The extent of the Marquisate cannot be exactly defined. In the early
years after the Conquest we find the first Marquess part-owner of
Lamia[327]; his territory extended down to the sea, upon which later
on his successors had considerable commercial transactions, and the
harbour from which they obtained their supplies would seem to have been
simply called the _skala_ of Boudonitza. In 1332 Adam, the Archbishop
of Antivari, alludes to the “castle and port of Boudonice (_sic_),
through which we shall have in abundance grain of all kinds from
Wallachia” (_i.e._ Thessaly, the “Great Wallachia” of the Byzantine
historians and of the “Chronicle of the Morea”)[328]. The Pallavicini’s
southern frontier marched with the Athenian _seigneurie_; but their
feudal relations were not with Athens, but with Achaia. Whether or no
we accept the story of the “Chronicle of the Morea,” that Boniface of
Montferrat conferred the suzerainty of Boudonitza upon Guillaume de
Champlitte, or the more probable story of the elder Sanudo, that the
Emperor Baldwin II gave it to Geoffroy II de Villehardouin[329], it
is certain that later on the Marquess was one of the twelve peers of
Achaia[330], and in 1278 Charles I of Naples, in his capacity of Prince
of Achaia, accordingly notified the appointment of a bailie of the
principality to the Marchioness of that day[331]. It was only during
the Catalan period that the Marquess came to be reckoned as a feudatory
of Athens[332]. Within his dominions was situated a Roman Catholic
episcopal see—that of Thermopylæ, dependent upon the metropolitan see of
Athens. At first the bishop resided at the town which bore that name; on
its destruction, however, during those troublous times, the bishop and
canons built an oratory at Boudonitza. Even there, however, the pirates
penetrated and killed the bishop, whereupon in 1209 the then occupant
of the see, the third of the series, begged Innocent III to allow him
to move to the abbey of “Communio”—perhaps a monastery founded by one
of the Comneni—within the same district[333]. Towards the close of
the fourteenth century, the bishop was commonly known by the title of
“Boudonitza,” because he resided there, and his see was then one of the
four within the confines of the Athenian Duchy[334].
[Illustration: PLATE VI
Fig. 1. BOUDONITZA. THE CASTLE FROM THE WEST.
Fig. 2. BOUDONITZA. THE CASTLE FROM THE EAST.]
[Illustration: PLATE VII
Fig. 1. BOUDONITZA. THE KEEP AND THE HELLENIC GATEWAY.
Fig. 2. BOUDONITZA. THE HELLENIC GATEWAY.]