Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The external policy of Byzantium during the reigns of the Andronicoi 

Page 6

But recently much new material, especially in the Archives of Barcelona (the archives de la Corona d'Arago), has come to light which shows that the conception of former historians on this subject was biased. The years of the Catalan domination in middle Greece in the fourteenth century were not only troubled and destructive; they were productive. The Acropolis, which was called in Catalan Castell de Cetines, was fortified; for the first time since the closing of the Athenian school by Justinian the Great, a university was established at Athens. Catalan fortifications were also erected in middle and northern Greece. A modern Catalan historian, the best recent authority on the Catalan problem in Middle Greece, A. Rubio y Lluch, declared, The discovery of a Catalan Greece is, in our opinion, one of the most unexpected surprises the modern investigators have had in the history of medieval political life. Of course, the full story of the Catalan dominion in Greece remains to be learned; but we must realize that the older works and former opinions on this problem of many very eminent scholars must be rectified, and that a new history of the Catalan dominion in Greece must be told on the basis of new material. The Navarrese invasion in 1379 dealt a death blow to the Catalan dominion in Greece.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/external-policy-andronicoi.asp?pg=6