$ 1.

CHAP. VII. declining years lamenting the forced apostacy of many of his flock, and the desecration of the glorious temple of the Panaghia in the Acropolis, by the rude priests of the haughty Franks, who compelled the subject Greeks to celebrate divine service according to the rites of the orthodox in the humbler churches in the city below.1

The conquest of Athens rendered Otho de la Roche master of all Attica and Boeotia; but immediately after the death of Boniface, the Lombards of the kingdom of Saloniki, under the orders of count Biandrate, deprived him of Thebes, but on what pretext is not known. This city was again restored to its rightful master by the emperor Henry, when he reduced the Lombard kingdom of Saloniki to its lawful state of vassalage to the imperial crown of Romania; and Otho de la Roche did homage at the parliament of Ravenika, for both Athens and Thebes, as one of the great feudatories of the empire. Otho, like the emperor Henry and the principal vassals of the empire, forbade all donations of land to the papal church, and appropriated to his own use, or at least to temporal purposes, a greater share of the spoils of the Greek church, and surrendered a smaller portion to the Latin clergy than met with the approbation of Innocent III. Even threats of excommunication could not compel him to alter his policy, and the Pope was induced to accept the explanations he offered for his proceedings, founded on the political exigencies of his position, and the deep contrition he expressed for having offended the head of the church.2 It seems that the wealth of the Greek church, the monastery lands, and the imperial domains of

1 The Parthenon had then hardly felt the finger of time, and had escaped almost uninjured from the hand of man. The marble walls of the Cella were adorned in the interior with Byzantine church paintings, in which it is not improbable that the emperor Basil II. appeared in his imperial robes, presenting his offerings from the spoils of the Bulgarian war.-Cedrenus, 717.

Epist. Innocent. III., tom. ii. p. 193, 213, 266, 418, 462, ep. 110, p. 465, and 624. Raynaldi, Annales Eccles., an. 1218, tom. i. 438. The Frank Chronicle says the church possessed one-third of Greece.-Greek text, v. 1305.

FRANK CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST.

159

the Byzantine emperors in Attica and Boeotia, were sufficient to satisfy Otho's wants and ambition, for his administration, judging from the tranquillity of his Greek subjects and the increased importance acquired by his principality, must have been less rapacious than the previous government of the emperors of Constantinople. Otho de la Roche nevertheless, in the decline of life, preferred his modest fief in France to his principality in Greece, and about the year 1225 resigned the government of Athens and Thebes to his nephew Guy, son of his brother Pons de Ray.1

Athens has been supposed to have lost its position as a direct fief of the empire of Romania by the homage which Otho de la Roche paid to Boniface, king of Saloniki; and it was pretended that the king of Saloniki had transferred the immediate superiority over all the country to the south of his own frontier, in Thessaly, to William de Champlitte, prince of Achaia. The pretended vassalage of Athens to Achaia at this early period rests only on the authority of the Book of the Conquest of the Morea, a Frank chronicle, of which a metrical translation in Greek was known long before the French text, which appears to be the original, was discovered. The work contains an inaccurate and far from poetical narration of the prominent events relating to the affairs of the Peloponnesus, from the time of its conquest by the Franks until the commencement of the fourteenth century. On all occasions it exalts the importance of the house of Villehardoin. This Chronicle asserts that Boniface, on quitting the army of the Crusaders in the Morea, to return to Thessalonica, placed all the great feudatories of the empire, including the duke of the Archipelago or Naxos,

1 Généalogie de la Maison de la Roche. Nouvelles Recherches Historiques sur la Principauté Française de Morée, par Buchon, i. p. 84. Guy de Ray, or de la Roche, is always called Guillerme in the Frank Chronicle of the Conquest of the Morea, one of the numerous inaccuracies which prove that it cannot be relied on as a historical authority.

A. D.

1225.

$1.

CHAP. VII. under the immediate superiority of William de Champlitte, prince of Achaia. There can be no doubt that this is a mere fable. Indeed the chronicler soon refutes his own story, by omitting to mention that the consent of these great feudatories was given to the trick by which he pretends that Geffrey Villehardoin defrauded the family of Champlitte of the principality of Achaia-a trick which could never have transferred to Villehardoin the feudal superiority over the fiefs of Athens, Negrepont, Boudonitza, and Naxos, without the express consent of these feudatories and the formal ratification of the emperor Henry. The earliest claim of the princes of Achaia to any superiority over the princes of Athens really took place in the time of Guy de la Roche, about the year 1246. The Grand-sire of Athens and Thebes had assisted William Villehardoin to conquer Corinth and Nauplia as an ally, and not as a vassal, and received as a reward for this assistance the free possession of Argos and Nauplia, for which the prince of Achaia did not even claim personal homage, as long as his wars with the Greeks in Laconia rendered the alliance of the prince of Athens a matter of importance. This, as far as can be ascertained from authentic evidence, is the only feudal connection that existed between Athens and Achaia previous to the conquest of the empire of Romania by the Greeks, and the transference of the feudal superiority over Achaia to the house of Anjou of Naples.1

When William, prince of Achaia, had completed the

1 The Frank Chronicle makes Guy de la Roche admit that he owed homage for Argos and Nauplia, but makes him assert that he was no vassal of Achaia. -Livre de la Conqueste, p. 106. King Louis IX. of France, to whom the dispute was referred, decided that Guy had never actually done homage to William ; and as he could not therefore be considered a liege-man of the prince of Achaia, he had committed no feudal delinquency in bearing arms against him, p. 114. Muntaner, an earlier and much better authority than the Chronicles, whether French or Greck, who had visited the court of Guy II., duke of Athens, in 1308, had never heard of any vassalage of Athens to Achaia. He declares that the dukes of Athens and the princes of Achaia held their principalities equally free of homage and service. -Muntaner, chap. ccxxxvii. and cexliv.

WILLIAM OF ACHAIA ATTACKS GUY OF ATHENS. 161

conquest of the Peloponnesus, his ambition led him to form projects for extending his power to the north of the isthmus at the expense of the Latin allies, who had aided him against the Greeks. In the year 1254 he called on Guy, Grand-sire of Athens, to do personal homage for his possessions in the Morea. To this demand the prince of Athens replied, that he was ready to pay the feudal service that was due for his fiefs of Argos and Nauplia, but he asserted that he owed no personal homage to William. Both parties prepared to decide the question by arms, for it seemed emphatically one of those that authorised a private war according to the feudal system. The Grand-sire of Athens was supported by the count of Soula, (Salona,) the lords of Eubœa, and even by the baron of Karitena, a relation and vassal of the prince of Achaia. But the army of the confederates was defeated by Villehardoin at the pass of Karidhi, on the road from Megara to Thebes. The vanquished were besieged in Thebes, and compelled to enter into a capitulation, by which Guy de la Roche engaged to present himself at the court of William Villehardoin, at Nikli, in order that the question concerning the homage due to the prince of Achaia might be decided in a parliament of the principality. Guy made his appearance, and William was unable to persuade his own vassals that the Grand-sire of Athens was deserving of any punishment according to the letter of the feudal law. The case was referred to king Louis IX. of France, whose reputation as an able and impartial judge was already so great in the whole Christian world that all parties willingly consented to abide by his decision. Guy de la Roche hastened to the court of France, confident in the justice of his cause; and

1 Nikli was the town that in Byzantine times occupied the site of Tegea. Mouchli rose into importance when it declined; and when Mouchli fell into ruins, the modern town of Tripolitza was founded. A similar succession of towns occurred also in the lower Arcadian plain. Veligosti arose not very far from the ruins of Megalopolis, and Leondari near the remains of Veligosti.

L

A. D.

1257.

§ 1.

CHAP. VII. Villehardoin was satisfied to secure the temporary absence of a powerful opponent at a critical moment. The king of France considered the delinquency of the Grand-sire of Athens to be of so trifling a nature, that it was more than adequately punished by the trouble and expense of a journey to Paris; and in order to indemnify Guy in some measure for the inconvenience which he had suffered in presenting himself at the court of France, Louis authorised him to adopt the title of Duke of Athens, instead of that of Grand-sire, by which he had been hitherto distinguished.1 From subsequent events, it seems possible that William Villehardoin really made a claim at this time to the direct homage of the duke of Athens; but whether he based his claim on a pretended grant of the king of Saloniki to Champlitte, or on some charter of the emperors Robert, or Baldwin II., to his elder brother Geffrey II., prince of Achaia, who had married the sister of these emperors cannot be determined. The claim, whether well or ill founded, was made a pretext by the kings of Naples for assuming that the cession of the suzerainty of Achaia, by the emperor Baldwin II., at the treaty of Viterbo in 1267, conveyed also to the crown of Naples a paramount superiority over the duchy of Athens.2

When Guy de la Roche returned to Greece, he found the emperor Baldwin II. a fugitive from Constantinople, and his own conqueror, William, prince of Achaia, a prisoner in the hands of the Greek emperor, Michael VIII., the conqueror of Constantinople. In order to regain his freedom, the prince of Achaia was compelled to cede to the Greek emperor the fortresses of Monemvasia, Misithra, and Maina, as the price of his

1 Guy de la Roche appears to have made ample use of his power to coin money as a great feudatory of the empire of Romania before visiting France, for his coins with Dominus are more common than those with Dux.

2 This seems to result from two rescripts of Charles II. of Naples, published by Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, ii. p. 336, Naples, xxx. and xxxi.