of the Danube."75 Elsewhere the same historian remarks: "The expedition of the Catalans in the East is a wonderful instance of the success which sometimes attends a career of rapacity and crime, in opposition to all the ordinary maxims of human prudence." The Spanish archives still afford much new information on this expedition. At the very beginning of the fourteenth century Roger de Flor with his "company" arrived in Constantinople. There were almost ten thousand members of the expedition; but the Catalans and Aragons who came to the East brought with them their wives, mistresses, and children. The Marriage of Roger to the Emperor's niece was celebrated at Constantinople with great pomp. After some serious conflicts in the capital between the Catalans and Genoese, who, jealous for their exceptional privileges in the Empire, felt the newcomers their rivals, the "company" was finally transported into Asia Minor, where the Turks were besieging a large city of Philadelphia (east of Smyrna). Supported by a band of imperial troops the small Hispano-Byzantine army, under Roger de Flor, freed Philadelphia from the Turkish siege. The victory of the Western mercenaries was enthusiastically received in the capital; some men thought that the Turkish danger to the Empire was over forever. The first success was followed by others against the Turks in Asia Minor. But the unbearable extortions and arbitrary cruelties of the Catalans towards the local population, on one hand, and the clearly expressed intention of Roger to establish in Asia Minor a principality of his own, though under the Emperor's suzerainty, on the other, strained the relations between the mercenaries, the people of Asia Minor, and the government of Constantinople. The Emperor recalled Roger to Europe, and the latter with his "company" crossed the Hellespont and occupied, first, an important fortress on the straits of Gallipoli, and, then, the whole peninsula of Gallipoli. The new negotiations between Roger and the Emperor ended in Roger's obtaining the title next to the Emperor's, that of Caesar, never till 75 Finlay, A History of Greece, III, 388. Finlay, A History of Greece, IV, 147. then borne by a foreigner. Before marching again to Asia Minor the new Caesar went with a small band to Hadrianople, where the eldest son of Andronicus, the co-emperor Michael IX, resided. On Michael's instigation, during a festival, Roger and his companions were slain. When these tidings spread among the population of the Empire, the Spaniards in the capital and other cities were also murdered. The Catalans, who were concentrated at Gallipoli, inflamed and thirsty for revenge, broke their obligations as allies of the Empire and set out to the west, ravaging with fire and sword the regions through which they passed. Thrace and Macedonia were terribly devastated. Not even monasteries on Mount Athos were spared. An eye witness, a pupil of Daniel, igumen (abbot) of the Serbian monastery of Chilandarion, on Mount Athos, wrote: "It was horror to see then the desolation of the Holy Mountain by the hands of enemies." The Catalans also burned the Russian monastery of St. Panteleemon, on Mount Athos. The assault of the Catalans on Thessalonica failed. In retaliation for the Catalan devastations Andronicus commanded the merchandise of some Catalan vessels in the Byzantine waters seized and the merchants themselves arrested." 77a After having stayed some time in Thessaly, they marched to the south, through the famous pass of Thermopylae, into Middle Greece into the territory of the Duchy of Athens and Thebes, which was founded after the Fourth Crusade and was under French control. In the spring of 1311 there took place a battle in Boeotia, at the river of the Cephisus, near the Lake of Copais (near the modern village of Skripù). The Catalans won a decisive victory over the French troops; putting an end to the flourishing French Duchy of Athens and Thebes, they established "Porph. Uspensky, The Christian Orient, Athos (St. Petersburg, 1892), III, part 2, 118 (in Russian). Ta See Acta Aragonensia. Quellen zur deutschen, italienischen, französischen, spanischen, zur Kirchen-und Kulturgeschichte aus der diplomatischen Korrespondenz Jaymes II. (1291-1327), ed. by H. Finke, II (Berlin und Leipzig, 1908), 741 (no. 458). In this edition the text is dated May 2, 1293. But in the document itself the year is obliterated. I think it should be assigned to the beginning of the fourteenth century for in 1293 the Catalan companies had not yet taken any part in the history of Byzantium. there Spanish sway which lasted for eighty years. The church of the Holy Virgin, of which we have spoken above, the ancient Parthenon, on the Acropolis, passed into the hands of the Catalan clergy, who were impressed by its sublimity and riches. In the second half of the fourteenth century a Spanish Duke of Athens called the Acropolis "the most precious jewel that exists in the world, and such as all the kings of Christendom together would imitate in vain."78 The Athenian Duchy of the Catalans established by mere accident in the fourteenth century and organized upon Spanish or Sicilian models, is generally to be considered a harsh, oppressive, and destructive government, which at Athens and in Greece in general has left very few material traces of its domination. On the Acropolis, for instance, the Catalans carried out some changes, especially in the disposition of the fortifications; but no traces of them remain. But in Greek popular tradition and the Greek tongue there still linger reminiscences of the cruelty and injustice of the Spanish invaders. Even today, in some regions of Greece, for example, in the island of Euboea, to blame some one for an illegal or unjust action, the phrase runs: "Not even the Catalans would have done that." In Acarnania, to the present day, the word "Catalan" is the synonym for "savage, robber, criminal." At Athens the word "Catalan" is considered injurious. In some cities of the Peloponnesus, when one wishes to say that a woman possesses a bad character, one says, "She must be a Catalan woman.' 1979 But recently much new material, especially in the Archives of Barcelona (the archives de la Corona d'Aragó), has come to light which shows that the conception of former historians on this subject was biased. The years of the Catalan domination in Middle Greece in the fourteenth century were not only troubled and destructive; they were productive. The Acropolis, which was called in Catalan Castell de Cetines, was fortified; for the first TS W. Miller, The Catalans at Athens (Roma, 1907), p. 14; idem, Essays on the Latin Orient (Cambridge, 1921), p. 129. Rubió y Lluch, La expedicion de los Catalanes, pp. 14-15. G. Schlumberger. Expédition des "Almugavares" ou routiers catalans en Orient (Paris, 1902), pp. 391-92. time since the closing of the Athenian school by Justinian the Great, a university was established at Athens.80 Catalan fortifications were also erected in Middle and Northern Greece.81 To quote a modern Catalan historian, our best authority today on the Catalan problem in Middle Greece (A. Rubió i Luch), "the discovery of a Catalan Greece is, in our opinion, one of the most unexpected surprises the modern investigators have had in the history of mediaeval political life."82 Of course, the full story of the Catalan dominion in Greece remains to be learned; but we must realize that the older works and former opinions on this problem of many very eminent scholars must be rectified, and that a new history of the Catalan dominion in Greece must be told on the basis of new material.8 83 The Navarrese invasion in 1379 dealt a death blow to the Catalan dominion in Greece. As has been stated, at the very beginning of the fourteenth century the Catalan "company" fought successfully against the Ottoman Turks. But these military successes did not last long. The bloody advance of the Catalan companies through the Balkan peninsula, after Roger de Flor's murder, and the internal strife between the two Andronicoi, grandfather and grandson, of which we have already spoken, diverted the forces and attention of the Empire from the eastern border. The Ottomans seized their advantage, and in the last years of Andronicus the Elder and in the reign of Andronicus the Younger won some important successes in Asia Minor. The sultan Othman (Osman) and after him his son Orkhan conquered there the chief Byzantine cities, Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia, and then reached the coast of the Sea of Mar80 See A. Rubió i Lluch, Atenes en temps dels Catalans, in the Anuari de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 1907, pp. 245-46. 81 Idem., Els Castells Catalans de la Grecia continental, ibidem, 1908, pp. 364-425. 82 Idem, La Grecia Catalana des de la mort de Roger de Lluria fins a la de Frederic III de Sicilia (1370-1377), ibidem, 1913-14 (vol. V), p. 393. See also idem, "Une figure Athénienne de l'époque de la domination catalane. Dimitri Rendi," Byzantion, II (1925), 194. 83 Idem, La Grecia Catalana de la mort de Frederic III fins a la invasió navarresa (1377-1379), ibidem, 1915-20 (vol. VI), p. 199. The author of this essay is planning to write a History of Catalan Greece (p. 127, note 2). For a list of many publications of Rubió y Lluch see the Cambr. Med. History, IV, 862. mora. Several cities of the western coast of Asia Minor began to pay tribute to the Turks. In 1341, when Andronicus III died, the Ottoman Turks had already become the real masters of Asia Minor, with the obvious intention of transferring hostilities into the European territory of the Empire and even threatening Constantinople itself; Thrace was exposed to continuous incursions on their side. Meanwhile, the Seljuq emirates, fearing danger from the Ottomans, entered into friendly relations with the Empire in order to struggle against both the Latins, and the Otto mans. The Western policy of Byzantium under Andronicus II and Andronicus III. Situation of Byzantium in the Balkan peninsula at the end of the thirteenth century. Rise of Serbia and beginning of the rule of Stephen Dushan (Dušan). Advance of the Albanians to the south. Venice and Genoa.-The possessions of Byzantium in the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the thirteenth century, embraced the whole of Thrace and southern Macedonia with Thessalonica; but the lands lying farther to the west and south, Thessaly, Epirus, and Albania, only partially recognized the power of the Empire, and not in equal degree. In the Peloponnesus the Empire under Michael Palaeologus had reconquered from the Franks Laconia in the south-east of the peninsula, and then the central province, Arcadia. In the rest of the Peloponnesus and Middle Greece the Latins continued to rule. As to the Archipelago, Byzantium possessed only a few islands in the northern and north-eastern portion of the sea. Parallel with the Ottoman danger in the east, another threatening danger to Byzantium was growing up in the Balkan peninsula, in the first half of the fourteenth century, from Serbia. Her previous history is briefly as follows. The Serbs and the closely related-perhaps, even identicalCroats made their appearance in the Balkan peninsula in the seventh century, at the time of Emperor Heraclius and occupied the western part of the peninsula. While the Croats dwelling in Dalmatia and in the region between the rivers Sava and Drava began to enter into closer relations with the West, adopted Catholi |