Intercultural Encounters in Medieval Greece After 1204: The Evidence of Art and Material Culture

576 Pages·2022·11.181 MB·English

by  Vicky Foskolou (editor), Sophia Kalopissi-verti (editor)

Intercultural Encounters
in Medieval Greece after 1204
BYZANTIOς
STudIeS IN BYZANTINe HISTOrY ANd CIvIlIZATION
Volume 19
Series Editors
Michael Altripp
Lars Martin Hoffmann
Christos Stavrakos
Editorial & Advisory Board
Michael Featherstone (CNRS, Paris)
Bojana Krsmanović (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts,
Belgrade)
Antonio Rigo (University of Venice)
Horst Schneider (University of Munich)
Juan Signes Codoñer (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Peter Van Deun (University of Leuven)
Nino Zchomelidse (Johns Hopkins University)
Intercultural Encounters in
Medieval Greece after 1204
The Evidence of Art and Material Culture
Edited by
Vicky Foskolou &
Sophia Kalopissi-Verti
F
© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2022/0095/18
ISBN 978-2-503-59850-5
eISBN 978-2-503-59851-2
DOI 10.1484/M.SBHC-EB.5.127530
ISSN 1371-7677
eISSN 1371-8401
Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Vicky Foskolou and Sophia Kalopissi-Verti 7
List of Abbreviations 19
List of Illustrations 23
Part I
Tracing the Latin Identities and the Role of the Mendicants
Architecture, Use of Space, and Ornament in the Mendicant
Churches of Latin Greece
An Overview
Michalis Olympios 45
Reflections of Mendicant Spirituality in the Monumental
Painting of Crete in the Late Medieval Period (13th–15th Centuries)
Vicky Foskolou 77
Art, Identity, and the Franciscans in Crete
Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis 113
Saint George ‘of the English’
Byzantine and Western Encounters in a Chapel of the
Fortifications of Rhodes
Ioanna Bitha and Anna-Maria Kasdagli 131
Western Music and Poetry at the Kingdom of Thessalonica
Music and Historiography of the Fourth Crusade
Dimitris Kountouras 177
Part II
Social Transformations and Mutual Approaches
The Evidence of Archaeology and Material Culture
Imported Projects, Local Skills, and the Emergence of a
‘Cretan Gothic’
Olga Gratziou 201
6 table of contents
Glazed Pottery in Late Medieval Morea (13th–15th Centuries)
Cross-Cultural Tableware with Multiple Connotations
Anastasia Vassiliou 247
Pottery Finds in the Medieval Town of Rhodes (1204–1522)
Insights on a Multicultural, Cosmopolitan Society
Maria Michailidou 285
Dress Accessories and Sartorial Trends in the Principality of
Achaia (1205–1428)
Evidence from the Frankish Castles of Chlemoutsi and Glarentza
Eleni Barmparitsa 327
Part III
Cultural Interactions and Byzantine Responses
The Evidence of Architecture, Murals, and Icon Painting
Cultural Interactions Between East and West
The Testimony of Three Orthodox Monasteries in Thirteenth-
Century Frankish Messenia
Michalis Kappas 361
Politics of Equilibrium
Gothic Architectural Features at Mystras (1361–71), Cypriot
Models, and the Role of Isabelle de Lusignan
Aspasia Louvi-Kizi 395
Reconstructing the Artistic Landscape of Rhodes in the
Fifteenth Century
The Evidence of Painting from Lindos
Nikolaos Mastrochristos and Angeliki Katsioti 427
Permeable Boundaries of Artistic Identity
The Origin of a Fifteenth-Century Annunciation
Konstantia Kefala 463
Preaching, the Role of the Apostles, and the Evidence of
Iconography in East and West
Byzantine Responses to the ‘Challenges’ from the Latin Church
after 1204
Sophia Kalopissi-Verti 489
Notes on Contributors 531
Index 537
Colour Plates 557
Introduction
The present volume is based primarily on the papers delivered at a round table entitled
‘Byzantines and Latins in the Greek Mainland and the Islands (13th–15th centuries):
Archaeological and Artistic Evidence of an Interrelation’, convened during the 23rd
International Congress of Byzantine Studies held in Belgrade in August 2016.1 The
key issue that connected the contributions was the cross-cultural interaction and
contacts between the two ethnicities, confessions and cultures as reflected in the
art and material culture of Medieval Greece.2
There is no doubt that over the last 30 years the history of Medieval Greece in the
aftermath of the Fourth Crusade has been a field of intense research activity.3 Political
developments, social life, economic activities and institutions have been discussed in
a number of publications, which have paid particular attention to the relations and
the cultural exchanges between the different ethnic and religious groups, mainly
Byzantines and Latins that lived together in the Latin polities of Romania from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries.4
1 Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies Belgrade, 22–27 August 2016. Round
Tables, ed. Bojana Krsmanović and Ljubomir Milanović (Beograd: The Institute for Byzantine
Studies, SASA 2016) 608−45, http://www.byzinst-sasa.rs/srp/uploaded/PDF%20izdanja/round%20
tables.pdf (1.11.2021). In addition to the original speakers, we have also invited other scholars in the
field, mainly of the younger generation but also some senior colleagues, who are well acquainted with
the archeological material in order to broaden the range and subject matter of this publication.
2 The recent publication entitled Cross-Cultural Ιnteraction between Byzantium and the West, 1204–1669:
Whose Mediterranean Is It Αnyway? Papers from the Forty-Eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies,
Milton Keynes, 28th–30th March 2015, ed. Angeliki Lymberopoulou, Society for the Promotion of
Byzantine Studies, Publications 22 (London, New York: Routledge 2018), is concerned with similar
issues but differs in its geographical and chronological range, as it includes all the Latin East and goes
up to the 17th c.
3 On the historiography of this research see the concise presentation in Nickiphoros Tsougarakis, ‘The
Latins in Greece: A Brief Introduction’, in A Companion to Latin Greece, ed. Nickiphoros Tsougarakis
and Peter Lock, Brill’s Companions to European History 6 (Leiden, Boston: Brill 2015) 1–22
(esp. 8–14).
4 Relations between Byzantines and Latins in the Levant has been a central issue in a series of collective
volumes from as far back as 1989, starting with the Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after
1204, ed. Benjamin Arbel et al. (London, Totowa: Frank Cass 1989) and followed by the volume The
Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki Laiou and Roy Parviz
Mottahedeh (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection 2001), who added
the dimension of the Muslim world to the debate. For more recent works that have approached the
subject from the perspective of political, social, religious, and economic history, see also, Identities
and Allegiances in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204, ed. Judith Herrin and Guillaume Saint-Guillain
(Farnham, Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2011); Greeks, Latins and Intellectual History 1204–1500, ed. Martin
8 introduction
Despite this flourishing of interest, the art and material culture of the Crusader
states in the southern Greek mainland and the Aegean has been represented in a
rather piecemeal fashion, scattered throughout these more wide-ranging approaches
to the period.5 This was due, among other things, to the fact that the impact of the
presence of Westerners on the artistic activity of medieval Greece was not a central
issue in the study of the art and archaeology of the region. This perception played a
crucial role in shaping the research interests and perspectives of scholars. Thus, the
few surviving works of Crusader architecture were treated as examples of the Western
architectural tradition and studied in isolation from all other buildings of the same
period in the region.6 On the other hand, Romanesque or Gothic elements adopted
in the local ecclesiastical architecture, were characterized as ‘Western influences’ and
considered to be limited only to specific formal features that did not alter the ‘purity’
of the Byzantine architectural forms, or as Charalambos Bouras put it: ‘Indeed, the
random and eclectic addition of Frankish architectural forms represents nothing
more than the intensification of a tendency toward variety.’7
Hinterberger and Chris Schabel, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales Bibliotheca 11
(Leuven: Peeters 2011); Liquid & Multiple: Individuals & Identities in the Thirteenth-Century Aegean, ed.
Guillaume Saint-Guillain and Dionysios Stathakopoulos, Collège de France – Centre de recherche
d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, Monographies 35 (Paris: ACHCByz 2012); Contact and Conflict
in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204–1453: Crusade, Religion and Trade between Latins, Greeks and
Turks, ed. Nikolaos G. Chrissis and Mike Carr (Farnham: Ashgate 2014); Tsougarakis and Lock,
Companion to Latin Greece (n. 3). The recent publication of the new periodical Frankokratia. A Journal
for the Study of Greek Lands under Latin Rule, ed. Michalis Olympios and Christopher Schabel (Brill)
demonstrates the increasing scholarly interest in this period.
5 See for example the articles by Charalambos Bouras, ‘The Impact of Frankish Architecture on
Thirteenth-Century Byzantine Architecture’, and Sharon E. J. Gerstel, ‘Art and Identity in the
Medieval Morea’, in The Crusades (n. 4) 247–61 and 263–80 respectively; also Sophia Kalopissi-Verti,
‘Relations between East and West in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes after 1204: Archaeological
and Artistic Evidence’, in Archaeology and the Crusades. Proceedings of the Round Table, Nicosia, 1
February 2005, ed. Peter Edbury and Sophia Kalopissi-Verti (Athens: Pierides Foundation 2007),
and the studies by Maria Georgopoulou, ‘The Landscape of Medieval Greece’, and Sophia Kalopissi-
Verti, ‘Monumental Art in the Lordship of Athens and Thebes under Frankish and Catalan Rule
(1212–1388): Latin and Greek Patronage’ in Tsougarakis and Lock, Companion to Latin Greece (n. 3),
326–68 and 369–417. The following two collected volumes are, as their titles reveal, an exception to
the general rule: The Archaeology of Medieval Greece, ed. Peter Lock and Gay D. R. Sanders (Oxford:
Oxbow Books 1996) and Byzantine Art in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. The Fourth Crusade
and its Consequences. International Congress, March 9–12, 2004, ed. Panayotis L. Vocotopoulos
(Athens: Academy of Athens 2007). The former concentrates on specific material remains, mainly
architectural, and its main focus is on the impact of the ‘Frankish’ conquest on the material culture
of the Greek mainland, whereas the latter contains overviews of the artistic activity, mainly of
monumental painting, over a wider geographical area, but without any special emphasis on the
influence the Latins’ presence and rule had on the Byzantine art of the period.
6 Typical examples are the studies of Antoine Bon, La Morée franque: recherches historiques,
topographiques et archéologiques sur la principauté d’Achaie (1205–1430), 2 vols, Bibliothèque des Écoles
françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 213 (Paris: De Boccard 1969), and Beata Kitsiki-Panagopoulos,
Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries in Medieval Greece (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1979).
7 Bouras, ‘Impact of Frankish Architecture’ (n. 5) 258.
introduction 9
Similarly, in the case of monumental painting contact with the art of the West was
mostly identified in minor details, usually iconographic themes of a pragmatic nature
that did not affect the Οrthodox character of Byzantine iconography and style.8 Often
newly introduced iconographic and stylistic elements in painting in these areas that
seemed ‘foreign’ to the local – Byzantine – artistic tradition were considered the result
of contact with Western art, without specific historical analysis. Though there were
exceptions to this – as, for example, the article by Sharon Gerstel on the iconography
of equestrian saints in the Peloponnese and that of Stella Papadaki-Oekland on a group
of wall paintings in Crete with Western iconography and style, and the study on the
so-called eclectic trend in monumental painting in Rhodes under the Hospitallers
by Elias Kollias, in which the question of Western ‘borrowings’ was approached from
a historical and social point of view9 – the more general tendency in studying the
monumental painting of the areas under Latin rule was basically to describe them
as ‘Western influences’ on the local artistic production.
This approach has been revised in the past few years and more recent scholarship
views the art and architecture of these regions as a single entity and attempts to
interpret it with reference to the new historical and social circumstances, which
differed from one place to another. This change in methodology first appears in the
study of architectural remains. Typical examples are Maria Georgopoulou’s book on
the urban planning and landscape of cities in Venetian Crete and Olga Gratziou’s
study of the ecclesiastical architecture of the island in the period from the thirteenth
to the late fifteenth century, in which the combined examination of the Venetian
buildings and Byzantine churches vividly illustrates the co-existence of the two
dogmatic communities on the island.10
A similar turn has taken place in the study of the Frankish Peloponnese, especially
the north-western part, where the Latin presence predominated. The studies of
8 The origin of this view is found in the work of Manolis Chatzidakis, whose influence on later scholars
studying Byzantine monumental painting was decisive, see Manolis Chatzidakis, ‘Aspects de la
peinture murale du xiiie siècle en Grèce’, in L’art byzantin du xiiie siècle, Symposium de Sopoćani 1965,
ed. Vojislav J. Djurić (Belgrade: Faculté de philosophie, Département de l’histoire de l’art 1967) 59–73,
esp. 73; Idem, ‘Μνημειακή ζωγραφική στην Ελλάδα. Ποσοτικές προσεγγίσεις’, PAA 56 (1981) 375–90
(389, n. 15); see also Doula Mouriki, ‘Palaeologan Mistra and the West’, in Byzantium and Europe.
First International Conference, Delphi, 20–24 July 1985, ed. Anastasios Markopoulos (Athens: European
Cultural Center of Delphi 1987) 209–46, esp. 239. For a more nuanced approach, see Demetrios
Pallas, ‘Ευρώπη και Βυζάντιο’, in the same volume, 30–61.
9 Gerstel, ‘Art and Identity’ (n. 5); Stella Papadaki-Oekland, ‘Δυτικότροπες τοιχογραφίες του 14ου αιώνα
στην Κρήτη. Η άλλη όψη μιας αμφίδρομης σχέσης;’ in Ευφρόσυνον. Αφιέρωμα στον Μανόλη Χατζηδάκη,
2 vols, Δημοσιεύματα του Αρχαιολογικού Δελτίου 46 (Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture,
Archaeological Receipts Fund 1991–92) II, 491–514; Elias E. Kollias, ‘Δύο ροδιακά ζωγραφικά σύνολα
της εποχής της ιπποτοκρατίας. Ο Άγιος Νικόλαος στα Τριάντα και η Αγία Τριάδα (Ντολαπλί Μετζίντ)
στη μεσαιωνική πόλη’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Athens, 1986); Idem, Η μνημειακή
εκλεκτική ζωγραφική στη Ρόδο στα τέλη του 15ου και στις αρχές του 16ου αιώνα (Athens: Research Centre
for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art at the Academy of Athens 2000).
10 Maria Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies. Architecture and Urbanism (New York:
Cambridge University Press 2001); Olga Gratziou, Η Κρήτη στην ύστερη μεσαιωνική εποχή. Η μαρτυρία
της εκκλησιαστικής αρχιτεκτονικής (Heraklion: Crete University Press 2010).
10 introduction
Heather E. Grossman and Demetrios Athanasoulis are indicative of the new research
directions. Building on their doctoral theses, these scholars have contributed a great
deal to both the systematic recording and highlighting of the architectural treasures of
the area and to raising new questions and elaborating new methodological approaches.11
The results of the work of the local Ephorates of Antiquities also contributed to
scholars’ renewed interest in the Frankish Morea. The excavations in the citadel at
Glarentza, the research and restoration works at Chlemoutsi Castle and the study on
the excavation finds from the basilica of St Francis in Glarentza, Chlemoutsi Castle
and other Latin-held sites of Elis have brought to light rich new material, offering a
holistic view of the material remains of the region that was the administrative and
economic centre of the Principality of Achaia.12 New material has also come to light
through restoration works in Messenia carried out by the competent Ephorate of
Antiquities.13
11 Heather E. Grossman, ‘Syncretism Made Concrete: The Case for a Hybrid Moreote Architecture
in Post-Fourth Crusade Greece’, in Archaeology in Architecture: Studies in Honor of Cecil Striker, ed.
Judson J. Emerick and Deborah M. Deliyannis (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern 2005) 65–73; Demetrios
Athanasoulis, ‘Η ναοδομία στην Επισκοπή Ωλένης κατά την μέση και την ύστερη βυζαντινή περίοδο’
(unpublished PhD thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 2006), http://ikee.lib.auth.gr/
record/66388?ln=el (1.11.2021); Heather E. Grossman, ‘On Memory, Transmission and the Practice
of Building in the Crusader Mediterranean’, in Mechanisms of Exchange: Transmission in Medieval
Art and Architecture of the Mediterranean, ca. 1000–1500, ed. Heather E. Grossman and Alicia Walker,
special issue of MedEnc 18 (2012) 481–517; Demetrios Athanasoulis, ‘The Triangle of Power: Building
Projects in the Metropolitan Area of the Crusader Principality of the Morea’, in Viewing the Morea.
Land and People in the Late Medieval Peloponnese, ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine
Symposia and Colloquia (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection 2013)
111–51.
12 Γλαρέντζα – Clarence, ed. Demetrios Athanasoulis and Athanasia Ralli (Athens: Hellenic Ministry
of Culture, 6th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities 2005); Demetrios Athanasoulis and Julian Baker,
‘Medieval Clarentza, The Coins 1999–2004, with Additional Medieval Coin Finds from the Nomos
of Elis’, NC 168 (2008) 241–301; Demetrios Athanasoulis, ‘Οι ιππότες στο Clermont. Ένα μουσείο για
τους Σταυροφόρους’, Ilissia 5–6 (2009–10) 36–45; Stefania S. Skartsis, Chlemoutsi Castle (Clermont,
Castel Tornese), NW Peloponnese: Its Pottery and its Relations with the West (13th–Early 19th Centuries),
BAR International Series 2391 (Oxford: Archaeopress 2012); Eleni Barmparitsa, ‘Η μαρτυρία των
μεταλλικών αντικειμένων από τα κάστρα Χλεμούτσι, Γλαρέντζα και άλλες θέσεις της φραγκικής Ηλείας.
Όψεις της ζωής των Φράγκων του πριγκιπάτου της Αχαΐας’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of
Athens 2014), http://thesis.ekt.gr/thesisBookReader/id/40905#page/1/mode/2up (1.11.2021).
Evidence of the increasing scholarly interest in the material culture of Frankish Peloponnese is also
the recent monograph by Katerina Rangou, Eastern Mediterranean Economic Networks in the Age of the
Crusades. The Case of the Peloponnese. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology and Literature PB 189.
(Nicosia: Astrom Editions 2020).
13 Evangelia Militsi-Kechagia, Michalis Kappas, and Vasiliki Mavroeidi, Το έργο της Εφορείας
Αρχαιοτήτων Μεσσηνίας στο πλαίσιο του ΕΣΠΑ (Kalamata: Ministry of Culture and Sports, Ephorate
of Antiquties of Messenia 2017); Michalis Kappas, ‘Approaching Monemvasia and Mystras from the
Outside: The View from Kastania’, in Viewing Greece: Cultural and Political Agency in the Medieval
and Early Modern Mediterranean, ed. Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Studies in the Visual Cultures of the
Middle Ages 11 (Turnhout: Brepols 2016) 147–81; Idem, ‘Cultural Exchange between East and West
in the Late-Fourteenth-Century Mani: The Soteras Church in Langada and a Group of Related