Essays on the Latin Orient — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Essays on the Latin Orient
John Stuart Mill · en
Guido, first Marquess of Boudonitza, the “Marchesopoulo,” as his Greek
subjects called him, played a very important part in both the political
and ecclesiastical history of his time—just the part which we should have
expected from a man of his lawless disposition. The “Chronicle” above
quoted represents him as present at the siege of Corinth. He and his
brother, whose name may have been Rubino, were among the leaders of the
Lombard rebellion against the Latin Emperor Henry in 1209; he obstinately
refused to attend the first Parliament of Ravenika in May of that
year; and, leaving his castle undefended, he retreated with the still
recalcitrant rebels behind the stronger walls of the Kadmeia at Thebes.
This incident procured for Boudonitza the honour of its only Imperial
visit; for the Emperor Henry lay there one evening—a certain Wednesday—on
his way to Thebes, and thence rode, as the present writer has ridden,
through the _closure_, or pass, which leads over the mountains and down
to Dadi and the Bœotian plain—then, as now, the shortest route from
Boudonitza to the Bœotian capital[335], and at that time the site of a
church of our Lady, _Sta Maria de Clusurio_, the property of the abbot
and canons of the Lord’s Temple. Like most of his fellow-nobles, the
Marquess was not over-respectful of the rights and property of the Church
to which he belonged. If he granted the strong position of Lamia to the
Templars, he secularised property belonging to his bishop and displayed
a marked unwillingness to pay tithes. We find him, however, with his
fellows, signing the _concordat_ which was drawn up to regulate the
relations between Church and State at the second Parliament of Ravenika
in May, 1210[336].