Essays on the Latin Orient — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Essays on the Latin Orient
John Stuart Mill · en
As one of the leading nobles of the Latin kingdom of Salonika, Guido
continued to be associated with its fortunes. In 1221 we find him acting
as bailie for the Regent Margaret during the minority of the young
King Demetrius, in whose name he ratified a convention with the clergy
respecting the property of the Church[337]. His territory became the
refuge of the Catholic Archbishop of Larissa, upon whom the bishopric of
Thermopylæ was temporarily conferred by Honorius III, when the Greeks of
Epeiros drove him from his see. And when the ephemeral kingdom had fallen
before them, the same Pope, in 1224, ordered Geoffroy II de Villehardouin
of Achaia, Othon de la Roche of Athens, and the three Lombard barons of
Eubœa to aid in defending the castle of Boudonitza, and rejoiced that
1300 _hyperperi_ had been subscribed by the prelates and clergy for its
defence, so that it could be held by “G. lord of the aforesaid castle,”
till the arrival of the Marquess William of Montferrat[338]. Guido was
still living on May 2, 1237, when he made his will. Soon after that date
he probably died; Hopf[339] states in his genealogy, without citing any
authority, that he was killed by the Greeks. He had survived most of
his fellow-Crusaders; and, in consequence of the Greek reconquest of
Thessaly, his Marquisate was now, with the doubtful exception of Larissa,
the northernmost of the Frankish fiefs, the veritable “March” of Latin
Hellas.
Guido had married a Burgundian lady named Sibylle, possibly a daughter
of the house of Cicon, lately established in Greece, and therefore a
cousin of Guy de la Roche of Athens. By her he had two daughters and a
son, Ubertino, who succeeded him as second Marquess. Despite the feudal
tie which should have bound him to the Prince of Achaia, and which he
boldly repudiated, Ubertino assisted his cousin, the “Great Lord” of
Athens, in the fratricidal war between those prominent Frankish rulers,
which culminated in the defeat of the Athenians at the battle of Karydi
in 1258, where the Marquess was present, and whence he accompanied Guy
de la Roche in his retreat to Thebes. In the following year, however,
he obeyed the summons of the Prince of Achaia to take part in the fatal
campaign in aid of the Despot Michael II of Epeiros against the Greek
Emperor of Nice, which ended on the plain of Pelagonia; and in 1263, when
the Prince, after his return from his Greek prison, made war against
the Greeks of the newly established Byzantine province in the Morea,
the Marquess of Boudonitza was once more summoned to his aid[340]. The
revival of Greek power in Eubœa at this period, and the frequent acts
of piracy in the Atalante channel were of considerable detriment to the
people of Boudonitza, whose food supplies were at times intercepted by
the corsairs[341]. But the Marquess Ubertino profited by the will of
his sister Mabilia, who had married Azzo VII d’Este of Ferrara, and
bequeathed to her brother in 1264 her property near Parma[342].