Aleman, a member of a Provençal family still existing at Corfù, and the
bold baron did not scruple to build his castle out of the house and
church of the Latin Archbishop. Finally, the dozen was completed by the
fiefs of Kalamata and Kyparissia (or Arkadia, as it was called in the
Middle Ages, when what we call Arcadia was known as Mesarea) which became
the barony of Geoffroy de Villehardouin. In addition to these twelve
temporal peers there were seven ecclesiastical barons, whose sees were
carved out on the lines of the existing Greek organisation, and of whom
Antelme of Clugny, Latin Archbishop of Patras and Primate of Achaia was
the chief. The Archbishop received eight knights’ fees, the bishops four
a piece, and the same number was assigned to each of the three great
Military Orders of the Teutonic Knights, the Knights of St John, and
the Templars. When, a century later, the Templars were dissolved, their
possessions went to the Knights of St John. In Elis was the domain of the
Prince, and his usual residence, when he was not at Andravida, was at
Lacedæmonia, or La Crémonie, as the Franks called it.
After the distribution of the baronies came the assignment of military
service. All vassals were liable to render four months’ service in the
field, and to spend four months in garrison (from which the prelates
and the three Military Orders were alone exempted), and even during the
remaining four months, which they could pass at home, they were expected
to hold themselves ready to obey the summons of the Prince. After the
age of 60, personal service was no longer required; but the vassal must
send his son, or, if he had no son, some one else in his stead. Thus
the Franks were on a constant war footing; their whole organisation
was military—a fact which explains the ease with which they held down
the unwarlike Greeks, so many times their superiors in numbers. This
military organisation had, however, as the eminent modern Greek historian
Paparregopoulos has pointed out, the effect of making the Greeks, too,
imbibe in course of time something of the spirit of their conquerors.
It is thus that we may explain the extraordinary contrast between the
tameness with which the Greeks accepted the Frankish domination, and
their frequent rebellions against that of the Turks. All over the Levant
and even in Italy the Frankish chivalry of Achaia became famous. They
fought against the luckless Conradin at Tagliacozzo, and the ruse, which
won that battle and which Dante has ascribed to Erard de Valéry, is
attributed by the _Chronicle of the Morea_ to Prince William of Achaia.
Round the Prince there grew up a hierarchy of great officials with
high-sounding titles, to which the Greeks had no difficulty in fitting
Byzantine equivalents. The Prince himself bore a sceptre, as the symbol
of his office, when he presided over the sessions of the High Court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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