231.

952 Ibid. II. 230, 253-54, 316-17.

953 Ibid. I. 34.

954 Ibid. I. 151; II. 252, 273.

955 Ibid. I. 30.

956 Ibid. I. 113.

957 Ibid. II. 18, 58.

958 Ibid. II. 106, 186, 259, 296.

959 Ibid. I. 230-1; II. 89-90.

960 Ibid. I. 101, 181; II. 149.

961 Ibid. I. 204; II. 149, 253.

962 Ibid. I. 109-11, 120-3.

963 Ibid. II. 209-22.

964 Ibid. I. 128.

965 Ibid. I. 220, 227, 246; II. 82, 83, 169.

966 Ibid. I. 69, 240; II. 162.

967 Ibid. I. 28, 55, 169, 174; II. 81.

968 Ibid. I. 89.

969 Ibid. II. 13, 26, 60, 71, 104, 114, 115, 138, 176, 204, 209.

970 Ibid. II. 8, 15, 97.

971 Ibid. I. 27.

972 Ibid. I. 199; II. 76, 78, 86, 205, 241-2.

973 Ibid. II. 94, 111.

974 Ibid. II. 65, 199.

975 Ibid. II. 99.

976 Ibid. II. 84.

977 Ibid. II. 206.

978 Ibid. I. 84, 128-9, 154, 179, 183, 197; II. 170, 256.

979 Ibid. II. 53.

980 Ibid. I. 57.

981 Ibid. I. 27, 153, 202.

982 Ibid. I. 169.

983 Ibid. I. 222; II. 81, 194.