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The Fourth Crusade and Byzantium
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Page 14
The Latin Empire was founded on the feudal basis. The conquered territory was divided by the Emperor into a great number of larger or smaller fiefs, for the possession of which the western knights were obliged to take vassal oath to the Latin Emperor of Constantinople.
Boniface of Montferrat, king of Thessalonica, marched through Thessaly southward into Greece, and conquered Athens. In the Middle Ages, Athens was a half-forgotten provincial city where upon the Acropolis, in the ancient Parthenon, an Orthodox cathedral in honor of the Virgin Mary was located. At the time of the Latin conquest, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the famous Michael Acominatus (Choniates) had been archbishop of Athens for about thirty years. Michael left a rich literary inheritance in speeches, poetry, and letters, which gives good information on the internal history of the Empire under the Comneni and Angeli, as well as on the conditions of Attica and Athens in the Middle Ages. Those provinces are represented in Michael's works in a very dark aspect, with barbarian population, perhaps partly Slavonic, with barbarian language round about Athens, with Attica desolate, and its population poor. Having stayed a long time at Athens I have become barbarian, wrote Michael and compared the city of Pericles to Tartarus. An assiduous protector of medieval Athens who had devoted much time and work to his poor flock, Michael, judging it impossible to resist the troops of Boniface, abandoned his seat and spent the rest of his life in solitude on one of the islands close to the shores of Attica. The Latins conquered Athens, which, with Thebes, was transmitted by Boniface to a Burgundian knight, Othon de la Roche, who assumed the title of the Duke of Athens and Thebes (dux Athenarum atque Thebarum). The cathedral upon the Acropolis passed into the hands of the Latin clergy.
While the Duchy of Athens and Thebes was founded in central Greece, in southern Greece, that is to say, in the ancient Peloponnesus, which was at that time often called Morea, a name whose etymological origin is not clear, was formed the Principality of Achaia, which was organized by the French.
Geoffrey de Villehardouin, nephew of the famous historian, was off the shore of Syria when he learned of the taking of Constantinople by the crusaders; he hastened thither, but he was driven by stress of weather upon the southern shores of the Peloponnesus. He landed there and conquered a part of the country. But feeling that he could not maintain himself with merely his own forces, he asked help from the king of Thessalonica, Boniface, who at that time was in Attica. The latter granted the right of conquering Morea to one of his knights, a Frenchman, William de Champlitte, from the family of the counts of Champagne. In the course of two years he and Villehardouin subdued the whole country. Thus, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Byzantine Peloponnesus was converted into the French Principality of Achaia, with Prince William at the head of its government; it was divided into twelve baronies and received the western European feudal organization. After William, the princely power passed over to the house of the Villehardouins. The court of the prince of Achaia was marked by its brilliancy and seemed larger than the court of any great king. There French was spoken as well as in Paris. About twenty years after the formation of the Latin feudal states and possessions on the Byzantine territory, Pope Honorius III, in his letter to Blanche, queen of France, spoke of the creation in the east as a sort of new France (ibique noviter quasi nova Francia est creata).
Cf. Venetians and Crusaders take Constantinople (1204) - Plunder of the Sacred Relics, by E. Pears
A History of the Byzantine Empire - Table of Contents
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/fourth-crusade.asp?pg=14
